This past weekend there was a horse race called the Kentucky Derby.
Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown.
Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.
Need I spell out the metaphor? As Mark Halperin of Time notes, “You Can’t Make This Up.”Â
Driving While Influential
A Texas state lawmaker instrumental in the passage of legislation increasing penalties on drunk drivers was himself arrested late Wednesday for driving while intoxicated (DUI). Texas State House Transportation Chairman Mike Krusee (R-Round Rock) now faces the special $3000 “driver responsibility fee” that he rushed into law in June 2003.
Click here for the rest of the story. The guy seems to know his way around the Texas DWI laws and I will not be in the least bit surprised to hear that he fought this tooth and nail.
I just hope he doesn’t win this case. Or his next election.
US politicians are watching their counterparts in the UK and taking some of their ideas and puting them into law here.
Now if we can just get the US voters to do likewise
Most people think government charges levied on the grounds that they help the environment are really just ways of boosting the Treasury’s coffers, it suggested.
Two in three people think that green causes have been cynically hijacked as a pretext for raising taxes.
The findings are a blow to green campaigners who believe the future depends on using high taxes and charges to encourage people to stop behaving in ways they believe are destructive.
You can only let yourself be bent over the barrel so often before you start noticing the splinters.
Excellent article from the Skeptic debunking climate change models. Money quote:
What is credible about a prediction that sports an uncertainty 20–40 times greater than itself? After only a few years, a GCM global temperature prediction is no more reliable than a random guess. That means the effect of greenhouse gasses on Earth climate is unpredictable, and therefore undetectable. And therefore moot.
The rapid growth of uncertainty means that GCMs cannot discern an ice age from a hothouse from 5 years away, much less 100 years away. So far as GCMs are concerned, Earth may be a winter wonderland by 2100 or a tropical paradise. No one knows.
— Patrick Frank, “A Climate of Belief”
The same issue of the Skeptic has an article presenting the other side. Read ’em both; judge for yourself who makes the better argument.
Two industrial-sized cans for $16! You have to ask for the “Google Offer.”
This stuff has been a lifesaver two years in a row now. I leave the parts to my steel-pipe shooting bench outside all year, and despite being in sunny California, inevitably a few of them end up rusted together. The weekend before Boomershoot I douse ’em with Kroil, and within 15 minutes I’m able to separate most of the joints by hand, no tools. Great stuff.
I’ve been guzzling Pepsi since I moved to California in 1987. It got steadily worse until, at the peak in 1992-96, I was drinking two or three two-liter jugs per day. This was not good for my teeth.
Along about 2004, I got on my wife’s really excellent dental insurance plan (thank you, California Teachers’ Association) and went to my boss’s dentist — a nice fellow with a nice office and an adjunct professorship at a nearby university. He fixed me up, repairing the large number of cavities I’d accumulated over the years (eleven).
Since then, no problems. The only dental work I’ve had done was going back to him to repair the fillings (for free) when they’d fall off. This happened once or twice a year, and I chalked it up to the fact that I use a Braun electronic toothbrush, which can be kind of hard on fillings.
Last month I went in to have yet another filling replaced, and he convinced me to get a cleaning while I was there (so he could charge my insurance for something, at least). At the time, he pointed out a couple of small divots high on my front teeth, saying we should “watch those.”
Well, throughout Boomershoot last week, I felt persistent and growing pressure on the left side of my head, pretty much like a sinus infection. I’ve gotten a lot of those this past year, all on the left side. Sinus infections run in my family, so I didn’t pay much attention. I usually let minor ones run their course, and they go away in a week or so.
On the way back from Boomershoot, this one started hurting more and more. By the day after I got home, my head was throbbing. Benadryl didn’t help. Tylenol Sinus didn’t help. Then I noticed another filling was gone. Poking the exposed cavity proved in no uncertain terms that this was the source of the pain.
Was Mr. Friend-of-the-Boss Dentist available? He was not — I could come in Saturday. I cast about for another dentist, picked the closest one to the office and went in to get the filling replaced. This new dentist pointed out that I had a total of FIVE cavities on the left side of my jaw, and those divots? They were cavities, too. Hell, I didn’t know any better.
New Dentist was only too happy to give me seven new fillings ($350 copay, ouch!) and a prescription for Tylenol with Codeine. She also pointed out that the sinus infection was clearly visible in my X-ray. Off I went to the doc for some antibiotics. I’m feeling much, much better now.
Here’s the thing: One of the aspects of the Friend-of-the-Boss (and now my Former) Dentist that I liked was that he was FAST. He runs his operation a bit like an assembly line. You’re in and out really quickly. No chit-chat, no handholding — just quick dental procedures. If I want to be charitable, I could say that in his haste he simply failed to notice the cavities a month ago when he cleaned my teeth.
He also built a new house recently, and has been bitching about the cost to my Boss and other friends.
So now I’m wondering, did he see the cavities during the cleaning a month ago, and decide to ignore them as long as I wasn’t complaining about them, in the hopes that he’d be able to charge more money for more work, and maybe get some kickbacks on a root canal referral or two?
I don’t know either way. What I do know is that I have no spleen, and he’s well aware of it. Splenectomy patients are at SERIOUS risk of death from certain types of infection for the rest of their lives. This bastard either negligently or intentionally let me walk out of his office with seven rotting sources of septic bacteria in my mouth. That shit may be a minor annoyance to most humans, but for me, with no spleen, it’s life-threatening.
No, I’m not going to sue him. But lesson learned — I don’t want my medical providers to be in a hurry, whether from overwork or from the profit motive.
Gee, aren’t there a couple of political candidates running around pushing health-care schemes that would swamp providers with a shitload of new patients?
This is something I can’t have unless I move to one of California’s really really rural counties, or out of the state.
I got endless sunshine and a lack of liberty. Both have the potential to kill me.
She’s got humidity/rain, but the means to defend herself.
As much as I hated the humidity back East, I’m pretty sure she’s got the better deal.
Congratulations, Squeaky!
I used to get this type of crap from the WA DOL about cars that did not run. Well, everything except for the “inspectors”.
When I heard from a constituent complaining of persecution by the TV licensing authority, who not believe him when he told them he did not have a television, I was sympathetic and took up his case. The response I received from the Authority was typical of this government’s revenue arms – inflexible, and determined to raise the maximum cash it can from the long suffering public. As usual I did not take the matter to the press, as the issue came to me in confidence and many constituents do not want their personal details splashed across the local – or sometimes the national – newspapers.
Today I can vouch for the hectoring behaviour of this body, backed up from my personal experience. I have a studio flat in Westminster, which I use when I have to vote after 10 pm in the Commons – or attend a working dinner in London – and then need to be up and out early the next morning for a breakfast meeting or the like. It is not a place I plan to spend my evenings in. I decided not to buy a TV partly because I deeply resent having to pay a poll tax to the BBC for the TV coverage of public issues they choose to put out, and have no intention of paying them two, one for home and one for the flat.I do not like the way they use so many voices who want higher taxes, more European government and more regulation for every problem.I also tire of the very large number of self advertisements on the BBC, when no-one else can buy the advertisement time.
When I moved in they sent me a letter reminding me of the need to take out a TV licence. I wrote back telling them I did not have a TV. For my pains I received another couple of standard letters telling me I needed a TV licence, and that inspectors might call unannounced to check up on me. I wrote back again complaining of the harassment. They replied saying they were sending me another standard letter, that inspectors would be calling unannounced, and they were sorry I was cross about it. They said they would be writing to me in a similar vein at least annually.
It is typical of this government and its state broadcasting corporation that the only thing they care about is extracting more money from the public, and they cannot believe that anyone could possibly live without their TV output. They clearly regard anyone who says they do not have a TV as a liar, and spend large sums on writing them endless letters and sending out inspectors. Their inspectors will, of course, be wasting their time in my case, as I am most unlikely to be in any time they call, unless I am to experience the knock at the door at 2 am, to confirm that I am living in a version of the Soviet Union circa 1960.
The man is helping Britain not go too far over their Kyoto limits (aka: Saving the Planet) by shortening his commute and not having at TV, and how does the government repay him?
By cutting down a forest to make the paper to send him official nasty-grams full of threats.
I once offered to have the hulks which the state was demanding I put a license plates on delivered to the front steps of the capital DOL administration building if they didn’t stop sending me crap in the mail about my tabs being expired. The lady kindly tried to tell me that I was not allowed to have hulks on my private property without having a scrappers license.
I asked her if she thought using a truck to tow them down there before shoving them up the Governor’s ass would be OK or if I should have them dropped from an airplane one by one instead?
Oddly enough, being rude worked. I never heard a single word from the DOL again.
Link found at Samizdata
As gun control didn’t
D.C. anti-gang effort: Call them “crews”
When is a gang not a gang? When it’s based in the District.
D.C. officials insist on describing groups of young males as “crews,” rather than gangs, even when they are held responsible for violent acts such as the wave of killings in the city last weekend.
We don’t have flatulence in my household. Instead, that biological function is titled “The Invisible Horror from Beyond the Nameless Void”.
They still stink just the same. But not as much as the D.C. police’s idea.
Dirtcrashr’s got the correct perspective on this election, from Denmark. Heroics, tits, beer, lawyers. Yup, they’re right.
