Yikes!

This weekend, like most weekends, The Smoking Gun has a carnival of mug shots. The one at right is from this week's collection.

All I can think to say is: YIKES!

But remember... Even this fellow has a mother...

Quote of the Day...

From Jeff Goldstein, at Protein Wisdom:

For those who shout loudest about a necessary “wall” between church and state (which is not in keeping with the plain meaning of the Establishment Clause), there never seems to be any recognition that the actual problem (as opposed to hyperventilating concerns over “Christianists”) is that the new church of politicized science is actively intermingled with the business of the state, elevating political faith to the kind of religion that is infecting public policy to an unhealthy degree.

...and the anthropomorphic global warming phenomenon is perhaps the very best current example, and Al Gore is the high priest. Do read the whole thing, and the WSJ article he's commenting on; both pieces are great Sunday ponder-producers...

Lovely Lawson Valley Weather...

We are having unusually beautiful weather for this season. Normally September is one of our hottest, driest months. We've had some hot days this month, to be sure, but the average temperatures have been well below normal.

Yesterday, last night, and today our weather has been more typical of what we get in November – cool, dry days with very clear air and gorgeous blue skies, and then very cool (cold for us!) and humid nights. As you can see by the chart at right, last night we had several hours at 100% relative humidity – most definitely not normal for September. And the temperature dropped all the way to 47°F (8°C) – certainly not unheard of for us, even on a summer evening, but very welcome nonetheless. We haven't run our air conditioner for several days now – I can't remember that ever happening in September before!

If this is what global warming is, I'd like more of it!

Health Care Choices...

Dr. Paul Hsieh, the wizard behind the curtains at GeekPress, has an excellent opinion piece in the Rocky Mountain News. In it, he takes a stand against Colorado's Amendment 56, a proposed law that Coloradans will vote on in November. This law would require all but the tiniest businesses to provide company-paid health insurance for all of their workers. An excerpt:

Two motivations behind this proposed law are (1) the mistaken notion that health care should be a guaranteed “right," and (2) the desire to force businesses (rather than government) to pay for this supposed obligation. But health care is a need, not a right. A right is a freedom of action in a social context, such as the freedom of speech.

It is not an automatic claim on a good or service that must be produced by someone else. There is no such thing as a “right” to a car or an appendectomy. Any attempt by the government to guarantee a false “right” to health care can only be done by violating the actual rights of someone — in this case, business owners.

Dr. Hsieh is not in the majority amongst doctors, if I believe what I read on the matter. Most doctors would like to see all patients have health insurance, and they really don't care very much how that's done – they'll support just about any proposal to provide universal health care insurance.

I'd like to see a few simple, basic reforms to our current health care system:

• The removal of the special tax status that health insurance expenses now have for businesses, coupled with making health insurance costs tax-deductible for individuals. This would remove the artificial incentive for employers to provide health insurance, which is the only reason that employers are expected to provide health insurance today. At the same time, it would create an incentive for individuals to purchase health insurance, in exactly the same way that the mortgage deduction provides an incentive for people to purchase a home.
  
  
• The removal of all the current regulatory barriers to providing and purchasing intrastate health insurance. These regulations today primarily benefit the insurance companies, by limiting the competitive environment to individual states, and discouraging low-cost nationwide entrants. Many people aren't even aware of these regulations, because it is primarily the employers who must deal with them. Today a resident of (say) New York is not allowed to purchase a less-expensive health insurance policy from a company in (say) South Dakota. There's no good reason for this from the consumer's perspective, though it's wonderful from the insurance company's perspective (and the state legislators who benefit from the insurance companies' largesse).

I believe that if just those reforms were enacted, our health care system would be transformed by the forces of competition in the marketplace. For example, consumers would suddenly become aware that if they were willing to cover the minor, routine health care costs themselves, they could purchase very low cost major medical insurance to cover the truly catastrophic illnesses or injuries. This is a choice most people simply don't have today – but I'd be willing to bet you many people would make that choice if they could. Similarly, doctors and hospitals would suddenly have an incentive to provide high quality health care at a lower cost. The incentives today that encourage doctors to order extra (but unnecessary) tests would be flipped upside down – suddenly those extra tests will make them less competitive. These are the exact same market forces that give us the modern miracles of production, like personal computers and the fantastically high quality automobiles we drive today...

I know I'm dreaming, but...I'm allowed to dream, aren't I?

Your Morning Mo'i (and Other Dogly Adventures)...

We're seeing progress almost by the hour with Mo'i. Last night when I took him out on a walk, he did something he does when he's happy – he grabbed the leash in his mouth and “took himself for a walk.” It was very nice to see that behavior, because we know he only does it when he's feeling good. This morning Debbie inspected the incision, and she was happy to see that the swelling is down (exactly as the vet predicted), and there still is no sign of infection. All good!

We had a dog adventure of a totally different kind last night, by coincidence (or at least we think so!). Mo'i, for obvious reasons, couldn't sleep on our bed as he normally does. We had him in a crate in our bedroom. Around 2:30 am, he started whining – something he has done before when we've had him crated. The whining could mean he needs a walk, or (more likely) it just means he wants to get up on the bed.

Debbie got up and took him for a walk just in case, but when she crawled back into bed we noticed there was a wet spot on the bed. A big wet spot, as though someone had dumped a glass of water there. Of course our first thought was that one of our dogs had peed on the bed – something none of our dogs has done for years. But no, this wet spot had no odor, and seemed clean, like plain water. The only thing I've been able to imagine is dog saliva, as though one of the dogs slept with its mouth open and drooling.

Whatever it was, it wasn't something we cared to splash about in as we slept. So (at 2:30 am!) we got up, stripped the bed, threw the bed clothes in the washer, and “camped” in the living room. We made a bed on the floor by using cushions from several chairs and sofas and throwing some blankets over them. Not a very satisfactory bed, for sure – Debbie and I are a little stiff this morning...

Mo'i Update...

Mo'i is doing great! I just got back from taking him for a short walk, and it was a joy to see him behaving completely normally. As usual, he investigated every gopher and ground squirrel hole (even the ones that haven't been used for years!). If you're Mo'i, it's important to smell them all carefully – you just never know when a critter might come by...

When we got back in the house, I took the opportunity to take a few photos. At right you see him looking almost normal. Only the shaved spot on his right front leg (where the catheter was) shows any evidence of his recent surgery. In the photos below, the surgery is a bit more evident.

The surgical wound is looking great. There is no evidence of infection, and only minor swelling. We're keeping an eye out for anything looking abnormal here, at the direction of the vet. Mo'i doesn't go back in for a checkup for two weeks.

As always, click on any of the photos to get a larger view...

Mo'i Is Home!

Yesterday Mo'i had surgery to repair a slipped disc. This morning, an astonished-sounding vet called Debbie and said (with many more words) that Mo'i was recovering so well and so fast that he thought we should take him home this evening.

So of course we did! Debbie and I drove down together, paid our bill (don't ask!), and waited for the technician to bring Mo'i down to us. He rounded the corner in the hallway well ahead of the technician, who was leaning backwards to counter-balance Mo'i's bulldozer-like pulling. That was one happy dog! Lots of happy grunting and whimpering, hugs, and a 200 mile-per-hour wagging tail. We lifted him carefully into the truck and took off for home.

And now Mo'i is resting very comfortably in his familiar crate. He is one very happy dog tonight. Adding to his pleasure is the fact that he has no dietary restrictions, so he's getting (and will be getting) a few more than the usual dog treats – and there's nothing that Mo'i likes more than dog treats!

He's got a rectangular shaved area on his back, with a roughly 8 inch long incision running right down his backbone. There are no sutures visible; the technician told us they were entirely under the skin. Mo'i acts almost completely normal, and his strength seems to be unreduced – certainly not what I was expecting after such a major surgery. Twice since we've had him home, he's yelped in pain; it seems to be associated with rotating motions on his back (as when he's shaking himself). Otherwise, we can't even sense any discomfort in him. We're going to keep him completely quiet for 2 weeks, and then after that we gradually ramp up the level of exercise. The vet tells us that he should back to normal in about 6 weeks.

Amazing!

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of Mo'i. Tonight we're just happy to have our dog back, and healthy...

Lots More Patriots...

Excellent:

We're Still Waiting, Harry...

The Washington Examiner has a great piece this morning about how Harry Reid and his band of bandits is not draining the swamp, as he promised to do. No, he's doing quite the opposite. The piece is very short, so I'm taking the liberty of republishing the whole thing:

As the stock market plunged nearly 1,000 points in two days this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was preoccupied with protecting billions of dollars worth of earmarks contained in a separate, unpublished committee report that got a one-sentence reference in a giant $612 billion defense bill. Reid engineered the 61-to-32 vote to limit debate on the bill, thus barring consideration of an amendment offered by Sen. Jim DeMint. The South Carolina Republican’s amendment would have deleted the reference to the committee report so that it would have to be considered separately. By leaving the language in the bill, the lawmakers were able to carry out one of their favorite maneuvers: Incorporating committee reports into omnibus bills so they can give billions of tax dollars to their cronies without recorded votes on specific spending measures. This is the same Harry Reid who with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of Republican corruption if voters would return the Democrats to the majority.

But Reid’s move was not just a slap at DeMint. Under pressure from a bipartisan coalition of fiscal watchdog groups, including Porkbusters, Club for Growth, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers for Common Sense, President George W. Bush signed an executive order last January that directed federal agencies to ignore earmarks that only appear in committee reports. If DeMint’s proposal had passed, the earmarks in the defense bill’s committee report would have been merely suggestions – not legally binding spending instructions. No wonder Reid made sure the South Carolinian’s amendment never made it to the Senate floor.

A task force created by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recommends that all earmarks and their congressional sponsors be included explicitly in spending bills, so they can be honestly debated and voted upon by the House and Senate, as the Constitution requires. This would give members of Congress sufficient leeway to direct public funds to worthy projects in their home districts, while making the lawmakers accountable to taxpayers. It is significant that Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., who opposed the DeMint amendment, admitted that it would have created “a huge shift in the power of the purse.” He’s right about that. But a shift from shady legislative maneuvers like Reid’s to full public disclosure and accountability is exactly the kind of change most needed on Capitol Hill. Voters are still waiting for that swamp to be drained.

We Are Terrorists!!!

You just can't make this stuff up. This is a quote from the North Korean Foreign Ministry:

“The DPRK (North Korea) neither wishes to be delisted as a 'state sponsor of terrorism' nor expects such a thing to happen.”

The left claims to believe that any disagreements we might have with people like this can be negotiated away. Me, I think the only “negotiating” one can do with people like this is the kind of negotiating that involves aiming weapons of terrorist destruction (i.e., U.S. Marines, JDAMs, cruise missiles, etc.) directly at their heads.

The One's Email Inbox...

Courtesy of The Onion (it's a spoof, of course – but hysterical!) Click to enlarge and enjoy!

The State of the States...

The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) is out with its annual ranking of the 50 U.S. states (yes, 50, Barack, not 57!) by an economic freedom index that the PRI invented. It always makes interesting reading, and even if you don't fully agree with their criteria the comparisons between states are always interesting. Click on the picture at right to get a larger view; go here to read the whole report and the associated press release.

California is right down in the mud along with other bastions of socialism like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. This is no surprise to those of us who live here. I, like many others I know, constantly ask myself the question: “Is it still worth it? Is the price of living in California too high? Should I leave now?” We're still here, but we're still asking the question. Each year, more people (both numerically and percentage-wise) vote with their feet and leave – California's emigration rate has been monotonically increasing for years.

On the other side, there's a geographical cluster in the top six positions. We own some property in one of those states (Idaho), and that beckons to us as a likely refuge from California. One could have an entertaining debate about why those states rank so much higher, but for me the most interesting part is the magnitude of the difference between those high-ranked states and the low-ranked states: nearly 2-to-1 on the index. There are days – such as any day I have to listen to a California Assemblyman or Senator – when that difference is mighty appealing...

Mo'i Update...

We just heard from the vet that Mo'i is out of surgery and doing just fine. Whew!

Best of all: the surgery confirmed that the problem was exactly what the vet thought it was – fragments of disc that were pinching a nerve the runs to his right rear leg. That means it was not a tumor or any other life-threatening issue.

The vet thought she saw a single fragment on the MRI yesterday, but it turns out that the actual situation was a bit messier. If I am correctly understanding her description, it appears that for whatever reason, this particular disc in Mo'i's back calcified, hardened, and then broke apart into multiple pieces. One of those pieces was pinching that nerve.

During the surgery she cleaned out all the little fragments, then put Mo'i back together. His back is currently being iced to reduce swelling, and he's on good pain medication. They don't want us to visit tonight, because they want him quiet and still. Dang. We'd sure like to see him right about now...

But the important stuff is that he's ok, and we're done with this problem. Even better, the vet says there's no reason to believe that his agility work contributed to this injury in any way, and he's perfectly ok to go back into competition.

We can hardly wait for Saturday morning, when we get to bring him home. And tomorrow afternoon, when we can visit with him.

A big thanks to all of you who sent kind words and thoughts – 'tis much appreciated by these worried “dog parents.”

Everything Is All Right...

...but for the last 24 hours we've been really worried.

Mo'i is our agility champion field spaniel – just over 8 years old and in his prime. A few days ago Debbie noticed that he seemed to be reluctant to jump up on us (something he loves to do when he greets us), and he wouldn't do the “dog food dance” when she fed him. She figured he'd pulled a muscle or something, and was watching him closely.

Last night she noticed the symptoms suddenly got worse. Now he was favoring his right rear foot, and showing some evidence of pain. Debbie got on the phone with our wonderful vet (Dr. Christine Wilson), and then ran him right down for an exam. Shortly after that I got a call: Dr. Wilson suspected a slipped disc, or something like that, and wanted us to get Mo'i to a specialist immediately.

So I met Debbie at Dr. Wilson's place, and we headed to the Veterinary Specialty Hospital in Sorrento Valley (almost an hour from home). They examined him, and recommended an MRI to determine what was wrong. We left poor Mo'i there, in pain, and went home very worried.

This morning we got a call from the neurology vet, with some very hopeful news: after an evening on pain meds and muscle relaxants, Mo'i was looking much better. The vet even talked with us about the possibility of the injury being relatively minor, and of treating it with (basically) bed rest and quiet. But after some careful discussion with her, we decided to go ahead with the MRI to see what it would find. We want to know what's going on, and that we're giving him the best treatment – not just guess at it.

This afternoon they did the MRI, and the vet called us with the results. She's about 99% sure that there is a fragment of a disc that's pinching a nerve and causing the symptoms. She recommended surgery – but it's relatively straightforward surgery, going in through the top of the spine (bone, not muscle). Success isn't guaranteed, but it's very likely. Recovery should be fairly fast, about 5 to 7 weeks to a full recovery. And the surgery will remove all ambiguity about the cause of his problem – if it is a tumor, bony growth, or whatever, when they're done with the surgery, they'll know for sure.

This evening we went down to visit with Mo'i. Lordy, he was happy to see us! We spent some quality time with him, then remanded him to the care of the techs at the hospital. Tomorrow around midday he goes under the knife. We'll visit him again tomorrow night, and then on Friday, barring any complications, we can take him home.

We're thinking that all of this is good news. We're pretty sure now that we know what the problem is, and it's completely treatable with low-risk surgery. We went home feeling much better.

And then tonight there was one final happy event. On one of the agility newgroups (on Yahoo!), a woman that Debbie knows through agility wrote of her surprise when she discovered that Mo'i was checked into the hosptital where she works. What a coincidence! She wrote on the newsgroup of how she checked up on Mo'i several times during the day today, and will continue to do so. It is no small comfort to us to know that a friend of the family is there keeping an eye on Mo'i. And it put a smile on our face to read her reports of Mo'i's cheerful demeanor and constantly wagging tail...

We'll be a little distracted for the next few days, folks...

Service-now in the News Again...

This time it's a nice little piece about one of our customers: Orrick, an international law firm. Orrick's IT operations are located in Wheeling, West Virginia; I visited them a couple months ago to help them get our Discovery product (a piece of our overall product that I've been focused on) up and running. Here's the lead from the article:

Changing your Service Desk solution can be a large project with many challenges. The ideal is to improve customer service, while reducing costs and making the transition as painless as possible. Many companies also want to adopt ITIL processes into their Service Desk. For Orrick, the SaaS solution Service-Now.com was the choice.

The Discovery product gets a nice little mention, and there's a video showing the Orrick facilities and several of the people that I worked with there. Orrick's service team is a finalist for a prestigous industry award, and they give our product credit as one of the things (certainly not the only thing!) that got them there...

Obama and Education...

The Obamas' little girls go to a pricey private school – $20,000+ per year each just for tuition. I applaud them for being willing to sink that kind of serious money into providing a solid education for their kids. I don't know anything at all about the school they're sending their kids to, but I have to assume that they've got their little girls' best interests in mind, and that they're doing the best they know how to give their kids the opportunity to excel. That's terrific, and I mean that most sincerely – this is one of the few actions of the Obamas that I find admirable.

But it also serves to point out, in a very clarifying way, Obama's staggering hypocrisy on the subject of education. He and his wife make good use of their wealth to get their kids out of our miserable public schools – but Obama adamantly opposes any such opportunity for ordinary parents. You know, those parents his party claims to represent.

The issue of education, perhaps more than any other, highlights the intrinsic conflict of interest between ordinary people and the Democratic Party. Ordinary parents (the kind who can't afford to spend $20K/year on their kids) desperately want to be able to control where their kids go to school. The Democratic Party (most definitely including Obama) opposes any and every kind of school choice.

The National Education Assocation (NEA) rates Obama's voting record on education as “perfect”. Their definition of perfect is very much self-interested, no matter how much they cloak it in “for the children” rhetoric.

The NEA and Obama are for more education funding, and against any financial reform. The implicit assumption in this is that public schools currently use their funding in a manner which could not be improved, and of course this is absurd. There are numerous examples of non-public school systems that spend less, have smaller bureaucracies, and that graduate kids with demonstrably superior knowledge and skills. The parochial school system is but one such example, but it's a good one.

The NEA and Obama are against any form of school choice, including (most famously) vouchers. While they don't like to say this directly, one cannot escape the conclusion that their objective is to force every parent to send their children to the school chosen for them by the education bureaucracy. No school choice for ordinary parents, only for the wealthy.

The NEA and Obama are against merit pay, are against firing substandard (but certified) teachers, and are against every other program that would rid our public schools of bad teachers and attract good teachers to them. They have many arguments for these positions, but they all boil down to this: they are putting the interests of the rank-and-file (mediocre by definition) union members ahead of the interests of the children. Oh, they won't say that, of course – but that is in fact what they are doing.

Obama's and the Democratic Party's position on education is inexplicable until you factor in this: the single biggest supporter of the Democratic Party is the NEA. Not just in cash, but also in contributions of grass-roots labor. For example, over half of all the delegates to the Democratic Party's convention are NEA members (and more than half the remaining delegates are members of other public-sector unions). The Democratic Party (and Obama) must support the NEA's positions, or they lose money and help they can't afford to lose.

In a very real way, the Democratic Party is an extension of public-sector unions, most especially the NEA. The interests of those unions (and by extension, of the Democratic Party) are clearly in conflict with those “ordinary Joe” voters the Democrats claim to support.

Obama: hypocrite on education. Here's a case where his actions speak far louder than his words. He and his wife have made a choice to take their kids out of public school. We all know why they're doing so – and I, for one, completely agree with him on that score. But Obama doesn't want you and I to have that same choice...

Full Moon...

Just got back in from taking the dogs for a walk, at 4 am. There's a full moon high in our clear southwestern sky, and it is very bright. I could easily see colors – not only bright colors in close objects (like the dog's leashes), but also on the hills several miles away. The bright moonlight lit up Cajon Mountain, some 15 miles away; its light-colored granite faces were clearly visible. The skies were relatively haze-free – I could still make out major constellations, the Pleiades, etc.

The dogs seemed to enjoy the moonlight, too – they were straining at their leashes for our entire morning walk...

Democrats Hit Bottom, Keep Digging (Chapter 16,543)...

Reader Gary P. sent me to this post over at the Daily Kos, recommending the analysis by Paul Hackett (a well-known liberal commentator who posts over there). The analysis is interesting, but what really caught my eye was Hackett's advice to Democratic operatives in Ohio, saying that the message they should send to the media is this:

"Sarah Palin? Can't keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant. Sarah Palin? Can you trust Sarah Palin and her values with America's future? John McCain? Divorced from his first wife one month and marries a billionaire influence peddler and convicted felon. John McCain, a record of rash and impulsive decisions. That’s not change that’s more of the same.”

Seriously, this is what he's recommending. It's not a parody or a joke; he means it. It's as if the backfire on the Democrats from all the lies and dirt they've already spread about Palin was invisible. The Democrats are in worse shape than I thought, if this is the level they've descended to...

Farewell from the Commander...

General David Petraeus has turned over his command in Iraq to move up the chain to CENTCOM. We Americans owe this exceptional leader our gratitude. Here's his farewell letter to the troops that were under his command:

Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and Civilians of Multi-National Force-Iraq:

It has been the greatest of privileges to have been your commander for the past 19 months. During that time,we and our civilian and Iraqi partners have been engaged in an exceedingly complex, difficult, and important task. And in the face of numerous challenges, we and our partners have helped bring new hope to a country that was besieged by extremists and engulfed in sectarian violence.

When I took command of Multi-National Force-Iraq in February 2007, I noted that the situation in Iraq was hard but not hopeless. You have proven that assessment to be correct. Indeed, your great work, sacrifice, courage, and skill have helped to reverse a downward spiral toward civil war and to wrest the initiative from the enemies of the new Iraq.

Together, Iraqi and Coalition Forces have faced determined, adaptable, and barbaric enemies. You and our Iraqi partners have taken the fight to them, and you have taken away their sanctuaries and safe havens. You have helped secure the Iraqi people and have enabled, and capitalized on, their rejection of extremism. You have also supported the Iraqi Security Forces as they have grown in number and capability and as they have increasingly shouldered more of the responsibility for security in their country.

You have not just secured the Iraqi people, you have served them, as well. By helping establish local governance, supporting reconstruction efforts, assisting with revitalization of local businesses, fostering local reconciliation, and conducting a host of othernon-kinetic activities, you have contributed significantly to the communities in which you have operated. Indeed, you have been builders and diplomats as well as guardians and warriors.

The progress achieved has been hard-earned. There have been many tough days along the way, and we have suffered tragic losses. Indeed, nothing in Iraq has been anything but hard. But you have been more than equal to every task.

Your accomplishments have, in fact, been the stuff of history. Each of you should be proud of what has been achieved and of the contributions you continue to make. Although our tasks in Iraq are far from complete and hard work and tough fights lie ahead, you have helped bring about remarkable improvements.

Your new commander is precisely the right man for the job. General Ray Odierno played a central role in the progress achieved during the surge. He brings tremendous skill, experience, and understanding as he returns to Iraq for a third tour and takes the helm of MNF-I just seven months after relinquishing command of MultiNational Corps-Iraq. I have total confidence in him, and I will do all that I can as the commander of Central Command to help him, MNF-I, and our Iraqi partners to achieve the important goals that we all share for the new Iraq.

Thank you for your magnificent work here in the "Land of the Two Rivers." And thank you for your sacrifices-and for those of your families--during this crucial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I am honored to have soldiered with you in this critical endeavor.

With great respect and all best wishes


David H. Petraeus
General, United States Army
Commanding

In my own experience in the military, commanders like these were rare indeed. I hope that's no longer true – I hope we now have a passel of them tucked away to help us in the tough years ahead. But meanwhile, I'm very glad we've had General Petraeus...

Speechless...

Me, that is – not this guy:


This is James David Manning, Ph. D., of the ATLAH World Missionary Church, in New York. I know nothing about him or his church. After watching this video (sent to me by my brother), my head is still spinning and I'm suffering from some combination of shocked sensibilities, stomach pains from laughing so hard, and hoarseness from cheering. I don't know whether to give this guy a little more exposure, or to soak my computer in some antibiotic solution.

So I put it up here for you to view. I look forward to your reactions...