Definitely Cerambycidae, based on the body shape, showiness, length of the antennae, etc., but this particular one’s not in my copy of Petersen’s field guide to NA insects, and I can’t find a pic of it on the ‘net, either . . .

:-)

Thanks to all who have stopped by this blog — and best holiday wishes to you . . .

(Ecard courtesy someecards. Check it out if you haven’t ever visited!)

From Ned Barnett at The American Thinker, who by way of background notes that over the past 10 years, he’s earned from $50,000 to $100,000 per year — so he’s not in the category of the “more than $250K ‘evil rich’”:

I’ve worked as the state level media and strategy director on three Presidential election campaigns — I know how “promises” work — so I analyzed Senator Obama’s promises by looking for loopholes.

The first loophole was easy to find: Senator Obama doesn’t “count” allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse as a tax increase. Unless the cuts are re-enacted, rates will automatically return to the 2000 level. Senator Obama claims that letting a tax cut lapse — allowing the rates to return to a higher levels — is not actually a “tax increase.” It’s just the lapsing of a tax cut.

See the difference?

Neither do I.

When those cuts lapse, my taxes are going up — a lot — but by parsing words, Senator Obama justifies his claim that he won’t actively raise taxes on 95 percent of working Americans, even while he’s passively allowing tax rates to go up for 100% of Americans who actually pay Federal income taxes.

Making this personal, my Federal Income Tax will increase by $3,824 when those tax cuts lapse. That not-insignificant sum would cover a couple of house payments or help my two boys through another month or two of college.

Barnett encourages us to go to this page on the IRS website, look up the tax tables for 2000 and 2007, and check his assumptions for ourselves.

In addition, Obama plans to eliminate the income cap on Social Security tax. So, for example, individuals making more than $94,700 will now pay an extra 12.4 percent tax on every dollar earned above that figure.

And he’s going to raise Capital Gains taxes. Too bad for you if you are one of the 50 percent of Americans who own stocks in, say, your 401K, and the market turns around.

Ah. No worries. What’s important is that 67 percent of Americans BELIEVE Obama is going to cut middle class taxes.

I bet he can keep insisting he’s cutting taxes, and his adoring public will continue to “know” that he has. Just like they “know” so much else about him. Democracy in action!

Seven out of 10 voters (69%) remain convinced that reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and this year by a nearly five-to-one margin voters believe they are trying to help Barack Obama.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of voters think most reporters are trying to help Obama win versus 11% who believe they are trying to help his Republican opponent John McCain. Twenty-six percent (26%) say reporters offer unbiased coverage . . .

The article goes on to break down the numbers by party.

Dems are most likely to think reporters are unbiased most of the time.

They also are least likely to think that the media treats their candidate more fairly.

How to ’splain that?

One possibility is that it’s just a coincidence.

More likely: the perception of “bias” is so subjective that people don’t even realize they’re accommodating it. Take this side by side comparison of the questions that Charlie Gibson put to Obama and Palin, which I’ve adapted from this Hillary Clinton forum:

Obama interview:
(Source: ABC News transcript.)

Did you truly, in your gut, think that a black man could win the nomination of a major party to be president of the United States?
Has it sunk in yet? Do you take joy from the win?
What did your daughters think of you winning the nomination?
Who will be your VP?
Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?
Will you accept public finance?
What issues is your campaign about?
Will you visit Iraq?
Will you debate McCain at a town hall?
What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?

Palin interview:
(Source: Fox News transcript.)

Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking?
Doesn’t it take hubris to accept the VP nomination, considering how inexperienced you are?
Have you ever met a foreign head of state?
Do you believe America is fighting a holy war in Iraq like I claim you said you did?
Are you sending your son to fight as a task from God?
What are your positions on territorial integrity of Georgia?
. . . Allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO?
. . . NATO treaty?
. . . Iranian nuclear threat?
. . . What to do if Israel attacks Iran?
. . . Al Qaeda motivations?
. . . The Bush Doctrine?
. . . Attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan?

Now an objectively “unbiased” interviewer would put the same set of questions to both individuals. I think everyone could agree on that. If anything, the more hard-hitting questions would go to the Presidential candidate, as opposed to the VP candidate.

But suppose you believe that Obama is the best Presidential Candidate since Washington himself? In that case, to your thinking, questions about hubris or attacking Pakistan or whatever wouldn’t be warranted, because you’ve already decided that Obama is a fine guy — those issues are settled, to your mind, before they’re raised.

If a candidate is prima facie superior, what would be the point of difficult questions?

Put another way: to some peoples’ minds, Sarah deserves the tougher questions; Obama does not. Therefore, lobbing softballs at him isn’t bias — it’s just How Things Should Be Done.

Simple!

As you know if you’ve been anywhere near a mainstream media outlet this week, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a recommendation that children as young as two be screened for cholesterol and, even more heinous, children as young as eight should be put on cholesterol-lowering drugs.

We need to wake up. Cholesterol is NOT the problem.

Trying to lower cholesterol via prescription drugs, OTOH, is a HUGE problem.

I’ve blogged before about cholesterol. We’ve managed to collectively demonize the stuff: a textbook example of the phenomenon of “mistaken consensus.”

Here’s the reality of the situation. We NEED cholesterol. Our brains need it, our bodies need it. It’s an essential component of dozens of critical cellular structures, such as the myelin sheaths that surround our nerve cells (can’t lay down new neural pathways in the brain without myelin, folks); it’s a component of the bile salts we use to digest fats; it’s a building block of our sex hormones (yes, that’s estrogen, testosterone, & friends).

So why is cholesterol the bad guy? Because it’s also a well-known component of arterial plaque.

But we’ve made a crucial error. We’ve assumed that since plaque is made of cholesterol, lowering cholesterol levels will help prevent heart disease.

Well, I say “we.” People have been questioning the role of cholesterol for years, now. This is from 1987:

In considering 1,400 patients whose blocked arteries were replaced with veins taken from other parts of their bodies, Dr. [Michael E.] DeBakey found again that cholesterol levels did not predict which of these bypass patients would redevelop blockage and require further surgery. He said patients with ”low” cholesterol levels, below 200 micrograms per milliliter of blood, did not fare better as a group than patients with high levels, about 240.

That’s over 20 years ago!

Since then, the thinking has evolved considerably; research now points more toward inflammation than cholesterol levels as the critical risk factor for heart disease. Google “inflammation heart disease” and you find plenty of stuff to mull, much of it along the lines of this bit from Andrew Weil’s website:

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a substance found in blood that is a marker for inflammation in the body. High levels of this protein are associated with an increased risk of heart disease and low levels with a low risk. The notion that inflammation plays a central role in heart disease is relatively new, although we’ve long known that CRP levels go up to signal any type of inflammation . . .

[T]he link between elevated CRP levels and heart disease has been demonstrated repeatedly, and there is some evidence that CRP may be a more important indicator of heart disease risk than high LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. In an eight-year study involving 27,939 women led by Paul Ridker, MD, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, more than half of the women who eventually developed heart disease had high CRP levels even though their LDL levels were not considered high. Dr. Ridker has estimated that the same may be true for 25 percent of the U.S. population. The study results were published in the November 14, 2002, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. More recently, a Cleveland Clinic study found ultrasound evidence that clogged coronary arteries had not gotten worse among 502 patients who were most successful at lowering their CRP levels. The study was published in the Jan. 6, 2005, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

It gets crazier. Courtesy of this piece published by the Weston Price Foundation: cholesterol seems to protect against infection. Since infection causes inflammation (low grade bacterial infection might be the true heart disease culprit), high cholesterol levels might actually PROTECT against heart disease.

Yes, there is a subset of the population for which high levels of so-called “bad” cholesterol is correlated with increased risk of heart disease. But it’s only a small subset. And it doesn’t include kids!

So why would ANYONE even CONSIDER drugging kids to lower their cholesterol levels?

I’m no conspiracy theorist. But I do think the American Academy of Pediatrics has betrayed its role as an advocate for our children. It’s shown itself to be too cozy to the “drugs are the answer” model of health care–and that’s not a positive thing.

Put on your thinking caps, guys, for crying out loud.

We need to feed our kids better. Childhood obesity IS an issue.

But drugging our kids to artificially lower levels of an essential molecule is NOT going to solve the problem.

What is will do, count on it, is put them at risk for a world of hurt. Starting with the known side effects of these drugs. And ending with who-knows-what other horrors. Messed up brain development? Hormonal imbalances during crucial stages of puberty? We just don’t know.

It makes me sick to my stomach . . .

So for your enjoyment, here’s an AP photograph taken by Mark Groll at a recent memorial service for fallen NY State firefighters, which I found on gothamist:

The fellow on the left is New York senate leader Joe Bruno. A Republican. Drawing on political skills he learned as a five-year-old.

Bruno is mad ‘cuz Spitzer’s administration is using some (mildish) dirty tricks to discredit him.

Which is apparently far more important, in Bruno’s childish little world, than showing respect for people who lost their lives trying to save the lives of others.

It speaks volume about what he really thinks about “public service,” doesn’t it.

Spitzer’s no angel, of course, and I’m not sorry to see his fake halo dislodged. But Bruno’s self-righteous anger is a big fat sham as well:

While it’s common for elected officials to dip into their campaign committees for an occasional personal meal or other perk, the filings for Bruno’s three committees suggest that he may never pick up his own tab. In 2006 and the first six months of 2007, the committees have spent more than $92,000 on restaurant and country-club bills for “meetings” or “meals,” not including any expenses that are listed for “fundraising” purposes. Calls to some of the restaurants confirm that Bruno eats there regularly, often with guests. It’s not at all uncommon for multiple meals to be billed for the same day, or for the committee to cover virtually an entire week of dinners (including the weekend), usually in restaurants near the capitol and his home. It is possible that some of these meals are for staff, but one committee has no full-time staff, and it’s the one with $38,000 in restaurant billings alone.

In addition, the committees have spent an astounding $18,225 at the track, including expenses virtually every other day during the 36-day summer season at Saratoga, where horseman Bruno reigns as a local potentate. He also appears to take at least a yearly “fundraising” junket to Florida, where he has spent $55,000 in the last year and a half—far more than he’s ever raised there.

As extraordinary as these totals are, there’s also the $211,381 attributed on the Bruno filings to “Cardmember Services,” an affiliate of the World Perks Visa Card; $55,621 to “Commercial Card Solutions,” an affiliate of J.P. Morgan Chase; and $26,000 to a third credit-card company. These entities, which are cumulatively listed at five addresses on Bruno reports, “consolidate transactions” and “help manage travel and other miscellaneous expenses” for small businesses. In addition, the committees report $36,507 in “unitemized expenses,” often listed by the thousands at the end of a reporting period. The law requires that any expenditure over $50 be specified. Ironically, while two of the committees serve the senate majority, the third—which has spent $4.5 million since 2000—is in business purely to re-elect Bruno himself, in a district where he hasn’t faced a real opponent (and sometimes no Democrat at all) in a decade.

That’s Wayne Barrett reporting in the Village Voice — and he’s only warming up. The article goes on & on for three pages, detailing how Bruno and his associates live fat, abuse their positions, and deliberately obfuscate their activities from anyone who might be critical of them.

Our state’s political class is a joke, and our residents are paying the price. Laughing yet?

Technorati Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Joe Bruno, New York State politics

I’ll try to get back into my head & blog some more over the next couple of days. We’re supposed to get a ton of rain tomorrow, that should settle me down. And any day now I’ll start to sleep better again. I’ve been waking up early every morning, too wound up to keep myself settled. I’m not complaining, it’s fun in a jittery kind of way :-)

Technorati Tags: blogging

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Is that an issue with the quality of the mic?

It’s a Radio Shack headset/microphone. I can’t remember what it cost. Under $30.

If I invest in a higher quality mic, would that solve the problem?

I’m using the sound recorder utility that comes with Windows 2000. Are there better sound capture applications that would let me filter the static?

Anybody reading this able to help? Thanks!