HOMELESS

Mrs. Optimist and I sold our home in Big Cold Town (BCT) recently. The process was tinged with sadness, but our sadness was assuaged by the $3,000 or so per month we save from (a) not paying the big mortgage for the big old house (b) not paying the big taxes from BCT and (c) not paying the big utility bills for heating and cooling and watering and sewering the big old house.

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But most of all we save the psychic pain that comes from the sudden, catastrophic "you must fix this immediately" moments that are such a charming part of home ownership. Mrs. Optimist totaled up all our out-of-pocket "fixer upper" expenses while we were fussing around getting ready for settlement. It turns out we averaged $666 per month during our 12 years. That's over and above fixed costs.

666 is, of course, the Sign of the Beast. (Revelation 13:16-18). I'm not suggesting this is significant. Just noting the coincidence.

I used to joke that I should film a TV show called "This Damn House" for PBS. Mrs. Optimist and I were compulsive "This Old House" watchers. We could relate. But then I realized that Bob and Norm and the guys were having a lot of fun. We were not having so much fun.

Bob and Norm had carpenters and plumbers and electricians and an unlimited budget. Not us.

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We had a bunch of kids and not enough money.

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And so when Mrs. Optimist would call me at work and say "there is water pouring through the second floor roof like a waterfall - it's running all the way down to the basement -" I would go home and go on the roof in a hurricane (yes, this happened) and hammer shingles.

Roof + Hurricane = Hurricane wins

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That's what I'm talking about. Not a lot of edifying things said on the roof during the hurricane. Wish I was a better man, but there it is. I was angry, soaking wet, cold and scared out of my wits.

So as much as I loved our home, I'm feeling mighty fine right now.

I'm thinking of taking the monthly savings and purchasing us a little solace. Like a trip to Jamaica. All cash. No credit card.

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And while I'm on the beach I will dream a dream about standing on a rickety ladder holding up an 8' sheet of gypsum against the plaster ceiling with my head while I try to balance drywall screws on the tip of my screw-gun as I drive them through the sheet rock.

These guys are wimps, using their hands.

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It is a cool trick, but it leaves you with permanent headaches. They don't tell you that stuff on "This Old House."

Holding drywall with head = bad headaches.
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I like renting a lot.

BUYING PLUTO

With our new found fortune - derived from paying off all our debts and selling our house - we are faced with the remarkable problem of where to put our money. I've hit on a new investment scheme that is destined for greatness.

Buy Pluto.

The opportunity here is immense. Pluto was recently downgraded from planet status and de-listed from all the major exchanges. Nevertheless, Pluto has not actually changed shape or form since being downgraded. So it is severely undervalued right now, especially when you compare it to any of the planets. Pound for pound, it is even undervalued when compared against asteroids and comets.

Which makes no sense at all, since Pluto is a lot closer to Earth, on average, than any of the asteroids or comets. This is how you know that an irrational herd mentality is at work.

By the way, a guy tried to get me to buy Mars. That is crazy stuff. EVERYONE is long Mars, and it is hopelessly overvalued.

Besides, Pluto just fits for me and Mrs. Optimist. It is way out there, it has a weird, eccentric orbit, and no one can figure out exactly what it is. We feel a kind of empathy for Pluto, a real sense of solidarity.

What's great is that I've found an outfit that sells fractional shares of Pluto, so I can do this over time. The deal is I pay a regular amount each month, so I'm buying more of Pluto when the price is down, less when the price is up. Over time I undercut the average market price for my Pluto stock.

Right now there aren't many buyers for Pluto, so the price is very low. In a few years, when everyone can see the value, the price will skyrocket, and Mrs. Optimist and I will probably be on to the Tibetan yak dung futures I read about in the Wall Street Journal the other day.

That's just the way we roll.

NOBEL PRIZE

Is it not hilarious that Al Gore and Barack Obama have both received Nobel Peace Prizes for doing nothing about peace? Gore made a documentary about global warming that rivals Reefer Madness for zany overstatement. Obama spent a year apologizing for George Bush while continuing Bush's war policies.

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I think the Swedes are doing this on purpose, to mock us. It's like the Nobel Irony Prize now.

Next up for Nobel Peace Prizes are David Cameron, for (kind of) winning the recent British elections, and Oprah Winfrey, for publishing a magazine every month about herself.

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I also predict a Nobel Peace Prize for Madonna for learning to speak with an English accent, and one for the entire State of California for going broke.

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Those Swedes think because they are tall and have blond hair that they are entitled to laugh at us. Wait until global warming hits and their country gets really hot. When President Obama refuses to send them a trillion dollars to bail out Saab and Ikea, let's see who's laughing then.

HEALTH CARE AND ME

It is tax day tomorrow, April 15, 2010, and I have a new tax code tweak that I think will "hope and change" the health-care debacle to death. The beauty is that everyone, whether right or left, can get behind this idea.

The Democrats and Independents who voted for Obama like big government and like paying over most of their income to make government bigger, stronger and better able to pay out benefits.

The Republicans who voted against Obama don't like that so much.

The tax gambit is this: everyone who was a registered Republican in 2008 gets a "Health Care Tax Credit" (HCTC) from IRS for their per capita share of any taxes paid that are attributable to funding Obamacare.

The Republicans will use the money to jump start the economy by buying fur coats or cars or some such. Or maybe even buying health care, if that's what they want. It's just like the $8,000 stimulus for first time home buyers, only more effective, since first time home buyers are usually not as smart with their money as "Rs."

Everyone who registered Democrat or Independent pays their share of the extra tax burden, plus extra bucks to fund the new HCTC. This satisfies the "D" moral fervor to pay more taxes and grow government and makes them feel much happier than they are now.

To pay for the heavier taxes, "Ds" can sell their houses and cars, buy older bicycles (the ones with heavy tires), move into cramped apartments in the city, smoke home-grown marijuana, stop shaving and using air conditioners, eat more tofu and navy beans, and stop having babies. Since these are all things they know they should be doing anyway, all the better.

Republicans can buy cheap health care from highly qualified non-citizen professionals in Metuchen, or even Singapore, with their extra HCTC money, and maybe catch a few days in South Florida or Acapulco, where they will smoke too much and eat unhealthy foods. This means they will die sooner, which has to be a plus for "Ds."

Democrats and Independents can get health care insurance through carefully regulated regional cooperative insurance federation thingies with impenatrable names and accounting rules. These Leviathans will provide mediocre health care insurance and mediocre health care for all "Ds" and "Is," while reducing America's budget deficit and making America just a little bit more like France, without the arrogance, racism and huge unemployment problem.

As I said, this is a total win-win. Republicans get to spend the money as they see fit while dying sooner from their inevitably poor decision-making, while Democrats get to pay taxes and grow government.

The only potential glitch is if the Republicans pool their HCTC money and start shorting U.S. Treasury bonds. But so what? Who cares if the Chinese lose money?

SEX SCANDAL AND CELIBACY

Last week I read an article on the Church/Sex story, titled "Pope Opens Solemn Holy Week Amid Sex Abuse Crisis." It's the usual story line: the Church didn't react fast enough or forcefully enough to predatory priests. For more on the painful subject, buy and read "The Faithful Departed," an honest and deeply troubling book.

EO was intrigued by a small quote near the end of the article. A Cardinal - identified in the article as a "liberal" - suggests that "mandatory chastity for churchmen should be thought over to prevent further abuse cases by clergy and help the church regain lost trust."

The Cardinal may have been "sound-bit," for all we know. "Sound-bit" is when you say something for one purpose, but a piece of your quote is used for another.

"Sound-bit"

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Rather than speculate on what the Cardinal actually had in mind, EO will just "think over" the actual language of the quote, which is safer. "Thinking over" stuff is almost always a good idea, except when you are "thinking over" sin. Then, not so much.

But I digress.

"I'll do the thinnin' around here!"
- Quick Draw McGraw
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EO can think of two different things the quote might mean: (A) requiring priests to be chaste actually causes them to become pedophiles, or (B) allowing priests to be married reduces the chances they will turn to pedophilia.

Theory (A) generally means that if you don't give people latitude to fornicate they will develop unhealthy sexual appetites. The flip side would be that if allowed to fornicate as they wish, people will wind up with healthy moral habits.

Smart people say so.

Sigmund Freud: "Let's Get It On."
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Cool people say so.

Marvin Gaye: "Let's Get It On."
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Bottom line: America has "Gotten It On" for the last 50 years, with genocidal results: a million abortions a year, a horrendous worldwide AIDS epidemic, a 70% illegitimacy rate in large segments of our society, explosions of rape, domestic violence, and pornographic abuse of women and children.

"Let's Maybe Not Get It On So Much."
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I would prefer not to import this wholesale into the priesthood.

Theory (B) generally means that if you let priests marry you can avoid having child molesters in the priesthood.

Problem is, two-thirds of child victimizers have been married. One-third of child abusers committed the crime against their own child. School teachers and married clergy may have higher incidencea of child abuse than Catholic clergy. The links supply a starting point, but there is plenty more.

So "married" is a truly lousy proxy for "won't commit child abuse."

Contrary to popular mythology, marriage is not something radically different from holy orders. It shares many of the same attributes, requiring chastity, faithfulness, sacrifice and endurance.

Priests who have problems with chastity in holy orders will have problems with chastity in marriage.

The problem is too little chastity, not too much.

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There is ample room in God's kingdom for all his children, no matter what their struggles. God has a way to redeem all of us. But that doesn't give us a license to be stupid. EO does not try to minister to Sports Illustrated swimsuit models. He keeps a respectful distance from them.

The Catholic Church does not force anyone to become a priest, or to stay a priest. Someone who struggles with a sexual attraction to young boys should not be a priest. You need to work that out in another environment.

For the last generation Catholic seminaries have been thrown open to people who were living in violation of the Church's rules on sexual morality. During the same period many in the Church's hierarchy dealt with pedophilic priests by sending them to "treatment" centers, then putting them back on active duty, rather than following historic norms for dealing with priests with sexual problems.

Now chastity is to blame for the sex scandal?

This is like torching a store and then suing the fire company for not putting it out fast enough. Next we will start blaming gluttony on prayer and fasting.

Nero fiddling.
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Excuse me while I curb my enthusiasm.

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Celibacy and chastity don't cause perversion, any more than marriage cures it.

Successfully celibate priests mean that sexual immorality is not an uncontrollable outcome of the human condition. The VAST majority of priests are faithful to their vows. People in my generation hate the celibate priesthood because it stands as a quiet witness against our culture of sexual immorality.

The notion that chastity causes or contributes to perversion is unsupported and a little whacky. It is the type of "virtue is vice" accusation that characterized the first Good Friday.

So thank God for Easter.

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(For more on the history of priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church,

see the Catholic Encyclopedia article.)

LIFE GOES ON

So Reid-Pelosi passed the house last night, amid cheering and high-fiving. Me, not so much.

Then I started thinking: what a great country we live in. Here we are debating an issue that touches the core of who we are, a defining line between very different visions of who we should be. Yet there are no machetes, suicide bombers or IEDs anywhere around.

Conservatives took a whipping in 2006 and 2008. Liberals won the national debate and the election in 2008. They won it politically, they won it following the rules, and to the victors go the spoils. They did what they said they'd do.

Yet no one is leading an armed insurrection. Conservatives are trying to take back power, just as liberals did when they were in the wilderness. But "take back power" doesn't mean fund a private militia and storm the capital.

In this country, it means working all the harder at making your point; working all the harder at convincing a free people of the merits of your position; working all the harder to elect people who agree with you.

The debate on health care has only begun. The bad math is still there, and in the coming decades we and our children will have to confront it again. Because this bill, for all its noble purpose, does not fund the entitlements it creates. And that, however you dress it up, is a piece of deception.

Funding these entitlements will, in the end, involve either massive new taxes or the complete overthrow of the current insurance system. At some point, you can no longer finesse the issue with gimmicky accounting tricks.

And the American people will have to make the actual choices that Congress ducked here. Do you want to keep your entitlements intact and pay much higher taxes? Do you accept a severe reduction in entitlements to limit your tax bill? Do you nationalize health care in order to control costs? Or some combination of these three unpalatables?

I don't know what their choice will be. I can't predict all the circumstances under which that choice will be forced upon them. But the cause for optimisim is that the people get to make that choice, and not some wacko president-for-life, "fearless leader" or Maoist dictator.

So for those who prefer an America where risks and rewards are high, and government control is low, keep working, keep praying, and keep voting. The day will come when your voice is heard again. Maybe you'll be the ones high-fiving and cheering on the floor of the House.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES

The health care bill now pending in Congress (I will call it Reid-Pelosi Care, or "RPCare") will mean a huge new entitlement program, vast increases in the federal budget, and huge new federal deficits.

We are currently watching the Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid (call them S2M2) programs approach bankruptcy. Soon we will get to watch RPCare approach bankruptcy, along with the Federal Treasury.

The Congressional Budget Office issues reports each time RPCare changes. The people at the CBO must be approaching nervous breakdowns.

The CBO reports suggest that over 10 years the bill as presently constituted will shave about 10% of the RP's cost off the federal deficit. Now this is small beer, in any event, given the enormous increase in the federal deficit during the Bush/Obama "debt = eternal happiness" era of government expansion.

But the CBO "scoring" is just that: "scoring," as in a weird game of Risk, based on arcane rules that ignore historical reality. CBO predictions of cost savings almost never materialize, and CBO always woefully underestimates how fast health care costs really grow.

Even on their own terms the CBO's estimates don't promise fiscal solvency. They just say that they can't predict where the bill will take us past 10 years, but that by increasing revenues now and postponing new health care expenditures for 4 years, the bill ekes out about 10% more revenue than expenses by year 10. This means 10 years of revenue to pay for 6 years of health care.

Never mind the quality of the "revenues" RPCare asks us to believe in. That is a sausage factory you do not want to see or smell.

After 10 years, we have to pay as we go. See, this is the problem with Ponzi schemes and check-kiting. At some point your "float" drys up. The expenses will keep on going up dramatically, while the revenue sources won't. The math will stop working very rapidly.

And then what? The S2M2 bankruptcy will be dwarfed by the bankruptcy of RPCare. We will either scrap the system, at untold cost to poorer Americans with nowhere left to go, or turn to a truly nationalized health care system. Welcome, Veterans Hospitals.

The administration understands that RPCare is the last, great hope of turning the United States hard toward a nationalized health system. The administration sees such a turn as "the right thing to do." Every year, every month, every week that goes by without RPCare allows America to keep thinking about "entitlement bankruptcy." Voters are getting more and more jittery, even now. Witness Scott Brown sitting in "Ted Kennedy's" seat. People's enthusiasm for new spending will continue to erode, the closer the S2M2 bankruptcy lumbers toward us.

Hence, the urgency to pass this bill now, while Democrats can. Because very soon, the moment will have passed, never to return.

In the end, I don't think Obama cares very much about health care. He didn't before the primaries. He picked up Hillary Clinton's fervor as a convenient device for accomplishing his true passion, a federal government locked into growth at a faster rate than the private economy. If Obama wins health care, he wins constant government growth, relative to the private economy. The rest of the story is interesting, but essentially inevitable, like finishing a hand of solitaire once all the cards are up.

Health care has grown faster than the rest of the economy for 40 years. If the federal government is running health care, the health care math means government expands at a rate faster than the private economy. 2 + 2 = 4, and that's that.

And this means that at some point within a generation, the government will have overcome and swallowed the private economy. That day will mark a great victory for America's left. No armed revolution will have preceded this takeover; just a vote on health care on March 21, 2010.

Obama and friends see federal control of the private economy as the only sure way to ensure social justice, a social justice defined by Obama and people who agree with him. Once they get RPCare done, all they have to do is wait, and the rest of the deal comes to them while they sit.

Tomorrow is the first day of spring. The weather is likely to be lovely, here in Hotville. I hope the House of Representatives refuses to approve RPCare. I am Eternally Optimistic.