You ever do something you KNOW is a bad idea just to remind yourself what a bad idea it is?  Had a pickup this w/e in Chicago.  New class sched makes fridaytrips viable.  Wife off on friday.  How about a trip together?  It'll be a nice short one.  Hour at the airport.  Hour flight.  Two-three hours to get the vehicle.  Five to six hour drive back.  Up at 4:30 and back by 5pm.

Except that's not how it happened.  

Overslept.  Caught an 8am flight.  There was a delay on the 6am anyway so we wouldn't have left Cbus before 8 anyhow, but now we're 2 hours behind schedule upon climbing out from under the covers.

Flight was fine.  On the way to the subway @ ORD we stopped to grab a cup of Starbucks (one can't really refer to it as coffee, can one?).  Ten minutes.  And we missed the subway connection by 5 minutes.  Cost us 15 minutes.  A brisk four block walk downtown got us to the ME line about the same time the bus would've taken, but we missed the train to Mattison by 10 minutes.  So we lost another hour.  Got to Mattison.  The shuttle from the auction wasn't running and there were NO cabs (unless you count the $70 minimum from Joliet.)  

Numerous phone calls, cajolling, and a lucky break got us to the auction house.  Another hour lost.  Then they moved the vehicle and it took about 45 minutes to find it.  Anothr delay.  We were finally headed home about the time I thought we'd be seeing Indy in our rear view mirror.

Now under normal circumstances I woulda knocked out a TON of podcasts on this trip.  But D decided she wanted us to have some conversation.  After driving in silence for an hour we stopped to eat and had a good chat.  Back on the road.  I plugged in my pod and after less than an hour she complained.  So out came the plugs.  And we drove another hour in silence.  Eventually some good conversation was had but it was NOT a good trip.  Back to solo driving.

Religious Liberties: The Ministerial Exception Case: Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC.  

Boring.  The case was an attempt by the POTUS to tell churches who they had to hire to be ministers.  Obama lost 9-0.  Not really barn burning stuff.  This was recorded about 45 days before the decision came down.  But the last 10 minutes are PRICELESS!  The panel agrees that the Conscience Clause would NEVER be broached by a POTUS ... the 1st Amendment protection is THAT strong.  What a laugh.

 Home by 10pm.

Under the Assumption that ObamaCare Will Reduce the Deficit, It's Safe to Assume that ObamaCare Will Reduce the Deficit

Provided you make the right set of assumptions:

• if you assume that the law will successfully raise roughly $500 billion in taxes
• and if you assume that it will reduce Medicare payments and other expenditures by another $500 billion
• and if you expect that the law's alleged delivery system reforms will keep producing savings year after year
• and if the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) it sets up works exactly as planned and isn’t repealed
• and if you ignore the cost of the doc fix, which Obama’s new budget plan does. 

Andrew Breitbart has died.

that is all for today.  that is enough

So the president refuses to apologize for forcing Catholics to violate their religious beliefs or pay a tax penalty.  

But he immediately apologizes because a few of our soldiers inadvertently violated Muslims religious beliefs by trying to dispose of already-desecrated Korans.

That about it?

... but I play one on the internet.  And I'm moving to Wyoming.

and where we're heading:

What It Takes To Start An Online Store In Greece. “At the health department, they were told that all the shareholders of the company would have to provide chest X-rays, and, in the most surreal demand of all, stool samples.”

"My mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts"

Minimum wage causes unemployment.

Liberals will deny this up and down.  Now, some may point to the litany of studies that support this assertion, and claim that since it was released by a Joint Economic Committee dominated by a GOP majority, that it is biased.  However, if a crazy man runs into the room and screams that the sky is blue, whatever bias he may have is rendered inert by the facts. So if one wishes to challenge these studies, then one needs to debunk them one by one, and provide studies of one’s own to support the opposite case.

Mind you, we don’t need a litany of studies to prove the assertion.  We can use actual, real-world examples.  Let’s say it’s 2006, and I run an airline, and my customer service staff is based in Colorado.  I pay them $5.15 per hour.  Then, in 2007, the minimum wage rises to $6.85 an hour.  My labor costs just increased over 30%.    Even worse, there’s likely to be further hikes.  What do I do?

Do I hire MORE employees at this higher wage?  No.  Why spend even MORE money?

Do I fire some employees to keep my costs where they were before?  Yes.

Employees get fired.  Therefore, unemployment increases.

It’s really that simple.

how ya gonna get the difficult stuff?