2009 archive
Ghost Doctors in the Sky 0
Christopher Swann at Retuters. Read the whole thing.
Every Time I Think It Couldn’t Get Worse . . . 0
. . . it does.
I’ve never read the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, just in English.
But I don’t think Jesus Christ would buy into this approach. Sounds more like the gospel according to Jereboam to me.
We Need Single Payer 1
Listen to the commenter point out the deeply hypocritical nature of the Senator’s response.
The government is damned answer. Health care should be a right, not a profit center.
Law and Order: Minor Case 0
Companion story here. (There’s a 30-second commercial at the beginning of the video.)
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
It really isn’t surprising the NBC would feature this. The Law and Order franchise is NBC’s bread and butter.
Yeah. Right. 2
I was looking for a defunct website at the Internet Archive and stumbled across a place that had squatted on the name of the site.
That page redirected to one of those fraudulent sites that pretends to scan your computer for malware so it can trick you into buying their anti-malware product. Most of the time, their product is actually more malware.
I clicked “Cancel” scan and it pretended to scan anyway while popups cascaded. One give away was that the phony scan’s progess bar moved faster than a scan from a local disk would have allowed, let alone a scan over the net (and I have used internet AV scans from reputable vendors such as Trend Micro and Symantec. It then told me that I had oodles of trojans, viruses, and other assorted baddies on my C:\ and D:\ drives.
This box runs Ubuntu Linux with Fluxbox. I don’t have C:\ and D:\ drives; I have sda1* (a very small boot drive) and sda3* (everything else). I don’t have a “My Documents” folder.
Here’s what it claimed to see:
Here’s what’s actually there:
__________________
*sda1 means “SCSI (or SATA) Disk A, Partition One.” sda3 means “SCSI (or SATA) Disk A, Partition Three.” There is no sda2. You’ll have to ask Ubuntu about that.
How To Confuse Who Did It with Who’s Trying To Fix It 1
This is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to start.
I’ll put it this way. Somebody burns down a house. Someone else comes along and tries to rebuild the house.
That does not change who set the damned fire to begin with.
Tomorrow Should Be Interesting 0
After all, Friday is commonly the day when banks bite the dust. That gives the FDIC and the receiving bank, if any, the weekend to allow the dust to settle.
A total of 416 banks with combined assets of $299.8 billion failed the FDIC’s grading system for asset quality, liquidity and earnings in the second quarter, the most since June 1994, the Washington-based FDIC said in a report today. Regulators didn’t identify companies deemed “problem” banks.
We’ve gone from MBA’s to MBE’s–Masters of Business Embalming.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
570,000 is a decrease from last week.
(snip)
Continued claims fell to 6.133 million in the week ended August 15 from 6.252 million the prior week. That was the lowest since the week ending April 4 when they were 6.045 million.
In other news, GDP didn’t fall as much as expected.
It could have been worse has become a bright spot.
By Their Words Shall Ye Know Them 0
Bet she wishes she could relive those ten seconds.
RIP Power, Privilege, and Justice 0
Dominick Dunne passes.
His interest in crime, which led to his show, Power, Privilege, and Justice, on CourtTruTV, grew out of the murder of his daughter.
Power, Privilege, and Justice was one of the few shows on commercial television which spoke to, rather than down to, the viewer (well, these days, a lot shows actually speak up to the viewer–one does hope the viewer is smarter than the shows; the alternative is despair).
The last scheduled new episode, about Hans Reiser, creator of the ReiserFS (Reiser File System) for Linux and Unix and wife killer, is slated for this Friday.
Happy Fourth Birthday to Me 0
Four years and lots of electrons and changes ago today . . . .
RIP Jim 3
When my father died, he became the go-to guy for taking care of Pine View Farm.
His word was all I needed.
If he recommended someone, the person he recommended could be trusted implicitly, as could he.
A Word on Ted Kennedy (Updated) 0
I was never a big fan of his, but he certainly redeemed himself from his early mistakes and, after them, lived a life of integrity.
I do not know anyone who hasn’t made mistakes.
I know lots of persons in both public and private life who haven’t lived lives of integrity.
Addendum, the Next Morning:
Kiko’s House has more.
Over There 1
Captain First Son, USA, is once more in Afghanistan.
We Need Single Payer 0
How is that possible, when the Consumer Price Index is flat, and prices for food, clothing, and other basic goods have been falling?
“It’s unsustainable,” said Joseph Reilly, head of Aon’s Northeast health and benefits advisory practice in Parsippany, N.J., which advises big employers on what benefits to buy, and what to cut.
(snip)
But managers aren’t eating all those costs. “Employers might see a 5 percent increase,” Reilly explained. “They’re passing the other 5 percent on to the health-care population” – that’s the public – through higher co-payments, higher drug payments, higher employee contributions.
After all, someone has to make up for all the money those CEOs lost in the stock market.
Cry Me a River 0
Terrance Heath at the Huffington Post:
(snip)
That’s what the town halls have devolved into — the tyranny of the tantrum. The behavior we’re seeing is basically the extreme of the Republican base kicking and screaming because they believe that if they throw a big enough tantrum, they can hold off change, turn back the transition period already begun, and keep things the way they are — or go back to the way they were.
(snip)
Neither can we turn back the clock (nor should we) to a time when the president and most of the Supreme Court (to name two seats of power), were guaranteed to be white — something many townhall screamers, birthers, and McCain/Palin rally attendees would like to return to, whether they say as much or not.
He’s right, you know.
Why We Are in Trouble 0
Dick Polman:
Ten percent of Americans don’t know that Hawaii is a state.
. . . And She Never Read the Part about the Good Samaritan Either 0
Just the part about not taking care of the sick and the helpless.
“That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.”