Technical Bellyflop

That's what Cnet News is quoting experts as saying about Barack Obama's much-touted text message revelation about his vice presidential pick. It seems that the Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight couldn't quite get over the technical hurdles. Many eagerly waiting recipients of the "big news" of Joe "Who?" Biden's ascension to the primary spot in Obama's shadow never got the news at all, or got it very, very late.

A campaign e-mail message on August 12 promised: "Let me be very clear. You are the ones who built this campaign, and Barack wants you to be the first to know who will join him in leading our movement for change."

There were just two problems with that plan. First, the Obama campaign chose the traditional route of handing the news first to a favored reporter: Joe Biden's selection was first reported by CNN. Second, many messages never arrived (one of my colleagues is still waiting).

Keynote Systems on Thursday called it a "technical bellyflop."

The stats are pretty bad. 40 to 50% of the folks who gave up their personal information to The One either never got the message at all or got it late. Gee, one wonders how the "working" toga party at Mile High will work out.

Will The Scales Fall From Media Eyes?

Whether the media admits it or not, they are rapidly becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic party and Obama campaign. Maybe the openly stated plan to attack television stations that dare to air anti-Obama ads didn't get their attention. (The Obama campaign pledged to coordinate attacks on those stations, but the media largely yawned.) Maybe the arrest of one of their own for daring to attempt to film lobbyists and Democratic Senators will finally enlighten them as to what they are involved in. Perhaps they'll pay attention to the story of Asa Eslocker, an ABC News producer.

A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker's neck, then twisted the producers arm behind him to put on handcuffs.

A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel.

Eslocker was put in handcuffs and loaded in the back of a police van which headed for a nearby police station.

Video taken at the scene shows a man, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County sheriff, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to the side of the entrance.

The sheriff's officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.

The media better wake up. Or they will be completely owned and will have no one to blame but themselves.

For all the screeching from the left that they were being oppressed under the Bush presidency, I don't recall network personnel being herded off to jail. Thuggish tactics seem to be the forte of the "liberals".

How Green Was My Temple

Grand news! The Temple of Obama in Denver is made of recycled material! And they have garbage police!

Some 900 volunteers were enlisted to help delegates sort their garbage so it ends up at a recycling plant or composting facility.

Caterers and other vendors are also being instructed in waste diversion.

And the company hired to build the stage where Barack Obama will accept his party's nomination has been asked to use recycled materials and make sure they get reused when the stage is torn down.

One could point out, of course, that had the 900 volunteer dumpster divers stayed home, the carbon footprint of the convention would have been reduced by a far larger amount than all their efforts. But that would entail some math skills on the part of the true believers.

Too much to ask, I suppose.

The Sermon Near The Mound

Oh, brother:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple. (Emphasis added)

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.

Followed by a simple supper of loaves and fishes, no doubt.

Perhaps someone should remind the Obama campaign of another ancient Greek concept: Hubris.

(The title of the post would have been funnier if they played baseball in the stadium.)

Via Memeorandum. Others: Weekly Standard Blog, The Corner, Redstate, Sister Toldjah 

Y R U S2pd?

Barack Obama's big plan to announce his VP choice via text message has brought out the mischievous in some people. A large number of people report receiving fake text messages announcing false names. There is little chance that things will get any better in the next few hours until the "big moment." So, by then, many people will pay no attention to the real announcement.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. – By the time Barack Obama is ready to announce his vice presidential pick, will anyone believe him?

In recent days, as speculation and anticipation has mounted, so too have phony text messages declaring Obama’s supposed running mate – from Evan Bayh and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.

It’s a cruel twist in a prolonged game of guessing that has put political junkies and Democratic supporters on edge since the campaign announced last week that it would disclose Obama’s choice through text messaging, which is expected to happen by Saturday.

In the absence of real information, pranksters have filled the gap with guidance from the website Wonkette – and maybe Howard Stern, too.

What gets me about this story is that nobody in the Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight - er - the Obama Campaign  - saw this coming? Really? Nobody? In the attempt to look young and hip, they end up looking inept and clueless. Nicely done, folks.

Sorry, Old Chap….

….It will just cost too much to save your life. NICE, the increasingly Orwellian advisory body to Britain's National Health Service has ruled that there is not - and will not be - a "Rule of Rescue." What does that mean? Simple, if your health care costs to much, you're a deader.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Guidelines (Nice) has ruled for the first time that saving a life cannot be justified at any cost, in a review of its ethical guidelines.

The ruling - made by the board of the controversial organisation - contradicts advice it received from its own 'Citizens Council' which offers advice from a representative sample of the general public.

Nice is facing growing criticism over the number of drugs it is now rejecting which are available throughout Europe and in America. Last week, it refused to sanction four kidney cancer drugs which can double life expectancy.

It has now rejected the so-called "rule of rescue" which stipulates that people facing death should be treated regardless of the costs. The rule is based on the natural impulse to aid individuals in trouble.

In a report on "social values judgement" the regulator says: "There is a powerful human impulse, known as the 'rule of rescue', to attempt to help an identifiable person whose life is in danger, no matter how much it costs. When there are limited resources for healthcare, applying the 'rule of rescue' may mean that other people will not be able to have the care or treatment they need.

NICE isn't, is it? This is the logical outcome of socialized medicine. The decisions of the state are final and may not be appealed. Well, actually, there is a step further that I expect the folks at NICE to reach eventually. That will be to withhold care completely from those who fail to meet some arbitrary standard they dictate.

Such as disagreeing with NICE.

Still think socialized medicine is a ginger-peachy idea? Hope you never need extraordinary care.

National Health Vermin Service

Barack Obama, at the behest of his left-wing supporters, wants "Universal Health Care" aka socialized medicine. Britain has had free health care for years now. And it comes with many benefits.

Like free maggots in your slippers.

Official figures obtained by the Tories show that 80 per cent of NHS trusts reported problems with ants, 66 per cent with rats and 77 per cent with mice.

Cockroaches were reported at 59 per cent of trusts, biting insects or fleas at 65 per cent, and bed bugs at 24 per cent.

There were infestations of maggots at a further 6 per cent of trusts. And many of the pests were in clinical areas.

The data, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that, on average, every trust in the country calls out pest controllers once a fortnight.

At one hospital, a horrified patient awoke to find maggots in her slippers. At another, expectant mothers were dismayed to find the ward overrun with rats, while at a third hospital, a store for sterile materials was infested with mice.

Still think socialized medicine is a good idea? Enjoy your slippers.

Super (Down) Size Me

In 2004, the film Super Size Me hit theaters. Much was made of the filmmaker's weight gain from eating McDonald's food exclusively for 30 days. He gained some 24.5 pounds. Expect to hear considerably less about the Virginia man who lost 80 pounds - eating almost exclusively at McDonald's.

QUINTON, Va. - A Virginia man lost about 80 pounds in six months by eating nearly every meal at McDonald's. Not Big Macs, french fries and chocolate shakes. Mostly salads, wraps and apple dippers without the caramel sauce.

Chris Coleson tipped the scales at 278 pounds in December. The 5-foot-8 Coleson now weighs 199 pounds and his waist size has dropped from 50 to 36.

In other words, your personal choices make a big difference. What a surprise. On the same note, Steve Chapman notes the latest push by the Nannies of New York - aka the NYC Health Department - to regulate the posting of nutritional information.

The 21st century has many problems, but a shortage of information is not one of them. Trying to avoid being endlessly barraged with facts is like trying to stay dry in a hurricane. But no matter. One government body after another has the idea that some people need more information, and it will be supplied or else.

The targets of this campaign are restaurants. New York City has a new law commanding chain outlets to post the calorie count of every item on menus and menu boards. The legislatures in New York and California are considering state laws to require even more extensive disclosures.

The reason, as the New York City Health Department explains, is that "New Yorkers get a third or more of their calories away from home. The lack of readily available calorie information in food service establishments makes it easy to consume too many calories without realizing it."

Imposing this mandate is supposed to help combat obesity. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health asserts that if just 10 percent of restaurant patrons cut their intake by a mere 100 calories per meal, we would see a 39 percent decline in weight gain.

As Chapman notes, food labeling began in earnest in the 1970s. Americans have steadily gained weight ever since. So the assumption that more information will lead to better choices is founded on flawed logic. It hasn't worked yet, why would it start doing so now?

You are responsible for what eating decisions you make, not the government. That is as it should be.

Zakaria: “You Can’t Fight The Arab Desire To Destroy Israel, So Why Try?”

Or something to that effect:

CNN: Why is the American decision not to work with Hamas such an issue in the Arab world?

Zakaria: The U.S. appears hypocritical to much of the Arab world. The U.S. has been trumpeting the importance of democracy to Arab countries world and has insisted on elections in Gaza. When Hamas, a faction they did not support, won, many Arabs felt the U.S. did not accept the victory and has attempted to strangle what they see as a burgeoning democracy.

CNN: How much of a difference does this make?

Zakaria: By the U.S. isolating Hamas from commerce and contact with the outside world, we are strengthening the forces of fundamentalism and extremism in Gaza. By all accounts, Hamas is stronger now than it was six months ago.

The implication that Hamas is just another political party, like working with Labour or the Tories in the UK, is morally reprehensible but par for the course for the elitists of the day.  The idea that "supporting democracy" means we have to be agnostic or indifferent to the espoused goals of extreme political groups is simply not worth considering.  There is no way to "work with" such groups that does not also legitimize and normalize their vicious aspirations.

Inhuman

Fresh from the "I Cannot Believe Anybody Would Be This Stupid" File: School defends drunken driving hoax

On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.

A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax, a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.

As seniors prepare for graduation parties Friday, school officials in the largely prosperous San Diego, California, suburb are defending themselves against allegations that they went too far.

At school assemblies, some students held posters that read, "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."

Michelle de Gracia, 16, was in physics class when an officer announced that her missing classmate David, a popular basketball player, had died instantly after being rear-ended by a drunken driver. She said she felt nauseated but was too stunned to cry.

"They got the shock they wanted," she said.

They should wind up getting a shock they didn't want, namely the shock of being sued for inflicting intentional emotional distress.  And don't even try to tell me that the ends justify these means.  If they couldn't think of another way of imparting this type of important information to their students then their teaching certificates should be revoked, because it is what they are supposed to be doing for a living. 

How much you wanna bet many of those in the know enjoyed doing this to these kids?

It's downright sadistic.

Bring Out Your Dead - Part Two

Last month, I noted the ethical problems associated with New York City's plan to have organ retrieval ambulances standing by to harvest (or keep ready to harvest) the organs of people who die in the city. Well, there's a reason for real concern. In France a man was being cut open to retrieve his organs.

Only he wasn't dead yet.

Doctors in Paris earlier this year called in transplant surgeons after failing to resuscitate a 45-year old man believed to have suffered a massive heart attack in the French capital.

According to a report by the Paris university hospital's ethics committee - seen by Le Monde newspaper - doctors continued providing a heart massage for an hour and a half while they waited for the surgeons to arrive.

When the surgeons began operating on the man to remove his organs, he began to breathe, his pupils became responsive and he reacted to a pain test.

France has an "opt out" law which is being pushed here in the US, too. That presumes you gave your consent unless you specifically refuse. In advance. And if you die with whatever paperwork the state requires to opt out.

And you may or may not be dead….

This really is an ethical problem, folks.

Bring Out Your Dead

The Washington Post notes the ethical problems that a pilot program in New York City faces. The city is going to begin using a special ambulance to "save" the organs of people who die suddenly for transplant. Some medical ethicists are outraged.

In the hope of saving the lives of more people waiting for transplants, New York City is working on a plan to deploy a special ambulance to collect the bodies of people who have died suddenly from heart attacks, accidents and other emergencies and try to preserve their organs.

If the "rapid-organ-recovery ambulance" succeeds, officials would like to expand the unique pilot program citywide with a fleet of ambulances and eventually duplicate it in other cities……..

….."I think it's disgusting," said Michael A. Grodin, director of bioethics at Boston University. "People are going to worry when the ambulance comes out to their house whether they are there to care for them or to take their organs."

The plan comes as transplant advocates have come under criticism for increasingly aggressive efforts to boost the organ supply, including advocating the removal of organs before patients are brain-dead. "This is another example of overzealous transplant people trying to retrieve organs any way they can," Grodin said.

The concern that the city of New York may not do quite as much to save a patient if the magic bus is standing by may be misplaced, but it is quite real. Sure, the professional paramedics who man the regular ambulances are going to continue to do their jobs. But the presence of the organ wagon will make people question whether they are really doing enough. There is also the problem of when are people really dead. Even doctors get that wrong in hospital settings.

The other concern is that procedures may be performed - no make that will be performed - on people without their next of kin's consent. Personally, I would be furious if anything were done to my loved ones without my consent. (My wife and I have long had medical power of attorney for one another). Sorry, New York. This is an ethical morass and I predict some serious problems with it.

Besides, there are other things to worry about, aren't there?

I’m Sorry, But This Is Stupid

Talk about the "Blind leading the blind": Court rules paper money unfair to blind

The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish the bills' value, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling upholds a decision by a lower court in 2006. It could force the Treasury Department to redesign its money. Suggested changes have ranged from making bills different sizes to printing them with raised markings.

If this is "discrimination" than the word no longer has a meaning.  It has simply become a term the courts can use to usurp the power the Constitution reserves for legislatures. 

Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart Now, Baby

A 25-year old Canadian woman will be on probation for the next three years for actually taking a little piece of her lover's heart while engaged in drunken "rough sex."

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian man who asked his lover to carve a heart-shaped symbol on his chest during a rough sex game almost died when she accidentally pressed too hard and punctured his heart, a newspaper said on Thursday.
 
The Winnipeg Free Press said the 25-year-old woman had been sentenced to three years' probation after she pleaded guilty to assaulting the man in February 2007.

There's kinky and then there's stupid. I kind of think this little incident crosses that line. But the man should be a shoo-in for a runner-up position in the Darwin Awards.

The Real Victim Of “Global Warming”

Bird Dog at Maggie's Farm points out the real victim of the "global warming" hysteria: real conservationism.

At the risk of sounding corny, we believe in good stewardship of our inheritance.

What's irrational? The Green Movement is irrational. Most of it represents feel-good ideas that are hooey: symbolic hooey that is meant to make people feel virtuous while accomplishing nothing. Witness the lightbulb craze, "organic" vegetables, "recycling" plastic bottles (totally energy-inefficient), or hybrid cars (which do nothing "for the planet" but which are great on gas mileage). It's empty vanity and fashion, and nothing more (for an example, see this foolish agonizing piece by Michael Pollan), who has caught a bad case of the vain and guilt-ridden sanctimony of the "I can make a difference" disorder.

Pure organic pixie dust for the latte liberals.

The CO2 obsession is similarly irrational, and, deep down, everybody must know it. It is irrational because it is futile, regardless of whether there is any current warming, and regardless of whether there is any man-made warming.

I've pointed out that it has never been easier to rape the planet right now. Say you're producing biofuel and you have a free pass to eradicate a rain forest. But true conservation is being dragged down into the insanity of the extremists. Bird Dog has it exactly right here. Go read it all.