A Wet One for Wednesday

Outtakes from "Rule 5" subject Erin Heatherton's SI Swim Suit shoot. I'm bushed from fishing. It's this or nothing.



Wombat-socho checks in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Force It". Also linke at Proof Positive in the weekly "Best of the Web".

I'm Back!

I got a call from Walleye Pete last night. It seems a client had canceled a fishing date, and he wanted me as crew for commercial hook and line trip. I met him and Mike, another "frequent fisher" in Deale at Paradise Marina at 6 AM, and left shortly afterward.

Pete is fishing in the upper middle bay this year instead of the southern middle bay because that's where the fish are. I think it's because when they are in low numbers, they need to crowd together in one area to school up and fish effectively. Just a theory.

Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse on the fly.

Chesapeake Bay Bridge:

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge (commonly known as the "Bay Bridge") is a major dual-span bridge in the U.S. state of Maryland. Spanning the Chesapeake Bay, it connects the state's rural Eastern Shore region with the more urban Western Shore.

The original span opened in 1952 and with a length of 4.3 miles (6.9 km), was the world's longest continuous over-water steel structure; the parallel span was added in 1973.

No pictures of fishing. I was just too busy. It was harder than Pete expected, but we managed to catch over 30 fish, several over 10 lbs, and Pete mad more money than he would have guiding.

Striped Bass are sold in 3 grades; 2-4 lbs (basically 18-20 inch sized fish) for about $3/lb, 4-8 lb fish for about $4/lb, and 8+ lb size fish for $5/lb). We had six fish in the largest size class, when we checked them in at "Skippers" restaurant, bar and fish check in/buying station. Fresh rockfish on the menu tonight.

And you can even feed the ducks.

Who's On the Money?

To help the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, the administration recently announced it's plans to replace Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill with A Woman To Be Named Later (AWTBNL). You have to wonder about how well thought out a plan it is if they can't really identify the woman they want to honor yet. It sort of makes you think confirms that it's strictly a political ploy

Sacajawea?

Semi-serious recommendations for choices of AWTBNL have been failed coin images Susan B. Anthony and Sacajawea, or Harriet Tubman, mistress of the Underground Railroad. While I have no great objection to any of these, the first two are rather severe in appearance, and Sacajawea's appearance is not well known, although most representations of her are fairly flattering.

Another suggestion, made by the Washington Free Beacon, is Kate Upton:

Kate Upton is a true triple threat and emblematic of the best America has to offer. Obviously, she deserves a place on some item of American currency. Why not the ten?

But, frankly, this doesn’t go far enough. If we’re monkeying around with the currency, why not make some real changes? Why settle for such a little portrait?
. . .
Don’t f—k this up, Obama Administration.

I particularly appreciate this  suggestion if they use a holographic "moving picture image". There are several I might suggest.

However, it is generally recognized that one of the requirements for being considered appropriate fodder for having their image on currency is that they be dead. This is to prevent cat fights between Nancy Pelosi, Michele Obama and Hillary Clinton. Fortunately for us, and Kate Upton, she also fails miserably on this count.

But I do have a candidate in mind that I have not seen suggested who I think would be both attractive, and appropriate - Hedy Lamarr:

At the beginning of the war, she was told that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds, which she did with great success. But she wanted to do more, particularly by using her interest in science to aid in the defeat of Nazism. This desire only intensified as Hitler continued his relentless attacks on Europe. When German submarines began torpedoing passenger liners, she said at one point, "I've got to invent something that will put a stop to that." This desire would give rise to the invention for which she would become famous many years later.

That picture would be just perfect, don't you think?

On 11 August 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Hedy Kiesler Markey, Lamarr's married name at the time, and George Antheil. This early version of frequency hopping, although novel, soon was met with opposition from the U.S. Navy and was not adopted. The idea was not implemented in the U.S. until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired. Lamarr's work was honored in 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave her a belated award for her contributions. In 1998, an Ottawa wireless technology developer, Wi-LAN Inc., acquired a 49% claim to the patent from Lamarr for an undisclosed amount of stock.

Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea served as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as Bluetooth, COFDM (used in Wi-Fi network connections), and CDMA (used in some cordless and wireless telephones). Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam's 1920 patent seems to lay the communications groundwork for Lamarr and Antheil's patent, which employed the techniques in the autonomous control of torpedoes.

The rest of her life was even more incredible:

In the late 1920s, Lamarr was discovered as an actress and brought to Berlin by producer Max Reinhardt. Following her training in the theater, she returned to Vienna where she began to work in the film industry, first as a script girl, and soon as an actress.

In early 1933, at age 18, she starred in Gustav Machatý's film, Ecstasy (Extase in German and Czech), which was filmed in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Lamarr’s role was that of a neglected young wife married to an indifferent older man. The film became notorious for showing Lamarr's face in the throes of orgasm as well as close-up and brief nude scenes in which she is seen swimming and running through the woods.

 So she helped invent soft core porn too!

In 1933 she married Friedrich Mandl, a wealthy Austrian military arms merchant. He objected to what he felt was exploitation of his wife and "the expression on her face" during the simulated orgasm. He purportedly bought up as many copies ofEcstasy as he could find in an attempt to restrict its public viewing. In her autobiography, she insists that all sexual activity in the film was simulated, and the orgasm was achieved using "method acting reality". The authenticity of passion was attained by the film director's off-screen manipulation of a safety pin strategically poking her bottom. Lamarr had married Mandl at the age of 19 on 10 August 1933.

And method acting!

Reputed to be the third richest man in Austria, Mandl was a munitions manufacturer. In her autobiography Ecstasy and Me, Lamarr described Mandl as extremely controlling, preventing her from pursuing her acting career and keeping her a virtual prisoner, confined to their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau. Although half-Jewish himself, Mandl had close social and business ties to the fascist governments of Italy and Nazi Germany, selling munitions to Mussolini.

Lamarr wrote that Mussolini and Hitler had attended lavish parties hosted at the Mandl home. Mandl had her accompany him to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and the ground that nurtured her latent talent in science.

Lamarr's marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable, and she decided to separate herself from both him and her country. She wrote in her autobiography that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris. However, rumors claimed that Lamarr persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner, then disappeared.

Germany's loss was our gain. She was an immigrant, but became a naturalized citizen in 1953 at age 38. But then, Alexander Hamilton was also an immigrant from the Caribbean.

Wombat-socho checks in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Force It".

Gone Fishin'

Back later.

The Reason Patience is a Virtue

Administration Punishes Border Crosser

They finally found one they could object to, one who won't ever vote Democrat, 
James O’Keefe!

Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents Monday while returning through an airport to U.S. soil. Why? Because he once filmed a video in which he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without going through customs. And customs agents told him he will be detained every single time he enters the country from overseas henceforth.

O’Keefe’s August video, published exclusively at the time by The Daily Caller, showed the conservative filmmaker freely crossing back and forth between the United States and Mexico dressed as Osama bin Laden, to make a point about Islamic radicals being able to pour onto domestic U.S. soil

Why? Because they can. Meanwhile a federal judge has the Border Control scrambling to find and re-admit a Guatemalan woman they deported.

A U.S. Court of Appeals judge has ordered U.S. officials to intercept a mother and her 12-year-old daughter on plane Friday being deported to Guatemala and immediately return them to the United States.

The 34-year-old mother, Ana, and her daughter were woken up at 3 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Friday and pulled from their rooms at a Pennsylvania family detention center, where they had been living for over a year, said her attorney, Bridget Cambria. By 10 a.m., the two were placed on a plane flying to Panama City, where they would catch a second flight to Guatemala City.

In a rare move that will likely draw more attention to the controversial practice of family detention, Chief Judge Theodore A. McKee of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ordered U.S. officials to stop Ana and her daughter when they arrive in Guatemala City and immediately return them to the United States.

“If the government is unable to intercept Petitioners at the airport, they must locate Petitioners in Guatemala and return them to the United States as quickly as possible,” McKee wrote in his June 19 order.

Another Day, Another Beach Walk

It's warm, nearly 90, mostly sunny, almost windless and humid. We waited until 4 PM for a low tide even though it was the hottest part of the day.

This Green Heron was checking out the fishing on the jetty north side of the harbor channel. You don't usually see them with their neck stretched out like this, but it was clearly checking me out.

Pretty good beach usage for a weekday.

I found this Red Admiral butterfly up puddling in some black sand up near the Kudzu vines.

Interesting Red Admiral fact; they don't survive cold winters, and have to recolonize most of North America from the south each year. Do they migrate back, sort of like Monarchs?

I lucked onto this big, but well worn Snaggletooth Shark lower tooth. We did pretty well today, 22 teeth, but this one tooth may outweigh the rest put together.

What's the difference between Bill Ayers and Dylann Roof?

Ace is on another roll:

Q: What's the difference between Bill Ayers and Dylann Roof?

A: Dylann Roof isn't a friend and colleague of an American president who enjoyed a cushy life in academia before retiring to life as the kind of author who's invited on-the-air by the mainstream media to hawk his books.

Other than that, both of these pigs share much in common.

Bill Ayers is an unrepentant domestic terrorist.
Dylann Roof is an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

Bill Ayers despises America.
Dylann Roof despises America.

Bill Ayers’s terror group The Weather Underground targeted and murdered innocent people.
Dylann Roof targeted and murdered innocent people.

Bill Ayers used murder and violence and terror as a weapon for political change.
Dylann Roof used murder and violence and terror as a weapon for political change.

Bill Ayers wanted a race war.
Dylann Roof wants a race war.

Actually, that was Ace's source. This is Ace:

When you ask people on the right if they believe that someone's objection to his status or the political status quo gives him the justification to murder people, he'll say: No. That's terrorism.

If you ask someone on the left, the answer is: It's complicated. It's complicated by the question of who is the "Oppressed" in the relationship -- those in the role of "The Oppressed" have the right to commit terrorism (which is then called "resistance").

And then they have the balls to claim that we equivocate on the definition of a terrorist.

One of the immediate "liberal" response to the Charleston shootings was "Can we call this terrorism, too?" They've been dying for an example  of right wing terrorism to offset all their failed attempts to blame the right for all the previous acts of violence, like UVA, Duke, Tucson, etc.

Sure, you can call it terrorism if you want, but as far as I have seen, this would be much more an act of "lone wolf" terrorism than Major Hasan's attack at Fort Hood. Maj. Hassan was certainly communicating with jihadists. Even the Tsaernev brothers were in contact with, and one of the received training from the Chechen Islamists. Poor little Dylann Roof was left decrying the lack of support his position was receiving. Heck, he couldn't even find an FBI agent to conspire with.

Yes, Biology is Oppressive

Stacy McCain has been rambling through feminism's drawers again and found this:

Oppressive Biology

Feminist Tumblr attracts strange people with strange ideas, which they feel compelled to share with the world. Megan is 20 years old and her Tumblr profile begins by telling your her Myers Briggs personality type: INTP — introversion, intuition, thinking, perceiving.

Why do so many Tumblr feminists list their Myers Briggs type? I don’t know. It’s a thing.

Here’s another thing: You have to specify exactly what kind of feminist you are, describe your quirky traits and/or mental disorders, and also your sexuality. So we learn that Megan is an “Anti-porn and Anti-Capitalist Feminist . . . oblivious nerd girl, compulsive procrastinator, straight asexual.” Excuse me, straight asexual?
. . .
Anyway, what drew my attention to Megan’s blog was this:

“Hey, body, I have no interest in producing a childnow or ever, so it’s pretty sadistic of you to put me through this every month. Thanks.”

Alas, the curse of having a reproductive system when you’re an asexual nerd girl feminist with “no interest” in reproduction!

Darwinian theorists must pause to wonder how it is that evolution could produce so many human beings who lack normal instincts, so that it is all but guaranteed that they will leave behind no descendants.

As thinking beings, biology is innately oppressive. I want to fly like an eagle, run like a cheetah, swim like a dolphin, and fight like a grizzly bear. But here I am stuck in this this silly primate body that doesn't do much excellently, but does a lot of things well enough to get by, and with a brain big enough to figure out how to make machines that can make apes fly.

It's no skin off my nose whether Megan decides to reproduce or not, but she may come around at some point, and want to put those lady parts to their appropriate function.

Morning Music - "Pocket Full of Sunshine"

Wombat-socho checks in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Force It".

Natasha Bedingfield:

Hold My Beer and Watch This!

Wombat-socho checks in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Force It".

If You Only Read One Editorial About Charleston . . .

Make it this one by Weirddave at Ace's:

Last week a waste of human skin with the unlikely named of Dylann Storm Roof walked into an historically black church in SC and opened fire. When he was finished 9 people were dead. While many things are still unclear about the atrocity, it does seem pretty clear that Roof's primary motivation was racial hate. Predictable, the left has reacted with reasoned calls not to overreact to the actions of one lone lunatic, reminding us that we must remember that Roof is representative of no one except Roof.

Wait, what am I saying? Roof isn't Muslim. No, the left immediately went into full hue and cry demanding that all white folks must answer for Roof's cowardly act. None of this is new, the left always goes back, like a dog returns to his vomit, to identity politics. Group A, Group B, fight, fight fight. It's a long, boring, endless tale of persecution and victims, over and over again ad nauseam . It seems to be all they have, it seems to be all they know, and they stick to it even when they look foolish as they do when a man who attacks an IRS office turns out to be left wing, not right. Or when a mass murder turns out to have a lot in common with Che, not Cruz. You'd think they'd learn, but they never seem to, so the question becomes why. . .

I disagree in part. They don't demand all white folks answer for Roof, only the Republican whites, preferably presidential candidates (Republican blacks are free to answer, but they will be ignored in any event).

As they say, read the rest.

Scientists Say Burden of Climate Action Falls Mainly on the Poor

And women and children, but mainly the poor ones. Of course, they have more to lose, and less to gain: Stanford research finds climate change regulation burden heaviest on poor

A bit dated, from Feb 28th of this year, but given the big push for Paris and the Pope’s encyclical, it is germane at the moment. -Anthony

Stanford research reveals that it is ultimately people – not corporations – who would bear the costs of climate change regulation. Under a hypothetical carbon tax, households in the lowest income group would pay as a percent of income more than twice what households in the highest 10 percent of income distribution pay. The findings suggest a fairer way to regulate greenhouse gases in the United States.

New research finds the heaviest burden for climate change regulation falls on the poor, for whom basic necessities take up a bigger chunk of the budget.

The heaviest burden for climate change regulation costs falls on people – especially lower income groups – and not corporations, according to new Stanford research.

The reason is that companies ultimately pass on those costs to people. For the poor, basic necessities take up a bigger chunk of the budget than for the rich.

“Households in the lowest income group pay, as a percent of income, more than twice what households in the highest 10 percent of the income distribution pay,” wrote economist Charles Kolstad, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Remember, on a really cold day in January, Al Gore isn't going to die from lack of heat because the price of energy is through the roof. He's going to hop in his private jets, and fly some place warm. Probably a global warming meeting in Bali or some place like that.

Of course, being socialists, the scientists continue to push for the expensive, and extremely ineffective measures to ameliorate global warming, and propose to tax the rich more to relieve some of the effects on the poor:

“This regressivity can be addressed through transfer payments, if and when the U.S. decides to regulate greenhouse gases leading to climate change,” said Kolstad, who researches environmental economics, regulation and climate change. As an example, he suggests reducing the payroll tax for lower income groups as a way to make a carbon tax more fair.

Dog Paddling at the Beach on Father's Day

After a tremendous thunderstorm last night, today was still warm, humid, and partly cloudy. We went down right after lunch to meet a low tide.

OK, I lied, the dog wasn't paddling. Except when he jumped in and swam the last 20 yards back to shore. I don't think he's a committed kayaker.

 The local Osprey

A father teaching a daughter how to surf fish?

A Great Spangled Fritillary on the verge of taking wing from some wild milkweeds.

Not too much question on the identification of this butterfly. There's only one American Snout.

But I had to check the photos to make sure this one was a Pearl Crescent and not a Silvery Checkerspot.

 A good day to sail.

But at some point you have to come back to port.

Happy Father's Day

Hey, it's my day too, so I'm just going to be lazy and post links to a couple of longer posts I put up in previous years for my father Gerhardt, and Georgia's father Vincent:

First my dad:

Thanks for the Inspiration, Dad!

Taking the air on deck in Glacier Bay, 2012.

This year for Father's Day, we arranged to have a couple of Stoney's crab cakes sent to him, frozen. He has already reported, through Mom, that they were acceptable.

And then Vince:

Father's Day Special Series - Part I

Father's Day Special Part II - Happy Father's Day, Vince!

We were unable to send anything except prayers to Vince.

Summertime Obamacare Schadenfreude

Some schadenfreude for the first official day of summer:

Remember the ObamaCare Website? It’s Still Not Finished. Your Money & Personal Info Are at Risk

First we had the website roll out disaster. It turns out the back end of the website still doesn’t work. That’s the part that manages the payments to the insurance companies. Oh well.

Latest on the tech front, the Chinese hacked into the Federal Office of Personnel Management database and surfed around in there for at least year. If you’re a federal employee, and maybe a member of the military or a veteran, the Chinese know more about you than your spouse does. A lot more.

And, it turns out that all of your ObamaCare information – your medical histories and all that stuff – is open to any enterprising hacker. We’re shocked.

All that may concern you, but it’s not a big deal to the insurance companies or the Obama administration.

The Obama administration is making billions in payments to health insurers under Obamacare without calculating the exact amount companies are owed, according to a federal audit released Tuesday.
Obamacare’s premium subsidies are paid each month directly to insurance companies, to ease the burden of health coverage to eligible customers in the health law’s government exchanges.

In other words, the Obama administration just guesses at how much the insurance companies should get and writes them a check. You can bet your last dollar they aren’t being underpaid.

There is something about government and large computer problems that an enterprising mathematician needs to study. They seem incapable of actually getting to grips with the scale, and the simultaneous need to make things secure. It doesn't help that the current administration just waves its hands and assume everything government tries will come out well the first time with no direction.

The Media Doesn’t Want Americans To Know Anything About King v. Burwell

According to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 7 in 10 Americans have heard little or nothing about King v. Burwell, the U.S. Supreme Court case that will, any day now, decide the fate of Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans. Yet 63 percent of those surveyed also say that if the court rules against the government, Congress should act to keep those subsidies in place.
. . .
But the media isn’t really interested in informing the debate with such pernicious facts. That’s why coverage of Burwell has focused almost exclusively on those who might lose subsidies and what congressional Republicans will do about it. The law’s defenders in the media and academia don’t want that to happen, so the polls they concoct assume the Burwell challengers are trying to undermine the law and Congress must do something to restore those subsidies.

Remember that the next time you see a poll about Burwell (or any other politically-charged issue) that doesn’t make any sense. Chances are, pollsters are begging the question—and doing it to keep Americans in the dark.

You will rarely go wrong to assume the news is biased in favor of the democrats.

House GOP has a post-SCOTUS Obamacare plan

We knew this was coming. If the Supreme Court holds in King v. Burwellthat the IRS illegally provided subsidies to Obamacare customers in states with federally-established exchanges and it doesn’t stay its decision, then such subsidies will almost immediately halt for millions of Americans. That is going to be quite painful for many Americans’ bottom lines, and that pain is going to be blamed on Republicans.

Enter House GOP:

House Republicans appear to be coalescing behind a plan that would give states the option of keeping ObamaCare subsidies if the Supreme Court rules against the healthcare law.
The plan, presented Wednesday by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would give block grants to states that want them, according to lawmakers who attended a briefing. States would get to choose how to spend the money to cover people in their state. The grants would last for two years, giving the next president a chance to enact an alternative to ObamaCare.

Let’s break this down a little more. First, the good news: as part of the package, the employer and individual mandates would be immediately repealed. States could opt out of the rest of the Obamacare regulatory system starting in 2016. That’s about it for the good news.

Now the part that hardcore conservatives (including my own coblogger, Drew M.) are going to hate: the plan is to “fix” Obamacare so that subsidies can continue to be provided for the rest of 2015, unless the Supreme Court stays its own decision for the same period. States that opt out in 2016 get block grants in the same amount as what their Obamacare customers would have gotten in subsidies, which the opt-out states can use to set up their own health systems as they see fit. Insert some mumbling about federalism and laboratories of democracy and the GOP’s historic strength among state legislatures and in governors’ mansions and you can see why the House GOP likes this idea. However, individuals in states that don’t opt out—that is to say, blue states and states with risk-averse GOP governors—continue to get subsidies just as they do now, but can use that money to purchase health insurance both on or off the federally-established exchanges.

Here’s the kicker: the whole thing, both for states that opt out and those that don’t, comes to a screeching halt in 2017, when the money portions of the deal sunset. This gives our next president an enormous headache right out of the gate and nevermind if he or she had planned to do something else in the first year.

It's a hard knot to untangle, but before we cut it, we have to make sure the boat's tied up well.

Some House Democrats Join Republicans to Repeal Part of Obamacare

With the support of nearly 50 Democrats, the House passed legislation Thursday to repeal the medical device tax—a much-despised part of Obamacare.

The bill came to the floor as Capitol Hill anxiously awaits the decision in a Supreme Court case that could potentially change the future of Obamacare. Lawmakers are using that extra adrenaline to put their energy into the war on words regarding Obamacare's success or failure.

Most likely, this bill just makes a statement about the law itself.

"This tax is a prime example of Obamacare's flawed priorities," wrote House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan in a statement released shortly after the vote.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, but that didn't stop 46 Democrats from joining with the GOP majority to pass it, 280-140.

Republicans aren't giving up hope of it being signed into law—perhaps in the future as part of a bill in response if the Supreme Court limits Obamacare's federal subsidies in the King v. Burwell case.

It always seemed like a remarkably stupid tax. You should tax what you want less of and subsidize that which you want more of. Do you want more and more medical devices or not?

ObamaCare’s Oligopoly Wave

. . . the economics of ObamaCare reward scale over competition. Benefits are standardized and premiums are de facto price-controlled. With margins compressed to commodity levels, buying more consumers via mergers is simpler than appealing to them with better products, to the extent the latter is still legal. Synergies across insurer combinations to reduce administrative overhead and other expenses also look better for shareholders.

The mergers reflect the reality that government—Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage and the ObamaCare exchanges—is now the artery of insurance profits, not the private economy. The feds “happen to be, for most of us now, our largest customer,” Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said this month at a Goldman Sachs conference.

Mr. Bertolini added: “So there is a relationship you need to figure out there if you’re going to have a sustained positive relationship with your biggest customer. And we can all take our own political point of view of whether it’s right or wrong, but in the end-analysis, they’re paying us a lot of money and they have a right to give us some insight into how they think we should run our business.” Such domestication is part of ObamaCare’s goal of political control, and it may well be that only fewer, larger and more centralized insurers can survive financially.

Use the "google trick" to read the whole thing.

Obama and the rest of the socialists democrats really didn't want the insurance companies, but they needed to co-opt them on their way to "single payer". When you sup with the devil . . .

Will Obama Intimidate Roberts, Supreme Court On ObamaCare?

. . . Once again, as in 2012, the president sounded a strikingly familiar tone. "If ... you have a contorted reading of the statute ... it would be disruptive," he contended. He went on to say that a "twisted" interpretation of the statute adverse to his position was "a bad idea," noting he was "optimistic" that the court would ultimately "play it straight" — Obamaspeak for "agree with me."

Once again, the focus has been on the chief justice. During oral argument in March, Roberts was relatively subdued. But Solicitor General Donald Verrilli mentioned that if the court were to hold against the IRS, "the tax credits would be cut off immediately, and you will have very significant, very adverse effects immediately for millions of people."

Justice Samuel Alito cut him off and offered a quick solution. "Would it not be possible," he wondered, "to stay the (order of the court) until the end of this tax year, as we have done in other cases?" That is, couldn't the court simply postpone the effective date of its decision to give Congress the time to correct any deficiency? Verrilli had no choice but to concede his point.

It's pretty clear that the law was written to try to bribe states to create their own markets. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise ignores a lot of inconvenient evidence to the contrary. Congress should have to fix it's own mistakes. What, the democrats don't control Congress now? Too damn bad.

Hot Summer!

Welcome to summer, June 21, 2105 the Summer Solstice at 12:38 PM EDT, and the longest day of the year.



Wombat-socho checks in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Force It".

Rocky Raccoon Stepped into the Room, Only to Find. . .

. . . Beer!

Soft Shell Sammy!

Our friends Charlie and Sandy invited us to help them use up a Groupon coupon for a beer tasting at Running Hare Winery, which hosts a beer garden for a Calvert Brewery, a relatively new microbrewery for the area. Of the four beers. Of the four beers served, both Charlie and I prefered the "Good Company Pale Ale".

Afterwards we went for dinner at "Rivers Edge" restaurant in Benedict, a town I used to work in. Lot's of memories, most of them good.  A view from the table. A massive thunderstorm is coming from the west, and the wind is picking up.

I chose the soft shell sandwich, the truly signature Maryland dish; a freshly shed blue crab, fried and slapped between bread, with minimal fixings. It was a really good crab, only a trace of chewiness, and perfectly cooked.

I used to shed crabs on the dock of the building next door.

T'was the Day Before Summer and Down at the Beach

 It was sunny, warm and muggy.

 The beach was not exactly empty, but not very occupied compare to say, Memorial Day weekend.

Smile for the camera.

A Red Admiral, who refused to co-operate with my efforts to take his picture.

Standing on the sand bar, trying to cast into the deep water. I haven't seen much caught off the beach yet this year. Seems to be a very bad year for croakers and spot,

The local ladies club was having a drink while