Radioactive Communist Zombies

Go Huskies!

It's half time in the Washington-Syracuse game and I'm writing this on my laptop.  Huskies are ahead 14-6.  The new redshirt freshman  Jake Locker is doing great.  The kid can run almost like a running back.  The "Orange" 

Plus the Syracuse uniforms are almost as ugly as the Ducks'.

It would be great to win this game because honestly it maybe be the last for a while for their schedule looks like this:

9/8 Boise State (ranked low at 24th)

9/15 Ohio State (ranked 11th)

9/22 at UCLA (ranked 14th)

9/29 USC (ranked #1)

Then a few PAC-10 games and then on 11/19 California (ranked 12th).

And Rankin just made a touchdown so now it's 21-6.

This is starting to look like a blow-out.

Go Dawgs!

Free Market Works Better

A study has determined that patients seeking Botox injections can see the doctor faster than those wanting to have a suspicious mole looked at:

For a Botox injection, patients waited typically for eight days, while those asking doctors to look at worrisome moles that might indicate skin cancer waited 26 days, said the study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

This should surprise no one.  Botox patients show up with cash in hand so the doctor has more incentive to treat them versus patients who might pay a co-pay and then the doctor has to get reimbursement from an insurance company (or government) that has forced him to lower his prices in order to be in their network.  Botox has got to be more profitable therefore he has incentive to see those patients faster.

Because the doctor doesn't have to do a bunch of paperwork (of course, he hires someone to do this) he can devote more resources and therefore there's more time to do Botox injections than do mole inspections.

This goes to show how a free market could improve health care.  If inspecting moles didn't require loads of insurance company or government paperwork the doctor would have more resources to devote to that and one might get in faster to see the doctor then, too.

This also shows that as government gets more into health care, the worse it's going to get.  The more bureaucracy a doctor has to deal with, the less time he has to devote to patient care.

I say again, the solution to our health care crises is:

1) Minimum $5,000 deductibles on catastrophic-only insurance.

2) Health savings accounts where people can take pre-tax dollars and put them in an account to pay for that $5,000 deductible.  That would cost you $400 a month the first year which is about what you and/or your employer are paying now.  And if you don't spend all $5,000, you keep the money and the next year can pay in less and meanwhile the cash in there is earning interest lowering your payments even further.

3) Government subsidies for those who can't afford the $5,000 deductible.

Because believe me, if you showed up at the doctor with cash in hand to have him look at your mole, he's going to be happy to see you and take you in as soon as he can.

(P.S.: I'm old fashioned, I use "he" and "him" where others might use "he or she" and "him or her."  I'm perfectly aware there are female dermatologists out there.) 

Slow News Day Again

Problem with having a day job and trying to blog is worrying that Castro's going to kick the bucket (or at least Cuba will admit he's dead) and you'll be in a meeting and your brilliant obit you wrote months ago will be sitting on your computer and not posted while the rest of the world reacts.

And the other problem is you come home from work and just don't have the energy to blog unless something grabs you and says "you have to blog about this."

Tonight, nothing has.

So here's Sister Toldjah on the lack of global warming consensus.  Enjoy.

9,000 Page Views

Today sometime I hit 9,000 page views for this 10 month old blog.

The nice thing is I went from 8,000 to 9,000 (or 1,000 page views) in record time: 20 days.  The previous record was 25 days.  The chart below shows average page views per day for each thousand paged views.  Click to see a larger version.

Unlike NASA, I'm pretty confident in my data.

As you can see, my views per day are accelerating.  If I used the global warming method to forecast future views per day by the time I get to 15,000 page views, I'd be averaging 280 page views per day.  That chart of my "hockey stick" projection is below.  Click for a larger view

   

You can trust that data as much as global warming projections into the future.  I guarantee 100% that the math behind it is sound (not making the same guarantee for the assumptions behind it, however).

Unfortunately, a lot of my page views are people looking for pictures of cars or pretty girls (because I've had pictures or links to pictures of both).

But page views are page views and maybe a few of them are staying to read the content. 

Wednesday Night Blogging

Well, nothings got me boiling tonight (Mythbusters was pretty good, though, even though they didn't blow anything up).

Everyone is calling for Larry Craig to resign, quit, or just fall of the planet, except maybe Harry Reid who'd like to hang on to his job.

Hillary Clinton is giving back the money given to her by a Chinese guy named Hsu and his friends as Democrats once again break the campaign finance laws they championed.  WJS had a big article yesterday about a mail man (and friend of Hsu) making $49,000 a year giving huge donations to Hillary.  What is it with the Clintons and illegal contributions from Asian folk?

The DJIA was up 247 points today apparently on hopes the Fed will "act" if needed to keep market disruptions from upsetting the economy.

So, other than that, no big news.  Maybe I'll go watch 300 (that finally arrived from Netflix, I think I am being brutally throttled).

Where's the Hurricanes IV?

Hurricane Dean having blown itself out over Mexico, there are currently zero active tropical cyclones in the Atlantic (nor Pacific).

Two years ago on this day Hurricane Katrina reached its maximum strength of Cat 5 and sustained winds of 175 mph.  Two years ago tomorrow it made landfall on the Gulf Coast.

Katrina was the 11th storm of a very active (okay, most active ever) hurricane season.

Which after last year and this year, is looking more and more like a fluke.  We've had four named storms this year, one hurricane (which did reach Cat 5) and none hit the U.S.

And I thought global warming meant trains of Katrinas every season until you start walking to work.

Ringing Endorsement

Writing from beyond the grave, Fidel Castro made his pick for whom the Democrats should nominate.  Castro (or whoever is writing for him) said:

"The word today is that an apparently unbeatable ticket could be Hillary for president and Obama as her running mate."

I'm sure the Clinton and Obama camps are jumping for joy.  What could be better than an endorsement by a murderous communist thug?

Castro has a reason to like Hillary--he's a Friend of Bill:

Castro said former President Bill Clinton was "really kind" when he bumped into him and the two men shook hands at a U.N. summit meeting in 2000. He also praised Clinton for sending elite police to "rescue" shipwrecked Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives in 2000 to end an international custody battle.

Yeah, no wonder he (or whoever is writing for him) wants another Clinton in the White House.

Can't wait for the Kim Jong Il endorsement.

Too Easy on Larry?

Apparently in my sleepy, pre-caffeinated state, I gave Larry Craig too much credit.  According to Best of the Web by James Taranto, Craig has been hiding in the closet for a long long time:

Craig's sexual orientation has long been the subject of rumors in Washington. Last year, during the Mark Foley scandal, a gay blogger "outed" him--i.e., purportedly exposed him as a closeted homosexual. Even more odd, in 1982, when an earlier scandal involving sex between congressmen and underage pages erupted, Craig, then a freshman House member, took to the airwaves and issued a pre-emptive denial.

And the "come on" wasn't just foot tapping according to police:

At 1213 hours, I could see an older white male with grey hair standing outside my stall. . . . That male was later identified . . . as Larry Edwin Craig. . . . I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, "fidget" with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes. . . .

At 1215 hours, the male in the stall to the left of me flushed the toilet and exited the stall. Craig entered the stall and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door. My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall. From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me. . . . At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. . . .

At 1217 hours, I saw Craig swipe his hand under the stall divider for a few seconds. . . . At about 1219 hours, I held my Police Identification in my right hand down by the floor so that Craig could see it. With my left hand near the floor, I pointed toward the exit. Craig responded, "No!"

Although from now on I'll be looking for foot tapping in bathroom stalls and making sure I don't tap back.

Because Craig is a conservative, Republican, and has voted against gay marriage, we'll soon have the left calling him a self-loathing gay man.  Here's a typical example:

I can’t help but smile when a Republican that has blasted gay and lesbian Americans, and has voted against a variety of GLBT issues, gets caught (forgive me, I have to say it) with their pants down. It’s also fun watching the rest of the party scurry like rats to try and 1) distance themselves from the issue, 2) distance themselves from the politician in trouble, or 3) come up with some political circus event to try and hide what’s going on.

Sure, Craig is a hypocrite.  So are those on the left who'll have no compassion for this obviously troubled man. 

But if I were to guess, I would say Craig votes against gay marriage and other "GLBT" issues not because he's a self-hating gay man, but because he believe on principle that those votes are what's best for the country yet he has his demons.  You can drink and be against underage drinking.  You can be "pro family" yet have a troubled marriage.  There's no reason in the world Craig could not honestly and sincerely believe the positions he takes are the best for the nation, and still be a closet homosexual.

Let's hope he either doesn't run for Senate again or is defeated in the primary.  I think Idaho (and remember, I've lived there) would vote for a Democrat before voting for a gay man.  I think.

Don't Tap Your Foot

Conservative Idaho Senator Larry Craig has pleaded guilty to "lewd conduct" after being arrested in a bathroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.  Now he regrets it:

"At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct," Craig said in a statement.

"I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously."

Craig has often voted against gay rights measures and "pro family" (100% rating from the Family Research Council) so of course this is immediately taken up by the media as a case of a hypocrite like Foley.

Craig says what he did was perfectly innocent.  After reading the description, I'm inclined to believe him:

According to the police report, Craig entered a bathroom stall next to the police investigator, placed his bag against the front of the door and tapped his foot in a gesture commonly used to try to pick up men in public toilets.

"I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct," Roll Call wrote, quoting the investigator in the police incident report.

Remind me to never tap my foot in men's bathrooms.  I wonder if the prosecutor is a Democrat.  This sounds ridiculous to me.

He should have fought this to the Supreme Court.  It's not as if he had sex with an intern in a government office. 

Fred On

Found this on YouTube: