Dojo Info 8/31/09

1. Microsoft drops price of Xbox 360 Elite, kills Pro
   This might be timely given that ours didn’t turn on yesterday… then it did. Early warning system?
2. What if I were Rick Pitino’s pastor?
   Very thoughtful and well-written response by Paster Prather.
3. Mr Anonymous – Some Gal A Move
   Mr Anonymous is jeep who’s great but has gone a bit reggae.
4. China’s BYD to bring electric cars to U.S. in 2010
   That’s really going to help our trade deficit. </sarcasm>
5. Debate Shows How Little Obama Understands
   People who live their working lives in the government sector think that government is always the answer. People who live their lives working in the private sector think that the private sector holds the answer. Who’s impartial opinion can we believe? I feel pretty good about John Stossel.

WordPress Upgrade In Effect

Just made all the file moves to 2.8.4 of WordPress but I already see some silliness happening here. May take some time to figure it out but I wanted to move to a newer version so that I can “Upgrade Automatically” which is uber-keen.

Dojo Info 8/18/09

1. Video: Loaded: Swine flu, the game
   Seriously? These are the best ideas you guys can come up with?!?
2. Reflecting on the DTV transition
   Wildly more expensive than it needed to be, IMO.
3. Google’s Caffeine: A jolt to search rankings?
   Just when I started to get some 1st page listings too. 8^(
4. Video game sales in free fall
   The prevalence of the me-too game is a direct result of producers lacking the courage to undertake creative game concepts. I don’t feel sorry for these people… the free markets will sort it out.
5. Video: A feisty ride in the Chevy Volt
   Sounds good, I guess. But what if electricity costs jump? The GM rep comes of swarmy, IMO. Weak video… better stuff here.

The Don’t Song

Great stuff. Creating these is harder than you might think.

Abortions Covered by Obamacare

It’s a sad state of affairs that mankind has come to this. Human life should be so easy to eliminate.

For those of you keeping track, the number of proofs that abortion is included in the health care overhaul officially hit seven yesterday at a townhall meeting in San Jose, California. House Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) did a fine job of making FRC’s case after a member of the audience specifically asked about the abortion mandate. The text of the exchange follows.

QUESTION: “[This is a ] health care plan that is covering abortion, which we know that over 90% of abortions are purely elective, not medically necessary. Why is this being covered when abortion is clearly not health care?” (Applause).
REP. LOFGREN: “[This is a] basic benefit plan developed by, um, health professionals… Abortion will be covered as a benefit by one or more of the health care plans available to Americans, and I think it should be.”

Obama Interview: End of Life & Healthcare

From the piece After the Great Recession by David Leonhardt.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care —

LEONHARDT: Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: … Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall. So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart. I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life – that would be pretty upsetting.

LEONHARDT: And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

LEONHARDT: So how do you – how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

If 80% of costs come at End of Life then you better believe there will be a government “panel” that will determine which treatments are covered and which aren’t. With no competition, things will quickly become wildly expensive.

Tell your representatives to oppose the government takeover of healthcare or someday… you could be on the receiving end of news you don’t want to hear.

John Wall Is Downright Nasty

Start praying now that Mr. Wall stays a second year at UK… even though that’s highly unlikely.

Blind Youth ‘Sees’ With Sound

Ben Underwood is truly amazing. How amazing is the human body and brain to be able to make such incredible adjustments. Fearfully and wonderfully made we are.

Obama Pushes Healthcare Takeover Against Public Opinion

This stuff is maddening. There’s never been a large United States program that was later scrapped. If Obama succeeds in pushing the healthcare legislation, that in the most conservative estimates is $1,000,000,000,000, then you can bet our economy will accelerate into a dangerous tailspin.

I have more thoughts, but can’t articulate as well as like Tony Perkins.

President Obama had hoped to celebrate his 48th birthday with a trillion dollar gift from Congress: a final bill authorizing his administration to seize control of the American health care system. Instead, his legislation is dead-locked, the public is outraged, and his team seems to be trying to prevent their liberal foot soldiers from retreating on the biggest domestic policy package in recent memory. Public resistance is a foreign idea for this President, who has managed to coast along for five months without focused opposition. Even his staff seems flustered, unsure how to respond in an increasingly hostile environment.

So far, no one seems to accept the cold, hard reality that the President’s health care plan is wildly unpopular. Instead, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs blames the national protest on an old standby: the vast right-wing conspiracy. He said K Street lobbyists were organizing the raucous town halls, where “angry mobs” are disrupting the “honest” conversations that Democrats are trying to have in their home districts. It’s “manufactured anger,” he told reporters yesterday. The Democratic National Committee echoed the spin, saying, “The Republicans and their allied groups… are inciting… a small number of rabid right-wing extremists…”

When the Left protested the war with graffiti on the Capitol steps, it was “civic engagement.” When conservatives ask questions about what’s included in health care “reform,” it’s orchestrated thuggery. As Michelle Malkin points out, “The DNC’s definition of ‘thoughtful’: Sitting silent about the lack of transparency, deliberation, truth in numbers…on the ObamaCare plan. The DNC definition of incitement: Asking out loud, ‘How can you manage health care when you can’t manage Cash for Clunkers?’” Isn’t inciting the heartland exactly what then-candidate Obama prescribed last September? Blogger Ed Morrissey pulled a quote from his campaign that demonstrates just how disingenuous the administration is. To make a case for his candidacy, Obama told supporters to get aggressive. “I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Obviously the President’s rules of engagement–like his theories on tolerance and speech–are a one-way street, open only to liberals.

The atrocious part is that he’s purposefully lying about the idea than anyone will get to keep their doctors under the government plan. Employers will dump everyone into the government plan because it’ll be cheaper. Rationed healthcare will be just part of the nightmare. Has the government ever done anything efficiently? No.

Bottom line: Government Healthcare = Fewer Choices, Lower Quality, Higher Cost

If it weren’t so scary it’d be hilarious.

Dojo Info 8/4/09

1. Study: Texting while driving increases crash risk 23-fold
   I would have guessed 47-fold but in any event… it’s a very bad idea.
2. The top 10 songs the Web brought back
   Why any band wouldn’t want to be part of rhythm games is beyond me.
3. Hawaii coach takes voluntary pay cut
   So this coach, Greg McMackin, goes off and says a few things he probably shouldn’t have said and now… *bam* the world is against him. He takes a 30-day suspension, a loss of $169,000 and everyone is hating this guy because he used the word “faggot” three times while explaining why Notre Dame was so fired up to play his team. Should he have done this? Of course not. Does the punishment fit the crime? Not even close. The gay and lesbian community has the whole country scared to say anything remotely negative about them for fear of backlash and everything that goes along with that. So much for freedom of speech.
4. Left 4 Dead On A Crash Course To New DLC
   Can’t tell if this is worthwhile or not but wanted to share it with you.
5. Tokyo Drift Writer Signs On For Wheel Of Time Games
   The Wheel of Time fiction series started off great! Then got long… too long. Sometimes people get swayed by money and the story suffers. You think?