I Like Horses

I have always liked horses. I would love to learn how to ride a horse and even possibly own one. I think I have always liked all animals, some more than others, and some living or cooked (but not cooked horses). And all manner of animals have liked me.

As an adult, I’ve had these pets:
dogs
cats
birds
snakes (a 6-foot boa constrictor my then pre-teen daughter wore like a feather boa and a 3-foot king)
iguanas
a rabbit
a ferret

I used to go to the pet store to buy 4 rats per month at a cost of five bucks per, then I changed over to breeding rats. I had one poppa rat and three momma rats who all enjoyed being handled. And I got to the point where I was selling about 25 rats per month to that same pet store for one buck each. And it cost me less than five bucks a month in cat food to feed the rats, so I went from spending 20 a month to feed my boa to making a net profit of 20 a month breeding my own snake food.

So I like all manner of animals and enjoy their company, and they enjoy mine. And I prefer larger animals. Boa over garter. Great Dane over chihuahua. Etc, etc. If they have fur, I very much prefer fawn-colored animals, although any color or combination of colors is fine with me. But I have a problem.

When I was a mere youth of pre-teen age, I went to the allergist. I found out I was allergic to four things:
anything with feathers
anything with fur
anything with pollen
dust mites
So I got allergy shots, first by our pediatrician then by our father because it was much cheaper for him to do it than for a doctor’s visit. It started out twice a week, went to once a week, then to twice a month, then ended prematurely due to money.

I still have hay fever, but it’s much less prominent. I still have issues (springing forth out my nose) with hay and straw, but it’s much less severe. I still have minor problems with dog dander and cat dander and likely the dust mites, but not like I used to. Then come the horses (and to a lesser extent, the llamas).

If I so much as touch a horse, my arms and the back of my neck welt up. My whole body itches severely. My eyes puff up so badly they nearly close, but that doesn’t matter because my eyes water so badly I cannot see anyway. And even if I could see, it wouldn’t matter due to my continuous snot-filled sneezing. And all this lasts for hours after a brief 3-minute period of physical contact with a horse. If a horse is nearby and the wind is right, I can have the aforementioned respiratory type issues from the horse dander flying through the air, but it doesn’t last nearly as long.

I love horses and they like me. I just cannot be around them and maintain any semblance of functionality. Having gone through the gas chamber in USMC bootcamp, I have to say I prefer the effects of the gas chamber over the effects of minimal contact with horses.

That was a gas!

(My daughter coming out of the gas chamber 5 years ago.)

The privacy of our medical records

From Tania of Midnight Blue:

One of the taxpayer funded mandates of Obamacare is the formation of a centralized medical record system. While it can streamline some aspects of care, it can lead to the mother of all ‘wikileaks’ regarding sensitive medical records. Here is just a peek at what that may look like – a California hospital discovered its protected patient data had been posted to a website for over a year.

This was, I’m sure, just a mistake, although a mistake which allows people’s medical records to be available online, to anyone, for over a year is one heck of a goof! And while it was a mistake, perhaps our readers will recall that I told you so, seven months ago:

The head of the Cleveland Clinic was both praised and criticized when he mused in an interview two years ago that, were it not illegal, he would expand the hospital policy (to deny employment to smokers) to refuse employment to obese people.

I noted here this article:

Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS

By Matt Cover, Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records — that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year — must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity.

The obesity-rating regulation states that every American’s electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”

The law also requires that these electronic health records be available — with appropriate security measures — on a national exchange.

The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law. Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the “meaningful use” of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers — including doctors and hospitals — must establish “meaningful use” of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing “meaningful use” of EHRs.

Now, just think of it: our mandated electronic health records must have a Body Mass Index calculation included. Given that a physician can see whether you are obese or not just by looking at you, and people are routinely weighed when they visit the doctor, I can see no medical reason to require that the health records automatically calculate BMI unless the government wants that to be something searchable. Now remember, “The law also requires that these electronic health records be available — with appropriate security measures — on a national exchange.” The head of the Cleveland Clinic said that he’d refuse to hire fat people if it was legal, yet, as the head of a medical institution, his organization would be one of those with the access to people’s electronic health records.

“Hey, Sandy, we have a résumé from Joe Schmuckatella, and it looks good; check his BMI before we give him a call, OK?”

Mr Schmuckatella might never get that call, and, never having been called in for an interview, there’s no evidence he was discriminated against for eating too many Doritos® unless someone in Human Resources squeals.

Now, if the “law also requires that these electronic health records be available — with appropriate security measures — on a national exchange,” that means that anyone who can figure out how to bypass those “appropriate security measures” can get to your records, and the public posting misgoof shows that security isn’t all that tight even before the law kicks in. As for records being unhackable, give me a break: if the records were available online now, and Mitt Romney ever sought a prescription for Viagra, you can guarantee his opponents would find that out and let everybody know he needed “help.” If Michelle Bachmann ever saw a shrink, the records would be found, and published by her political opponents. It’s pretty obvious that there are no secrets anymore.
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cross posted on Common Sense Political Thought.

Rahm Emanuel The Chicago Thug

Back in March, 2010, I wrote about the kerfuffle between Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Eric Massa (D – NY).

Here’s a small portion of Massa’s (D-NY) blast, as transcribed by NBC Chicago:

“Let me tell you a story about Rahm Emanuel,” Massa said on the program. “I was a congressman in my first eight weeks; I was in the congressional gym, I went down and I worked out and I went into the showers … I’m sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird and here comes Rahm Emanuel not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, and he starts poking a finger in my chest yelling at me because I wasn’t going to vote for the president’s budget.

“Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man?”

You can hear Massa himself saying it here.
…
Massa said Rahm called him and cursed him out for voting against ObamaCare and that Massa told Rahm to do things that are anatomically impossible. Then Massa said he told Rahm to start over. “Let’s pretend you’re the White House Chief of Staff and let’s pretend I’m a Congressman.” Or something along those lines. Rahm told Massa that Massa had crossed the line with his language, to which Massa retorted “you already crossed that line first” or matters to that effect.

Well, Rahmbo’s egregious, unethical, enraged, out of control attitude and actions didn’t stop when he became Mayor of Chicago. Nope. And, again, Rahmbo is lashing out against people within his own political side of the spectrum. The Chicago Sun-Times reports the latest in Rahmbo’s out of control mad disrespect of even those on his own side of the political spectrum. (HT Hot Air Headlines)

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis says Mayor Rahm Emanuel “exploded” at her during a conversation in his office about his signature longer-school-day effort, pointing his finger at her, yelling and telling her, “F— you, Lewis.”

“I just want to call it immense disrespect for me and the Chicago Teachers Union,’’ Lewis told the Chicago Sun-Times Friday. “I didn’t appreciate the way he talked to me.

“My father never talked to me like that. My husband’s never talked to me like that.”
…
The behind-the-curtain intensity of the battle was evident Friday, as Lewis described her meeting with Emanuel in the mayor’s office a few weeks ago. Sitting next to her in a chair in front of his desk, the mayor talked about adding 90 minutes to the school day, saying “I can’t have kids on the street at 2:15,” Lewis recalled.

“I called out what he was doing had nothing to do with education,’’ Lewis said. She said she told him, “So this is not about education. This is about safety. … This is babysitting and warehousing.”

At that point, the “craziness” began, Lewis said.

“He [Emanuel] got up out of his chair and started cussing at me.” Pressed for the language, Lewis said the mayor told her, “F— you, Lewis” and dropped other “f-bombs.”

As before, Rahmbo is out of control, highly disrespectful of others in leadership, unable to control his language or his intimidation tactics, and attacking people who are Democrat stalwarts. Typical, unethical, violent Rahmbo. Typical Chicago thug tactics.