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The Wall Street Journal reports that bankruptcy filings are up 32% from 2008.

Mr. Mann (a law Professor at Columbia University) said he believes bankruptcies reached their peak sometime last year, but bankruptcy attorneys from across the country said there was no sign that business was slowing. The 113,274 filings in December alone were a third higher than the same month a year earlier.

As I reported before, we have been hearing that we are in a recovery phase for over a year now, but the news just keeps getting worse. The unemployment figures for December will be released this friday, I believe. Will those figures show an increase in the ranks of the nearly 15.5 million unemployed?

My favorite attempt at spin is this story. The math is intended to confuse you, so let me see if we can work it out:

Retail sales rose 3.6% from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24, compared with a 2.3% drop in the same period a year ago, according to figures from SpendingPulse, which tracks all forms of payments, including cash. Adjusting for an extra shopping day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the number was closer to a 1% gain. Last year, the economy was in “critical condition,” said Michael Macnamara, vice president at MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse. “This year, it’s in stable condition.”

So lets start by setting sales in the Christmas season of 2007 as “normal,” or $1000. Now 2009 saw a 2.3% drop, meaning sales dropped during that period to $977. Now adjusting sales figures to account for the fact that the 2009 season has one fewer shopping day increases our sales by 1% to 987. That figure is still 1.3% lower that 2007. In fact, if those figures are adjusted for the inflation we saw in 2008, the sales figure would be closer to $946.

In other words, the increase in sales over the normal of two years ago is less than the rate of inflation. Sales figures for this Christmas season are more than 5% lower than pre-financial crisis levels. I am tired of being told that things are better, I am tired of being lied to. When all of this started, I listened to the talking heads who told me to keep my money invested where it was and take the “long view.” They said the smart thing to do was wait it out, and that we would improve.

I lost over half of my life savings. My home value dropped to less than half of what I owed on it. My mother has had to come out of retirement, as the nest egg she built with my late father becomes depleted. I am sitting on my money. I am buying the one thing that has not lost real buying power- gold and silver. I am getting rid of this boat anchor of a house. I will buy another at half price, and hope for the best.

Above all, I am no longer listening to the supposed experts that got us all into this mess in the first place.

I am in an Ayn Rand state of mind today, so I will share a few of my favorite quotes:

Do not ever say that the desire to “do good” by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Government “help” to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions to an individual, but permitted to a mob.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

News from Sturgis that a woman was seen at a hospital there with a BAC of 708. Checks with local and state labs where blood-alcohol levels are tested suggest Engle’s reading may be the highest ever recorded in South Dakota.

LD 50 is the level at which 50% of people will die. LD50 for EtOH (alcohol) is 400.

My personal record is transporting a patient with a BAC of 568. He walked to the stretcher. Some of the homeless in my area habitually have a BAC near 300, and will begin to have withdrawals of they drop below 150 or so.

In 2008, 60 percent of all fatal car crashes were caused by intoxicated drivers– 26,000 of them. 85,000 people die each year due to alcohol, whether that be DUI crashes, or health problems caused by extreme intoxication.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. I will be at work, and it is one of the busiest days of the year for EMS workers. Please get a designated driver. It is a rare New Year’s eve when I don’t work a fatal crash. I don’t want to have to tell anyone that there was nothing else I could do to save their loved one.

I would also point out that either guns (excluding suicide) or marijuana kill far fewer people than alcohol.

If you drink a bottle of lemon scented Mr Clean at 3 in the a.m. and then wake up your parents to tell them you did it, you really aren’t trying to kill yourself, you are just being a drama Queen: but at least you have the best smelling vomit ever. Just sayin’.

I think this guy is the one who said he was going to wire $40 million to my bank account. Now that he is in jail, I guess the deal is off…

Abdulmutallab’s father, Umaru, is the former economics minister of Nigeria. He retired earlier this month as the chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria but is still on the boards of several of Nigeria’s biggest firms, including Jaiz International, a holding company for the Islamic Bank

This has got to be one of the funniest Monty Python bits ever.

“You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. If I went around proclaiming myself emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away.”

“Now we see the violence inherent in the system. Come & see the violence inherent in the system. Help help I’m being repressed !”

For Christmas, I got a dehumidifier and a pistol rack for my gun safe, my wife got a set of fiber optic tritium sights for her Glock 19, my Mom got a new revolver, and my Son (among other things) got a copy of Monster Hunters International.

Yesterday was a quiet day at work for the most part. The only calls we ran were for drunk bums and a not serious suicide attempt. (Superficial wrist scratches)

A strong majority leader in the Senate manages to cut deals in the Democrat controlled body and gets unpopular legislation passed. The new law overturns 34 years of legislative precedent, and changes the face of the United States for the rest of history. That Senator goes on to win reelection against his Republican opponent, and then wins the Democrat nomination for President 6 years later. He loses the Presidential election to the same Republican opponent that he defeated in the polls just two years earlier.

Am I talking about Reid and the Healthcare reform bill? No, I am talking about the Senate Majority leader in 1854, Stephen Douglas. His Republican challenger is none other that the first REpublican President, Abraham Lincoln. The unpopular law that was passed was the The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which overturned the Missouri compromise, and set the stage for the civil war and essentially created the anti-slavery Republican party that was to oppose the pro-slavery Democratic party.

The parallels are obvious. Asking that one man spend a portion of his life carrying out labor to the benefit of another amounts to involuntary servitude, slavery, if you will. I sit here wondering if we have not set the stage for the Second American Civil War. If that is so, it is my fervent hope that the second one will be less bloody than the first, and (to borrow a phrase) that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Alas, I fear it already has.

Wow, it seems that incompetence never takes a holiday, and does not care whether you are a Doctor, nurse, or paramedic. I wrote last week about a Doctor who insisted that I did my patient a disservice by going with CPAP instead of Albuterol on a patient with symptoms of CHF.

Well, not to be outdone, we arrived at one of the nursing homes in our area for a reported “heart attack” (I won’t even go into the nurse’s inability to use big boy words) to find every nurse in the facility in this lady’s room. The group included LPNs, CNAs, and even a couple of RNs, and all were trying to administer Albuterol to a woman who was sitting up in bed. The woman looked pretty sick- pale, cyanotic lips, etc.

As I got closer, I noticed to source of the problem. She was pulseless and apneic. I started chest compressions, and one of the nurses was heard calling the facility’s Doctor, and could be heard complaining that we didn’t know what we were doing, as they had just checked the patient, and she was fine. Nevermind that she was in Asystole. Even as I was doing chest compressions, one of the RNs was still trying to give the Albuterol. WTF?!?!?!?

By the time we got to the hospital, we had her intubated, had started an IO, and had given 3mg of Epi, and 2mg of Atropine. The hospital gave 2 more of Epi, and 1 of atropine, and lo and behold- we got a pulse and a BP of 80/60, but it was not to last. She passed away.

So, the lesson here for all of you incompetents- if the patient is not breathing, Albuterol will not help. Just sayin.

Note: Not all nurses are incompetent, just the ones in the nursing homes around here. We often joke that the nurses who scraped by with an 80.1% on the exam are the ones in the SNFs around here.

Note 2: SNF- now there is a joke in itself- SNF= “Skilled Nursing Facility” Haha.

There is an article here about women in some units in the military being subject to court martial if they get pregnant.

Some complain that it infringes on a woman’s reproductive rights. My view is that women use the pregnancy thing to get out of unpleasant military assignments, and then men must be reassigned to those now vacant positions.

When I was in the Navy, my sea/shore rotation was 60/24. That means that for every 60 months I was assigned to a sea going command, it would be followed by 24 months in a shore command. Since a person on shore duty is home nearly every night, shore duty is highly prized. Since there are far more sea duty posts than shore posts, sea duty is usually the first (and only) assignment for a new sailor.

During my 6 years in the Navy, I spent the first year in school, and then the next 5 assigned to a ship. That ship spent 3 and a half of those 5 years at sea, including 3 deployments overseas for 6, 7, and 9 months, respectively.

Women, on the other hand, frequently are assigned to shore duty as soon as they complete initial training. Those who are assigned to sea duty frequently turn up pregnant as soon as the unit is scheduled to deploy overseas. They are then immediately reassigned to shore duty.

Some other unfair facts: Women who are assigned to shore duty outside the continental US (including Hawaii) are counted as being on sea duty, even though they are home every night. A man in the exact same billet is counted as shore duty. So a woman could be assigned to Hawaii for 5 years, and be eligible for 2 years of shore duty in San Diego, while a man in the exact same job would do 5 years floating on a Destroyer, followed by 2 years at San Diego.

Getting pregnant in order to go home is no different than shooting off your toe to go home. And saying it’s an “accident” is a load of crap. It’s no mystery how pregnancy occurs. It’s no magical “accident”

Women have claimed for years that they want the same chances as men to advance in the military, but frequently use their gender as an excuse to escape the real work. It is about time they were held to task.

Edited to add:

Some shore commands in the Norfolk, Va., area report that up to 34 percent of their billets are filled by pregnant sailors, and commanders are complaining about a “lack of proper manning to conduct their mission,” according to a Naval Inspector General report.

When sailors on sea duty become pregnant, they are transferred to shore-based commands that fit certain criteria, such as being close to a Navy medical center. The length of that assignment changed in June 2007, when the Navy extended the postpartum tour from four months after a child’s birth to 12 months. Combined with a nine-month pregnancy, that puts expectant mothers on limited duty for up to 21 months.

21 months? Picture this: you join the Navy, and finish two months of Boot Camp, and 4 months of A school. You get your orders, and get travel time and up to 30 days of leave, then report aboard your first ship: You have been in the Navy for 7 months, and have not contributed to the mission one bit. You get pregnant, and sit on shore duty for 21 months. You now have been in the Navy for 28 months- more than half of your enlistment is over, you have done NOTHING to earn the money you have been paid, and the taxpayer has paid for your medical care and training.

There are 54,000 women serving in the US Navy– and last year, 3,125 (5.8%) of them got pregnant. If that is an average year, then there are 9,375 women (17.4%) on shore duty due to pregnancy at any given time.

To top it off, the woman then gets another set of orders to go somewhere else, which entitles her to another 30 days of leave (because of her change in duty station). Since she is a single mother, she is now entitled to a hardship discharge. It is a waste of money, and turns the military into another government welfare/social program.

The proposed rule change? The military commander was forced to rescind the policy. We can’t infringe on a woman’s right to land on her back with her legs open, now can we? Even if everyone else gets to pay for it: The men of the military who must carry the extra load, the taxpayer who must foot the bill, and the country that is left with a weaker defense system.