maxopedia

If Obama is really the incorruptible visionary leader he's supposed to be he will be assassinated.

An assassination attempt would legitimize Obama.

Disgusting? Yeah, pretty much.

True? Maybe.

update: this story about an assassination plot is awfully timely

George Obama seems way cooler than his half-brother.

"There are some challenges, but maybe it is just like where you come from, there are the same challenges."

"I think in life, what you want is what you are supposed to get."

-George Obama

From An Antichrist Obama in McCain Ad?:

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue "O" logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

Knowing very little about Christian theology (or most theology for that matter) I would never, ever, understand this reference without some serious help. Apparently, I'm not part of the target audience.

Check out the video for yourself. The end segment with the Obama seal is weird and unsettling. Cracks me up.

I think it's likely any US president is a rough approximation of the Antichrist (oh my god think about Hillary as president). I wonder what percentage of politicians rate as psychopaths.

So last night I happened to be at a cookie party. It was pretty fun, and there were lots of good treats. One nice thing was that I got to talk to some old friends.

One of my friends that I hadn't seen in a while who always has strong opinions made a case that managed care organizations, particularly HMOs, have the potential to stifle medical innovation. The data that he used to support his theory was that areas in which there are high levels of managed care, there are less MRI machines, and even if there is an MRI machine in such a region, it will be under-utilized.

I didn't really follow this argument at the time, but now I think I understand why he feels this is irrefutable evidence. It is not the managed care organization that pays for the installation or maintenance of MRI machines directly. It is the medical institution that subsidizes these costs, and it only recoups its investment when the machine is utilized. In the meantime the maintenance bill continues to come. Thus, if the machine is under-utilized because the managed care organizations are generally unwilling to pay for costly procedures, it sets up a feedback loop. The less the machine is utilized, the more expensive individual uses become, which makes it less likely in the future that the managed care organization will approve such uses.

If you were running a for-profit hospital, would you invest in an MRI knowing that this feedback loop exists? Why develop new procedures and new technologies if no one is willing to pay for them? Are we saying that we only want cost-effective innovations, or do we want the highest level of care possible?