Friday, October 23, 2009

Abortion Kills More Black Americans Than the Seven Leading Causes of Death Combined, Says CDC Data

The Democrats are not your friends.


(CNSNews.com) – Abortion kills more black Americans than the seven leading causes of death combined, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2005, the latest year for which the abortion numbers are available.

Abortion killed at least 203,991 blacks in the 36 states and two cities (New York City and the District of Columbia) that reported abortions by race in 2005, according to the CDC. During that same year, according to the CDC, a total of 198,385 blacks nationwide died from heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined. These were the seven leading causes of death for black Americans that year. (more)

Administration Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview

Well, I guess this means they aren't totally beholden to Obama after all, much to the Administration's chagrin I suspect.... But should this not scare the hell out of all of us? True, Presidents have a history of getting in pissing matches with certain members of the news media and have been vocal and more about those the were displeased with, but to attempt to completely exclude a news outlet? That is extreme no matter which side you're on- at least it should be.

The Obama administration on Thursday tried to make "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg available for interviews to every member of the White House pool except Fox News. But the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks decided that none of their reporters would interview Feinberg unless Fox News was included. (more from Fox)

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Quote Of The Day

From the comments section of Mere Comments on a posting on the Pope's invitation to Anglicans to join the Church.

One last thing, whether some of the interlocutors here like it or not. I'm a committed Christian. Jesus is my savior. No answer besides Jesus can be given to any of the great questions in this universe. I can do absolutely nothing of merit on my own, without Jesus; and I don't mean that I do half of a good thing while He supplies the other half, either. Now you all who believe in Scripture are my compatriots in the battle. I may grumble that you take insufficient stock of the Church fathers and of the natural law. You may bemoan the fact, as you see it (for of course I don't see it that way, or I would not be Catholic) that I accept unwarranted additions to Scripture. But whether we like it or not, the battle is here, the trenches are dug, and our rifles had damned well better be pointed in the same direction. And here we bicker -- to quote Milton, "As if we had not foes enow besides, That day and night for our destruction wait."

Great post on this over at Bedlam and Parnassus

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

U.S. troops in Iraq have time on hands

So, we have a General, which the President appointed and we have a Secretary of Defense, which the President appointed, both of which are recommending more troops in Afghanistan. Yet, BO can't make a decision. Big surprise, he voted present instead of voting over 80% of the time while in the Senate. Sorry, not allowed to do that as President. Either s$%* or get off the pot! Either support our troops, or pull them out of Afghanistan!

Meanwhile, we have troops bored in Iraq, while we have other troops getting killed in Afghanistan because BO can't make a decision. Guess he's too busy flying around supporting liberals that are down in the polls. Which is more important, supporting the troops, or supporting liberals here at home? Personally, I'm getting sick of going to military funerals. Want your guts ripped out, try it sometime.

Where is the fringe media in all of this? When Bush was President we got a body count and call for withdraw every night on the news. Now, nothing! Our military is getting killed daily and not a word from the press. What is the country coming too (unfortunately we know the answer to that)? Truly the troops are just political pawns only to be used when there is political hay to be made.

What are you doing about it?

Wednesday Funny

Ever feel like that?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

"Very Sobering" Flu Season

Most everyone it seems is dismissing the H1N1 threat as overblown. Some go so far as to see government conspiracy. I am not among those in either camp. I have said in previous posts that while there is no need to panic, it would be foolish not to keep a close eye on this matter. The prevalence of the virus in the southern hemisphere these last few months and the fact it never "went away" as is the usual case in this country during sumer months were all potential red flags. Combined with a tendency to strike the healthy and a high virulence capacity were more casuses of concern.
This has recently come to the forefront in the mainstream media headlines but nothing has truly driven home the fact like the graphics from the CDC and the commentary from Effect Measure. Effect Measure has an excellent if chilling explanation of the charts (especially needed since the graphics are so poor) and excellent commentary as well. In a nutshell, this flu season is shaping up to be like few others and while a typical flu season may kill more in number, these are typically the old an infirm. H1N1 victims are more often, much more often, infants, children, teens and healthy adults. As Effect Measure points out, these could triple or even quadruple and not reach what a "typical" season involves. But the psychological effects of so many young and healthy would be immense.
Monday morning, start of week three of the official flu season (which began October 4). CDC's scientific spokeswoman on the flu, Dr. Anne Schuchat has said we are seeing "unprecedented" flu activity for this time of year, including an unusual toll in the pediatric age group. What does "unprecedented" mean? It's not very specific on what precedents are included, but if we confine ourselves to the three years before this one, we can get a good idea of just how unusual this flu season is.

CDC Source, full size here; legible on the .pdf version (page 8) (hat tip OmegaMom)
Weeks are on the horizontal axis. There are five age group panels (0 - 4 years at the top, seniors at the bottom) and at the right side of each panel you will see lines gradually ascending from week 40 (October) to week 20 (April), CDC's traditional flu season. Everything to left of week 40 in each panel is prior to or just after the official flu season and is essentially zero for the three prior seasons, .....

...The "unprecedented" year we are having shows up in the left of each panel. The rates are a solid line running across the bars. the bars are case counts (note to CDC: lose the bars. They are obscuring the picture). To see how unusual this is, look at the top panel (0 - 4 years), where the solid line has risen to 1.4 cases per 10,000 infants and toddlers in week 40 (first week in October). In the three previous years that seasonal risk level isn't reached until the 3rd week in January. We are 3 months in advance of the last three years by this measure, and the case count for that age group is still rising.

For the 5 - 17 year old panel the difference is more dramatic. We've already reached the risk level we would normally see for the whole flu season, and we are just getting started. That's the group being hit the hardest, and half the fatalities since September 1 have been in the 12 - 17 year old age group, confirming that.


For adults between 18 and 50, the picture is like that for the under 4 year olds: about 3 months in advance compared to the bad flu year of 2007 - 2008 and already exceeding that for the entire flu seasons of the other two years. This is the age group populating the ICU beds. Even though population rates may be smaller, there are many more of them. ...

...It is true that seasonal influenza kills a lot of people every year. They are mainly seniors, people like me. People care about seniors, of course, but our deaths are considered part of the natural order of things. Old people die. If it's not one thing, it's another. And of course our mortality rate is very high, compared to all other age groups. Even if the number of infants, children, teens and healthy adults double or triple or quadruple, the number of deaths may not ever reach what happens normally to seniors during seasonal flu, but the psychological and social impact is considerably greater. That's one of the fallacies in comparing the numbers of deaths from this flu with the usual seasonal flu. More



I THOUGHT I was back

But I guess I wasn't....
After returning from training I expected to get back to posting fairly regularly but obviously that was not the case. Some small minority of you may have even noticed.

But you see we've had a baby in the house and I've forgotten how much time they can take up. This one we found in the yard behind ours, a bold explorer who managed to wander from its mom and litter mates. We found it when it was about three weeks old, stumbling shaky legged through the underbrush after a neighbor brought it to our attention. Since it was in danger of being carried off by mosquitoes (any one of which was as big as she was) or worse yet to be a fine feast for the owl that lives in the tall trees behind us, we thought it best to bring her in. After a crash course in what 3 week old kittens eat (there is kitten formula BTW) and a visit from our mobile vet who pronounced her a) healthy b) about 3 weeks old and c) a she we settled in to finding her a home and taking care of her. This included feeding from a tiny bottle about 6 times a day for a while and teaching her sanitary habits with a litter box before which we were required to do mama cats job of "stimulating" her to do the job via wet paper towel. It was a grand day when she started using the pie pan that is her sand box.

We were also told by the vet that orphaned kitties need lots of "socializing" with many different people, otherwise they have an unfortunate habit of turning into "demon cats" (the vet's words) meaning they are really mean and hateful to all but those they bond with initially making adoption all but impossible. So we took her to work a few times and passed her about and for the most part she took to folks rather quickly her few pathetic, though heartfelt, hisses and spits notwithstanding. Now she is everywhere and in everything and must be crated whenever there is no one to watch her carefully. She has a home as soon as she is weaned and that day is almost here but for now still prefers a bottle to her gruel of kitten formula and some minced meat of the feline variety not easily recognizable by looks or smell to any human and that is "buried" by the kitten and our cat whenever possible.

So for now its us and the cat and the kitten and the three feral outdoor cats that we are feeding so that we can eventually trap and "fix" so that we have no more kittens. A task that we were apparently a bit tardy in accomplishing.

So its us and the cat and the kitten which are indoors and which I'm allergic to, and the three outdoor cats and the two outdoor kittens belonging to the queen which we didn't fix in time. We've seen them a couple a times though not lately, so they are either owl meat or being taken care of by mama cat till the time that they can be brought to the morning feeding that the other three get. They too will be eventually be trapped and fixed.

So its us and the cat and the kitten and my asthma, and the three outdoor cats and the two outdoor kittens and a sheep. Yup, a sheep. Our oldest son is raising a sheep for show through the FFA (Future Farmers of America). He goes to the barn (which is at the school) two times a day and feeds and cleans and walks and runs his sheep. Or rather I take him to the barn twice a day to feed and water and clean and walk and run his sheep.

But he has finished the play he was in so now gets home in the evening before 9:00 which is better for everyone since he's up at the barn by 0645.

And then there is the pumpkin patch. A little outreach project at the church that I am in charge of. We unloaded 800 pumpkins earlier in the month and expect another load about that size this week. I have to find folks to help unload and man the patch for selling purposes and this year it has been a challenge. I've spent quite a bit of time in the patch.

This last week-end I took my last Physical Training test of my Air Force career. 47 push ups in a minute, 37 sit ups in a minute (no I'm not proud of that) and a mile and a half run without requiring EMT intervention. At least I passed.

So now I'm back- sorta.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton gave a presentation in St. Paul, MN on the subject of global warming. In this 4-minute excerpt from his speech, he issues a dire warning to all Americans regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty that is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

A draft of the treaty can be read here: http://www.globalclimatescam.com/documents/un-fccc-copenhagen-2009.pdf

Page 18: Section 38 of the "Share vision for long-term cooperation action plan" contains the text for forming the new government.

Page 40: Section 46 Subsection H of the "Objectives, scope, and guiding principles" contains the text for enforcement and establishment of the rule of law.

There has been considerable debate raised about Monckton's conclusion that the Copenhagen Treaty would cede US sovereignty. His comments appear to be based upon his interpretation of the The Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution (Article VI, paragraph 2). This clause establishes the Constitution, Federal Statutes, and U.S. TREATIES as the supreme law of the land. Concerns have been raised in the past that a particularly ambitious treaty may supersede the US Constitution. In the 1950s, a constitutional amendment, known as the Bricker Amendment, was proposed in response to such fears, but it failed to pass. You can read more about the Bricker Amendment in a 1953 Time Magazine article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/art...,9171,806676-1,00.html

Lord Monckton served as a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to a debate to which Gore has refused. Monckton sued to stop Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" from being shown in British schools due to its inaccuracies. The judge found in-favor of Monckton, ordering 9 serious errors in the film to be corrected. Lord Monckton travels internationally in an attempt to educating the public about the myth of global warming.