Weekend Update 12-03-2011

What’s next? Will they start rejecting the theory of evolution? Oh, wait. That closing bit certainly got a chuckle from me.

Taxes could and should be part of any long-term deficit reduction plan. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I keep forgetting the evidence that a lot of Americans can’t seem to handle elementary level arithmetic anymore. I also know that a lot of people wait for Medicare today, even at cost to their health, simply because they have no other option they can afford. When they finally get Medicare, not only do they quickly get the delayed procedures, but the delay has often made care more expensive. Now, if the proponents to raising the age of Medicare to 67 were predominantly those who supported health care reform, I would agree with Krugman’s comment that it’s simply shifting costs from the less expensive Medicare to the more administratively expensive private plans. Either way, it would be a shared cost under the ACA (which ultimately requires that everyone be covered without discrimination and that everyone participate), which means we would be robbing Peter to pay a more expensive Paul. “Savings” would be illusory. However, the majority of the support for raising the Medicare eligibility age seems to come from those who oppose the ACA. In a world in which the ACA is repealed, the idea of raising Medicare age looks a lot more sinister. A lot of those people will no longer be able to afford any coverage. So it looks to me like those proponents are not proposing shadow accounting and cost shifting from one ledger to another. Rather, they seem to be betting that if you delay Medicare two more years without any other alternative, more people will die before they become eligible for coverage. So much for being “pro-life” but we knew that was a political sham anyway.

It’s only the rich the GOP insists can’t be taxed more. They’re fine with raising taxes on the rest of us. They don’t even try to maintain a facade of credibility. And yet people still support them. It boggles my mind.

Study debunks stereotype that men think about sex all day long. Men do tend to think about sex (and eating and sleeping) somewhat more often than women (and yes, women think about sex), but hardly every seven seconds.

Robert Reich comments on something I’ve long noted, that the modern GOP are not conservatives in any sense of that word, but regressives who seek to return our country to something like what it was in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. And yes, they are proponents of social darwinism. Curiously, many of those most likely to be utterly destroyed by such policies actually support these villains. Ain’t democracy grand?

The millionaire surtax would have very little impact on small business. Of course, since it appears that a significant number of Americans are unable to do the math themselves or understand it when someone else tries to do it for them, it’s unsurprising that such bald-faced propaganda (lies) works.

Chrome surpasses firefox. Not by much, but still pretty significant. We now have a healthy diversity with many products implementing the same standards, requiring interoperable implementations. Even the browser with the largest (still) market share, Internet Explorer, is not the majority browser. There is no browser with a majority of the market anymore. And ultimately? Whether it’s in second or third place, that means firefox succeeded in one of its underlying goals. And that’s pretty cool.

The fundamental flaw in Ramsey’s theology of money is the perspective that it’s his money or property in the first place. That’s the underpinnings of Deism (and more broadly of secularism) as this Orthodox lay theologian points out. And Ramsey’s theology of property also has no basis in either the Old or New Testaments.

Marine: Fears of end to gay ban prove unfounded.

Zach Wahls speaks about family. Wow. Any parent would be proud, I think. My older son married an Iowan and they live there. I have to confess I don’t know much about the state or its culture, but Zach also makes his state sound pretty good.

The Secure64 DNS products are pretty impressive in action. It’s an invisible part of the Internet until it doesn’t work. And without DNSSEC, it can be manipulated to allow essentially undetectable (by the end user) man in the middle attacks. He explains both issues very well.

How the f$*k is it Martha Stewart went to jail?