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See the "Blue Book" for more information

Amendment 69 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to:
 establish ColoradoCare, a statewide system to finance health care services for Colorado residents;
 create new taxes on most sources of income, redirect existing state and federal health funding to
pay for the services and administration of ColoradoCare, exempt ColoradoCare from constitutional
limits on revenue, and require approval by Colorado residents for future tax increases;
 establish a board of trustees, initially appointed and then elected, to oversee the operations of
ColoradoCare; and
 allow the board to terminate ColoradoCare if the waivers, exemptions, and agreements from the federal
government are not sufficient for its fiscally sound operation.

Arguments For
1) Amendment 69 creates a more equitable health care payment system that provides coverage for all
Coloradans. All people should have access to affordable health care regardless of their ability to pay. The
current health care system leaves many people uninsured or unable to access care due to insurance denials or
high deductibles. ColoradoCare prohibits deductibles and may reduce financial barriers to needed care. The
measure helps ensure that individuals and families will not face financial ruin when accessing needed health care
services.

2) Amendment 69 offers a means to control health care costs and improve patient outcomes. In the
United States, health care costs are higher than in any other industrialized country. Under Amendment 69, health
care costs could be controlled by lowering administrative costs, adjusting payment rates to health care providers,
and reducing the amount of unpaid care provided by health care providers. By creating a centralized system for
health care records, ColoradoCare may improve the coordination of care and create cost savings by more
efficiently sharing information between providers, monitoring medical conditions, and reducing diagnostic testing.

3) ColoradoCare provides a more transparent system that serves the interests of Coloradans, instead of the
interests of private corporations. The current private health insurance system is profit-motivated, which
contributes to rising health care costs. ColoradoCare offers an alternative that shifts incentives toward improving
patient care by allowing Coloradans to elect health care decision-makers. Under Amendment 69, Coloradans
also have control over tax increases for ColoradoCare, increasing local control over health care costs. Unlike
private insurance companies, ColoradoCare board meetings are subject to open meetings laws, which allows
Coloradans to monitor decisions made by the board.

Arguments Against
1) Amendment 69 imposes new taxes, which may harm the Colorado economy by burdening
taxpayers and eliminating jobs. The tax increases under this measure will nearly double state government
spending, which currently totals $27 billion for the entire state budget. In the initial years, taxpayers will pay
about $2 billion a year into a system without receiving any direct benefits. Many individuals and
businesses will pay more with the new taxes than they currently pay for health care. Additionally,
taxpayers must pay the new taxes even if they do not utilize the services offered through ColoradoCare.
Under Amendment 69, higher taxes and an uncertain economic climate could discourage businesses from
operating in Colorado. Finally, ColoradoCare may cause private health insurance businesses to downsize
or leave the state, leaving many people unemployed.

2) Amendment 69 offers no guarantee that ColoradoCare will improve patient care, expand access, or
reduce health care costs. Coloradans may never receive the benefits promised under ColoradoCare if
federal approval is not granted or revenues are not sufficient. The measure does not specify critical details of
how ColoradoCare will be implemented, and has no required implementation date. The measure concentrates
control for making important decisions and spending billions of taxpayer dollars in a 21-member board with limited
accountability and no required health industry experience. ColoradoCare may not solve fundamental problems of
rising health care costs and limited access. If the state fully transitions to ColoradoCare and it fails, it could take
years to re-establish a private health insurance market and government programs, and taxpayers will have paid
billions of dollars for a failed system.

3) ColoradoCare may limit consumer choice and strain the health care system. Health care providers may
be unwilling to serve ColoradoCare patients if reimbursements are too low, or they may choose to leave Colorado
due to uncertainties in the health care market. This could reduce options for patients and increase wait times to
receive services. Also, the health care system could be further burdened by people coming to the state to receive
health care without adequately contributing to the taxes that pay for their care. If the system fails to control costs,
health services covered by ColoradoCare may be reduced. Additionally, private health insurance may not be
available or affordable if Amendment 69 passes. This could leave people with limited options for accessing
alternative coverage or needed care, forcing some people to leave the state.

Personal take
Tentatively planning Yes on this one. Despite the costs we really need to move away from for-profit health insurance.

What say you Soylent?

So, my network has done some strange things over the years. We're all familiar with Cat5 cabling. You plug the RJ45 connecter into two machines, and they are supposed to communicate. Way back, you had to have a crossover cable to make some couplings work, but that's pretty much ancient history now. The machines generally sense whether there is a crossover present now, and compensate.

But, recently, a laptop was plugged into the network with some random cable laying around. They all look pretty much the same, and no one can say where any particular cord came from. Most of those six foot yellow cables are relatively new, and come with almost any machine or card you buy nowadays. But, there are the putrid green ones, the gray ones, black, brown. Do the colors mean anything? Hell, I don't know. But, the laptop was plugged into my gigabyte network, and things just crawled.

So, I did some reading. Cat5 has been around for a long time. They predate any effort on my part to do any networking. The Cat5 specification has undergone changes several times now, because the old standards are just not fast enough.

Obviously, we are into the gigabyte range of speeds now. But, take an ancient ethernet cable, plut it into a typical hub, and the hub automatically changes the speed of ALL THE CONNECTIONS to that slower speed.

Thus, plugging the laptop into the hub with that ancient cable dragged my entire network down to less than 10/100 speeds. Files were transferring at about 4 M/s on my gigabyte network.

So, after some (minimal) research, I decided to just upgrade everything. Shopped around a little, and decided on Newegg's lower cost offerings. Ordered a dozen 6 footers, a couple 12, 25, 30, and 50 foot cables, thought a little more, and ordered a couple more. Got a big box of cables in last week, all of them purple.

One cable at a time, I replaced every single Cat5 cable in the house. And, there are some short cables lying near the router and the hub, awaiting the odd people who show up, and want to plug into the network. (of course only odd people show up at my house, what did you expect?)

Now - what to do with that mess of old cables?

I'm thinking about divvying them out among people that I don't like very much. Let one or more of them try to figure out why his/her network is suddenly crawling at less than ten meg. I can tell them that I only upgraded to Cat6 because the cables are a pretty purple color. They'll believe stupid stuff like that.

A real-life swing-state voter checking in. I've got the 2016 State Ballot Information Booklet in front of me. Let's do this thing! (aka the "Blue Book," located here)

There's some pretty crazy stuff in here so I plan to go initiative by initiative and hit them all.

Amendment T proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to:
 remove language that currently allows slavery and involuntary servitude to be used as punishment
for the conviction of a crime.

Argument For
1) The section of the Colorado Constitution that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a
crime should be updated because it represents a time in the United States when not all people were seen as
human beings or treated with dignity. Removing the language reflects fundamental values of freedom and
equality, and makes an important symbolic statement. There are 25 other states that do not have any language
related to slavery and involuntary servitude in their constitutions, and both prison work and community service
programs are able to operate within those states.

Argument Against
1) Amendment T may result in legal uncertainty around current offender work practices in the state. Prison
work requirements provide structure and purpose for offenders, while enabling skill building and helping to reduce
recidivism. Community service programs allow offenders to engage with the community and make amends for
their crimes.

Personal take: Definitely the least controversial item on the list, so, perhaps a bit boring to start off with. Since our state constitution is so easy to amend currently (more to come on that issue) we might as well make forced labor camps illegal while we can. Planning to vote Yes.

Your thoughts, SN?

It's a wrap! Get ready for President H. R. Clinton!

Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005
Billy Bush was already polarizing. His lewd Donald Trump conversation makes things much worse.
Tape Reveals Donald Trump Bragging About Groping Women
'You Can Do Anything': In 2005 Tape, Trump Brags About Groping, Kissing Women

In talking about kissing women, Trump boasted: "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."

"Grab them by the p****. You can do anything," the Republican nominee continued, using vulgar slang for the female anatomy.

Trump also told Bush — who is the nephew of former President George H.W. Bush and cousin of former President George W. Bush and former 2016 candidate Jeb Bush — about a time he unsuccessfully tried to seduce a married woman.

"I moved on her, and I failed," he said. "I'll admit it. I did try and f*** her. She was married." He continued, "I moved on her very heavily."

He said he even took her furniture shopping to try to get her to sleep with him.

"I moved on her like a b****," he said, "but I couldn't get there. And she was married. Then, all of a sudden, I see her — she's now got the big phony t*** and everything. She's totally changed her look."

[...] In regard to trying to shift blame to Bill Clinton, Trump has also threatened to bring up the former president's infidelities in an attempt to damage his wife during the next debate. That's despite Trump's having been divorced twice and admitting to his own adultery. At the time of this 2005 recording, Trump had just married his third (and current) wife, Melania.

'America deserves far better': Republicans react to crude comments from leaked Trump audio

"No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever," Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said in a statement, in a sharp, unprecedented response about the party's presidential nominee.

Statement from Donald Trump:

“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course - not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”

Kim Kardashian Bound, Gagged and Held at Gunpoint: Exclusive New Details on the Robbery in Paris

The French Interior Ministry said five men threatened a concierge with a weapon, handcuffed him and forced him to open Kardashian's private apartment. Per Today, the Paris Prosecutor's office confirmed two of the men gained entry to her room. One of Kardashian's rings, worth an estimated $4.49 million, as well as a jewelry box, worth an estimated $5.6 million, were stolen.

This is a critical moment in human history.

Kentucky day care worker cited for 'smack for a snack' game

The report says two male staff members would play a "Smack for a Snack" game. The report says the only way school-age children could get a yogurt is to allow the men to hit them with a stick on their leg and/or hand. State officials say at least two students had noticeable bruising. Lexington Police cited one staff member with second-degree assault.

An ingenious cost-cutting move that builds character.

More problems are noted in the article.

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/30/hillary-clinton-center-right/

IN THE HACKED recording of a private conversation with campaign donors in February, Hillary Clinton distanced herself from progressive goals like “free college, free healthcare” and described her place on the political spectrum as spanning from the center-left to the center-right.

Clinton has been inconsistent in the past about espousing political labels. She has at times touted herself as stalwart liberal. For instance, she said last July: “I take a backseat to no one when you look at my record in standing up and fighting for progressive values.” But a few months later, she told a group in Ohio: “You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center. I plead guilty.”

The newly disclosed comments came in audio, apparently from hacked emails, that was revealed this week by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative blog run by a Republican communications strategist. Clinton was speaking at a Virginia fundraiser hosted by Beatrice Welters, the former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, and her husband Anthony Welters, the executive chairman of an investment consulting firm founded by former Clinton aide Cheryl Mills.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-supporters-audio-leak-228997

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-jumps-leaked-audio-hillary-clinton-fundraiser/story?id=42499760

Welcome to my continuing nervous breakdown. I have some new cynicism that I feel the world would benefit from.

Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Ten. Six to explain to the world why C++ was the correct solution and the advanced techniques employed in implementing that solution and four to implement a partially-working solution in twice the time that the lone C programmer got a complete, correct solution designed, implemented, tested, documented and signed off in last time.

Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Ten. They all set to work analysing their previous partial and unreliable implementation and come up with a new design based on new language features in the latest standard that have been in LISP for over thirty years but they've never heard of before. They draw UML diagrams galore and fire up Visual Studio It Never Rains But It Pours Cloud Enterprise 365+ Edition. Six months later the project is scrapped and declared impossible.

Q: How many C++ programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: We don't know, about ten maybe, but the new language standard has advanced features that will make changing lightbulbs not just a possibility, but achievable by ordinary programmers. Watch this space.

Omagerd I can't even.

Some developers dropping Oculus support to protest founder’s politics [Updated]

Indie developers Polytron (best known for Fez) and Kokoromi (makers of the intriguing VR puzzle game SuperHyperCube), have joined in the developer protest against Oculus. Last year, SuperHyperCube was announced as a PlayStation VR exclusive "at launch," but today, the companies made it clear "we will not be pursuing Oculus support" for the game after that exclusivity expires.

"In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform," they wrote (and announced via tweet). "If you are a voting citizen of the United States, please remember to register and make your voice heard this Nov. 8. Do not let bigotry, white supremacy, hate, and fear win."

Instead of making it so that any dumb VR headset can view our game, we will take a stand against bigotry (and having political opinions) and work only with Sony VRDRM.

Palmer Luckey, Millionaire Founder of Oculus Rift, Loves Donald Trump and Dates a Gamergater

It’s been an open secret for some time that Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old founder of VR company Oculus Rift and heir apparent to the future of gaming, is a strange guy—the type who argues with his customers on Reddit and casually cosplays as My Little Pony characters. Turns out, he also appears to be an active supporter of Donald Trump and the alt-right, and in a long-term relationship with an avid Gamergater.

Rags-to-riches nerd dates a hottie, gets called out for it. No pussy for anti-social white nerds, EVER.

It's all a conspiracy to derail anti-social VR technology! Everyone who is anti-social will be exterminated! You must buy the upcoming Apple augmented reality product, which is pro-social! But not Google's, because that one is just as anti-social as VR, you problematihole!

I'm sure these articles would do "well" on the front page, but I don't want to put them there.

Maybe we need some new options for journals. For example, an option to nest journals (from friends only) between stories on the main page, or an RSS feed that lists all of the journals (if this one exists, I haven't seen it).

Since the Great British Public voted by a narrow margin to show its un-wiped bare backsides to our closest, friendliest, most valuable trading partners (Brexit) in order to pursue potential trade deals with the economic powerhouse that is Australia, and to make TTIP easier to get done, I've had much less time and inclination to be interested in technology, unfortunately. Instead, I've been incubating a nervous breakdown playing at slapping the Kipper on the web sites of some national newspapers. My country (the UK) may be on the brink of disintegrating, after all.

We've suffered from simplistic right-wing ideology in government, and our social care systems and National Health Service (you know, that filthy commie thing we have where we pay money to have a free-at-the-point-of-use medical service for the benefit of us plebs and everyone else with no profit motive for corporations and the aristocracy) are. perhaps deliberately, being allowed to atrophy due to mismanagement and under-investment, so that they can be turned over to for-profit companies...

So here's my paranoid-delusional discourse. It applies to PHBs as well, so is relevant to the technology sector.

You have to think like a Tory (Conservative or UKIP) to understand the predicament the NHS and social care organisations are in.

To a Tory, the only thing with value is material wealth and anything that distracts from the maximisation of realising wealth is at best frivolous and at worst evil.

Little People (those not wealthy enough to live off their capital) are a danger to that if they are not work-producing units operating at maximum efficiency. So we have the phenomenon of the Useless Eaters. IDS, Gove and Osborne did their level best to reduce the number of Useless Eaters to protect the wealth.

However, sociopathic the Tory may be, he or she is not entirely stupid. They realise that amongst the population there are bleeding hearts and wooly-minded liberals who have an intrinsic irrepressible compulsion to value their fellow human being for no "rational" (wealth-related) reason.

Two things are implied here. The Tory realises that the "lefty" has a vote and influence on the political process and direction of society and, in order to maintain power, must pay lip-service to this. Hence, the NHS and welfare state is not quite dead yet, and is given almost enough money to limp along.

Secondly, the Tory knows that the "lefty" values the Useless Eater above wealth and so is intrinsically motivated (no money necessary) to provide assistance to said Useless Eater. Therefore the Tory knows that funding can be cut continually because the "lefty" will work itself to death out of this empathy for the Useless Eater.

Your PHB and its superiors may frequently say things like, "You're all professionals, so I know you'll be on board with this. We have to tighten our belts and redouble our efforts. We have to be grown-up about this. The market may be going through some difficulties, but we have to look after our investors." The PHB knows that your Little Person brain that feels intrinsic responsibility to your fellow human being can be used to produce more wealth for Righty with less expense.

Two cheeks of the same behind, as it were.