Fruitcakes
 

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...rpc=22&sp=true (Huckabee tied with Rudy nationally)

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

I feel like there is slime dripping from my computer. Sighh.

But we protect their rights too.

S_A_M

Fruitcakes
 

The never ending Republican search for someone worse than Bush.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

Your evidence is irrefutable.

If this is offered in anything but complete jest, you forfeit all rights to criticize Ty for citing blogs.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

You couldn't spot the Hank post on that? It slaps you in the face like a fish.

Fruitcakes
 

This country is doomed.

I wonder about these "faith" voters. They never articulate what they're thinking and I think the media is misinterpreting them. The faithless seem to think the faithful have no interest in empiral or even anecdotal data or applying scientific or logical scrutiny to any of their beliefs.

But I'm not sure that's what these faithful sorts believe. I think they believe that the ultimate solutions to problems are unknowable, and that their "hunches" are infused with a deeper, but unarticulable knowledge about what they see. They look at all the candidates and are overwhelmed with all the different pieces of information and kneejerk to this folksy, but highly dangerous rube based on the fact that he offers them certainty, which they view as an indication that he, like them, is guided by an indescribable wisdom.

In other words, they're not anti-science so much as believers that they have the better quantum of scientific understanding of the world around - that "faith" is a base of knowledge, just a passive sort the person buying into it will never understand. I think they think they're smarter than logical, rational or scientifically inclined types. And they have the results to prove it - the faithful tend to be happier than everybody else. They benefit from ignorance of what's around them which feeds the notion they have everything figured out. They're not kooks, they're accidental existential snobs.

I used to pity them, but I'm beginning to see them more and more as a cult following that half-scientific contrarian slop Malcolm Gladwell pimped in "Blink," only with a Jesus Freak spin added to it.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

if you are trying to call me racist, do it flat out, but realize you'll have crossed a line. I didn't even look at any of it when I posted (it's from lgf), but now that I've read the first page of comments, I do like this : Fuck you hippie, you are the system.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

I didn't even look. The slur in the second post slapped me in the face early, so I stopped reading.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

Damn. Then you won't get my "What exactly are you trying to accomplish here", since it was posted repeatedly down below.

You do know that all of a sudden a whole bunch of "racialists" are seeing that someone here has linked to their blog and are heading over here for the recruitment drive?

Thanks, Hank.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

umm, lgf is our DU. they are being linked to so many pages that our little watering hole won't get too much attention.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

I suppose if anyone does arrive, we can send them to Thurgreed to receive the Newber Welcome Package.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

Is that like a scientician or technologist?

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

Ask Hank. It's his blog.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

you know I asked a nice friendly question about tufts and you ignore me. NWTF?

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

I can't believe I just wasted that time looking for the stupid post.

Fruitcakes
 

I can't believe that was approved by his campaign. He seems so disingenuous. And retarted. Speaking of elections, I saw this quote and laughed; sounds like something Sebby would say:

"Choosing between Rudy and Hillary is like trying to pick up the clean end of a turd."

Fruitcakes
 

Ooooh. I am stealing that.

Jihad on the US Dollar
 

Mullahs are urging the Saudis to combat local inflation, and if they do, that will require the Saudis to buy less US treasuries/dollars, and thereby do less to stregnthen the US dollar.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/busines...er07/fatwa.htm

Is it Me?
 

I hate to complicate this, but I believe that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime. It was pay back for the bombing of London which is not a justifiable reason for bombing a city. And did not really help win the war (or help speed up its end). Same as the fire bombing of Tokyo; it served no strategic purpose. I believe, like Hutchins, that all the "strategi bombing" would have been more effedtive if it had been focused on military targets. Why the hell were there any operating airports left in Germany after the war? Why were there any military bases left? Those should all have been incinerated before we started thinking about civilian targets (if ever).

In hindsight the bombing of Hiroshima was not a war crime because as it turned out we had to hit two cities (Nagasaki) to get the Japanese to surrender. We should have started out with military targets and then moved our way up, but now we all know that the Japanese needed two bombs dropped in two major metropolitan centers before the emperor would force a surrender on the Japanese military.

Is it Me?
 

I have been absent from this board because my source of income is inextricably entwined with this crisis. Property prices have dropped like a depth charge all over the country. They only places they haven't dropped recently are where they have already been dropping (like Michigan). From personal experience I can tell you Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada and CA are in a free fall. Prices in many cities surrounding the San Francisco bay area have dropped twenty percent in the past four months. Parts of San Francisco have dropped half their value since October. Of course there are always scattered neighborhoods that avoid it, but in general the reports on how fast and hard the property prices have been dropping across the country have been way under reported. I think part of the problem is that in many cities the market has just stopped. Nothing is selling and no one is willing (or cant) to drop their listing anymore. So you can't get a good read of the crisis if you are just looking at prices listed in the paper or on the MLS. In most markets a comparable from September is worthless. It might as well be a comparable from 1752.

My basic rule for buying a house from a bank right now, is looking at a comp from the previous month and offering them twenty percent below that. If there are no comparatives from the last month then I offer them thirty to forty percent below what the comps are from August and September. And I don't even buy the house, I just get a sixty day option to make sure I can flip it. And believe me, many banks jump at that sort of opporutnity to unload a home.

A bank gave me an option to buy a house in Anthem AZ that a year and a half ago sold for $750,000. Five bedroom, three bath, swimming pool, tennis court and sitting on the eight hole of a golf course. They said they would give it up for $300,000 but I couldn't find anyone who would offer me more than $250,000 for it. From what I have heard, Vegas is worse.

Is it Me?
 

Many of the foreclosures are also families that are living in homes where they are making monthly payments on a mortgage or mulitple mortgages that ad up to six hundred grand and their house is now worth three hundred grand.

They simply leave the house, stop making payments and use those payments to pay rent on a house twice the size of the one they just left.

Is it Me?
 

There are a couple big problems with the reported information on sales and on prices. The statistics on reported sales generally don't take into account cancellations of the sale. The statistics on prices generally don't take into account incentives given to the buyer, and also don't take into account coundo prices. Condo prices are far more sensitive than prices of separate unit houses.

Is it Me?
 

Wow. I hadn't really thought about that but that makes perfect sense. With a lot of these houses people are taking thirty or forty thousand dollars back from the purchase because it is so easy to get a high appraisal.

All most Kentuckians want for xmas
 

Note to Hil: Make sure to include dental in that nat'l health care proposal . . .




December 24, 2007
In Kentucky’s Teeth, Toll of Poverty and Neglect

By IAN URBINA
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — In the 18 years he has been visiting nursing homes, seeing patients in his private practice and, more recently, driving his mobile dental clinic through Appalachian hills and hollows, Dr. Edwin E. Smith has seen the extremes of neglect.

He has seen the shame of a 14-year-old girl who would not lift her head because she had lost most of her teeth from malnutrition, and the do-it-yourself pride of an elderly mountain man who, unable to afford a dentist, pulled his own infected teeth with a pair of pliers and a swig of peroxide.

He has seen the brutal result of angry husbands hitting their wives and the end game of pill-poppers who crack healthy teeth, one by one, to get dentists to prescribe pain medications.

But mostly he has seen everyday people who are too busy putting food on the table to worry about oral hygiene. Many of them savor their sweets, drink well water without fluoride and long ago started ruining their teeth by chewing tobacco and smoking.

Dr. Smith has a rare window on a state with the highest proportion of adults under 65 without teeth, where about half the population does not have dental insurance. He struggles to counter the effects of the drastic shortage of dentists in rural areas and oral hygiene habits that have been slow to change.

“The level of need is hard to believe until you see it up close,” said Dr. Smith, who runs a free dental clinic at a high school in one of Kentucky’s poorest counties. He also provides free care to about half of the patients who visit his private practice in Barbourville.

Kentucky is among the worst states nationally in the proportion of low-income residents served by free or subsidized dental clinics, and less than a fourth of the state’s dentists regularly take Medicaid, according to 2005 federal data.

Until August 2006, when the system was revamped, the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rate was also one of the lowest in the country. Experts say this contributed to the shortage of dentists in poorer and more rural areas.

The state dental director, Dr. Julie Watts McKee, said that last year, Medicaid reimbursement for children’s dental services was raised by about 30 percent.

But even with this increase, which was paid for by cutting orthodontic benefits, reimbursement fees remain about 50 percent below market rate, said Dr. Ken Rich, the state’s dental director for Medicaid. And for adults, Dr. Rich said, they are about 65 percent below market rate.

“Not much has changed over the years here, really,” said Glen D. Anderson, who for two decades has made dentures in Corbin, Ky. He sells a pair of dentures for $400 that many dentists sell for more than $1,200. Like his brother, father and grandfather, he makes them without a license.

“Bootleggers exist here for a reason,” Mr. Anderson said. “People need teeth, but they can’t afford to go to dentists for dentures.”

While Kentucky may have some of the worse oral health problems in the nation, it is by no means alone. Residents in neighboring states across the region suffer similar dental problems for many of the same reasons — inadequate access to dental care or the inability to pay for a dentist, widespread use of chewing tobacco and a pervasive assumption that losing teeth is simply part of growing old. West Virginia, for example, which has the highest proportion of people over 65 without teeth, also has one of the lowest percentages of adults who visit the dentist at least once a year.

Dr. Smith is trying to catch these problems before they progress. Each week, he drives his mobile clinic, Kids First Dental Care, up the windy Appalachian roads to visit schools and to provide free check-ups to children in the poorest counties of Kentucky.

Dr. Smith paid about $150,000 of his own money to build the mobile clinic inside an 18-wheel truck. The clinic has a staff of seven and operates with private and Medicaid financing.

Pain caused by dental problems is a leading cause of missed school days in Kentucky, according to state health officials, and almost half of the state’s children ages 2 to 4 have untreated cavities. About 1 in 10 state residents are missing all their teeth, according to 2004 federal data.

At his private practice, Dr. Smith said that at least once a month he sees a patient who has used Krazy Glue to reattach a broken tooth to the root or to an adjacent tooth. Just as often, he sees patients who have tried to avoid the cost of a dentist by swishing with rubbing alcohol to deal with a tooth infection or by rubbing crushed aspirin pills on gums to numb pain. Both tactics worsen the situation by burning the gums and creating ulcers, he said.

“Under Medicaid,” Dr. Smith said, “the only choice a person with a severe infection has is to have the tooth pulled, even if she’s 25 years old and the tooth is right in the middle of her face.” He added that the program does not pay for root canals or dentures, though it does help pay for a liquid diet for those without teeth.

Medicare, the federal government’s health insurance program for seniors, does not pay for dental services.

Dr. Smith said some people assumed that if their parents and grandparents lost their teeth before they were 40, they would too. They figure no teeth, no costly toothaches, so they pre-emptively pull them.

“Try finding work when you’re in your 30s or 40s and you’re missing front teeth,” said Jane Stephenson, founder of the New Opportunity School in Berea, Ky., which provides job training to low-income Appalachian women.

Ms. Stephenson said the program started helping women buy dentures 10 years ago. She said about half of the women who go through the program, most in their 40s, were missing teeth or had ones that were infected. As a result, she said, they are shunned by employers, ashamed to go back to school and to be around younger peers and often miss work because of pain or complications of the infections.

His teeth crooked and blackened, Justin Baker is the face of another reason for Kentucky’s oral hygiene problems: methamphetamine use.

“They just rotted,” Mr. Baker, 16, said about the damage done in less than a year of drug use.

In 2006, Kentucky law enforcement seized 342 meth labs and made more than 32,000 arrests related to methamphetamine. The previous year, the Office of National Drug Control Policy designated Kentucky’s largest city, Louisville, among 23 nationwide that were hot spots of methamphetamine use.

Kentucky also has the highest rate of cigarette smoking in the country and one of the highest proportions of chewing tobacco use. Smoking and chewing tobacco, which account for more than half of all cases of periodontal disease in the United States, often lead to oral cancer and can encourage the growth of the bacteria that erode teeth and eat away at the gums.

As Mr. Baker sat up to rinse and spit at a free dental clinic at his school, Knox Central High School in Barbourville, Dr. Smith shook his head.

“Even though he is turning his life around, the damage is done,” Dr. Smith said about the likelihood that Mr. Baker would soon lose all his teeth.

The consequences of oral hygiene problems are far reaching, Dr. Smith said. When teeth fall out, he explained, the mouth loses some of its structural support and turns in on itself; that can lead to distorted speech and, in the absence of dentures, force a person to eat only soft foods, which can lead to poor nutrition.

Back in the southeast Kentucky city of Corbin, Mr. Anderson, the maker of dentures, said, “People shouldn’t be ashamed to smile.”

Growing up, Mr. Anderson said he and his brother moved around — from Massachusetts to Florida to Oklahoma and, finally, to Corbin — whenever local dentists complained to the police about their father’s denture-making practice. In 1990, he said, their father moved to Washington State to practice legally after repeated arrests in Kentucky.

The American Dental Association objects to denturism, as the trade is called, because it says practitioners have not received proper training through dental school. They are not competent to diagnose cancers or other diseases in the mouth, the association says, or to spot broken roots of teeth, which can lead to injury if not corrected before the installation of dentures.

Denturists are allowed to practice independently in Idaho, Maine, Montana, Oregon and Washington. In Arizona and Colorado, they can practice with at least limited supervision of a licensed dentist, according to the National Denturist Association.

Pointing to the wall where his license to practice the trade in Maine is mounted, Mr. Anderson said he trained in a program at George Brown College in Toronto. He has continued to practice in Kentucky even though it is illegal because no one complains about the quality of his work, he said, and he has a licensed dentist on staff and in his office several days a week.

“The truth is that we see people dentists don’t because those people are too poor,” said Glen Anderson’s brother, Eric Anderson, 36. “And there’re a lot of these people around here.”

Seated in Glen Anderson’s office, David Caldwell, 53, smiled widely as he stared into a mirror at his first pair of dentures. Mr. Caldwell attributed his dental problems to his smoking habit. He said he quit smoking but still chews tobacco.

“You get in the habit of keeping your mouth shut if you’re in public,” Mr. Caldwell said about the embarrassment of having no teeth.

Now, with his full set of false teeth, he said he could stop talking with his hand in front of his mouth. He could stop tilting his head downward, so people would only see his lower, less damaged teeth.

“I’m a new man, I suppose,” he said with a shy laugh.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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It isn't you, it's me . . .
 

Of course, it's the reverse lock theory.

The market plummeted (1) on the day my offer was accepted; and (2) further on the day I signed the mortgage.

more ron paul ties to blimps, or to the country famous for them at least
 

You means techmologist

All most Kentuckians want for xmas
 

So what is England's excuse? They have national health care.

Plaintiff Action v Citi
 

Icky,

if you want to make back the money, go read Barclays' papers alleging fraud by Citi. And then tally up the state and local governments that invested in securitization vehicles in a lawsuit against the sponsors.

There's money suing over these securities.

Plaintiff Action v Citi
 

Other things I should have done:

Went to Europe in 2003. Was very tempted to buy 10K worth of Euros (cash) and hold onto them.

Would have been a wise investment indeed.

cooking/PB x-post
 

My MIL and FIL are going to a party where each guest has been given the name of a political candidate and is to bring a dish or dishes appropriate to that candidate. My FIL has Ron Paul, and my MIL has Barack Obama. For Paul, fruitcake sprang to mind, but otherwise I'm short on good ideas. Any suggestions?

cooking/PB x-post
 

Game meat. Hunted on private land. Domestically.

cooking/PB x-post
 

Whatever he brings, he should charge for it.

cooking/PB x-post
 

all you dems keep forgetting, once you guys have put sharia in place, you can't make money from money.

cooking/PB x-post
 

Assuming your ILs have politics similar to yours, Ron Paul if nominated and elected should be a bag of Taco Bell, i.e. "Run for the Border."

Here's an interesting article about Pakistan.

Interesting except that it dodges the very important fact that Bhutto looted her own country, yet she still had a huge following from the lootees themselves and authors of articles like these treat this fact like the elephant in the room that it is. A frank discussion of the state of Pakistan would include this phenomenon.

On a related note, it's hard to believe you could have a body right in front of you and one person saying there's a bullet in it and another person saying there is not. And both sources are as "official" as the other. The government has offered to exhume the body. I don't quite get the "reason" Bhutto's party declined -- did you catch it? Anyhow, why the importance of whether she died dodging a bullet or taking one?

Anyhow...
 

Happy New Year's and I leave you with:

Jibjab's 2207 Year in Review in case you haven't seen it. "OJ took his crap back" <====LOL.

I gather that the government is trying to minimize its own blame in failing to prevent her killing, but I don't really see why it matters. I read her husband as saying that the official autopsy would be a sham in any event, which seems like a fair point. What's needed is an independent inquest, but Musharraf has locked up most of the judges.

Which Bhutto eventually realized was good since it allegedly allowed Musharraf to go forward with their little deal that apparently included the dismissal of all corruption charges lodges in the judiciary against her -- an act that wouldn't have been possible without certain of the judges canned.

This bit seemed implausible to me but the latest info I hear is that the government is going to retract the "she wasn't shot" statement and it's because of all the Youtube coverage out there showing "close" to the final moments and b/c it's only a matter of time before someone shows up with streaming video showing the bullet actually entering her head. And if government officials really said that bit about the sunroof handle and if it's true the vehicle didn't even have one......Musharraf is going to lose all credibility (even I was holding out hope for him). I sympathized with this man and what he was dealing with but Goddamn he has fucked up so badly with the assisination aftermath. Now I don't feel guilty for having had him as a Death Pool pick for one year.