Quick Hitts

Lefties get very annoyed when their opponents refer to Universal Health Care as Socialized Medicine.  This is because it is socialized medicine and the word “socialism” carries a well deserved stigma.

In such discussions I like to ask the question: “Do you really want your health care to have the safety of Amtrack, the budgeting skills of the pentagon, the speed and accuracy of the post office, the scientific acumen of the EPA, the honesty of congress and the compassion of the IRS?”  But processing that sentence requires a fair amount of brain power and socialists are not the sharpest crayons in the box, so here is a much simpler way to make the same point, starting with a classic photo most of us have seen before.

Do You Really Want This Government Providing and Controlling Your Health Care?

And finally, perhaps the most perfect metaphor for UHC:

Thanks to Failbog for most of these pictures.

Morewatch is one of the most popular anti-Moore sites on the net.  A few years ago the wife of one of the guys who runs it got very sick, and didn’t have insurance.  They announced they were going to have to shut it down. But then an anonymous check arrived for $12,000, allowing the proprietor to take care of his wife and keep the site running.  He was extremely grateful and thanked and praised the anonymous benefactor.

Shortly thereafter the Sicko came out. It was, like all of Moore’s movies, a slick piece of propaganda, full of half-truths, outright lies, and staged events presented as impromptu documentaries.  At the end of the movie Moore bragged about being the “anonymous ” donor.

If that information had been revealed accidentally, or through a reporter’s research, we’d have to admit the possibility that Moore might be a nice guy.  Although I’d have suspected he did it because he knows any publicity, even bad publicity, is good for him, I’d also have to admit I couldn’t be sure about his real motives, and maybe he just did it to be decent.  But bragging about it in a movie released worldwide made it obvious the only reason he did it was to pretend to be a good guy.  It makes him one of the him one of the top ten douchebags of the decade.

Now he’s working on a movie about capitalism.  The evil, evil capitalism that has made him a multi-millionaire. As part of his preparation his written a Time Magazine article about Bernie Madoff.

Immature child that he is, he first wallows in delight over the Evil Rich getting ripped off: “Yes, he stole $65 billion from some already quite wealthy people. I know that’s upsetting to them because rich guys like Bernie are not supposed to be stealing from their own kind.” This is a typical Moore half truth. Maddof stole from everybody.  Many of his victims were working stiffs, hard-working middle-class folks who had amassed decent-sized retirement funds and invested all of them with Madoff.  So does ignoring that fact make Moore an asshole, or does his glee in seeing the wealthy suffer tip the scales in the douche bag direction?

He continues: “It would be too easy and the wrong lesson learned to put Bernie on TIME’s list all by himself. If Ponzi schemes are such a bad thing, then why have we allowed all of our top banks to deal in credit default swaps and other make-believe rackets? Why did we allow those same banks to create the scam of a sub-prime mortgage?”  Um, Mikey?  Sub-prime mortgages were forced on the banks by the government.  They wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for Carter creating them, Clinton putting the program on steroids, and Bush pumping it up a bit more.  I know facts never got in your way before, but at least try to get some of the basics correct, OK?  Otherwise, you make it too easy for people like me.

He paints Madoff’s fraud as the very definition of capitalism. Therefore, Capitalism = Fraud.  He doesn’t come right out and say it in this article; he’s apeing the Chomsky technique of implying something so strongly the intended meaning is unmistakable while leaving an out that allows him to backpedal when called on his ignorance.  In other words, his talent for fraud is improving.

So I’m still not sure if Moore is one of the world’s biggest assholes, or one of the world’s biggest douchebags. He strikes such a good balance between the two, being an asshole one day, a douche the next.  It seems unfair for someone to have both titles, but isn’t it more unfair to deny them to someone who has worked so diligently to earn them?

And yet, he continues to have a huge fan base, proving that Lincoln was right – you can fool some of the people all of the time.  Whenever anyone tells me they’re a fan of his I immediately adjust my estimate of their IQ by 25 points.  Guess which direction?

When Obama made his Wednesday night speech he asked the four major networks to cover it.  ABC, CBS and NBC did.  Of course.  Fox elected to run it’s regular programming.  Of course.

Back in the days before cable and Tivo, when there where only three networks we captured with rabbit ears covered with aluminum foil, I was always annoyed when presidential speeches commandeered every station.  Why couldn’t it be on one channel?  Where was my choice?  Now it doesn’t matter so much – there’s always something I like on the Tivo.

I was visiting relatives on Wednesday night, and they had The Lord Messiah Obama on in the background.  I was more interested in our conversation and only listening out of the corner of one ear.  He was assuring us that the government, who did such a fine fine job with Katrina, had everything under control, advising parents to keep sick kids home from school (duh) and promising that swine flu wouldn’t interfere with government pork.  Or something like that.

But the best part of the event was the title of the show Fox ran instead:  Lie To Me.

I’ve never liked the term whatever-phobe, which makes the usually spurious assumption that fear is the only reason to dislike something.  I’m not afraid of Islam; I hate it because it is a vile religion that sucks in every way possible.  I’m not an Islamophobe, I’m an Islamocontempter.  I’m  Islamodisgusted.

Likewise, those who hate gays are not usually afraid of them, they just don’t like them for a variety of (stupid ignorant) reasons.  The term homophobe isn’t accurate.

Except when it is.  Evidently queers scare the bejesus out of the Mormons.  And a Mormon without his beJesus is a pitiful creature.

You’ve probably already seen this:

Just to clarify, here’s my positions on the issues involved.  I despise the Mormon church (and I challenge anyone to use the term Mormonophobe without sounding more ridiculous than a toy poodle doing a pit bull impersonation).  But the few Mormon people I’ve known have all been nice, friendly, decent folks.  Perhaps it’s their magic underwear.  My reaction to homosexuality is the same as most heterosexual men; the idea of gay sex between males is gross and disgusting, and between females is really hot and can I watch?  But I honestly don’t give a damn how adults amuse themselves with their genitalia as long as they don’t scare the cattle.  Just like my heterosexual friends, none of my gay friends have ever had sex in front of me.  Guys, thank you.  Ladies, come on, just once.  Please?

So, hesitantly, I’m going to give you Mormons some advice on how to conduct your next “Them Fags is Scary” campaign.

First off, don’t.  Gays aren’t scary.  They just . . .  aren’t.   If you’d get to know a few of them you’d find they’re about as scary as, well, Mormons.   So you have to give us a different reason to hate them.  I have yet to hear a good one, but I’ll be happy to consider any you have to offer.  For instance, I’ve been married for nearly three decades.  If you can explain to me how my marriage will be threatened if two strangers with the same plumbing take vows, I’ll be happy to listen.

Secondly, don’t hide behind some front group.  If you’re going to be asshats and douche bags, celebrate your asshattery and douche baggyness.  Revel in it.  You think Fred Pehlps is embarrassed about being an asshat?  Hell no, he loves it, and he’s delighted to be known as the world’s biggest douche.

Thirdly, realize that in today’s world of instant communication and cheap production tools, anything you do is going to be parodied, so don’t make it so easy.  Use some focus groups, and when they laugh out loud at your commercial, consider a different approach.   Try some production values that require more than a green screen and some stock weather footage.  This ad was self-parodying – additional parodies were redundant, but that didn’t stop anyone.  There were so many parodies on YouTube I couldn’t find your original there – I had to look at the source code on your site to find the link.

Ok, back to the non-Mormon readers.  Most of the parodies of this commercial sucked, bigtime.  Here are a few that didn’t.

Gathering Storm Chasers:

Stephen Cobert did a great parody preceded by a great commentary, but the code Comedy Central provies to embed a link is crammed with useless and ugly crap that would take too long to clean up, so I’m just giving you the link.

And one more:

I was having a horrible month of bad beats at the sit-n-gos.  I play $2 and occasionally $5 SnGs (yes, I’m that good) but wasn’t even breaking even on them.  It was bad beat after bad beat.  Kings beat by sixes.  Kings beat by an A7 offsuit – not by the ace, but by their 7 filling an inside straight on the river.  Aces cracked by low one gap unsuited connectors.  My bankroll, never high to begin with, dwindled down to less than ten bucks.  I’ve been studying the game for years, with books and videos, but was still losing and losing and losing, mostly to people playing crappy hands they should have folded.  I was wondering if my opponents had a secret “suckout” button on their screens, and getting so frustrated I was planning on playing until I’d lost the last few bucks left in my accounts and give up on online poker.

I cashed in some bonus points for a SnG and won a $26 token, then used that for a 45 person SnG, which I had only played a few times before.  I placed fourth, giving me bankroll boost that will let me continue losing for much longer.  In that tournament I put at two bad beats on someone else.

We all hate bad beats, but some are worse than others.  If you’ve accurately put good player on a second-best hand and a miracle river card costs you your stack, it’s annoying but not infuriating.  Frustration and anger hits when you’re playing against a donk who has consistently played poorly, then gets that miracle two-outer that destroys your powerful hand.  And when it happens again and again and again it can make you consider just giving up the game.

Bad beats are part of poker, so learning to deal with them is essential.  Here are a few things I found helpful.

Classifying Them Correctly. Make sure it really was a bad beat, and not poor playing on your part.   Slow playing trips and giving your opponent the correct pot odds to keep calling their long shot is your mistake, not theirs.

I recently lost a SnG by going all-in pre-flop with AKc against a considerably larger stack who called me with A6s.  He hit his flush and eliminated me.   Although he didn’t have quite the correct pot odds to call, losing wouldn’t cripple him and winning would give him a substantial advantage, so it was at best a marginal call.  It wasn’t a bad beat.

Understand the Numbers. After the fact use an odds calculator to see if it really was a bad beat.  (I like this one.) You’ll often discover your opponent had a 30% or better chance to win, so it wasn’t as bad a beat as you thought.  When my pocket kings lost to pocket sixes I was surprised to discover that would happen 20% of the time.

No hand is invulnerable.  AA will lose to 72 off suit 12% of the time.  That’s a very bad beat, but if you play long enough it will happen to you.

Avoid multi-way pots. This is standard poker advice many people ignore.  Pre-flop AA is an 80% favorite against kings, but against kings and queens it will lose a third of the time.  Add a fourth hand of jacks and it’s only a 54% favorite – a virtual coin flip.  Add a fifth hand to the mix – and for fun let’s make it 72 off, and now your aces are an underdog, with a 45% chance of winning.  The miserable 72 off has an 8% chance of taking the pot.  If you’re holding a high pair try to bet enough pre-flop to chase out all but one other opponent.  And don’t fall in love with aces.  If there’s three cards to a flush and/or an open ended straight on the board and three other people are betting, it’s time to lay them down.

I don’t fold aces very often, but one such fold was memorable.  I was on the button, on the bubble, and had shortest stack and a pair of pocket rockets.  What more could I ask for?  Pre-flop I just flat called a raise, thinking I’d earn more chips going all in after the flop.  But after the flop everyone went all in.  I nearly pushed too, then realized that if I folded I’d was guaranteed to be in the money.  I reluctantly mucked the aces.  The largest stack took the pot with the full house he’d flopped – my aces would have lost.  I was left in second place with a tiny stack (which was quickly destroyed) instead of losing on the bubble.

Savor Your Bad Beat Victories. We all remember the times we were destroyed by a ridiculously lucky card, but we tend to forget the times we did it to someone else.  Like the time I was short stacked on the bubble, went all in with kings, got called by aces, and got a king on the turn.  Ah, that was fun.  Or when I went all in with 98s (My M was in the red “shove with any two cards” zone) against aces and saw a flop of 9-8-3.  My two pair held up. Recalling those victories can take some of the sting out getting stung.

One of the most painful bad beats I’ve ever put on someone actually left me feeling sorry for the guy.  I was the table leader with about 3500 chips.  He was in trouble with just 600.  I had kings.  When the flop came K-Q-10 I put him all in.  He called – with J-9.  I’m sure he was delighted, probably doing a little Snoopy dance.  I wasn’t worried, this would just be a minor dent in my stack.  It wasn’t going to hurt me, but it was going to give him a fighting chance.  The turn was a blank (a 7).  The river was. . .

A king!  The one card in the entire deck that could have helped me.  I’m sure he was cursing his miserable luck.

Post game, analyzing the hand, I realized I had better odds than I thought.  Post flop I was only a 32% underdog.  The turn card dropped it to 22%.  The king wasn’t the only card that would have won.  In the heat of the game it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d win if the board paired.

Take a Break. Accepting bad beats calmly takes practice, but sometimes it’s just impossible, and the only reasonable response is to get away from the game for a while.

Yesterday I was in a SnG with an All-In Asshole.  He called or raised 50% of the pots pre-flop, then went all in on the flop about half the time.  Players like that usually rack up quite a few chips early on but very seldom make it into the money.  In the meantime, they ruin the game for everyone else at the table.  All you can do is wait until you have the nuts (or at least the near nuts), shove back at him, and hope the Bad Beat Gods don’t reward him with a suckout.

I had a modest stack, about half of his, and flat called a K-10 in late position.  Not a great hand, but with an M of about 8 I had to be less selective and get more aggressive.  The flop came up A-J-Q rainbow, giving me the nut straight.  He checked, I bet a quarter of the pot, and as expected, he shoved.  I smiled and called him.  He showed a J-Q, a measly two pair.  Ah!  Beauty!  I was going to take half of his chips and teach him a lesson.

The turn came up a Q, giving him a full house.  I swore loudly at the computer and logged off the site.  I was done for the night.  Maybe for a couple of nights.  Sometimes you’ve just got to get away from it for a while.

What does a rabbit or an egg have to do with Jesus?  I’d learned that they were hangovers from pagan fertility rites that were incorporated into Christianity to help make it easier for those filthy heathens to convert.  But recently I discovered the real story behind these Easter icons.

Happy Easter!

I just got an e-mail from SiteUpTime which listed a monthly summary of all the times my site has been down in the last month.  The list was blank.  When StartLogic was my host I used to get at least one notice, and often two or three, every day.

A recent comment to this post reminded me of the billing problems I had with StartLogic.

I was running two sites there, davehitt.com, and podcastpeers.org.  My increasing disgust with their crappy performance and non-existent support inspired me to move davehitt.com to DreamHost, but I was putting off moving Podcast Peers because the heart of it was a forum, and moving forums is a major PITA.   (Moving a static site is much easier – you just copy the files to your new host and point the domain at the new host’s name servers.)  However, their daily outages meant I wasn’t going to be able to put it off much longer.

I received an e-mail notice that my hosting for davehitt.com was running out in a month, and they would automatically bill my credit card for the amount (I think it was about $120, but don’t recall exactly) when it came due.  I wrote back and said I had moved the site, that if they were paying attention they would see there was no traffic to it (the files were still there, because I didn’t bother to delete them), and that they were not to bill me.  Two weeks later they notified me again.  Once again, I told them not to.  I even logged on to the site and canceled my account for that domain.  Sure enough, they socked my CC on the appointed date.

I called, pissed, and told them to take the charges off my card.  They said it would take two weeks.  When I told them that was unacceptable they said “Sorry, that’s the way we do it.”  How’s that for customer service?  It takes them a moment to fraudulently charge your card, but two weeks to get around to correcting their mistake.  Two weeks later they still hadn’t refunded my money, so I called again, and finally got my refund.

Calling Startlogic is not fun either.  It takes at LEAST an hour on hold before you get through to anyone, and then they often “accidently” disconnect you.

So now they’ve managed to get even worse – now they’re charging $35 to refund a charge that shouldn’t have been made in the first place.  I guess when your reputation keeps new customers away the only way to make a profit is to screw ex-customers.

BTW, I’ve been very happy with DreamHost.  I did move the Peer Awards over there, and also host Bloodwitness.com with them.  All the sites all under the same account, and they don’t charge any extra for multiple sites, which is pretty sweet.  Their support is very good.  They do it through e-mail, which they respond to quickly.  If you want to call it’s ten bucks for three calls, which is more than reasonable.  (They’re losing money at that rate.)  When my sites got hacked (because I’d neglected a WordPress update) they were able to restore a copy of everything – the static files and the databases, (which they conveniently had on hand) with a minimum of hassle.

If you’re considering them, sign up for a year with the promo code HITTMAN and you’ll get $50 off.

In the meantime, don’t forget: StartLogic Sucks!