The Land of Ozz

This is a tough subject for me. I am well above poverty, but I have a child on Medicaid as secondary coverage. We would be very poor if it were not for Medicaid. I post this just to bring light to the fact that Medicaid does not equal poor like many people think. I have planned to post on this subject for a while.
Don Surber After Hours talking about Medicaid prompted me to share a little about my Medicaid experiences. I have many more specifics to share later, but here is the high level story.

My son Caden is now just over one year old and our family would not have survived financially without Medicaid. Today he is still on a feeding tube and sees doctors and/or therapists almost every day of the week. He has had numerous procedures in the past year including a very complex open-heart surgery, abdominal surgery, and in-home nursing care. His conditions related to his primary diagnosis (DiGeorge Syndrome or VCFS) qualifies him for Medicaid. I never thought my family would need Medicaid, but we do. Caden’s hospital bills have totaled nearly a half million dollars in just over a year. He rang up almost fifty thousand on his sixth day of life during the open-heart surgery. I am seeing even more clear signs of how important Medicaid is o our family as I gather information to qualify Caden for another year of coverage.

I am certainly not going to complain if I have to pay a co-payment. I thank God that this program and other programs were there for my family. I know of other families just like us in our local area and in other parts of the country. I wonder where we will shake out in all of this slow-down and cut spending?

See also Medicaid Overhaul in SC.

I have been around and around with my emotions concerning the TTLB’s announcement on how trackbacks will be counted. At first I said, who cares! I don’t need his stink’n rating anyway. Then I realized that it is sort of cute. Then I realize that I had been downgraded to a slithering snail instead of high flying eagle. So I got mad again because his new policy affected me directly. I was about ready to build a site to compete. I envisioned a list of only those who have never been published in a major newspaper, magazine, or been invited as a guest on a national TV news program. Then I got over it because I realized that most of my problems with my statistics on the TTLB and SiteMeter were as directly related to my own mistake. Not because there are no readers of my blog, but because I made a coding error a couple of months ago when I changed themes on my WordPress installation. As a matter of fact, I am cruz’n at an average of just over 300 visits per day according to my raw logs instead of the measly 30 per day that TTLB and SiteMeter were showing.

I realized I had a problem with my SiteMeter statistics when I got a link in from the Instapundit a couple of weeks ago on my Gas Below $2 per Gallon posting. I knew I should have seen more than my average 30 visits per day to The Land of Ozz. I just found the problem today. I did not have the TTLB or SiteMeter scripts running on my archive pages. Soooo, all the links that came directly to postings either from search engines or from other blogs were not showing in my SiteMeter stats. Even though the link from Glenn Reynolds came in on a Friday afternoon, it still brought me almost 1000 unique. My site meter statistics registered only 50 visits that day and the light came on. I was just about ready to can the SiteMeter script or worse just stop blogging because it appeared that no one was reading. I am glad I found my error before getting all bent out of shape and writing a nasty about SiteMeter or TTLB for that matter.

I do have readers. I have even picked up a few new regulars in the past couple of weeks. Thank you for your support.

As for the TTLB. His new rules:

In the Ecosystem right now, all links are equal. But I’m considering changing that. It doesn’t seem right to me that if Blogger A links to 3,000 other blogs, and Blogger B only links to 300, that those blogs receiving the links from B get exactly the same “credit” as those receiving one of A’s few thousand links.

A link is a recommendation; it says, “Go look over here, and you’ll find something interesting.” So should a recommendation from someone who says everything is interesting be considered as valuable as one from someone who seems to choose their recommendations with more care?

That sounds strangly like Google PageRank technology to me. What’s next? A piece of the Goggle Earth pie?

It seems that this new TTLB philosophy will make a direct hit to knock down the number one “Higher Being” in the TTLB ecosystem. How can the Instapundit remain on top with that last sentence of the quote being true in the new TTLB rule book? Has anyone noticed that Glenn Reynolds puts out a ton of links and very few original thoughts? Instapundit is a link farm. He grows a healthy crop, but he still mainly pulls other people’s work together and points his visitors to it. I like him and I am grateful for the traffic he sent me recently, but how will he fair in the new TTLB ecosystem? My guess is that the TTLB will make him look just fine no matter what the rule book says because the Instapundit has the visitors.

Before I wrap up, just for fun, I am going to add some hard links to some of my OTA friends like Don Surber, Florida Masochist, The Political Teen, and The Business of America is Business.

You can link back here with this URL:
http://www.hoei.com/blog/archive/2005/11/29/125/
Here is the trackback URL:
http://www.hoei.com/blog/archive/2005/11/29/125/trackback/

I will not be available to return links for a couple of days due to a death in my family. I will return links for all trackbacks later in the week if you would like to go ahead and leave them.

Thanks,
TheOzz

Oh Yeah,

The URL to this post is
http://www.hoei.com/blog/archive/2005/11/28/124/

The Trackback URL is
http://www.hoei.com/blog/archive/2005/11/28/124/trackback/

Links back to fellow OTA members: Third World Country, Don Surber, The Florida Masochist and The Business of America is Business

That is just about the dumbest thing I have heard in a while. A CBS affiliate in Texas KWTX reports:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suggesting the federal government tax hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.

Can’t they come up with a better idea than that? There was at least a passing mention of taxation based on the amount of fuel you burn. Let’s consider another option. How about a tax based on a calculation of weight and use? The heavier the vehicles tend to use more fuel and the larger vehicles create larger potholes. Why not hit hard with taxes those who hit the road harder since the justification for raising tax is to fix roads?

Also see my previous postings on the economics of owning a hybrid in June and September.

Update: Green Car Congress gives a better explaination as to what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is trying to accomplish. Let me see if I can simplify this problem that they think will take 10 to 15 years to solve.

State vehicle tax when tags are issued

W * Y = ST

W = weight of vehicle
Y = state tax coefficient
ST = total vehicle tax

Federal tax per gallon

G * X = FT

G = gallons purchased (miles driven / time engine runs on hydrocarbons)
X = federal tax coefficient
FT = total use tax

Simply raise the coefficients X and Y as the need becomes greater for more funds to repair roads. Those who move to lighter more fuel efficient cars will benefit from this simple method of taxation and will force those who stay with larger gas hogs to carry more of the burden of repairing the roads.

Also linking to OTA members: The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns and Stop the ACLU and Point Five and Right Wing Nation and Don Surber After Hours and Conservative Cat and NIF and The Uncooperative Blogger and Pajamas Media / Stuck on Stupid and Robinik.net

I have no plans to send my children to public school. I can come up with at least a half dozen reasons off the top of my head. Let’s see: safety, security, no discipline, lack of respect, theory of evolution, no prayer, sex education. Now if that were not enough, Michele Malkin points us to a story in the Boston Globe with her Indoctrination, Not Education posting today.

It seems that an English teacher in Bennington, VT is all but teaching disrespect towards the President of the United States. The real problem that parents have is that they never know when their child is going to get a teacher with this type of an teaching philosophy. By the time the parent figures it out the damage is already done.

My wife and I plan to home school. We have made a 180 degree turn from a few years ago. My wife is an elementary education major and taught public school before we had children. We both started our marriage thinking that public school was the only option. There are two primary reasons why we have changed our minds. One is that my wife saw first hand what our children would face and that there was often very little a parent could do to control it. The second and more important reason has to do with our growth in our faith in God. We believe that there is just to much immorality being shared in schools by other children and often school staff members. The best answer is to home school. There are other options out there, but they are few and far between.

The philosophy we are embracing is to teach our children to live in this world and not of this world.

All good things come from God. Remember this as you celebrate on this day of Thanksgiving. May God bless you and yours today and through this weekend.

********************
Sent from Treo 650 Wireless

Fellow blogger Mark Tapscott adds an interesting spin to a study released by the Catalogue for Philanthropy by noting which presidential candidate carried the state during the 2004 election. The study shows which states are considered to be the most generous based on a calculation they call a Generosity Index derived by using Average Adjusted Gross Income and Average Itemized Charitable Contribution. Mark says:

It may not get much play in the MSM, but the Catalogue for Philanthropy’s latest National Generosity Index finds a clear majority of the most generous states are in the Bible Belt where evangelical Christianity is strongest and household income is lowest.

Other bloggers talking about this data:
Marginal Revolution
Andrew Sullivan

One of my favorite radio hosts Glenn Beck gives us a color-coded version of the data showing elections results in blue and red.

Maybe those who give actually have more to begin with in terms of solid Christian influence in their communities.

Land of Ozz News bulletin: Wow! What a night. I have recovered two postings due to deleting them accidentally. This is the second one. I have not found a way to recover a deleted post from WordPress so I am recreating it. The really sad part is that you can not reuse the same post ID number without manually editing the database. I will have that fixed by the time you read this.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program. This is my first posting for the Open Trackback Alliance (OTA) (OTA). Please be patient with me. I will have to manually return links until I get my WP plug-in installed and working. I plan to tap the resources of Simply Kimberly for that task.

In the meantime, let me lay down the rules for this OTA post. I have reused much of what Starling Hunter said on his first Open Trackback posting over at The Business of America is Business. I hope you don’t mind me reusing this Starling.

Here are the rules:

1) Post about anything that’s in good taste. No porn, no spam, no profanity. Your post can be about anything.

2) Send me a trackback of any post you want and as soon as I check my blog, I’ll update this post with your link provided you link back to this posting.

For your convenience, here’s the URL for this posting:

http://www.hoei.com/blog/archive/2005/11/22/115/

And here’s the Trackback URL for this posting:

http://www.hoei.com/blog/archive/2005/11/22/115/trackback/

If this is your first time visiting my blog, please do take a moment to browse my archived posts, other blogs (listed on the right), profile and, of course, leave a comment about anything that interests you. I have also recently built a new web site with a forum front end that is dedicated to the promotion of aviation. Check out Hangar Flying.

Your trackbacks will be listed as comments on my posting. I will manually add links back to your site in the body of this posting.

Links to other interesting blogs:

Adam’s Blog: The Pick the President Open Trackback Party #1
Don Surber: Post Link! Win a Prize!
Right Wing Nation: Tuesday Open Trackbacks
Dummocrats: World Caliphate Museum Exhibit Opens
The Political Teen: Open Trackback Tuesday
The Florida Masochist : How about this for a label?
Freedom Folks: Indiana Illegals to Demand Driver’s Licenses
The Business of America is Business: Pilot, Air, or Pilot Error?
Mensa Barbie Welcomes You: Provoking Civil Unrest
Stuck on Stupid: Thanksgiving Weekend Blogfest Weds. thru Sunday

Note: I will get the bonus link up on the Tech Land of Ozz later today.

Update: I have added the bonus tracks. Thanks everyone!

The anti-war movement is getting very old and very ineffective from a political perspective in my opinion. I looked over the breaking news section at topix.net. The cool thing about Topix is that they have this NewsRank system that rates a story on several factors. What I found interesting tonight was the rank of the story titled “Senator Criticizes Administration for Not Leveling With Public About Iraq”. This particular article originally sourced from the Associated Press does not seem to be ranking up there with other stories like the “Oprah and Letterman finally end their feud?” article. See a screen capture below showing the NewsRanks (little number by articles) for the articles mentioned.

I tend to agree with Mark Noonan over at Blogs for Bush when he says:

“it is the so-called “anti-war” movement which is now making this campaign longer and bloodier than it ever had to be. It is the anti-war movement which provides the hope for the enemy and makes us have to fight that much longer and harder.”

Even though the MSM is not likely to make a move away from the story just because of a statement like Mark’s, maybe they will move on once their numbers start to show that they are not attacting a mass number of people with these stories of the anti-war movement.