BOSTON – A panicky White House and Democratic allies scrambled Sunday for a plan to salvage their hard-fought health care package in case a Republican wins Tuesday’s Senate race in Massachusetts, which would enable the GOP to block further Senate action.

The likeliest scenario would require persuading House Democrats to accept a bill the Senate passed last month, despite their objections to several parts.

Aides consulted Sunday amid fears that Republican Scott Brown will defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy’s seat. A Brown win would give the GOP 41 Senate votes, enough to filibuster and block final passage of the House-Senate compromise on health care now being crafted.

House Democrats, especially liberals, viewed those compromises as vital because they view the Senate-passed version as doing too little to help working families. Under the Senate-passed bill, 94 percent of Americans would be covered forced to purchase private coverage under penalty of law, compared to 96 percent in the version passed last year by the House.

The House plan would increase taxes on millionaires while the Senate plan would tax so-called Cadillac, high-cost health insurance plans enjoyed by many corporate executives as well as some union members.

When the House passed its version, members assumed it would be reconciled with the Senate bill and then sent back to both chambers for final approval, even if by the narrowest of margins.

A GOP win in Massachusetts on Tuesday would likely kill that plan, because Republicans could block Senate action on the reconciled bill.

The newly discussed fallback would require House Democrats to swallow hard and approve the Senate-passed bill without changes. President Barack Obama could sign it into law without another Senate vote needed.

Nail, meet coffin.

Bruce Kastings - S.S. trust fund year end results

Link

I like the point in volume three - the first two films were great, but that was before Lucas had a chance to exploit his fan base… which is why he produced enhanced versions later.

Hat tip to Steve for the link.

programmer mode. love it! the 64-bit binary display block is awesome!

Sooner or later market participants will figure out this recovery and this rally are both nothing but hot air and wishful thinking. Until they do, enjoy the party. In the meantime, try not to confuse cash-for-clunkers, housing schemes, and other government stimulus programs for sustainable demand. A massive secular shift in attitudes has taken place as cash-strapped, credit weary consumers have at long last decided “Less Is More”.

Peek credit

One thing people are spending on - the ZuneHD. Tried to pick one up at Best Buy yesterday, but they were sold out.

I bought into this rally way back April, and sold in May. Wish I had seen the correlation between government security purchases and the run up back then, I probably would have stayed in longer. Regardless, I’m not really feeling as if I’ve missed out.

See this post by Steve for more data.

The IEEE standards group today officially ratified 802.11n, the most recent standard for Wi-Fi. The move officially takes the wireless spec out of the draft status it has been in since 2006 and lets companies develop 11n hardware knowing that it will work properly with any device that supports the technology. Officials plan to publish the final standard in mid-October.

Link

Time for a network upgrade.

Windows does a far better job today of managing the working set for minimized applications, making this code largely obsolete. But the code is still around for those that feel they need it. (A long time ago, I think when IE 7.0 came out, some bloggers criticized Fx for the minimized working set “problem”.)

Systems with ample memory really don’t need this hackery at all, so it can be safely disabled. Open up config (about:config) and add a new pref:

config.trim_on_minimize = false

This will disable Fx’s custom minimize code and let windows do it’s “normal thing” when Fx is minimized to the tray.

The Federal Reserve Evil Empire on Thursday launched a robust defense of its independence and warned that efforts in Congress to put monetary policy under political sway would hurt the economy Empire.

Fed Vice Chairman Sith Master Donald Kohn said opening up some of the U.S. central bank’s most sensitive decisions to political scrutiny could result in higher long-term interest rates and hurt the United States’ credit rating discrimination against the Sith Lords.

Testifying before a congressional panel, Kohn sought to beat back a proposed bill that would open the U.S. central bank’s policy decisions to audits by a federal an Ewok watchdog agency. More than half of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives Ewoks have signed as co-sponsors of the measure.

Kohn’s testimony comes as Congress debates President Sith Lord Barack Obama’s plan for regulatory reform, which envisions the Fed Evil Empire taking on an expanded role monitoring risks across the entire financial system to help ward off future financial crises.

Funny stuff from Mish.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An airstrike believed to have been carried out by a United States drone killed at least 60 people at a funeral for a Taliban fighter in South Waziristan on Tuesday, residents of the area and local news reports said.

Family members mourned Mr. Zainuddin, a tribal leader, on Tuesday in Abbotabad.

Details of the attack, which occurred in Makeen, remained unclear, but the reported death toll was exceptionally high. If the reports are indeed accurate and if the attack was carried out by a drone, the strike could be the deadliest since the United States began using the aircraft to fire remotely guided missiles at members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The United States carried out 22 previous drone strikes this year, as the Obama administration has intensified a policy inherited from the Bush administration.

“…intensified a policy inherited from the Bush administration”? WTF are these people smoking? Obama’s The President of the United States, but as far as Pakistan is concerned, he’s George Bush’s lackey?

New York Times Link

I’ve been a little bummed about the properties I’ve been finding while searching around Central Florida for a place with a little more space. Generally the prices are still way too high and the types of homes are not to my liking. I’m also feeling a little tired of living on flat land year round. That probably has something to do with my having grown up near the mountains of Colorado. So now I’m wondering if slightly cooler weather and scenic views for part of the year might be a nice addition to my lifestyle. The Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina are peaking my interest. (Hat tip to my big sis for turning me on to this area of the country.) The Boone area in particular, looks really really nice. 

To see more excellent photography of the area visit the Blue Ridge Blog.  (The images above were taken by it’s author.)

Link

Expanded Medicaid - The original income levels this was to be expanded to have been scaled all the way back to the poverty line for adults, and around 133% for kids. Subsidies will be phased in over a few years, which is basically a way for Congress to hide true costs at the time of enactment.

Insurance Subsidies - Eligibility has been scaled back to around 300% of the poverty line. This is still way too high in my opinion. I’d much rather see reform that cuts costs vs. simply having government pay the bills. However, future reforms will have the ability to decrease costs by regulating the level of care, so it gives future politicians the opportunity to scale this back.

Public plan - It’s looking more and more like this is not going to be part of the plan, with some sort or consumer run co-op non-profit corporation taking its place. This is really good news IMHO. The public plan (which was based on Medicare) was flawed in a thousand different ways, so it’s good to see Congress is finally making some changes. IMHO whatever this “co-op” thing is, the idea that it’ll be “consumer governed” seems like a great idea. Another good thing about this is that the financials would likely be completely separate from the general accounting of the federal government. (Like a Freddie or Fannie for health.) The details though are still thin, so we shall have to see.

Mandates - A foregone conclusion. It’s unfortunate we have to implement stuff like this as its basically playing Robin Hood with health, but it’s also easy to understand the financial issues revolving around not having it.

Insurance regulation - In return for mandates, insurance companies would be regulated more. For example they would not have the ability to refuse coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. IMHO trading the mandate for this is probably a worthy trade.

Employer provider / funding mandates - It may get scratched completely, or phased back significantly.

Misc. “preventative health measures” - Mostly provided through existing systems or tax incentives for business who provide preventative health service for employees. Note that last part.. Congress it seems, is not filled entirely with idiots.

Funding - A whole host of major tax hikes are under consideration. Predictably Obama wants to tax the rich, but it seems Congress is thinking that something a little more fair might be the right solution. Options range from payroll tax hikes (fair), VAT taxes (fair), taxes on the rich (not fair), taxes on company provides health benefits (levels the playing field). It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. Tax hikes are inevitable, so if I had to choose I’d go with a payroll tax (so everybody pitches in their fair share and gets a feel for the cost) or even better, a new VAT tax that could be leveraged down the road to implement a more broad based “fair tax” at the federal level.

Senate Finance Committee PDF Link

All-in-all, it seems some real progress is being made.

Link

When I first started using software to track my finances, a couple of my financial firms didn’t support Money, so I had to use both Money and Quicken for a while. About three years ago all my financial institutions finally had Money support, so I dumped Quicken off my drive and took the painful step of migrating all of my Quicken financial history over to Money. It was time well spent. I’ve brought my cost of living down 50% using Money. I’ve improved my investing approach. I track everything - my investments, my credit cards, my checking, the value of my house and my car, my home equity line of credit, my HSA, everything, all through Money. The app automatically categorizes anything that comes in, I’ve taught it what goes where, and how things get split up. When I get an interest payment on an investment or my 401K gets a deposit or I charge something or pay a bill online, Money has it the next day, categorized, broken down, graphed out, and ready to go. Plus, because I enjoy using it so much, I open it more often, I poor over my graphs, I analyze everything more often. It’s an excellent tool that I love to use, which why I’m so dissapointed that Microsoft is cancelling it.

So what will I do next, go back to Quicken? I hope not. Having worked with both programs side by side I’ve always felt Money is a far better product. A few examples -

User interface - Quicken on Windows is akin to someone taking a dump on your desktop. 2006 was without a doubt the worst UI design in history, until Intuit came out with 2008. That release was so horrible in terms of look and feel that it literally made me heave every time I opened the app.

Quicken is one of those awful apps that has a poorly drawn custom UI. For some reason their software designers felt they were more skilled at UI design than the company that made the OS. Some apps can pull this off assuming their designers actually, you know, have some skill. Intuit’s designers are clearly all design school drop outs. The UI breaks UI conventions and style so that it doesn’t integrate with your desktop. The UI layout is mangled, and the design is incredibly poor. The rendering engine also flickers a lot when it redraws. In short, it’s an ugly app.

Imagine spending an hour or so every day giving the elephant man a back rub - that’s what using Quicken is like. Here’s a taste of the “Deluxe 2008″ edition -

Note the mixed use of win95 / Vista UI common controls and the wonderful 360 degree shading on all the ugly custom drawn elements. Also notice the smart choice for toolbar background color and 16 color icons spread throughout the app. (I’m amazed, and I mean truly amazed, that Money didn’t wipe these guys off the face of the map.) Generally speaking, the UI is a complete mess.

Money on the other hand has had a slick, well integrated custom drawn UI. It also had web integration, excellent rendering and graphics support, (for graphing and the like) and generally conformed the browser UI style with forward and back buttons for navigation, integrated web content, and a slick themed look that appealed to the eye.

Here’s a snip, which is all I can show. More can be found by searching the net -

It’s nice to look at, the UI is easy to navigate, things are organized in a cohesive and sensible manner.

2) Graphing - Money’s graphing wasn’t perfect, but it sure as heck was better than Quicken. Quicken’s graphs are ugly and can’t be customized. Money’s graphs on the other hand were well rendered, colorful, and didn’t flicker when drawn. You could customize them to produce numerous different graphs and reports that helped visualize what was going on with your money and investments. I have around fourty of these now and they are invaluable. Tools I will miss.

3) Account register and reconciliation - I’m not sure why I was never able to get Quicken to correctly categorize things automatically, or why my account balances never seemed to match up, but I know I’ve never had this problem in Money. The amount of time I used to waste digging through registers trying to find errors in Quickens transaction tracking was immense. It always frustrated me. Money did this kind of stuff automatically, which saved me time.

Now I’m bitching a lot here about Quicken only because this is the pile of dung Microsoft is likely forcing me to go back too now that they have completely bailed on one of their most devoted customers - me. Hey Microsoft, are you listening? WTF guys? How can you possibly just dump a piece of software like this? It’s one of the few apps you wrote that “just works” that has a devoted base of users who depend on it for, you know, fracking managing their financial future. Do you even care about that or is it all in the bottom line, or some such nonsense that you’ve placed ahead of the needs of your devout customer base? Also, seeing as how you’re simply dropping the project, how about open sourcing the code so folks like me can continue to work on it? Are you really just going to dead end twenty years of software development? If that’s really the case, and you don’t have “something else” up your sleeve, I guess all I have say is, fuck you too. You really let me down on this one.

Some might suggest that instead of using a desktop solution, I should try out a web based solution like mint.com. All I have to say to that is, are you high? You’re suggesting I turn my account numbers, login information, net worth data, investment transactions, credit card numbers, and a whole host of personal financial information over to a bunch of geeks running a startup in the valley? You have got to be kidding. If there’s one thing that’s meant to stay locked up tight as a drum on my personal computer it’s the sum total of all my personal financial data. Uploading that to some server in a colo in California is stupid, and I sense a lot of people out there who do that will someday regret it.

Anyway, rant mode off. Microsoft, you let down damnit. I really do not know what I’m going to do now.