And they’re our… *allies*??

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Feb 022014
 

Investigation seeks answers on Fremont doctor whose clinic infected 99 people with hep C

 

Short form: in 2002, doctors in Fremont, Nebraska, started putting pieced together and realized that a whole bunch of recent Hep C cases had one thing in common: oncologist Tahir Ali Javed was the common link. So, one of his doctor friends asked him about it.  Dr. javed promised to help look into it.

Two weeks later, he hopped a plane and ran off back to his native Pakistan, never to return.

And now, he’s just been elected a public health minister in Pakistan.

The source of the hep C outbreak doesn’t seem intentional, rather the result of *incredibly* (and I’d imagine criminally) shoddy medical practices… basically sharing needles between patients. Bleah. That he ran away from what he apparently knew to be his responsibility says much about him. That the Pakis put him in charge of medical things says much about *them.* Is it “we don’t care that you’re lazy by American standards, that’s just fine here”? Or is it “you sickend and perhaps killed many Americans? Say, that’s neato!”?

 Posted by at 6:57 pm

What happened, Canada? You used to be cool.

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
Jan 292014
 

Conservative website shuttered after libel ruling

In short: Free Dominion, the Canadian counterpart to the formerly great Free Republic political discussion forum, has been shut down because a few commenters said something (hard to tell what) negative about a “human rights” lawyer.

Strictly speaking, the Canadian judicial system has not shut the website down. However, what they *have* done is made a ruling that if any of the supposed libelous statements are repeated on Free Dominion, the owners of the site will be *jailed.* How do you prevent, say, an American leftist from signing up, posting the statements, taking a screenshot of the post they themselves just made, sending it to the Canucops, and having you arrested? You can’t, that’s how, unless to shut the place down.

So, congratulations, Canada, on your innovative new ways to censor political speech you don’t agree with.

An Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for an appeal.

 Posted by at 11:57 pm

Facepalm

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., I'm from the government, news, religion, ಠ_ಠ  1 Response »
Jan 232014
 

Oy vey:

Don’t want to be hassled by creationist teacher? Give up Buddhism, Louisiana public school says

*IF* the story here is true, we’ve got a 6th grade public school teaching that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that if you don’t want your teachers berating you for being a Buddhist, then the cours4e you should set is towards conversion to Christianity. Why, yes, the ACLU *has* jumped into the fray. *IF* the facts are as the story describes them, here’s a time when I hope the ACLU tears ’em a new one.

 Posted by at 6:30 pm

It can’t be *that* hard to kill people…

 AARRRGH, blather, Forward!, Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, politics  6 Responses »
Jan 162014
 

Executed Killer Dennis McGuire Gasped And Snorted For 15 Minutes Under New Lethal Drug Combo

Short form: now that drug companies are making it difficult for states to obtain the usual crop of Lethal Injection drugs for executions, states are tinkering with recipes. And apparently the results aren’t always quite so quick and clean. But… come on, it’s not really that big of a challenge. If executions are to be painless, a few options *immediately* spring to mind:

1) Gunfire to the brain stem

2) Overdose of morphine

3) Put a mask on them, and feed them pure nitrogen or freon. From what I’ve read, thre have been numerous industrial accidents where people have gotten stuck in rooms filled with pure nitrogen or freon, and they have simply, quickly, quietly slipped into unconsciousness, and if not dragged out in a minute or two, slipped into death. Unlike CO2, breathing pure N2 doesn’t bother your lungs, so it doesn’t hurt and you don’t cough and choke.

Nitrogen would seem an obvious and easy one. Anybody know of a reason why this would be problematic?

 Posted by at 11:20 pm

Knuckling under to terrorists

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  1 Response »
Jan 152014
 

Two tales of appeasement in Canada:

School faces human rights complaint over student’s egg, dairy allergy

Short form: some kid is allergic to eggs and milk, so her mother is dragging the school to the “Ontario Human Rights Commission” to get them to *ban* eggs and milk products from the school. The school has already banned nuts.

Imagine trying to feed a school full of children without nuts, eggs and dairy.

Also:

Teen felt ‘degraded’ after teacher backed aikido student’s request to avoid touching females on religious grounds

Short form; a kid of Some Particular Religion (go on, guess) joins a Halifax aikido dojo and refuses to train with females or show them proper respect. Teachers response? Follow Canadian “human rights” rules and change things to accommodate the demanding little prick, to the detriment of the females in the class.

To me, the obvious asnwer would be for the teach to stand the prick in front of the rest of the class and say “New Student here refuses on religious grounds to practice with girls. I won’t make him practice with girls. But then… I won’t make any of the rest of you practice with him either, and I certainly will not practice with him. Do we have any volunteers?”

 Posted by at 8:13 pm

The children are the future

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., I'm from the government, news, Obamazombies, politics, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Jan 132014
 

Once again, New York leads the way:

No books, no clue at city’s worst school

It’s quite a litany of edumacational incompetence. But hey… at least the principal – who barely shows up, but when she does she does so in a BMW with a cliched fur coat – is pulling down a paltry $128,207/year salary.

 Posted by at 7:03 pm

That’s no way to treat a library

 AARRRGH, APR, blather, books, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., history, I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  9 Responses »
Jan 122014
 

As I mentioned on the Space Show interview a while back, one of the events that started me working on Aerospace Projects Review was the reported destruction of the Bell Aerospace technical library. It turns out that aerospace libraries aren’t the only technical libraries to suffer that sort of fate. Behold:

dumpster

This apparently is – or, more correctly,”was” – a good chunk of the Fisheries and Oceans Canada library in Mont-Joli, Quebec. Now it’s dumpster-filler. THIS STORY describes what’s going on at a number of Canadian government Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries where vast reams of irreplaceable data is being simply chucked as a cost-savings measure. Replace “fish” with “rockets” and “oceanography” with “aerospace,” and the story is virtually identical to what has happened time and again in the US aerospace industry.It also describes why “just digitize it” is an insufficient response.

The vast bulk of the technical information generated by and kept at United Tech near San Jose, CA (former manufacturers of the Titan SRMs) was simply chucked, either into recyclers or into vast storage facilities where the information was un-indexed and irretrievable. The main technical library, fortunately, was passed on to CPIA… or at least those bits of the library that hadn’t been appropriated by managers who came in in the last days and simply walked off with stuff (something that did *not* please the chief librarian, but she couldn’t stop it).

Man, there was a *lot* of stuff there that I wish I could’ve walked off with. I’d give someone else’s left nut for their complete CPIA Motor Manuals…

 Posted by at 9:59 pm

Yay, expanding “death taxes” to cover Obamacare

 blather, Forward!, I'm from the government, news, Obamazombies, politics  No Responses »
Dec 252013
 

One of the effects of Obamacare is expansion of medicaid to people of somewhat higher income than previous. It was *supposed* to provide health care for the desperately poor; now it covers up to 138% of the poverty level. Still poor, but perhaps well enough off that even though your income sucks, you might have accumulated some property… a car, a house, a million Hummel figurines, whatever. Normally you might expect to pass these on to your heirs. Ooops! Not anymore!

Washington state, for example, has had an asset “recovery” system in place to bill dead people of the cost of the Medicaid they’d consumed. But up till now, the income standard was so low that only the truly poor would have been on Medicaid, so they wouldn’t have anything for the state to seize. now, though, there’ll be people with stuff actually worth taking.

Is this wrong? Not really… if you consume a product or service, you really should pay for it, and being dead does not absolve you of your bills. For anything else in life, if you’ve racked up a stack of bills and then keel over, your creditors can dip into your estate. What’s new here is that there just might be a whole lot of folk who are not only mourning dear Granny’s departure, but coming to find out that the few trinkets and doodads she had left for ’em in her will now belong to the state.

“If you like your inheritance, you can keep it.”

Expanded Medicaid’s fine print holds surprise: ‘payback’ from estate after death

The article says that the Washington state legislators are scrambling to “fix” this. But it also suggests that this is an unintended consequence. Riiiiight.

 Posted by at 9:37 pm

“Microaggression”

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., humor, I'm from the government, Meh., news, Obamazombies, politics, ಠ_ಠ  10 Responses »
Dec 202013
 

The latest trend in gormless chickenshittery being foisted upon western civilization is ulcerating over – and attempting to bully people into “correcting” – the supposed problem of “microaggression.” You know… not when someone walks past you on the street and suckerpunches you dead in the face, or steals your identity and destroys your life: no, it’s when someone doesn’t refer to you by your chosen pseudo-gender pronoun, or assumes that just because you’ve lived your whole life in the US that you understand English and have some understanding of American culture.

Read up on this dire threat to mankind here:

Unmasking The Mustachioed Menace Of Microaggression

———-

Now: with that out of the way, I shall now endeavor to engage in some blatant microaggression (or perhaps milliaggression). This is based on the latest bit of odd propaganda to come out promoting Obamacare Zealotry posted to Obamas Twitter account:

hipsterdouchebag

That’s just… ummm… Sorry, dude, but I can’t respect a grown man dressed in a one-piece childs pajama outfit, focused on driving his family nuts by yapping incessantly about how wonderful Dear Leaders policies are, wearing that look of insufferable smugness.

There is, fortunately, a wide field of mockery. Because Internet:

The Dozen Funniest Variations of Obama’s Pajama Boy Propaganda

Bbu9B-xIQAAbVeX  Bbu--cMCUAAGmpd

————–

Here’s the thing: The world is *full* to overflowing with instances of “microaggression.” You have two chocies before you: you can stamp your feet and demand that the entire universe conform to *your* worldview, politics, opinions, behaviors and even grammar and diction… or you could, oh, let’s say, MAN THE HELL UP.

Anyone who sees themselves in Pajama Boy and agrees with the yammering yahoos on the importance of eliminating “microaggression”… you need a good solid dose of insensitivity training. You’ll be stronger and happier for it.

BbvLXuqCcAAHkry pajama_09

And unless you were thinking that Pajama Boy is just some poor schlub whose stock photo was used in a bizarre Tweet to prop up Obamacare… turns out he’s an employee for “Organizing for Action,” the successor group to the Obama election organization.

 

[youtube BVzZ83N5y58]

 Posted by at 11:25 am

And I thought American laws were goofy

 AARRRGH, Crazy, history, I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Dec 132013
 

Try this on for size:

Calling for abolition of monarchy is still illegal, UK justice ministry admits

A 165-year-old law that threatens anyone calling for the abolition of the monarchy with life imprisonment is technically still in force – after the Ministry of Justice admitted wrongly announcing that it had been repealed.

It’s not been used in more than a century, but it’s still on the books.

 Posted by at 9:46 pm
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