Valerie has insurance which covers the three of us, but it's her insurance. If she lost her job or if other things happened that I decline to contemplate, we would not have been able to obtain that sort of insurance or indeed anything that wasn't a fraud or a rip-off.

Given that some of the other 50 states implemented exchanges and that the Federal one exists, a total of 7 Million sounds reasonable with 1.2 Million coming from California.

Are you able to show us the terms of your plan? The reason I ask is that I was offered what turned out to be a "trash plan", and the sort of things that aren't being grandfathered are rejected because they don't meet a minimum standard of care. In my case, a catastrophic injury such as in an auto wreck would not have been covered significantly.

The lady who famously confronted Obama on this issue had a plan that limited its payout to a few hundred dollars.

There were two sorts of plans available: There was a company that sold a "trash plan" and sent a sales person to my home. This plan was not written to provide useful medical coverage for a catastrophic condition such as an auto accident with severe injury. Basically, it was a "feel good about being insured until you try to use it" plan which had the main purpose of producing income for a fraudster. I am very glad that such things are being prohibited now because I know there are lots of people who are not as careful readers of terms as I am.

The second was priced so prohibitively high that it seemed to be intended to deter the customer from purchase.

California's exchange is well capable of providing a mere 7 Million registrations and was not ever having problems while the Federal site was the subject of so much news controversy.

I am celebrating this event because This is the first time that Bruce Perens can get insurance coverage! I operate my own company and have previously only had access to insurance through my wife's employer. All of my family, my wife, my son, and I, have each individually been rejected by private insurers for what was esentially medical trivia. In my son's case, it was because he took a test they didn't like even though he passed it.

Not everyone understands the B.S. that private insurers were permitted to put people through.

Since I doubt that this sub-question will get through the editor, I'll give you my answer now. My objection was to the use of bitkeeper due to its license. This is not the same as being in favor of violating the license. What Tridge did (invoking the "HELP" command on a TCP stream connection to the bitkeeper server) was not a license violation.

It's up to the editor when they run the replies. But I promise to answer mine.

Yes, I will answer the interview questions as soon as the editor gets them together.

If you have a specific question, you can always reach me via email to bruce at perens dot com or phone 510-4PERENS. Email usually works better.

To be fair, most liberal arts majors never reach this realization. They just get together in dirty groups and complain about how evil bankers are.

Kudos to this individual for connecting the dots and taking some personal responsibility, then acting on it to improve his or her situation.

Well sport, since you like Wikipedia, we can use that if you like.

"The number of Crimean residents who consider Ukraine their motherland increased sharply from 32% to 71.3% from 2008 through 2011; according to a poll by Razumkov Center in March 2011,[10] although this is the lowest number in all Ukraine (93% on average across the country).[10] Surveys of regional identities in Ukraine have shown that around 30% of Crimean residents claim to have retained a self-identified "Soviet identity".[11]

Since the independence of Ukraine in 1991, 3.8 million former citizens of Russia applied for Ukrainian citizenship.[12]

This is particularly apparent in both the Russian and Ukrainian ethnic populations, whose growth rate has been falling at the rate of 0.6% and 0.12% annually respectively. In comparison, the ethnic Crimean Tatar population has been growing at the rate of 0.9% per annum.[13]

The growing trend in the Crimean Tatar population has been explained by the continuing repatriation of Crimean Tatars mainly from Uzbekistan."

As for the 1989 and 2001 census numbers, they're also up there on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Sadly enough, all this information was in a link right from the very page you originally linked. See, you've got to keep reading, sport. Can't give up as soon as you think you've found something to back up your incorrect, out of date beliefs. Now, am I still a CIA spy here to mislead the masses? Or is someone else perhaps a little guilty of drinking that Putin Kool-Aid delivered right from the RT pitcher? :)

Sorry, sport, you're a little out of date. Your Wikipedia numbers are pulling from the 2001 census (and it was 58% Russian then). Since that time, overall population in Crimea has been falling at about 0.4% per year. Numbers of ethnic Russians in Crimea has been falling at about 0.6% per year. Meanwhile, ethnic Tatars have been growing at a rate of about 0.9% each year.

If you look back a little bit, the trend (which has continued) shows up a bit easier. In the 1989 census, it was 67% Russian and 1.6% Tatar. By the 2001 census, it was 58% Russian and 12% Tatar. The shift is from mass repatriation of Tatars primarily resettling from Uzbekistan. So your 13-year old data just isn't valid anymore. Best estimates are that right now, it's about 51% Russian. Of those, a growing number would actually self-identify as Ukrainian. Putin's lies just don't work here. The memory hole doesn't go deep enough.

I'm particularly amused at your "now go back to langley" comment, essentially claiming I'm working for the CIA. That's pretty funny, but it actually just helps to confirm your disconnect from the facts on the ground. I'm not working for any government agency; I'm just a regular guy with better, more up to date information. Chin up though, sport, you'll get the hang of it. Just need to not use decades old data when making your point if there's any chance you're going to get caught.

 

No, people are making a big deal out of this because Russia marched troops and mobile armor into Ukraine, allowed (some would say encouraged) armed mobs of fanatical ethnic Russians to run amok, surrounded Ukrainian bases in Crimea, and then decided there should be a hastily organized vote on whether Crimea should join Russia immediately or become independent and let its leadership vote on whether to join Russia (no options to remain part of Ukraine). Ethnic Russians make up about 51% of Crimea. Since Crimea was handed to Ukraine some 60 years ago, younger generations of ethnic Russians have grown up as Ukrainians and largely self-identify as Ukrainian. About 15% of the population there are ethnic Tatars, who were brutalized and murdered by Russia until Crimea came under control of Ukraine. The rest is mostly ethnic Ukrainian.

So with Russian tanks and armed troops parked outside peoples' homes and armed mobs of fanatical pro-Russia groups roaming the streets uninhibited, a vote took place in which 97% of votes cast were to join Russia. 97%, despite the fact that at least 15% of the population would essentially be like Jews voting to have their homes fall under the control of the Nazis. The Russians claim this is somehow a legitimate vote and that the people of Crimea have the right to simply vote themselves part of any country they choose (so long as that country is Russia).

There's very little fighting going on. Much of the violence you're seeing in Crimea is from pro-Russian fanatics who've formed armed mobs supported by the Russian military. They've killed or wounded a small number of Ukrainian soldiers stationed at Ukrainian bases in Crimea and they're generally running amok because nobody's stopping them. The Ukrainian troops in Crimea aren't shooting because if they did, the Russians would just murder them (bombing from the air, rockets from helicopters, shelling from artillery; the Russians have a lot of options against small numbers in tight quarters armed only with small arms). As it turns out, about half the Ukrainian military on the ground in Crimea are joining Russian forces, likely because they don't want to be on the losing end of a potential slaughter and/or due to personal or familial Russian self-identification issues.

Amazing how the percentage keeps going up. Every decent source I've seen says 51% ethnic Russians. A poster here named etash claims it's 60%. You're claiming 65%.

Well I'm now claiming it's 104%! 104% of Crimea is ethnic Russians! 110% of them voted to join Russia! Vote is complete! It is fair and reasonable!

You'd need to adjust your analogy to assume the Nazis stayed in power (being that Putin is "ex" KGB and is running the place like the Soviet Union of old). So it would be like saying that if the Nazis who exterminated Jews still controlled the German government, all Jews who ran from Hitler would still hate/distrust Germans.

And yes, I think that's fair to say.

Even Russia doesn't claim that. I don't know if you're drinking Putin's Kool-Aid or if he's drinking your's.

There is no dispute that Crimea was part of Ukraine a month ago. Seriously, not even Putin has ever claimed any differently. The area belonged to Ukraine. The argument Putin has made is that the people there didn't want to be part of Ukraine anymore; they wanted to have Crimea be part of Russia again, and that the right of self-determination makes it all legal. But that's a far cry from claiming it was always Russian land.

Also, it isn't 60% Russian. It's about 51% ethnic Russian. Of those, the younger generations grew up only ever knowing it as part of Ukraine. Therefore, even among ethnic Russians, some percentage would self-identify as Ukrainian. Then you have the roughly 15% Tatars who've had nothing but persecution under Russian rule (the reason so many of them are there is that Russia got tired of beating the Hell out of them and expelled them from Russia ... to Ukraine). Between the ethnic Ukrainians, Tatars, and the younger generation of ethnic Russians who self-identify as Ukrainian, a fair vote would likely be something like 45% join Russia 55% not (some mix between becoming independent and staying with Ukraine).

The fact that it was 97% shows just what a Saddam Hussein style "vote" it really was.