Justin Buist

I’m sure it’s too late for my opinion to matter on the topic but I’ll lay it out here anyway.

1) I think the Democrats have gone about this all crabbed. Health insurance reform should be approached from a consumer protection angle, not an “everybody has a right” angle. If you want to sell a product called “health insurance” then you need to meet certain federal guidelines on what you do and do not cover. Health insurance coverage shouldn’t be any harder to understand than when you motor up to a gas pump and decide what octane rating you want the gasoline in your car to be.

2) Not having a “public option” is bullshit. I can’t believe the package we’re getting doesn’t include one. When you’re running a small business with 5-20 employees it’s a bitch to track down a policy that’ll actually cover you at a reasonable cost. We really should let the feds gobble up a giant pool of policies that meet their criteria (see point 1) and then resell them at cost to small business owners. Insurance companies get a giant customer pool with a single payer out of it and small businesses would have a nice “default” to go to if they don’t want to invest man hours in shopping around for something better.

3) Go ahead and regulate the profit margins while you’re at it. Health insurance is nothing more than pushing money from party A to party B and taking a bit of profit for your trouble along the way. It’s not much different than lending really and we’ve all accepted that the government can regulate interest rates to some extent. Let the government set the actuary tables on the health policies and hold the insurance companies to that. You want more profit or market share? Do it through better customer service and gathering more customers. Seems to work for the Swiss.

4) Just get rid of Medicaid and drop those people into the public option plan. Either pay for it out of the general fund or weight the premiums paid by those on the public option so that they’re covering folks that cannot afford it.

What’s wrong with that?

My sister-in-law is staying with us for a few days on vacation with her two toddlers, ages 3 and 1.5 years old. I love it when they come out to visit. The husband couldn’t make it because he’s in Afghanistan working on building a power plant.

So, this evening the 3 year old is acting like a 3 year old is expected to. Screaming and crying about everything that doesn’t quite suit him perfectly.

Wife: “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Me: “Honey, I just got done watching Republican Senators in the Sotomayer conference hearings on C-SPAN. This is nothing!”

This is where I’m keeping updated. Tatsuma is a commenter on Fark.com and follows Middle East news pretty closely. I’m using him as my filter instead of trying to follow everything on Twitter and figure out what’s true and what isn’t.

I’m usually annoyed with Democrats point to the national budget and get all hot and bothered that defense spending is the biggest slice. Yeah, it’s huge. It’s insanely huge, but it’s also about the only 100% legitimate task of the Federal government that requires any sort of real funding.

However, when ex-military folk, like E.B. Misfit point to actual programs that are money pits, well, I kind of like that. She does it fairly frequently too.

Here’s an idea for Obama: If you want to find some wasteful spending assemble a team of of ex-military folk. Let them build up a list of programs that just don’t work. Then kill them. The programs, not the vets.

Yep, you and I are now partial owners of Chrysler now. They’re not going to pay back their loans so we’ve acquired controlling shares in the company. Or at least that’s the plan. I’m not sure it’s if it’s final yet.

I’m generally capable of understanding how various clauses in the Constitution enable the Federal government to go far and above what they’re actually permitted to do. I don’t agree with them, but I “get” it.

This one? I haven’t a clue.

It came together a couple weeks later than we’d originally planned, but it still should increase our plants’ growth this spring.

Behold:

Click to enlarge.

Okay, technically it’s not a greenhouse as it has no heat source. It’s a poly covered cold frame, but it still will allow us to get our raised garden going darned near a month before any sane person would be planting in Michigan. The idea is for it to keep the frost off the plants, not create a proper seed germination environment or anything complicated.

What you’re looking at is a really simple 4′x8′ raised garden made out of 2×6s and a few 4×4 posts. Pretty easy to build, and when I told my dad about it he asked if I was going to put some PVC hoops over it and cover it. Good idea. So, snagged 4 pieces of 10′ long 1/2″ PVC pipe and shoved them in there as hoops. Drilled some holes and stuck U-bolts in there to keep them upright, filled with black dirt, and then laid some plastic sheeting I got from Big Lots over it. Then we snaked a 50′ section of soaker hose in it, also sourced from Big Lots. After that a 1″x2″ piece of lumber (cedar in this case, because I couldn’t find anything else in that size at Home Depot) was placed along the sides atop the 2×6 and drilled down to secure the plastic. The ends at the front and back you can see that we’re holding it in place with some clamps. The idea there is that we’ll keep it closed up until about May 19 or so, and during the days after that remove the clamps, fold the ends over the top, and clamp it back to the PVC pipes to keep it from getting too hot. Close the plastic up and at the end of the day to keep the heat in. When June rolls around I’ll loosen the U-bolts remove the hoops and plastic, and throw them into storage for next year. I’ll probably need to stick small sections of PVC pipe into the existing holes to keep it from filling back in.

Watering everything will be easy: Just hook the garden hose up to the soaker hose and turn it on for 15 or 20 minutes every day.

Two other things: Yes, that’s an oil rig behind my house, and yes, I’m aware that a section of my fence is missing. I kicked it out in haste while chasing a cat one day and later screwed it back to the rest of the fence. Poorly. Chuck Norris knocked it down after that and I haven’t seen much point in replacing it, though my wife would probably like it put back up one of these days.

If this goes well we’ll probably build a 2nd one near it next year.