Divemedic

An Orlando Sentinel article about setting captive whales free got me to thinking. Isn’t supporting an animal for its entire life, giving it everything it needs, destructive to the animal’s ability to hunt and survive on its own? The article itself says this:

Keiko preferred the company of people to other killer whales. He preferred a handout to catching his own food.

Isn’t the Welfare program the same thing? People who have spent their entire lives on the government dole have lost the ability to hunt. They have also lost their freedom, for in accepting the handout, you become dependent on the handout giver, as captive as any killer whale.

Is it any wonder that people, like animals in captivity, occasionally lash out and kill?

Reading this article from the Cato Institute, I started thinking about the post where I demonstrated that Clinton did not balance the budget,and looking at government expenditures. (Yes, I know that I have no life.)

Let me walk you through this:
This site has an interesting chart, showing you the National debt as a percentage of GDP.

Looking at the GDP of the nation in 1980 (when Jimmy Carter left office), it was $2.725 trillion dollars, or if you want to adjust them to the year 2000 inflated dollars, $5.221 trillion. Government spending that year was $531 billion, ($1.017 trillion in 2000 dollars), or about one fifth of the economy.

In 2000, the year Clinton left office, the GDP was $9.629 trillion and Federal spending was $1.8 trillion (still about 1/5 of the economy).

In 2008, the GDP was $14.373 trillion ($13.366 in year 2000 dollars) and the FedGov budget was $2.9 trillion (still 1/5 of GDP).

Now look at what we spent in 2008, by turning to page 90: Social Security and Medicare is 37% of the budget, Social giveaway programs like Medicaid, welfare, and food stamps were 29% of the budget, and the stuff that the FedGov is actually supposed to be doing (provide for the common defense, yada, yada) was less than 25% of the total budget.

This means that we are pulling dead weight in our economy to the tune of $2 trillion a year, and it makes me wonder how long before the whole thing simply stops working.

The press just ignores it.

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.

The president is an idiot. Since he had just gotten out of college, he was a lawyer. One would guess that any competent lawyer would know the difference between liability insurance and collision insurance. One would also assume that an attorney would know that being rear-ended means that the person doing the rear-ending is liable and should pay for repairs.

This quote, and his story, illustrates the problem with government mandated insurance- the companies will offer the minimum amount of coverage under the law, whether it is worth a crap or not, and many people who can’t afford the good coverage will buy that minimum coverage. Of course, the insurance the president really wants to mandate would not be able to refuse you for a preexisting condition, meaning that you will not have to buy insurance to fix your car until AFTER you have an accident. How anyone thinks the insurance companies will be able to stay in business under those conditions is beyond me.

I am still undecided as to whether any human being can be as stupid and naive as Obama is, or of this is a deliberate attempt to destroy the country.

I was sitting in a restaurant yesterday when I overheard the table next to me talking about the Chile earthquake. One of the women at the table said that it seems like lately there have been a lot more earthquakes than usual. The other responded that it is because the earth is mad that we are creating so much pollution, so it is trying to show its displeasure.

Aside from the obvious stupidity, here is the historical earthquake count for the last two decades, courtesy of the US Geological survey:

or the Eye in the Sky. Rockwell. Alan Parsons Project. Whatever.

They are watching you. So, since even a teen who sends a nude picture of herself to a boyfriend via her cell is considered under the law to be distributing child porn, and the boyfriend in possession of child porn, then someone needs to explain to me how the school officials are not going to jail.

Not only that, but isn’t this a violation of the Third AND Fourth amendment rights of the children and their parents?

The Fed just announced that they are increasing the discount lending rate half again– from .5% to .75%. Here comes phase two of the economic crisis. The US Government last year had a record deficit, increasing the debt by 16% during the last 12 months, despite interest rates dropping 13%, from 3.811 to 3.326 over that same period.

What does this mean? The government paid $383 billion in interest on the debt in 2009. If rates were to rise to pre-recession rates at say 4.188% (the rate for September 2008) interest payments on the debt would rise to over $550 billion. Obama’s projected deficit of $1.5 trillion would balloon to $1.7 trillion, further increasing interest rates and the nation’s debt.

Hello inflation.

From the website FML:

Today, I tried convincing my Valentine-hating boyfriend to send me a card, by explaining how important it is to me. He finally agreed and sent me a card. I opened it up, and it wished me ‘harmony and well-being on Lupercalia’. What is Lupercalia? It’s an ancient Roman festival where men run down the street naked, whipping people with goat skins to encourage fertility. FML

One of the replies:

THE ONLY THING I EVER LEARNED IN LATIN, BUT IT WAS WORTH IT BECAUSE LUPERCALIA IS AWESOME.

I LIED, LATIN REALLY WASN’T WORTH IT. AT ALL. BUT LUPERCALIA IS A WIN. WHICH REMINDS ME OF THE REAL BEST HOLIDAY EVER: GRENDELSMASH.

I have been sitting here for 20 minutes reading these.

Ohhh- or this one:

Today, my boyfriend wanted to have Valentine’s Day sex. He then remembered it was unlimited pancakes at IHOP.

Bestiality? Sex? Nope, just me going for the cheap hits, being the post whore I am.

Tip of the hat goes to the Innocent Bystanders

There was a time when law and medicine were affordable in this country. There was a time when nearly anyone could become a lawyer or a doctor. That was before our colleges changed the system.

Abraham Lincoln was admitted to the State Bar of Illinois in 1837 after spending 3 years reading and studying Blackstone’s book, Commentaries on the Laws of England. Lincoln had a total of 18 months of formal education in his entire life. Now it takes a minimum of 19 years of formal education to become an attorney, 7 of that in a University.

If you want to make something (anything) cheaper, you need to either increase supply or decrease demand. The way to increase the supply of either doctors or lawyers is to make becoming a doctor or lawyer easier without hurting the quality.

Four years of this education is spent getting a Bachelor’s degree. Anyone who has a degree will tell you that the first two years of the four required to earn a Bachelor’s degree is spend studying subjects that have exactly zero to do with being a doctor or lawyer.

The standard excuse is that you become a more well rounded person when you study the unrelated subjects. My response to you is that when I go to the doctor, or hire a layer, I do not care how well rounded you are, I only care whether or not you are a good doctor or lawyer.