Blog Action Day

Oh man, almost missed it. I forgot I was signed up to post on the environment today. What the Blog Action people were looking for was something along the lines of, "run for your lives, I found gum stuck to my shoe and I think it's due to global warming!"

What they're getting:

Take the test.

Seasonal Dog Abuse

Yup, we're at it again.

The National Health

The Guardian has: Patients pull own teeth as dental contract falters.

Large numbers of people are going without dental treatment and some even report extracting their own teeth because they cannot find an NHS dentist in their area, a survey reveals today.....

...."Fourteen teeth have had to be removed by myself using pliers," said one Lancashire respondent. "Have pulled teeth out before, easier than finding a dentist," said one in Hull. "Because I could not afford the treatment cost, I had to extract my own tooth on one occasion," said one in Harrow. "I took most of my teeth out in the shed with pliers. I have one to go," said another in Wiltshire....

One tooth left to go. Then he'll be done.

And Hillary wants the government to run health care in this country. I suppose she thinks we would do it better. Somehow she'll get around government inefficiency in this one area. Me, I'm going to make a dental appointment.

The Cat Show

Judge Darrell Newkirk decides that Mr. Biggins can
only be entered once in the Persian category.

Judge Barbara Sumner checks for traces of superglue
on this American-Wirehair. "We'll have no shenanigans
this year," she informed contestants, "We've worked far
too hard on this show. We won't have it ruined by a bunch
of cats falling apart on the judging table again."

Dignity

The path to enbiggenment begins with a single click.

Saturday Dog

SCHIP

I lose patience with liberals who feign outrage, so I haven't had much to say about little Frost children. I was going to comment, but it was going to be something along the lines of "the children were faking it, come on kid, shake it off, you're not hurt, cowboy-up" See? Wouldn't have worked. So seriously, thank goodness the children survived this accident. Thank goodness SCHIP covered them, even though we know that no hospital would have turned them away.

And I don't care that the Frosts have more cars, and more commercial buildings, than me. That's fine. I, and the President, only object to people making almost twice as much as the Frosts taking my tax money to insure their kids. OK? We love your kids, but we don't love them more than you do, and if you're a family of four making $80 k/year, you should be able to buy your own health insurance.

The Smug

At first I thought that Erik at ¡No Pasaran! did this artwork. I mean, doesn't it look like early Soviet Union propaganda? And is that camouflage he's wearing? Dear Lord, don't let him grow a ché beard.

Anyway, click on the poster and you'll see, it's for real. Al Gore, Saver of Worlds. And quite possibly the only person on the planet that could make me vote for Hillary.

OK, couldn't help myself:

J'Accuse!

J'Accuse! - Gesundheit!

JENA, La. - A teenager at the center of a civil rights controversy is back in jail after a judge revoked his probation because of an old drug charge that had never been tried, his father said Thursday.

Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers had been accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court expecting another routine hearing, Marcus Jones said.

"He's locked up again," Jones said. "No bail has been set or nothing. He's a young man who's been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it."

Anazing, "thrown in jail again and again" and we have no clue why. I mean, what a surprise. It's so confusing that this would happen.

OK, I know the kids were overcharged in the beginning. But that's what prosecutors do; they overcharge in order to get the guilty to plead to a lesser charge. It may be a flawed system, but that's how it works. They'll charge the people in the car with you if you don't admit that it was your dope. If you don't want to plead guilty to the car you stole, they'll charge you with assaulting the officer as well. It's hardball.

I know I'm just looking for trouble by asking, but do you think that maybe, just maybe, a plan could be formulated to beat this system that is grinding this young man down? Maybe something clever, something the police and prosecutors would never expect: maybe something like staying away from drugs, and not running with "friends" who do crimes? Just an idea.

You want to beat the criminal justice system, quit being a criminal.

Awards

It's not bad enough that actress Charlize Theron snatched the Esquire Magazine Sexiest Woman of the Year Award away from John Edwards, now there's talk of Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize. If there's a silver lining in this at all, it's that the Prize might finally help Al with his self-esteem problem. (Here's an inside the beltway tid-bit you might not have heard: Rumor in DC is that lately Al's been seen walking around the reflecting pool rather than over it)