My hamstring is happy that we didn't walk...

this morning.  The rest of me is not.  But I suspect that tomorrow morning, when I resume walking, it will be very grateful.  I intentionally remained in bed for the hour during which I would have been walking and then cooling down.  An hour's extra sleep was wonderful, especially since I stayed up late last night watching something on television.

Speaking of television, one of my pet peeves is going on right now.  A TV network, that frequently shows episodes of an hour-long drama, broadcast several excellent episodes of that show back to back to back last night.  That's all well and good.  Even if you haven't seen them for awhile, they may well be worth watching.  But now they're showing those same episodes, in the same order (more or less) this morning.  Now a few weeks, or few months passing between the airing of a re-run is tolerable.  But less than 14 hours is not.  I hate to say it, but I wouldn't watch "Lawrence of Arabia", my favorite movie of all time, twice in 14 hours.  Not even if it were on the only working channel on the entire spectrum of channels.

It's called balance billing and in California it's illegal for emergency room physician to engage in.  It refers to the practice of seeking payment in full from a patient treated in an emergency room, after insurance has paid what it is willing to pay in a managed-care case.  The reason behind the practice of not allowing this is that when one is in an ER, one has much less control over which doctors are providing treatment.  Well, there's a plastic surgeon from Pasadena who has been so aggressive and abusive in using balance billing to try to collect from her patients, she's being sued by the State of California.  In one case, she sued a patient in small claims court when her bill was $2,750, insurance paid just under $500 and said the patient owed $200.  The doctor lost in small claims court and was awarded just the $200 insurance said was owed.  The doctor then placed a lien on the patient's home to try to collect "post-judgment costs" to which she was entitled.  I hope the Medical Board is successful in revoking her license to practice medicine.  I know a collection agency that she can buy and run, it's much more suited to her mindset than practicing medicine.

The fuss continues over Romney's tax returns and what percentage of income tax he paid for the ten years before 2010 and 2011, for which his returns are available (2011 is an estimate).  More than half of his income in those two years was from long-term capital gains.  Like it or not, Congress lowered the tax rate on long-term capital gains long ago.  It was lowered a little further in more recent years during the Bush era tax cuts.  There is a purpose behind the lowered rate for long-term capital gains.  It encourages investors to leave their investments in place, allowing companies to grow and prosper, rather than constantly seeking new sources of capital if investors were not getting some incentive to letting long-term investments grow.  The rate of taxation on long-term capital gains will increase by 8.8% starting January 1st of next year.

But by all means, let's raise the capital gains tax rate on long-term gains to your highest marginal tax rate.  Then, just to be fair, let's repeal Section 121 of the Internal Revenue Code.  Not familiar with Section 121?  It's the code section that allows a homeowner to avoid paying capital gains tax on $250,000 in gains ($500,000 for a married couple) on the sale of a home in which the couple has owned and occupied for at least two of the five years prior to sale.  Why should home ownership be any different than stock ownership?  It's just another form of capital gain.  You won't mind paying all that tax on this huge gain.  So what if it pushes you into the 35% bracket for one year?  Suddenly taking a new view on how long-term capital gains should be treated?

Once again the power of the Internet, viral news stories and collective outrage prevails.  There was a case where a woman died in a car accident and her own auto insurance company, Progressive Insurance, tried to prove she was at fault, in order to avoid paying out a big claim on her uninsured motorist coverage.  Her brother put the story on-line and the collective outrage boiled over like an unwatched pot of soup on the highest flame.  Now Progressive has settled for an amount far in excess of the limit of the policy to make the case go away.  But the outrage will not be so easily quieted.

The fans of WikiLeaks continue to defend its founder, Julian Assange.  Let's suppose for a moment that he didn't rape those women.  Why would they come forward and lodge complaints if that were the case?  Are they part of a conspiracy to get him extradited to the U.S., to face charges of espionage in the Bradley Manning affair?  What is in it for these women?  Why did they come forward? 

People are calling the presidential campaign the dirtiest in history.  Well, until someone breaks into someone else's campaign offices, tries to plant bugs in offices and so on, it doesn't begin to approach the level of prior campaigns.