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So I'll call this guy an idiot lacking the brains to pull down his pants before he takes a crap.
That way he won't be offended.
Let's talk about smoking for a minute. I don't smoke and never have. Probably never will unless I'm on fire. And there's nothing that can ruin a good dinner faster than somebody lighting up in a booth nearby.
But.
There's some fundamental dishonesty going on in the camp of the anti smokers,and it's resulting in some very bad law.
Let's look at the numbers with a little bit of reality.
According to the CDC, for 2007
Hmmm. What about the other 99%?
We'll get back to them in a minute. First, let's see where they get all these scary numbers, like smoking will increase your risk of death by lung cancer up to 10 or 20 times.
The CDC tells us that roughly 36% of deaths due to smoking are cancer related, and of those, 78% are lung cancer deaths.
1000(deaths due to smoking)X 0.36(percentage of smoking related deaths due to cancer)X 0.78(percentage of cancer deaths that are lung cancer)=281 lung cancer deaths due to smoking per 100,000 people.
We need one more piece of information. The average lung cancer rate among the non smoking population is about 16 deaths per 100,000 people. ( average of men 17.1 and women 14.7)
281 (lung cancer deaths in smokers)/16 (lung cancer deaths in non smokers)=18.
This means that smokers are 18 times more likely to die of lung cancer than non-smokers.
Ok, so the scary commercials are right. But only partially. The initial risk of lung cancer, 16 per 100,000, is so low that multiplying it by 18 still means that 99,719 smokers will not die from lung cancer.
Hardly compelling is it?
"But Rich, what about all the other smoking related deaths that aren't cancer? Won't that change the numbers?"
Yep. But now we're back to those 99,000 smokers out of 100,000 who aren't dying from it each year. (Incidentally, these numbers include deaths from secondhand as well as primary smoke.)
The truth is that smoking does not result in death for the vast majority of those who smoke, yet you will never hear that during any debate on smoking laws.
In order to fully understand the risks associated with a behavior, you have to know two things. You have to know the increase in the risk, which the anti smokers are really good about, but you also have to know the baseline risk, which the anti smokers are very quiet about.
The problem for the anti-tobacco side is that the baseline risk is so low that if they publicized it, they would lose all traction. Or do you think the anti-smoking bans would have passed if the anti smoking warriors banners said
And that is what bothers me. By giving people only half the information they need, they are manipulating them through fear, while pretending to inform them.
Whaddafuxup?
When did politics turn into high school popularity contests? When did a President's effectiveness become solely measured by his polling? For years we've heard nothing except how Bush's approval ratings prove he's a bad president, that his 30% numbers are an historic low, that his administration is an utter failure.
But somehow, Congress's 9% approval rating draws a pass.
And let's take a stroll through history for a moment. Just how popular was Abraham Lincoln during the first 3 years of the Civil War? If I remember my history correctly, his war was considered a failure as well. He was told to end it by the major media of the day. And how many people stood behind the Revolutionary War and the founding fathers? Last time I checked, their support ran around 30%, with an overwhelming majority of Americans either indifferent or actively opposed to the war for independence.
Sometimes, maybe even most times, doing what's right isn't going to make you popular. Remember high school? The cool kids, were they the ones who worked hard, studied hard, got the grades, and did what they were supposed to do? Or were they the ones who did the fun things, the glamorous things, lived on the edge, at least, as edgy as it can get in a suburban school.
Just like high school, politics is based on standards that reward conformity and mediocrity, or do you really believe that the two best people to run America are John McCain or Barack Obama?
It's no longer about doing what is right for America, but doing what's popular.
The Groom and his Kilt...What's he wearin' underneath it?
Isaac and Stephen in the kitchen...catering because they care!
The bridal party and some old guy...
Waiting for the bride...better get used to that!
The bride and the old guy again...
The rings...
The kiss...
The cakes...
The ring bearer...
The flower girls...
The first dance...
The getaway car
Mr. and Mrs. Sasha and Adam Privett!
At midnight EDT on July 4th, he left Kuwait and traveled for nearly thirty hours before arriving home in Kodak for 18 days of leave.
He'll be getting married tomorrow evening by the shores of Douglas Lake, and leaving on a honeymoon Monday with his new bride.
He'll be back home around the 14th, and then headed back to Iraq around the 20th to finish his 15 month tour, at which time my new daughter, Sasha, will be heading to Colorado for college.
Kids grow so fast...
The Supreme Court today decided on a 5-4 basis that the Second Amendment confirms an individual right to keep and bear arms.
What this means is that 4 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices either cannot read simple English sentences, or that 4 out of 9 Justices would rather follow their own prejudices than the Constitution.
The fact that these 4 Justices are the most liberal is not a coincidence.
Yep, you heard me right. He's nothing but a loudmouth who acts like he has a social agenda, but in reality, it's all about him.
How do I know this?
Remember a few years back during the benefit for New Orleans after Katrina, Kanye went off script to deliver an impassioned plea to the people of America. "They're killing us," he said, shortly before his famous "George Bush doesn't like black people." He was in a state of moral outrage as he railed against the injustices of the federal response to Katrina.
But as angry, offended, and outraged as he was then, he says nothing can compare or ever will compare with how offended he was at being booed by a Bonnarroo crowd, angered because his show started almost 2 hours late.
On his website, West wrote. "This is the most offended I've ever been ... this is the maddest I ever will be."
So let me get this straight: Kanye is more offended by being booed than by police shooting at looters in New Orleans? What a guy!
Yesterday, I pointed out Stacy Campfield's ridiculous post about refusing to issue birth certificates for US citizens based on the actions of their parents. Today, in the spirit of bipartisan snark, I am obliged to point out the ridiculous response coming from my old friend R. Neal at KnoxViews. Here is Randy's headline: (If link doesn't work, go to http://www.knoxviews.com/node/8240. Randy is funny sometimes about allowing links from my site to his.)
Slavery was a Better Immigration System?
Now, I've read Stacy's post in detail, and there's absolutely nothing in Stacy's post that can even be remotely construed as approval of slavery. Only a warped and twisted reading of the post in question could result in such an interpretation. Randy isn't stupid, and I'm relatively certain he's neither warped or twisted, so what gives? Is he that worked up about Campfield? Or was he just providing a little red meat for the monkeys in his echo chamber?
Hey, I never thought I'd be in the position of defending Campfield, but if you're going to ridicule a guy for the stupid things he says, and Campfield has said some fairly stupid things, you shouldn't need to make stuff up to do it.
According to Stacy Campfield, if you don't like their parents, the State does not have to issue a birth certificate. Mr.Campfield posts about his amendment that would prevent the state from issuing a birth certificate to a child born in the US to two illegal alien parents.
His "logic" goes like this:
(1) If both parents are here illegally, then they are not under our jurisdiction, and therefore, their baby is not automatically a citizen.
(2) Citizenship is a Federal matter, and birth certificates are issued by the State. Even if the child is a US citizen, the State has no obligation to issue a birth certificate.
Wow.
OK, let's apply a little bit of real world logic here, not the stuff that passes for it in the mirror maze of Mr. Campfield's mind. If a man is in this country illegally, he is subject to arrest and deportation. He is given a hearing to determine his status and that all applicable laws regarding his case are met. He has legal avenues to pursue to apply for asylum. If he is incarcerated during the process, he has civil rights that must be observed. If he commits a crime while in the US, he can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced, regardless of his immigration status.
Now I'm not a lawyer, but the above seems to suggest that our illegal alien is certainly under local, state, and federal jurisdiction.
So much for point number one.
As for point number two, if Mr. Campfield had finished reading the 14th Amendment, he would have gotten to the part about "...No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That's pretty simple to read, and it says that if a person is a citizen, then the state cannot pass any law that would abridge their rights and privileges, and withholding a birth certificate would certainly do that very thing.
I understand that we need to get control of immigration, but we need to do it intelligently, not with stupid amendments that will never stand up to a constitutional challenge. I don't care for the "anchor baby" loophole either but I don't see any way to close it without causing worse problems down the road.
Obama's speech:
...we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
And
I face this challenge with profound humility.
All he needs to add to his act is water into wine and walking on water to achieve deity status. The Dems will probably even let him skip that whole messy crucifixion thing.