Unemployment and Wife Beating

According to Senate majority leader Harry Reid, unemployment is a major cause of wife beating and spousal abuse. Funny, I always thought the media blamed the Super Bowl. At least until statistics disproved that theory.

Now Fred Thompson made the joke that we all have thought and many said - This ought to be be fair warning to Mrs. Reid after November's coming election.

BUT: Now a spokesman for Senator Reid has taken Senator Thompson to task because, Senator Reid was the child of abusive parent(s).

But here comes the big one: Statistically, the common factor for abusers is ... child of abusive parents.

I'll repeat, "Watch out Mrs. Reid. You've got a problem."

This Is So Wrong On So Many Levels

Danny Williams,Premier of the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, is in Miami. No, that's not wrong, Miami is filled with Canadians in the wintertime. No, he is there for heart surgery. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a “minimally invasive” surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago.

I thought we were to believe that Canada's health care system is so much better than ours. Well no, the officially allowed procedure up there is to bisect the breastbone and chest and operate through that opening. He decided that he preferred the sound of having merely a laproscopic set of incisions under the arm and the operation being done that way. He thought it might be less uncomfortable and have a better success rate.

But he did make it clear through a spokesman that he was not going to the United States in order to go to the head of the line in getting treatment for his heart condition. Do you mean that there is a waiting line for treatment for heart failure? That is certainly what that statement implies.

I have many times spoken and written of the Canadians seeking treatment for prostate cancer here in the Atlanta area, something that Canada considers a waste of resources; but I admit I am tickled at the prospect of all the Obama-supporting fat school teachers I encounter on a daily basis waking up to discover that joint replacement surgery is a luxury and therefore not covered by government health care.

We can't abandon our health care system - Where would the poor Canadians have to go to get care?

Now for something a little more gloomy.

From Stella Concepts, one of my favorite Silver advisors; something quite different and good.

A Little Gift For All You New Hope-Solebury Class of 64 People.

Yep, that's our Kim. You can really see it just before she starts singing.
An interview with Kim about Bird.

The State of the Obama Speech - 1/27/2010

I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I

Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me


To put it in perspective, here is the wonderful word count program Wordle's relative word count. The program normally ignores pronouns and articles, but in this case he wanted us to see just how the word I fit in, so someone substituted the word hedgehog for every instance of the word I.

How Much Is A Trillion?

One million seconds is 12 days.
One trillion seconds is 32,000 years.

An Awww! Moment

Good Luck? Good Grief.

On my way out the door to a special overtime job yesterday evening, my supervisor wished me "Good luck". It was casually said, a greeting really. But it struck me odd. I am good at what I do - and it isn't luck.
"Good grief", I replied, "or good skill or good job. Good God. Good night. Or even Good riddance; but not good luck."
Little of our lot in life is really luck. Most, good or bad, is the result of our decisions and our actions. Little of our adversity is luck either - most of it is the result of the self-serving actions of other men - most recently the Government providing impediments to our good actions in the named of the so-called "Public Good" which is neither truly benefiting all mankind equally nor good for us as a people.
But one thing it is not ... is Luck.

Good Day.

The Pollution Al Gore Never Talks About

Tank 7120
Originally uploaded by luxomni

I really should explain that what you are seeing is steam (not smoke and fire) when we are just barely out of a fog.
It is reflecting the High Pressure Sodium light. HPS is getting to be a pollution - it is everywhere. Look around at night little patches of red-orange everywhere. See the orange glow of cities.

I don't remember the first time I saw High Pressure Sodium light. I do remember the first time I saw low pressure sodium (which is even redder). That was in 1967 lighting a parkway in Dallas, TX. It looked so strange - especially from the air. This red strip through town.

By 1967, mercury vapor had been around for a while, but even then most street lighting was incandescent. When you did see a mercury vapor light, it was unique and people took notice. High Pressure Sodium street lighting began three years later, in 1970. In the following 40 years it became omnipresent. No one notices any longer even though there are bright orange skyglows over every city and town in the nation - perhaps the world.

Perhaps over the generations we will evolve to adapt to HPS, but to this generation, orange just does not seem to be the way the night should be.

Paranoia Is the Thinking Man's Mental Illness

The more you think about it, the more you know they are out to get you.

Lately the paranoid rumbling is that the Progressive Elite wants to thin the herd -- That they are about killing off a large percentage of the world's population.

Maybe it is nothing but paranoia, but do they have to act like it is true?

Underwear Czar?

"In response to the Christmas day bombing attempt, President Obama will be appointing an Underwear Czar. He will be presenting his briefs on the new position in a television address later this week."

Mark Steyn

Some Things In Life Are Self-Punishing

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not sitting too pretty tonight in Federal custody near Detroit. Umar, you might remember, tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.
Umar had the explosives sewn into the crotch of his pants. The explosive did not explode, but merely caught fire, presumably rendering him of little use to the 72 virgins when he finally gets to meet Allah.

Do you suppose all that celibacy might account for some of the Islamic anger?

Something new. I can post from my cell phone for those odd fleeting thoughts which I will lose while trying to typwle from the stupid touchscreen.

Uh Oh.

I thought I was done for the day. I thought that I would be able to leave the pretty little bit of poetry as the top story for a while. I did not count on the sneakiness of politicians doing things under cover of other events. While we were all watching the Senate play games, President Obama issued Executive Order 13524 amending President Reagan's recognition of Interpol by removing all the restrictions that made them different than diplomats. Ipso Ergo, they are no longer restricted by the niceties of observing United States Law. They are just like any Ambassador. They can not be detained or arrested for violation of any law. He has effectively waved all your Constitutional Rights and rules of American jurisprudence. No Miranda, No Habeas Corpus here. He even removed the semi-colon indicating where the exceptions to the Diplomatic rules were. They are not answerable to you or any of your elected officials in any way. There is a new sheriff in town, an international one who don't answer to your steenking law.


Bet you didn't hear that on CBS, NBC or ABC. You didn't even hear that one (yet) on FOX. One world government here we come. Read it and weep.

"Think as I think," said a man

"Think as I think," said a man,
"Or you are abominably wicked;
You are a toad."

And after I had thought of it,
I said, "I will, then, be a toad."

Stephen Crane

The ist I Am

Young Matthew asked me: "What do [I] think of race?"
Very simple I guess: I don't.
Unless the other person insists I do. And then somehow I cannot repair the damage done. As an individualist and libertarian I first look at each person as an individual until their own words or actions say "put me in this group" (not just race¹) or "my group identity is more important than our relationship". Then that is how they are filed in that great filing cabinet of my mind.

This segues into something that has bothered me for a few days. A young(?) man who was a regular contact on my Flickr account, who mutually traded comments about railroad photographs, his and mine, found a photograph that editorialized on my feelings about the upcoming changes in our medical system, and left me a rabid disagreeing comment. I responded with logic, gently compared to here, and he left me a scathing reply about why I was wrong about the lack of individual responsibility and malpractice suits as lottery being real problems that aren't even being addressed; and he then promptly blocked and banned me from any further contact. It is a shame, I liked his photographs, and he mine; but he could not tolerate someone having dissenting thought. How far we as a culture have strayed from Voltaire's words in his Essay on Tolerance: "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too."²

Now, having said that, What would you do? If you came into your child's classroom and found this posted? It is an extremely racist work of I believe student art, although there are no other student works posted in the classroom, at all. So far, I have done nothing, said nothing, probably will not, and this is the first I have publicly mentioned it. But one standard I have always considered is: "If you reverse the parties, would it be offensive? Then it is offensive both ways". But what if you came into your child's classroom and found this prominently posted, what would you do?

¹ I had a correspondent on the internet who was profoundly deaf (don't expect hearing impaired from me). I ultimately stopped writing because the sole focus of her existence was her deafness, like that really was an important attribute on a computer bulletin board.
² The phrase "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is widely attributed to Voltaire, but cannot be found in his writings. With good reason. The phrase was penned by a later author as a description of his attitude. It appeared in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under the pseudonym S[tephen] G. Tallentyre.