Not all of the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but parts of it are and I am grouchy about this, incoherently so. I'm going to go crawl under a rock for a little while, until I get over it. I'll be back to pick up the dangling threads of conversation, but until then, I leave you with a kitten.



yikes, this batch are almost-cats now.

Karma

CARMA
bad karma?

Is our childrens learning?

Florida, home of the lovably wacky and lightning rod for various and sundry wingnuts, is right now revising the state's standards for teaching science in the public schools, and predictably, the creationistas are frothing at the mouth. But then a miracle occurs and the Lakeland Ledger prints a good piece entitled Creationism — Evolution of a Flawed Notion [via].

Want to jump in? Here's a list of things you can do, or if you think you may fall under the rubric of Other interested person, have at it.

Meanwhile, is you smrter than our eighth grade science students? Take the test [PDF], check your answers [PDF]. When you're done with that, how do you stack up in math and reading?

Hard core, me

and you?

Whachoo lookin at?

there really was a brief span of time when i had the library put back together. i even vacuumed the carpet. not that anybody is ever going to believe me on either of these claims.

Missions a grunt dreams about

I’m infantry…I lust for the blood of America’s enemies.

A question of impeachment

Discourse of a different flavor





via

Teach your bears well.

Be a Bear Shepherd.


Perhaps the town of Whistler should make the Karelian Bear Dog their mascot.

Uninsured? Need health care?

Get a PredatorCard!

Can't pay for all your health care up front? Have no fear, the doctor, lab, hospital, dentist, whoever will let you pay it off in installments. Except that apparently they're not exactly explaining to you that what you're signing isn't an agreement to pay them, it's an application for one of those usurious credit cards suitable only for [fleecing] the credit-unworthy.

Paul Krugman laments that they're treating patients like animals:

Remember, things like this don’t happen in any other advanced country. Only in America.

I have to agree on that only in America, but treating patients like animals? I wish. My veterinarian lets me pay off unexpectedly high pet care bills in interest-free installments and I'm getting a bulk discount on basics for the ever-multiplying cats. Humans should be so lucky.

Maybe if I learn to purr....

NATIONAL TAX BILL EATS INTO INCOME;

Study of National Industrial Conference Board Shows U.S. Second In Federal Tax Burdens. INCREASE IN TWO YEARS One-Sixth of Income Went to Taxes In 1921--15 Per Cent. Higher Than In 1919.

December 10, 1922, Sunday

Section: Real Estate, Page 134, 1123 words

A comprehensive study of the growth of public expenditures and taxation in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan and of the relation between taxation and national Income in these countries from 1903 to 1921 has been issued by the National Industrial Conference Board, 10 East Thirty-ninth Street, New York City.

A PDF of the full article can be had here but you'll probably have to register [free] to get to it.

Among other things, we learn that from 1903 to 1914 total expenditures of all public disbursing authorities in the United States increased from $22 to $35 per capita. Want to know how much that is in today's dollars? Here, let them do the math for ya.

That sumbitch needed killin

Have some more grits while yer at it.

reason.com has lost all their marbles

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, writing in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, would have us believe that single-payer health care is kookier than UFOs, and Ron Paul represents free-wheeling fun.

Thanksgiving

One of the great things about living here in almost-Alabama is that Thanksgiving day is warm enough for me to walk along the beach barefoot, but cool enough for the fluffy black dog to race around like a maniac. Some day I may even actually succeed at getting a good photo of a racing maniac.

Be afraid

be very afraid

Dear Health Insurance Companies:

Y'all are afraid of competition from the government, eh?

I wonder how that could be.

Could it be because you won't sell your product to otherwise perfectly healthy individuals with only minor afflictions, even some childhood afflictions that they outgrew years ago?

Could it be because you will sell your product to a group, and then renege on the contract with the entire group? What? 8000 people isn't a large enough risk pool?

Could it be because you sell your product to an individual, but cancel them when they fall ill and need the coverage they've paid you for? And then reward your employees handsomely for it too.

Could it be because, instead of denying your customers coverage outright, you just drag the process out until they go away [downsized from their jobs, for example]?

Could it be because you're still trying to suck money out of your customers even after they die? [h/t]

Nah, can't be.

And yet, posses of your customers and former customers are forming against you, with blood in their eye and all manner of weapons to hand.

PS. Your brethren in the property and casualty business might want to go crawl back into their coffins too.

I wonder

Are these 3 guys running for President in hopes of snagging some of that guaranteed-issue, taxpayer-funded, affordable health insurance?

Because some people just need killing

Grits for Breakdast, on the death penalty: The missus thinks I'm going to "get in trouble" for writing this, but I think, as a practical matter, I'd prefer a death penalty privatized on a case by case basis at the discretion of 12 jurors than operated by the government itself. What do you think?

Me, I'm a native of the Lone Star state, now a long-time resident of the East Coast version of the Wild West, and I confess to a great deal of sympathy for this view of murderers and their victims:

The truth is that Texas's propensity for killing its citizens, and its leniency with some murderers, are both expressions of the a single principle. Texas doesn't execute murderers to show its regard for the value of life; it does so because some people (as the parable says) need killing. Sometimes the guy who -- in the eyes of Texas -- needs killing is the accused, and sometimes he's the complainant.

"He needed killin', and my guy was the guy to do it" has long been a viable defense in some Texas murder cases. These are cases in which the State often couldn't secure convictions despite being technically murder; it'll be even less able to secure convictions in the future from juries that know that, if they convict, prison will be the only option.

On the whole though, I'm opposed to anything that smacks of vigilanteism. I don't want to live in a place where people are allowed to, or feel compelled to, take the law into their own hands. But the reality is that some people do kill in self-defense and those people, unless they later get it into their heads that a bullet is the way to deal with everyone who irritates them, are not going to be a danger to me. Turn 'em loose on probation.

Besides, I just plain dislike killin' be it state-sponsored or not. The death penalty, like torture, ought to just be one of those unquestioned and unquestionable taboos that requires no further philosophical justification beyond Dude, we don't do that kind of thing here.

You can edit

but you can't hide.

Glowball warming

Screens will be fed. Writers, not so much.

Let them eat pencils. No, not the writers, the CEOs of Big Media. Sounds like an inexpensive and fun way to support the striking writers, if you were looking for one.

If you scroll down the list at United Hollywood, you see TimeWarner is listed. No surprise of course, but I found this interesting item at Left in Alabama:

Cinram manufactures and distributes DVDs at their plant in a Huntsville industrial park. The shifts are long (12 hours) and the pay is low ($ 8/hr.) The company says they are unable to find willing workers locally and are importing about 1350 workers from Jamaica, Bolivia, Nepal, Ukraine and the Dominican Republic under H-2B visas.

From Cinram's webiste, buried in the Investor Relations section:

In 2003, we completed the largest strategic acquisition in our history. We acquired Time Warner Inc.'s DVD and CD manufacturing and physical distribution businesses, together with certain related businesses, in the United States and Europe, for $1,150.5 million in cash.

As part of the transaction, we also entered into exclusive, long-term agreements to manufacture, print, package and physically distribute DVDs and CDs for Warner Home Video and Warner Music Group in North America and Europe, and for New Line Home Entertainment, Inc. in North America. The transaction closed in October 2003 and increased Cinram's DVD and CD manufacturing capacity to over one billion discs per year. The purchase price was funded from banking facilities comprised of term loans totalling $1,025.0 million and revolving credit facility of $150.0 million. Accordingly, Cinram's revenue, earnings and earnings per share all reached record levels in 2003.

And they want to pay people $8/hour, in 12-hour shifts, and apparently with no benefits, in a city where the median household income was $44,000 back in 2005.

Also, according to the blog post, Cinram is getting some tax breaks for locating their DVD-making business in Huntsville. I suppose expecting them to hire local workers at decent living wages and providing benefits in exchange for a lower tax bill is too much to ask.