(Clear skies and good company at College Park. Photo Socotra.)
We were at the Florida State game yesterday, a delightful day spent drinking in the great out-of-doors. The Terps got their butts handed to them, and we only stayed in the seats on the fifty at Byrd Stadium for the first half and then repaired to the parking lot where we continued eating and drinking.
The Man Up guys were not there, though the ringleader appeared late in what probably was the fourth quarter, and a fine time was had by all.
I am going to mosey down to the farm later this morning when things have settled out a bit. There will be more clouds today than yesterday, but still in the low 50s and with that golden burnish to the fields as they appear once outside of the Beltway, where Blue NoVA transitions to Red Virginia.
(It was chill in the early morning, but the fire-log warmed things up nicely.)
I am looking forward to the day- and nestling into a snug bed deep in the country, with the night sounds of the freight trains approaching the grade crossings on what had been the Alexandria and Orange railroad- the one my Irish ancestors helped to build in the 1850s as they headed south and then west to Tennessee.
I had every intention of going through the very strange tale of the impoundment of the Argentine warship in the African port of Tema while on a training cruise. The ARA Libertad, a tall sailing ship with a crew of more than 330, was detained in Ghana’s eastern port on Oct. 2 on a court order obtained by the American firm NML Capital Ltd, which claims Argentina owes it $300 million from defaulted bonds.
I was going to go through the machinations of malevolent capitalists, the American court system, and international law regarding the sovereignty of naval vessels. I got stopped in my tracks by a perceptive bit of analysis about the ponderous nature of the health care system with which we have been burdened.
One of my pals sent me an appreciation of what the Republican Governors were up to at their just-concluded convention in Vegas. There are more of them than there used to be, and they have a key role to play in the aftermath of the election that they thought they would not lose.
I know, what goes on in Vegas ought to stay there, but the position taken by the thirty Red Governors is worth considering. They apparently have made a collective decision to not establish state-level health insurance exchanges, forcing the burden on the dauntless bureaucrats in Washington.
I do not know what the impact of all this will be, and since it appears it is going to happen, ready or not, it is time to try to understand what it means on a personal level. I am not even going to try the Iranian A-Bomb, but you can put that in the same basket with the litany of things I hoped we would avoid.
I mentioned at the time the Affordable Health Care Act was jammed through that I was in favor of some universal, single-payer system. I mean, you have to accept the fact that it will be a crappy system like the one in the UK or Canada, and that at some point access to service will be rationed, and yes, that amounts to what has been demonized as “death panels.”
There has been a fair amount of death around me of late, and there is not enough in the way of medical personnel and resources to go around, so somehow it has to be contained- rationed, if you will.
My pal Mac knew that- he told me a few weeks before his death that there was no surgical option for people of his age, since the Docs were uniform in their view that the risk did not merit intervention.
I was healthy enough to eschew the company health care options up to this year. I bought into it when open season came along, hoping the augmentation to the TRICARE For Life program that came with my military service.
I had hoped that the company plan would provide coverage right here in Arlington, rather than having to drive to the nightmare that is the new Walter Reed, the hostile take-over of Bethesda by the United States Army.
It is pretty weird, and the clash of cultures at the former National Naval Medical Center is profound. The Navy still operates the equivalent of the 1MC with all sorts of announcements in Navy-speak, and the Army health care people say it is very difficult for them to go back to a pure Green Machine when their tours are done there.
Other than that, I don’t have much to do with health care, and I flat don’t know what the impact on people in my situation will be. I know vaguely that we transition from TRICARE to Medicare at the full retirement age, or thereabouts- I suppose I should pay more attention, but I have been content to sit on the sidelines and watch the implementation play out.
Now, the messy business is nearly upon us. I am fascinated by the intrinsic tension between the states and the Feds, and what is likely to happen. I presume the Old Dominion where I live will be one of the rejectionist front states, but beyond that I have no idea whether this will affect me or not in a personal manner, vice general, as 20% of the GDP is absorbed into the clutches of the Bureaucrats.
I worked at Health and Human Services in one of the stranger episodes in my military career, and interacted with the VA and Ag and the Public Health Service. It is a much different government than the one I knew in the IC or DoD. Much dumber, though, and with many more flacks and functionaries filling the halls of the Hubert Humphrey Building.
It appears that the Republicans are going to cave on many issues, the general theory being that they cannot stomach the notion that they are just the party of “No,” though of course that is just what we have elected them to do. I would have to go back and see what is going to happen to my paycheck, once they are done screwing around with the tax brackets.
I did not mind the taxes I paid prior to the Bush cuts- I think the difference amounted to a few hundred dollars every pay period.
Things have changed considerably since then, and I just do not know what it means, between death and taxes. I guess we will just have to deal with what is coming and figure it out as we go along.
Friday night at Willow an associate from my days in the Pentagon showed me the following video, which was quite liberating. I imagine we will survive, at least for a while. There has been a spate of deaths among the small circle of those I care about- the parent’s generation are fading fast, and there are some of our own cohort who have filed to the exits this year. The torrent will increase, since the failure rate of our frail vessels amounts to 100% over time, as noted by John Maynard Keynes. The inevitable got him, too.
So, considering the inescapable, it is worth a watch, to see such youth and talent.
Maybe this will all be OK. I doubt it, but you never know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0INlumRpL8
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com