Faith healing and death

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

A Wisconsin jury found a father guilty of second-degree reckless homicide of his 11 year-old daughter.

Apparently she had diabetes and he and his family chose to pray instead of taking her to the doctor. While I support freedom of religion I draw the line at people letting their children die. If an adult wants to faith heal themselves (and die in the process) I say let them, but I don't feel it's right to make that decision for the kids.

A Chance to "Work Within The System"

[inibo.livejournal.com]

This is dedicated to all those believers in voting and magic pieces of paper.

When they want to know what's is in your bank account they get one of these.




( When we want to know what's in theirs we get one of these... )

You have a congressional representative...
H.R. 1207: Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009

...and two senators.
S. 604: Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009

Make them do their job.

U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 8

The Congress shall have Power To... coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin...

Go ahead, prove Mr. Spooner wrong. Nothing would make me happier.

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain--that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

My God, Jim, it's like 2007 all over again...

bill o'reilly weighs in on the health care debate

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

In this clip Bill O'Reilly claims that the reason life expectancy is higher in Canada is because the US has 10 times as many people resulting in ten times as many deaths and crimes, etc.   I try to be charitable, I've misspoken lots of time, momentarily misunderstood a metric or a stat when presented with it in the heat of discussion, and as such, probably made a stupid remark or asked a dumb question.   But this is uttered by a "talking head", a man whose job it is to analyze, discuss and elaborate on the issues of the day. He's ostensibly doing an analysis of health care systems and it's a prepared bit, not an off the cuff reaction to someone calling in.  Life expectancy, for better or worse, is a very simple metric frequently used in comparing health systems.  There cannot be any excuse for coming on the air and pretending to speak intelligently on an issue while failing to grasp such a simple idea.  Try as one might to be charitable, it's hard to conclude anything other than the man is a complete moron, a blowhard who cares nothing for truth, only winning arguments.  Yet tens of millions of people listen to him and form opinion based on what he's saying, a man so fucking stupid and/or pig-headed that he doesn't even understand, or bother to try to understand how to interpret life expectancy metrics.  This is the man playing a key role in helping Americans form opinions in the health care debate.  Sometimes I think my head will explode.

x-posted to my journal