Category Archives: Throw Da Bums Out

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Posted on by

I’m bored.

Miz Gekko wrote about boredom and creativity but this is different.

I like working on/worrying on a problem or a process or simply an idea. I can wander around in the cellar in the back of my head, move the furniture around, blow the dust aside with the air compressor, and make connections or come up with something new. I used to do that all the time while standing in a grocery line or sitting on the toilet or commuting. Somewhere along the way, I lost some of that time.

My need to make some changes to the No Puffin Perspective™ has nothing to do with gaining time to commune with the guys in the cellar.

My need to make some changes has everything to do with what I write about.

I need to freshen my approach.

The Perspective™ has indeed exposed a number of the issues we face, from the general lies, to the Comcast lies, to the political lies in pseudoscience and finance.

Don’t worry, I’ll still point out when we need a new head for the CDC (and for the guy who appoints the CDC Director).

Today in Medicine
We need a new CDC Director.

Norah O’Donnell asked the yes-or-no question on CBS Face the Nation yesterday, “Do we need to mandate the MMR vaccination?”

CDC Director Tom Frieden danced around it but never said yes.

It is a tragedy that the measles vaccine had eliminated measles from the U.S. by the year 2000. Fewer than 100 cases have been reported every year since, but 644 people became infected in 27 states in 2014. 84 cases of measles were reported in January of this year alone. Most are in California where airhead parents listening to their bubble headed, celebrity, political “scientists” have opted out of vaccinations. [<==Note Editorial Commentary]

Public schools do require kids to be vaccinated but California parents can exempt their kids simply by saying they have a “personal objection” to vaccination. Of the 6,236,672 kids enrolled in 10,366 California schools, nearly 200,000 may not be vaccinated against measles and over two million have not received all seven CDC-recommended shots. Those 200,000 put thee and me at risk. Your kids, too.

CDC Director Tom Frieden danced around the question but he never said yes.

Here’s the plan.

Week 1: Random Fancies from the “you just won’t believe this” department.

Week 2: Random Storytelling from North Puffin.

Week 3: Random Truthtelling from the topical news

Week 4: Random Storytelling from South Puffin. (We don’t call it Random Access for nothin’ you know.)

Five week months mean you get a week off. Yay!

Don’t worry, I’ll stay on top of my areas of interest and expertise, from business and marketing, and engineering and real science, to heating issues, to the National Debt, teaching, and, of course, healthcare but next week I’ll tell the story of why we had no telephones at Floodstock.

If you are an editor looking for syndication, the new schedule means you can pick up a monthly spot with light explanations of the unexpected, a twice-monthly pair of tales from the northern- and southernmost points of the Puffin range, or all four. Or any other combination.

Cheers!

 

A Bit Too Transparent

Posted on by

The government has stopped openly sharing your personal information from the still-troubled Obamacare website with the usual cookie collectors. The Associated Press found that Healthcare.gov was relaying users’ personal information including zip code, income level, pregnancy status, and smoking status with Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and companies that track people online, such as the ad service DoubleClick.

Caught redhanded, Healthcare.gov changed its site coding overnight.

As CNN notes, though, “While Healthcare.gov is no longer relaying your personal information on the front end, there’s no telling what information might get shared once it is stored in the government’s computers.”

Oh, goody.

Distracted

Posted on by

A friend posted this: “I guarantee you’ll hear the phrase ‘My ancestors came here legally’ in the aftermath of President Obama’s immigration address. It’s almost impossible to find any conversation about immigration — between elected officials, pundits, online commenters – in which at least one participant doesn’t use the phrase.”

While the Obamanation and his Kool Aid quaffing crowd distract us with illegal executive orders and net neutrality, we still have crumbling roads and bridges, failing schools, and the slowest and most expensive Interwebs in the world.

Oh, yeah. And a still-broken healthcare system (dammit, I thought the Unaffordable Care Act was supposed to change things).

This newspeak argument over the illegal aliens the left wants to recast as “undocumented immigrants” is a decent stand-in for the criminal behavior across government.

If you are Abenaki, Eastern Pequot, or Mi’kmaq, your ancestors illegally displaced the Red Paint people. If your ancestor came over in 1642 at the invitation of Billy Penn with my greatx6 grandfather, you maybe displaced the Lenni-Lenapi. Mr. Penn had a legal charter and my greatx6 grandfather was a British subject because there was no United States. His grandson became an American citizen. His greatx2 grandson was born one. If your ancestor came in with my other great-grandfather, they used the then-normal immigration process and became citizens. They followed the law on the ground at the time.

No matter how they got here, the problem isn’t our ancestors (unless they were criminals). The problem is anyone who is here illegally now because they are criminals. The problem is this attempt on the part of so many to pretend that that ain’t so.

crim·i·nal /’krimənl/ noun
1. a person who has committed a crime.

The Obamanation has accumulated an extraordinarily long list of major crimes in just six years. The following is just the short list. If a business or a crime family got caught at all of this, we’d see million spent on RICO prosecutions.

• Mr. Obama stole General Motors from its owners and gave it to his cronies so they would vote for him. Grand theft is kind of against the law. Of course, car theft on that scale is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama stole your doctor and your health plan from you and gave it to the Big Insurance so they would pay for his election. Graft is kind of against the law. Of course, graft on that scale is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama exchanged five Taliban terrorists for an American deserter. That’s not just against policy; it’s against the law. Of course, breaking the law in the oval office is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama’s Justice Department illegally sold thousands of guns to criminals and refused to comply with congressional subpoenas about the operation. A sting is deceptive, probably unethical, but common; Fast and Furious wasn’t a sting. Supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”
• Mr. Obama’s people falsely portrayed the Benghazi terrorist attack as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim YouTube video, and then lied about White House involvement. Perjury is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”
• Mr. Obama’s IRS illegally targeted conservative groups for heightened IRS scrutiny. Using government agencies for political acts is kind of against the law. Newspeak called it merely a “management problem” — Liberals said the IRS did it to liberal groups, too.
• Mr. Obama’s IRS refunded more than $46 million to nearly 24,000 illegal aliens using the same Atlanta, GA address. Fraud is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”

And there you have it.

A crim·i·nal /’krimənl/ is a person who has committed a crime.

The newspeak argument to recast crimes as “hope and change” or “management problems” or “good politics” is worse than giving the burglar the keys to your house or the murderer a deadly weapon or the used car salesman your checkbook. We trust burglar and the murderer and the used car salesman to do us wrong. We’re supposed to trust those we elect to do us right.

The Obamanation has not only violated the law, they have shredded that trust.