The Silver Solution?

If I were still making even the slightest effort to maintain my credentials as a microbiologist, I would be on top of the latest news on antimicrobial products and technology rather than reading about it in the newspaper. But, I don't so I wasn't and I did. I would always mention in my beginning lectures on antimicrobials that heavy metals had antibacterial properties and would use such examples as organic mercury, gold, and silver to achieve disinfection.
Well, they have moved on in this area using a new science called nanotechnology to produce some really neat sounding new products. Silver nanoparticles are being incorporated into soaps and other consumer goods such as socks. The soap is called Cor and is the next in way to keep microbes off the skin. It had better work, however, since it costs about $115 a bar. My Dial would have to fail me mightily to induce me to switch, however. Toothpaste is said to be the next product to look for. Other products, however,are already here. Sharper Image sells a set of plastic food containers with imbeded silver which are intended to keep food fresher for longer. One owner reported keeping strawberries fresh for 14 days in such containers. Samsung has a washing machine launched in the U.S. which uses silver ions to sanitize laundry. The washer has a grapefruit sized drum which uses electrical currents to nano-shave two silver plates each time the washer is turned on. The resulting ions interact with the bacteria to disrupt membrane functions and very effectively reduce the bacterial count in your laundry ( hospital usage here?). The silver plates will last 10 years according to Samsung and even though they cost $1200 at Best Buy, for example, you don't have to use hot water to kill 99.9% of the microbes in your wash.
If you want to try the product and have a special need, you can go to WalMart and buy some sports socks with E47 (element 47 or silver which has an atomic number of 47). Supposedly they keep your feet warm in winter, cool in summer, and your feet don't stink.
We will be hearing a lot more about nanotechnology in general and disinfection products in particular.

Amen, Brother Sowell

When it comes to racial and ethnic minorities, liberal politicians and judges can make it literally a federal case to give IQ tests to black children. Among the facts that we would never have known if some people did not find ways around this taboo is that black IQs have risen in recent times.

The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned.

That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare state is only one example.

Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing this and other social pathology in today's ghettos to "a legacy of slavery" -- even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today.

Blacks only a generation or two out of slavery also had higher rates of employment and lower rates of crime than today.

The illogic of the "legacy of slavery" argument only illustrates the desperate attempt to salvage the liberal vision.

Read the whole thing here

Terror Plot in Canada

Canadians have broken up a terror ring which was planning on blowing up a target in Ontario. Consider the identity of this group the next time you see a grandmother being wanded in the line at the airport. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service confiscated three tons of ammonium nitrate -- the same fertilizer ingredient that Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing, only three times as much. Of the seventeen, 12 have been publicly identified, while five are apparently underage. The identified suspects are:

1. Fahim Ahmad, 21, of Robinstone Drive, Toronto, Ontario;
2. Zakaria Amara, 20, of Periwinkle Crescent, Mississauga, Ontario;
3. Asad Ansari, 21, of Rosehurst Drive, Mississauga, Ontario;
4. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, of Lowville Heights, Mississauga, Ontario;
5. Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, of Montevideo Road, Mississauga, Ontario;
6. Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ontario;
7. Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston, Ontario;
8. Jahmaal James, 23, of Trudelle Street, Toronto, Ontario;
9. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, of Stonehill Court, Toronto, Ontario;
10. Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, of Treverton Drive, Toronto, Ontario;
11. Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Robin Drive, Mississauga, Ontario;
12. Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga, Ontario.

Yes, they are connected to al-Qaeda. The group has been under surveillance since 2004. I sure hope their civil rights weren't violated by anyone.

Was this a message to Pat?

Tammy Bruce recalls that Pat Robertson attributed Ariel Sharone's stroke to God being unhappy with his Jerusalem policy. Now that Pat's airplane just crashed into the water up in Long Island it is only fair to ask if this is a wake-up call of some kind.

I agree with this

It's time for Dennis Hastert to go.

Rep. Hastert, R-Ill., ought to announce sooner rather than later that he will not be a candidate for re-election as Speaker of the House when the next Congress convenes in January, 2007. He should do so for reasons both principled and purely political. He should do so because, in practical terms, his effectiveness is reaching -- or probably has already reached -- an end.

Read it all here.

I have wondered about this

Cosmic Thoughts

I wonder if it is part of God's plan for old people to get so disillusioned with the changes in their world that they are not all that unhappy when the end of their time on earth comes around. An article in the paper today got me to thinking this may be so. It seems the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has decided that, as of this fall, coaches whose teams win by more than 50 points will be suspended for the next game. This is so silly and depressing at so many levels that it's hard to know where to start in listing them. Suffice it to say that this score management scheme is concocted by the same morons who want to just hand out grades in school or pay people based on factors other than merit. We must avoid hurt feelings in some even if it means it makes others of us just want to take a bullet to get away from this idiocy.

The Dreadful Senate Immigration Bill

There is a very nice analysis of the Senate's monstrocity that is being advanced as a comprehensive immigration bill that is sadly being promoted with help from the ever more disappointing Bush White House. All in all the good guys have listed some 22 deficiencies in the legislation. Here are a couple.

The alien and their families who file applications for amnesty “shall not be detained, determined inadmissible, deported, or removed until their applications are finally adjudicated, unless they commit a future act that renders them ineligible with amnesty.” With tens of millions of applications, this amnesty, this provision essentially guarantees an illegal alien years of protection in the United States, even if they do not qualify for the amnesty."

According to Ed Meese, the current Senate bill would actually prevent police officers from arresting anyone based on the fact that they're in this country illegally.

Read them all here.

Amen

From Mark Steyn. Read it all here.

Last week, something very unusual happened: There was a story out of Washington that didn't reflect badly on the Republican Party's competence or self-discipline. It was about a Democrat! Fellow from Louisiana called William Jefferson. Corruption investigation. Don't worry, if you're too distracted by "American Idol," it's not hard to follow, you just need to know one little visual image: According to an FBI affidavit, this Democrat congressman was caught on video taking a hundred-grand bribe from a government informer and then storing it in his freezer. That's what the scandal's supposed to be: Democrat Icecapades of 2006. All the GOP had to do was keep out of the way and let Jefferson and his Dem defenders skate across the thin ice like Tonya Harding with her lumpy tights full of used twenties. It was a perfect story: No Republicans need be harmed in the making of this scandal.

So what does Hastert do? He and the House Republican leadership intervene in the case on behalf of the Democrat: They're strenuously objecting to the FBI having the appalling lese majeste to go to court, obtain a warrant and search Jefferson's office. In constitutional terms, they claim it violates the separation of powers. In political terms, they're climbing right into the Frigidaire with Jefferson's crisp chilled billfold. What does the Republican base's despair with Congress boil down to? That the Gingrich revolutionaries have turned into the pampered potentates of pre-1994 Washington, a remote insulated arrogant elite interested only in protecting the privileges of the permanent governing class. But how best to confirm it? Hmm. What about if we send the Republican speaker out to argue that congressmen are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. law-enforcement agencies?

After all, the GOP's 1994 Contract with America stated pretty plainly that henceforth "all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress."

CBS strikes again

The media would love to help the Democrats with their "culture of corruption" campaign theme; unfortunately, the facts aren't cooperating very well. Which didn't stop CBS News from doing its best, in this story about the Justice Department standing firm on the documents seized from Congressman William Jefferson:

Top law enforcement officials at the Justice Department and the FBI indicated to their counterparts at the White House that they could not, and were unwilling to, return documents to the Louisiana Republican which were seized as part of a bribery investigation.

Jefferson is, of course, a Democrat. It's common for news stories about scandals involving Congressional Democrats to omit any reference to their party, but this really is going too far!

Credit to Powerline.

Watch what the Senate does

Some people are worried that amnesty will give illegal aliens the same rights that American citizens have. In reality, it will give the illegals more rights than the average American citizen.

Since most of the illegals are Mexican, that makes them a minority. Under affirmative action, combined with amnesty, they would have preferences in jobs and other benefits.

Those who set up their own businesses would be entitled to preferences in getting government contracts. Their children would be able to get into college ahead of the children of American citizens with better academic qualifications.

Illegals who graduate from a high school in California can already attend the
University of California, paying lower tuition that an American citizen from neighboring Oregon.

Under the supposedly "tough" immigration bill in the U.S. Senate, illegals don't have to pay all the back taxes they owe. An American citizen gets no such break from the government and can end up in federal prison, like Al Capone.

If an American citizen gets stopped by the police for a traffic violation and the cops discover that he is wanted for some other violation of the law, they can arrest him for whatever else he has done.

But if an illegal alien gets stopped for going through a red light and the police discovers that he is in the country illegally, in many communities the cop is forbidden to arrest him for that -- or even to report him to the feds.

If an American citizen forges a Social Security card in order to get a job, he can be arrested. Under a provision recently passed by the Senate, illegal aliens who forged Social Security cards not only get a pass, they get to collect Social Security benefits.

If you think this is a particularly astute take on the idiocy coming from the Senate, you won't be surprised to learn it comes from Dr. Sowell.

Read the whole thing here.

Misplaced Outrage

I just don't see Americans having much sympathy for the boo-hooing we are hearing from Congress about the FBI having the audacity to actually go to a judge and get a warrant to obtain information requested in a legal subpoena 8 months ago from a crook who just happened to be elected from the most corrupt city in the U.S----New Orleans. These same congressmen would be much better off supporting our investigative processes and stating that if one of their colleagues broke the law, or even gave the appearance of breaking the law such as being taped taking a bribe, they would support whatever discovery process is necessary. Once again, congress managed to place itself in a position completely opposite the American citizenry. To make it worse, the outrage they are expressing is based on a reading of the Constitution which can't be supported by anyone with two brain cells.

Can't make this up

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- A mock evacuation that was supposed to be part of a two-day statewide hurricane preparedness drill was canceled after a misunderstanding about who had jurisdiction over a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer park.

The two-day statewide drill that began Tuesday was aimed at avoiding the chaos that followed last year's deadly Hurricane Katrina, which hit the state Aug. 29 and killed more than 1,000 people. The drill is expected to continue Wednesday.

The mock evacuation was to take place in the state's largest FEMA trailer park in Baker, 10 miles from Baton Rouge. The park has more than 500 camper-style travel trailers that house about 1,500 people displaced by Katrina.

Officials are concerned about the safety of travel trailer residents in rough winds. There are more than 200,000 people statewide living in unfinished homes and mobile trailers.

But the Baker evacuation was canceled because of an apparent communication breakdown, said JoAnne Moreau, director of the East Baton Rouge Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Just wondering

The federal government currently requires some counties to print ballots and other election materials in foreign languages -- a mandate which is, to say the least, a little curious. If someone must learn English to be a citizen, and only citizens can vote, why is there a need for bilingual ballots? The senate refused to address this matter in the legislation currently being crafted to gloss over the immigration problems we face.

It just isn't fair

The poor democrats were all primed to run this Fall on a charge that the Republicans represent a culture of corruption as represented by Delay and Cunningham. Now they have to deal with the fact that the FBI supposedly has a tape showing a democrat (William Jefferson,from New Orleans) taking $100,000 in $100 bills. This is on top of a resignation of the ranking member of the Ethics committee (Hallorhan of West Virginia) because he is under an ethics investigation by that same committee.
I guess they are going to be forced to fall back on the "Bush Lied" mantra.

A media quiz

Here are the first two paragraphs from a story this morning that I ran across. Now, after reading these words, guess what the political party affiliation of the ex-senator is. Here is a hint. If he had been a Republican, you would not have to guess.

The US Senate is looking into allegations that a former US senator urged Baghdad to give a US company lucrative contracts under the much-criticised United Nations oil-for-food programme.

This is the first time that a leading US lawmaker has been linked to the controversial UN programme, whose shortcomings have been an important element of the Bush administration's critique of the UN.

The U.S. Senate is not cutting it

Earlier today, the Senate voted 50-49 to kill an amendment to the immigration bill offered by Senator John Ensign of Nevada that would have barred illegals from getting Social Security credit for the time when they were working illegally.

Ted Kennedy argued that those who become legal permanent residents shouldn't be penalized because they were here illegally:

"Their money sits in the Social Security Administration waiting to be matched with an eligible beneficiary, and once those workers establish the eligibility, how in all fairness can we deny them the credit for their past contributions?" asked Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat.

But, as Senator Ensign pointed out, illegals often misappropriate other people's social security numbers, which has caused nightmarish problems for many citizens whose Social Security work records have been confused or even deleted entirely.

They may all come across the border

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Police enraged by the kidnapping of six officers club unarmed detainees. A bloody battle between steelworkers and police leaves two miners dead. Drug lords post the heads of decapitated police on a fence to show who's in charge.

Less than two months before Mexicans elect their next president, many fear the country is teetering on the edge of chaos - a perception that could hurt the ruling National Action Party's chances of keeping the presidency and benefit Mexico's once-powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party, whose candidate has been trailing badly.

Some blame President Vicente Fox for a weak government. Others say rivals are instigating the violence to create that impression, hoping to hurt National Action candidate Felipe Calderon, who has a slight lead in recent polls.

A poll published Friday in Excelsior newspaper found 50 percent of respondents feared the government was on the brink of losing control. The polling company Parametria conducted face-to-face interviews at 1,000 homes across Mexico. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

The conflicts are "a warning sign," said Yamel Nares, Parametria's research director.

Security is the top concern for Mexicans, and Fox has struggled to reform Mexico's notoriously corrupt police. Meanwhile, drug-related bloodshed has accelerated, with some cities seeing killings almost daily.

In April, suspected drug lords posted the heads of two police officers on a wall outside a government building where four drug traffickers died in a Jan. 27 shootout with officers in the Pacific resort of Acapulco.

A sign nearby read: "So that you learn to respect."

Fun with numbers

The New York Stock Exchange was founded on this date in 1792. That is 214 years ago. Today the DJIA was down 214. Enough of these anniversaries.

Long Term Worries

With all the attention being given to President Bush's too little too late plan for assimilating millions of Hispanic law breakers, there is an aspect to it that is not being given much thought. After Bush won reelection he spent an entire year trying to get the nation and our congress interested in doing something about Social Security and Medicare and the obvious demographic fact that we are, as a nation, growing older and our government has made very specific promises to those over 65. He failed in this effort, but we are faced with the inevitable clash that is going to come when we ask our young workers to support more and more elderly with higher and higher taxes. Now consider how much worse this is going to be when a larger and larger percentage of the workforce is low-paying, poorly educated, and essentially untaxed. We have constructed our tax code so that low incomes are largely exempt from income tax. Where is the money going to come from to honor our commitments to the elderly. It is going to be fun watching our gutless politicians deciding whether to screw the poor or the old folks.

Legislation to Support

Rob Andrews (D, NJ) and Mark Kirk (R,Ill) are two congressmen with a bill we need to consider seriously. This bill calls for a quarantine of gasoline imports to Iran. The Iranians have a lot of oil, but little refining capacity. They must import 40% of their gasoline from a Netherlands company which has storage and blending facilities in the UAE. The blockade of this gasoline making its way to Iran would seriously destabilize Iran and also be considered an act of war. If this seems to be a greater evil than letting Iran develop nuclear weapons in violation of an international treaty, the legislation may not appeal to you. It seems to me to be a fairly intelligent approach.

A letter I wish I had written

This supposedly came from a paper in North Carolina, but is now anonymous. I got it from Neal Boortz's blog. Very good letter.

To the Editor:

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration. Certain people are angry that the U.S. might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let's say I break into your house. Let's say that when you discover me in your home you insist that I leave. But, I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors: I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest ... except for that part where I broke into your house.

"According to the protestors, not only must you let me stay, you must add me to your family's insurance plan and provide other benefits for me and my family. My husband will do your yard work because he too is hard-working and honest ... except for that breaking in thing.

"If you try to call the police or force me out I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my right to be here. It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm hard-working and honest .... ummmmm .... except for that breaking in thing.

"Besides. What a deal it is for me! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of selfishness, prejudice and being anti-housebreaker!

Did I miss anything? Does this sound reasonable to you? If it does, grab a sign and go picket something. If this sounds insane to you call your senators and enlighten them because they are stumbling in the darkness right now and really need your help.

(Name? _______________)

Why the press hates the data mining of phone records

I doubt that this is true, but I wish it were. Treason via press leaks needs to be stopped, but this administration doesn't have the cajones to actually do what it takes to stop them.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

More on climate changes

From the Washington Post yesterday:

New evidence from Canada and Alaska suggests that climate change, rather than human hunting, may have played the key role in a great die-off of mammoths, horses and other large North American mammals that began more than 10,000 years ago.

What was releasing all those terrible greenhouse gasses back then, I wonder?

Rap music deadly

I know that rap music is deadly to me and I will do almost anything to avoid it, but it seems that it is also a fairly risky business. On the periphery of my universe of interesting things lies the fact that a number of blacks in the rap music field wind up shot to death. Here is what a liberal editorial board editor from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (Cynthia Tucker) has to say on the subject. It is fair to mention that this could well be the only thing she and I will ever agree on.

In the last 12 months alone, several young black men linked to rap music have been killed in disputes stoked by a code of conduct that finds respect in retribution and mistakes slaughter for strength.

The deaths have received at least cursory news coverage, a tribute to the celebrity status of most of the subjects. But there have been no sharp denunciations of the violence from the black institutions that matter, no groundswell of anger or disgust on black college campuses, no marches or demonstrations led by self-appointed black leaders.

Had just one of these young men been killed by white police officers, the machinery of black protest would have revved into high gear, with press conferences, marches and demands for justice. The relatively muted response to the string of dead rappers — the suspected perpetrators are mostly other young black men — suggests that a dead black man matters most when his murder can be used as political propaganda.

What is your carbon footprint?

Most people don't care enough to look at this situation rationally, much less mathematically, but there are those who will help you with the calculation of just what is required to save the planet from a 1 degree rise in temperature over the next century. First, you must buy the argument that it is greenhouse gasses (CO2) that are responsible and if you are going to reverse this warming trend which man brought upon the earth and portends doom for us all, we must reduce the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere. Here is an exerpt of the results of the calculations which have been done. Read the whole thing here.

assuming all estimated warming since 1880 to be attributable to atmospheric carbon accumulation from human activity, using the land surface warming rate to avoid ocean heat take-up 'masking' the global rate and further assuming a linear temperature response, it would take 70 years of zero emissions to 'save' 1 °C. Using the more realistic logarithmic response and ridiculously high sensitivity blows that out to about 150 years while the realistic response to the most likely sensitivity suggests something over 450 years of zero emission are required -- all for just 1 °C!

Mark Steyn nails it again

The idiocy surrounding the NSA data mining activities is summarized wonderfully by Mark, as one expect. Here is a sample.

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) feels differently. "Look at this headline," huffed the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. Now, are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida?"

No. But next time he's flying from D.C. to Burlington, Vt., on a Friday afternoon he might look at the security line: Tens of millions of Americans are having to take their coats and shoes off! Are you telling me that tens of millions of ordinary shoe-wearing Americans are involved with al-Qaida?

Of course not. Fifteen out of 19 of the 9/11 killers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. So let's scrap the tens of millions of law-abiding phone records, and say we only want to examine the long-distance phone bills of, say, young men of Saudi origin living in the United States. Can you imagine what Leahy and Lauer would say to that? Oh, no! Racial profiling! The government's snooping on people whose only crime is "dialing while Arab."

Morgellon's Disease

I just ran across this which seems to describe a new disease. I once did research on a new infectious disease and have long been fascinated that they continue to pop up. This one is called Morgellon's disease and sounds like it will a fun study since it seems to respond partially to antibiotics. There is no indication as yet that it has a specific infectious agent, however.

Most individuals with this disease report disturbing crawling, stinging, and biting sensations, as well as non-healing skin lesions, which are associated with highly unusual structures. These structures can be described as fiber-like or filamentous, and are the most striking feature of this disease. In addition, patients report the presence of seed-like granules and black speck-like material associated with their skin.
While all of this is going on, it feels like bugs are crawling under your skin. So far more than 100 cases of Morgellons disease have been reported in South Texas.

Morgellons disease is not yet known to kill, but if you were to get it, you might wish you were dead, as the symptoms are horrible.

"These people will have like beads of sweat but it's black, black and tarry," said Ginger Savely, a nurse practioner in Austin who treats a majority of these patients.

Patients get lesions that never heal.

"Sometimes little black specks that come out of the lesions and sometimes little fibers," said Stephanie Bailey, Morgellons patient.

Read more about Morgellons here.

Buy American

Next time someone complains about all the U.S. jobs going overseas and tries to make you think you should buy a Ford, for example, rather than a Toyota, consider this. The Ford Mustang is built with only 65% U.S. or Canadian parts. The Toyota Sienna is assembled in Indiana with 90% local components. Now you can buy the better automobile with a clearer conscience.

Something else to worry about

Security services the world over have been considering the problem for several years, but no one has yet come up with a solution.

"We are observing an increasing threat from such things as remote-controlled aircraft used as small flying bombs against soft targets," the head of the Canadian secret services, Michel Gauthier, said at a conference in Calgary recently.

Models with a wingspan of five metres (16 feet), capable of carrying up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds), remain undetectable by radar.

And thanks to satellite positioning systems, they can now be programmed to hit targets some distance away with just a few metres (yards) short of pinpoint accuracy.

According to Gauthier, "ultra-light aircraft, powered hang gliders or powered paragliders have also been purchased by terrorist groups to circumvent ground-based countermeasures."

Japanese company Yamaha, meanwhile, has produced 95-kilogram (209-pound) robot helicopter that is 3.6 metres (11.8 feet) long and has a 256 cc engine.

It flies close to the ground at about 20 kilometres per hour (12 miles per hour), nothing but an incredible stroke of luck could stop it if it suddenly appeared in the sky above the White House -- and it is already on the market.

Read entire article here.

One of the things I didn't need a study to learn

James Felton, a professor of finance and law at Central Michigan University, and a colleague looked at ratings for nearly 7,000 faculty members from 370 institutions in the United States and Canada, and his verdict is: the hotter and easier professors are, the more likely they’ll get rated as a good teacher.

As some one once said, education is the only product where the consumer is out to get the least for his money.

No more stuffed geese?

I read this morning that Chicago has passed some kind of law which bans the serving of foie gras. The ban takes place in 90 days. California has passed some kind of legislation that bans foie gras in 2012. Evidently the mere thought of stuffing geese with food to fatten up their livers is sufficiently repugnant to the loonies out there that laws are being passed to bar the practice. We need to keep an eye on this sort of thing. Next thing we know they might try to ban humans from stuffing themselves at these all you can eat buffets.

This seems to be a problem

From an eye doctor. Read the whole thing.

The way HMOs make money is by charging patients a yearly fee for medical care, and then trying to keep the utilization of medical care as low as possible. They do this by denying certain treatments, medications, and tests. And, they usually pay physicians what is called “discounted fee for service”, which means they only pay a percentage of the physicans charges, rather than their actual bill. What this basically means is that physicians get shafted, not just because their bills don’t get fully paid, but because this giant bureacracy, which is geared towards denying as much care as it can, is between the doctor and the patient, preventing the doctor from caring for the patient the way they believe the patient should be cared for.

Trust me, it’s very frustrating to not be able to give someone the medication you want to, or to have to fill out a bunch of paperwork to justify a CAT scan or a consultation with another doctor because the HMO doesn’t want to have to pay for these things. So, that in a nutshell is why the trend is for doctors to avoid HMOs if possible, and I’d expect that trend to continue. And, as as unfortunate result of that, patients will find it more difficult as time goes on to find physicians willing to care for them. When you add in all the physicians who are dropping out of the Medicare program, there’s a real potential for some serious doctor shortages in certain regions of the country.

Musings

I don't really have enough time or inclination to pursue the question, but if Patrick Kennedy admitted to driving while impaired with drugs shouldn't that be just as illegal as driving while under the influence of a drug like ethanol?

The foaming at the mouth left was especially brutal when Rush Limbaugh was found to be addicted to pain killers and went into some rehab facility. I wonder if the Kennedy "problem" will be judged more kindly by the liberals.

More Kennedy problems?

All the news today is about Teddy Kennedy's boy driving his car into a barrier at 3:00am and then staggering around claiming that he had to go vote. The police then took him home after the supervisors big-footed the line officers and told them to back off. I think you can excuse the behavior of the mental midget representing Rhode Island more easily than you can the police. I wonder if the Cynthia McKinney run-in caused them to be more deferential to Teddy's baby boy? I don't know, but this is really fun to watch.

Libertarian Perspective

I just ran across this blog which is discussing an interesting topic, i.e. why should public sex be subject to governmental sanction--or societal, for that matter. You have to read the whole thing to get the full flavor of the argument, but I now find that I am intellectually a libertarian on the subject, but would just as soon not see people coupling like dogs on the park lawn. It is just hard to rationalize laws against it.

Good analysis of Bush foolishness

Here is a pretty good synopsis of the idiotic Bush response to the Mexican invasion . Read it all.

I understand that President Bush has a problem dealing with this problem. There are businesses, after all, that depend on a constant stream of unskilled workers. I say constant because we already have several million illegal aliens in America -- surely enough to pick our lettuce, bus our tables, wash our cars, and put the little mints on our hotel pillows. But this is the land of opportunity, and people don’t want to remain very long at the bottom of the food chain.

So George Bush promotes a worker program that is so idiotic, Republicans wish that a Democrat had come up with it, so they’d feel better about ridiculing it. Suggesting that after working in this country for a number of years, Mexicans will simply return to their country, and take their place at the back of the immigration line is perhaps the single most stupid, most naïve notion I’ve ever heard. Even a four-year-old would recognize Bush's brainstorm as amnesty in sheep’s clothing.

Sad

I just heard on the radio that someone did a survey of 18-24 year olds and only 14% could find Afghanistan on an unmarked map. Makes you want to cry.

A must read essay by Shelby Steele

This is a sample. Read the whole thing here. Very thought provoking.

White guilt makes our Third World enemies into colored victims, people whose problems--even the tyrannies they live under--were created by the historical disruptions and injustices of the white West. We must "understand" and pity our enemy even as we fight him. And, though Islamic extremism is one of the most pernicious forms of evil opportunism that has ever existed, we have felt compelled to fight it with an almost managerial minimalism that shows us to be beyond the passions of war--and thus well dissociated from the avariciousness of the white supremacist past.

Anti-Americanism, whether in Europe or on the American left, works by the mechanism of white guilt. It stigmatizes America with all the imperialistic and racist ugliness of the white Western past so that America becomes a kind of straw man, a construct of Western sin. (The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons were the focus of such stigmatization campaigns.) Once the stigma is in place, one need only be anti-American in order to be "good," in order to have an automatic moral legitimacy and power in relation to America. (People as seemingly desperate as President Jacques Chirac and the Rev. Al Sharpton are devoted pursuers of the moral high ground to be had in anti-Americanism.) This formula is the most dependable source of power for today's international left. Virtue and power by mere anti-Americanism. And it is all the more appealing since, unlike real virtues, it requires no sacrifice or effort--only outrage at every slight echo of the imperialist past.

Where's the love?

Hamas has thus far failed to raise enough funds in the Arab and Islamic world. True, its leaders have been promised tens of millions of dollars by Iran, Libya and a few Arab countries, but the money has still not been transferred to Ramallah and the Gaza Strip. A drive by Hamas to collect donations from Arabs and Muslims has also failed because of the failure of Arab banks to cooperate.

Even if the promised money does arrive, Hamas officials note, it would hardly cover the amount required to pay March’s salaries.

In addition to the financial crisis, the Hamas cabinet is also facing a political and diplomatic boycott by most of the world. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar, who has just wrapped up a tour of a number of Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya, is about to return home with a suitcase full of promises and little cash.

Energy Facts and Fundamental Truths

The following makes several good points which most Americans don't understand

"From 1986 to 2003, using 2004 dollars, the real national annual average price for gasoline, including taxes, generally has been below $2 per gallon," noted the Federal Trade Commission in a 2005 report absolving the industry of collusion. "By contrast, between 1919 and 1985, real national annual average retail gasoline prices were above $2 per gallon more often than not."

In other words, gasoline prices were lower than at anytime since 1919 for much of recent history. Some conspiracy! Maybe somebody should have been investigating consumers for "gouging" the oil companies.

And just who is the profiteer here? While the average profit on the sale of a gallon of gasoline is nine cents, the average state and federal tax on that same gallon of gasoline is about 45 cents (and 52 cents in Michigan). And if we must have an investigation, how about investigating the extent to which government regulations drive up prices and block new production?

Management guru Peter Drucker once remarked, with his usual drollery, that profit is "whatever government lets a company keep." But most folks have a vastly inflated view of corporate profits. One regular survey of Americans found that the majority believes the average corporate profit is between 30 percent and 40 percent of sales, while the real figure is closer to 4 percent.

Washington should cool its carburetors. The pursuit of profit is one of the main engines of Western progress and prosperity. And as people in my neck of the woods are fast learning, it is only out of profit that we can afford to pay for a comfortable retirement. As profits in the steel, airline and auto industries erode or even vanish, so do pensions and health care benefits, not to mention jobs.

Does Al Gore know about this?

The coal mine fire started in the north-western Xinjiang region in 1975, and has burned 20 million tons of coal and releases huge amounts of noxious gases into the atmosphere.

In 2004, a project began in China to extinguish the fire. Why they waited 29 years to begin the project is unknown.

Regional authorities aim to extinguish the fire by 2018.

That's what we need....more talk.

Former U.S. Army General and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark says the United States must "tone down the rhetoric” in its ongoing verbal joust with Iran over nuclear development.

Iran missed a U.N. Security Council deadline Friday to stop enriching uranium. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran openly defied the U.N. request to cease nuclear development.

Clark, appearing on Fox News Channel, said it would be best for the United States to speak with Iran directly on this issue, rather than engage in bravado via media outlets.

Sowell nails it again

Ironically, the people who are making the most noise about the high price of gasoline are the very people who have for years blocked every attempt to increase our own oil supply. They have opposed drilling for oil off the Atlantic coast, off the Pacific coast, or in Alaska. They have prevented the building of any new oil refineries anywhere for decades.

They have fought against the building of hydroelectric dams or nuclear power plants to generate electricity without the use of oil. They love to talk about their own pet "alternative energy sources," without the slightest attention to what these would cost in terms of money, jobs, or our national standard of living.

Even when one of their pet "alternative energy sources" -- windmills -- is proposed to be built near them, suddenly it is not right to spoil their view.

Politicians have indulged these spoiled brats for generations. Now, when the chickens come home to roost, they are screaming about high prices and Big Oil. That is world class chutzpa.

Liberal politicians have played this game for years. With the help of the liberal media, they have so demonized oil producers and so replaced economics with demagoguery that now Republicans are running scared, which seems to be their favorite exercise.

Republicans have apparently decided that, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. Republican "leaders" have apparently decided to give up on trying to talk sense to the public. So we end up with bipartisan demagoguery.

Read the whole thing here.

Written by Bill Quick, but I agree

This one is for all you wailing wussies who are terrified that the miserable, dog-useless RINO party might get booted out for a couple of years, and the Demon Democrats take control, thereby assuring the destruction of All that Is Good And Pure.

Let's take a look at what happened in the real world:

In 1992, a man named Bush ran for the White House for the second time. He was pretty much a bumbler, botched the Iraqi war, a full-blown RINO who got so out of touch with his own party he cut his throat by going back on his promise not to raise taxes (couldn't even read his own lips, I guess). And no, don't tell me he lost because of Perot. Perot did equal damage.

Anyway, because a lot of this guy's support never materialized, because he'd disgusted it with his betrayal of the Republican and conservative principles they supported, he lost, and "the best politician of the second half of the 20th century was elected." According to all the Weeping Wilmas, the Republican party was, at that point, almost as doomed as the Republic itself, right?

Well, not exactly. Two years after the political genius' election, the Republicans remembered who they represented, pushed forward a Contract With America that Democrats and the MSM loathed, and swept into power in the House, a majority they hold to this day. By the time the political genius left office in disgrace, the new Administration controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, and the new President was at least talking like a Republican. For a while. Before his true RINO stripes came back to the fore.

Frankly, we could use a few more "disasters" like that. In other words, I don't think the world comes to an end if we boot out some RINOs who have forgotten the principles they are supposed to represent. If they are replaced by - gasp - Democrats, so what? First, I really do doubt there will be much difference in the way the replacements vote, and second, we just might trigger a new understanding in the Republicans that there are limits to how much their supporters will take.

The only thing a politician fears is being booted from office. So let's scare them. Let's scare the whole damned party.

Osama Speaks

Here are the main topics from Osama's P.R. release over the weekend. As pointed out by Tigerhawk, there is no mention of Iraq and his main call to action is in places where our military isn't. I don't think he likes what happened in the Sunni triangle.

1. Hamas: Despite the fact that we (including Ayman Zawahiri) warned (Muslim Palestinians) not to take part in elections in general, the victory of Hamas shows that there is a "Crusader Zionist War against Islam." Cutting foreign aid to the Palestinians because of Hamas victory proves that war.

2. The public (in the West and the US), despite our warnings, continues to reelect these Governments, pay taxes to these Governments, and send their children to fight against us. They (civilians) are therefore part of the war against us. They are responsible for any harm that would be caused to them.

3. Sudan: The Bashir Government is failing in stopping the Crusader War in Sudan. The Crusaders (Britain) has pushed the southerners (Blacks) to separate. The US has armed them and is supporting them. And now, because of tribal tensions in Darfour, the Crusaders are planning on intervening there. We are calling on the Jihadists to fight them in Darfour and Southern Sudan.

4. Long War: We're calling on all Jihadists, particularly in Sudan and the Arabian Peninsula to prepare themselves for a long war.

5. Danish Cartoons: We are asking the Danish Government to remit the Cartoonists to al Qaida.

6. Saudis: We criticize the Saudi Monarch for refuting the idea of Clash of civilization. There is a clash led by the West against Islam.

7. Arab Liberals: Jihadists must silence the Arab and Muslim liberals. (A list has been established, but it wasn't aired).

8. Education: We warn from any change that would affect the educational curriculum in the Arab and Muslim world.

9. Arab TV: We warn against those TV stations airing into the region and propagating Crusader propaganda.

10: Truce: We offered a truce to the West (US and Europe) but their public refused to accept it. They will only blame themselves.

Spy Sting?

O.K., this is where we stand this fine Sunday in April. Mary McCarthy, a spook who was just fired from the CIA for telling Dana Priest of the Washington Post that the nasty and devious Bush has been taking terrorists and sticking them in secret prisons in Europe somewhere. Horrors. The story was so delicious that the Pulitzer Committee gave Ms. Priest a prize the other day for telling us the dirt on the White House now occupied by an idiot.
Well, this is not fair according to the liberals like John Kerry, so they are rushing to her defense. Mary gave Kerry and other dems $7500 last year and she used to work for Clinton on spy stuff, so she obviously had a good, pure reason for telling us about the nefarious deeds of the Texas cowboy. National security should be trumped in some cases and Mary may just be a whistleblowing heroine. This line of bull can be expected to continue since the talking points are now out there for all good liberals to heed.
There is something else out there, though, that could make this all just too delightful. The Europeans have been looking far and wide for these secret prisons and can't find them or any evidence of them. These are not our friends out there looking for them. They want to humiliate us by finding them and revealing how we have just moved Abu Gharib to other places.
Wouldn't it be just peachy if this was all a big sting. The existence of the prisons was generated by the CIA and Mary fell into it by telling her buddy Dana at the Washington Post who published these fabrications and the Pulitzer folks gave a prize for the wonderful job Dana did on this project. Now Mary has lost her job and may go to prison for leaking a planted, but fictitious activity, the Pulitzer prize will be forever tainted, and other spooks may think twice about leaking.

A health care story from Canada

The family of a 57-year-old Meath Park woman says it will take at least three months before their mother gets to see a Saskatchewan oncologist who can tell her if her cancer is treatable or fatal.And while Health Minister Len Taylor says three months is too long to wait, he offered little Wednesday to indicate wait times to see cancer specialists in this province will soon be getting shorter.

Emily Morley has already waited a month to see an oncologist since receiving her biopsy results that identified her secondary cancer, but were inconclusive in determining the primary source. Until that primary source is identified, her treatment cannot begin.

And even though the cancer is now in Morley’s lungs, liver, pancreas and spine, the Saskatoon Cancer Clinic has advised her it will still take at least three months to see an oncologist.

“As of this point, she doesn’t even know if this is terminal or not,” her son Chris Andersen told reporters at the legislature Wednesday.

What’s worse is that their mother wasn’t given any options by the quality-care co-ordinator in Saskatoon that would help them navigate the system and see an oncologist quicker, her son said.

“It’s like a big game of snakes and ladders,” Andersen said. “This isn’t just about Mom. It’s about all people (with cancer).”

Chris, his sister Karen Andersen and Emily’s husband Warren Morley travelled to the legislature in the hopes of finding answers to why it’s taking so long for their mother to see a cancer specialist.

In raising her case in Wednesday’s question period, Saskatchewan Party health critic Don McMorris asked what the government was doing to hire more oncologists.

Health Minister Len Taylor said an oncologist has been recruited in Saskatoon to start in the fall, but acknowledged that there are three oncologist vacancies in the province and recruitment remains a problem.

A soldier writes from Iraq

A soldier by the name of Aric Catron recently sent in this story from Iraq. Read it all here.

On one of those days in Iraq where I wasn't sure if I'd see my daughter again, I was working at a checkpoint near a small camp in the desert. ... The locals would gather around our checkpoints to try to sell us things, beg for food or water, or just hang around the soldiers.

On this particular day one of the locals had his little girl with him. She was shyly watching me from behind his legs. When I smiled and waved at her, she brazenly ran up to me with a big smile and held out her arms, expecting to be picked up. At first I was shocked at her sudden bravery, and it took me a second to reach down and pick her up. When I did, she immediately kissed me on my cheek and then nestled in as if she meant to stay a while.

I looked toward her father and he immediately began talking rapidly in Arabic and gesturing at me. Our translator quickly explained that he, the father, had been locked in a prison for most of the child's life. He had been sentenced to death for being a Shiite dissident traitor. The man went on to say that soldiers wearing the same patch on the shoulder as I was (the 101st Airborne Division) had freed him shortly after we began the liberation of Iraq. His daughter from then on believed that the famous Screaming Eagle patch of the 101st meant that we were angels sent to protect her family.

I sat in a little folding chair with that girl in my arms for well over 30 minutes. She trusted me so completely that she had fallen asleep with her head on my shoulder. All of my fears and worries faded as I held that little miracle. It had been so long since I had held my own daughter that this episode was even more healing for me than it was for her.

I have often wondered if, on that day when I missed my family so much, it wasn't a coincidence that she found me, of all soldiers. Maybe it was that innocent girl, and not me, that was the angel sent by God.

CIA scum caught

The CIA finally caught someone in connection to national security leaks to the media about our location of prisons where we keep terrorists in other countries. Now let's see a prosecution.

Citing the Privacy Act, the CIA would not provide any details about the officer's identity or assignments. It was not immediately clear if the person would face prosecution. The firing is a highly unusual move, although there has been an ongoing investigation into leaks in the CIA.

"The officer has acknowledged unauthorized discussions with the media and the unauthorized sharing of classified information," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That is a violation of the secrecy agreement that everyone signs as a condition of employment with the CIA."

Gold

I have been investing for the better part of 50 years and over that period there have been times when a chorus of advisers have come out saying you just had to buy gold because it was going to the moon. I always thought that was a bad idea since gold is hard to store and I never liked to invest in something I didn't know how to sell.
For many reasons I have changed my mind and started buying gold coins yesterday. This could well be a clear signal that if you own any gold, now would be a good time to sell.

More research foolishness

One of the things I really enjoy is reading about nonsense research projects and much ballyhooed research that is poorly designed and executed. There was an article in today's paper that fits into the first category. It seems someone found that when you show male gamblers erotic pictures of females their gambling decisions suffer. Who would have thought? Not only that, they also made the startling finding that the distraction was exacerbated by higher testosterone levels.

Why didn't I come up with that project back in my research days?

Energy Ignorance

It is almost impossible for someone who just listens to tv or reads some of the daily drivel in the newspaper to understand what is responsible for the rising costs of gasoline and the related price of oil. As a result one hears mostly nonsense from those who are irritated or even angry at the pump prices when they fill up. Many blame the oil companies for gouging. They are just getting rich on the backs of us poor folks. Recently there was a retirement package of the Exxon ceo highlighted to support that contention. I admit it ($400 million) did sound generous to me, but take that away and everything else he has and the price at the pump would not go down.
If someone is really interested in looking for a cause for much of our angst at the pump, Congress would be a good place to start. This august body has failed to respond to our need to open additional U.S. sources of oil for exploration and more importantly, they have let the enviro-wackos prevent us from building more refinery capacity for decades now. That would be bad enough, but these same idiots have let the nation fall into a situation where there are now 18 different gasoline formulas which the refineries must produce in order to conform to state regulation. Some mandate more ethanol so the mid-west farmers can sell more corn and everyone must remove MBTE, starting this Spring. This additive was once required by Congress and now a major and costly modification to refinery procedures will be necessary to remove it and we will pay. Furthermore, U.S. rules make it prohibitive for low-cost foreign companies to come here and supply our gasoline markets. It costs them too much to comply with our rules. Again, we pay.
So, look to the politicians for corrections in our laws and buy energy stocks.

As an aside, I get tickled when I hear the federal government release inflation numbers which always exclude food and energy. If I didn't buy those two items, I would be hard pressed to spend any money.

Nobody says it better than Sowell

Thank heaven for the massive marches across the country by those favoring illegal immigrants. These marches revealed the ugly truth behind the fog of pious words and clever political spin from the media and from both Democrats and Republicans in Washington.

"Guest workers"? Did any of the strident speakers, with their in-your-face bombast in Spanish, sound like guests? Did they sound like people who wanted to become Americans?

To read the entire essay by Sowell, go here.

Sounds good to me.

In the last six months, the U.S. Army is seeing 15 percent more soldiers re-enlist than expected. This continues a trend that began in 2001. Every year since then, the rate at which existing soldiers have re-enlisted has increased. This despite the fact that 69 percent of the troops killed in Iraq have been from the army. New recruits continue to exceed join up at higher rates as well.

All this is extremely important, especially when there is a war going on. Experience saves lives in combat, and more of the most experienced troops are staying in. This means that, a decade from now, the army will have a large and experienced corps of senior NCOs. That, in turn, means the younger troops are likely to well trained and led.

The army makes a big thing, internally, about the number of troops re-enlisting, especially within combat units that are in Iraq or Afghanistan. Pictures of mass re-enlistments are published in military media, but the civilian media has generally ignored this phenomena. Also ignored, except by some local media interviewing locals who are in the army, is the positive attitude of the troops, especially those in combat units. The large number of re-enlistments occur because the troops believe they are making a difference, and winning. This is especially true for soldiers who have come back to Iraq on a second tour, and noted the improvements since the first tour.

Read the whole thing here.

From Bill Kristol

In the spring of 1936--seventy years ago--Hitler's Germany occupied the Rhineland. The French prime minister, Lion Blum, denounced this as "unacceptable." And did nothing. As did the British. And the United States.

In a talk last year, Christopher Caldwell quoted the great Raymond Aron's verdict: "To say that something is unacceptable was to say that one accepted it." Aron further remarked that Blum had in fact seemed proud of France's putting up no resistance. Indeed, Blum had said, "No one suggested using military force. That is a sign of humanity's moral progress." Aron remarked: "This moral progress meant the end of the French system of alliances, and almost certain war."

Today, it is President Bush who has said (repeatedly) that Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon is unacceptable, and a process which would enable Iran to develop a nuclear weapon is unacceptable." The "reason it's unacceptable," the president has explained, is that "Iran armed with a nuclear weapon poses a grave threat to the security of the world." The Iranians must "not have a nuclear weapon in which to blackmail and/or threaten the world."

Is the America of 2006 more willing to thwart the unacceptable than the France of 1936?

This would never happen to me--I wouldn't win.

Police in Toronto are searching for four women suspected of beating a man to death over a $1,000 jackpot he had just won in a bingo hall, according to Local 6 News.Police said Yousif Youkhana, 58, was walking outside the Country Bingo Hall over the weekend with his $1,000 winnings when he was approached by the women.When Youkhana refused to hand over the jackpot, the women kicked and punched him, the report said.Witnesses said the man stumbled back into the bingo hall after the attack and later died from his injuries.The women fled on foot after the beating, according to witnesses.

France surrenders again

There are articles today indicating the protest in France have worked on Chirac. He gives up. Now, I wonder if the Mexican protest in the U.S. will have a similar effect on our politicians.

How will the Democrats react to this?

An Alabama employment agency that sent 70 laborers and construction workers to job sites in that state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina says the men were sent home after just two weeks on the job by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for less.
Linda Swope, who operates Complete Employment Services Inc. in Mobile, Ala., told The Washington Times last week that the workers -- whom she described as U.S. citizens, residents of Alabama and predominantly black -- had been "urgently requested" by contractors hired to rebuild and clear devastated areas of the state, but were told to leave three job sites when the foreign workers showed up.

The Book of Judas

I don't know much about the widely publicized excitement last week over the discovery of a supposedly new "Gospel of Judas". The following has an analysis which seems to be a good one, however.

Georgia Embarrassments

First we have a looney Congresswoman punching a security officer doing his job and now thanks to Neal Boortz we learn how pitiful our former Governor and President is when teaching Sunday School no less.

Yesterday James Taranto's Wall Street Journal Online column carried an item about an article that appeared in Atlanta's Creative Loafing tabloid newspaper. The article detailed an interview with former (thank God) president Jimmy Carter. Read for yourself --- and stand back in amazement at the absurdity of this man who has never seen a dictator he didn't like; a man who once occupied our The Oval Office; a man whom the voters overwhelmingly rejected after just four years --- Jimmy Carter, our biggest national mistake:

I was teaching a Sunday school class two weeks ago," he recalls. "A girl, she was about 16 years old from Panama City [Fla.], asked me about the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

"I asked her, 'Are you for peace, or do you want more war?' Then I asked her, 'Do you favor government helping the rich, or should it seek to help the poorest members of society? Do you want to preserve the environment, or do you want to destroy it? Do you believe this nation should engage in torture, or should we condemn it? Do you think each child today should start life responsible for $28,000 in [federal government] debt, or do you think we should be fiscally responsible?'

"I told her that if she answered all of those questions, that she believed in peace, aiding the poor and weak, saving the environment, opposing torture . . . then I told her, 'You should be a Democrat.' "

Ending Earmarks

There is a new (at least to me) web site devoted to ending the practice of congressional earmarks funding questionable projects. You can read it here.

I hope they are effective.

Stem Cell Obfuscation

Scientists have been able to take cells from the testes of mice and transform them into “pluripotent” stem cells — the same kind of stem cells that can be derived from embryos. Their work suggests that it may be possible to obtain the benefits of embryonic-stem-cell research without killing human embryos. As usual, however, the topic remains mired in confusion. When the Washington Post wrote up the story, the headline read “Embryonic Stem Cell Success.” In truth, it is the opponents of embryonic-stem-cell research who are cheering these results most lustily.

Not really news

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - New statistics suggest San Francisco has the highest percentage of gay men among major cities in the world, with a quarter of them HIV-positive, a top city health official said on Friday.

"Despite an overall loss in the population in San Francisco in the last five years, we think there has been an absolute gain in gay men," William McFarland, head of HIV/AIDS statistics at San Francisco's Department of Public Health, said in an interview. "From all the data I have seen ... it's the gayest city in the world."

Bush's latest mess

The liberal media is fanning the charge that George Bush leaked classified information for crass political reasons according to Grand Jury testimony given by Scooter Libby prior to his indictment for lying to prosecutors in the Valerie Plame case. This is nonsense, as far as I can determine. In the first place the President of the United States has complete control over what is classified information. If he wants to declassify something and release it (in whatever manner), it is not illegal and not even inappropriate. The charge is that it is inappropriate if done for political reasons. In this case, a political hack by the name of Wilson attacked Bush in the New York Times about a statement in the State of the Union Address concerning Iraqii attempts to get nuclear material in Niger. The facts of the attack were deemed by the White House to be at odds with their information so they released intelligence information refuting the charge. This is unfair according to the liberals, the President is not supposed to fight back. Unfortunately, the President has fought back all too seldom and the fact that the office of President of the United States is a political one and politics is one function of the White House should not be too surprising.

AIDS in South Africa

I ran across an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on the AIDS problem in South Africa. Due to cultural practices primarily, AIDS is epidemic in this country and others in Africa. The western world has put forth a generous effort to get effective drugs to the patients in this continent. Now, it seems that this effort has another complication. A woman in South Africa with AIDS and children won't take her medicine cocktail because it will make her better. It turns out that if her doctor states that she is getting healthier she is no longer eligible for the $130/month stipend the government gives to each person with a "disability" such as AIDS. So, she doesn't take her medicine so she can get the money to feed her children.

Accumulated Thoughts

Travel and other things have kept me from the blog for the past couple of weeks. A couple of things in the news have interested me, however.

1. Tom DeLay's troubles and those of his congressional staff remind me of my reaction to Bill Clinton's administration. At the time, I was struck how there had to be some reason he surrounded himself with people who did things which deserved jail sentences. That reason, to me, was some character flaw or lack of judgement in who he picked to associate with. Most people don't even know anyone who is in prison.

2. The new anchor at CBS news will not affect my life much. I will watch CBS the same as before. Never.

3. It is hard for me to decide which is more pitiful.... baseball or the Republican Congress.

4. The inability of the Iraqii politicians to select a leader and form a government is getting to be a problem that needs to be resolved, but the interference of Condi and Jack Straw, her counterpart from England, is not likely to be helpful and may cause the Sunni / Shia schism to widen.

5. Others have probably already made this observation, but it seems to me the main division in America today is between those who think we are at war and those who don't. Responsibility for that falls to the unfortunate inability of President Bush to communicate effectively and the reluctance after 9/11 to recruit us to contribute to the war effort in some way.

6. Cynthia McKinney is a new addition to my list of human beings who seem be lacking the positive necessaries for continued existence.

Quote of the day

"Why would anyone wave the flag of the country that they would never return to--and yet scream in anger at those with whom they wish to stay?"

The Black Caucus

This is a good read 0n the failure of the blacks in Congress by Jonah Goldberg.

Here is a sample of the problem they have failed to address.

If you include blacks in prison or not seeking work — which conventional unemployment surveys don't — the jobless rate for black men in their 20s without a high school diploma is 72 percent. At the height of the economic boom in 2000 it was still about 65 percent, according to the New York Times. This is twice the rate of white dropouts and three times that of Latinos. A UC Berkeley researcher found that black dropouts in their late 20s are more likely to be in prison than working.

More Nonsense from Time Magazine

I take a short 2 week vacation and the idiots blowing smoke on global warming come out of their holes and reached a new level of nonsense. This time it is Time magazine which I quit taking long ago. This was a Special Edition in which everything from the recent Australian storms to the sky over Indonesia which is orange due to fires and dust are blamed on global warming and furthermore, our future is severely threatened. Some guy named Hansen is widely cited. He is a NASA scientist and spends his spare time writing Al Gore's slide presentations, supporting John Kerry for President and spending a $250,000 grant from Teresa Heinz Kerry. In 1988 he predicted to a congressional panel that there would be a 0.35 degree rise in temperature over the next decade. He was wrong by 219%. Another citation was a study released by some clowns at Colorado University that stated Antarctica is losing 36 cubic miles of ice each year. That may sound like a lot, but Antarctica consists of 7 million cubic miles of glacial ice. The threat, of course, is that it will make our oceans rise. In fact, this is like an ice cube melting since earth has 320 million cubic miles of ocean. If this keeps up, we will raise the level of the ocean a whopping 0.4 millimeters or 0.0115 inch per year. Other evidence shows that 20,000 years ago the global sea levels were 400 feet lower than they are now. So, evidently the seas were rising even before we started driving these nasty SUV's.

Illegal Immigration

National polling data could not be more emphatic — and has been so for decades. Gallup Poll (March 27) finds 80 percent of the public wants the federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses). Time Magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26) found 75 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism and 57 percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (March 10-13) found 59 percent opposing a guest-worker proposal, and 71 percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.
An IQ Research poll (March 10) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and Congress.

These polls suggest to me there will be a strong presidential candidate from the outside of the two major parties who will run on this issue. This will be the result since Congress will not do anything of note on this problem. The current senate legislation is a joke and an insult to everyone who has thought about this problem.

Aloha II

BestView is on the last leg of the Hawaii trip. It is safe to report that there is a whole lot of water here in the Pacific Ocean. The fact that you can travel for 4 days and see no land, ships, or even birds or marine life is amazing. The Captain says the ocean is over 14,000 feet deep out here. Seems unlikely to me. I finally saw a fish jump yesterday. That is the only one and I spend a lot of time watching the ocean from my balcony on the 8th floor of this ship. I also saw one cruise ship yesterday heading toward Hawaii, I would guess.The trip has been enjoyable but I am ready to get back to my routine. We get very little news and I am ready to catch up on the happenings around the world. One thing we have heard about is the bus accident down in Chili involving passengers from a sister ship of the one we are on and the fire on another ship. From what I understand, some idiot started it on the balcony with a cigarette. That seems odd to me since I am looking at my balcony and you couldn't burn anything out there with a blowtorch.
Before we can go to LA we have to go to Ensenada, Mexico. This is because of a moronic law which says that a cruise ship with a foreign registry must go to some foreign port after leaving a U.S. port before it can come back to a U.S. port. Makes no sense. It is just a tax on and inconvenience to U.S. citizens. So tonight we dock in Ensenada and leave one hour later for L.A. If our plane stays in the air I should be almost back to normal on Tuesday. One deviation from normal will be the diet we go on to shed some of the culinary delights we have enjoyed.

Aloha

BestView and spouse are winding up a few days in Hawaii and heading back to the states today. We spent an hour this morning watching 3 whales frolic along side the ship whild eating breakfast. Pretty neat. Overall a nice trip except I spent 5 hours trolling off the Kona coast which is supposedly the best billfishing area in all the world without a strike. Nice boat ride, though. I'll have more when it doesn't cost me $0.50 per minute for internet access.

The case for home schooling

This is part of an essay written by a budding Microbiologist from Oregon. Read the whole thing here.

The strongest argument for homeschooling is the education that takes place in the public schools, or rather, the lack thereof. Reports on the sorry state of America's schools come out regularly, and it's always interesting to see how many spots we've fallen and what tiny nations (like Luxembourg and the Czech Republic) outscored us academically.

The problem isn't a lack of funding.

Rather, much of it is due to a fondness for egalitarian gestures. As Christopher Lasch observed, "Given the underlying American commitment to the integral high school – the refusal to specialize college preparation and technical training in separate institutions – make-work programs, athletics, extracurricular activities, and the pervasive student emphasis on sociability corrupted not merely the vocational and life-adjustment programs but the college preparatory course as well." People have varying intellectual abilities, and however much it may offend liberals, half the population is below average.

More BS from CNN

According to a recent segment on CNN the life expectancy in countries which have socialized medicine is higher than it is here in the United States. Unfortunately, according to the World Health Organization, such does not appear to be the case. Of course, using life expectancies in other countries as proof that socialized medicine is better than the system we have here is completely idiotic anyway, but CNN intentionally or unintentionally getting the story wrong is inexcusable.

Worse than West Texas

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have produced a superheated gas, which is hotter than the interior of the Sun.

The gas achieved the hottest temperature ever recorded when it reached 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 billion degrees Kelvin. For those keeping score, the Sun is only a mere 15 million degrees Kelvin.

Using the the largest X-ray generator in the world, called the "Z Machine," Project Leader, Chris Deeney, says, "At first, we were disbelieving."

"We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result."

Therapeutic Water

My previous post on wine that I discovered could be "earthy" and evidently not taste like dirt should only be followed by one on therapeutic water. Evidently, it is true. A company in Los Angeles (where else would you expect this) is now selling a bottled water which they claim is the world's first to be vibrationally charged. It starts with conventional spring water and exposes it to words on the label that alters it. "Love" and "Perfect Health" are the first varieties. Each bottle is also supposedly infused through music in the storage room after bottling and by the thoughts from the person drinking it. You can't make this stuff up.

Tastings

I just discovered a new subject to read about every week. My Wall Street Journal has a weekend section with an article every week on wines. They review various wines and if you ever read one of the reviews you will be addicted. Where else can you read something like this:

One problem with so many of Merlots is that they have no sense of place--no sense that they came from actual grapes grown in actual soil. But one was so charming and earthy that John called it "a Earth Mother kind of wine". It was dark and rich, with the kind of smooth, easy qualities that Merlot lovers are looking for and the kind of soul that non-Merlot lovers would enjoy. It wasn't an elegant wine, lacking structure and edges, but was so charming, earthy and friendly that, when our tasting was finished we poured ourselves another glass and watched " Desparate Housewives".

Or this:

Best Value. Rich, earthy nose and a great, dark color. Slightly chewy--not at all weak--with real earth and even a hint of chocolate. Honest red wine.

I am seriously intriqued by an earthy nose.

SAT Errors

Evidently the SAT folks were challenged by some students to hand-grade the SAT tests they took last October and before the review was over 4,000 students were found to have been given scores lower than they earned. 5% of them were given grades 100 points lower than they should have had. This, of course, is certainly enough to affect admission decisions at many colleges. There is now a scramble to see if early applications were affected and whether some of the pending decisions must be reversed. The whole thing was blamed on a computer scanner in Texas.

Snooze you lose

Looks like the bluebirds lost out on the nice house here in my backyard. A tufted titmouse is about to move in it looks like. I read they love sunflower seeds and there is an endless supply about 10 yards from their new house. How sweet it is.

Trying to understand Yale

Two events this week gave me moments of amusement. First, we learn that Yale has admitted a former official from Afghanistan who was in the Taliban. Next we learn that the Law School at Yale has had a major defeat inflicted on them by the Supreme Court in an 8-0 decision. The supremes said they could no longer refuse access by the military seeking face time with potential recruits at their fine institution. These brilliant legal minds actually thought they could claim the right to exclude recruiters on the basis of some free speech excercise. The objection by the law school to the recruiters was supposedly based on the don't ask, don't tell policy of President Clinton which they feel us unfair to homosexuals. I wonder if anyone at Yale stopped to ask those who are light in the loafers if they would prefer to be found out by their military superiors or some Taliban official. In the latter case, I understand treatment was somewhat more harsh than simple dismissal.

Mideast nonsense

When one tries to follow events in the Mideast and make sense of what is going on, especially the Israel/Palestinian situation, this is what you run into.

An interesting war of words has broken out in the Palestinian Authority. In an interview published March 2, Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas stated that he has intelligence information that al Qaeda has set up shop on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. He calls the information very serious and troubling, and the implication is that al Qaeda was allowed to enter the PA by the local security forces, particularly in Gaza, which the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) controls. Hamas quickly denied that al Qaeda is present in Gaza, but added that if in fact they are there, it is Israel’s fault. Also, they stated that if their group is not treated favorably by the U.S., al Qaeda may just as well be there, to teach us a lesson.

Ports deal will die

As I predicted in an earlier blog where I compared the ports management sale to the nomination of Harriet Meirs, Bush will back down. The main reason is now evident in the polls. This is not some slanted CBS poll where Democrats are asked whether or not Bush is evil, it is a Fox News poll. In that poll, 69% oppose letting the Arab country of Dubai take over the ports. Once Bush sees he has no chance to sustain a veto, he will cave and the only question now is when. My thought is he should do it as soon as possible and move to remove Homeland Security head Chertoff at the same time.

My busy weekend

I am going to be tied up all weekend it looks like. The following story must be in some large liberal newspaper and surely if I look hard enough I can find it.

The driver of an SUV that plowed into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill on Friday told police it was retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world, according to ABC News.

...Sources say Taheriazar told police he was seeking retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world, according to ABC News justice correspondent Pierre Thomas. Taheriazar apparently told police he tried to rent the biggest SUV he could find to use in the attack.

The "Pit" is a sunken bricked area where students congregate. It is closely surrounded by buildings. There is no adjacent traffic. It can be accessed only via very small service access and not without carefully navigating to the pit area. There is not even the remotest possibility that this was anything other than a deliberate vehicular assault. The students were not "pedestrians;" they were merely students at a popular campus gathering spot, almost a courtyard.

Taheriazar is a native of Iran and a December 2005 UNC graduate.

RPS; a new cultural craze

With all the crazies on the loose in Iraq, the major media busily creating untrue stories about what Bush was told before Katrina hit New Orleans, the U.N. becoming more and more obvious in its corruption, the education system in the U.S. revealing itself to be close to utter failure, and other things similarily depressing, I read today that a new craze in bars and various tournaments is RPS. This childhood game otherwise known as Rock/Paper/Scissors is becoming a national diversion with sponsors and organized leagues. This game is considered the most democratic of bar games since you don't have to be adept at darts, pool, or video games. All you need is a functional hand which allows you to signal a flat palm, two fingers, or a fist at the count of 3. Rock smashes scissors, paper covers (wraps) rock and scissors cuts paper. If you opponent loses two out of three, you win. Fox Sports Net broadcast the 2004 championship and some matches can allow you to win thousands of dollars.
There is even a strategy developed which supposedly gives you an edge (which I am going to use on my Granddaughter the next time we play). You are supposed to decide in advance what your moves will be to avoid psychological traps. For example, your opponent might dare you to start with scissors. What do you do? What do you do if you are a red-blooded American male and she is drop down gorgeous, blond, and wearing a Bud-lite T-shirt? Supposedly, two scissor throws sandwiched around a paper is "an invasive and devious gambit". I also read that a man who throws two papers and then a rock has never kissed a girl. It is all very mysterious. Much more so than learning that David Gregory called in to the Imus show drunk.

FDA needs to get real

Tysabri is a MS drug which, in a study of efficacy and safety was shown to reduce clinical relapses by 68% relative to placebo and reduced by 83% the number of new or expanding brain lesions found on MRI. The other drugs used reduced these relapses by about 1/3rd. So, it was definitely of great value to MS patients until 3 patients developed a previously unknown side-effect. Rather than just change labelling, the FDA took it off the market. This was an idiotic response since there are many drugs out there which have definitive clinical benefits with potentially lethal side-effects. In antibiotics, I can think of chloramphenicol and gentamicin plus nearly all the agents used to treat cancer--antimetabolites which are known toxic compounds which we hope are more lethal to cancer cells than normal ones. It is time for the FDA to change the label and put Tysabri back on the market and let the patient choose what risk to undertake for MS.

Hollywood

Hollywood feels it has done enough for the blacks. Hollywood can never do enough for the gays. Gays in the military, gays in the Texas Rangers, gays on the range. It's like a brokeback record! As Pat Buchanan said, homosexuality has gone from "the love that dare not speak its name" to "the love that won't shut up."

Bad Science

Most science that you read about in the news and hear about on TV is just bad, I am convinced. First there was the big study by a group called the WHI (women's health initiative) concerning the use of estrogens and progesterone by menopausal women. That one was screwed up, I am reading by using old women well past the initial menopausal symptoms and thereby reached an erroneous conclusion regarding the risk of heart problems. More recently we have heard that those women who take calcium to protect against loss of bone density and colorectal cancer aren't protected. The problem here is many of the women in the placebo group also took supplements in the form of multi-vitamins. The latest and probably the most shaky is the study widely talked about which seemed to show that a low fat diet does not confer any lessened risk of breast cancer. The problem here was several-fold. One factor was many of the women did not adhere to the low fat diet and the resulting numbers in the group dropped too low to give the statistical interpretation enough power. I don't think they really had it set up to be low fat in the first place, but that is another matter. Also, there were women who did adhere to a very low fat diet over the course of the study and they showed a 24% drop in risk, but this was buried deep in the report and not covered by the press. The reason given was that this was a sub-group of women and thus not as relevant. One could also argue that it was the most important finding by the study in that it was most relevant to the original objective of the study.
My conclusion is that the more publicity a study gets (think global warmings causes and effects), the more likely it is to be bad science.