XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

Seattle Officers leave loaded rifle unattended on trunk of patrol car...then drives away with gun STILL on trunk -

Seattle Officers leave loaded rifle unattended on trunk of patrol car...then drives away with gun STILL on trunk -
Doh: The Seattle Police officer left their loaded rifle unattended on a patrol car outside a busy down town area today

Doh: The Seattle Police officer left their loaded rifle unattended on a patrol car outside a busy down town area today

This is the shocking picture of a fully loaded assault rifle left unattended on the trunk of patrol car in a busy Seattle street.
The bungling officers were nowhere to be seen after leaving the AR-15 on the trunk of their patrol car outside a busy hotel and shopping street on Monday night.
Shockingly, after the officers returned, they failed to notice the menacing rifle and drove off.
It was only after a woman chased the car as it drove away, that the officers realised their mistake.
Passer-by Nick Gonzales, who photographed the shocking scene above, also alerted two bike cops after seeing the rifle at around 9 pm Monday night, describing them as being 'shocked as hell'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009273/Keystone-cop-Officer-leaves-loaded-rifle-boot-patrol-car--drives-away-gun-STILL-there.html

Inside the Fed’s Vault: $1 Billion Worth of Unused Coins - they have cost the government $300 million so far -

In the basement of a Baltimore vault the size of a soccer field, 1 billion dollar coins are just sitting there. Thanks, Congress.

NPR’s Planet Money reporters recently investigated the $1 presidential coin program, which was a Congressional effort to get more $1 coins into circulation while also trying to be educational.

The problem is that nobody really wants them. Well, not nobody. Sixty percent of the coins make it into circulation. But that other 40 percent? They’re sitting in vaults. In fact, the Fed’s even running out of space for them.

Each coin costs the government 30 cents to make, so the piles in those vaults have cost the government $300 million so far, according to NPR.

The whole thing started in 2005, when the Presidential $1 Coin Act was written into law. While the legislation seemed to have good intentions, when the U.S. Mint started producing the coins a couple years later, the demand just wasn’t there. I mean, had you even heard of the presidential $1 coins, let alone seen one?

At the same time, the legislation mandated that a certain number of Sacagawea coins be made in conjunction with the presidential coins, which has now amounted to one Sacagawea for every four presidents. And I think we know how well those coins went over.

Read more:
http://moneyland.time.com/2011/06/29/inside-the-fed%E2%80%99s-vault-1-billion-worth-of-unused-coins/

50 U.S. Health Care Statistics That Will Absolutely Astonish You -

#1 What the United States spent on health care in 2009 was greater than the entire GDP of Great Britain.
#2 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#3 The United States spent 2.47 trillion dollars on health care in 2009. It is being projected that the U.S. will spend 4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019.
#4 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#5 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.
#6 Over the past decade, health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than wages have in the United States.
#7 The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, brought in a staggering $68.7 million during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million in wages and other forms of compensation. The funny thing is that he left the company and didn’t even work the whole year.
#8 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States combined to receive nearly $200 million in total compensation for 2009.
#9 Even as the rest of the country struggled with a deep recession, U.S. health insurance companies increased their profits by 56 percent during 2009 alone.
#10 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.
#11 In the United States, health insurance administration expenses account for 8 percent of all health care costs. In Finland, that figure is just 2 percent.
#12 Health insurance rate increases are getting out of control. According to the Los Angeles Times, Blue Shield of California announced plans earlier this year to raise rates an average of 30% to 35%, and some individual policy holders were slated to see their health insurance premiums rise by up to 59 percent.
#13 According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers in the U.S. increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.
#14 Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.
#15 There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits each during 2008.
#16 Each year, tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.
#17 Prescription drugs cost about 50% more in the United States than they do in other countries.
#18 Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was recently released. According to the report, approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs, and more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more drugs on a regular basis.
#19 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#20 The Food and Drug Administration reported 1,742 prescription drug recalls in 2009, which was a gigantic increase from 426 drug recalls in 2008.
#21 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
#22 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higherthan in any other country in the world.
#23 Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs. According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.
#24 According to one doctor interviewed by Fox News, “a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen” will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the wound is.
#25 Why are c-sections on the rise? It is because a vaginal delivery costs approximately $5,992, while a c-section costs approximately $8,558.
#26 According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States had a higher infant mortality rate than 45 other nations in 2009.
#27 The infant mortality rate in the United States is nearly three times as high as it is in Singapore.
#28 It is estimated that hospitals overcharge Americans by about 10 billion dollars every single year.
#29 In fact, one trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of all the medical bills that she has audited contain “gross overcharges“.
#30 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don’t know how the system works then you are out of luck.
#31 Over the last decade, the number of Americans without health insurance has risen from about 38 million to about 52 million.
#32 People living in the United States are three times more likely to have diabetes than people living in the United Kingdom.
#33 Today, people living in Puerto Rico have a greater life expectancy than people living in the United States do.
#34 According to OECD statistics, Americans are twice as obese as Canadians are.
#35 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#36 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run outfive years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#37 It is being projected that the federal government will account for more than 50 percent of all health care spending in 2012.
#38 Greece has twice as many hospital beds per person as the United States does.
#39 The state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.
#40 According to one survey, approximately 1 out of every 4 Californians under the age of 65 has absolutely no health insurance.
#41 According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, “inefficient claims processing” costs the U.S. health care system 210 billion dollars every single year.
#42 Today, approximately 40% of all U.S. doctors are age 55 or older.
#43 According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, we were already going to be facing a shortage of more than 150,000 doctors over the next 15 years even before Obamacare was passed.
#44 An IBD/TIPP poll taken back in August 2009 found that 4 out of every 9 American doctors said that they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passed Obamacare.
#45 According to a survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine, approximately one-third of all practicing physicians in the United States indicated that they may leave the medical profession because of the new health care law.
#46 According to a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors that was conducted in August 2010, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to “retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care” at some point over the next three years.
#47 According to the executive director of Physician Hospitals of America, Obamacare has already forced the cancellation of at least 60 doctor-owned hospitals that were scheduled to open soon.
#48 According to a report released in 2010, Americans spend approximately twice as much as residents of other developed countries do on health care.
#49 If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would be the 6th largest economy in the entire world.
#50 According to numbers released by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping875,000 Americans were “medical tourists” in 2010.

Brady Bunch Florence Henderson Reveals she Caught Crabs from Ex-New York Mayor John Lindsay - while cheating on hubby -

The Brady Bunch icon Florence Henderson admits in her autobiography that she cheated on her husband with then-New York Mayor John V. Lindsay. That, in itself, is hardly news. The shocker is that La Henderson got more from the brief encounter than she had bargained for.

When the "beloved Carol Brady" hooked up with the handsome and dapper New York City Mayor John Lindsay in the '60s, their liaison was limited to just one night. Unfortunately, the next morning Henderson woke up to find she'd been infected with crab lice. Poor Florence.

"Guess I learned the hard way that crabs do not discriminate, but cross over all socio-economic strata..." Henderson recalls, adding: "He must have had quite the active life. What a way to put the kibosh on a relationship."

Indeed. It all ended quite amicably, however. Reportedly, "Lindsay felt so guilty about the incident he sent flowers to Florence Henderson the very next day."

Read more -
http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979522436

Tuesday, 28 June 2011

It seems that once again, Michelle Bachman is just a little confused about facts - compares herself to wrong John Wayne -

It seems that once again, Michelle Bachman is just a little confused about facts, history, etc..

In a recent interview with FoxNews from Waterloo, Iowa, where she is preparing to kick off her official Presidential campaign, Bachmann told the reporter: "Well, what I want them to know is... just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa... that's the kind of spirit that I have too. It's really about not being ashamed of America... it's embracing America, loving America, sacrificing for America."

The only problem with Bachmann's comparison of herself to John Wayne (other than the fact that it's a false equivalency).... is that she picked the wrong John Wayne.

You see, the John Wayne who is from Waterloo, Iowa is none other than the infamous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy... who committed the rape and murder of 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. So... yeah, I guess that John Wayne did a lot of sacrificing too.

OOPS!

The John Wayne that Bachmann is no doubt comparing herself to is John Wayne, the actor, AKA "the Duke".... who was born in Winterset, Iowa, not Waterloo.

Now, before all you Bachmann circle jerkers start leaving your apologist comments about how it's just a "slip-of-the-tongue" (one of hundreds), or about how "Obama thinks there are 57 states"... keep in mind that Bachmann is actually from Waterloo, Iowa. One would think that, at the very least, she would be able to get ONE fact right... if it was about her own hometown.

The simple fact of the matter is this... Michelle Bachmann lives in a world where she has all the pertinent "facts" conveniently stored right under her voluminous helmet of hair. No need to research or consult higher authorities... Michelle Bachmann believes it, so it is a fact.

Bottom line... it took me a total of 20 seconds on google to confirm that John "the Duke" Wayne was from Winterset, Iowa, not Waterloo.

If this dumb chunk of Minnesota fence-post can't take 20 seconds to confirm that she is comparing herself to an American icon (a joke in itself) and not a deranged homosexual, pedophile, rapist, serial murder who posed as a clown... then she shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a microphone, let alone the Presidency.

Shame on all of you, who pass over a true American Patriot like Ron Paul, in favor of this know-nothing, empty-headed, religious zealot, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, ignorant, populist fucktard.

If you want to jerk-off to Michelle Bachmann, that's your business.... just don't do it in the voting booth.

America deserves better!

RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012!

Read more -
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b91_1309221202

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michele-bachmann-kicks-off-campaign-but-john-wayne-gacy-gaffe-mars-speech/2011/06/27/AGDYNjpH_story.html

London COPS are breaking into homes - climbing through windows left open to alert residents to a sinister threat -

I didn’t believe that this was real. I thought that some hoax had been picked up by a tabloid newspaper and that it was off to the races from there.
Nope. It’s real. This is the ‘Operation Poppins’ page on the London Metropolitan Police website.
Via: The Sun:
COPS are breaking into homes in a dramatic bid to highlight the risk of being a victim of burglars.Police from Fortune Greens Safer Neighbourhood Team in West Hampstead, north London, are climbing through windows left open to alert residents to the sinister threat.
Officers are carrying out the mock raids in a high-profile initiative to slash the number of burglaries.
They are committing break-ins across their patch, locking up the property and leaving a calling card to notify the stunned owner that they were there.

Read more -
http://cryptogon.com/?p=23225

Pope Benedict XVI tweeted for the first time on Tuesday - by tapping an iPad -

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday tweeted for the first time, announcing the launch of a Vatican news information portal.

Benedict's tweet read: “Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI”.

The portal for the first time aggregates information from the Vatican's various print, online, radio and television media. It's the latest effort by the Vatican to bring its evangelizing message to a greater, Internet-savvy audience and follows forays into Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Benedict put the site online himself by tapping an iPad, said Thaddeus Jones, project co-ordinator and an official with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Moments later the pope sent the tweet.

The 84-year-old pontiff was then shown the portal and its features in greater detail.

Jones described him as “interested and impressed,” and “clearly enjoying it.”

“He was clearly in awe at the new technology,” said Jones. “It's a lighter moment but also an important one, it marks a new way of communicating.”

TSA has been caught covering up a surge in cases of TSA workers developing cancer from close proximity to scanners -

Fearful of provoking further public resistance to naked airport body scanners, the TSA has been caught covering up a surge in cases of TSA workers developing cancer as a result of their close proximity to radiation-firing devices, perhaps the most shocking revelation to emerge from the latest FOIA documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

After Union representatives in Boston discovered a “cancer cluster” amongst TSA workers linked with radiation from the body scanners, the TSA sought to downplay the matter and refused to issue employees with dosimeters to measure levels of exposure.

The documents indicate how, “A large number of workers have been falling victim to cancer, strokes and heart disease.”

“The Department, rather than acting on it, or explaining its position seems to have just dismissed. I don’t think that’s the way most other agencies would have acted in a similar situation if they were confronted with that question,” EPIC’s Marc Rotenberg said.

In an email sent to Heather Callahan (PDF), deputy federal security director at Boston Logan International Airport, union representatives express their concern about “TSA Boston’s growing number of TSOs working here that have thus far been diagnosed with cancer.”

Of course, if TSA workers who are merely standing near the scanners are already developing cancer, frequent flyers are also putting themselves in harm’s way by standing directly inside the radiation-firing machines.

As we reported yesterday, newly released internal government documents, obtained via the Freedom Of Information Act by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, reveal that the TSA, and specifically the head of the Department of Homeland Security, “publicly mischaracterized” the findings of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in stating that NIST had positively confirmed the safety of full body scanners in tests.

In erroneously citing both NIST and the Johns Hopkins school of medicine to claim that the body scanners are safe, the TSA has also deliberately misled the public on the dangers posed by the devices.

Afghan Central Bank Chief Takes Billion Dollar Bribes Flees to US -

Afghanistan’s central bank governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat fled to the United States after investigators summoned him for questioning over the collapse of the biggest Afghan commercial bank, a government spokesman said.

“Fitrat left the country after the attorney general’s office sent him a letter asking him to answer questions about his handling of the Kabul Bank scandal,” said Siamak Herawy, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

The government took over Kabul Bank in September as thousands of depositors rushed to withdraw their money after learning that the bank’s owners had lost funds that a U.S. government report said may total $850 million, or 94 percent of its loans. Some lending paid for luxury homes in Dubai for bank shareholders, including Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, the Washington Post cited him as saying.

Fitrat said in an interview that he had resigned and flown to Washington because he received threats from officials he had named as profiting from the insider lending at Kabul Bank, Afghanistan’s Ariana Television reported. He left a week ago, the Financial Times cited him as saying in an interview.

BPA exposure makes male mice less masculine, attractive - raising possibility that it could affect boys in similar ways -

Male mice who are exposed in the womb to bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical compound found in some hard plastics and can linings, appear to be less masculine and less attractive to females once they mature, raising the possibility that the controversial chemical could subtly affect boys in similar ways.
In a new study, male deer mice whose mothers were fed BPA while pregnant had more difficulty navigating a maze and displayed less interest in exploring than unexposed males -- a sign of "demasculinization," researchers say, since navigational skill and a propensity for exploration are considered classic male traits in this particular species of mice. (In the wild, these traits help young male mice find potential mates.)
What's more, this reduction in masculinity appears to make BPA-exposed mice less attractive to those potential mates.
In another experiment, female mice who were released into cages containing two male mice, only one of which was exposed to BPA, spent roughly half as much time in "nose-to-nose contact"-- an expression of sexual interest in the rodent world -- with the BPA-exposed mice, perhaps because the females sensed differences in their behavior, pheromones, or both.
Health.com: 8 ways to protect your health (and the planet)
"The [BPA-exposed] mice outwardly look normal," says Cheryl Rosenfeld, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri--Columbia. "We have measured their motor skills and done sensory skill assessments, and they look normal; you can't tell which were exposed. But when you go deeper, that's when you find this difference emerging. The fact that we found this sexually selected behavior is different."
Read more - http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/27/bpa.mice.exposure/index.html