I'm sorry for not getting at least 3/4 posts up this week, but it's been a hectic week; and I'm getting ready to go to a funeral service at 11 am this morning, so I'll be back sometime later I guess.

The The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that patients with a terminal illness are being sentenced to a premature death by being assigned to the "Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP)" program implemented by the British National Health Service (NHS).  This is a program that was originally designed to let patients who are within hours of death die "with dignity" by withholding fluids and food until life ceases.  The program has been adopted nationwide by "more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England."

Unfortunately, withholding of fluids and food also has a tendency to mask the fact that a patient may actually be on the road to recovery.  Patients are then mis-diagnosed as they become semiconscious and confused as a side effect of pain-killing drugs.  Why?    

"What they are trying to do," said Dr. Peter Hargreaves, "is stop people being over treated as they are dying," saving money thereby.  It is supposed to let people die with dignity, but it appears to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Patients are sedated and allowed to become dehydrated.  They then become confused and can be "wrongly put on this pathway." 

This way out of dealing with patients has become all to easy in England, and has resulted in an excessive number of unnecessary patient deaths, leading to a "national wave of discontent."  Some estimates indicate that more than a million patients have died this way.  "As a result the scheme is causing a 'national crisis' in patient care."

Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, said that it was worrying that "patients were being 'terminally' sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours."

"In 2007-08 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands."

We all know the government is doing the right thing. Trust in the government. Unfortunate that a few were dead before their time, but, you know, nothing is perfect. What's a few dead relatives more or less. Keep in mind that the NHS is saving money with this program. And in the future you can expect more of the same, saving money that is. So, don't you worry a bit, your government is in charge of everything, all will be fine.

For some reason, some people think that those of us who oppose Obama's health care plan are automatically opposed to health care reform or are racist.  We are neither.  We would like some health care reform.  We just believe that tearing down the system in place is not the way to achieve that.  We don't see how stripping billions of dollars from medicare to support the Obama initiative can do anything but put the elderly in a wail of hurt.

Instead, we believe that a few well crafted regulations to control the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies, along with legislation to limit frivolous malpractice suits, would be a better approach.  In combination, these would save billions of dollars annually, making it easier for those who voluntarily do not carry insurance now to do so in the future.  

The government could also add just $5 to each annual federal income tax bill.  With a base of 150 million taxpayers, that alone would net the government over 3/4 of a billion dollars each year, allowing it to provide for the indigent. 

Any of these options is preferable to allowing the government to come between the patient and his or her doctor.  They are certainly preferable to letting the government cut its costs by murdering patients as is currently being done in England.  That's right; I said murder, because that's what it is.  The patient is not consulted, and neither are the patient's relatives.  It is strictly a provider made decision that has been abused by the system.

In the Spring, the administration tried to get a bill passed that would give Obama the power to seize control of the internet and private-sector networks when he deemed it necessary for some sort of vague thing called a "cyber-emergency."  Now CNET news is reporting that a revised bill (S. 773) is again trying to makes its way through the legislative process.  The bill, revised by Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, will still allow the president to "seize temporary control of private-sector networks."

I know from first hand knowledge that the government cannot keep its own computer systems safe from cyber-attack.  In fact, it may have the worse record publicly available where cybersecurity is concerned.  The briefest search on google will confirm the many problems the government and the Department of Defense have had in keeping unauthorized individuals out of their systems.

Having spent 40 years of my life working with computers and networks, I know the need to beef-up security for critical defense systems and for the electric grid and other parts of the national infrastructure, but why would I want the very people with the worse track record in security telling me how to do security?  Wouldn't it be much better if they would simply direct that the industry work out the details, while the government sits on the panels to make sure the process is kept moving toward the goal? 

Most people do not seriously wish the death of someone else, but there are times when death is a welcome visitor.  That is just the way it is.  So it is with some trepidation that I write this blog today.

The passing of Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy last night leaves an empty seat in the Senate.  That leaves the Democratic majority one vote short of the 60 votes necessary to guarrantee the passage of the health care package that we have all been wrestling with for these past few weeks.  That shortage can evaporate in only a few days, however. 

If the Democratic party now renames the bill or starts calling it the Kennedy Health Care bill, it would be possible to generate a sympathy vote to push the bill over the top.  I don't like to think that anyone would use the death of any individual that way; I don't like to think that anyone would vote on such a major bill out of sympathy rather than with the best interests of the country in mind.

But I'm a realist, and so are they.  I'm quite sure that strategy meetings have been held for months over how to best deal with a Kennedy death, and this seems to me to be as good a way to do that as any and better than most, assuming that the Massachusetts legislature doesn't reverse itself by repealing the law it passed to prevent the previous Republican governor from naming a successor to complete Kennedy's term.

So be watchful; be alert, because it will only take one sympathy vote to lay this bill upon us all. 

For those who haven't seen it, Colorado Springs  has found a way to help reduce its deficit.  The city is going into the gun business.  Yep!  The City Council has approved a plan to sell all the guns it takes off the streets so dealers can put those same guns back on the streets ... so the police can confiscate those guns again so that they can be sold and put back on the streets again ... so that the police ... well, you get the idea. 

The city estimates that it can reduce its $50 million dollar annual deficit by a whooping $10,000 a year.  Imagine that -- a continuous, revolving revenue stream making a tiny dent in the deficit, but like they say, "Every penny counts, uh."  I guess as long as there are loose marbles wonders will never cease.

Life is hard.  It's harder when you're stupid!
It's harder still when your life is partially controlled by idiots!

President Obama has spent more and more time recently trying to find someone to blame for his failing health care program.  First he tried to blame the GOP, but the republicans are so far out of power that he couldn't make that stick.  Next he tried to blame special interests.  When that didn't work, he attacked a Sarah Palin facebook post.  (That's really grasping at straws.)  Then, he blamed all his trouble on radio talk shows and television news programs that were whipping the public into a frenzy over problems that "don't exist."  After that, it was the insurance companies in particular. 

Now, in an apparent act of desperation, Obama himself has joined the chorus of administration name callers by referring to the press as a bunch of bedwetters who should be trying to defend the administration against "misinformation" rather than asking impertinent questions like "How will you pay for it?"

In 1989, the earth came within 6 hours of a direct impact by the Apollo asteroid, which is 1,000 feet (304 meters) in diameter . That is 6 times larger than the Tungusta meteorite that exploded with the force of 60 atomic bombs over Russia in 1908 and 6 times larger than the meteorite that left the 1200 foot crater in Arizona.  Apollo actually came within twice the distance of the moon as it passed through the exact place in space where the earth had been just 6 hours before.  Now that's what I call dodging a bullet, because an asteroid that size is large enough to make it to the surface with devastating results for, not only the immediate area, but for the entire planet. 

And who can forget the dramatic pictures as the world watched the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact with Jupiter in 1994, providing dramatic evidence that planetary impacts still occur.  In 2004, a 30 meter wide asteroid passed within 26,000 miles of earth. It was followed two weeks later by an asteroid that passed within 4,000 miles of the earth.  It was only discovered hours before its closest approach.  And just last month astronomers were surprised when another object of unknown size and origin bashed into Jupiter again, creating an Earth-sized spot in that planet's atmosphere which is still growing in size.

Because of all this activity in space, Congress, in 2005, issued a directive to NASA to find 90% of potentially threatening near-earth asteroids and comets by the year 2020.  Now that's something worth doing; something that needs to be done; but Congress has not yet provided NASA with the funding necessary to do the job. 

The current estimate by NASA is that there are about 20,000 potential threats to Earth, but only 6,000 of them are currently known.  Without the funding necessary to build additional ground and/or space based platforms to do the monitoring and mapping of the sky, location of the remaining 14,000 threats cannot be accomplished in the timeframe given.  According to NASA, $800 million would be required to find all the threats;  if only $300 million were provided, NASA could at least locate all the threats that are over 1,000 feet in diameter.  Neither amount has been provided.  

While Congress creates Lame Duck programs, the earth is subject to an assortment of sneak attacks by asteroids, like the one that blew up in November 2008 over Sudan.  Astronomers didn't even know of its existence until 19 hours before it came screaming into the atmosphere.  Fortunately it was only a few meters wide.    

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that unless we can identify and track these things, we will never have a chance of intercepting them and altering their courses to prevent a really big disaster from happening.  Perhaps now that the most recently proposed moon landings have been canned, some of that money can be used to fund this much needed research program.