Reason? It's going to be too expensive.
There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.It's going to be too expensive for politicians and their aides, but not too expensive for a family of four trying to live on $20,000 income, right?
The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.
Gabriel Malor at AoSHQ says it best: "I believe the first part of any rational response to this proposal has to begin: 'Fuck you, you fucking fucks.'"
Advice Goddess also comments on the latest example of government hypocrisy.
That's how it is, though; Congress always exempts itself from laws it finds inconvenient, like the minimum wage law, or the one prohibiting insider trading.
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From that same AoSHQ link, the following:
Animal rights "activists," accurately referred to as terrorists, ransacked a lab in Italy and set back research for treating autism and other disorders by years. I believe the first part of any rational response to this act has to begin: "Fuck you, you fucking fucks."Italian scientists were doing research into autism and schizophrenia, and eco-terrorists decided that was intolerable...so they ruined years--and millions of dollars--worth of work.
Weer'd points out their error.
Guess what the first thing they’re going to do when the researchers get back into that animal facility? Euthanize ALL the animals. ALL OF THEM. The research is ruined, as there is no way to be sure which animals are which, and what was done to them. More than likely these goons didn’t wear protective gear so they introduced bacteria and viruses into clean areas. All animals will have to be culled off. Any unique strains will have to be re-derrived inside a quarantine facility. (For those who don’t know, its usually done by in-vitro fertilization in a germ-free foster-mother animal) and the rooms will need to be fully fumigated to return them to clean status.This kind of reminds me of the eco-terrorists who burned an agricultural research facility, thus destroying about 90% of the extant examples of a particular species of an endangered plant. F-ing brilliant, jerks.
If any animals are released they will die in the wild as they are bread to exhibit disease models, not survive on their own.
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I'd ask what the hell is going on in our public schools but I already know the answer to that. In the guise of "anti-bullying" we have girls being forced to kiss other girls, in order to make some kind of point about something or other.
"Parents say they were not notified of the presentation." Gee, why do you think that might be? Surely it's not because some parents don't want their kids given instruction on sexual technique, right?
[A female student's mother, Mandy] Coon said her daughter was distressed by the presentation and wondered why she’d been required to ask another girl to kiss her....except, apparently, "No" to school officials who are telling you to kiss someone of the same sex in front of class.
“She told me, ‘Mom, we all get teased and picked on enough – now I’m going to be called a lesbian because I had to ask another girl if I could kiss her,’” Coon said.
According to the mother, the school said the lesson was meant to “teach girls boundaries and how to say no.”
Also, the school is fostering rape culture:
Parents of middle-school boys were outraged by the school’s lessons on condom usage and determining whether a girl is a slut.Sure, it's perfectly reasonable to tell teenage boys to assume a girl in revealing clothing wants sex.
“I was absolutely furious – really furious,” said one parent of a 13-year-old boy. “They were teaching the boys how to decipher if a girl is a slut.”
According to the parent, who wished to remain anonymous, boys were told to determine whether girls are promiscuous by the way they dress or the number of boys they date.
“We don’t judge people like that in our family,” she said. “We don’t call women names because of what they wear or who they date.”
Holy crap what a clusterfuck.
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Sexual offender is jailed for watching anime. Wow. I mean, the guy's watching anime and they're putting him in jail, because "It's all part of that spectrum."
Anti-child pornography group ECPAT Child Alert director Alan Bell said the images were illegal because they encouraged people "to migrate from there to the real thing".So if you're watching hentai anime about fairies and trolls having sex, you're one step away from kidnapping and raping children? What the fuck.
"The distribution of it is damaging. You have to ask what impact does it have even if it's not harming [an individual child]."
Related: The government cannot force you to reveal the password to your encrypted hard drive, because that violates the Fifth Amendment. That is to say, police can't gather up your encrypted data storage and force you to decrypt them all as they search for files you might have. If the police have formerly seen the files on your machine and it is now inaccessible, they can make you decrypt that.
It makes sense and seems reasonable. If Pervert A has an ecrypted laptop but someone sees illegal images on it while he's using it, the government can compel him to issue the password to unlock the machine. If Pervert B has been accused of having illegal images, but only he knows where they are stored, the government cannot compel him to issue passwords to decrypt his hard drive(s).
...and if you're going to have all kinds of incriminating data on your computer, it's probably best to have an alternate password which will wipe it clean. The alternate password should be written somewhere obvious (post-it on the monitor?) and the program should start by wiping the MBR and proceed from there to scrambling the FAT. Bonus points for purposely fragmenting files so it's nearly impossible to put them back together without the FAT. After that it could start wrecking the files themselves, but the idea is to render the information as inaccessible as possible as quickly as possible, before the person accessing the device can realize it's happening and cut the power. This would make it very difficult and expensive (though not impossible) for someone to recover anything from the drive.
But that kind of data security requires some serious programming chops, which is probably a good thing for law enforcement.
I'm all for prosecuting people who break the law, don't get me wrong, but the Bill of Rights exists for a reason and we must continue to toe that line. Without rule of law, the government can do as it pleases; and if we give the government leave to ignore civil rights to prosecute child molestors, the government will soon start ignoring civil rights for a lot of other crimes.
Heck, they're already doing it with asset forfeiture laws (eg "Cook County vs. $150,000 in cash"). Isn't that bad enough?
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The weather is seasonably cool, and it's been damp, but I'm hoping to be able to get the grass cut today or tomorrow. Mrs. Fungus bought a trio of rose bushes which we want to get planted, too.
Work on cleaning up the bunker continues apace. Yesterday I took out four bags of garbage, only one of which was normal household refuse. I've got more donatables piled by the front door. I'm also getting rid of my old high-back desk chair, because I haven't used it since I got the current chair, and I don't think I'm ever going to use it. Anyway, desk chairs are fairly inexpensive, and that one makes my back hurt, so why keep it?
All three satellite boxes are going to the recycler. I'm not going to pay for satellite TV, and anyway these boxes are years obsolete, so why keep them?
There's still a lot to do, but it's nice to be making progress.