Expensive Free Medical Care

The government and union employees who are currently pushing really, really hard for ObamaCare might want to read this story from Britain.

A young woman died in hospital after waiting almost two hours for a blood transfusion that could have saved her.

Sally Thompson, 20, bled to death after a doctor accidentally punctured her jugular vein during a bungled procedure.

Despite an urgent request to the blood bank at Manchester Royal Infirmary, she died one hour and 45 minutes later, before any arrived.

Speaking after her inquest, her father John, 62, said she would still be alive if the blood had been available sooner.

The retired farmer said: ‘This hospital is supposed to be the cornerstone of the NHS in Manchester, but they couldn’t get any blood for two hours.

‘We have never had any answers about why it took so long. I feel very let down by the hospital.’

Here’s the thing,  Ms. Thompson happened to work for the local council – she was a government employee. This is the care she got. Food for thought.

My very sincere condolences to the Thompson family over this horrible loss.

Psst! You Get To Pay For It!

Obama’s solution to illegal immigrants and health care: Make them instantly legal and give ‘em all the health care we can afford to pay for for them.

In other words, not only should everyone pay for Americans to get health care, we should pay for health care for those who came here illegally. That’s going to be a winning argument in 2010, especially in Blue Dog districts! We’re going to bust the budget and infringe on your personal choices, and we’re going to make you pay for insurance for illegal immigrants!

Obama is on record stating that American seniors should maybe get a handful of pills rather than that hip replacement. He has other plans for that money, apparently.  

This one could cost him the entire senior vote.

Any illusion that ObamaCare is about the welfare of American taxpayers just went out the window.

Continuous Jeopardy

Seven former directors of the CIA have publicly asked Barack Obama to rein in Eric Holder’s witch hunt against the CIA. They have several very good reasons as to why this whole thing should be stopped – right now – but this is one that most people will understand right away: this is digging old dirt in hopes of finding a new nugget.

The post-September 11 interrogations for which the Attorney General is opening an inquiry were investigated four years ago by career prosecutors. The CIA, at its own initiative, forwarded fewer than 20 instances where Agency officers appeared to have acted beyond their existing legal authorities. Career prosecutors under the supervision of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia determined that one prosecution (of a CIA contractor) was warranted. A conviction was later obtained. They determined that prosecutions were not warranted in the other cases. In a number of these cases the CIA subsequently took administrative disciplinary steps against the individuals involved. Attorney General Holder’s decision to re-open the criminal investigation creates an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy for those whose cases the Department of Justice had previously declined to prosecute.

Holder has said not a single word about investigating the operators of a Child-Whoring Pimp Assistance Program, ACORN. Apparently, all of his time is absorbed in trying to punish people who were trying to operate within what they were told was the legal envelope for their actions.

What legal envelope gives ACORN immunity from scrutiny from Holder? Newt Gingrich would like to know the answer to that:

The excuse offered by ACORN’s remaining defenders is essentially this: Sure, the tapes are reprehensible, but otherwise, ACORN does good work in poor communities. This excuse is unconvincing when used by defenders of the terrorist group Hamas and it’s unconvincing here. Americans can no longer allow Washington to turn a blind eye – much less fund – an organization that uses the suffering of our most vulnerable citizens as a cover for its illegal and illicit activities.

Why is Holder silent on ACORN but ‘way bullish on low-level CIA people who thought they were following binding legal advice?

Anyone doubt this is about who ACORN supports? Anyone? Anyone? Holder?

Warning: Being A Bigot Makes You Not So Good At Statistics

This is sadly typical of lots of bigots these days:

Is this a surprise to anybody? The following was posted on rhrealitycheck.org Thursday:

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, according to a new study forthcoming in the journal Reproductive Health.

It’s not surprising to me, because most of those “religious” states are also so-called red states. Generalizations are always dangerous, but lack of education, low or no income, and increased religiosity tend to intertwine and build on each other.

Yes, because God knows, there is no chance there are other variables in play here. Like how about the differences in birth rates between races or the difference in the rates of teen marriage?

We know that nationwide (these stats are from the CDC 2006) the birth rates for unmarried women age 15-19 (per 1000) was:

All Races: 36.2
Non-Hispanic Whites: 21.6
Black: 63.5
Hispanics: 70.6

Using this information I can hypothesize that states with relatively low percentages of non-Hispanic whites will have higher teen pregnancy rates then states where there are high percentages of non-Hispanic white.

Let’s see how my hypothesis does. Here are the states with highest rates of unmarried teen pregnancies, along with their non-Hispanic white population as a percentage of total population: (State – Teen Birth Rate – % Pop. non-Hispanic White)

#1. Mississippi – 68.4 – 58.7%
#2. New Mexico – 64.1 – 41.7%
#3. Texas – 63.1 – 47.4%
#4. Arkansas – 62.3 – 75.6%
#5. Arizona – 62 – 58.4%
#6. Oklahoma – 59.6 – 71.4%
#7. Nevada – 55.8 – 57.1%
#8. Tennessee – 54.7 – 77.1%
#9. Kentucky – 54.6 – 87.8%
#10. Georgia – 54.2 – 58.1%

The average percentage of non-Hispanic whites in these ten states is 63.33%

So, let us look at the same numbers for 10 states with the lowest unmarried teen pregnancy rates:

#1. New Hampshire – 18.7 – 93.1%
#2. Vermont – 20.8 – 95.2%
#3. Massachusetts – 21.3 – 79.2%
#4. Connecticut – 23.5 – 73.8%
#5. New Jersey – 24.9 – 61.7%
#6. New York – 25.7 – 60%
#7. Maine – 25.8 – 95.3%
#8. North Dakota – 26.5 – 89.6%
#9. Rhode Island – 27.8 – 78.8%
#10. Minnesota – 27.9 – 85.4%

The average percentage of non-Hispanic whites in these ten states is 81.21%

*Please note, in order to make these comparisons I do not have to weight the percentages for population. If you don’t understand why that is so, please go find a statistician.*

Gee, my hypothesis seems to be doing alright, doesn’t it?

I also note the study did not make any distinction between married teens and unmarried teens in the numbers they used. This will skew the results of any analysis and make their results specious unless they can show there is no difference between the rate of married teens in religious states versus the numbers of married teens in less religious states. This matters because the birth rate for married women seems to be 8-10 times that of unmarried women. (Seriously, doesn’t anybody teach research design anymore?)

Well, I went and looked for the data and looky what I found! A CDC report on marriage from 2002. I wonder what I will find on the question of teen marriage rates?

Well, it turns out (page 44 of the report) the chances of you being married by the age of 20 if you are from the South is 31%. The chance if you are from the Northeast? 16% Got that? The (religious) South has nearly twice the rate of teen marriages when compared to the (not-so-religious) Northeast.

At the end of the day all this “study” proves is that the Northeast has more white people in general and fewer married teens in particular than the South.

Nice going Sherlock…you really wow’d us this time.

Honestly, I cannot believe a journal could publish something the “logic” of which was so easy to demolish. Seriously, it took me fifteen minutes on Google.

(Crossposted at IMW)

Records Broken

Not good ones, either.

Five states posted jobless rates above 12% in August, according to federal data released Friday.

California, Nevada and Rhode Island each hit record-high rates, the Labor Department said.

Michigan led the nation in unemployment, with a rate of 15.2%, while Nevada was next at 13.2% and Rhode Island was third at 12.8%. California and Oregon were tied for the fourth spot, each with unemployment at 12.2%.

This is in addition to the widely ignored weekly figures that show that there are a huge number of people still filing initial jobless claims – and a huge number running out of benefits:

In the week ending Sept. 12, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 545,000, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 557,000. The 4-week moving average was 563,000, a decrease of 8,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 571,750.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7 percent for the week ending Sept. 5, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.6 percent.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Sept. 5 was 6,230,000, an increase of 129,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,101,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,180,250, a decrease of 5,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,185,750.

The fiscal year-to-date average for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment for all programs is 5.636 million.

The spin right now from the Federal government and their water-carriers in the media is that the recession is over.

Does that look over to you?

Or do they mean “over” in the sense that the recession has degenerated into depression territory?