Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
Initial reports are that it was a magnitude 7.0 that collapsed a hospital in Port-au-Prince and damaged many buildings. Communications are cut and I expect there will be a large death toll since the epicenter was inland.
Pray for those affected, it is going to be bad.
Global warming has gotten so bad that iguanas are falling out of trees from the heat in Florida. Oh wait, they are freezing from the record cold there. My mistake.
The next link may not be reality, since it is only theory, but it qualifies as stranger than fiction. The theory postulates that 8 percent of our DNA was inserted by animal viruses and furthermore they may cause schizophrenia!
I always though insanity was hereditary, but I thought you caught it from your kids, not your pets.
Over at Dark Roasted Blend there is a nifty tribute to birds titled “Praise to a Common Duck.”
I can attest to the amazing acrobatic agility of barn swallows and the blazing speed of hummingbirds since we get both out here on the farm. Also seen around here are Canada geese, bald eagles, hawks, turkey vultures, many a songbird and occasionally a blue heron.
So far none of the cats have brought in a large bird, but they do enjoy the sparrows a lot.
The world famous Mayo Clinic is piloting a program of refusing Medicare patients at their Scottsdale, Arizona clinic. While technically not rejecting the patients, there are few on Medicare who can afford to pay their own way. In other words, if you have Medicare as your only means of health insurance you are screwed.
This is something that has been coming for some time. In a desperate effort to contain spiraling expenditures on an already overstressed social programs, the government has been underpaying fees and services. Medicare, like Social Security, is in very bad financial shape and rationing is starting to happen.
The quote of the article for me is this:
Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”
Basic economics, that.
Medicare is for the elderly and disabled. It is already getting difficult to find doctors that accept it in some areas and that is going to get worse if the above quote is any indication.
Funny how every federally run welfare program is mismanaged. Knowing that, what sense is there in either expanding Medicare or adding yet another program as Obamacare?
Being on both Social Security Disability and Medicare, I’ve been sensitive to the growing problems with both. In fact, I’m planning for the day when I can’t get medical care due to being on Medicare. I can’t afford to save or go on another plan, so I’ll simply stop going to the doctor when that happens.
I won’t be the only one and things will get very dire in America as the quality of living plummets for many. We are a graying nation and don’t have enough young people to sustain the system.
Oh yes, we are living in interesting times.
Amidst all the gloomy weather and economic predictions, one ray of light for today. Andre Dawson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame today. Ever since Ryne Sandberg got in I’d hoped “The Hawk” would be the next Cub MVP to get in. Watching him play was always a delight and there are vivid memories from then. The one that stands out is when Eric Show beaned him and knocked him out for a few horrific moments. Winning the National League MVP for a losing team was another highlight as it showed just how dominant he was that year.
But the best memory was seeing him at baseball card convention in La Crosse. Dawson was always such a serious player and it was very rare to see him smile. My mother took a hand sewn Cubs flag she’d made to get his autograph and when he saw it a huge smile broke out. One of these days I’ll get the photo of that smile while he signed the flag scanned into the PC.
Congratulations to one of baseball’s class acts!
It has never been easy for the Hmong people and it has only gotten harder for them since the Vietnam War. 4000 refugees were taken from Huay Nam Khao camp and forcibly repatriated to Laos where they face violence and persecution due to their having fought against the communists who now rule there. This has struck home nearby, for many Hmong live in the La Crosse, WI area.
While that article only lists one account of abuse, over on Facebook the group USA Stop the Torture of Hmong Refugees in Thailand claims there was more:
PRESS RELEASE - December 29, 2009
Thais to force more UNHCR-recognized refugees back to Laos
The Thai military has announced its plans to deport the remaining 400 Hmong refugees back to Laos. The majority of them are UNHCR-recognized refugees living in the Lop Buri and Bangkok areas. These forced deportations are planned to take place today and tomorrow under the noses of the UNHCR and foreign diplomatic community. The Thai government continues to blatantly defy well-respected norms of international refugee law by continuing to do this. Just yesterday, the Thai military forced back a group of 158 UNHCR-recognized refugees from Nong Khai jail. The group is reportedly being held at Lom Sat immigration jail in Vientiane.
On Monday, just before the group was forced back to Laos, they were encouraged to return by the U.S., Australian, Canadian and Nederland governments who had told the group they had arranged to have them resettled in third countries shortly after returning to Laos. The group was still unwilling to return to Laos so the Thai military raided the Nong Khai immigration jail with a force of 500 soldiers dragging the refugees onto deportation vehicles. The refugees were outnumbered 4 soldiers to each refugee so were powerless to resist.
Meanwhile, reports of abuse are circulating among some of the recent returnees to Laos, including ill-treatment of a former UNHCR-recognized refugee, Chue Long Her, along with others who were forced back to Laos yesterday by Thai authorities. They were part of a group of 4000 refugees forced back from Huay Nam Khao camp, Petchabun province. A group of 34 leaders in the camp were arrested by the Thai military and reportedly stun guns were used to subdue them as the leaders resisted deportation attempts. They are all on a Lao government political blacklist which was handed down to the Thais earlier this year - another breach in well-respected norms of international refugee law.
Currently, these leaders are being held in Borikhamsai province with no access to third party monitoring.
Joe Davy
Hmong Advocate
Chicago
Sadly, I think the Western governments involved would like the problem to simply go away. There is little will and no desire to get more involved. Now it is a wait and see game to find out if the refugees really will be relocated to other countries.
It looks like police are investigating my first theory about the theft of the sign (which has been recovered, thankfully). The current suspicions are that a wealthy Swedish collector hired the petty criminals involved in the heist. Poland has asked for help from the Swedish government in the investigation.
I swear too many people have more money than sense or morals. Of course it could turn out that the collector is a neo-Nazi since Sweden has more than a few of them.
