How to run afoul of the Patriot Act by doing absolutely nothing for 20 years

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — According to the federal government, two sisters in rural Kentucky do not exist.

Raechel Colleen Schultz and her sister, Stephanie Marie Schultz, were born at home in Kentucky and Alabama respectively. They were home-schooled and their parents never sought birth certificates, vaccination records or Social Security numbers for them.

Now, 29-year-old Raechel and 23-year-old Stephanie have sued the Social Security Administration in an effort to get Social Security numbers and cards, which will allow them to work legally. The suit, filed July 29 in U.S. District Court in London, Ky., is the latest legal battle for the women as they attempt to obtain legal recognition of their existence.

"No one has ever heard of anything like this before," said their attorney, Douglas Benge. "When the girls first came to see me, it's one of those things of, 'What do I do now?'"

Notice first of all that these women ('girls' seems to be unintentionally demeaning here) are not accused or even suspected of any crime. If anything, it was their parents who offended the law by failing to get them registered, but it is the girls who are now being punished for it. Without the ability to be recognized by the government, they have absolutely no rights as citizens--even though they have lived their entire lives in the United States. Furthermore, without being able to legally identify themselves, they are deprived of even basic civil rights, like the ability to use public transportation, drive, or even get out of jail on bail if unjustly arrested. In short, they are no better off than the niggers of 50 years ago--maybe worse. They not only can't sit in the front of the bus--they aren't even allowed on at all.

More misinformation from the vaccination front

Parents who do not allow their children to be vaccinated against polio now risk jail time for defying a government order aimed at ensuring that the disease is eradicated from Africa's most populous nation, authorities said Friday.

Tajuddeen Gambo, the permanent secretary of the Kano state health ministry, told The Associated Press that Nigeria has a law that punishes parents who refuse their children access to health care.

"Polio immunization is part of health care," Gambo said.

Let's see if we can make sense of this. Giving a child drops of live but attenuated polio virus--something that can actually cause people to contract a crippling or fatal case of polio--is heath care. How, we wonder, would one define heath assault?

Alas, there appears to be no such legally defined category of crime or trespass. In fact, in the USA, medical malpractice laws specifically exempt inoculators. You can sue a doctor for giving you any treatment that turns out to be ineffective or harmful--unless it's a vaccination. In that case, he's immune from litigation. Why is that?

Let's continue the story:

Tommi Laulajainen, the UNICEF chief of communications for polio efforts in Nigeria, explains that it takes four rounds of drops for children to be completely out of danger.

Completely out of danger from what? Contracting polio, we suppose--although no one will guarantee in writing that an inoculation being given is 100% effective. But what about the first three rounds--what dangers might they hold?

We have to make sure we capture every single child," he said. "Because if one child is not protected against polio, he or she can get the virus and spread it very quickly to other children in the community."

This statement flies in the face of the previous quote. What possible danger could children who've received all four drops be in from their immunized fellows? Well, remember the four drops: children who've only received one, two, or three could contract polio from those who've received none at all--or from each other!

If you think about it, this argument falls short on its very claims. Polio could continue to be spread, indefinitely, among children who have not yet received the full round of shots, could it not?

He said a collaboration with religious leaders has been particularly fruitful over the years and that health workers have used a variety of communication tools such as drama, radio, street theater, town criers and strong visuals to remind parents that polio will keep lurking until it's wiped out.

But it will never be wiped out to the point that it's not lurking. Governments of the world will continued to hang on to the active virus as a potential biological weapon, while they continue to vaccinate their own troops against the possibility of the other side doing the same. No virus, under such circumstances, can ever be wiped out.

Nigeria's needle-wielding vaccinators are living in a dreamland.

Playing Monopoly with William: a lesson on The Federal Debt Limit

As a boy, I had a friend named William whom I did a lot with. It wasn't always fun for me, though, because William--being over a year older than me and much more forceful in personality--seemed to always get his way. And it wasn't just that we always did what he wanted to do: he seemed to come out on top in whatever game we played.

Take Risk, for instance. No matter how I rolled the dice, I never won a game. I'd put 26 armies on the border of my continent, only to have him mass 56 armies against me. Then there was Monopoly. How he always ended up with 2 hotels on both Broadway and Park Place I could never figure out--nor could I avoid the inevitable landing on one or the other.

Since our Monopoly games tended to end as soon as this happened, William came up with an ingenious way to keep going: A Credit Line from the Bank. All I had to do was scribble "IOU $1200" on a piece of paper and put it in the bank (which didn't usually have enough cash on hand to handle the transaction otherwise). William would then add the credit slip to his pile of cash and the game would go on. This was great! But those two hotels were still on each of the dark blue properties, and it was only a matter of time before I landed on them again. Around about the time I hit $18,000 in debt, I realized that I was only postponing the inevitable. I could continue to borrow imaginary money forever, but I could never win against William. I finally conceded the game--relieved that my debt, huge as it was, didn't really exist.

This is exactly the situation that the US Congress faces this week. Seventy-eight times in the past fifty-one years, they have signed off on yet another IOU and slipped it in the bank, only to forestall the inevitable default that comes from continuing to live beyond their means. Yet they keep coming around to land on Park Place after the next election, necessitating another round of funny money to keep the whole system afloat. They can keep on raising the debt ceiling for a while, but unlike my friend William, America's creditors aren't going to let the game go on forever. Sooner or later, they're going to call the game--and request payment in specie.

America's Day of Reckoning is coming--and the longer Congress puts off dealing with it, the more it's going to hurt when they finally do. UPDATE JUNE 2012 Well, it's just about time for another IOU, and we are even further away from achieving fiscal responsibility. Unlike my Monopoly games, however, this cannot continue forever: sooner or later will come a day of reckoning, as it has come to every other fiat money system the world has ever created. But there's another application to be made from my Monopoly madness. Were I an ardent evolutionist, I could have continued the game indefinitely, setting the board carefully aside each night and picking it back up the next morning--at least until summer vacation was over (it rained a lot that year and there wasn't much to do outside). Every time I rolled the dice, I could have devoutly repeated the mantra, "Given enough time, anything can happen," but the only change would be the depth of the hole into which I would have continued to sink.

Indications of sudden death--or something else?

In this article in the Biblical Archaeology Review, the remains of an ancient Palestinian are described as "a badly crushed human skeleton . . . sprawled on its back with limbs splayed, indicative of sudden death."

I ran a search on "indicative of sudden death" and found that all other references were to forensic investigations in the present. This was the only one in an archaeological setting. And there were no hits whatsoever for the two terms in juxtaposition, "limbs splayed", and "sudden burial."

Actually, it is sudden burial, not sudden death, which is most likely indicated by a crushed and splayed skeleton. Most people who die suddenly are subsequently laid to rest in a position of calm repose, with nothing to indicate how fast it took them to die.

I raise this issue because most vertebrate fossils are found sprawled and crushed, and often fragmentary; very indicative of sudden burial--and just as sudden contemporaneous death. Yet the classic view of fossilisation requires a long and gradual process of burial.

If archaeologists can clearly recognise the signs of sudden burial--whether or not they know what to properly call it--why can't paleontologists?

Sarah Palin's Views on Abstinence Lead to Second Grandchild?

I just have to comment on this. Saying that abstinence education leads to pregnancy is like saying nutrition education leads to obesity; they're leaving out the actual cause, which is premarital sex and overeating, respectively.

In September 2008, Sarah's 17-year-old daughter Bristol announced that she was five months pregnant while her mother continued to support beliefs that obviously do not work within her own family. That year she also voted to cut funding to a program that helped support teen mothers, according to the Washington Post.
In the ultimate hypocrisy, Bristol went on to earn more than $260,000 in 2009 as an advocate against teen pregnancy while at the same time admitting that abstinence was not realistic.

More when I get to it . . .