Round-Up Of Recent News Stories

There are enough news stories over the past three days to choke a horse and we are going to do those now. Debby Roe has reached a deal with Mrs. Jackson where Debby promises to let Mrs. Jackson have uncontested custody of the kids, but she still is to retain her “rights as a parent” and hopes to build some sort of relationship with the two older children, who are here, with appropriate visitation rights.

Governor Swartzenegger has signed the new State Budget Bill into law over the past few days. But the bill was still a billion dollars short of a balanced budget, and so the governor took out his blue pencil and began lining things out. And the things which suffer most are education and child care bills and services for the poor. This to me doesn’t seem a very Christian thing to do. Isn’t he concerned about his image before the voters? Apparently it’s the whacko voters who are cheering him on!

There is paranoia afresh about androids taking over the world. Scientists are again concerned that machines may get the better of us in the future because they were already getting so intelligent and pro-active. Still the adage holds true that no machine will ever perform any action that wasn’t programmed into it by a human being. The idea of a computer going rogue like the HAL 9000 on “2001” is still Science Fiction. No computer is ever going to “develop an ego” or “become sentient” like Star Trek.

Judy is all upset about this euthanasia provision of Obama’s health bill. I must say I was not encouraged by this press conference video of Obama’s where he was grilled about a 104 year old woman who loved life wanting to get a pace-maker. But the President wasn’t all that hot on the idea and suggested that she perhaps just take a pill if she’s having heart pains. The liberals on the radio have said that this five year “reassessment” period they have with old people is to “share information with them” and discuss their hospital care in the future and whether they want extra-ordinary measures taken to prevent death. Judy says this is a clear code word for euthanasia. I must say that I am a whole lot less keen on any plan of the President now than I was two weeks ago. The bureaucracy and lack of accountability is rather bewildering. Now it comes out that Medi-Care itself will be cut itself, and that old people will be increasingly encouraged to euthanize themselves. Also despite the money pinch in government all around, nowhere is it ever broached that illegal aliens won’t have the same full-care health coverage as the rest of us, no matter if it breaks the budget.

Michael Jackson was regularly given Deprovan intravenously in his last days on this earth. Everyone agrees it is the only way Mr. Jackson could sleep, and everyone agrees that Michael was desperate for sleep in his last days. They would set up an intervenous drip for him, hospital style, and he would be “out” akin to someone undergoing surgery, and then as an automatic “alarm clock” the drip would be halted at a set point and Jackson would immediately wake up. It seems that sleep was so tenuous with Mr. Jackson that the slightest halting of any drug would cause a waking. Now they are saying that there were no hospital heart monitors or anything, which everyone agrees is necessary, if this drug Deprovan is going to be administered safely.

There is some law called the Arissi law (?) which makes the single payer health plan illegal for any individual state to adopt. This is pretty insane but I agree that we do some insane things. There is also a provision in our government that those Banks who were given all those hundreds of Billions last fall- - don’t have to lend the money out because the US government will PAY them six percent NOT to lend the money out but just to sit on it. We really don’t know who our congressmen are. There are a lot of blue dog democrats, which on some issues- is just like having republicans in office.

The biggest development in the Health Care saga is that now they want to wipe out public funding of Health Care entirely, so you don’t have that needed competition from the insurance companies. Apparently there is a “gang of six” senators from rural states like Montana, North Dakota and New Mexico and Maine- - and these six are drafting the whole current bill before congress. These six states combined are represented by twelve senators, but only comprise 2.5% of the population of the entire country yet they are dictating the fate of the rest of us. I’ll tell you this. If I had doubts about the Health Care bill before- - this latest development is a deal breaker for me causing me to vote “No”. My whole goal is not to see how much additional money I wan spend or of instituting some gigantic maze and schematic of beaurocracies- - - , No. My goal is purely and simply to get rid of HMO insurance companies. Any bill that facilitates this is a good bill. Any bill that ignores this problem is a bad bill.

People are so concerned about President Obama’s birth certificate, that they have forgotten about John Mc Cain. Because Mc Cain was born in the Panama Canal territory in 1936, which is a year before they were retroactively given citizenship in a bill passed in 1937. It all comes back to the wording of the Constitution and just what do the words “natural born citizen” mean? If citizenship was conferred upon you retro-actively, just now “natural” can it be? Also there is much controversy now about a “Certificate of Live Birth” verses an official hospital “Birth Certificate” like the one in my baby book, which nobody can find now. The “Life Birth” short form lacks vital details such as the signature of the attending physician, and height and weight information at birth- - and the baby’s foot print and the mother’s thumb print. Etcetra.

Now there is new hysteria about tanning beds. I guess these alarmists haven’t heard that we need at least five thousand units of Vitamin D every day, or else we will suffer symptoms of unwell-ness, and that vitamin D actually acts to prevent a whole host of cancers of various organs. Of curse then generally just use the UV A and not the more potent UV B, but don’t confuse the alarmists with the facts. I know, you’re all saying I don’t have normal Caucasian skin anyhow so I don’t count. I’m just saying that fifty years ago being darker was a whole lot more fashionable than it is now.

Well- - as if to make my Mom look even stupider than she already looks, they have now announced that home prices beginning with the month of May, have been trending higher. As you know home sales are up eleven percent in the past week or so and now are at the highest levels since last November. One would think surely it is only a matter of time before this whole housing crisis is in our rear view mirror.

Pregnant woman are at risk with the H1 N1 Swine Flu virus. Not only is the virus bad for the baby, but it seems you are six times as likely to contract the virus if you’re pregnant. Six percent of pregnant women have the virus in this country and in Brazil the figure is up to twenty percent of pregnant women. But so far other than inconveniencing kids at summer camp, this virus doesn’t seem all that dangerous at all- - yet.

Well now those new bathing suits are in the news again that Olympic swimmers use now. New records are being set with them all the time in “too” impressive numbers such that starting in 2010 they are going to ban these new body suits. I guess. But then there are all the bogus records that have already been set this year and last.

Congress is going on vacation next week and the people will let congressmen know just how they feel about the sort of bills they are contemplating. To be frank I haven’t decided about the Health Bill. There are so many roomers among the conservatives about how President Obama wants to take away this or that cherished right. Thom Hartman said that congress still retains the right to override Executive Orders. That is, until some Court gets a hold of a case. Because I get the distinct impression the Justices are so in the grip of Presidents they will go along with about what any President wants from strange executive orders, to these bill signing statements.