deadissue.com

I got this from yahoo:

A social network. The Greenwich study also found that having friends was far more important to retirement bliss than having kids. Those who have strong social networks are 30 percent happier with their lives than those without a strong network of friends. Having kids or grandkids had no impact on a retiree’s level of contentment.

The article also mentioned that if your income is close to what you had before retirement you are more likely to be happy.
If anything kids and especially granfkids just add a lot of drama to peoples lives but little satisfaction, now dogs and cats on the other hand I bet lead to much more satisfaction in later years.

The we are mad all the time crowd has manufactured another contraversy, this time over imagined racism. If you have ever dated a drama queen you can understand how the conservative movement operates and at some point you have to learn to ignore the drama or you go crazy. The same can be said for the country, we need to ignore the drama and get back to creating a great place to live and work. if not we will probably go crazy as their is no way to satisfy a drama queen, or the conservative movement for that matter.

BTW Vilsack should be fired but that is another post.

If this guy wasn’t dangerous the story would be completely funny:

A California man, whose mother said he was upset about Congress’ “left-wing agenda,” allegedly opened fire on police officers during a traffic stop in Oakland early Sunday morning…
Another news story says Williams was arrested for a bank robbery in 2002. According to a Modesto Bee story from that time, one Byron Christopher Williams tried to rob a bank in Chowchilla wearing a blond wig, only to be laughed out of the branch by customers. He then allegedly robbed another bank and led police on a 100-mile-an-hour, hour long chase

I am surprised this guy couldn’t get a job working for the tea-party express, it seems like he would fit right in at a tea-party rally or a Palin book signing.

This has shown up in a lot of places and it is certainly worth talking about:

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as “poor man’s pavement.” Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring “washboard” effect of driving on rutted gravel.

But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular.

I spent quite a bit of time in Northern Kansas where it seems like all the roads are falling apart, but if you ask the residents about the situation they will blame the evil government and suggest that if the government would just stop wasting money on abortion, all the roads could be fixed. I think rural America is harmed far more by the lack of infra-structure than Urban areas that can figure out ways to finance new roads and other services. It is odd that rural Americans continually support policies that destroy their way of life.

The latest right-wing wierdness is that government, by trying to help people, is interferring with freedom of religion. I think what they are really afraid of, is that people will no longer have to depend on religous groups for help, and if the economy ever improves less people will have to depend on anyone. The goal of most religous groups is to get converts when they are down, what better way to get more converts than to have a bad economy.

No wonder republicans and conservitives seem to do everything to wreck the economy, it just saves more soul’s. This is part of the reason I don’t think religous groups help in foreign countries, they really don’t care about the lives of people they are far more concerned about their deaths. It is interesting that they are starting to admit it though.

The Eagles are saying Vick will be able to travel with the team. I get that Vick is innocent of the shooting until proven guilty, but the NFL doesn’t have to let him play until he proves that he wasn’t involved. the only way for that to happen is for the witnesses to the shooting to start talking and help the police arrest the real shooter.

My guess is that Vick and his enablers could talk people into cooperating with the police and until they do that the NFL needs to keep Vick off the field. And can we all agree Tony Dungy is not much of a mentor.

I have always thought one of the problems with medical research is that it is mostly done by people that couldn’t get into medical school, apparentely even people who do get into med school are pretty incompetent.

Why aren’t hospitals leaping to adopt these best practices?…. More than half of the 2,075 respondents, most of whom were infection control nurses employed by hospitals, reported that they use a cumbersome paper-based system for tracking patients’ conditions that makes it harder to spot infections in real time. Seven in 10 said they are not given enough time to train other hospital workers on proper procedures. Nearly a third said enforcing best practice guidelines was their greatest challenge, and one in five said administrators were not willing to spend the necessary money to prevent CRBSIs.

[Peter] Pronovost said part of the problem was that many hospital chief executives aren’t even aware of their institution’s bloodstream infection rates, let alone how easily they could bring them down. When hospital leaders decide to create a culture in which preventing infections is a priority, he added, nurses feel empowered to remind physicians to follow the checklist when inserting catheters, physicians are provided antiseptic soaps as part of their catheter kits and infection control personnel have the best tools to monitor patients.

I wonder if this isn’t also a problem of a for profit health-care system where a patient with an infection is going to spend a lot more money, so from the hospitals perspective an infection is a good thing.

The New York Times has an article on BP and some of the companies many screw-ups. What really jumped out at me was this paragraph:

Tom Kirchmaier, a lecturer in strategy at the Manchester Business School, said that Mr. Browne tried to run BP like a financial company, rotating managers into new jobs with tough profit targets and then moving them before they had to deal with the consequences. The troubled Texas City refinery, for example, had five managers in six years.

This seems to be the business model for most companies right now, maximize profits and deal with the bancruptcy later. I am amazed that people continue to see the market as infallible in the wake of the numerous dissasters of the past few years.

It is good to see Vick facing some consequences for his actions:

Micheal Vickhas been barred from traveling out of Pennsylvania by probation officials in the wake of a shooting after his birthday party last month, a Philadelphia TV station reported Sunday.

Vick, who must have travel plans approved, missed scheduled appearances this weekend at his own golf tournament in Atlanta and at a youth football camp in Raleigh, N.C., as he stayed in Philadelphia, his spokeswoman, Judy Smith said.

WCAU-TV, an NBC affiliate, reported Sunday that Vick is not being allowed to travel out of the state at this time.

I hope they don’t let him travel until the witnesses in his shooting case decide to talk about what they saw that night, and yeah what I am implieing is that Vick and his enablers, are discouraging people from talking about the incident.

This has been all over the internet:

The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves like this one in Silicon Valley.

Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars is seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.

It seems like it would be much harder to come up with the payment on a million dollar house than a fifty-thousand dollar condo, almost any job will pay you the four-hundred dollars a month you need to stay current on a small property, finding a job that pays enough to stay current on a million dollar home would not be so easy. In other words I think this is pretty much a non-story, accept maybe for the idea that housing bubbles should be discouraged in the future to avoid all the misery the foreclosure crisis causes at all levels of income.

Looks Like Vick may not be held accountable for this latest incident.

The Virginia Beach police say they are done with Michael Vick, and, maybe, done with the case that might have cost Vick his second chance in the NFL.

Police said reluctant witnesses and an uncooperative shooting victim have convinced the prosecutor’s office not to press charges against the shooter – even though they know who the shooter is.

It wasn’t Vick, according to a police statement.

It happened about 2 a.m. on June 25 near a club in Vick’s old stomping grounds, where Vick was attending a 30th birthday party thrown in his honor. And the victim, identified by Vick’s lawyer as Quanis Phillips, was part of the Vick posse convicted of dogfighting and related charges in 2007. Vick spent 18 months in prison as a result of those charges.

It seems a little strange that even the victim doesn’t want to cooperate and the police seem very happy to close this case. What really happened?

Most police departments wont even let a parking ticket go, but the Virginia Beech police seem happy to give-up on a shooting? This makes no sense unless someone with a lot of money wants this whole thing to go away and some powerful people are willing to help them do it.

Colorado Springs Colorado aspires to be like Somalia:

At Village Green Park, just off Carefree Circle on the city’s east side, weeds flourish, and stenciled onto a bathroom door: “Restrooms Closed Due to Budget Restrictions.”

“If you have kids who are potty trained, that’s a problem,” said Rachel Barker, 33, playing at the swings with her toddler. “There’s probably a lot of kids peeing in the weeds.”

Of the city’s 149 parks, only 15 are being carefully maintained by the city, and most of them are revenue-producing sports fields.

It is only a problem if you are potty trained?

Colorado Springs is fast becoming “Galts Gulch” where all the gifted go to pee in the weeds.

Looks like other people are starting to think it is time to cut Vick:

Last August, after the Eagles’ shocking decision to sign the reinstated Vick, Lurie spoke with unprecedented candor and visible anguish during a news conference at the NovaCare Complex.

Lurie talked about his own disgust with Vick’s crimes, about his misgivings when coach Andy Reid proposed signing the former Atlanta quarterback. He talked about sitting down with Vick and looking into his eyes for signs of remorse and “self-hatred” for his actions. He said it wouldn’t be enough for Vick simply to refrain from causing trouble…

To be blunt, it has been apparent all along that the Eagles were wrong. Vick has not been some “agent for social change” (in Lurie’s words). He made a handful of uninspired appearances, telling children they shouldn’t get involved in dogfighting. Vick did little, if any more, than most players whose contracts call for a few such public appearances every season.

I still think their may have been other reasons to sign Vick, mostly to keep him quiet about other players and dogfighting, and he has acted that way, not really seeming very sincere when he talks about errors in his past. Mostly he has talked about how bad it has been for HIM. I hope the Eagles cut him and let him write his tell all book, it beats having Vick embarrass the NFL by his presence in the league.

Another picture of Kip and Cory in the kitchen, apparentely we all like it there. They seem to be smiling for the camera today

Looks like Vick may be in more trouble than we thought:

A man named in reports as Quanis Phillips, one of his co-defendants in his 2007 dog fighting conviction, was shot near the restaurant on the night of the June 24 party.

Vick’s lawyer had said he left the restaurant long before the shooting and had no involvement in it.

But surveillance video from the restaurant reportedly shows Vick was still there just three minutes before the shooting.

Police say Vick has not been ruled out as a suspect or person of interest in the investigation.

Vick is on probation and is not supposed to associate with convicted felons.

(Bolding mine)
It seems like the story keeps changing and Vick seems to be looking more and more like he had a part in the shooting. This sort of reminds me of O.J Simpson where he just kept pushing his luck, until he wound up in prison for probably the rest of his life.

UPDATE: This article seems to imply the same thing.

Looks like Avandia may not have been a safe drug, but it was a good seller, so the market decided it was a good drug:

The diabetes drug Avandia, once the world’s top-selling diabetes medication, took two more hits Monday with one new study linking it to an increased risk of heart attacks and a separate study linking it to an increased risk of heart failure and stroke. The research comes only weeks before an upcoming federal hearing to reconsider its fate.

The drug, also known by its generic name, rosiglitazone, was approved in 1999 to help people with Type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar. At the time, it was considered a safer alternative than existing diabetes drugs used instead of insulin. Soon after approval, however, the drug was linked to an increased risk of heart failure and bone fractures; worries about the drug’s safety increased in 2007 when a meta-analysis — a pooling of previous studies — concluded that the drug increased the risk of heart attack.

I think one of the reasons the U.S has poor health outcomes, especially when you consider how much money we spend on healthcare is that the main motivation behind health care in the U.S is to make a profit. As long as we continue to believe their is a market based solution for every problem we will have more situations like this one with Avandia.

Things that make you go MMMM.

Woodward said Vick left the club Guadalajara at Town Center shopping center at least 10 minutes and perhaps as much as 20 minutes before the shooting, which occurred just after 2 a.m. The shooting victim and witnesses at first were uncooperative, according to police, but Bernstein said detectives have now interviewed several people.

Vick allegedly had an argument with his co-defendant and ten-minutes later shots are fired at the same co-defendant?

I guess this Woodard person is supposed to be Vick’s attorney, but I don’t think he is really helping his client at this point. Almost from the begginning of this latest debacle it seemed like Vick was getting bad advice, I really don’t think he should have had a birthday party and invited all of Virginia, and now we know at least one of the people that has not been looking out for Vick’s best interests.

One thing that gets ignored, was who was at Micheal Vick’s fog fights, how many NFL players attended these events. I ave always believed that part of the reason the NFL let Vick back in was to keep him quiet about that part of the his dog fighting business. This article hints at a dog fighting problem in the NFL:

“Washington Redskins players Clinton Portis and Chris Samuels defended Michael Vick on Monday by ridiculing the notion that dog fighting is considered a crime.

In an interview with WAVY-TV, Portis said that if the Atlanta Falcons quarterback is charged and convicted of being involved in a dog fighting operation, then authorities would be ‘putting him behind bars for no reason.’

‘I don’t know if he was fighting dogs or not,’ Portis said. ‘But it’s his property; it’s his dogs. If that’s what he wants to do, do it.’

Portis said dog fighting is a ‘prevalent’ part of life.”

At this point if the NFL keeps Vick around it will definitely seem to bolster the argument that Vick is being given hush money.

Doesn’t sound like the Eagles are rushing to the defense of their quarterback:

We are aware of the incident that occurred in Virginia early this morning and are in the process of gathering all of the facts. Until then, we will not have any comment on this matter.”

What is more interesting is what might have led to the incident:

Now, the Eagles might have some egg on their face ( at least it’s not cake) depending on what facts come out of the shooting incident outside a club Thursday night in Virginia during a celebration of Vick’s 30th birthday party. The shooting victim was Quanis Phillips and the shooting allegedly happened after Phillips threatened to put birthday cake in Vick’s face or vice versa.

I really hate that part of weddings where the bride and groom smash cake in eachothers faces, but I have never seen that at birthday party. At a minimum it does not sound like Vick was avoiding other convicted felons.

I really would like to go back to being an Eagles fan so hopefully the Eagles will cut Vick in the next week and fire Reid sometime during the season for inflicting Vick on long suffering Philly fans.

Both Kip, the dog and Cory, the cat seem to be escaping the heat by laying on the tile floor. I don’t have central air and if the temperature here in Denver keeps getting up near a hundred I may be joining them on the slightly cooler floor.

Looks like Micheal vick, a well known dog fighter and part-time quarterback in the NFL may be in some trouble:

A fight broke out when a crowd of people attending Michael Vick’s 30th birthday party, dubbed “Vick’s All White 30th Birthday Bash,” spilled onto the street. Several gunshots were fired and one of Vick’s co-defendants in the federal dog fighting case, Quanis Phillips, was taken to Virginia Beach General Hospital with a gunshot wound in his leg.

It is unclear whether or not Vick was present at the time of the shooting.

Vick is still on federal probation and on a three-year suspended sentence for a state dog fighting conviction. As a condition of his release, he is not allowed to associate with known felons, that would certainly include Quanis Phillips

(bolding mine)
First it doesn’t seem like Vick was taking his probation very serious, and was still hanging out with the same people he claims got him into trouble. Second, if his probation gets revoked he will probably miss another year of football; which I guess will be the end of Vick’s football career.

If the NFL doesn’t ban Vick at this point, it would be pretty obvious they don’t care at all about the conduct of NFL players.

This is Kip my Australian Shepard mix, as you can see he is taking a break from a rough day of napping.

A lot of people are calling for McChrystal to step down and he probably should after saying some pretty stupid and disrespectful thing in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, but I doubt his replacement would be any better.

The real problem with our milatary is that for quite a few years it has been mostly about promoting christian beliefs and not really about defending America. It will probably take twenty years to fix the milatary and until then we are stuck with a bunch of guys like McChrystal, who have never shown good judgement and want to make the whole world beleive in their Santa Clause. Going back to his attempts cover-up Pat Tillman’s death McChrystal has never shown good judgement but I doubt the army has anyone standing behind him who is any better. It is time to get out of Afganistan before our christian soldiers make it worse, and McChrystal is as good as anyone to lead the retreat.

Update: Looks like Obama outsmarted me at just about everyone else. Again I am really glad Obama is president

Looks like Texas is starting to have some fiscal woes. Texas like Somalia and the Sudan is becoming one more example of why conservatism doesn’t work.

Got into an argument on another site about animals in research. If anyone wants to talk about I would love to hear peoples opinions. In a related note someone told me Micheal Vick won the most hated athlete in 2010, seems like he finally got an award he desrves.

Update: Here is the article on Vick, but Al davis was the second most hated man in sport ahead of Ben Rothliesberger which sort of makes me question the entire poll. It was also interesting that no steroid using baseball players were named at all which makes me think fans don’t really care whether athletes us steroids.

This is a follow-up to yesterdays post about some in the media complaining about the president’s speech on Tuesday night:

The result was a $20 billion pot of money that will bring much-needed help to a devastated region. As one report noted, “The figure is not a cap on the potential damages, and the company received no liability waiver as part of the agreement.” BP also scrapped this year’s dividends payments, and agreed to set aside an additional $100 million to support unemployed oil industry employees.

It seems praise for the president isn’t especially common right now, but for Obama, this was no small feat — he got what he wanted, and gave up nothing. As one lawyer explained, “[The president] had no actual power to compel that aside from moral suasion and the threat of having an unhappy president. Legally, BP could have just waited for the lawsuits and drawn the whole thing out for years. As a lawyer, I find it a unique and mind-boggling accomplishment.”

Actions speak a lot louder than words, Bush was great at making big promises and not keeping them, remember “Bin Laden dead or alive” Obama seems very good at making small promises and then exceeding them. We have a health care, financial reform and now a fund to at least start re-building the gulf. What did Bush have at this point in his presidency other than a big hole in New York.

I watched a little bit of Olberman last night where, Howard Fineman, Chris Mathews and Keith Olberman pretty much hated Obama’s speech. I think they got it wrong.

Obama hit on what is probably the most important part of the debacle in the Gulf. Lack of regulation and blind trust in business got us to this point. He(the president) even talked about being misled as to the the safety on offshore drilling, and was now going to change the policy towards offshore drilling. Yeah, more specifics would have been nice but just an admission that business cannot police itself is a big step in the right direction.

I am starting to like Charley Crist and I doubt he would have been such a reasonable candidate if the Baggers hadn’t kicked him out of the ever shrinking republican party.

Looks like BP is not stepping up when it come to paying for the mess they have made:

The financial toll of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico escalated Wednesday as BP’s stock plummeted to a 14-year low and fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with the company angrily complained of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under.
The oil company captured an ever larger-share of the crude gushing from the bottom of the sea and began bringing in more heavy equipment to help in the effort, including a production ship and a tanker from the North Sea that will allow the system to process larger quantities of oil and better withstand tropical storms.
The containment efforts played out as investors deserted BP amid fears that the company might be forced to suspend dividends, end up in bankruptcy and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Maybe it is time to seize BP’s assets while they still have a few left

At least in the case of BP

BP stock sank to its lowest point in 14 years Wednesday as investors feared the company would be overwhelmed by the costs of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps forcing it to cut its robust dividend to pay for the disaster.

The stock dropped $5.45, or 16 percent — easily its worst day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded seven weeks ago. The company has lost half its market value, a stunning $95 billion, in that time.

On Wednesday alone, 238 million shares of BP changed hands, an extraordinary number that was more than double the company’s volume for some days earlier this month.

“It’s not time for logic. It’s not time for being rational,” Fadel Gheit, energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., said of the selling. “When people say run, you run too. It’s a mob mentality.”

BP really should be on its way to being the new Enron, nothing more than a bankrupt company that is the butt of jokes and its CEO serving a long jail term. Hopefully Obama and co will do the right thing in this case, end offshore drilling and punish those responsible for destroying the gulf coast.