Monthly Archives: April 2012

Horse Racing and some Heroes for Today

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I don’t like horse racing because it seems they use younger and younger horses on frailer and frailer bones as the years go by. In the NYTimes today there is a story on some of the changes happening in horse racing (at lower levels) due to casino involvement and all the money that can be had even by losing horses.

It doesn’t look real good for the horses.
Which brings us to the heroes of the day.

Jockeys at Penn National!!

But there was no secret why Mr. Gill had made Penn National the hub of his operation: the hefty purses.

Now, Melodeeman’s death threatened to upend it all.

The next morning, Thomas Clifton, a veteran jockey, complained to the state racing commission’s office at Penn National that Mr. Gill’s horses were unsafe. He had been making similar complaints for a month.

“The horses go perfectly sound right up to the second they snap their leg off,” Mr. Clifton said. The following day he came back with a warning: “If we have one more horse break down, we are going to have a major problem on our hands.”

That night, riding in the fifth race, Mr. Clifton heard a bone snap and saw another jockey, Ricky Frazier, vaulting off a horse named Laughing Moon. Mr. Clifton yanked his own mount, but they still went soaring over Laughing Moon.

Within minutes, Mr. Frazier was in an ambulance and a veterinarian was administering a lethal injection to Laughing Moon, the ninth Gill horse to die racing in 10 months.

That is when the jockeys decided to take a stand: They would not ride in any race with a Gill-owned horse.

Their boycott cast a harsh light on the Pennsylvania Racing Commission and Penn National Gaming, which owns the track.

“It wasn’t the commission or the racetrack or anyone with any responsibility for horses and riders who took action,” said George Strawbridge, a prominent breeder and owner. “It was the jockeys who feared for their life. That’s not a shame. That’s a disgrace.”

Track officials and regulators had ample reason to question the integrity of Mr. Gill’s operation well before the boycott.

The officials who are theoretically in charge of the well being of the horses here should be ashamed of themselves.
At Aqueduct in NY:

These horses got little protection from state regulators or the racetrack. Even as the death toll was rising, necropsies were not performed to determine if pre-existing injuries had contributed to the fatal breakdowns. Nor were toxicology exams conducted.

In March, days after Governor Cuomo announced he would appoint a task force to investigate the fatalities, New York Racing Association veterinarians became more aggressive in keeping unfit horses out of the starting gate, which Dr. Anthony Verderosa, its chief examining veterinarian, called “a coincidence.”

Jockeys make little money. The group that banded together and refused to ride Mr. Gills horses deserve a metal while the vets who are checking on race horses at this level – making more money than jockeys at it I presume – deserve a kick in the ass.

The Energy and Commerce press conference:
http://www.ustream.tv/embed/8188285
Live video by Ustream

Looking at the Data

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Bad Data, Bad takes a look at the incidences of retractions in scientific journals compared with conservatives rising distrust of science. The conclusion is what you might expect based on your own experience and rising distrust!

[ht Maggie's Farm]

And since reading that won’t take long, here’s a photo from my cell phone. There’s a study for you….how often is the good camera at home when you pass a scene like this?

Let the Spin Continue

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ATF: Aaaaah – 70% of guns found in Mexico come from the US!!!!!

More than 68,000 of the 99,691 firearms that were recovered between 2007 and 2011, and submitted to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for trace testing, were either made in the U.S. or legally brought into the U.S. at one point, according to the agency.

Oh wait….not only does our government make certain gun shop owners sell guns illegally to people known to “walk” them across the border, but they also encourage direct sales of guns to the Mexican government for their army. 150,000 who have deserted…with their guns. doh

The problem of weapons legally sold to Mexico – then diverted to violent cartels – is becoming more urgent. That’s because the U.S. has quietly authorized a massive escalation in the number of guns sold to Mexico through “direct commercial sales.” It’s a way foreign countries can acquire firearms faster and with less disclosure than going through the Pentagon.

That 2nd story about the Mexican military is dated December 6, 2011.
The 1st one is dated April 26th, 2012. You know right where this story is going, don’t you?

Aaaah!!! We must regulate guns more!!!!! It’s too easy for Mexican cartels to get US guns!!!!!

Basic Wisdom, and Wit, from the Blogs

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Darleen notes:

Why should they [mmenboys] put forth any effort in wooing a young female? She is eager to serve herself up on platter to prove how hip and with-it she is … Soon with mandated “free” birth control! For her health!

And Warren:

By the way, why is it so easy for the media to see, say, back room abortions as a symptom of prohibitions on abortion but not see stories like this [teens drinking hand sanitizer] in the same light.

And from Classical Values on Zimmerman’s background:

Well, all I know is someone’s not getting invited to dinner with Al Sharpton or Barack “my son would look like Trayvon” Obama. Which is too bad, because Big Boi [Big Boi is a dog] sounds delicious.

Immigration

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For first time since Depression, more Mexicans leave U.S. than enter

Mexicans come to this country illegally for work and the wages that work earns. During hard times, there is less work and many will go home. Others won’t because this country is their home. This is no surprise.

So where does a statement like this come from? Bold is mine.

“I think the massive boom in Mexican immigration is over and I don’t think it will ever return to the numbers we saw in the 1990s and 2000s,” said Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and co-director of the Mexican Migration Project, which has been gathering data on the subject for 30 years.

Why?
In 1986 Reagan signed the amnesty bill giving amnesty to illegals already living here. What happened then is more people arrived illegally and have awaited a 2nd amnesty. doh.
So if the economy improves and there is more work…..(or if the industry of agriculture is no longer able to use their 17 year old kids as free labor so there are a LOT more cheap jobs available), and if more talks get going about another amnesty bill, then Mexicans will most definitely return en masse illegally.

Professor Massey doesn’t even bother discussing the economy in Mexico. If it improves to a great extent, then that would be a reason the mass illegal immigration would not occur again.

It’s as if people think the world is a static place now that they are in it.

Oblivious much?

It’s the Government’s and you’re lucky to have any

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Sayeth Professors Diamond and Saez today in a column on how high taxes won’t hurt growth.

Read the entire column because it’s worth a “feel” for how people like that think.
This comment from a Peter Spicer was perfect. [bold is mine]

This analysis seems to suggest the entire goal of tax policy is to maximize taxes extracted from an individual. What happened to liberty and personal property?

Apparently the authors think that the governments job is to gather as many tax dollars as they possibly can without hurting the economy.
Not sure why they think the government knows best what to do with those dollars.

I don’t have any skin in this game, but until our elected officials can be trusted to spend wisely, the government’s job really ought to be to live on as little as possible.

Regarding Yesterday’s Outrage

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The WSJ has a great column about the 8.5Billion, (yes Billion!) dollars that Obama is using of your money for re-election.

A quote from the column:

The GAO auditors show a dry wit in expressing skepticism about Medicare’s “stated research goal” for the test. The demonstration project’s design “precludes a credible evaluation of its effectiveness,” GAO says, since all Medicare Advantage insurers get the pay-for-performance bonuses.

In other words, there’s no control group to test which approaches work better. It’s a demonstration project without the ability to demonstrate. Professional courtesy prevents the GAO from saying outright that the bonus program is purely political, but the report suggests as much.

And a great new bumper sticker from the comments:

Romney 2012: Because Obama is a Total D*ck