Exporting Death

I hope she succeeds.
KAMPALA, Uganda, August 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – At the premiere of the soon-to-be-released documentary “Miss HIV” in Kampala, the wife of Uganda’s president, Janet Museveni, lamented the rise in dangerous sexual behaviour in the country and the resultant rise in HIV-AIDS rates.
According to New Vision, Musevini said that Ugandans are abandoning behavior-based solutions to HIV-AIDS in favour of methods, imported from the West, that only serve to perpetuate the disease.
“It is not too late to reverse the trend,” she said. “We can adopt our own indigenous solutions, which are less expensive and are 100% sure of preventing the spread of this deadly disease. I find it very baffling how we could throw away what worked, and embrace ideas from elsewhere. Then we watched as rates of infection soared again to claim lives.”
Musevini’s words echoed those of anti-AIDS crusader Sam Ruteikara, who wrote in the Washington Post several weeks ago that Western methods of combating AIDS, which strive to protect casual sex at all costs, are being imported into Uganda and are resulting in a rise in risky sexual behaviour and the overall HIV-AIDS rate. (more)

7 Tips to Develop the Habit of Daily Exercise

Over at dumblittleman some assistance for, well, people like me who remain somewhat skeptical about the claims below of not being as painful as you think but here ya go…
One life habit that is often neglected is the habit of daily exercise. There are several reasons for this: too hard, too painful or the ever popular, I’ll do it later, when I have time.Physical activity is not as hard as you think. In fact, is not as painful as you think either (you should be virtually pain free after about a week. For a short investment of time each week, you will reap a ton of rewards.So, don’t put off exercise. Get educated on what you want to accomplish and jump in. I’ll even help get you started on developing a plan for daily exercise. (go here for the tips)

Cocaine traced to Venezuelan jungles

From WND:
UK estimates 250 tons shipped in just 6 months.
LONDON — Anti-drug specialists for Britain’s MI6 intelligence service are spearheading a deadly new war in the jungles of Venezuela where President Hugo Chavez’ revolutionary regime apparently has allowed a key trafficking route for 90 percent of the cocaine sold on Britain’s streets…”We estimate that over 250 tons of cocaine has passed through Venezuela in the past six months. This is five times more than in the past two years,” states an MI6 report to Britain’s Home Office.
MI6 officers operating in the high-danger steamy jungles of Venezuela have established that senior commanders in the country’s security forces are “profiting from the smuggling by actively helping smugglers by allowing them to use military airfields.” (more)

Bad Law, Worse Timing

From the WSJ:

Repeated studies have shown that minimum-wage increases are more likely to slow job creation than reduce poverty. A large share of the costs of these mandates are borne by the same low-income families the wage hike is supposed to help. Employers inevitably pass wage increases onto consumers as higher prices for goods and services, which erodes the spending power of all consumers but especially the poor. Employers also respond by hiring fewer unskilled workers, a disproportionate number of whom are teenagers and minorities. (more)

Hard Summer

I read an interesting quote over at “And sometimes tea” it’s from from Mason Cooley, and goes like this “Writing about an idea frees me of it. Thinking about it is a circle of repetitions.”
And so I beg your patience while I try it out.
It’s been a hard summer. Death is everywhere. A friend at church who died in a car accident on the way to choir practice. My youngest son’s den leader dying from cancer. My oldest son’s assistant scoutmaster on the last leg of his earthly journey, also from cancer. I am not new to this. My dad died when I was 20. I’ve had a grandmother die and the lady who was like a second mother to me, who kept me while my parents worked from the time I was 6 weeks old till I was in 5th grade died last summer. Her husband and two boys, again like a second family, having preceded her. Less than a month after returning from Iraq, a friend of mine was shot down and killed. It was at that point that this death thing got really hard. Don’t get me wrong, when a boy loses his dad, he never gets over that, but lately it just seems to be piling up. My dad had a bad heart and had a heart attack and a stroke before his second heart attack finally took him as he walked/jogged his dailey 2 miles (I think this proves exercise is bad for you but I could be wrong). He was 55.
As young as that is, and it’s younger every year, I could kind of explain that, I guess I saw it coming. And maybe that’s why this summer has been so hard, and why my friend getting shot down was so hard- I didn’t see it coming and it doesn’t make sense. To quote my 13 year old after a visit to his assistant scoutmaster in the hospital. It sucks. He is leaving behind an 18 year old boy and a wife. Our den leader leaves behind a wife and 3 boys under 8, one born just this last December. My pilot friend a 3 year old and a wife. My son is right. It sucks. and I hurt all over sometimes and the hurt stretches, like an ugly un-healed scar, all the way back 24 years. My comfort in this, is that God thinks death sucks too. I once read a translation of Jesus’ reaction to Lazarus’ death as something akin to “the snort of war horse,” God hates death. It’s not the way He intended and some day, the pain will be gone and the tears will be dried. In the mean time, God weeps with us.

Weather In Austin

A blog only a weather geek can enjoy.
I just got 1.37 inches of rain in 28 minutes. My lawn is choking and sputtering since it hasn’t had the “real” stuff in so long..

From Townhall:
“Explain the minaret ban,” I asked.
I was sitting in the side room of a house, overlooking a flat plot somewhat larger than the trampoline outside. Beyond that trampoline, still visible in the evening light, rose the Swiss Alps. Across the table, Oskar Freysinger sat poised to address my query over some cups of espresso, speaking as a local leader of the Swiss People’s Party.
Or perhaps I should say — a local leader of the “extremist,” “bigoted” and “xenophobic” Swiss People’s Party. That’s how this largest political party in tiny Switzerland is routinely discussed, or, rather, dismissed by elites, glitterati and other social deadweights.
Why? Because the Swiss People’s Party is, with noticeable success, fighting to bring massive immigration, including Islamic immigration, under control in Switzerland before this rigidly neutral, quite independent, non-European Union country loses its uniquely Swiss character. (Hardly unimaginable given that 21.1 percent of Swiss residents are foreign.) This makes men like Freysinger a dire threat to the multicultural world order. Hence the very nasty, but meaningless names. (more)

Sofia Goes Flat

A lesson from Bulgaria in the WSJ:
I recently interviewed the instigator of the world’s lowest flat tax, Svetla Kostidinova, director of the Institute for Market Economics located in Sofia, Bulgaria. Ms. Kostidinova insists that the most amazing part of her story is that the Bulgarian government is still overtly socialist. Nonetheless, she and her colleagues managed to persuade politicians that replacing the existing tax system with a 10% flat tax would increase revenues and give the government extra money to finance social programs and unfunded pensions. If only Nancy Pelosi were as amenable to economic logic and the lessons of the real world…..
…Result: A country that ten years ago had a 12% unemployment rate now has a 6% jobless rate. Instead of people leaving Bulgaria to find jobs, “now it is the reverse. Western Europeans now come to Bulgaria for jobs. We’re gaining population now,” she says…. (more)

The Cost Cutters Called Suffering and Death

From Touchstone an idea of what nationalized healthcare looks like…
…Price controls have driven many doctors to the States; and the generally lousy schools have done a poor job preparing young people (young men in particular) for careers in science. Most of the doctors I’ve met are not Canadian, and with that comes all the problems of transience, and sometimes uncertainty about the adequacy of their preparation. But even assuming that they have all been well-trained, there aren’t enough of them, not by a long shot. The shortage shows up in personnel, and then it shows up in machines, available tests, even beds in hospitals. Let’s say you live where we do in the summer, and you need a hysterectomy, or a gall bladder removed, or something that is not absolutely urgent, but that will cause you a good deal of pain. You wait. You may wait as long as a year; I’ve seen this happen. You wait for a bed to open up, sometimes in Halifax, 200 miles away. But you need to be ready on the day when the bed is available. So people are told when their number is about to come up, and if they’re not there when it does, the bed goes to the next person in line. That means that people stay in motels in Halifax for a week or two when the date draws near. Folks around here will hold raffles or other fund raisers to help a neighbor defray the costs; it is a regular occurrence.
But then, you can’t keep the bed, either, as long as you should. My sister, an infectious disease specialist in Pennsylvania, tells me that the argument in the States is over how long you should be without fever before you are discharged from the hospital for treatment for infection. My neighbor up here was discharged with a fever, and with intense pain in her surgical incisions (she was back in the hospital two weeks later; this woman waited nine months for her three operations, nine months of pain). …(more)

Oral Contraceptives May Be Linked to Atherosclerosis

From LifeSite News:
“Can you imagine if a supplement was found to cause a 42% increase risk of plaque in the carotid arteries? There would be an immediate call for the removal of the supplement and congressional hearings would commence.”"Oral contraceptives totally disrupt the normal hormonal cascade. When the hormonal system is disrupted, cardiovascular disease, cancer, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and other serious illnesses will increase. My clinical experience has clearly shown that it is impossible to adequately treat these illnesses if there is an imbalanced hormonal system. I do not recommend the use of oral contraceptives for any reason.” (more)