What hath Viagra wrought?

What is wrong with this article, oh were to start, where to begin…

First off quoting a lesbian comedian (Wanda Sykes) about Viagra is kind of like quoting a man on tampon usage, you are kind of looking in the wrong place. I can understand why Wanda might not be able to wait “for the dick to break” but that might not be a universal position for women that actually prefer men.

What a fantastic opening to set the stage for the rest of the article which treats us to all manner of stories as to how old (and young) married women just want to be left alone (sexually that is) but do want to have their men (how else to get a house, car, money, etc.). Well if all you want is a room-mate, there is a solution to that. Get a room-mate. A healthy sexual relationship is part and parcel of a healthily marriage.

What hath Viagra wrought? It has wrought an extended period of sexual intimacy for older couples that would not otherwise be able to enjoy “that” type of relationship.

I just love this other quote:

“I think there’s a lot of women who are married to older men who now have to perform and they find it annoying,” says Judith Regan.

And this one:

Or as Judith Regan, the former editor-publisher and purveyor of the tastes of millions of American women, puts it: “I think there’s a lot of women who are married to older men who now have to perform and they find it annoying. They didn’t get married to have sex with these geezers. They married them for money, houses, and companionship. Sex with them is an irritation.” (As Regan sees it, women are “almost” as horny as men, though somewhat more selective about sex.)

So it is perfectly fine for these young women to marry older men so long as the men don’t get the wrong idea and expect sex (it is ONLY a marriage after all). These sorts of women (that Judith seems to support) are the worst sort of gold diggers. At least with a prostitute you know what you are getting, in this case, you pay but she does not expect to have to play.

According to Jacob Bernstein, for many married women it was just fine when their husbands had the will but not the way (for sex). It was just fine for these men to suffer with the desire that they could not satisfy. The wives were finished with sex so done is done, none for hon. Now Viagra has gone and made a mess of things. These wives still would rather not “play house” with hubby but can’t understand why hubby would (now that he could) look elsewhere for satisfaction.

This is just such a badly written, one-sided, women first article, I can not believe that it got published. It barely hints that the “little blue pill” might be just what the doctor ordered not only for millions of men but also for millions of women that are not really to give up on intimate relations with their men. Nope, according to Jacob Bernstein, men are just such a bother and it is such a relief to women of all ages when “the dick breaks” and they can stop with the irritation of sex.

It's all about the diplomas

Really? It is all about the diplomas?




Peter Orzag, the head of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has explained the differences in pay by saying that public employees have more diplomas.

However, in my opinion if the government we are getting is the result of all these diplomas, I would like high-school drop outs to run Congress.

Ain't that the truth! Most of the government workers I have direct experience with are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, diplomas or not. There is some innovation but the cost of that innovation is much higher than in the private sector. Additionally, most of the government workers are bureaucrats following the rule book. To what end are higher level diplomas?

Actual comparisons of education levels between public sector and private sector dispute that statement so try again...

It used to be that public sector pay lagged that of the private sector because you traded money for security. It was and still is very difficult to loose a government job compared to losing a private sector job. The salary discrepancies have been removed and so now you have "tenured" government employees that make on par or more than the private sector, have great benefits and can't be fired easily. The best of all worlds. The big dirty little secret is the pension obligations that are unsustainable at both the Federal and local government levels that will result in either massive tax increases and/or cuts in other current/future services to pay for retirement benefits.

Obamacare

Well, Obamacare looks to very soon, be the law of the land. The Democratic leadership managed to bribe, brow beat and twist enough arms to get this 2000 plus page monstrosity passed. I firmly believe that if it is not repelled, we and our children will suffer as a result if the enacting of this thing.

1) This bill is so massive that even after talking about it for a year or more, there is no single congressman that has read it all and understands it.

2) It is full of special deals, favors and vote buys.

3) I have lost count of the number of promises broken and lies this administration has told about this bill (i.e. it will be available online for at least 3 day before it is voted on). So much for that transparent government thing.

4) As has been noted before here and elsewhere, if real reform were the goal, there are two or three simple things that could have been done to do that. 2000+ pages was not needed. This has never been about health care, it has been about power and control.

I hope that all of the Democrats that voted for this stinking pile learn to regret their betrayal at the next election (a "sorry I did not know what I was voting for cause I did not read it" will NOT cut it).

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and welcome to 2010. I hope that your new year is better than your year past.

I have little to complain about regarding 2009. My family is in good health, I am employed, no major crises in my life. It was not all roses but there was much more to be grateful for than there was to regret.

So, happy New Year and God bless.

Expanding the definition of marriage

As is discussed in the linked video, I have thought for some time that the push to recognize and legalize gay marriage in the U.S. will be a wedge event to drive acceptance of other non-traditional forms of marriage, marriage with multiple partners (i.e. group marriage). My thinking on this goes as follows:

• The original marriage construct was meant for the creation and raising of children.
• The government got involved because it was in their interests to promote families.
• Gay marriage does not have as its base, the creation and raising of children, it is for the couple, the relationship. The desire for legal recognition which will drive social services and have legal ramifications.
• If gay marriage is accepted (a relationship between two people of the same sex that will not/can not produce children) as a number of states have or are trying to do, why not three men? What is the legal difference between a marriage involving 2 men and one involving 3? What would be the bases for denying the rights of three men to get married if it is legal for 2 men to get married?
• If three men can get married, what would be the legal basis for denying two men and one woman from getting married? The precedent for multiple partners has been set within the same-sex construct.

I am not saying I am for or against any of this, I am just saying that I think that this is inevitable based on what is happening to the definition and legal description of where marriage is going today. I think that the major push-back will come from government agencies where the multiple partner families start demanding government services like SS and Medicare/Medicaid. This will also play havoc with the definition of a legal parent. Is it the biological parents only or all partners in the marriage?

This idea has been slightly explored in a Robert A. Heinlein novel "The moon is a harsh mistress".

If my logic is in error, please comment.

Why not "do nothing"?

As noted in the linked article, sometimes doing nothing is far better than doing something. Not every "problem" can be fixed by "doing something". Unfortunately for us, politicians see everything as problems to be solved by doing something, even doing anything so that at least they can say that they tried to fix it, completely ignoring the historical evidence that most government "fixes" make things far more worst for the effort.

In this specific case, the government wants to completely redo (read screw) 96% of the population to expand support (that already exists) for the remaining 4%. Don't forget, a big reason we are in the position we are in now with health care (which really is not that bad all things considered) is that government got involved in the first place. Government is involved a) in giving tax breaks to businesses for offering health insurance which should be stopped because it hides the real costs of services from the consumer, b) mandating (mostly at the state level) specific levels of coverage instead of allowing citizens to truly pick just the coverage they want, and c) artificially tampering with insurance pools to skew the cost curve by not allowing insurers to either charge the real rate for insurance to specific individuals based on lifestyle and/or pre-existing conditions like life insurance currently can.

Health insurance was originally intended to cover catastrophic illness, not routine and preventative items. It now (in many cases) covers office visits, prescriptions, pregnancy benefits (even for men) and other extensions that many people would rather not have but forces an across the board cost increase on everyone. Health insurance was meant to be like life insurance, you pay a little to cover you for the rare occurrence of something tragic. You only die once and hope that it is far in the future but there are no guarantees so as a responsible adult, you get life insurance now, pay a little along and along and know your family is covered if you die. That is what health insurance was and could (maybe should) be again. You pay a little along and along to cover you for the rare big ticket things like accidents that result in hospital stays. You pay for your own yearly check up and your own Viagra. Is that so hard to understand and accept? All it takes is a little personal responsibility both for your life and your choices, something that too few are willing to own these days.

War crimes are in the eye of the beholder...

“The kids in first grade in Sderot were born when rockets were being fired at Sderot. They have lived their entire lives having to think that when they leave the house, when they’re walking down the street, when they’re playing ball, that they have fifteen seconds to hide from an incoming rocket. And it’s not only the kids, it’s the parents. I have a friend who won’t drive with two kids in the car. If the alert goes off he doesn’t want to have to ask himself which of his kids he is going to save.” If the Israelis were doing this to Palestinians, it would be a war crime . . . .

And that is a big part of the problem. Too many people see everything that the Israelis do as a crime and everything that the Palestinians do as self-defence whereas reality is pretty much the exact opposite and no amount of proof to that effect will change their minds. Unfortunately until that happens or the Israelis are eradicated, there will not be peace in that region. The Palestinians are too brutal and the Israelis too civilized for this to end any other way.

Spending Our Way to Prosperity

Last week, the Cato Institute ran a full-page newspaper ad signed by more than 200 economists, including Nobel laureates stating:

"We the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan's 'lost decade' in the 1990s ... Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth."

Let's hear no more about "everyone" agreeing that politicians can spend the economy into recovery.

The problem is that talk like this gets in the way of the spending orgy that Obama and the Democrats have planned.

"Losing Control" all right!

Yes, there are still some very legitimate issues with a bill that's supposed to be "temporary" and "targeted"—among them, large increases in permanent entitlement spending, and a paucity of tax cuts that will prompt immediate spending. Even so, Obama has allowed Congress to grow embroiled in nitpicking over efficiency when the central debate should be about whether the package is big enough. When you are dealing with a stimulus of this size, there are going to be wasteful expenditures and boondoggles. There's no way anyone can spend $800 to $900 billion quickly without waste and boondoggles.

That is exactly the point when politicians are involved and that is also one of the reasons this should not be done quickly! If they can not act like adults in an emergency (Obama keeps saying that this is one) than in this case it is more prudent to do nothing than do way too much of the wrong thing. The country has been in recessions before (anyone shouting that this is the worst since the Great Depression does not remember the early 80s so well) and if left alone will work its self out of this one. What it does not need is a bunch of politicians using this as an excuse to turn this "crises" into a feeding frenzy, which is exactly what they are doing that will result in an excess of wasteful spending that the country will be paying for for years to come.

John Stossel on Reason TV

Good interview and as always, good ideas. Even when you disagree with John, you have to appreciate that he came to his position through reason as opposed to feelings. Always interesting.

Reefer Madness

He makes a good point and he makes it in a far simpler way than the government makes their case for their over-the-top drug laws.

My personal view is that whatever consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes should be entirely up to them and not subject to any outside scrutiny. If they want to dress up as 2 year olds and crawl around on the floor, who cares? If they want to do LSD, who cares? Now, if they are stupid enough to do LSD and then get into a car and cause an accident, they should be held completely responsible but if they stay in their homes, who cares?

Why California is No Longer a Paradise

As the blogger notes:

California has followed the grim path of the Great Lakes states.

As I wrote before, those states where once the industrial dynamo for the entire Earth, yet they destroyed that enormous economic dominance by political policies hostile to economic creativity. Likewise, California had a golden era as an economic and cultural dynamo. Well up until the late 1980s California was the place to go to make it big. People moved from other states to California. Now, internal migration has reversed. California looks less like a dreamland and more like basket case waiting to happen.

The truly sad thing is that many of those people fleeing California for greener pastures are bringing with them the same appetite for big government, nanny state-ism that turned California from a paradise into a bankrupt nutty farm. They will then proceed to mess it up for everyone else.

Oh give me a break!

This is frigging ridiculous! Now according to our court system, being sexually incapacitated is now going to be a protected disability for the purposes of the ADA. What a crock! The ADA was intended to protect those with "real" disabilities. The sightless, those with hearing problems, mobility issues, etc. Not those with weight, physiological, emotional, substance abuse or sexual problems or issues. As is typical, no good deed goes unpunished and a real attempt to help those in real need of a level playing field in society has been warped and twisted by those with an ax to grind or the desire to wear a "victim" badge. This case should be tossed out as it was the first time but I guess common sense does not rise to appellate-court level.

It is really starting to get crowded around here...

This is the third dwarf planet or plutoid (sorry Pluto) found in our solar system. It sure is getting crowded around here! It is a shame that we are not more "into" space. We should be out there tooling around our solar system. We should have space stations and moon colonies and be on our way to Mars. Instead we are nursing an aging shuttle fleet and working on a global space Motel 6. Shame.

Muslim Woman Protests X-Ray Specs

Via Protein Wisdom.

It would seem to me that a far safer, more equitable solution here is to have a separate scanner for women only, staffed by women. This way, the same "tight" security can be maintained but the local sensibilities can be respected. Which is more invasive? Having your revealing scan seen by another woman or being physically patted down and intimately touched by a woman?

To photograph or not to photograph...

This seems to me (me being most definitely NOT a lawyer) to be similar to not being able to require or compel people to say the Pledge of Allegiance. If I have the right to say or NOT say something, why would I not also have the right to create or NOT create something as I saw fit? Taking photographs is creating something. It was not as if this photographer had the only camera in existence and was the sole source of any photographic records. Also, as I see it, this is a private business and as such is permitted to supply (or not supply) their services to anyone they choose.

Your 'Right" to health care

What he said and it goes for all of these other "rights" that people are constantly prattling on about. I hate to break it to you but you have no "right" to affordable anything, whatever affordable means. You also have no right to air travel, a cell phone, cable, a seat in any restaurant or to shout your opinion to anyone else and not have them shout right back at you.

Finding a good plumber

[T]ry to find, you know, a plumber, a carpenter ‑‑ we have so devalued and disrespected the work that a lot of people don't go into it, and these are not only good jobs, these are really important jobs, and the more we look at how we're going to have to retool the economy and move towards clean renewable energy, we're going need a lot of people who are installing solar panels and putting up the wind turbines and doing the work that's going to make us energy independent. Those will be good jobs that can't be outsourced. So we've got to talk about it and then act on it.

Why is it that liberals always seem to need to tell everyone else that the rest of us need to value honest laborers? We already do. When I find an honest plumber or car mechanic, they have a customer for life. Conservatives value an honest days work no matter what the task. We just don't think we have to go around all the time telling everyone else they have to appreciate it to.

Me thinks this is a bit of projection and it goes something like, liberals think they are far better at tackling the big problems of society than everyone else because, well they just care more and "know" more. As such, they are BIG IDEA people. Little ideas like how a car engine works, how to change a tire, or how to fix or install a garbage disposal are just so beneath them and tasks more suited for "commoners". As a result, to not feel like such a snob, they go around reminding everyone else how honorable manual labor can be without having either much experience with it or understanding that everyone else already gets it.

I want a grown-up attitude...

I want you to have a grown-up attitude too. I truly would have expected more sense from a 64 year old woman and what I get instead is more like this:

I want a grown-up attitude to Cuba, for instance, a country and people I love. I want an end to the war immediately, and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the US to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. But most of all I want someone with the confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend", and this Obama has shown he can do.

Where to start?

We have a grown up attitude to Cuba. If we had a childish attitude, we would not have stopped at but one failed attempt to dispose of a tyrant that has plagued the country and people you love for too many years.

You want to end the war immediately? And if doing so results in the thousands of Iraqi dead that most knowledgeable people predict, that is just the cost of getting out and GWB's fault too?

You want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, well I want the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world held accountable for their behaviour toward Israel. You believe they have not acted in good faith? I beg to differ. I believe that they have been far more restrained than I would be if I were not only surrounded by people that want to eliminate me from the face of the earth but constantly show me that their attitudes have not recently changed by lobbing rocket bombs at me on a daily basis.

You also want the people of the US to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. From my vantage point it is mostly those of the "community based reality" that insist on acting like they don't know what is going on and instead act like they are on a grade school play ground and some adult will show up at any moment and set it all right.

Last but not least you want someone with the confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend". There is a big difference between talking to someone and wasting your breath while those you talk to use that time to plan and prepare for your destruction. Ask the citizens of North Korea how well all the talking has been going lately. I am quite sure none of them are starving any more since we have all spent so much time talking. Ask the people in Dufar how well talking is working on not getting them wiped out.

It is one thing to have hope and it is another to completely forget that you live in the real world where there are people that are not only just not nice but people that so truly hate other people that they will do all in their power to crush and/or kill them, people that are so drunk with power that everyone else's life is worth the price for them to hang on to that power. I hate to say this to a 64 year old woman but please grow up.

Welcome aboard (there is yet hope)!

"I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.... [Now I] question my hatred for 'the Corporations' -- the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live. And I began to question my distrust of the 'Bad, Bad Military' of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world.... I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism" -- Playwright David Mamet, writing in the Village Voice on why he is no longer a "brain-dead liberal."