Archive for the 'Current Events' Category

This morning at 3:34 am local time, a magnitude-8.8 earthquake occured about 70 miles northeast of Concepcion, Chile, the country’s second largest city. It was the largest earthquake to hit Chile in fifty years. The death toll, according to President-elect Sebastian Pinera, is 122, but the number is expected to rise.

Reuters reports that:

Buildings caught fire, major highway bridges collapsed and wide cracks opened up in streets. A 15-storey building collapsed in the city of Concepcion, near the epicenter, and overturned cars lay scattered below a fallen overpass in the capital.

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I’m on a Thomas Paine kick right now…. reading “Common Sense” and “Rights of Man” currently…

“If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute. ~Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

“Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people. They fix, too, for the people the principles of their political creed.” –Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 1802.

Science fiction meets science!

Soldiers can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, yet. Seeing through walls — that’s a different story. Later this year, American troops fighting in Afghanistan will begin to get gadgets designed to peer inside buildings and detect the heartbeat of people buried under rubble. It’s not exactly Superman’s x-ray vision. But it’s not that far way from it, either.

These Eagle handheld scanners, which look “like a cross between a video game controller and an oversized cell phone,” according to Defense News, work by sending out low-power, wideband radio-frequency signals toward a target, and measuring how the signals bounce back. A signal coming from a person will return differently than one from dirt or concrete, which will return differently than a signal bouncing off of concrete.

It will supposedly be helpful in locating those damned IEDs as well.

Such technology reminds me of this “prediction” a while back:

Hat-tip to Ace’s Overnight Thread

Oh man. So true. Just watch 48 Hours Mystery and you get this time, and time, and time again… (my wife DVRs it and I watch it at night whilst I try to go to sleep…

Pilfered from Dan at Slapinions.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, and you follow politics, then you are aware of the dust up surrounding the recent U.S. Supreme Court CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION decision. It comes complete with President Obama chastising the Justices during his State of the Union, and Justice Alito’s equally firm “Not True”.

Anyways, its causing a big stink on the left right now, pretty much being pushed as an example of what happens when you get a conservative majority on the court and why its important to get the true judicial activists back in charge.

But what caught my eye the most in the dissent, written by Justice Stevens, was this bit of “logic”…

“If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by “Tokyo Rose” during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could ” ‘enhance the relative voice’ ” of some ( i.e., humans) over others ( i.e. , nonhumans). Ante, at 33 (quoting Buckley, 424 U. S., at 49). Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.”

Really? If logic has ever been tortured, it has been now, and therefore I must assume that Justice Stevens supports torture. Or something.

Still, its an interesting argument… on the surface anyways. Dig a little deeper and it is not so analogous.

Tokyo Rose was providing aid to the enemy during a time of war, easily an act of treason by trying to sabotage the war effort by attempting to demoralize soldiers and sailors. While I understand that the counter-argument is that now “foreign” companies can give money to campaigns after the ruling (ChinaGate being a better example), the particular act of Tokyo Rose is more of a non-sequitur in this instance…

I wonder if Justice Stevens is aware that Article 88 of the UCMJ would prevent the general officers in his example from saying anything contemptuous concerning the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, or the Governor of Texas, just to name a few. (Link to Article 88 of the UCMJ here: CLICK!), even contemptuous political speech. Free speech is not exactly “free” in the military. While I know that it isn’t readily enforced (as I’ve heard many times military members disparage Clinton, Bush and Obama during a heated political debate in the office and no one thinks to turn anyone in), it has been before when such speech was made public and by high profile individuals… such as generals..

Another problem I find with his argument is that of “voting” as a matter of “speech”. Why would we need the 15th and 19th amendments if people, regardless of the race or sex, have the freedom of speech, through voting, in the 1st!

Now, I know I’m not an expert in constitutional jurisprudence, nor do I claim to be an expert in platonic logic. However, I have read a book once or twice (Run Dick Run and a Star Wars : A Phantom Menace [LARGE PRINT EDITION} if you must know) in my life, and the Justice’s argument has a hole in the side of it caused by quite a massive iceberg methinks.

Yesterday at 4:53, a magnitude 7 earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti, the worst in 200 years. Buildings of all varieties collapsed, including hospitals, schools, the main prison, the president’s palace. One Haitian official estimated that up to 500,000 people could be dead, but conceded that no one knows. This would be an enormous loss, out of a population of 9 million.

The Big Picture at Boston.com gives this pictorial report.

At First Things, the Anchoress has much more information, including the relief effort and ways you can help.

So here we are, almost the end of the year 2009, and life is good. Up in my neck of the woods, New Hampshire, we’re just getting cold and winter is knocking on our door. It’s been a good fall with lots of warm days and nice evenings. The political news, for the most, is depressing and boring. We see Obama is very naive and childish, but we knew this.

Some links from other blogs and news sites for your Sunday morning pleasure:

Via Teach, a hospital in Britain is facing nasty problems.
US hospitals aren’t perfect either. WRONG. Hate to think what will happen under Obamacare. That nightmare is only just beginning.

Is The (wide Eyed) One trying to script yet another phoney self serving failure in his policies? I think so.

The (wide Eyed) Wonder who took months to decide how to **deal** with his War on Terror, swiftly takes action when it comes to a publicity seeking couple that broke through secret service detail and shook sweaty hands with…Obama has priorities you know!

The NYT realizes Obama is a pussy. A big one, at that.

Tough thoughts:

My patients seek state-of-the-art therapy, access to clinical trials and new treatments, all of which we provide at our institution. Almost all of them have insurance, and most have some form of prescription drug coverage; their access to care is virtually limitless. We employ the latest diagnostic tests, targeted chemotherapy, minimally invasive surgical techniques and incredibly precise radiation. Yet, despite the many recent advances in detection and treatment, of the 50 patients, 40 of them are likely to lose the fight.

In the extensive debate over health-care reform, we have heard little discussion about the enormous cost of cancer care. (Some of the only voices to broach the subject are those fearing “death panels.”) But at this moment, when a significant shift in the health system in this country is possible, we must ask some difficult questions: Does it make sense to support cancer care at the current levels in the United States? Who should determine the value of care?

My answer? We the people should determine. Since we’re paying the bill. Not some panel of so called experts/idiots who pick and choose which ten people get to live.

More:

As Hippocratic physicians dedicated to saving lives, we fear the new breast cancer screening recommendations foreshadow what is yet to come. Enamored with European universal healthcare, Washington is hell-bent to push through some form of government-run health plan. But at what price? If America adopts European style medicine, Americans must expect European style results.

The five-year breast cancer survival in the U.S. is 90.1%. The five-year survival for breast cancer in Europe is 79%. American women must ask themselves one question: Is cutting the budget for screening mammograms in half worth this 11.1% drop in breast cancer survival?

Can we assume them that Mrs. Obama does not get mammograms since she is under 50? Hmmm…..

6 Trillion bucks and people will die. A lot more people. Just. Say. No.

Speaking of Mrs. Obama via Ace: LOLOLOLOLOL!!!

As Pelosi and Co. have since spewed for their abomination dressed up in the rags of liberty and freedom, I’d thought I’d link to a story that shows what it looks like with the rose-colored glasses of Hope and Change™ removed.

Stare into the loving, gentle embrace of universal insurance guaranteed and mandated by the government. Only this is in the People’s Democratic Republic of Massachusetts, where they’re trying it.

My favorite lines:

“I think it’s great that people have insurance,” says Dr. Jacqueline Spain. “I’m wondering where they’re getting their care.” Spain is the medical director of the Holyoke Health Center, a busy clinic in a low-income community.

Since the reform law passed, the Holyoke Health Center has been inundated with calls from newly insured people seeking a doctor. More than 1,600 people are on its waiting list; Spain says it takes about four months to get a first appointment.

and

Massachusetts Dr. Dan Levy, who left primary care for medical administration, says that’s only getting worse with universal health care, since newly insured patients tend to come with a pile of saved-up complaints.

“You have someone on your hands with five separate medical problems, 15 minutes to see them. If you spend the extra half hour, you don’t get paid for it, so the pressure is to refer them to a subspecialist,” Levy explains.

Ahhhh… That warm, loving embrace is the progressive left peeing on your leg and telling you its raining…

Somer Thompson

Florida police have tentatively identified a child’s body found in a landfill as that of a missing 7-year-old girl who vanished while walking home from school on Monday.

Sheriff Rick Beseler said that the identification was based on clothing on the body and a birthmark that matched an “odd-shaped” mark on Somer Thompson’s left shin.

The partially covered body was found in a Georgia landfill near the Florida state line, after investigators followed garbage trucks leaving the neighborhood where Somer disappeared.

Which is why my children won’t walk to or from school, even though we live less than a 1/4 mile from where they will go.

Somer’s father, Samuel Thompson, said on Wednesday he believed it was likely his daughter.

“I’m angry. I’m so angry. I’m so hurt,” Thompson told Florida Times-Union as he wept. “My baby daughter laying in trash. Discarded like a piece of trash. God help the sons of bitches who hurt my daughter. They better find them.”

Mr. Thompson, as a father of two little girls, I can only imagine your pain. I only hope that the bastards, no, the pieces of human filth that harmed your precious daughter, then truly discarded her when they were through, resist, to the point that deadly force is required so that they can be quickly dispatched to hell…