Ebola and ISIS

It is obvious that our government and our health care system is completely unprepared for the ebola crisis.  The CDC looks incompetent in their recommendations, the government is still allowing the borders to remain open and travel to be unfettered, and medical support who have been exposed to ebola and are running a fever are given the OK to fly.  It is astonishing.

Our friends in ISIS have to see this too, and that should scare the living hell out of all of us.

On 9/11, we had 19 jihadist ready to crash planes so that they could obtain their 72 virgins in paradise.  Does anyone honestly believe that these ISIS guys can't find a willing volunteer to visit west Africa, contract the virus, make his way to US soil, and then ride the NYC subway, sneezing and hacking for a week or so?  

These guys don't need a nuke or any another WMD.  They have access to a devastating biological weapon by just executing the above plan before the government gets wise and starts to secure our borders.  And at the rate the Obama administration is going, there's ample time.

When it happens remember that you read it here first.  And God help us.

The Inconvenient Truth of Animal Rights

Here's a nice little video of an animal rights terrorist preaching to the patrons of a mostly empty restaurant about the death of her "daughter" - a chicken named Snow:



Really.

The animal rights crowd is obviously passionate, but they're intellectually dishonest.  They live in their urban dwellings, and their only interactions with "animals" are the 13 cats in their apartment and what they see on Nat Geo.  Consider:

• The carnage waged, on a daily basis, of horribly painful and prolonged death of animals at the claws, jaws, and teeth of other animals.  What is the answer to that?  Nature is not a peaceable kingdom.  It is one gigantic killing field.
• The massacre of billions of insects every week due solely to people driving vehicles at night during the summer
• Animals like service dogs, critical for lives for millions of humans, won't even be born without the need for them to be employed
• Oh yeah, lest I forget: Peta kills animals (do not click over to this unless you want to see dead puppies)

Hypocrites.  Ignorant, ignorant hypocrites.  If you don't want to eat meat, knock yourself out.  But shut your veggie hole and don't interrupt my dinner with your sanctimonious misguided tripe.   

As for Snow, if she was part of my chicken fajitas last week, I can say that she was unequivocally delicious

Worry About Ebola Not Racism

There is a meme on the left, mostly an undercurrent but it has been more forthright, that concern over ebola is nothing but what the right is leveraging to disparage people that are black.  They think that the contagious nature of ebola has been extremely overstated, and all we need to do is temper our racist urges and not worry.

What utter hogwash.

If this contagion began in Paris, I'd be screaming for flights to be cancelled between here and France, and that all inbound passengers from French locales be thoroughly screened upon entering this country.  It has absolutely nothing to do with where it is coming from.  It has everything to do with the fact that it is a killer virus with no known cure.

We've seen this play before.  When AIDS first manifest itself, people needed to tread lightly on the subject as it was not politically correct to talk of how AIDS was transmitted, especially in certain communities.  The net result of such an environment was inactivity - nobody wants to be cast a homophobe, right? - and because of the inactivity, a lot of people died unnecessarily.   All due to political correctness.

We're in the same boat, albeit much more dangerous this time.  Now the virus is much more easily transmitted, and is much more deadly.  And yet we can't talk about any of it as it just shows how racist we still are.  

I fear the political correctness on this event is going to end up killing a awful lot of innocent citizens.

Again.  

Saturday Song Share: The Greyhounds - What's on Your Mind

It is not often that I play a song to death, as songs that I truly love I want to savor and not burn myself out on them.  However, with this song, I simply can't stop playing it.  

I'm a huge fan of blue-eyed soul, and this dude has some unbelievable soul.  His voice is just incredible.  

Listen to this (try to ignore the weird video), let it sink into you, then go out and buy it.

Welcome, Wild

Professional sports finally returns to Minnesota as the Wild kicks off their 2014-2015 NHL season tonight against Colorado.  And folks, that's really it for professional sports in the north star state.  Consider that the Twins are as bad as they've been since the 80's, and that the Vikings are in complete free fall without their star running back and without an NFL caliber quarterback.

Yes, I do know that with the start of the NHL season, that means that winter is coming.  Given temps of late, it looks like it is getting an early start.  But as long as it is going to be cold, we might as well watch some hockey.

Go Wild!

Ben Affleck and Liberal Derangement on Islam

This clip is absolutely fascinating.  Bill Maher, certainly no conservative, gets exasperated at Affleck and his perceived insults against "The Religion of Peace."  Reason and statistics fly right out of the window.  All that matters are feelings and perceptions, to the point of shouting down any opposing view.

This is precisely the kind of thinking that will ultimately doom all of us.

Check it out:

The Odd Thing About Odds

We were blessed with very successful treatments for Mrs. YDP's cancer.  We're not out of the woods yet, but given her type of cancer, treatments already employed, and future activity, we've got the the odds of her surviving this episode as 95%.  That is an outstanding number, and we're grateful for our prognosis.  Most folks aren't that lucky.

But a funny thing, those odds.  Consider the following:

• On my website at work, I'd kill to have a 2% conversion of the traffic coming to the website.  I'd be hailed a hero.
• If I went to a Delta Waterfowl dinner and they were raffling off a gun with a 5% chance of winning, I'd buy as many tickets as I could.
• Back in my catalog days, a 5% response rate on a mailing was a hell of a performance, and would be considered a great success

In all of these situations, that puny little 5% isn't deemed so puny.  It's deemed as a success, and in the event of the raffle ticket, even good odds.

Now consider the cancer, and what the 5% actually means: there is a 5% chance not that you get an order or that you win a gun, there is a 5% chance that the cancer gets away from the treatment and that you die.

Good odds and a great diagnosis?  Absolutely.  High statistical probability of living through this?  Absolutely.  Still dangerous as hell?  Absolutely.

Funny how one's perspective of the same odds changes depending on the nature of the "payout."  

Back Online

Things have been pretty much in free fall here in YDP land these past three weeks of my hiatus, but at least the most important thing - the health of my wife - appears to be coming into order.  With that, I feel like I can get back to trying to contribute something written to the world on a daily basis again.  There is a lot of ground to cover and things I want to get off of my chest, especially around my wife's journey with cancer, and what being on this side of that illness is like.  We'll be reviewing it in detail in future posts, so stick around if you're of a mind.

Here in Wisconsin, the weather has turned cold, and the 80's we enjoyed just a weekend ago now seem a distant memory.  The leaves are at their peak, the acorn crop the best I've ever seen, and the squirrels appear quite content with the changing season.  They're about the only ones, as our ten day forecast doesn't have us getting out of the 50's at all.  Goodbye, summer.  You will be missed.

Thanks for bearing with me as I got my feet back underneath me.  Now, off to more politics, music, sports, and things that appeal to yellow dogs and those that patrol with them.