I’m not sure if they keep a world record for “most swearing during a weekend,” but I would have obliterated it these past couple of days. Consider the following:

1. The Brewers
2. Flooding
3. My satellite crapping out during the Packer game
4. My purchase of Madden 2008 (If you play it, you know what I mean)

Incidentally, the 2007-08 Packers are now 2-1 in my Madden preseason. Tough loss against the Seahawks, followed by a blowout of the Jaguars. There is no doubt that this is a positive harbinger for the real Packers this year. Even though, for some reason, James Jones is white in the game.

Also, I am demanding a divorce from the Brewers. This relationship has been abusive for too long. All I ask is sole custody of Ryan Braun.

There are plenty of arguments to make in urging increased funding for the University of Wisconsin System. You can say the system is the economic engine of the state, or that it is vital to an educated workforce, etc. Yet last Thursday during budget conference committee deliberations, Senator Judy Robson made an unbelievable argument for funding the UW that truly is beneath the dignity of any thinking person. Her argument to send more money to the UW System shows the depths to which she will go to get her hands on taxpayer money.

Robson argued that the UW System couldn’t provide campus safety under the Assembly Republican version of the budget, and tied that issue to the April shootings at Virginia Tech. Clearly, she was making the case that by only increasing the UW Budget $63 million, a Virginia Tech situation was much more likely, and the campus police would have trouble dealing with the situation.

Here’s her exact quote: (at the 28:04 point of the video clip)

After Virginia Tech, we all were astonished, grieving, upset, and wondered if the campuses at the University of Wisconsin, all the college campuses, whether private or public, would be safe.

We had the UW System President Kevin Reilly, who after the shootings at Virginia Tech, covened a school safety task force, and they came up with their recommendations, and he said today that there is no way they can implement the recommendations to make the campuses safe because of the significant cuts to the University of Wisconsin:

You can bet that if something happens on those campuses and there is a student that is harmed, after these recommendations are going to come out, who is going to get blamed? It’s not going to be the Republican – they should be – you know, because you’re going to cut the university, but they’re going to blame Kevin Reilly.

Let me be up front – as a Virginia Tech alum, I am probably oversensitive to people using the tragedy to further their own causes. But to say that somehow a violent act like we saw at Tech could be averted if taxpayers just gave the UW more money is insulting.

The fact that the UW reviewed their security policies in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings is actually commendable. Certainly, if there could be something they could do differently to make campuses safer, it would be worth investigating. But a review of their final report (a report ignored by noted campus safety expert Judy Robson until it became politically advantageous) shows that most of their recommendations are policy changes, not fiscal ones. Furthermore, it is unclear how any of these changes could stop a random shooter that has their mind set on mass murder. One of the areas they emphasize is hiring more mental health counselors, but it is unclear as to whether this would actually stop someone with no known mental health problems.

UW leadership, to their credit, has not tied any of these changes to the proposed budget. There is some merit to their contention that much of the new money granted by the Assembly will be tied up in operational cost-to-continue funding. However, after several expensive high-profile budget missteps, there seems to be a feeling in the Legislature that they could get by with more focused budgeting priorities (Democrats often forget that it was Governor Doyle who cut $250 million from the UW System just two budgets ago).

In politics, people say stupid things all the time. Often times, they are excused as just being “hyperbole” or “in the heat of the moment.” In the technological age in which we live, it is sometimes unfair to hold people to things they say, as their words will now live on forever. Yet this Virginia Tech fearmongering by the Democrats is particularly galling. It was a calculated, planned talking point meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and managed to even go lower than its target.

UPDATE: Nick Schweitzer wonders what the UW could possibly spend more money on that would lower the risk of violence on campus. As I commented on his post, the state could double the budget of the UW System and it wouldn’t stop any homicidal maniac with his mind set on taking out some students. And the rarity of such events makes invoking them in a plea for more funding, as if such an event is imminent, is even more galling.

My new column is up at the WPRI website. It attempts to aid Democrats in their recruitment of potential voters.

In it, I propose an imaginary blind date with a woman who claims she looks like Eva Longoria, but ends up looking like Natalie Portman. It was intended to imply that Portman is a little step below, but still hot.

Naturally, I have already begun receiving criticism from Portman fans, who say she is much preferable to Longoria. I actually conducted a small focus group which put Longoria on top, so I went with that.

So I apologize to all the Queen Amidala fans out there in their basements. I probably agree with you – but I did take a survey, and science is science.

Clowns seem to be making a lot of news these days, with Barney Baloney being put on “Britian’s Most Wanted” list because of his potentially lethal use of balloons.

Now comes a video of this woman trying to overcome her fear of clowns, known medically as “coulrophobia.” Let’s just hope, for all our sake, that the Wisconsin Senate Democrats’ universal health plan covers treatment of coulrophobia. We can send them all to Baraboo for intensive therapy, or at least to be smacked in the head by a giant floppy shoe.

In any event, enjoy:

The front page of today’s Wisconsin State Journal features an article about the UW-Madison’s “Parent Program,” which provides services for parents who just can’t let their little angels go. The article features mother and daughter team Amy and Alynna Smith, who apparently are a little… close. It appears that Alynna will not be able to live her college life without her mother knowing every move she makes, since that’s clearly how it works at home now.

While her mother’s intent in participating in this story was clearly to show how much she loves her daughter, she may actually have just put a target on Alynna’s back when she shows up on campus. I’m sure there will be plenty of guys in the dorms who would delight in being the first one to take a crack at Amy’s little girl. Hooray for unintended consequences!

I don’t necessarily fault the UW for having such a program, because these clingy parents are probably a royal pain. But instead of having a full fledged program to deal with them, the UW should just set up a hotline, that says the following:

“If you are calling to pay your child’s tuition, press ‘one.’ If you are calling because you are having anxiety about your child being in college without you there, then it might be time for you to grow the hell up and leave your kid alone. To return to the main menu, press the star key.”

Naturally, I draw on my own personal experience with regard to parental involvement in my college life. When my dad packed our van up with all my stuff to drive me to college, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him move so fast. I’m sure as soon as he got back, the champagne corks were popping in my house. The day after I left for college, my mom converted my bedroom into her own personal art studio. So when I came home to visit, I had to sleep on the floor among pottery and pressed flower pictures.

It’s not a crime to care about your children and wish them well. But we have reached a point where the kids might actually be more grown-up than the parents.

UPDATE: It appears Newsweek has named UW-Madison their “Hottest Big State School.” No doubt, this honor is due to the wide array of parental babysitting options the UW offers.

David Leonhardt has written a fantastic article in the New York Times that addresses the contention that government-run universal health care somehow “saves” money. Although Leonhart is open to the idea of cost savings in some circumstances, he says:

The theory goes like this: By practicing preventive medicine, doctors can keep many people from getting sick in the first place. Those who do end up with a chronic illness will be closely tracked so that fewer of them develop complications. These steps will result in less illness, which in turn will require less health care. With the savings, the country can then lower its medical bills or provide health insurance for the 40-odd million people who lack it – or maybe even both.

[...]

No one really knows whether preventive medicine will save money in the long run, let alone free up the billions of dollars a year needed to help pay for universal health insurance. In fact, studies have shown that preventive care – be it cancer screening, smoking cessation or plain old checkups – usually ends up costing money. It makes people healthier, but it’s not free.

“It’s a nice thing to think, and it seems like it should be true, but I don’t know of any evidence that preventive care actually saves money,” said Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. economist who helped design the universal-coverage plan in Massachusetts.

This is a tough idea to swallow because better health really does seem as if it should lead to lower medical bills. Indeed, if it were somehow possible to wave a wand and turn people into thin nonsmokers who remembered to take their statins, this country’s health care expenses would fall.

[...]

Jay Bhattacharya, a doctor and economist at Stanford’s School of Medicine, estimates that to prevent one new case of diabetes, an antiobesity program must treat five people -not cheaply, he says. Along the same lines, Mr. Gruber found that when retirees in California began visiting their doctor less often and filling fewer prescriptions, overall medical spending fell. People did get sick more often, but treating their illnesses was still less costly than widespread basic care – in the form of doctors visits and drugs. Louise Russell, an economist at Rutgers, points out that programs that focus on at-risk patients cost the least, but even they are rarely free.

The idea that savings can be realized with a government takeover of health care is a central component of the “Healthy Wisconsin” plan currently before the Legislature.  The notion that somehow all these cost savings are going to materialize once government takes over health care is far-fetched, as they rely on people fundamentally changing their behavior to reduce hospital visits in the future.  In fact, providing government health care for everyone may have the exact opposite effect, since individuals may begin to over-utilize the system for minor health problems.

The Janesville school district is doing what school boards do best – that is, everything other than actually making sure students learn anything. A hockey coach has been suspended for five games for swearing and demeaning players, which naturally has forced the school district to issue another “policy” dealing with athletic coaches.

No one would argue that coaches can’t cross the line in their treatment of players. The hockey coach may very well have gone too far. But enacting this new policy sounds all too much like the school board giving in to whiny parents. Instead of the board having to actually make decisions on a case-by-case basis, they just throw out a blanket policy that tells coaches how to coach and hamstrings their ability to motivate players as they see fit.

Granted, it has been a long time since I’ve been involved in high school athletics. But at one point, parents trusted their young men and women with their coaches. Coaches occasionally swore, but only to motivate their players. Maybe it’s gotten out of hand in the last 15 years and we can’t trust coaches anymore. More likely, parents have grown more controlling about what their little babies hear and see.

There’s evidence of this in the proposed new policy, which is supposed to provide “a positive and constructive environment.” The policy prohibits profanity, “criticizing to demean or humiliate” and “inappropriate contact.” What any of those mean will likely be sorted out in the courts by the first parent whose kid is criticized.

The idea that a school board, whose members may never have been involved in athletics at any level, can micromanage how coaches teach their players is ridiculous. Of course coaches should be expected to maintain some decorum, and should be punished appropriately if they don’t. But to equate an athletic field with a classroom shows how utterly clueless the school board is.

Here’s a video of the story that describes the new policy. More disturbing than the actual policy is where Parker football coach Joe Dye says his players respond better to “stroking” than “poking.” Now that probably deserves some kind of policy against it.

In related news, some guy decided to “rock out with his c**k out” on a Janesville bike path.

Yes, that was me spending $80 for my daughter and me to go see The Wiggles in concert on Thursday. I now have my head in the oven.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service has dropped Alzheimer’s medication from the list of drugs covered by their universal health care system, citing the high cost of providing the drugs.  In a recent court ruling, the High Court found the move to be legal, citing the diminished benefits of Alzheimer’s drugs in later stages of the disease.

In essence, it was up to the courts to make a determination of how effective the drugs were – and not health professionals.  Some very interesting points are made in the comments section of this Scottish news account of the court ruling.  Among them:

My wife’s mother here in Madrid has been using Aricept for about 3 years now to treat Alzheimer’s, and we have certainly seen a massive improvement since she started using it. It is free for all pensioners over 65 in Spain, although those under 65 have to pay 40% of the cost.

I find it perplexing that the UK constantly appears to lag behind countries such as Spain in so many health related issues like this.

This may sound familiar:

This is the same NHS that wastes huge amount of money to offer free treatment to immigrant and asylum seekers as well as paying for translation costs and bankrolling a lot of useless manager.

While supporters of Wisconsin’s proposed government-run health care system continue to speculate as to how the program will work, they forget that similar programs already exist.  And they have the same problems we will inevitably see in Wisconsin. “Healthy Wisconsin” is a mystery to which we already know the answer – it’s just a matter of who is willing to listen.

It actually just struck me the other day that I may be able to consider myself a “writer.” I mean, I do get paid to write stuff. I think that’s probably a major consideration when determining whether you’re a writer or not. I had always just kind of considered myself a guy who thought of stuff and typed some of it out.

As such, I try to stay as in touch with popular culture as I can. While that means viewing some of the most horrid, contemptible trash humanity can endure, it helps me keep tabs on exactly how low we can go as a society (that’s my excuse). And lest you think I’m being snooty to lower myself to the level of the common people, I have to admit some of it is pretty funny, too.

This brings me to my discussion of the epic “Bret Michaels: Rock of Love” currently showing on Vh1. The premise is flawless – get 25 skanky strippers together in one house to fight (both literally and figuratively) for the affections of a balding, washed up ’80s rock star. Add in healthy doses of alcohol, hairspray, penicillin, and tattoos, and you get explosively bad television. After each viewing, I feel like I need to wipe off the film these filthy women leave on my television. Honestly – if you bombed this house, you’d be eradicating herpes.

In a sense, it’s not any different that most of the other dating competitions on TV – mostly because the premise is a complete fraud. Women don’t compete for men. It’s just the way the world works. Generally, women tolerate men as much as they have to, until they realize that they have found one they can tolerate more than the others.

Secondly, none of these women are legitimately looking for love. They are competing for something even more important in today’s culture – screen time. When Bret cuts these women loose at the end of every episode, they’re not upset that they’re losing the chance to sleep with a bald has-been. They’re crying because their reign of eternal skankdom has been cut short. Plus, it’s not like Bret Michaels couldn’t call any of these petri dishes after the show wraps up and have them any way he wanted. It’s all just such a crock. (This week Bret clearly accepted a “favor” from a ditzy blonde, then dumped her at the end of the show saying he wasn’t looking for “a party girl.”)

Third, these shows are so well established now, each woman knows exactly what she needs to do to get as much camera attention as possible. Each skank knows her role – there’s always “ditzy skank,” “conniving skank,” “drunk skank,” and so on. They characters couldn’t be scripted any more tightly. And the producers clearly keep the craziest and filthiest ones on the show as long as possible just to create more Springer-esque catfights. Honestly, we don’t need universal health care – 90% of the world’s diseases can probably found and quarantined in that house’s hot tub.

So when the show started, I had a choice. I could watch and probably enjoy the abject horror of it all, or I could boycott based on how heinous it was likely to be. It’s exactly like fast food – you know it’s unhealthy before you start consuming it, and you hate yourself when you’re done. But taking it all in is magnificent at the time.

I am going to continue to watch, and continue to be ashamed I am doing so. There is a legitimate shot that my IQ will have dropped 50 points by the series finale. But I will forge on, as any serious popular culture observer would be expected to do. Just don’t tell anybody.

Since he was born, I have been singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to my son. Now, he’s finally able to chime in with the occasional word. Here’s our duet:

Today’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel contains an article about Dr. Christopher Wolfe, a Marquette University political science professor who intends to set out and begin his own university.

From the article:

The university Wolfe envisions would stand in contrast to what he views as a “flabby relativism” in modern education, a belief that all ideas must be recognized and given similar weight. “There is a truth,” he says. “It’s sometimes hard to see what that truth is, but we need to pursue it, and we can discover it to a great extent.”

As a graduate student in 1998, I took a constitutional law class from Dr. Wolfe, and it was one of the most illuminating academic experiences I’ve had. In fact, his class inspired me to write my Master’s thesis on judicial activism – probably a bad choice, given the fact that the topic is Wolfe’s specialty, and he could easily spot flaws in many of my arguments. But that’s the type of tough academic instruction that academia needs – and which he’ll no doubt provide at his new university.

Marquette will miss him, as he represented the best the university had to offer. Best of luck to him, and here’s hoping his new school’s basketball team makes the Sweet Sixteen.

Watching the legislative budget conference committee debate the proposed government-run health care plan for three hours had me thinking about a lot of things.  Most notably, I wondered how much liquid drano I would actually have to ingest to make sure I didn’t have to watch any more.

However, there’s one point the committee Democrats keep reciting that deserves a little more scrutiny than it has gotten.  Senate Democrats keep pointing to the fact that their plan “saves money,” since the amount of revenue their newly imposed tax brings in falls a couple billion short of what health care currently costs.  According to the Lewin Group powerpoint presentation prepared for AARP Wisconsin, current health care spending for the Healthy Wisconsin (HW) Plan population is $18.5 billion.  The HW plan is expected to bring in $15.2 billion in tax revenue to pay for universal health care.  Thus, $3.3 billion in health care spending will be eliminated from the market.

Let’s back up for a moment.  That $18.5 billion is what health care currently costs, as determined by the market.  Health care costs what it costs.  It factors in what doctors charge, what equipment they need, what insurance companies charge for premiums, and so on. In setting all these costs, it is the people actually in the health care arena determining what to charge – due to competition within the system, many of these costs are controlled as much as possible, as a company has to meet some price level to attract and retain customers.

Senate Democrats, however, believe they can actually do a better job of setting these prices than can the people actually performing the heart surgeries and building the CAT scan monitors.  In fact, they think they can pull $3.3 billion out of the health care system without any adverse effects on consumers, while at the same time greatly expanding the number of health care users in the system.

This brings up an interesting contradiction within the Democratic ranks in the State Legislature.  Think about the University of Wisconsin System and the nearly $1 billion the state provides to the system annually.   Now imagine the state cutting $300 million from the UW System and freezing tuition, while doubling the number of students the state’s campuses had to accept.   Is there any Democrat in the Legislature that wouldn’t say the quality of education those students receive would be drastically harmed by such a scenario?

Yet this is similar to what the Healthy Wisconsin plan proposes doing.  Democrats are proposing pulling $3.3 billion in “savings” out of the health care system, while drastically increasing the scope of individuals and procedures covered. And this isn’t supposed to affect our quality of health care?

Plan supporters argue that numerous insurance companies operating within a market creates inefficiencies within the market.  They believe having the state being the sole insurance provider can save bureaucratic costs and negotiate better drug prices through bulk purchasing.  They argue that more of an emphasis on preventative care will lower health spending in the long run, since people will be healthier.

It’s adorable that Democrats have suddenly embraced the idea of streamlining bureaucracy. They seem to be all for streamlining the bureaucracies of private companies, yet defend state government administration as apparently too valuable to face even modest cuts.

Furthermore, is there anyone in the state that believes once government takes over paying for health care that costs will actually be reduced?  The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance has demonstrated that the more rapid increases in health care costs versus personal income could push the tax rate for the program to 20% in 10 years.  Either the tax will continue to rise, or benefits will have to be cut.  Given the lack of political will that spawned this plan, you can guess which is more likely to happen – workers will be picking up more of the tab, so legislators can avoid kicking people off of certain procedures covered by the plan.

Finally, who is more likely to know what procedures cost and are actually necessary – doctors and insurance companies or the newly created Healthy Wisconsin Board of Trustees? This Board, incidentally, is made up almost entirely of labor, farm, and business interests, with no representation from insurance or doctors’ groups. There are a couple slots for health care administrators, but they are non-voting members.  When the Board implements “cost containment strategies” (i.e., rationing and price controls) it will do so without the input of a single appointed doctor or insurance representative.  Apparently representatives of the AFL-CIO will know what types of procedures are more medically necessary than actual doctors.  In fact, if they added Doctor McDreamy to the Board, it would have more medical credentials than it has now.

There’s no doubt that insurance companies can institute more effective cost-saving measures.  In fact, many of them haven’t had to slim down administration due to the healthy profits they have been collecting.  Sadly, when many insurance companies look to trim costs, it generally means dropping coverage for their sickest patients.

But to think that somehow government is going to tell insurance companies how to cut bureaucracy is laughable.  I’d rather my dog got obedience training from Michael Vick.  The only thing that will get insurance companies to cut costs is more competition.  This is where tax-free health savings accounts can be effective.  As more people get comfortable with the notion that they can pay for quality health care without insurance, it will force insurance companies to become more consumer-friendly. Think of it as getting a birthday card from Saddam Hussein.

The instances where government takes over a program and costs explode are too numerous to mention.  The idea that the Healthy Wisconsin plan is going to somehow save everyone money without affecting the quality of care is simply a chimera.  Ultimately, the Healthy Wisconsin plan, as all government plans are, is going to be judged by how quickly it grows, not by how effectively it can hold down costs.

I was doing some reading and happened to stumble across some of the writings of Chilean biologist and philosopher Francisco Varela which I thought were interesting. Varela, a Buddhist, coined the term “autopoiesis” to describe the regenerative process of human cells and that relation to the body itself.

Put more simply, Varela pointed out that the human body is constantly remaking itself. This is known in some circles as “structural shift.” Skin and tissue cells die and are replaced by new ones. Bones completely regenerate themselves after ten years. So you literally are a completely different person every decade.

The interesting part to me is how the person I am today relates to the old me of a decade ago. How is it that I have the same traits, same knowledge, and same characteristics of that guy people knew as me 10, 20, and 30 years ago? At some point, my brain cells die off and new ones are created. How do the old brain cells pass on information to the new ones? Do they “teach” the new cells what I have learned in the past? When I grow new taste buds, how is it they have the same tastes as the old ones?

It also made me think about what role an environment might play in one’s development. While the body continues to regenerate, the objects within someone’s environment may not. Someone’s surroundings could play a large part in molding the new person into the same person they were before.

Regardless of which “me” happens to be around at any given time, my couch is extremely comfortable. It would be comfortable to Chris at age 10, Chris at age 20, and Chris at age 30. I think all three of them would very much enjoy laying on it – so I do, and quite a lot. I still enjoy much of my favorite music from my teens – is that because there’s some objective standard of good music, or because my teenage brain has taught my adult brain to like specific albums? And is music and movies the only way I can go back and communicate with the now-extinct me of the past?

In the end, this all may just have the effect of making me feel older than I really should. It’s a little spooky and a little depressing to know that I fell in love with Mary Beth Hammond in fourth grade a full two sets of eyes ago. When I call my insurance company to tell them the speeding ticket I got in 1998 wasn’t me, I’ll really be telling the truth.

On the other hand, this may all just be a lesson that I should stop eating the mushrooms out of the bag that guy on State Street handed me.