Posts from — January 2005

The CBC notes Tucker Carlson’s “retirement” from CNN. I was wondering why they would be interested until I got to the bottom of the article.

In November, Carlson also famously interviewed maverick Canadian MP Carolyn Parrish on fellow host Wolf Blitzer’s program Wolf Blitzer Reports.

Ostensibly a discussion of U.S.-Canadian relations, the segment digressed into a showcase for Carlson to outline his belief that Canadians spend a lot of time dogsledding.

“I don’t think every Canadian is dogsledding at all times but I do think there’s a lot of dogsledding in Canada,” he said after Parrish challenged him. “Yes, I do think that’s true.”

Congratulations, Tucker, you join Triumph the Insult Dog among a select group so obnoxious that they annoy Canadians.

The whole issue is “frivolous and junk”.

Business is responsible for the bulk of all lawsuits in this country. The Congress has enabled business to sue people for all sorts of things, including downloading songs from the Internet.

Malpractice insurance is going up because the economy is in the tank and medical costs are skyrocketing.

The whole stock of “horror stories” about malpractice awards is essentially bogus. They amount to a series of anecdotes that don’t stand up to scrutiny, a litany of urban legends.

If doctors would clean house, malpractice lawsuits would plummet. Medicine is a guild system with the doctors in control, but they don’t want to purge the bad doctors. Doctors rarely report colleagues who are incompetent, and avoid testifying against each other. If doctors started removing the minority that cause the lawsuits, instead of protecting them, the insurance companies might be forced to lower rates.

Florida slapped these caps on and the insurance companies responded by raising rates. For the slow, the caps had absolutely no effect.

Also be warned that this bill the President wants is going to shield drug companies and others from law suits. More payoffs for campaign contributors.

Also on the World Service, former British Secretary of State for International Development, Clair Short, said she never visited disaster sites because she felt that VIP visits used resources needed for recovery efforts, and if you couldn’t tell that Asia was a disaster after the tsunami you must not watch much “telly”.

Having just gone through hurricane Ivan, I would say that between looters and sightseers, I prefer looters who at least have a reason for being out. If these guys need first-hand knowledge about disasters, they can watch the weather and move into a trailer before the next hurricane hits.

He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse.
Psalms 28:27 [KJV]

As reported by the BBC World Service and Ntodd: Michael Schumacher, the dominant driver in Formula 1 racing, has donated $10 million dollars to tsunami aid. That’s 40% of Schumacher’s annual driving contract, so he won’t be a burden on the welfare system any time soon, but it will probably be a jolt to German tax officials. The officials will also be dealing with Chancellor Schroeder’s decision to offer a total of $680 million dollars of assistance over the next 3 to 5 years.

Excuse me, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, are you ashamed of your paltry offer yet?

To give people a basis for evaluation of these aid numbers, the US gives Israel $3 billion every year, and has done this for years. That’s where the bulk of US foreign aid goes.

Médecins Sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders] has announced that it has received all of the money it can use in the tsunami disaster and asks that you give to others.

They have decided that it is better to be honest and to admit there are limits, than to continue to take donations which they know cannot be used as the donors wish.

Honesty, what a concept. This is why I have supported them in the past, and will support them in the future.

Oxfam still needs money, as does the International Red Cross / Red Crescent. These groups are going to be feeding millions for months while the economies and distribution systems are re-built.

Yesterday Colin Powell mentioned, almost in passing, that there are four to five thousand US citizens missing in the areas struck by the tsunami. Apparently a State Department spokesman had mentioned this a few days ago. I can’t find this fact being reported, only the 15 confirmed dead.

The BBC Foreign Victims box has the same disconnect for the two largest donors:

Germany: 60 dead
1,000 missing
Sweden: 52 dead
2,322 missing
Britain: 41 dead
159 missing
France: 22 dead
99+ missing
Norway: 16 dead
91 missing
Japan: 21 dead

Australia: 12 dead
79 missing
South Korea: 11 dead
9 missing
[Figures include those feared dead but not all unaccounted for. Sources: Reuters, AP]

Digby mentioned this lack of reporting this morning.

Doesn’t the M$M think the American public would be interested in that fact? Doesn’t Acme, Inc. think this would strike a chord with people, and perhaps encourage Americans to be more generous towards relief efforts?

If the worst case comes true and up to five thousand Americans have died in Asia, how are Americans going to react to Dubya hanging around at the ranch cutting brush and his initial $15 million dollar aid package?

Kelly Freas will probably be remembered by the majority as the creator of the image of Alfred E. Newman that appeared on the cover of Mad magazine, but I was more familiar with his work on many science fiction magazines and book cover art for which he received many awards.

If those I highlight seem odd to some, I prefer to highlight those who others may overlook. It isn’t that one is more important than another.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne

Unable to fake sympathy, Dubya has asked his father and Bill Clinton to convince people to donate. I assume he doesn’t intend to cancel the coronation and donate the $40+ million price tag to the victims of the tsunami. He knows that he is not going to get any money from the Religious Reich, who have yet to even acknowledge the disaster and are unlikely to ask their mailing list to display “Christian” charity when there are people left to hate.

George H.W. Bush can appeal to real Republicans, and the Big Dog can appeal to real Christians.

The M$M has been running stories about the declining number of murders in major cities. They are claiming that the decline is due to the hard-nosed policing pioneered in NYC under Mayor “Giggles” and his “no jaywalking” crusade.

Real slowly for the journalists: all reliable research shows that the crime rate is directly proportional the number of males between 15 and 45 in society. The crime rate has been going down since 1992 because the leading edge of the “Baby Boom” hit 46 in 1992. As the “Boomers” age the number of people available to commit crimes go down. Nothing else that has ever been done has shown anything more than a “noise-level” effect on the crime rate: not community policing, not longer sentences, not an armed citizenry, not get tough, not sentencing reforms, not the death penalty, not planting flowers, not et cetera . . . ad nauseam.

How many prisons are needed, how many cops are needed, how many courts are needed? How many males between 15 and 45 do you have? I’m sorry, but that’s all there is to it.

Digby has a long post about the real working conditions in the 19^th and early 20^th century called: Nostalgia.

It is really annoying when people who have made no effort to study history claim to know all about the way things were back in the “good old days”.

Those who see social programs as a liberal conspiracy might be shocked to learn that sick pay and medical benefits programs were first instituted by that “lefty radical” Otto Fürst von Bismarck-Schönhausen, Chancellor of the German Reich at the end of the 19^th century. The reason for this “bleeding heart liberal” to create these programs was the reality that 90% of German workers were not in good enough physical shape to be drafted into the military. Britain soon followed Bismarck’s lead for the same reason. Nine out of ten factory workers too sick or exhausted to meet minimum requirements for the draft should give people a pretty good idea of what their living conditions were like.

Social Security is a form of national security program. It is also interesting that medical insurance was seen as the most pressing need of the workers. Unemployment insurance soon followed. Public schools were instituted in the United States to provide educated workers for industry as well as “cannon fodder”.

People forget that Herbert Hoover expected private charities to deal with the effects of the Great Depression. As we know now, they couldn’t do it, so the government had to take up the slack. I don’t mind trying new ideas, but I really resent ignorant people suggesting we try old ideas that we already know failed. Supply-side tax cuts didn’t work for Ronald Reagan and they are not working for George W. Bush. How many times must they be tried before these idiots learn they are a failure?

He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.
Proverbs 27:14

It is much better to remain silent and let everybody think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln [restating Proverbs 17:28]

A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
John Stuart Mill

While people have been focusing on Ohio and the governor’s race in Washington, my old hometown, San Diego, has been having fun with the mayor’s office.

You don’t have to be crazy or a crook to be elected mayor of San Diego, but most former mayors tend to fall into one of those categories.

The election is non-partisan, which normally means it is a contest among Republicans, as the town and county has much in common with Orange County, i.e. “conservative”, Republican, insane, and fiscally mismanaged. Roger Hedgecock is a former mayor who provided entertainment with his multiple re-trials for financial “errors in judgment”.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a story on the attempts to install the individual who actually received the largest number of votes, write-in candidate Donna Frye, rather than the current mayor, Dick Murphy.

I know and did work for two of the attorneys involved: Bruce Henderson and Mike Aguirre, so I won’t comment on why I think one of them has nested with a group of crows that no self-respecting legal eagle would ever fly with.

For those who don’t know the basics of this: more than enough votes to make Ms. Frye the uncontested winner have been thrown out because the voters wrote in her name but didn’t fill-in the circle next to that name.

The BBC has before and after aerial photos of Banda Aceh in an update from Sumatra. The pictures make manifest the power of the wave.

It is hard for me to understand that the local people who have lived by the shore all their lives didn’t understand that the water being pulled suddenly back into the ocean meant a huge wave would be coming. It wasn’t just children who went out on the newly exposed seabed to pick up grounded fish, but adults from the villages that were caught away from the shoreline when the wave struck.

I don’t like the water and have never been dumb enough to buy a boat [AKA a hole in the water into which you pour money]. I can swim and scuba dive. I can actually stand up on a surfboard and exercise some control over it. I could, if necessary, build a watercraft and sail it to a given destination even without a following wind, but I wouldn’t do it by choice. In spite of that I learned a very important rule about the water: if the water is doing something that fish can’t handle, you sure can’t handle it, so get away.

For example, if there are dead fish on the surface of a body of water, don’t go swimming in that water and don’t drink it. If the water is sucked away from the shore so quickly that the fish can’t stay wet, something bad is going to happen. It may be an overcautious approach, but it works for me.

[Update at 7:23pm]: More “before & after” photography via Len at Dark Bilious Vapors