Clinton did not balance the budget

The Democrats keep pointing to Clinton and claiming that he balanced the budget, and even ran a surplus, but it seems like no one has bothered to check the figures. Read the figures below, obtained from the US Treasury, and see for yourself:

National Debt on September 30 of each year (the last day of the Fiscal year); followed by the deficit that increased it
Year  //  Public Debt ..........   increase from previous year
1993 // 4,406,339,573,433    The start of Clinton's first budget
1994 // 4,692,749,910,013.....286,410,336,580
1995 // 4,973,982,900,709.....281,232,990,696
1996 // 5,224,810,939,135.....250,828,038,426
1997 // 5,413,146,011,397.....188,335,072,262
1998 // 5,526,193,008,897.....113,046,997,500
1999 // 5,656,270,901,633.....130,077,892,736
2000 // 5,674,178,209,886..... 17,909,308,253
2001 // 5,807,463,412,200.....133,285,202,914 (Bush assumed the helm Jan 1, 2001)

Sure, he came close with an $18 billion deficit in FY 2000, but that is certainly not a surplus. Clinton ran a deficit every year he was in office.

Priorities

Congress has a lot on its plate. In fact, today the Senate Judiciary's subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights is having hearings on whether the current system of deciding the National College football championship is fair.

Behind the push for the hearings is the subcommittee's top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. People there were furious that Utah was bypassed for the national championship despite going undefeated in the regular season. In the House, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, has sponsored legislation that would prevent the NCAA from calling a football game a "national championship" unless the game culminates from a playoff system.

and the Republicans wonder why they are being considered irrelevant. Can we please have a viable third party, or am I going to be forced to continually be forced to choose between a douche and a turd? Where in the Constitution is Congress even granted the power to interfere in this?

Meanwhile, we have a Treasury Secretary who is announcing that he is just fine with the Chinese and Russian plan to stop using the dollar as the international trading currency, and is also seeking to expand his control over the private sector, as he seeks to get the power to regulate how much risk you can take as a private investor.

I am starting to think that we are seeing the end of the American Superpower status, and the beginning of the end of our nation. China will be the next leader of the world, probably within the next decade. We will be bankrupt by then, as our national debt will be around US$30 trillion.

Credit scores and spending

One of the factors in your FICO score is your credit utilization. That is, how much money you have borrowed. Well, today the Treasury had a bond auction, and the lenders were not biting.

Investors gave an unexpectedly cool response to a $24 billion auction of 5-year Treasury notes Wednesday, which also sent prices for Treasurys lower...Bond prices fell after the auction. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, jumped to 2.78 percent from 2.71 percent late Tuesday. The yield on the three-month T-bill rose to 0.19 percent from 0.17 percent Tuesday.

I guess this means that the Nation's FICO score just took a hit. Investors are starting to shy away from loaning money to Uncle Sam. The government has to respond in the only way available: raise yields. We are on a rapid accelerating slide towards becoming a sub-prime borrower. As the yields climb, interest will take a larger cut of the budget, meaning that the deficit will climb. This will increase the debt, causeing the deficit to climb further. I wonder what the breaking point is...

One in a million

Recently, someone made it to my blog by searching for the term, "percentage of ammunition used in crimes"

Let me help you on that:

First let me say that there is no way to know, since many crimes involving ammunition are unreported, like shooting in prohibited areas, poaching, and the like. If you are talking about violent crimes, like robbery, this is again problematic since the police do not report how many shots are fired unless they strike someone.

Each year, there are approximately 10 billion rounds of ammunition sold in the United States.

In the year 2007 (the latest year for which data is available), according to the FBI, there were 15,972 murders in the United States,and 68% of these murders were committed with firearms. Therefore, have a total of 10,860 homicides in which a shot was fired.

This relates to 1 bullet in 920,810 being used in a homicide. Your odds of being killed by any particular bullet are less than the odds of you dying by being bitten by a rabid squirrel in New York's Central Park.

I can't be a bigot, I am part of a "minority group."

This article is about a boy who wanted to wear an Obama mask during a dance number he was performing for a school talent show, claiming that Obama is his idol. The school is prohibiting it, because they feel it is rascist. The boy and his gay parents disagree, saying:

"I understand the history of black face and how African Americans were caricatured by it," Lechert said. "However, we now have a popular biracial president who is admired by white and nonwhite people. At what point will it become OK for an 11-year-old admirer to dress up as the president without fear of offending someone?"

Kelly said that as a gay couple, he and Lechert consider themselves particularly sensitive to issues of minority groups.

"We are white, but we're a minority class," he said. "We have some insight into this process of what is and what isn't offensive. There was obviously no intent to harm here -- or really any possibility of offending anyone."

So let me get this straight, you can only be a racist if you are not a part of a "minority group?" That is, you must be white and straight in order to be considered racist? I hear this argument all of the time, and I cannot fathom how a person can believe that they are excused from racism simply because they are a part of a certain class. So you are wrong about something else- someone was offended, and it was me.

A black man who believes you are keeping him down because you are white: a bigoted racist.
A woman who believes men are sexist pigs: a bigoted sexist.
A gay couple that believes that they are somehow exempt from racial sensitivity, because they are part of a "minority group" is bigoted as well.

The funny thing is, I support this child's desire to perform in the talent show, mask and all, but not because of some illusory challenge from his self-professed protected class. No, I support it because it is his right to say what he wishes, and the school (a branch of the government) should not be censoring protected speech.

I am sure the child has learned a lesson here, I am just not sure what that lesson is.

Obama honeymoon draws to a close, but it isn't his fault

Reading Newsweek today, it looks as though the mainstream media is finally tumbling to the fact that his administration is going to be inept, and no different than the last. Huh, I pointed that out during the election.

There is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats- they both want to take your money and your liberty and give it to someone else. They only differ in who they are giving it to.

According to Salon, it isn't Obama's fault, it is the fault of his advisers. Isn't that what President Bush said when he finally admitted that there were no WMDs in Iraq? The mainstream media didn't give Bush a pass on that one, so why is Obama being given so much leeway?

Still, 50 days into the Obama Presidency, and the first cracks are beginning to show.

The force is strong

Idiot doctor, again

In this post, I wrote about the "Doctor" who did not even know what SVT was. Well, the same Doctor is at it again.

My crew yesterday included a paramedic who is actually a fairly good medic, but he has less than 2 years as a medic. There was also a new EMT and an excellent EMT who has been getting pushed by me to attend medic school.

We arrived at the home of a 90 year old woman for a reported fall. It seems that her neighbors stopped in for a visit and found her on the living room floor, and the victim stated that she had fallen, and her back was hurting. She also said it was difficult to breathe. She was on the floor, and was pale and diaphoretic. She has no radial pulses. Her BP was 86/p, pulse was 40. Out in the truck, the monitor shows:

(If you look closely, you can see where we were preparing to pace)

An IV is established, a 12 lead EKG is established, and the Pacer pads are placed on the patient. Pacing was begun, and we got capture at 50mA. Three minutes later, she became apneic and went into PEA. We started chest compressions, and gave her a 500ml fluid bolus. Pulses returned.

When we arrived at the hospital, the same doctor from last week did not believe us, and felt that our rapid return of pulses indicated that the patient could not have coded, and we were mistaken. It went like this:

Dr: Why did you start CPR? What made you think it was PEA?
DM: She did not have a pulse.
Dr: Why did you stop CPR?
DM: We did one minute of CPR, and got ROSC.
Dr: How did you know that?
DM: She started moving her arms.
Dr: So you were doing CPR on a woman who was moving?
DM: No.
(In the background, the nurses have removed the pacer, per the Dr's orders- the patient has now gone into cardiac arrest again)

A code is called, and they get pulses back. I left. That Doctor is going to kill someone.

This is what happens when the Government owns businesses

They stop caring about profits. After all, all a company should care about is helping the poor, because their owner doesn't care about profits.

Being a Doctor doesn't mean you know what you are doing

I had a call to a local amusement center for an unresponsive 26 year old male. On arrival, we found a confused 26 year old patient (doesn't know his name, the date, or his location, but does recognize his wife) who had been bowling with his wife, and bystanders claimed he was bowling and fell over unconscious, and remained so for about 2 minutes. The only history she is aware of is a syncopal episode that he had two years ago, and states that her husband's physician could not find the cause when he went to the doctor the next day. She denies any history of seizures, drug use, or alcohol use.

We put him on the monitor and get the following vitals: HR 177, BP 156/72, RR 22, SaO2 98% on room air.

(click to enlarge)


I had a new medic with me who was being precepted, and she interpreted this rhythm to be PSVT. Valsalva maneuvers were ineffective. We considered cardioversion, but decided that he appeared to be somewhat stable, even with the confusion. She started an IV, and administered 6mg of adenosine, with no effect.

She then administered 12 mg with no effect. There was another preceptor/instructor on scene, and after we talked about it, decided to go with 150mg of amiodarone given IVPB over 10 minutes. (We both wanted to go with cardizem, but we don't carry that any longer). Nothing worked. We soon arrived at the ED.

The doctor at the ER questioned our treatment and told us that we were wrong, because (in his words) PSVT does not have P waves. (He said that the rhythm was Sinus Tachy)The National Institutes of Health seem to disagree with the good doctor, as they claim:

PSVT can be initiated in the SA node, in the upper heart chambers (atria), in the atrial conduction pathways, or other areas.

The doctor then went on to tell us that our treatment of adenosine was not correct, because we were not dealing with SVT. Again, the NIH disagrees:

Emergency treatment of PSVT may include:

• Medicines through a vein, including adenosine and verapamil.

He also claimed that amiodarone was in appropriate, even though the AHA and multiple source claim otherwise.

What a waste of a decade of education. Please, if you are a doctor, take an ACLS class and know what you are talking about before you hurt someone.

Hard nosed investigative reporting here

First, CNN reports on how you can get Michelle Obama's toned arms.

Then, Time magazine reports that Obama prefers Coke over Pepsi.

Yeah. Boy, those guy sure do dig for a story. The press really is holding Obama's feet to the fire...

March to stop hate?

It seems like criminals are having a march and protesting the fact that the Sheriff is enforcing the law. Perhaps a march where bank robbers. In fact, according to this page, one of the criminals was illegally carrying a concealed weapon, an LAPD badge and a pair of handcuffs. He made threats against the Sheriff.

One of the attendees of the march, a Salvador Reza of Puente, said this:

“We are excited to see such a strong and peaceful showing of opposition to the wrong-headed policies of Sheriff Joe Arpaio,” Salvador Reza of Puente said in a news release after the march. “... 5,000 marched today to make sure that the abuses that we’ve suffered under for far too long move from the local to being dealt with on the national level as well.”

A google search of that name produces this page, where this is said about Mr Reza:

After graduating from the University of California, San Diego, he worked for California immigrant advocacy groups and was drawn to Phoenix because he is among those who consider the city the center of Aztlan, the original land of the Aztecs before they moved south to what later became Mexico.

If you remember, we first talked about the Aztlan movement here. Isn't it funny that the press interviews a figure who advocates the overthrow (what the Illegals call "reconquista") of the United States, and they fail to mention that fact?

March to stop hate? No, it is not a march, it is an invasion.

Repo men come under fire

The Associated Press reports that Repo men are becoming increasingly violent with debtors.

This is the story where Repo men claim that they are defending themselves when they repo a car, by shooting at debtors that are defending their property. A few thoughts on this:

It is not the bank's car. It is not the bank's property that the car is on. The bank has a security interest in the car, but gun play in a debtor's yard is not the place to settle a civil dispute. That is why we have courts.

If this is typical of how repo men operate, I can see the problem. Sure, people need to pay their bills. With that being said, no one has the right to use force in a CIVIL dispute.

As a homeowner, if someone is on my property at 2 AM, I am going to investigate. If a man istrying to take my car with force, he is an aggressor and he will be dealt with, and I will meet force with force.

In Florida, it is illegal for a repo man to be armed. It is Federal law that a repo man is not allowed to create a "Breach of the Peace" in affecting a repo. I would say that a shootout is a breach of the peace.