Death with Dignity

66-year-old Linda Fleming was diagnosed with terminal cancer and feared her last days would be filled with pain and ever-stronger doses of medication that would erode her mind. She had late-stage pancreatic cancer and wanted to be clear-headed at death, so she became the first person to kill herself under Washington State's new assisted suicide law, known as "death with dignity."

"I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death," Fleming said in a statement released Friday. "The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death. And I knew I would have to increase them."

With family members, her physician and her dog at her side, Fleming took a deadly dose of prescription barbiturates and died Thursday night at her home.

Manneken Pis

A state in eastern Mexico will erect a statue to a small boy suspected as being the first patient of swine flu, to be modeled on the famous Belgian Manneken Pis statue of a child urinating.

Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez appeared in media across the world after the health ministry confirmed that he had contracted, and overcome, the virus at the start of the epidemic's outbreak.

Hernandez's role in putting his poor village of La Gloria on the map merited recognition in the shape of a small statue. "La Gloria is now an important tourist destination. Next week we'll inaugurate a statue of the child Edgar Hernandez that resembles the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium, for having carried out a similar exploit," the mayor said.

The story is that the young Belgian child stood on the walls of the city to urinate and discovered enemy troops approaching. He warned the town's people, who eventually defeated the enemy.

Government Healthcare Plans Unfold

Under a new set of proposals by Senate Democrats, which resemble those under consideration by their peers in the House, everyone in the U.S. would be required to carry health insurance starting in 2013, except illegal immigrants and people with religious objections (I guess their's remains free care). Government would regulate the marketing of commercial insurance to families and employers as well as sales commissions paid to insurance agents and brokers.

Medicaid would be expanded to cover additional low-income families with children.

Families making up to four times the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four) would be eligible for tax credits to help them afford coverage. Taxpayers would have to report their health insurance coverage on their federal income tax returns and the penalty for not carrying insurance would be up to 75 percent of the premium for the lowest-cost health plan in the area where the person lives. (This is like Massachusetts has now)

Health insurance companies would have their premiums regulated, and allow workers to drop out of group health plans to seek a better deal on their own, but the employer would have to pay the premium amount into a "national health insurance exchange."

The feds would set minimum standards for what benefits health plans would offer, including physician services, hospital care and prescription medications. All health plans would have to offer four levels of coverage, ranging from lowest to high.

Most companies would be required to offer insurance to full-time employees, or else pay a special "excise" tax. The government would provide tax credits to small businesses with up to 25 employees. Businesses with the lowest-wage workers would get more aid. All of this great stuff to save money and it only is estimated to cost 1 trillion dollars - such a deal!

Sexy Over Sixty

Massachusetts House Bill 1668, (filed Jan 13, 2009) "An Act Relative to Posing or Exhibiting or Disseminating Material of an Elder or a Person with a Disability in a State of Nudity or Sexual Conduct" would make it a crime to "photograph with 'lascivious intent' a person over the age of 60 or a person with a disability who has been declared mentally incompetent."

If it is passed, a person violating the new provisions of the law "shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of not less than ten nor more than twenty years, or by a fine of not less than ten thousand nor more than fifty thousand dollars, or by both such fine and imprisonment." This would include spouses photographing one another with "lascivious intent" and the person who poses.

State Democrat Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein, above right (unmarried) says the bill she sponsored was intended to protect vulnerable (elderly) populations from sexual predators, but some disability advocates and law buffs have criticized the amendments as restricting the sexual freedom of seniors and people with disabilities.

Adding insult to injury, the proposal amends a bill designed to punish those who make child pornography. It treats fully functional adults who happen to be over 60 the same as children under 18; it explicitly takes away their right to consent to pose or be photographed nude.

I looked it up and she is from Revere, MA. with a population of 47,000, 84% Caucasian, and with 9,000 over 62 years old. She was born Jan 31, 1971 (38).

Protection in the form of stealing people’s rights isn’t protection. This is the same argument that was used to deny women the right to vote 100 years ago: “Protecting” them from the upset of digesting political information and the pressures of citizenship. Hey, AARP - where are you?

Not only is this stupid and unnecessary, it is also unconstitutional. Do you think she might have seen her parents naked, and they were ugly?

Global Warming

New York Times April 24, 2009 by Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center at Copenhagen Business School - "If the Kyoto agreement were fully obeyed through 2099, it would cut temperatures by only 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit."

National Priorities

Below are the results from a national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (an independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward the press, politics, and public policy issue), conducted Jan. 7-11, 2009, among 1,503 adults. (results +/- 3%) Contrast these results with the current administration's plan to spend billions of our tax dollars to reduce global warming.

Did you notice where fixing the environment is, third from last, and the last item on the list? Hmmm. . . Helloo White House, are you dyslexic?

Speaking of Bacon

You are more likely to die from a coconut falling on your head than from Swine Flu - Oh, I mean H1N1

The U.S. government and the World Health Organization are taking the swine out of "swine flu," but the experts who track the genetic heritage of the virus say this: If it is genetically mostly porcine and its parents are pig viruses, then it is swine flu.

Scientifically this is a swine virus. Six of the eight genetic segments of this virus strain are purely swine flu and the other two segments are bird and human, but have lived in swine for the past decade.

BTW - The US government is ditching the swine label because many people are afraid to eat pork and hurting the $97 billion US pork industry. The experts who point to the swine genetic origins of the virus agree that people can't get the disease from food or handling pork, even raw. Eat more bacon.

Stimulation

Can you say ten point five trillion and keep a straight face? Check this site for a detail breakdown of the money the government is spending. It scares the bejeebers out of me.

Honk

Benjamin Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin

Speaking of Queens

Bet ya didn't know that Queen Elisabeth II is the official head of state of Canada. . . and Australia, Antigua, Barbados, Belize, New Guinea, New Zealand, Jamaica, Grenada, Bermuda, Bahamas, Grenada, all the Soloman islands, St. Kitts, and Tuvalu (what's left of it, over in the Pacific, between Hawaii and Australia). Sounds like a dance - Let's do the Tuvalu.