I have news of a minor health victory. On January 1 of 2010, I weighed 248.8 pounds, and I decided that was too much. So I decided to start a diet, and I picked the South Beach Diet. Two and half years later, I now weigh exactly 30 pounds less than I did when I started. I’d still like get my weight under 200 pounds. But my body mass index is now 29.7, and that means a goal has been met. Although my goal is not to lose weight, but to be healthy. In the 10 year period before I started the diet, I gained about 80 pounds which was a steady trend in the wrong direction.

When I started, I wasn’t having any health problems from weight yet, but I knew if I didn’t do something that I’d eventually gain even more weight and eventually it would cause health problems. Now, I’ll never know what weight would have been the point where I started developing health problems. I believe I now have a system I can follow to maintain a healthy weight.

So I’d like to thank Dr. Arthur Agatston for writing the South Beach Diet book, and say the $10.17 I paid for the book on Amazon may be the best bargain I’ve ever found for improving my health.

If you’re looking to improve your weight and health, I heartily recommend the South Beach Diet. Although the bargain book seems to be the South Beach Diet Supercharged. I’m not guaranteeing it will work for you, just that it did for me. If you try it and it doesn’t work for you, I encourage you to try something else.

So the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act is out. The mandate to buy health insurance is constitutional solely because it is a tax. In other news, the Federal government can’t cut funds from states that don’t expand Medicaid. I suspect some states won’t expand coverage because they are already having problems paying for current Medicaid coverage. So if a state doesn’t expand Medicaid coverage, does the tax apply to people who are uninsured solely because their state didn’t expand Medicaid coverage? In other words, does the tax just hit the middle class, or the middle class and working poor?

Thanks to InstaPundit for the link to the opinion.

I used to say that Chicago is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. By way of Instapundit, it appears that Chicago is no longer a nice place to visit. It appears a group of thugs went to a restaurant and assaulted a group of out of state diners.

Update: Another article reports that the assaulted diners were white supremacists. I think white supremacists are jerks, but they have a First Amendment right to open their mouths and demonstrate their stupidity. As many have said before me the solution to obnoxious speech is speech rebutting it, not violence. My guess is these protesters thugs are too stupid to craft a complete sentence criticizing white supremacy.

They told me if I voted for John McCain, we’d see a blatant violations of the civil rights of a man who may well be as black as Homer Plessy. George Zimmerman’s Peruvian great-grandfather was of African descent. If his great-grandfather was entirely of African descent, that would mean Zimmerman is one eighth black, the same as Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in Plessy vs. Ferguson. NBC edited audio to make it sound like Zimmerman volunteered that Trayvon was black. Spike Lee tweeted what he thought was Zimmerman’s home address. Noted attorney Alan Dershowitz has said on more than one occasion that the evidence the prosecution claim does not support a charge of second degree murder. He has in my opinion used very strong legal language to criticize the prosecutor’s decision.

George Zimmerman may well have committed a crime, but if Dershowitz is right, it is a crime less serious than second degree murder. Everyone should care that George Zimmerman not get railroaded by the “justice” system. Because if it can be done in a highly publicized trial like this one, it can happen to anyone else be they black, white or hispanic.

The opening title for this post was inspired by several posts by Instapundit.

In the most important race this year, I cast my vote for Mourdock. In the race that’s already decided, I cast my vote for Gingrich. I know Romney will be the nominee, and I will vote for him come November. However, I still think that Gingrich ideas most closely match mine, and the only way I can communicate that to the Republican party leadership is to vote for him.

It’s only one week to go until the Indiana Republican Primary. Which will feature the most interesting primary race I can remember. That being the US Senate race where I will be voting for Richard Mourdock over the guy that’s been endorsed by Arlen Specter.

One of President Obama key ideas has been green jobs. One era of history I’m interested in includes the mid 20th century greening of the railroad industry. The big “green” trend of that era was the development of the diesel locomotive. Yes, those nasty smoke belching diesels were a big improvement over their coal burning predecessors. But that progress came at a price. It meant the elimination of a lot of jobs. You see not only does diesel fuel burn much cleaner than coal, diesel locomotives require much less repair work than diesels. There’s no corrosive steam causing wear on moving parts for one. For the second part, a diesel engine needs oil changes and engine rebuilds and motor and generator (or alternator) rebuilds. That’s most of the work required. And all these can be very standardized. Two of the most common early diesels, the F-7 and GP-7 shared common drive train parts.

How much less time is a diesel down for repairs? Well, there was one snag in the early adoption of diesels. After a couple of years of use, one of the earlier diesels wore out its solid steel wheels. Wheels which would last the two decade life of a steam locomotive. After a little bit of research, they figured out this wasn’t a problem. Over the course of two or three years, that diesel locomotive traveled more than a steam locomotive would over its entire life.

I’d still argue the greening of railroads was a good thing, it was a net destroyer of jobs, not a creator of them. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for writing this post about the more current green jobs situation and reminding me to write this post.

The Indianapolis Tea Party is happening Saturday April 14th, 2012 at 2PM in downtown Indy.

Here are the details.

In a 2009 Opinion piece in the Washington Post, Richard Lugar advanced the idea of the $1 per gallon gas tax. To be fair, he is proposing to make it revenue neutral by cutting the payroll tax. However this would be a huge economic penalty for people who have to drive a lot. This tax would have a serious impact on lots of Americans. This wouldn’t hurt my wife and I all that much, because we have a decent income, and a short commute to work. However, certain areas and people would be devastated. This would strongly affect people in rural areas (which tends to be underserved by mass transit) especially poorer working people with a long commute. You know, the people who are so financially strapped they can’t afford to sell their current house and buy one closer to work who coincidentally are the same people who can’t afford to trade in their cars for newer, smaller, more fuel efficient ones? Obviously Senator Lugar doesn’t understand that three year old opinion pieces no longer go to the newspaper morgue to die.

Need I point out to Senator Lugar that there’s a name for the demographic group of Hoosiers who don’t live in areas served by mass transit and drive to and from work? They’re called Republicans!!!

Indiana Senator Richard Lugar is running for re-election this year. He’s the one Republican I won’t be voting for this year. I was offended by former Senator Evan Bayh’s claiming his in state residence as a condominium which he never lived in. Senator Lugar’s continued listing of the house he sold 35 years ago as his Indiana address may fill the literal letter of the law, but it most certainly does not fulfill the spirit of the law. Furthermore the Senator’s tone deafness on earmarks, something which the Senator may not have abused, but his colleagues on the other side of the aisle certainly have abused repeatedly is unacceptable.

Finally, this post from Gary Welch has put the icing on the cake. Someone sent an anonymous complaint to a professional organization that one of Senator Lugar’s critics belongs to complaining about the actions of the critic. The “anonymous” compliant included email exchanges between the critic and a member of Senator Lugar’s staff about the issues in question.

I am now an unabashed supporter of Richard Mourdock.

After I post this, I’m adding Gary’s Blog to my blogroll.