What's Worse Than Being Sick?

When your wife is sick, and you can only suggest OTC medicines and pray, and take the day off work to tend to the Zoo.

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Stealing Our Democracy? SRSLY?

The Democrat party has started running ads accusing the Republicans of trying to steal our democracy with foreign-donated funds paying for campaigns in the USA.

1) it's not a democracy, jerk.

2) do you really want to talk about foreign money corrupting the political process? Really? Are you sure about that?

Hat tip: Instapundit

WTH Go Back To The Doctor!

This is a messed-up set of legs attached to a 3 year-old. The clinical term is Tibia Vara - the lower legs were severely bent, and they were getting worse. The doctors suspected rickets but couldn't be sure. There was no follow-up care: The parents never came back.



These knees are attached to a 58 year-old woman who is fat and otherwise unhealthy. She was advised to get both knees replaced two years prior, but she also did not seek follow-up care. Now she is in health too poor to allow the surgery. She's screwed.

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People, if your doctor says "you finally dragged yourself in here and it turns out to have been a good thing you did, be sure to set up an appointment when you pay the receptionist" . . . go back. Some stuff can actually be fixed before you (or your child) end up with a dysfunctional body. After, sometimes it can't. Follow-up care: it's not just recommended because they will make money off of you.

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In related news, Dr Arun Pal Singh writes some interesting articles at Bone and Spine and I just blew a good hour clicking through the links. If you're into that sort of thing . . .

Carbon Is Not Pollution Unless You Are!

I suppose the case could be argued that certain hippies and commies are pollutants per se, but that would be a stretch in this case. Have you ever noticed the wide spread tendency of talking heads to say bad things about "carbon" emissions as a short-hand way of referring to "gaseous carbon dioxide" emissions? Yeah, well 1/5 of you, by weight, is carbon. Remember that as you exhale hundreds of times more carbon dioxide than you inhale, you filthy pollution generation station you!

Okay, that was the side note. I really wanted you to go here and read up on why we don't need to legislate economy-killing carbon dioxide restrictions into US law. Significant highlight:

It’s true that incomplete combustion emits carbon particles that can cause smoke and smog. But this particulate carbon pollution is well controlled by the Clean Air Act of 1970 and many other federal and state statutes.

According to Environmental Protection Agency data, U.S. air quality today is significantly better than it was in 1980. Since 1980, airborne concentration of carbon monoxide is down 79%, lead is down 92%, nitrogen dioxide is down 46%, ozone is down 25%, and sulfur dioxide is down 71%. Carbon particulates have been tracked for fewer years, but PM10 particulates are down 31% since 1990 and PM2.5 particulates are down 19% since 2000. Over the same period, electricity consumption from coal-fired power plants rose 72% and vehicle miles driven are up 91%. We do not need Cap & Trade, Renewable Portfolio Standards, or the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), to reduce carbon particulates.

Cap & Trade and the other "carbon" reduction measures are yet another symptom of the recent political disease in the U.S.A.: electing ignoramuses liberals to high office.

To Protect And Serve The Community

That was my theme basically all day today.

My entire family has a cold or minor flu or something. We have a couple of people in our church with major (major as in, "we hope you live") surgeries upcoming. We sat out the whole day of services to do our part to protect them from getting sick before going under the knife.

This afternoon for about four hours I combined a half dozen or so routine maintenance services with baby sitting services. I was working on my Darling Wife's car with the efficiency-killing "help" of #1 and #2. Explaining things as you go along has got to be the slowest way of getting work done, but get it done we did. #2 made progress getting over his fear of sliding under a car by hating to have #1 show him up when she went under there like nothing. My Darling Wife reports that the car now drives much nicer. After all that hassle, I hope so.

SRSLY? Take Your Drunk Ass Elsewhere!

Drunks are pathetic*. I had to pick up some cat food at the local grocery store, and on the way out of the parking lot I was inconvenienced by a particularly sad sack.

The place in question was the MAIN entry/exit driveway for a huge grocery store, where there is a chain-link fence on one side of the driveway blocking access to construction on an auxiliary parking lot. This was in a place with parking for HUNDREDS of automobiles, and it was mere yards from a sidewalk by the doors to the store. Across eighteen feet of asphalt there is a shady island of grass and trees with curbs all around it.

In this place, actually IN the lane of traffic for cars leaving the store, a female in her mid 20s to 30s (rough, hard to tell) with a shirt that didn't cover her tramp stamp, approximately 5'5" 200lbs and a good two feet wide and thick, decided to pour out (on the driveway) a quarter of her freshly-purchased bottle of Coca-Cola, and fill the bottle up with Jack Daniels. That is, she bought coke, jack, and a few other bags full of stuff, walked fifty feet out of the store, and decided that right by-god HERE where cars are trying to drive through is the place to mix up a fresh Jack & Coke.

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*It's not a disease, it's a choice. Choosing to ruin yourself is pathetic.

Less Government Means More Everything Else

Including jobs. All the elected officials are running around talking about creating jobs. Not many of them are talking about privatizing existing government jobs as a way to create a larger number of private jobs . . .

... getting work done for lower prices puts more money in the pockets of taxpayers who will make far better use of it than politicians who use taxpayer money to buy union votes. It also makes projects more affordable so more of them can be done for the same amount of money.

If pay scales are cut to match the private sector, the jobs can actually stay (or be privatized), AND taxes lowered at the same time. Thus getting rid of government jobs is a win-win for everyone but the overpaid, ungrateful public union workers who always want tax increases to support their undeserved pay and benefit scales.

Mish brings the logic. Go read the whole thing.

President Obama: Badly Mistaken (at Best)

"Yes, the trend line in private-sector job growth is moving in the right direction. But I'm not interested in trends or figures as much as I am interested in the people behind them,"

-President Obama, today.

The right direction? Well, remember he is a leftist. To him, the right is wrong, so the economy moving in the right direction is a bad thing. Or something. Oh, but can't he read that teleprompter well, Gladys!

The right direction then is apparently straight sideways . . . unless you count how it's worse than we said for the past year.

Down. It is going down. Unemployment is only holding steady because the official numbers stop counting you when you run out of unemployment benefits and still can't find a job. If it weren't for the transfer payments and "benefits" the government gives out these days, the 1930s would be looking like a relative cake walk right now. Those of us who are paying attention still put high odds on a double dip in the ongoing depression.

Of course, if you WANT a double-dip, you can always go ahead and vote Democrat this November . . .

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This quote from the President is quite telling, if you will consider it. It explains why he was very quick to dismiss the lack of revenues we would see after he raises the capital gains tax - because raising the tax is fair. He has what you might call a "different" idea of fairness. I call treating everyone equally "fair." As it turns out, according to the best-funded and most in-depth economic research, treating everyone fairly also brings economic prosperity. Who'd'a thunk it?

Obama Even Lies In Budget Proposal

President Obama has put out "his" budget proposal, declaring it reduces defecits and brings fiscal responsibility. By this, he means it continues structural deficits in the trillions of dollars for at least the next decade, while assuming cuts in federal spending that will never, ever, ever happen.

What Obama's new budget proposal does is increase the amount of money YOU spend on national debt service. Ten years from now, over a third of the taxes coming from your paycheck (as well as the taxes your boss pays instead of giving you a raise) will be going toward payments on the national debt!

This does not have to be, my friends.

Not three days ago, Neal Boortz was talking about a study that shows 100% balanced budgets WITH increased federal spending! By 2020, you can have a balanced budget (note: -$1T is not balanced) and you'll have had 2% growth OVER inflation and population growth the whole time! What do you have to do? STOP SPENDING SO MUCH MORE! In fact, the story goes: keep the "Bush" tax cuts and don't increase the amount of money we spend on any federal programs, and the budget balances itself in SIX years. That is not with a phantom trillion dollars in deficit spending in six years, it's ZERO deficit.

Now in a way, this new fantasy budget could be good news. It should tie up the Congress for the rest of the term, with party-line votes that never quite make the required majorities. Then Congress will have to pass yet another emergency extension of the current spending plan. It's a big, big jump in the baseline spending from a couple of years ago, but the President's new budget proposal has even larger deficit spending than last year, so staying the same leaves us relatively less indebted!

This November, all the Tax-and-Spend Democrats and Borrow-and-Spend Republicans need to be tossed out of our capitol on their [deleted]s.

Here's hoping.

I Can Do 40 Push-Ups

So I found out the other day: I can do 40 push-ups, 18 sets of flutter kicks, and 12 sit-ups with nobody holding my feet. Then I can have an emergency visit to the john, and then proceed to lie sweating a lot, shaking a little, 7/8ths naked on the cold tile floor in the bathroom for 15 minutes while my blood chemistry goes bizzonkers because I did this immediately after waking up an hour early after a rough night of parent-sleep (frequently interrupted, 4hrs total).

Note to self: if you are inclined to exercise, don't. You're probably not in your right mind and it's likely to be a bad idea. Only exercise when you don't want to, because it's obvious then that you're thinking clearly.

Bonus points: It turns out I was fighting off a cold at the time of the incident in question, and that fight was officially lost.