Archive for February, 2008

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. We have an appointment at 9 am at the vet that is clear across the universe and will take us an hour and a half to get there (if traffic keeps moving smoothly).

Depending on the outcome at the vet, tomorrow’s posts may be a bit on the light side. Keep your fingers crossed and keep saying those prayers.

If people don’t pay for their own health insurance, Hillary Clinton thinks garnishing their wages to pay for it anyway is a good idea.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC’s “This Week,” she said: “I think there are a number of mechanisms” that are possible, including “going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment.”

Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it, which puts undue pressure on hospitals and emergency rooms. With her proposals for subsidies, she said, “it will be affordable for everyone.”

I’m all for revamping the health care industry, it does need to be fixed, but government mandated health care is not the answer. If it was we would hear about thousands of people leaving the United States for health care in other countries, but we don’t. In fact, we always hear about people coming here to have procedures done. We have the best health care in the world, we just need to make it more affordable to those who desperately need it.

Also, when my son had his surgery, we had insurance, sucky insurance, and I made payments for a year and a half to pay it all off. There was no “undue pressure on the hospital”. They still got their money and in many cases they do. I don’t think we would see much difference whether it was my own sucky company provided insurance or government controlled crap coming down the same tube.

I don’t know about you, but I have seen far worse while walking by the Abercrombie & Fitch store at the mall.

Police, saying they were responding to citizen complaints, carted away two large promotional photographs from the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Lynnhaven Mall on Saturday and cited the manager on obscenity charges.

Adam Bernstein, a police spokesman, said the seizure and the issuance of the summons came only after store management had not heeded warnings to remove the images.

The citation was issued under City Code Section 22.31, Bernstein said, which makes it a crime to display “obscene materials in a business that is open to juveniles.” He did not say what was being done with the pictures and when the manager, whose name was not released, is scheduled to appear in court.

If these images are obscene, what is going to happen over at Victoria’s Secret? Ouch.

What’s the one thing we need to help people lose weight?

More diet books? Diet pills that work? What about government mandated segregation in restaurants? That should do it, shouldn’t it?

Mississippi legislators this week introduced a bill that would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous laws I have seen proposed in a long time. Now, just to put matters into perspective, in the quote above, change the word to ‘African American’ or ‘female’ or ‘gay’. Where’s the outrage people?

You can read more of this piece of nonsense at The Smoking Gun.

Our dog Flash has been limping for the last week or two, so we took him to the vet today. It turns out he has cancer. We have another appointment on Tuesday to find out how bad it is, and what we can do for him.

I know to many of you he is just a dog, but he’s a part of our family and I would appreciate some prayers if you’re so inclined.

Honestly, in today’s day and age, I can see why this happened. People, in general, are not as bright today as they were, say 20 years ago. I call it the dumbification of America.

The case of a chilly dog on display at a local convenience store prompted an outraged woman to take action.

Cindy Gravelle says she took a big gulp when she spotted a miserable looking pooch in the walk-in cooler, pressing its face up against the glass door, during a milk-run to her local 7-Eleven earlier this week.

Gravelle was doubly disturbed the next day to find the same dog, which appears to be an American Eskimo, in the cooler apparently for safekeeping while its owner worked a shift at the store near Centre St. and McKnight Blvd. N.E.

“Eight hours later it was still in the fridge,” the horrified 41-year-old said yesterday.

Wow. Just wow. If you have to keep an American Eskimo dog in the cooler while you are at work, where do you put your Himalayan cat?

Although pink slips were handed out, the unemployment rate still dropped, which I just don’t understand how that happens. It must be some political mumbo jumbo double speak.

In a shower of pink slips, U.S. employers cut jobs last month for the first time in more than four years, the starkest signal yet that the economy is grinding to a halt if it hasn’t already toppled into recession.

Conditions are deteriorating, according to the latest employment snapshot by the Labor Department, which showed nervous employers slicing payrolls by 17,000. The country hadn’t seen such a nationwide job loss since 2003, when employers were still struggling to recover from the last previous recession.

“We are certainly on thin ice,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia. And even President Bush, normally a cheerleader for the economy, said there were “serious signs” it was weakening.

When President Bush says things are weakening, you know they are. Will the economic stimulous package arrive in time? Will it help? Only time will tell.

I’ve often wondered what would happen in this very scenario.

Having a tornado demolish her home was bad enough.

But weeks later when Ann Beam received a $2,000 cable bill for destroyed equipment, she was floored.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Beam said. “I was like: ‘What are they thinking?”‘ Time Warner Cable billed a number of Wheatland residents for equipment damaged in the Jan. 7 twister. Beam’s bill covered five cable boxes and five remote controls.

Hopefully she told them to shove it. It sounds like nothing more than a scam to get money from the insurance company and they are using people to do it. Of course they say it was a mistake and she doesn’t really owe that money.

How many people turned those bills in to their insurance companies? How much has Time Warner received by them doing so?

So, the court has ruled that EchoStar, the owner of DISH netwokr, violated TiVo’s patent. Now they owe about $94 million bucks. They say that they already have a substitute for the software in question and customers like me will not be affected.

EchoStar Communications Corp infringed a TiVo Inc patent in building digital video recorders and must pay nearly $74 million in damages, a court that specializes in patent cases ruled on Thursday.

Once the appeal is final, EchoStar will be barred from selling the infringing devices, the ruling said. EchoStar said it already had a substitute for the software in question, and its customers would be unaffected.

TiVo’s stock soared more than 30 percent to $8.92, and EchoStar’s shares rose just under 1 percent to $28.58 in late trade on the Nasdaq.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the lower court’s damage award of $73,991,964. With interest, the damages would be $94 million, EchoStar said.

My question is, who is going to pay that $94 million bill? How much you wanna bet I won’t be affected by the software upgrade, but my bill will be? Uh huh. Someone has to pay for it.