Caging your own voters is just so....

gauche.

Yeah, i know, it's not really caging, but still....

via

Counting kittens

How many? I can't tell. Still. Even though I think there might be only four, this place is getting a distinct air of St Ives about it. If I start collecting wives next then maybe I'll at least have somebody to do the vacuuming for me.

I've started "taming" these little guys early. Mom cat believes strongly in benign neglect as a kitten raising philosophy and it seems to be working. I almost never see her in the same room with them, but they're always clean, dry, well-fed, and sleeping in a pile whenever I reach under the bed as far as I can and lay hands on them.

Today was a big day for one or two of them. Yes, that one kitten's eyes are open in the picture. And that one or another one crawled out from under the bed and out into the hallway in search of breakfast early this morning, squeaking as loudly as it could [which wasn't very].

I and almost-cats thing1 and thing2 were standing in the hallway, at once bemused and entertained by squeaky kitten. The dog, ever the auntie-of-helpless-kittens, was trying to gently steer squeaky kitten back in the direction of the nest, but squeaky kitten's motor skills, while admirable, are still uncertain and resulted in a complete tour of about one square foot of carpet.

Eventually mom cat moseyed on over, but she just sat down and watched the rest of us, with a bit of a Mona Lisa smile on her face. Curmudgeon cat has taken the approach If I can't see them, they don't exist and offered advice, loudly, from another room.

I eventually restored order in the fiefdom by picking up squeaky kitten myself and putting the little wanderer back under the bed. Mom cat sighed, rolled her eyes at me, and slipped under the bed. All squeaking stopped abruptly, so presumably breakfast waas served.

Pruning Shears

My new favorite blog, if just for the name alone, where you can check to see if your Representative and Senators voted for the latest iteration of FISA. Write them, call them, e-mail them if they did. Contact information provided for you.


Links to some discussions of The New and Improved FISA. I like the one at Obsidian Wings.


While we're on the subject of crumbling infrastructure, you can look up your bridges too.

Clouds over the Everglades (1950)

The Everglades in the Time of Marjory Stoneman Douglas

via Cracker Boy

TAP interviews Dr Steffie Woolhandler

Roger Bybee, writing for The American Prospect, talks with Dr Steffie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, on whether or not we've got a snowball's chance in Florida of switching to single-payer health care system.

Polls of doctors in Minnesota (Feb., 2007) and Massachusetts (2004) both show a remarkable 64 percent favoring a single-payer plan. What accounts for this historic shift in the sentiment of doctors, when you think back to how the American Medical Association successfully mobilized doctors in every community to block Harry Truman's health reform effort? This new polling seems extraordinary; both because doctors' support for single-payer is just slightly below the general public's and because doctors are presumably much more knowledgeable about health systems than the average citizen. How do you see things developing among doctors and the health industry?

The opposition in Truman's era was the medical profession, and the AMA still is opposed even though a high percentage of doctors support a single-payer plan.

But now there are two other powerful forces: the health insurance industry [that emerged since the Truman plan] and the pharmaceutical companies. Under a single-payer plan, the government steps into the pharmaceutical pricing picture with a lot of bargaining power, so both of these forces feel threatened.

It's ironic that hospitals aren't more supportive. The health insurance industry would be put out of business, so it's life or death for them. But hospitals would still be there. Some for-profit hospitals oppose national health insurance, and our plan calls for reconversion to non-profit status. With the non-profit hospitals, I think opposition to single-payer is mostly fear of change. I think that they can live with a single-payer national health insurance plan, so I don't see them as our biggest enemy.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Wait! Wait! Don't tell me!

Old news perhaps [2005] from the Heritage Foundation Policy Blog:

• 900,000 Canadian patients are on the waiting list to get into hospitals at any one time.
• 90,000 patients in New Zealand are the waiting lists at any one time.
• 1 million people are waiting to get into British hospitals at any one time.
• Funny, they don't have any waiting list numbers for the US.
  

Populations of those countires [all numbers are July 2007 estimates from the CIA World Factbook]:

• Canada, pop 33,390,141
• New Zealand, pop 4,115,771
• UK, pop 60,776,238
• US, pop 301,139,947
  

I can hear Dr Sanjay Gupta's exploding from here, mixing data from both different sources and and different years bad! but I'm going to do it anyway:

• Canada 900,000/33,390,141 >> 2.7% of the population is waiting to get into the hospital
• New Zealand 90,000/4,115,771 >> 2.2%
• UK 1,000,000/60,776,238 >> 1.6%
• US 0-46,000,000/301,139,947 >> somewhere between 0% and 15%, but goodness only knows what the real number is, because while the other countries have transparency in their government-run health care systems, insurance companies here don't have to tell anybody anything.

The Heritage Foundation's other big whine:

• Only half as many Canadians as Americans get dialysis, per capita.
• Only a third as many Britons as Americans get dialysis, per capita.
• The American rate of coronary bypass surgeries is 3-4 times what it is in Canada.
• The American rate of coronary bypass surgeries is 5 times what it is in Britain.
• Britain has half the number of CAT scanners per capita as in the U.S.
• One-third of women diagnosed with breast cancer in France and Germany die from it.
• Almost one-half of women diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK and New Zealand die from it.
• About one-fifth of American women diagnosed with breast cancer die from it.
• One-fourth of Canadian men diagnosed with prostate cancer die from it.
• One-half of men diagnosed with prostate cancer in the UK die from it.
• Less than one-fifth of American men diagnosed with prostate cancer die from it.

And yet, the people in those countries all live longer than we do:

• Canada 79.43 years
• France 78.76
• New Zealand 77.82
• UK 77.66
• Germany 77.44
• US 77.12

Global cooling is here!

And I got proof.

Every spring [starts in February] I foolishly plant little pots of herbs and sometimes even boxes of flowers. Every summer [starts in April] they all die of heatstroke. In 2005 and 2006, the plants were all dead by sometime in May. This year they made it to mid-June.

QED


All is not quiet on the western front. The global warming deniers [skeptics! call us skeptics!] are having kitten fits over Sharon Begley's Newsweek article The Truth About Denial. We've mostly known all this before, but she gathers it all up into one neat general-public-friendly package.

For once, it seeems that the illiberal MSM may have bowed to lefty pressure to give equal time to the dark green side. Cool.


NB Amy Ridenour, conservative think tanker, isn't exactly a fan of sane health care policy.

Kozy as 2 kittehs

in a cookie jar

Oscar, LOLcat of Death

This is Charley

Doubledog Films

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang $148,000

Do want.
[video]
[article]

In the wake of Katrina. Still.

You can read about the video, how much longer the FEMA trailer parks are going to stick around [barring another storm], and how the insurance companies are doing their part to help [not].

On that note, New Orleans musicians aren't having an easy time of it either.

Madame Speaker

Speaker of the House website: speaker.org

blog: The Gavel

Game on.

Tetris and minesweeper are my two favorite [desktop] computer games. Ever. I can't wait to see this version of minesweeper. I hope somebody [other than me] does one.

via

Taste test?! Surely there's a better description.

CLEVELAND, OH – In the political equivalent of a “blind taste test” taken by more than 67,000 participants, an independent website surveying public attitudes on various issues is reporting that Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is the first choice of a phenomenal 53% of respondents.

I seem to be in the 53%.
Kucinich 61
No Child Left Behind
Gravel 57
(you have no disagreements with this candidate)
Obama 36
Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Same-Sex Marriage
Edwards 31
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action, Same-Sex Marriage
Clinton 31
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action, Same-Sex Marriage
Biden 29
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Same-Sex Marriage
Dodd 26
Death Penalty, No Child Left Behind, Patriot Act, Border Fence, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action
Richardson 24
Death Penalty, Assault Weapons Ban, Patriot Act, Iran Sanctions, Iran - Military Action, Same-Sex Marriage

Not too sure about this survey-- [1] after the YouTube debate, I liked Gravel less, and Edwards and Richardson more, than I had to that point; [2] I'm never in the majority. Anyway, if you want to take the survey yourself, here ya go.

h/t

from Managed Care Matters [a pro blogs on healthcare]

Joseph Paduda will possibly be out of work if things go my way, healthcarewise. He's obviously on the side of keeping private health insurance alive and well in the US, but nonetheless has a good rundown on what's not wrong with universal coverage.

Now, if we can only convince all the privateers that government-run single-payer universal coverage is the key to wealth and happiness, we're set.


The series, in order:

The top 10 reasons universal coverage is bad

Health policy -- a question of philosophy or finance?

Universal coverage -- part 3

Universal coverage is bad -- part 4

Universal coverage is bad -- part 5

Universal coverage is bad -- part 6

Universal coverage is bad -- part 7

Universal coverage is bad -- part 8

Universal coverage is bad -- part 9, socialism

Rudy Giuliani on health care

Rudy Giuliani doesn't know how many of the currently uninsured will have coverage under his proposed healthcare plan, but he thinks it might not be all of them:


Also, he's clearly not living on the same planet as the rest of us:


He's in Cedar Rapids [median household income $48,ooo], Iowa [median household income $45,000], talking about giving everyone tax exemptions up to $15,000 on their health care costs, and that their health insurance might be $9,000--$8,000--$7,000--$10,000 or it might go as low as $6,000, with $3000 in a health savings acoount.

I'm not sure, but I think the woman who asked him the question: What are the private companies doing to lower our healthcare costs? might just have heard: When I'm President your healthcare is going to cost you one-third of everything you've got.

It's almost too much to hope for, but Rudy Giuliani might be the best secret weapon we've got for winning over hearts and minds to the dread Socialized Medicine. The rest of us aren't making all that much more than the good folks in Iowa.

It's the Crude, Dude

book, by Linda McQuaig


review, by Stephen Lendman
[practically book-length itself]

Debunking David Pimentel

Quote of the day, from Ethanol Under Fire, David Pimentel [down the page a bit]:

Actually it's Big Ethanol and Big Corn that are under fire by Big Oil, though Big Corn and Big Agriculture are a major client of Big Oil. We tend to think they might all deserve each other.

Anyway, it's a webpage of commentary about and links to debunkings [by reputable folks, it looks like] of Pimentel's ethanol, uh, research. I haven't read all of it, but, here, I give you some points:

you can see the entire PDF here

That last bullet item, DDGS, dry distillers grains with solubles, highlights the fact that maufacturing processes, including the production of gasoline from crude oil, rarely produce just one product. The very same bushel of corn that's feeding your cars is also feeding your cows, [and bringing other good stuff to your life]. Ethanol advocates say you have to count some of that input energy towards producing the cattle feed [and other products], instead of counting all of it towards producing motor fuel.

It's a valid argument. I don't know yet if the Pimentel refuters are calculating the same for fossil fuels -- how much of the input energy goes towards producing the other products that happen when you make gasoline -- but I hope to find out.


Much as I applaud his conservation-mindedness, and yes, he's right about one thing -- all our energy usage is essentially a net consumption of the earth's finite resources, no matter what form that energy takes -- life really is too short to spend in the company of David Pimentel. I'll mention briefly a couple of other points and then hope to not think of this guy again, for a while at least.

• The rising world demand for ethanol is destroying the rainforests. It's a valid concerm, that Brazil [and probably other places suited to growing sugar cane] will mow down the world's rainforests to raise fuel crops, and it's one I worry about too, but even on this topic there's debate.
• We're taking food out of the mouths of the poor kids in Africa. Not really. Most of the corn grown in the US goes to feeding our cows and other food animals. Most of the rest of of the corn we consume in the US is in the form of alcoholic beverages and processed food items. We don't export a lot of our corn, but what we do export goes mostly to the cows and other food animals of the [already well-fed] European countries. Only a tiny fraction of it ends up nourishing the bodies of starving children in third world countries. If you truly care about the children, you'll become a vegan and a teetotaller.
• We might start mowing down our own forests to turn into cornfields. A distinct possibility. Cut back on your consumption of just about everything, and vote for people who will actually do things to save the environment.

Aside to Arch: ultimately you may prove to be right, and I wrong, about teh burdz and teh kittehs, but Stanley Temple's "research" [and unfortunately also his reach] is on a par with Pimentel's.

"... famines are complex social phenomena,

... and a lack of food is seldom the reason why people starve."

something i stumbled over while researching corn just now

David Pimentel and Tad Patzek

Critics of ethanol-as-fuel often point to studies done by these two prolific, vocal, and zealous anti-ethanol crusaders. If you see any report or article or blog post that cites either Pimentel or Patzek, whether directly or indirectly, you need to turn on your bullshit detector.

It's not that they don't put a lot of work into their work, they do, but some of it's fuzzy, some of it's poorly reasoned, and some of it's downright controversial.

A f'rinstance. They calculate the "oil equivalent" of the labor that goes into farming corn [and other ethanol-producing crops]. They figure up how many calories of food a farm laborer eats and how many gallons of gasoline a farm laborer uses to get from home to the fields and back, and then set this equivalent to X number of liters of oil and add this to the total energy put into producing the resulting ethanol [8000 liters/year/hectare here].

That's all fine and dandy, I like thorough analyses as well as the next number-cruncher [and maybe more], but they never once do any such figuration on producing an equivalent amount of gasoline. Oops. In fact, I've spent the last two years, ever since Slate lauded their anti-ethanol ethos here, trying to find out how much energy goes into producing the gasoline you use.

This is the best I've found so far [and it's not great, so remember your grain of salt]:

• It takes 0.74 BTU of fossil energy [coal + natural gas + petroleum] to produce produce and deliver to the gas pump 1 BTU of ethanol from corn.


• It takes 1.23 BTU of fossil energy [coal + natural gas + petroleum] to produce produce and deliver to the gas pump 1 BTU of gasoline from petroleum.

NB: As far as I can tell, nobody's found a link between Pimentel and Big Oil, but Patzek has ties.


Just sayin'.

First, a disclaimer or three...

It's a blog, not professional journalism, but like the professional journalists [ought to] do, I'll indulge in a bit of disclosure:

I have opinions. You're entitled to them.
It's why I blog. I make no claims to fairness or balance, but I will sometimes try to back up my opinions with supporting materials, but they'll be supporting materials that I've gleaned from the internet.

Oil, biofuels, wevs.
Whatever carbon-based energy choices you make, I and my family will profit from you, just so long as you continue to burn, baby, burn! We grow the corn and soybeans that go into biofuels and we have ties to the petroleum industry.

I like my anonymity.
Or what little of it I've been able to preserve to this point. This is pretty much the extent of disclosure you're going to get from me.


So, rather than litter the comments to ellroon's ethanol post with lengthy and rambling dissertations, I'll just babble boringly [and perhaps only ocassionally] about ethanol and related subjects here in my own blog.