Good news and bad news

The good news is that my temperature is 98.8, so I don't have the flu. The bad news is that yeah, it might just be a cold, but it's knocking me loopy...

Update at 1:45PM: Just finished sucking down half a gallon of chicken soup (actually, Vietnamese Pho Ga). Feel *much* better, though still feel like I have a cold. Chicken soup really is the wonder drug :-).

-- Badtux the Ill Penguin

Those oh-so-effective Republican policies

This just in: Life expectancy decreasing in the United States. But not in all of America. As Karlo at Swerveleft notes, quoting an AP report on this study: What the new analysis reveals is the reality of two Americas, one on par with most of Europe and parts of Asia, and another no different than a third world nation. For example, previous research has shown that the U.S. state of Georgia has a life expectancy and infant mortality rate similar to the impoverished Eastern European nation of Georgia. In Harlem, African American men are less likely to reach the age of 65 than men in Bangladesh, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Disparities in life expectancy are increasing rapidly, with the West Coast and Northeast continuing to have improvements in life expectancy, while the Republican-dominated South and interior states stagnate or have declines in life expectancy.

In short, life expectancies are declining primarily in Republican-dominated areas like the state of Georgia that implement Republican policies, and are increasing primarily in areas like, say, the San Francisco Bay area, which implement liberal policies. In other words, liberalism is good for your health as well as your wealth -- it's no mistake that the states that have the highest concentration of liberals are also the wealthiest states, while the states that have the highest concentration of Republicans are the poorest states. Republican ideology simply isn't based on reality, and if you govern according to ideology rather than reality, you get the stark results of people dying. That's how it's always been, whether we're talking about Lenin's ideology or George W. Bush's ideology. Govern according to ideology rather than reality, and you end up with the life expectancy of the average American being only about 78 years, which places us 41st on the 2008 CIA World Factbook list, behind Bosnia but still edging out Albania.

Yay! We're #41! U S A! U S A! U S A! We may not be #1, but we're still better than Albania. WOOT!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Nutritional crack

Little Caesar's Pizza opened an outlet three blocks from me. $5 for a hot pepperoni pizza, no waiting, any time of the day.

It's a conspiracy, a conspiracy I say, to increase this penguin's rotundity!

-- Badtux the More-rotund Penguin

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

and not a symbol of male domination over womankind. Sorry, Ampersand. I just don't buy this neo-feminist nonsense that fat is a body image problem caused by male domination pushing a draconian body image upon women, rather than a health problem.

Look, both of those people above are just plain *fat*. Gender image has nothing to do with it. They have a health problem, not a body image problem. They're going to die at an earlier age than someone who is not morbidly obese. They're going to develop insulin-resistant diabetes at a far greater rate than someone who is not morbidly obese. They are going to suffer a restricted lifestyle due to the mobility issues of being morbidly obese. They aren't "victims of the patriarchy", they're just freakin' *FAT*. I'm not talking about "oh woa I'm a size ten and I wanna be a size one" fat. I'm talking about fat fat FAT fat. Morbidly obese fat. A health issue, not a body image issue.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, rather than being a phallic symbol of patriarchial oppression. Sheesh!

-- Badtux the Cigar-totin' Penguin