saddam in heaven

More cruelty from right-wing crackpots

Nothing like blaming the victims.

The difference between liberals and conservatives, Chapter 973: While liberal Salon readers were debating the decorum of criticizing the president on a national day of mourning over the Virginia Tech massacre, conservative bomb throwers wasted no time criticizing ... the victims.

It's not just Mad John Derbyshire yesterday -- "Where was the spirit of self-defense here ... [W]hy didn't anyone rush the guy?" That was bad enough. Today the National Review's Mark Steyn blamed the "awful corrosive passivity" of Virginia Tech students for not defending themselves against Cho Seung-Hui. He even mocks the male students as somehow not quite being men. (I found this at Think Progress.)

"I’m not sure I'm ready to go the full Derb but I think he's closer to the reality of the situation than most. ... Point one: They're not 'children.' The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and -- if you'll forgive the expression -- men.

"We do our children a disservice to raise them to entrust all to officialdom's security blanket. Geraldo-like 'protection' is a delusion: when something goes awry -- whether on a September morning flight out of Logan or on a peaceful college campus -- the state won't be there to protect you. You'll be the fellow on the scene who has to make the decision."

The hideous Michelle Malkin is even worse. "There's no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries," she begins (as if she's ever thought about a polite time or way to say anything). She continues: "Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.

"And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense." Malkin then goes off on a predictable rant against the Virginia law that prevents guns on campus.

So let's sort this out: On a day when people of conscience and common sense are asking what makes a miserable young man turn to guns and violence, conservative provocateurs are insisting the answer is more guns and violence. Over three tragic days, I've found solace in the actions of two Virginia Tech professors: the courageous Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu, who died blocking the door so his students could get away, and English department chair Lucinda Roy, who tutored Cho personally when other students were afraid to be in class with him; who tried to get him counseling, and even went to the police with her concerns about the dangerously depressed student. But Malkin and Steyn are telling me Librescu and Roy are actually part of the problem.

Of course, I'd rather be in the camp where people debate whether it's OK to criticize the president in a time of tragedy than in the camp where people blame the victims of the tragedy. I actually feel sorry for decent conservatives today, having to be soiled by association with such garbage. But if you ever find yourself wondering why liberals are so often out-shouted in the public sphere, even though most Americans agree with their politics, remember this moment. It isn't easy to compete with wingnuts who will say absolutely anything to make their points. When Ann Coulter's cracks about the 9/11 widows start to look tame by comparison, you know standards of public discourse are continuing to erode.

A Real-Estate Roller Coaster (Literally) from Freakonomics Blog by Stephen J. Dubner

The Yale economist Robert Shiller has indexed American housing prices going back to 1890.

You know how people like to say that such-and-such experience “was a real roller-coaster ride”?

Well, the blogger Richard Hodge at SpeculativeBubble.com wanted to see if housing prices really were a roller-coaster ride. So he plotted Shiller’s inflation-adjusted index onto a roller-coaster video ride. It is pretty fantastic.

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Is it OK to criticize the president again?

Joan Walsh - Salon:

"Bush did a fine job at the memorial service Tuesday. His warm, regular-guy human decency shows up at times like this. You wonder where it goes the rest of the time, when he's presiding over a war that has already killed 3,300 Americans and getting ready to send more soldiers to Iraq. Bombs killed 127 more people in Baghdad today, on the heels of the attack on the Iraqi parliament building last week, the bombing of the historic Jadriya bridge, over the Tigris -- all this after we've been told the surge is working. What would things look like if it wasn't working?"

From the current "Real Time With Bill Maher." George W. Bush's guide to ethics.

Little boxes | Salon.com

Garrison Keillor hits the nail on the head once again. Italics below are mine.

Little boxes | Salon.com: "The Current Occupant, trying to escape the dreaded term Moderate Republican, has done violence to the Constitution and flown in the face of reality. He invades a country and allows neocon ideologues to play at colonialism until the country has descended into chaos and thereby costs the lives of young Americans who had other plans than to be blown up in a war whose purpose now is forgotten. And then he wraps himself in Old Glory and dares you to say otherwise. We are now three-quarters of the way through the Attention Deficit Administration and who knows what dark surprises remain?"

More old folks humor --- so funny yet real.

More from my dad

*Distraught Senior*

A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor's office.

"Is it true," she wanted to know, "that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so," the doctor told her.

There was a moment of silence before the senior lady replied, "I'm wondering, then, just how serious is my condition. This prescription is marked 'NO REFILLS'."

*Walking Recovery*

From my dad....

An old fellow came into the hospital truly on death's door due to an infected gallbladder. The surgeon who removed the gallbladder was adamant that his patients be up and walking in the hall the day after surgery, to help prevent blood clots forming in the leg veins. The nurses walked the patient in the hall as ordered, and after the third day the nurse told how he complained bitterly each time they did. The surgeon told them to keep walking him.

After a week, the patient was ready to go. His family came to pick him up and thanked the surgeon profusely for what he had done for their father. The surgeon was pleased and appreciated the thanks, but told them that it was really a simple operation and we had been lucky to get him in time.

"But doctor, you don't understand," they said, "Dad hasn't walked in over a year!"

Imam's prayer in Senate makes one senator a no-show

This is why I never make fun of Utah politicians. Some of ours here in Texas are just unbelievably ignorant.

Nothing is more routine on the floor of the Texas Senate than the morning prayer. Unless the prayer is delivered during Passover, four days before Easter, by a Muslim cleric whose background is questioned by conservative radio talk show hosts, one of whom happens to be a senator.

The senator, Dan Patrick, who has from his first day in office challenged tradition, may have become the first senator ever to leave the floor in protest of the prayer. The invocation itself was a first for the the Senate, delivered by Imam Yusuf Kavakci, with the Dallas Central Mosque.

Before he could stand before the Senate, Kavakci faced accusations by conservative groups such as the Texas Eagle Forum, suggesting that he was a member of a radical Muslim religious sect, a charge he has denied.

Here I Am With President Romney

Reason I blog... Too funny

Parody of Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" (itself a parody of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours")

Lyrics by M. Spaff Sumsion

http://www.spaff.com/poesy/romney.html

Fred Thompson's First Campaign Ad?

I am not even that big of a fan of his character on Law and Order, but I did like this video.

Great definition - SPASM child

Simply Pray And Send Money - GARRISON KEILLOR

Trunk Monkey

No car should be without one?

Thank you for signing Oppose Vice President Dick Cheney's BYU Commencement Speech

Couldn't help myself. I guess Darth Vader wasn't available.

BYU commencement speaker

So happy that none of my kids is graduating from BYU this year.  I am surprised they didn't have Mitt Romney speak instead.

"An invitation for Vice President Cheney to speak at BYU's April commencement was extended by members of the First Presidency of the LDS Church in their capacities as chair and vice chairs of the BYU Board of Trustees," Jenkins said.

BYU NewsNet - Cheney Visit Confirmed

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Vanity Fair: The Night of the Generals

Amazing article in the current issue of Vanity Fair.

The six retired generals who stepped forward last spring to publicly attack Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq war had to overcome a culture of reticence based on civilian control of the military. But while each man acted separately, all shared one experience: a growing outrage over the administration's incompetence, leading some of the nation's finest soldiers to risk their reputations and cross a time-honored line.

The Night of the Generals: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

I always figured that 9/11 was just an excuse for the Bush administration to declare war on Iraq.  The article talks about General John Batiste, former commander of the First Infantry
Division

From March 2001 to June 2002, Batiste worked alongside Wolfowitz. ("Unflappable," Wolfowitz later called him.) In that position, he saw the Iraq war take shape even before September 11, then saw the plan solidify. He was there that Saturday morning in early 2002, for instance, when Rumsfeld, unhappy with the proposed troop numbers, sent General Tommy Franks, the CentCom commander, packing back to Tampa with orders to come up with a way to do the war on the cheap. Batiste says he had doubts from the outset, but though he had Wolfowitz's ear daily, he didn't bend it; someone else, he thought, surely would. "I didn't always agree with his thinking," he says, "but you have a certain amount of trust that your government and its apparatus will look at all sides of something before they go to war."

.

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Have a Messy Desk? Congrats, You're More Productive

Sponsored by publisher Little, Brown and Co., the competition promoted "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder," by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman, a new book that argues neatness is overrated, costs money, wastes time and quashes creativity."We think that being more organized and ordered and neat is a good thing and it turns out, that's not always the case," said Freedman."Most of us are messy, and most of us are messy at a level that works very, very well for us," he said in an interview. "In most cases, if we got a lot neater and more organized, we would be less effective."

Have a Messy Desk? Congrats, You're More Productive - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

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From my dad: *Murphy's Laws on Computers*

• As soon as you delete a worthless file, you'll need it.
• Installing a new program will always mess up at least one old one.
• You can't win them all, but you sure can lose them all.
• The likelihood of a hard disk crash is in direct proportion to the value of the material that hasn't been backed up.
• There are only two kinds of computer users: Those whose hard disks have crashed, and those whose hard disks haven't crashed yet.
• Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it. If you fiddle with something long enough, you'll break it.
  

Office workers more prone to blood clots

Incentive to get off my butt and walk around during the day.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Office workers glued to computer screens are at greater risk of deadly blood clots forming in their legs than long-distance air travelers, the author of a New Zealand study on thrombosis said Monday.ADVERTISEMENTThe study found that 34 per cent of patients admitted to hospital with blood clots had been seated at work for long periods, its leader, Prof. Richard Beasley of New Zealand's privately funded Medical Research Institute, told The Associated Press.

Office workers more prone to blood clots - Yahoo! News

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My aching back, part 2

I now have two back specialists, one for my lower back and one for my neck and upper back.

My lower back doctor indicated that I have:

• Spondylolisthesis
  
  The skeletal anatomy involved in spondylolisthesis is complex but, in brief, it works like this: Each vertebra in the spine has a thick anterior body (called the centrum). A vertebral (or neural) arch on the surface of the centrum encloses a "vertebral foramen," which the spinal cord passes through. On each side of the neural arch on each vertebra, a pair of "superior articulating processes" projects up, and pair of "inferior articulating processes" projects down, supplying support and flexibility.
  
  Spondylolysis is the degeneration or deficient development of these articulating parts of the vertebra. It can range from a serious condition to a mild one.
  
  Spondylolysis may permit forward slippage of a vertebra onto the next vertebra below it, producing a spondylolisthesis. Spondylolysis occurs in 6% of the population, but only in people who can stand upright and walk. Spondylolysis is more common among athletes active in sports that require repetitive hyperextension, such as diving, weight lifting, wrestling and gymnastics.
  
  Children and teens with this condition may have no symptoms, though symptoms often develop during the preadolescent growth spurt. The magnitude of symptoms does not always correlate with the severity of the slipped vertebra. Many people with this condition don't require treatment. Spondylolysis or low-grade spondylolisthesis may be managed conservatively without surgery. However, young ("skeletally immature") people with more than 30 to 50% slippage are at increased risk for progression and are candidates for spinal fusion without delay. For other patients, treatment can vary from surgery to physical therapy to modification of activities.
  
  Spondylolisthesis has an emotional impact because pain can limit function and impair quality of life. Education is important in giving the patient a sense of control and the information necessary to make informed treatment decisions.
  
  
• neurogenic claudication
  
  Spinal claudication is pain in the buttocks and legs brought on by exercise with the back in an extended position.
  
  Spinal claudication may be mistaken for:
  
  * intermittent claudication due to arterial disease, or
  * typical lumbar disc prolapse
  
  It is relieved by sitting, bending forward or lying down.
  
  
• multilevel disc degeneration
  
  Description of Degenerative Disc Disease
  
  DDD can affect any part of the spine, although common sites are the lumbar (lower back) and cervical (neck) spine; thoracic DDD is very uncommon.
  
  Radiographic (x-ray) findings of DDD are a narrower disc space and some osteophyte (bony outgrowth of spur) formation. As people age, these changes tend to show up on the radiographs of most men and women. However, the first imaging modality to detect changes of DDD is MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), even before plain radiographs. Loss of water content (hydration) in the invertebral disc is an early finding, which is followed by narrowing of the disc space. People in the 20?s and 30?s may already have changes to their discs but no clinical symptoms. As the aging processes continues, the prevalence of DDD increases.
  
  In the early phases of DDD, spontaneous or post-traumatic tears, degeneration, fibrosis, and collapse of the disc may lead to failure of mechanical function. This is associated with low back pain and possible leg pain if there is nerve root impingement (radiculopathy).
  
  As DDD progresses, there is ligamentous buckling and osteophyte development which can cause narrowing of the space for the spinal cord and nerve roots. Lumbar spinal stenosis is the narrowing of the neural canal and foramina to an extent that results in compression of the lumbosacral nerve roots or cauda equina. Acquired lumbar stenosis is caused primarily be degenerative disease of the spine. However, a congenitally narrow or small spinal canal is a common finding; when present, it requires less disc degeneration, smaller disc herniation, or osteophytes to cause symptoms.