Mucky Declarations

I’ve got two back-posts after this one that I want to publish. One’s on my half-marathon, and one is on Haiti. So fair warning - I’m usually late to process current events (even in my own life).

In the meantime, here’s some stuff that caught my eye over the past few days.

PETA, in their latest attempt to keep up with modern events AND modern technology, has suggested that Punxsutawney Phil (let’s see that at the national spelling bee) be replaced with a robot groundhog.

Lending more proof to the fact that Big Media does indeed control the narrative, almost nobody reported on the fact that Obama recently admitted (at a republican retreat, no less) that the health care legislation he helped nurse through Washington would, in fact, have broken his eternally repeated promise on the campaign trail that anyone who would like to keep their insurance, will be allowed to. One - how is this not news? Two - how can we believe anything this man tells us anymore?

Every third news story I’m seeing these days has something to do with a new phone, Apple’s new douche-top, or how Google now hates Amazon because they stole their lunch money, or something. I’m just ready for all of these devices to coalesce into a handy, portable, super-machine. It’s coming, and with all the noise lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens soon.

The Colts are in the Superbowl. One thing that I have loved about the Colts is their ability to shut up and get things done. I fell in love with the fact that Harrison always simply walked over to the official and handed him the ball, rather than act like an idiot like most other primma donna receivers. Saints fans, yap it up now. Have your fun. In the meantime, I’ll be quietly rooting for a repeat of an old Colts-Saints game.

February 2nd, 2010 | Tags: Apple Hate, Colts, Obama | Category: News of the Day | Leave a comment

I’ll have more time to post after this weekend. Until then, I’ll drop some knowledge on you.

January 15th, 2010 | Tags: cats, Humor | Category: Random | Leave a comment

What if cars are blood cells,
With the red cells on the right
And the white ones trav’ling back to home,
There on the left at night.

The highways veins and arteries
We kindly pump along
Next all our fellow hemo-nodes,
A bustling happy throng

The ten car pile-up is a clot
With pressure built behind
The few cells squeaking through the gap,
Joyous at their find.

With road construction surgery,
We yell and fuss and clot,
But mind the orange barrels, we
Despite our tempers hot.

When blood cells die, they’re traded in
For newer, faster wheels.
With little blood-cell salesmen selling
Bigger, better deals.

Consumer gluttons, we transfuse
The streams out on the streets
That give the city life and breath,
And road beneath our feet.

December 21st, 2009 | Tags: Poetry | Category: Random | Leave a comment

You…yeah, you.

You’re just not funny. Stop. Please, just…stop.

December 15th, 2009 | Tags: That Guy | Category: Random | Leave a comment

We’re seeing some shades of what we will see much of once the government has their fingers in healthcare. In a nutshell, government spending constitues a greater and greater percentage of total healthcare dollars in this country. So, rather than finding a way to get out of the game of being the teat for the grand majority of the nation’s elderly, poor, and infirmed, Uncle Sam is insisting that costs must somehow decrease. Inexplicably, to assist in meeting this end, they are looking to extend the number of people on their rolls (increasing healthcare demand), create one-size-fits-all policy regulation (increasing demand - ’cause now Aunt Hilda can get a facelift for only a $20 co-pay), and taxing a variety of medical devices (decreasing supply), with the remainder of costs being hefted by a tax on the wealthy, and a huge cut of the only privatized chunk of medicare available (decreasing competition). You do the economic math.

Some of the policy regulation is already being debated - asking which things will be required to be in any given insurance policy. Recent debates have been sparked by various federal recommendations regarding mammograms, prostate cancer screening and papsmears. The scary side of evidence based comparative effectiveness research is that, given the money crunch, it will be used to make economic decisions as well as medical ones.

As others have pointed out, the muddled message trumpeting preventative care (as bread to the huddled masses) while on the other hand limiting access to such care will continue to create healthcare quagmires. The frustrating short of it is that the government knows what’s best for you, and intends to give you just that and nothing more. The scary part is when such tests will be illegal (in the name of cost-cutting) even when you are able to pay for the test. I cannot wait for the government to decide that the average person has three colds a year, and that it is not cost effective for any doctor to treat any person for more than this. Rationing indeed.

Some may claim that it is a slippery slope to react to these (relatively) small debates at this level, assuming that they will develop into something much more sinister. But again, we’ve heard many instances of political policy driving medical decisions such as this from the two most similar nations to us which have government run healthcare: Canada and Britain. But in the words of James Taranto, don’t worry: Paul Krugman assures you, “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”

December 10th, 2009 | Tags: Articles, Healthcare | Category: Musings, Political | Leave a comment

Some updates on the layout:

I used to not use tags at all, thinking that I would simply add a new category for every, well, category of post. But, I’ve found that this sub-classification works better. This way, if you read a particular post of mine, and then, in turn, decide you’d like to see everything I’ve ever posted on pertaining to Obama, Running, or Shameless Self Promotion, you can simply click on that tag rather than sifting through all of the posts in a particular category. So, have fun with that.

I’ve also updated some links. I had some dead blogs out there, and a serious handful added which I’d like to read more often. Enjoy.

December 7th, 2009 | Tags: Shameless Self Promotion | Category: Housekeeping | Comments Off

…here’s a Don Hertzeldt cartoon for you. I hope you’re not schizophrenic.

December 4th, 2009 | Tags: Don Hertzeldt, Videos | Category: Random | Leave a comment

…looking forward to the rematch.

November 16th, 2009 | Tags: Colts, Football, Videos | Category: Random | Leave a comment

Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, and it’s often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia?

 

I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particuar kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for the use on the British.

 

-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

November 10th, 2009 | Tags: Douglas Adams, Great Britain | Category: More Eloquent than I, Random | Leave a comment