Month: January 2011

Bloody Terrorist Bird

Saudi Arabia has detained a vulture on charges of being an Israeli spy. No I’m not making this up and no it’s not an article on The Onion:

Saudi Arabian officials have “detained” a vulture on accusations of being a spy for Israel, media reports say.

The griffon vulture was carrying a GPS transmitter bearing the name of Tel Aviv University, prompting rumours it was part of a Zionist plot.

Yeah those vultures are always trying to get jobs from various intelligence agencies. In fact I hear many former CIA spooks have a hatred of birds because they claim so many jobs in the spying world preventing regular people from getting said jobs. Oh and birds spying for Israel isn’t the only crazy coming out of that region:

Last month, Egyptian officials implied the Israeli spy agency Mossad was to blame for shark attacks off its coast.

Those bastards are training sharks to kill people! And here I thought out government’s fear mongering was bad.

New Hampshire Doing it Right

It seems New Hampshire is working hard and ensuring they’re known as the free state. Today the new Legislature convened and one of the first things to go was the stupid ban on carrying weapons into the House floor. Now people entering the House floor may carry a firearm so long as it’s concealed (display is still banned).

I’m going to wait for the anti-gunners to claim there will be blood running through the House with the lift of this ban.

The Oxymoron of Socialized Medicine

Big surprise here but I’m not a fan of socialized medicine. My reasoning is different than a lot of peoples’ though. I’m not against it because it creates longer wait times, causes rationing of medicines, and empowers insurance companies. My problem with socialized medicine is the violence required to implement it.

This is actually a problem with all forms of socialism, not simply socialized medicine. Let’s look at how insurance works. People purchase insurance from an insurance company with the agreement that should something horrible happen the insurance company will be there to foot the expense. In order for this to work there needs to be on key thing, more money being paid into the system than removed.

Socialized medicine is sort of a larger scale of insurance except every person in under the force of law pays into the system in the hopes of generating enough money to pay for those who can’t afford medical care. It sound so nice when you explain it that way but there is one major problem with socialized medicine that never gets brought up, it requires the force of a gun.

In a market based health care system each person pays their own way or gets involved with insurance. It’s not a perfect system obvious as not everybody can afford either of the two options but there are still options for those who can’t pay (charity, pro bono work, family members pitching in, etc.). The main advantage though is the fact that it’s voluntary, you’re not being forced to participate. If you don’t with to receive medical care you don’t have to pay into the system.

There is no such option with socialized medicine, much like social security there isn’t an option to opt out. To ensure everybody participates the government uses their monopoly on use of force to make everybody participate. If you refuse to pay into the socialized medical system you’re usually fined or your wages are garnished. If you refuse to pay the fine the police will come to toss you into prison for the crime of not allowing your money to be stolen, and if you resist arrest physical violence will be brought against you.

Does it seem like an oxymoron to use physical force to steal money from one person in order to pay for the medical care of another? Doesn’t it even seem more of an oxymoron when you realize the threat of physical violence is being used to steal from more people than will be needing medical care? When using socialized medicine you’re actually harming more people (theft if harm in my book and if you refuse to participate you will be physically harmed) than you’re helping.

Yet people tout socialized medicine as a good thing that will help people. So long as you ignore the force required to create and operate such a system I guess you can make a claim it helps some people.

They Were Just Kidding About That Whole Constitution Thing

When the Republicans were running for the House and Senate they made a “promise” to their constituents. The promise was simple, all bills introduced would be accompanied by an explanation of how the bill was constitutional. I didn’t buy it and neither did most people who hold the idea that all politicians are crooks. Our politicians have been doing this for years already but they just keep citing the “general welfare” clause.

Scott Garrett, a representative of New Jersey, put forth an amendment to the whole “constitutionality” requirement. The amendment would prevent law makers from citing the “general welfare” and the “necessary and proper” clauses in the Constitution. Well the amendment failed so it looks like business will continue as usual (did anybody expect anything else?).

Canadian Surgical Wait Times

It should be no surprise to anybody that I’m against any form of socializing anything. When I mention I’m against socialized medicine I usually get various response ranging between me being the second coming of Satan to simply being a complete tool of the “corporations” (which corporations I’m not sure, nobody ever tells me). One thing never fails though, when I get into an argument involving socialized medicine somebody invariably brings up how great it works in Canada.

The problem with this argument is it doesn’t work that great in Canada. Well I guess it works great so long as you are willing to wait on average 18.2 weeks for surgical and therapeutic procedures. That’s what the average wait time ended up being in 2010.

Personally I’ll take the horrible system here that allows me to get much needed surgery in a timely manner (although it would be nice if we could get rid of all the government interference which has increased the cost to an astronomical rate).

Even More Dead Birds

What the fuck? First 5,000 dead birds appear in Beebe, AR followed by 10,000 dead fish in Guy, AR, and now we have 500 more dead birds in Louisiana, 100 in Kentucky, and 50 to 100 in Sweden. I don’t believe my natural gas theory holds water on all of these but I do have a new theory:

Martians hate birds. Make no mistake, the invasion has begun. On the upside Congress shouldn’t be a thorn in our side for much longer.

Security Done Right

One thing I do like about the major credit card companies is the fact their security setup works by individual transactions instead of users. When you purchase an item on a credit card (or debit card issued by one of the companies) the company checks the transaction to see if it seems valid.

The other day I received a call from my credit card company informing me that they saw some apparent fraudulent activity. Needless to say it was fraud and the card has been canceled and a new one is in the mail. Credit card companies are doing it right in this regard by making it so each transaction is looked at as well as assuming trust with the customer when they call and claim something on their bill was not purchased by them.

Shit Keeps Dying

Yesterday I reported that a few thousand birds ended up dying for unknown reasons (it sure as the fuck wasn’t fireworks otherwise we’d have similar death rates on the Fourth of July). Well birds weren’t the only things that got killed off as 10,000 fish were also killed in Arkansas. On plausible explanation has been presented:

Right now scientist are eying natural gas as the cause of death for both the red winged blackbirds and the drum fish. Residents of the small town of Beebe were startled Saturday morning to find the dead birds littered over a 1.5-square-mile area.

The reason I say this makes sense is because there has also been a lot of problems in the nearby town of Guy, Arkansas potentially caused by fracking. Fracking is a method used to extract natural gas from shale and since beginning fracking operations in Guy, AR the number of reported earthquakes has been through the roof (over 500 since September, 2010). I checked it out on Google Maps and Guy, AR is about an hour driver from Beebe, AR making the possibilities of events being related pretty fucking high.