Alright, Now Science Has Gone Too Far

Now science has crossed the line. What line, you ask? The line that separates my childhood safely from the clutches of reality.

John Scannella and Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, two men who apparently study dinosaur remains for a living, have decided based on "evidence" that the famed Triceratops and its close relative, Torosaurus, are not actually separate species but rather younger and older animals from the same species. As the two men say, "...triceratops is merely the juvenile form of torosaurus. As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form."

Well la-dee-frickin-da. Aren't we just so smart. As the article states, "Scannella and Horner examined 29 triceratops skulls and nine torosaurus skulls, mostly from the late-Cretaceous Hell Creek formation in Montana. The triceratops skulls were between 0.5 and 2 metres long. By counting growth lines in the bones, not unlike tree rings, they have shown clearly that the skulls come from animals of different ages, from juveniles to young adults. Torosaurus fossils are much rarer, 2 to 3 metres long and, crucially, only adult specimens have ever been found.

The duo say there is a clear transition from triceratops into torosaurus as the animals grow older. For example, the oldest specimens of triceratops show a marked thinning of the bone where torosaurus has holes, suggesting they are in the process of becoming fenestrated."

Until they find a skull whose age is in between those of the juvenile/young adult Triceratops and the adult Torosaurus, and observe whether or not it has holes, this whole thing is just two guys spouting off their somewhat educated opinions. It really is just speculation on their part, evidence be damned. Then the pair goes on to claim that the large bony frill on the skull actually wasn't for defense. "If I was a triceratops I wouldn't want anything too damaging to happen to my frill, as it had numerous large blood vessels running over the surface,' says Scannella. 'I don't imagine holding up a thin bony shield that can gush blood would be a very effective means of defence."

How about this idea, dumbass? Humans have bones for protection, none of which are very thick...take the ribs for example. Along with the spinal column the ribs are just about the only natural defense our body has for our internal organs. And they're covered by skin, which, when injured, GUSHES BLOOD! Why would it be so far-fetched to think that a dinosaur may have used a large bony structure that just happened to be covering the area over its NECK as a defensive tool? Hmmh, yeah, can't answer that can you? The "upside" (if you can call it that) is this: Torosaurus will now be abolished as a species and specimens reassigned to Triceratops, says Horner." Whatever, on to the next part. Oh yeah...there's a next part.

So the Triceratops thing is bad enough right? Well guess what kids, they aren't finished! Get a load of this: "Last year, Horner and Mark Goodwin of the University of California, Berkeley, claimed something similar for another iconic Hell Creek dinosaur, the dome-headed pachycephalosaurus, perhaps best known for headbutting jeeps in Jurassic Park 2.

Two similar dinosaurs, classified as Dracorex and Stygimoloch, are also known from Hell Creek. Horner and Goodwin say that they are not separate species but juveniles of pachycephalosaurus (PLoS One, vol 4, p e7676). If so, this is an even more extreme case of shape-shifting than triceratops, with the animal growing horns and then re-absorbing them into its skull as it ages."

How in God's name can horns be re-absorbed? And wouldn't they just be "absorbed," since the process only happens (supposedly) once in the animal's life? "Horner says this makes it unlikely that pachycephalosaurus engaged in headbutting as it, too, retained spongy, immature bone throughout adulthood. As with the frill of triceratops, its dome was probably used for display." So I guess there were certain female dinosaurs that also went wild for the bald look on a male? How would the animal defend itself without a hardened bony skull cap? Would it use harsh language instead? I'm just about in tears.

AND, and, there's this: "a dinosaur called Nanotyrannus has been tentatively reclassified as a juvenile form of Tyrannosaurus rex."

So taken as a whole you have two species being completely removed from the scientific record, another being essentially castrated of its bad-assedness, and the whole idea of a diverse dinosaur population thrown into jeopardy. Good job. I hope you sleep well tonight, Mr. Scannella and Mr. Horner. Know that you have destroyed many a person's fond childhood memories. I will part with this simple message:

The Audacity of Idiocy

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States will extend a "defense umbrella" over our Persian Gulf allies if Iran gets a nuclear weapon. That should make them feel better. Wait, what?

"The secretary's remarks also suggested the course the Obama administration might pursue if, as many analysts predict, an unchecked Iran succeeds in obtaining a nuclear weapons capability before President Obama's term expires -- in effect, how the United States might live with a nuclear-armed Iran. Clinton's comments evoked a vision of the U.S. countering such a threat by bolstering regional defenses and reminding Iran of the dangers of mutually assured destruction -- but not by seeking regime change in Iran or by taking military action to destroy the country's nuclear apparatus."

Theories like mutual assured destruction don't apply to Iran the same way they applied to the Soviet Union. Iran doesn't care one way or the other if they are retaliated against, they will feel that they have the upper hand once they have that weapon. That gives them the edge.

Now try to follow this logic: "We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment that if the United States extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon," Clinton said.

While Clinton may believe it's unlikely that Iran will stand to gain from having a nuke, I personally don't want to let it get to the point where we have to find out. I don't think a U.S. "umbrella" is going to make Israel feel any less threatened if Iran goes nuclear. Also, as far as I recall, once a rogue country gains a nuclear capability, regardless of a regional defense umbrella or not, that is what they call a "game changer." Nukes have to be respected, even if the people wielding them don't garner such sentiment.

I figure the only thing that will stop Iran from obtaining its nuclear capability is a series of strategic military strikes by Israel. God knows our milquetoast foreign policy isn't going to eliminate the threat. With that being said, I also worry that we won't give Israel the support it will need to defend against retaliatory strikes if/once it takes care of Iran's nuclear development sites. Godspeed, boys, it looks like you'll be on your own.

Insurers Feeling The Squeeze To Help Pay For Public "Option"

Democrat Charles Schumer and others said, "Insurance companies should use their profits to help fund as much as $100 billion of a landmark overhaul of the U.S. health-care system."

For an insurance company, that's like putting a round in the gun that's already pointed at their head! Why on Earth would they voluntarily do that? Short answer...they wouldn't.

"Schumer and other Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee, which is leading the effort to forge a bipartisan compromise on health care, said they will probably assess fees on insurers, a plan that drew fire from the industry.

Industry leader UnitedHealth Group Inc. and rivals are facing pressure to contribute after drugmakers and hospitals agreed to billions of dollars of cost savings."

Again, why should the insurance companies contribute just because drugmakers and hospitals have signed on? Those two entities don't offer or pay for insurance! As long as the drugmakers and hospitals still get their money, what do they care? Plus, the revenue they receive will almost certainly increase under a government-run health care plan, because as we all know the government doesn't do anything inexpensively. The private insurance companies are getting strong-armed and forced down the road to their own demise.

"'We need the insurance companies to step up to the plate to be part of the solution,' Schumer said at a news conference in Washington yesterday." Is health care run by the government REALLY a solution? Why won't Schumer and the other Dems step up to the plate and pledge to put themselves and their families on the government health plan, huh? Lead the way!

My fault, I forgot...the government health legislation specifically exempts lawmakers from having to join the system. They get to keep their horrible, overpriced, inconsiderate private health care, but they are saving the rest of us by forcing us into health care run by the government, an omnipotent entity that can do no wrong!

What a travesty. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Take a look at this HHS breakdown of the uninsured population in the United States. The numbers tell the story. For example:

The Uninsured by Citizenship Status
The vast majority (79%) of the uninsured are citizens. However, a disproportionate percentage of the uninsured are non-citizens. While non-citizens are 7% of the population, they are 21% of the uninsured. Non-citizens are a disproportionate percentage of the uninsured because they are more likely to have characteristics associated with higher uninsured rates. Non-citizens are more likely than citizens to:

•be Hispanic (59% vs. 12%),
•have incomes below 200% FPL (51% vs. 30%),
•be young adults age 18 to 34 (42% vs. 22%), and
•work for small firms with fewer than 100 employees (34% vs. 22%).

Or:

The Uninsured by Work Status
The vast majority of the uninsured are working individuals or the children of those who work.(8) In 2004, almost half of the uninsured (46%) worked full time, and another 28% worked part time or for part of the year. Many of the uninsured worked for firms that did not offer coverage, or if their employers offered coverage, they either were not eligible or did not accept the offer. Based on data from the 2001 February Supplement to the CPS matched with the 2001 March Supplement to the CPS, 18 million workers were not offered coverage and another 6 million were not eligible for coverage that their firm offered, representing 54% of the uninsured.(9) In addition, there are 6.9 million workers and dependents that have declined employer coverage and remain uninsured (19% of the uninsured).(10) These individuals are most likely to decline employer coverage because it was too costly: 3.8 million, or 52% said coverage was too expensive. The February-March match file shows another 2.9 million dependents who live with a family member covered by employer sponsored insurance. While there are no follow-up questions on the February CPS to determine why dependents are uninsured, one can surmise that many of those dependents could have been insured under the covered worker's employer plan but the worker found it unaffordable to purchase family coverage.(11)

Part-time workers comprise a disproportionately large percentage of the uninsured because employers often do not offer coverage to part-time workers and because part-time income may make offered insurance less affordable. The median family income of part-time workers is about $13,000 less than the median family income of full-time workers, $63,500 vs. $50,300.

So there you have it. A full 75% of the uninsured in this country are either people who are here illegally, were not offered health care through their employer and chose not to get it on their own, or were not eligible (which could mean a number of things). This article explains the process of buying private health insurance quite nicely. An important paragraph to note is this one:

"If you think you can't afford your own insurance, you might be wrong. While there is a lot of hype in the media about the rising cost of healthcare, health insurance plans are available at a variety of prices. You might not be able to afford the kind of plan an employer would offer, but any plan is better than no plan. At a minimum, you want to be covered in the event of a major incident, such as an illness or the aforementioned broken bone."

Long story short, the government is going to deep-six all of us in an effort to cover the minority of the population that doesn't carry insurance. I would rather have great treatments available to most people, available at all times, as opposed to treatments available to almost all people, available only some of the time. Who will decide who needs a treatment, and when they can get it? Look at Canada and England. Patients in those countries wait exorbitant amounts of time for treatments they desperately need, but the powers that be have decided the patients can wait for. Countless people have died as a result of such a system. This U.S. government health care plan will kill more people than it will save as well.

Pentagon Health Experts Urge Ban On Tobacco Use In Military

Pentagon health experts are campaigning to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "to ban the use of tobacco by troops and end its sale on military property." This is based on a report by the Institute of Medicine, which focused on tobacco use in the military. The reasoning behind the move is that "tobacco use costs the Pentagon $846 million a year in medical care and lost productivity, says the report, which used older data. The Department of Veterans Affairs spends up to $6 billion in treatments for tobacco-related illnesses, says the study, which was released late last month."

The report found that "troops worn out by repeated deployments often rely on cigarettes as a 'stress reliever.'" Since that is the case, why would you want to take that outlet away from them? They defend our freedoms, why shouldn't they be able to make the choice as to whether or not they want to smoke? To save some money? How about killing just one pork program? Viola, there's the money for tobacco-related health care!

Of course, the anti-smokers also weighed in. "The military complicates attempts to curb tobacco use by subsidizing tobacco products for troops who buy them at base exchanges and commissaries, says Kenneth Kizer, a committee member and architect of California's anti-tobacco program.

Seventy percent of profits from tobacco sales — $88 million in 2005 — pays for recreation and family support programs, the study stays."

With that in mind, consider that maybe military personnel know what other military personnel want, and find ways to help each other out. They know their brothers and sisters in arms may smoke, so they took steps that would benefit the military community. That doesn't sound like a bad deal to me. Those who choose to smoke can smoke, and the money generated from that goes to help their families.

Instead of trying to figure out ways to keep service members from smoking, maybe the Pentagon and Washington should try to figure out ways to, I don't know, HELP THEM WIN THE WAR?

Justice Ginsburg Just Lets It All Out

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a soon to be released interview in the New York Times Magazine, gave her thoughts on Sonia Sotomayor, as well as her (Ginsburg's) views on abortion.

"In an interview to be published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she thought the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion was predicated on the Supreme Court majority's desire to diminish 'populations that we don’t want to have too many of.'"

*Crickets chirping*

"Ginsburg discussed her surprise at the outcome of Harris v. McRae, a 1980 decision that upheld the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use of Medicaid and other federal funds for abortions."

*In the distance, a dog barks*

"In 1993, she told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing:

'(Y)ou asked me about my thinking on equal protection versus individual autonomy. My answer is that both are implicated. The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices.'"

Justice Ginsburg has, how can I say this politely, a...skewed...view on abortion. Deciding to get an abortion isn't a choice, it's a crime. What else do you call the voluntary termination of a life? Government doesn't control a woman's decision to get pregnant, she makes that for herself. Where government intervention should come in is when that woman decides she wants to take the life of the baby, more often than not because of a question of convenience. THAT is when somebody MUST step in. That isn't being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices, that's acting to stop a crime from being committed by someone who is trying to avoid being responsible for a choice she already made. Being stupid or not having the forethought to think of what raising a child will do to your life is not an excuse to snuff out an innocent life. You didn't take precautions to avoid getting pregnant, you pay the consequences...it's not the unborn child's fault you have no self control.

G8 Leaders Agree to Weather Control

It's no secret that many world leaders have inflated views of their own power, but this is just ridiculous.

"President Obama joined other leaders of the industrialized world Wednesday in backing new targets for battling global warming. But the wealthy nations were unable to persuade leaders of developing countries to commit to reductions of their own, and their cooperation is critical to avoiding the worst effects of climate change.

White House officials confirmed that Obama agreed to language supporting a goal of keeping the world's average temperature from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit."

Yes, you read that right. The G8 leaders have agreed to keep the world's temperature from rising more than 3 degrees in the coming years. How in the hell are they going to do that? Would it work the way the $787 billion stimulus worked to keep unemployment below 8 percent? What if every country on Earth limited their greenhouse gas emissions, and the temperature still rose? That would not only thwart their plans to prevent the temperature from rising, but it would also prove that climate change is just as much a natural mechanism as it is a man-made one.

Senate Democrats Unveil Public Health Insurance Legislation

The dawn of government-run healthcare is upon us. Today Senate Democrats revealed their plans to create the "public option" for health care, one which they say will extend coverage to 97% of all Americans.

"According to Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, their legislation would extend health insurance coverage to 21 million uninsured people over 10 years at a net cost of $611.4 billion. Combined with separate legislation being developed by the Senate Finance Committee, senators said their healthcare reform plan would bring the total number of newly insured people to 41 million by 2019, or 97 percent of the projected U.S. population, excluding illegal immigrants."

I'm not a mathematician, but spending *at least* $611 billion to insure an additional 21 million people seems like quite a lot of money per person.

20 million more people would be covered through an expansion of the Medicaid program. Also, "under the new provisions, employers with more than 25 workers would be required to either provide "affordable" coverage or pay the government an annual fee of $750 for each full-time employee and $375 for part-timers." Again, the "or else" language from the government rears its ugly head.

"President Obama praised the HELP Committee bill in a statement. 'Today the Senate HELP Committee has produced legislation that lowers costs, protects choice of doctors and plans and assures quality and affordable health care for Americans,' Obama said. 'The HELP Committee legislation reflects many of the principles I’ve laid out,' he said, such as the creation of a health insurance 'exchange' through which people can shop for insurance, a ban on insurance companies excluding people with pre-existing conditions, and the public option."

I can't even begin to describe how bad these ideas are. First, you can ALREADY shop and compare insurance options, we don't need a government organization for that (though I presume he means an "exchange" for government-run health care). Second, banning insurance companies from excluding people with pre-existing conditions will tank their business (not to mention it's a major intrusion into free market principles), resulting in higher costs for the few remaining people that decide to stick with them. Pre-existing conditions generally mean higher medical costs for that person, which means the insurer must pay out more money. More money out per person = higher costs for all subscribers to reimburse the company's expenses and to keep it afloat. That, however, is exactly how the Democrats and Mr. Obama want it. They want the private insurance companies to have to pay out more, raise prices, and ultimately lose customers, because that will drive people to the "public option," thus giving the government more control over what you can and can't do.

The government has (or rather, should have) a limited supply of money. With gobs of people presumably signing on to the public option, how much money will be available for each person's care? What if you need a costly operation, who decides whether you need it, you and your doctor, or the government? For the answer, look at any country that currently uses a socialized medical system, i.e. Canada or England. Read over this short article by John Stossel, or the offical site for England's National Health Service.

One thing I find striking is how much is spent trying to regulate what people can or cannot do in regards to their health, and how that affects the overall "health" of the system. Apparently people exercising their right to be overweight, smoke, or drink, costs the system money. Let's look at England's plan for tackling the growing obesity problem.

"Obesity is one of the biggest health challenges we face. The Government is committed to taking action to reverse the rising tide of obesity. Almost 1 in 4 adults in England are currently obese, and if we carry on as we are by 2050, 9 in 10 adults will be overweight or obese. The cost of overweight and obese individuals to the NHS is estimated to be £4.2 billion and is forecasted to more than double by 2050. The cost to the wider economy is £16 billion, and this is predicted to rise to £50 billion per year by 2050 if left unchecked.

In January 2008 the Government published “Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives: A Cross-Government Strategy for England”. £372 million has been made available to implement the strategy, which sets out how the Government will enable everyone in society to maintain a healthy weight."

Part of the attack plan involves the proper labelling, marketing, and consumption of foods. The government will decide what is good for you, and will direct the media and companies to market those products to consumers, as well as direct the consumers themselves on how much to eat. From the report at the bottom of the page linked above:

"Early identification of at-risk families

Throughout the CHPP, a series of health reviews provide an opportunity for health professionals to identify families that are most at risk from child weight issues and least able to tackle them.

In particular, the assessment by the 12th week of pregnancy allows health professionals to identify mothers who are already obese or overweight, and to give them advice on healthy weight gain in pregnancy. This is crucial for their baby’s development, safety and also to ease delivery.

The forthcoming update of National Service Framework (NSF) Standard One (CHPP) will prioritise the promotion of healthy weight in early life, and specify the monitoring and interventions that are to be offered to all children and families."

If that doesn't scare you at least a little bit, it should. And it's coming home. This legislation isn't about health care, it's about control, and how the government can wrest more from you.