Cicada Mania

An entire web site dedicated to Cicadas.
http://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/

Snopes Left Leaning Conclusions

I have begun to notice a trend in the conclusions reached by the editors of Snopes.com.
Their conclusions tend to have a left-leaning bias.

Example Bush -vs- Clinton (out of context?)

Take the following article regarding comments made by Hillary Clinton:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/marxist.asp
This article status is determined by Snopes editors as "Status: Multiple - See Below". When I continue to read the article, nowhere does it say "Status: True", nowhere does it say "Status: False". The editor spends most of his or her article space explaining how each Clinton comment (that could be construed as Marxist) was taken out of context.

Ok fine... Let's give them the out of context defense. If it's good for the goose, then it should be good for the gander. Right?

Apparently not so.

Let's take the first random article that I pulled up with a snopes search for "Bush out of context". Note: I have never been a George Bush fan. I'm just using this article because it was the first thing that came to mind.

Here's the article related to a comment made by Barbara Bush:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/barbara.asp
This entry is determined as "Status: True" right at the top. Yet read further and you will see that this statement was also taken out of context. But, instead of taking the time as they did in the Clinton article to further explain the context, the Snopes editors simply stamped the comment as "True".

Snopes should apply the same rules for both articles. They should either change the Bush article status to "out of context" or change the Clinton article status to True.

Snopes still has value, however as I have said in a previous posting - Snopes is not necessarily the last word.

Obama's Czars: The Men Behind The Crown

Obama's Czars: The Men Behind The Crown

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World Net Daily being CENSORED from search engines?

Obama birth certificate links buried on Google News site

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=104947

I initially feared posting this link for fear of my own blog being sandboxed. Then I remembered... "It's not about me". People need to know that Google and Microsoft can play these types of games. They can build an online business overnight and they can ruin an online business overnight.

By the way, this is my second posting on the following topic:

If information is power, then Google is quietly taking over the world.

Source of "Government Censorship" image:  http://www.larrywestproductions.com

Savage Ban - Things are supposed to happen this weekend.

Savage is comparing the new information about his Britain ban to the Dreyfus Affair: http://www.answers.com/dreyfus+affair?gwp=11&ver=2.4.0.651&method=3

New information is released: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=105029

Bakken Oil - U.S. Reserve

I recieved an interesting email today that appears to be legit. It describes a large oil reserve located within the United States. It is called the Bakken formation. Apparently there are environmental and logistics issues related to the harvesting of this oil. In addition, some of the numbers are disputed. From what I gather from the links below, estimates range from 3 to 503 billion barrels of oil at this location. The primary source of the dispute apparently is related to estimates of what percentage of this oil is "recoverable". The bottom line- There is a lot of oil in the Bakken region.

USGS article: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

USGS FAQ regarding the Bakken formation:http://www.usgs.gov/faq/Subject.asp?category_id=94

Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/bakken.asp

Health Care Is Not That Complicated

Source Article: Health Care Is Not That Complicated
Author: C. Edmund Wright
Key Points:

• It is no more practical to have "health insurance" to pay for prescription drugs and routine doctor visits than it is to expect your auto insurance to pay for your oil changes and tire rotations.


• The confusion between "health care" and "health insurance" as public policy issues -- along with the near universal misunderstanding of what health insurance is (or should be) -- is making what should be a rather simple financial planning market solution a national nightmare.


• The problem begins with the almost universal misapplication of the terms. Health insurance does not insure your health, nor was it ever intended to. Health care insurance, formerly called "medical insurance," is merely an instrument of neutralizing risk. Financial risk, that is.


• It was brought about by a need to insure a family's assets against a dread disease requiring care so expensive it would wipe that family out financially. As a strictly financial planning endeavor, the issue never seemed to be discussed in terms of being "a right" or in terms of "compassion."


• But "medical insurance" as a component of financial planning has morphed into "health care" as a right for everyone in the new political parlance. And not only is the insurance a right, but the insurance should be "free" and it should cover everything from routine care visits to erectile dysfunction to ADHD to gender re-assignment surgery.
  
• Instead of being viewed as a financial instrument to keep a family from losing everything in an effort to pay for a cancer treatment or heart surgery, it has become viewed as an endless supply of other people's money to pay for everything related to healthcare -- so the family can buy every car, boat, flat screen, iPod and laptop they want with their own money.


• The media would have you believe this is just more proof that the private sector "is failing us." Alas, just like the mortgage and housing meltdown, in reality it was a private sector failing under the weight of unsustainable government mandates.


• Which of course leads to the inescapable conclusion that the very worst thing we can do to solve it is to allow that very same government to have total control over it.


• The solution is to get back to the original intent of health insurance and an understanding of what it is. And more importantly, what it is not.


• Health insurance, like any other insurance, is the spreading of financial risk. Period. The financial risk in health care is - as Fred Sanford used to say - "the big one." To purely insure against that eventuality would not cost a lot. It would not require an army of paper pushers and mouse clickers at every step of your life.


• Insuring this way would take the huge administrative burden off of the system. It would reduce costs dramatically. It would by definition encourage healthier habits. It would shrink the rolls of the uninsured.


• It really is no more complicated than that. Oh, it will be hard, because nearly a generation of Americans never bothered to think through a little analogy like the auto insurance example - and they like to have their needs met by Other People's Money - and they have convinced themselves it is a right.
  

Kish Comments:

Health insurance is NOT a citizen's right. Health care is NOT mentioned in the U.S. Constitution nor should it be. Universal health care and Obama care are perfect examples of unnecessary government meddling.
A business market already exists for HEALTH INSURANCE that an army of insurance agents are already ready and willing to manage.

A completely separate business market for HEALTH CARE already exists that an army of doctors and nurses are already willing to manage.

An army of laws and lawyers are already in the books and standing ready to regulate such enterprises (i.e. to protect the people from shady practitioners).

There is nothing for government to do here- except get out of the way and let the people do their work.

Train vs Tornado Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azV5bC2br-Q

How to embed sound and music in a web page.

WWW FAQs: How do I embed sound and music in a web page?

Wikipedia List of United States Czars

I've been trying to keep an updated list of Czars on Wikipedia. This is proving tough to accomplish apparently due to the numerous liberal-minded Wikipedia contributors.

My original list was hijacked and "combined" with another list entitled "List of U.S. executive branch 'czars'". In the process, many of my referenced contributions and external links were replaced or removed. According to one user who was logged only by their IP address (24.44.142.254) the external links "did not add value" and were "overly biased".

I am now working to update this newly created list with the information that was stripped from my old list. Help is appreciated. I want to keep this list factual and up to date.

Let the facts speak for themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Czars

Company Denies its Robots Feed on the Dead

Company Denies its Robots Feed on the Dead

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Position Is Everything — Modern browser bugs explained in detail!

Position Is Everything — Modern browser bugs explained in detail!

This is a nice page for properly identifying, understanding, troubleshooting and preventing cross-platform web page display and function issues.

http://positioniseverything.net/piefecta-rigid.html

Service

Forwarded to me in an email (original source unknown):

I became confused when I heard the word "service" used with these agencies:

• Internal Revenue "Service"
• U.S. Postal "Service"
• Telephone "Service"
• Cable TV "Service"
• Civil "Service"
• State, City , County & Public "Service"
• Customer "Service"

This is not what I thought "service" meant.

But today, I overheard two farmers talking, and one of them said he had hired a bull to "service" a few cows.

BAM !!! It all came into focus.

Now . . . I understand what all those agencies are doing to us!

Fuel tax could be replaced with by-the-mile road tax | McClatchy

Fuel tax could be replaced with by-the-mile road tax | McClatchy

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