I have severe case of formaphobia...

or form fatigue, or maybe post-formatic stress disorder, all due to the Kansas Child Health Assessment Form, which, in order to enroll one's child in any type of care, one is required to have filled out by a doctor... once, once a calendar year, once a year from the date of the last check-up?  Who knows?  Who can tell me whether I need to produce a new form for my child's daycare even though they have a form that is less than a year old? 

Certainly not anyone from the Kansas health department or the county health department.  Sure, they are tasked with enforcing the licensing requirements and will be coming around to every day care to demand compliance with the law.  But that is no reason to expect them to be able to tell you how to comply with the law.  Every (very friendly and helpful) person I spoke to gave me a different, contradictory answer.

I cannot wait until these people are in charge of every minute detail of our lives.

Second Look At Bobby Jindal?

Check out Bobby Jindal giving a great speech at a rally to oppose the off-shore drilling moratorium.  After his atrocious response to Obama's State of the Union last year, I thought that, smart as he clearly is, he just doesn't have what it takes to be a national politician.  But perhaps overly-processed speeches read from a teleprompter are just not his forte. No notes, no teleprompter and he knocks it out of the park. 

If we can't have him for POTUS, can we at least have him for Secretary of the Interior? 

p.s. The link is to part one.  More of the speech is in the side bar.

 

My New Favorite Blog

The Introvert's Corner. Reading through this blog was an exercise in saying "Yes, definitely, yep, so true" over and over and over.  I particularly enjoyed Dont' Call Us, We'll Call...Well, No, Actually, We Probably Won't... I never associated my dislike of all things telephone with being an introvert, but the author makes a compelling case.  I particularly related to this:

Introverts tend to be slow thinkers and responders and long pauses don't go over well on the phone. If I am on the phone with a talkative person, I struggle to get my say. I end up doing a lot of listening and uh-huhing. 

This is also a problem with instant messaging. There are even fewer non-verbal cues than on the phone.  By the time I formulate a thought and type it out, the conversation has long since moved on.  I find it stressful and tiring.

How to Piss Off an Introvert:  Yes, yes, yes to all of these, except the last one.  No one has ever accused me of not being an introvert.

Depressing Economic News of the Day

Ed Morrissey has the charts: America's unemployment rate vs. Canada's.  Turns out Canada is led by a fiscal conservative, while we're led by a.....

It's a good thing I haven't moved around too much,

because I've picked up a piece of bad local grammar everywhere I've ever lived.

Chicago: "I'm going to the store.  Wanna go with?"  This is so ubiquitous that Illinois grammar nazis do not bother to correct it.  I had no idea it was problematic until I moved to Kansas.
South Carolina: "I might could do that."  It sounds terrible, but adds extra ambivalence, which I like.
Missouri: The other day someone told me that the song "Life Ain't Always Beautiful" is a great song, if grammatically incorrect.  Several long seconds went by before I figured out the problem.
Kansas:  As far as I can tell, the only grammar problem Kansans have is their tendency to correct other people's grammar.

Something no one knows

As I listen to the pundits discuss the latest dust-up in Israel, it occurs to me that no one seems to know this:

The newly created United Nations approved the Partition Plan for Palestine (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181) on November 29, 1947, which sought to divide the country into two states—one Arab and one Jewish. Jerusalem was to be designated an international city—a corpus separatum—administered by the UN.

The Jewish community accepted the plan, but the Arab League and Arab Higher Committee rejected it.
...
On May 14, 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, the Jewish Agency proclaimed independence, naming the country Israel. The following day, the armies of five Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq—attacked Israel, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War;
...
After a year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line, were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip.

So, land was designated for a Palestinian state from the very beginning, but what land the Arab countries didn't lose in a war with a day-old nation, they annexed to themselves.
 
Here's something I didn't know:

Following World War I, the League of Nations granted Great Britain the Mandate for Palestine and the responsibility for establishing "the Jewish national home" within it.

^{I've often heard and believed this piece of conventional wisdom: "Arabs have to suffer a Jewish state in their midst, just because Europeans murdered all those Jews."  I'm sure the Holocaust gave the movement more urgency, but a Jewish homeland was a goal of the international community long before anyone ever heard of Hitler.}

There is no rain in the forecast...

and yet, it's raining.

This in no way shakes my confidence in the ability of scientists to predict the weather 100 years in the future.

Running Makes Me Hungry.

That's the only possible explanation for why I am dutifully putting in the miles and losing no weight.  I shaved 3 minutes off my best time today but I'm still fat.  Arrrgh.  I guess if it wasn't for all the running I could be gaining weight.  Horrors!  I shall try to keep at it, but my body is not providing me with any motivation.

Update:  Shaved another 1:30 off my time.

Talk Nerdy To Me, Baby

I am a Library School drop-out, so this made me quietly chuckle:

"United Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists"

To quote Mark Steyn. More:

Whenever something goofy happens — bomb in Times Square, mass shootings at a US military base, etc. — there seem to be two kinds of reactions:

a) Some people go, "Hmm. I wonder if this involves some guy with a name like Mohammed who has e-mails from Yemen."

b) Other people go, "Don't worry, there's no connection to terrorism, and anyway, even if there is, it's all very amateurish, and besides he's most likely an isolated extremist or lone wolf."

Unfortunately, everyone in category (b) seems to work for the government.

'Cause if I didn't laugh, I'd cry.

And Jonah Goldberg on liberals' no longer repressed hope that a "teabagger" whacks someone.

It's May Day!

Let the rioting commence!

Seriously though, I hope everyone stays safe out there.  I wish these lefties would take their own advice about working folks into a lather with misinformation.  It's shocking to see how many people think they can be jailed for six months if they leave their driver's license at home.

Every article I've read on the topic includes a sentence like this:

Arizona's new law that allows police to ask people on the street for proof of their immigrations status has energized some protestors, LA Weekly reported.

This is, of course, untrue, especially since the recent clarification:

... lawmakers have removed “lawful contact” from the bill and replaced it with “lawful stop, detention or arrest.” In an explanatory note, lawmakers added that the change “stipulates that a lawful stop, detention or arrest must be in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state.” “It was the intent of the legislature for ‘lawful contact’ to mean arrests and stops, but people on the left mischaracterized it,” says Kris Kobach... “So that term is now defined.”

The second change concerns the word “solely.”  In a safeguard against racial profiling, the law contained the phrase, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”  Critics objected to that, too, arguing again that it would not prevent but instead lead to racial profiling.  So lawmakers have taken out the word “solely.”

I don't know how he narrowed it down to just 10, but Byron York as a list of the Top 10 dumbest things said about the Arizona immigration law.

                              Shamelessly Stolen from Ace of Spades

Papers Please!

According to Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, "nobody but the Nazis ever asked anybody for their papers."  Too true.  Americans are completely unused to showing documents... unless they:

• fly in an airplane
• travel overseas
• get a job
• rent an apartment
• buy a house
• open a checking account
• get something notarized
• apply for a library card
• rent a car
• buy smokes or alcohol 
• write a check
• get pulled over by the police
• go to the doctor/emergency room

Just the exceptions that prove the rule, I guess.

Thanks Outrageously Expensive American Medical System

My mother has officially outlived the best-case life expectancy given her when she was diagnosed with brain cancer 18 months ago.  This article by Glenn Reynolds reminded me of the amazing feats of technology that made it possible:

• Dinky hospital in Libby, MT (county population 20,000) has MRI machine and uses it to diagnose brain tumor.
• Patient is in danger of slipping into a coma, so hospital calls A.L.E.R.T Air Ambulance to transport patient to...
• Kalispell Regional Medical Center (county population 90,000) where a neurosurgeon begins removing the tumor 6 hours after patient presented in the emergency room back in Libby.
• Radiation in a regional hospital in the middle of Missouri.
• Temodar, chemo drug introduced in the U.S. 9 years earlier specifically for brain tumors
• MRI's every 6 weeks for a year, every 8 weeks from now to eternity to check for regrowth of this very aggressive tumor

And a hundred other gizmos, tests, procedures and drugs to keep alive a person who just had their brain sliced open. Astounding.

From Glenn's article:

The key point, though, is that these treatments didn't just come out out of the blue. They were developed by drug companies and device makers who thought they had a good market for things that would make people feel better.

But under a national healthcare plan, the "market" will consist of whatever the bureaucrats are willing to buy. That means treatment for politically stylish diseases will get some money, but otherwise the main concern will be cost-control. More treatments, to bureaucrats, mean more costs.

And we'll never know what we're missing.  Ten years ago, they didn't know a 67 year old patient with a Grade III Anaplastic Astrocytoma could live 18 months (and counting).

Running

This looks interesting.  A trailer for a documentary/reality show about 6 grassroots candidates running for congress.  Multiple attempts to embed the video were unsuccessful, so you'll just have to click over to you-tube if you want to check it out.

I hope we get to see how it's done. I've always wished that reality shows would actually reflect reality in some way.  This "let's find a dozen of the most annoying people on earth, put them in untenable situations and watch them act like narcissistic maroons" never did it for me.  Give me "Dirty Jobs" any day.

I hope the people responsible for "Greensburg" are kept far away from this project.  After being devastated by a killer tornado, a small town seeks to rebuild using as much green technology as possible. Cool.  Bring on the funky new building materials and small town politics.  We gave up after struggling to stay awake through five episodes.

Kansas City Tax Day Tea Party

Nice Deb has coverage here and here. According to the organizers, an estimated 14,000 people showed up throughout the day.

Kansas Liberty has details on the various speakers, including this Kris Kobach quote:

“The constitution is a cage around the beast and the beast is the government,” Kobach said. “What we are trying to do today is put the beast back in the cage.”

As It's Last Wish...

Iceland's economy requested it's ashes be spread over Europe. -- heard on NPR today.

Awesome volcano pics.

On the Tea Party Crashers

Bill Whittle just posted this wee bit of genius on Facebook:

I just have to say that this attempt to "crash" the Tea Party rallies with racist signs says all you ever need to know about the diversity-loving, tolerant Left. Just THINK about what they are saying here: there is not enough evidence -- essentially no evidence -- to support their slanders, so they will go and GENERATE THE RACISM they will later condemn. Disgusting! 

How twisted would you have to be to carry a racist sign, even in support of a "good" cause?  They won't get too far with this.  Even most leftists will pause to reconsider before they pick up the swastika sign. I hope.

Update:  So far, more bemused hipster, less agent provocateur.

Paul Ryan: Rock Star

Don't miss Glenn Beck's interview with Paul Ryan. Beck fell in love, and so did I.  I love me some wonky politicians. In fact, I heard Ryan mention means testing of SS benefits and had a flashback to Bruce Babbitt's 1988 presidential campaign.  The line on him was that he was too analytical and "means testing of social security benefits" wasn't a good campaign slogan. Babbitt was no closet conservative.  He also supported a national sales tax, if I recall, but there was a time, back in the day, when fiscal responsibility had a constituency on the left. 

Also check out Ryan's super wonkalicious website, A Roadmap for America's Future.

Can You Believe The Nerve?

Dennis Moore:  Ha, ha!  I'm doing whatever I want and you voters can't do a thing about it because I'm retiring.  Hey, how about electing my wife?  
 
From the Kansas City Star:

Stephene Moore, who has been married to Congressman Dennis Moore for 20 years, told The Star this morning that she’s running for Congress.

Her husband announced last year that he would not seek a seventh term this year.

Yes, he announced he would retire because of all the negative feedback he got for his pro-Obamacare stance.  He's received very little static, hasn't held town meetings, etc., because he's retiring.  Now his wife thinks she can just slip in there in his stead.  If she wins the nomination, I hope she's ready to deal with all the anger and frustration her husband deflected with his early retirement announcement.

The New Truth About the Easter Bunny

I was busted hiding Easter eggs in the yard this morning.  After carefully balancing an egg on a tree branch, I looked up to see Mia watching me from a window.  I stopped hiding, grabbed the bag of yet-to-be-hidden eggs, and went inside, preparing to have the "Yes, mommy's been lying to you for years about the Easter bunny" conversation.  Instead, she says, "Wow, mom!  How many eggs did you get?"

The new truth about the Easter bunny: Mommy gets up early to hunt for eggs before those pesky kids hog them all.

So Simple Even A Democrat Could Understand It?

Well, maybe not that simple.  But I love the way Ann Coulter cuts to the chase:

A few weeks ago, The New York Times ran an editorial noting the amazing fact that, by the middle of this year, there will be an estimated 6.8 billion people on Earth -- and 5 billion will have cell phones!...

Before Reagan came into office, we had one phone company, ridiculously expensive rates and one phone model. Reagan split up AT&T, deregulated phone service and gave America a competitive market in phones. The rest is history.

If you can grasp how inexpensive cell phones in a rainbow of colors and wonders like the iPhone could never have been created under a National Cell Phone Reform Act, you can understand what a disaster ObamaCare is going to be for health care in America.

If Puritanism is,

as H. L. Mencken once famously defined it, "the sinking feeling that somebody, some where, is having fun,"  then has liberalism become the sinking feeling that somebody, some where, is making money?

Manifesto

I don't have an I-Phone. I don't have a big screen TV. I drive an 9 year-old car that is too small for my growing kids but has one feature I really love: It's paid for.  Four years ago, I was thrilled to move into the first house I have ever lived in that has a garage door opener.  Sure, we wanted a house with a three car garage, but, alas, we couldn't afford it.  Remember that quaint concept.  Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who does.

I don't mean to poor mouth.  We choose to spend our money on other things.  We choose to have no debt other that our mortgage.  We choose high-speed internet and fairly nice computers.  I have a kid with some sensory issues that would make public school (or any 'sit at your desk and do this worksheet' school)  a nightmare for her, so we choose to send her to a private school that is so perfect it might have been tailor-made for her. Oh, and we choose to buy health insurance.

I've spent my whole life working, studying, and making boring, responsible choices. And now, when I've finally reached what I've been working towards, which for me is the smallest house in an middle-middle class neighborhood in a nice town in the midwest, Obama comes along to tell me I MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY. I have to buy a non-subsidized $15,000 insurance policy I don't want and can't afford so he can buy the vote of some 26 year-old hipster who chooses to buy internet access for his cell-phone, but not health insurance; who chooses to buy an x-box, but not health insurance; who chooses to be a performance artist rather than get a boring job with health insurance. I guess I don't have to tell you what I was doing a at 26. Yes, working a job, paying off my student loans and BUYING MY OWN HEALTH INSURANCE.

This was exactly my concern when Obama was elected.  Where will these socialists get the money for their social revolution?  From the the rich? There are not enough of them and they're powerful enough to look after their own interests.  From the poor? Obviously not.  From people who've spent every dime they made plus every dime they could borrow on consumer goods?  Blood from a turnip.  The grasshoppers have to come after the ants, because the ants are the only ones with any money in the bank.

Alright grasshoppers: Bring it.  You may be big, but there are a hell of a lot of us ants.