Mollie Sugden, R.I.P.

I admit to watching that British sitcom, but it is all I will admit.  Obit here.

Yay, We're 40th

In this case it's good being so low in the rankings. Hope this info doesn't change anything. Be careful this weekend, however, no speeding, please, & absolutely no drinking & driving, it's a killer.

Why? Oh, Why? Oh, Why?

Yes, why would any newspaper which claims integrity as a guiding journalistic light give this nitwit any space on their pages?

Will It Be Double Figures Next Time?

It will probably be a safe bet. I wonder what the rate would be if the government counted all the folks that have just stopped looking for work?

By Popular Demand

It will now & forever be my friend SENATOR Al.

My Friend Al

Finally. & now the Dems are at 60. Will it give them, & President Obama spines? We'll see.

Billy Mays, R.I.P.

Too bad OxiClean can't revive the dead.

Sky Saxon, R.I.P.

Obit here.

OK, OK Josh. Michael Jackson died. You can watch his videos here.

Haven't Left Yet

Minnesota must be so embarassed. I'll tell you one thing, I'm not spending a dime in Stillwater, Minnesota no matter how hip it thinks it is. Good grief.

Trip Today/Tomorrow

No acid, but leaving shortly for The Cites to have another couple of hours of tattoo work done on Marigny's arm, my left arm. Happily, I'm off the awful warfarin, less pain, less bleeding. Of course, the real reason for going are The Twins. See y'all late tomorrow night or sometime Saturday. Yes, it's going to be hot.

This photo was taken by The Kid.  I love the arm over the cat.  Tchoupi is one great cat. 

Viagra? He Don't Need No Damned Viagra

What is with these ReThugs & their apparent insatiable need of sex? Sen. Ensign, who inexplicably is still more popular than his fellow Nevadan Sen. Harry Reid, juiced up the news a week or so ago. Now, the completely immoral governor of South Carolina had an affair. Family values, anyone?

Just Wonderful

Gold! Common sense solutions to environmental problems indeed.

Medical Doctors & Money

Apparently, for some docs, it's never enough. It infuriates me that the people mentioned in the article work on the public dime, develop their inventions on the public dime, but the general public gets squat in return. & spare me the humanitarian bullshit, it's all about the money.  Maybe these docs, if they exceed their UW salary with industry "donations", ought to be forced to keep working, but without the public pay.

Heatley, president and founder of Med-Systems Inc., a Madison-based company that manufactures and markets the SinuCleanse over-the-counter saline nasal wash system, reported receiving $1.3 million from the company and working 40 days.

My emphasis.

This Is A Great Project

A levee is removed, on purpose! What a concept. Maybe this will spur more removals, & the wetlands of south Louisiana will rebuild to their historic acreage & offer their hurricane protection once again.

Yet at the same time, there is a growing awareness that Louisiana’s levees have exacted a huge environmental cost. Inland, cypress forests and wetlands crucial for migrating waterfowl have vanished; in southern Louisiana, coastal marshes deprived of regular infusions of sediment-rich river water have yielded by the mile to an encroaching Gulf of Mexico.

Taking Care Of The Veterans

Er, not so much. The federal government, in their frantic & stupid attempt to save money & privatize everything, learned nothing from Blackwater's brutal incompetence. Now, we have a surgeon who doesn't know a prostate from a bladder. So much for providing state of the art care at a VA hospital. & of course, no one is in jail, Dr. Kao still has a job.

For patients with prostate cancer, it is a common surgical procedure: a doctor implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the disease. But when Dr. Gary D. Kao treated one patient at the veterans’ hospital in Philadelphia, his aim was more than a little off. The Rev. Ricardo Flippin, preaching at a Baptist church in Charleston, W.Va., had severe pain and later found out he had a radiation injury. Most of the seeds, 40 in all, landed in the patient’s healthy bladder, not the prostate. It was a serious mistake, and under federal rules, regulators investigated. But Dr. Kao, with their consent, made his mistake all but disappear. He simply rewrote his surgical plan to match the number of seeds in the prostate, investigators said.

*****

The V.A. put too much trust in the contractors,** said Darrell G. Wiedeman, a senior health physicist for the nuclear commission. “They claim they hired experts, the best that money could buy from the local university, so therefore they didn’t require a lot of training and oversight,” Mr. Wiedeman said at a recent meeting of the nuclear commission’s advisory board.

My emphasis. **Sound familiar?