AFLAC: Ask about it...

You would have to be dead for the past few years to not have heard of AFLAC. The commercials alone, with Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of that hilarious duck, have propelled this company into the name recognition stratosphere. It is indeed the best of annoying Gottfried's work.

However, for those who don't necessarily understand what AFLAC is; in short, it is a supplemental insurance policy that pays a fixed amount of money based upon incident, accident, or illness (depending which policy you have) regardless of health insurance coverage or personal income. I have AFLAC coverage at work, and the ads for the product have been bugging the hell out of me lately, simply because it is not what they say it is. The ads explain how AFLAC "gives you cash" while you're out of work to pay your cable bill, rent, little Susie's piano lessons, or whatever the hell you want.

It is true that AFLAC does send you a check based on a claim, and they do not dictate how you spend it. What they don't want you to know is this. First, the requirements are very specific, so in order to receive a claim payment you have to submit some very particular and involved paperwork, including specific itemized documentation regarding every element of treatment, hospitalization, surgeries, dates, etc. Now, I understand their desire to prevent fraud, so they need proof you were actually hospitalized; however, they're asking for documentation that typically hospitals and doctors do not provide. Thus, you either have to fight with a hospital bureaucrat and get nowhere, or usually, depending on the hospital, the itemized bill is enough. But, if you know anything about hospital billing, you know that they're going to file the insurance claim, wait for them to pay, then send you a bill for what you owe. Sometimes this process can take months and in most cases you're back to work when you begin receiving those bills, and/or that statement you need for AFLAC submission.

Second, both your doctor and your employer have to complete separate statements verifying that you were out, for how long, when you were released, and when you returned to work. Look at that carefully. You have to have verification of how long you were out and when you returned to work to file your claim with AFLAC. Thus, AFLAC cannot pay you while you're out of work because you can only file the claim after your doctor and employer have separately verified in writing how long you were out, and when you returned. I won't even go into the pud-pulling-fest of getting the doctors office to complete the paperwork, but I digress.

After you get all the stuff together, send it, and they approve it--they pay the claim somewhere between 2 weeks and a month--which isn't bad. So all that being said, why do keep the coverage? Well, when medical bills are rolling in and you've exhausted your MSA or Section 125 plan for the year, the little extra money does indeed help cover the gap. Or, if your employer's disability policy only pays 60% of your income, like most, then, again, the extra does help. Just know that it won't be enough to pay for all the stuff the advertisements imply and the paperwork prevents you from receiving the checks to pay those living expenses while you're out of work.

CD22 Update: The "Secret" Meeting

So I went through another round of surgery a while back and haven't been up and blogging much. During this time it was determined that Tom DeLay wouldn't be allowed to be declared ineligible, appeals were rejected, and so on. Luckily for all of us, both Greg and Chris have been covering the issue very thoroughly.

As a precinct chair, I did attend the so-called "secret meeting" (that everyone, their dog, and the press knew about) conducted by Tina Benkiser.. She specifically asked for people to not "transcript" the meeting, so I won't...but I will briefly recap. Mr. DeLay was there for a short time, discussing his decisions and the entire process in his own words. Paul Bettencourt gave us a brief tutorial about the numbers game of the process. Each individual wanting to be considered for the write-in choice spoke, and there was a vote.

Unfortunately, however, most of the evening was a rah rah and pressure fest with one testimonial after another about how important it is for all Republicans to back one candidate and one alone. The irony is that nobody can yet determine whether a write-in candidate will be listed with that almighty R after their name anyway. All bets are that write-in candidates are by law, independents, and will just be listed by name.

When what could've been about 40 minutes worth ended about 2 1/2 hours later, culminating in Shelley Sekula-Gibbs being given the backing by a "majority" of precinct chairs to be the lone write-in candidate. The oddest thing about the vote, however, is that for the first time since I've been involved with any of these party ballot placement deals, there was no definitive number tally announced. See, usually, when there is any type of vote, they will announce that "X got X number of votes" and so on...and yet not this time.

Ms. Benkiser looked at the sheet and announced that there were some votes for Mr. Turner, some for "the Libertarian candidate" and that Dr. Sekula-Gibbs got the most votes. She then deferred to someone else to explain whether that number (the number we weren't told) was a majority, then told us it was. That was it. More hubub occurred, then we were gone. Frankly, I walked away non-plussed.

That Smell

Can’t you smell that smell? The smell of death… umm, well, defeat, at the very least. The stench should be overpowering tonight, that's for sure. Remember how I said the comedy had ended? Chalk that one up as a loss on my prognosticatin' scorecard. At this rate, I'll be laughing about this all the way up until November and beyond. Of course, my sense of humor is pretty twisted, so you, especially the hardcore efenants out there, might not find the whole thing nearly as comical as I do.

Tonight’s the night for the CD-22 precinct chairs to get together and decide what they should do about the disaster that has become the Congressional election. I have no doubt that the party will try to throw their support behind one of the losers who have already declared as write-ins. Effectively, that means she who must not be named since David Wallace has inspired some profound feelings amongst the precinct chairs. So they’ll rally around some poor schmoe who has no hope in hell of winning as a write-in just so they can go home comfortable and secure in the knowledge that they supported a Republican, by gum!

Now, as an avowed libertarian leaning independent, this is just ass-backwards to me. The point is not to get somebody elected who has the right party affiliation. The point is to get a person elected who will work towards policies you think are beneficial. Party affiliation is shorthand for policy, not a value in and of itself. The idea is that if someone runs as a Republican, there is a core set of ideas they’ll take into office. The same can be said about Democrats, Libertarians, and Greens. However, as we have all seen lately, party affiliation doesn’t mean squat. You can have elected party members who differ from the general party consensus on any number of issues. So really, saying someone with an R is automatically better than any other candidate is just completely ludicrous. Yet, that’s what’s going to happen.

All the CD22 apparatchiks (Sheryl Berg, Kathy Haigler, Lisa Smith, etc.) aided by the state and county party functionaries are going to push the precinct chairs into picking any Republican over the one guy who is already on the ballot against Nick Lampson (D-Redistricted). This will effectively hand the election to Lampson. You could rally behind a guy who’s on the ballot, shares your positions on many issues, and could potentially win with your support. Given that he has more commonality with the efenants than with Lampson, I’d think this would be something to consider. Hell, several prominent efenants have already endorsed him. Plus, I figure the odds are better if you try to beat a Libertarian incumbent than a Democrat incumbent in 2008. Will all of these things be brought up? I hope so. Will it make a difference? No.

There’s a plethora of sound tactical reasons to support Smithers and more than few ideological ones. However, Smithers is running with the dreaded L so he’s not gonna be a real candidate to the hardcore party loyalists. Instead, I’m betting they’ll pick one of the write-ins and get that efenant beat like a red-headed stepchild. Anybody want to take me up on that bet? I’ll even give you 2 to 1 odds.

Kitchen Soiree

Pot, meet Kettle. Actual headline:

Kennedy calls Cheney’s attack on Lamont "ugly and frightening"

Umm, has Teddy looked in a mirror lately? Just in case you haven’t seen him lately, here’s old Ted in swim trunks. What two words pop into your head? Okay, my two were "sunburnt blubber" but ugly and frightening were running close behind, after "Ewww! Nasty!"

I don’t think Ted’s one to talk, that’s all I’m saying. Of course, I still think Teddy Kennedy (D-isgusting) should have gone to jail instead of the Senate, so maybe I’m biased.

Rangers Lead The Way!

I have nothing against the fine gentlemen in the 75^th Ranger Regiment, but this one is too good to not mock.

The best trained and best equipped light infantry in the world, baby! I’ve always felt my military training was of limited use in the civilian sector, but these guys found a way to make it pay off for them. I don’t think $54K is enough money for the amount of jail time they’re gonna do. However, apparently their risk/reward calibration is a little different than mine.

Gives "sua sponte" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?

Good Neighbors

I’m not going to suggest that the state of Texas is governed particularly well, or even all that intelligently most days. Texas is benefited by some smart decisions made a long time ago which greatly restricts the amount of damage the state government can do. However, it doesn’t hurt us at all that our neighbors are often even more amazingly idiotic and venal. Exhibit one, is of course, the entire state of Louisiana.

Working hard to overcome the immense disadvantage of not being Louisiana are the Okies. There is now a law in Oklahoma that makes it a criminal offense to use in advertising without permission pictures of members (both active and former) of the Armed Forces of the United States.

That’s right, bitches. All you folks who try to cash in on the immense cachet of being associated with YPS by using my picture to advertise your wares? You’re going down! That’s a year in the pen! Of course, you may obtain my permission subsequent to such use. We’ll talk. How much is a year out of your life worth to you?

Now that I’ve gloated over the possibility of sending people who advertise with my likeness to jail (or using the laws of Oklahoma to extort money from them), I’d just like to state that this is one of the dumbest things I’ve read lately. I’m not bright enough or lawyer enough to give an opinion on the constitutionality of the law, although it’s prima facie absurd. I just think litigating this one out in court is at some point going to get expensive for the state.

That's Good

One of the reasons I read James Lileks on a fairly regular basis is the sometimes amazing turn of phrase that makes you sit up and go "Damn!" Today’s little jealous moment, the "I wish I wrote that" moment, comes from the Screedblog:

the intellectuals who mistake their neuroses for insights

If that doesn’t sum up and dismiss an entire category of people, I’m not sure what else would.

L is for...

Once again, the junior senator from Connecticut has shown he is incapable of accepting the results of an election. Given his hedging during the 2000 election and apparent endorsement of the pernicious meme that he and his buddy didn’t actually lose, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s all about Joe keeping his cushy job on the taxpayer dime. Radley Balko has some choice words on the matter, pointing out what a disaster Joe Loserman (D-1 for 3) actually is as a Senator. He also makes a good point when he says "The position of federal politician should be a short-term privilege, not a career." That’s the ultimate vision I have of the Congress. I’m just a little fuzzy on how to get there.

While we’re tangentially on the subject, I’m going to bring up a pet peeve of mine. I am not a big fan when people try to act out George Orwell’s famous statement about the equality of pigs. It irks the crap out of me when people refer to former officeholders by the title long after they’ve left office. "Ambassador" is one that pops up a lot. Maybe I’m silly, but once you have left the office, you are no longer entitled to the honorific. The idea is once you have departed from office, you are just a regular citizen and entitled to all the courtesy anyone else is, but no more. You have entered back into the teeming millions and should be treated as such. Titles are reserved for the people actually doing the work. If someone could distribute a memorandum to all of the news outlets, maybe we could stop this shit. Any volunteers to type that up and get it out?

Update: My mistake. Leiberman is the junior Senator, not the senior as I had originally written. I don't think it changes much but the extent of his complicity in the problem.

An End to the CD22 Comedy

Well, Justice Scalia told everyone to go piss up a rope, so it’s a done deal. Unless he withdraws, as some sources are saying, Tom DeLay’s name will be on the ballot come November. J is of the opinion that roadkill could beat Nick Lampson in the district, so I guess we’ll get to find out. Given the unappealing collection of hacks that put themselves forward for the nomination, I’m not sure roadkill wouldn’t be a better choice.

As for me, once again, I’m tired of all you donkelfants. I wouldn’t vote for Nick Lampson if I was on fire and he had a bucket of water. Despite what some of you efenants think, whoever gets put forth to run with an R won’t be much better. If all of y’all that keep saying you want change keep voting for the majors, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. You’ll get another guy who says what you want to hear, and then goes to DC and votes for pork and special interests. Wow, just like the last guy! Remember him? The guy who said, against all evidence to the contrary, that there was no fat left to trim in the federal budget? Yeah, Robert Talton is a worthy successor to that kind of thinking. He’ll do you up right if that’s what you want. If you want the unnameable to go up there in her pretty pink suit, what’s she gonna do? Try to cram nanny-state public health bullshit down our throats on the federal level? Yay! That’s what I want from the party of small government. The only guys that are actually old-school conservatives have no chance in hell of winning. Neither, incidentally, does David Wallace. He has managed to piss off the precinct chairs outside of Fort Bend, so he can’t take the district.

Bah! Humbug! Mercutio was right. Pox, pox, pox. Vote for this guy. With no anointed efenant and a donk that’s just as loathsome as the rest of his party, he might actually have a chance. Slightly akin to the proverbial snowball, but a chance nonetheless. Keep voting for the same parties, get the same government.

Parts List

Lower receiver? Check. Purchased from Northwest Houston Tactical a few months back. I think I bought two the month before I bought J her pistol.

DPMS Lower parts kit? Already mostly installed on the lower. I have to wait on the stock for some bits.

YHM flip-up rear sight? Picked up yesterday at the gun show.

1000 rounds of 5.56 and 10 magazines? Arrived on the doorstep today.

16" M4 Kit? Left NC today via UPS on it’s way to me. Includes 16" chrome-lined 1-in-7 barrel, 4-rail gas block with flip-up front sight, 6 position CAR stock, and flat-top upper with T-marks.

Soon…Very soon…

Of course, this is all for J's rifle. I'm still dithering on what to get for mine.

The Lynx Likes Links

So, my random thought of the day is to wonder if the browser Lynx is still extant in some sort of usable implication. I don’t think I’ve thought of the program in a good 10 years.

Huh. Apparently it’s still out there. It was updated as recently as May, if I read the timestamps correctly. I’m not sure why you’d want a text-only web browser, but just in case you do, there it is.

Well, there’s another irrelevant digression done, so back to the main topic, which is how to keep all your links current between your various and sundry locations. For those of us who work on different computers than we use at home, it’s always been an issue. I’ve been using deli.icio.us for a while. I was going to try to pinpoint how long, but apparently my oldest bookmark is December of 2004, which can’t possibly be right. For a while, I was editing the html code of a geocities page by hand to keep some links available to me globally without having to wrry about transferring bookmarks around. Both methods got to be a pain in the ass, especially when my jump drive had a major seizure. (Sony used some extraordinarily cheap glue to hold it together.) Shortly after that, somebody (Make magazine, maybe?) pointed me in the direction of this handy service. I have to admit, I use it almost exclusively now. I am a big fan of the service.

You keep all of your bookmarks on a web server and you can acccess them from anywhere. Instead of folders, you tag the items with keywords and can filter you bookmarks by tags. The tag filtering works with multiple layers of tags, so you can filter by several keywords and see what comes up. This is handy for scatter-brained types like me, but does require you to maintain some coherence in your labeling scheme. Of course, since it's your page, it only has to make sense to you. You can also add other people on del.icio.us to your network and send links back and forth.

Anyhow, you can import all your old browser bookmarks into your page and your categories/folders translate over as tags. You can also get toolbar buttons for Firefox and integrate the whole thing rather nicely into your browsing experience. All of this is simply but my clever introduction to the fact that I will soon be posting a link to my del.icio.us page on the sidebar. Feel free to add me to your network and send links my way. After all, it’s not like I can’t find enough ways to waste time on the ‘net without help. In the meantime, here’s a link to all the crap I look at on the Web. A lot of the links imported as not shared, so I’ll be updating some of those over the next while. Until then, there’s still plenty o’ stuff to browse.

The Lynx Likes Links

So, my random thought of the day is to wonder if the browser Lynx is still extant in some sort of usable implication. I don’t think I’ve thought of the program in a good 10 years.

Huh. Apparently it’s still out there. It was updated as recently as May, if I read the timestamps correctly. I’m not sure why you’d want a text-only web browser, but just in case you do, there it is.

Well, there’s another irrelevant digression done, so back to the main topic, which is how to keep all your links current between your various and sundry locations. For those of us who work on different computers than we use at home, it’s always been an issue. I’ve been using deli.icio.us for a while. I was going to try to pinpoint how long, but apparently my oldest bookmark is December of 2004, which can’t possibly be right. For a while, I was editing the html code of a geocities page by hand to keep some links available to me globally without having to wrry about transferring bookmarks around. Both methods got to be a pain in the ass, especially when my jump drive had a major seizure. (Sony used some extraordinarily cheap glue to hold it together.) Shortly after that, somebody (Make magazine, maybe?) pointed me in the direction of this handy service. I have to admit, I use it almost exclusively now. I am a big fan of the service.

You keep all of your bookmarks on a web server and you can acccess them from anywhere. Instead of folders, you tag the items with keywords and can filter you bookmarks by tags. The tag filtering works with multiple layers of tags, so you can filter by several keywords and see what comes up. This is handy for scatter-brained types like me, but does require you to maintain some coherence in your labeling scheme. Of course, since it's your page, it only has to make sense to you. You can also add other people on del.icio.us to your network and send links back and forth.

Anyhow, you can import all your old browser bookmarks into your page and your categories/folders translate over as tags. You can also get toolbar buttons for Firefox and integrate the whole thing rather nicely into your browsing experience. All of this is simply but my clever introduction to the fact that I will soon be posting a link to my del.icio.us page on the sidebar. Feel free to add me to your network and send links my way. After all, it’s not like I can’t find enough ways to waste time on the ‘net without help. In the meantime, here’s a link to all the crap I look at on the Web. A lot of the links imported as not shared, so I’ll be updating some of those over the next while. Until then, there’s still plenty o’ stuff to browse.

CD22 Follies Continue Unabated

Via Chris, I learn this little tidbit. Nothing personal, Tom, but this mess you’re in is almost wholly related to your actions. If you’d done the right thing when you should have, this whole thing would be over for you and you wouldn’t be "forced to run". Plus, don’t give me that crap about how you’ll have to serve if you’re elected. You were elected less than two years ago and decided partway through your term of office not to serve anymore. Why should this time be any different?

I honestly don’t know how complicit in Tom DeLay’s decision everyone at the state party has been. I also don’t know the real motivations behind all of the happenings. However, at this late date in the game, it seems more and more like DeLay, with the possible help of Tina Benkiser and others in the Texas GOP, looked at the rules and tried to game the system. Nobody involved counted on the pushback from the donks and the courts. So now we’ve got the somewhat bizarre spectacle of a guy who has resigned being left on the ballot. Not quite as funny as the dead guy winning the election, but with a few more good twists we could that reach that level of ridiculous.

I’ll just reiterate: If Tom DeLay would have announced before the primary his intention to resign, we wouldn’t have to be going through this farcical charade. Somebody else could have won the primary and we could all have moved on with our lives.

However, it's all been a learning experience. I have learned once again that the government that provides the most entertainment is also the government that is the most annoying. I would be free to sit back and enjoy all this as pure comedy in the finest absurdist tradition if I weren’t paying so much for the privilege of having these asshats trying to control my life.