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August 24, 2010
Posted by Carla René in: Accountability, Advice, African-American, Attitude, Biography & Memoir, Book Marketing Online, Book Review, Books, Business, Business Management, Cancer, Cap and Trade, Children, China, Climate Change, Commentary, Comments & Discussion, Communications, Communism, Community, Computers, Congress, Contributor's Audio/Video, Creative Writing, Current Events, Democracy, Democrat, Diet, Economic Crisis, Economics, Education, Energy, Entertainment, Environment, Environmental Issues, Faith, Family, Fiction, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations, Freedom, Freelance Author, General Topics, Geopolitical Events, Global Warming, Governance, Habit Change, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Heroes, History, Homeland Security, Humor, Inspiration & Motivation, Internet, Internet Advice, Interview, Islam, Journalism, Latino & Hispanic, Legal, Life Experiences, Lifestyle, Literature, Marketing, Marriage, Medical, Men's Issues, Mental Health, Mexico, Military, Minorities, Morality, Motivation, Music, Native American, Nature/Wildlife, Non-Fiction, Nutrition, Opinion, Personal Experiences, Philosophical Genres, Poetry, Politics, Publishing, Question of the Day, Recovery, Relationships, Religion, Republican, Rhyme, Satire, Self-Help, Sex, Short Stories, Social Aspects, Social Classes, Social Issues, Sociology, Spirituality, Sports, Technology, Television, Terrorism, The Economy, The Media, The Pundit's Corner, The Writer's Corner, Travel, Uncategorized, Website Instructions, Weight loss, Wellness, Women's Perspective, Women's Rights, Working Women, Workplace, World Issues, Writing Essentials
 Begun back sometime in 2001, this book was originally a fluke of an idea… [...]
August 18, 2010
The study suggested that we not only need to encourage healthy eating habits for young children, but also need to set a good example by refraining from making negative comments about people who are overweight. Children of course, are mirrors of us and they pick up our attitude, which results in bullying behavior. In effect, we indirectly teach our children to bully. However, there is a bigger picture. We need to remember that each and every person has habits about which he or she is not proud. The difference is that if over-eating is the habit, it cannot be hidden. It is on display for all to view. [...]
April 7, 2010
Posted by Muhammad Cohen in: Accountability, Cap and Trade, Commentary, Communications, Congress, Current Events, Democrat, Healthcare, Marketing, Medical, Republican, Travel
Republicans were for healthcare insurance mandates before they were against them – and the Obama White House missed it. [...]
March 11, 2010
Our body can’t perceive the difference between “saber-tooth tiger stress” and the “IRS is on the phone for you” stress. All it understands is that something is a kilter; we are under pressure and it reacts to deal with the problem. [...]
March 3, 2010
She was 6 feet 1 inches and weighed 411 pounds. These figures stick to my memory because I had never met a woman so large who could move so fast and be so full of joy. I met her in the 70s when the world was still determining the worth of a woman by her looks and this young woman, not even 20 years old, was so true to herself she did not care that she was not slim or small. She had a boyfriend, she had loving parents and she loved life. Continue reading An Obese Story
March 3, 2010
Posted by Muhammad Cohen in: Business, Business Management, Cancer, Congress, Current Events, Economic Crisis, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Interview, Medical, Wellness, World Issues
While politicians fiddle and patients get burned, Americans’ best bet for affordable, quality medical care right now is in Bangkok. [...]
December 17, 2009
Joe Lieberman needs to be bitch slapped. We need Hillary or someone to get in and fight for us now. The President is too remote, too Ivy League, too government by deal. As Keith Obermann said in a piercing comment, “there is a big difference between compromise and compromised. “With the loss of the Public Option, no Medicare buyi n and the ability to charge whatever they want for preexisting conditions, surely President Obama has gotten his hat handed to him and told to not let the door hit him on the way out. Insurance has won. The Republicans have won. The American people have lost because no one has fought for them. The case for a legislative victory becomes weak when we are the Poles who just lost the Danzig corridor in the name of appeasement. You can almost see President Obama on a carrier, “I have just secured healthcare reform in our time!”
So we need Hillary. We need someone who will get in there and burn these namby pamby conservative Democrats to the ground and push the obstructionist Republicans to the side. We need someone not afraid to get dirty. Barack is looking a little too crisp these days, a little too polished while Harry Reid and the boys look like they have gone though a war. They have. They have had to fight without a commander. Mr. President, get in there and fight for us! Don’t take this watered down garbage that is now passing for reform. Make Joe Lieberman accountable. The man got a million dollars this year from the insurance companies. He is as tainted as any Tammany Hall politician ever was. Continue reading We need Hillary to bitch slap Lieberman
November 17, 2009
The insurance companies are trying to screw us again. By us I mean women. Well mostly women. Some men get breast cancer too. Like Richard Roundtree, the one time Ebony model who was the original “Shaft” in the movies. And like the man who was in the room next to me last year having a mammogram when I had mine. He looked about 35. I was 57. Would he be dead now if the insurance companies had their way with a new study that recommends a change in testing for possible breast cancer? Continue reading The Distrubing New Study on Breast Cancer
November 10, 2009
In the depths of the Great Depression the United States government undertook the largest project in the United States to date–The Hoover Dam. Billed to provide electricity and water for the West from the Colorado river and to finally tame the Colorado so it would quit washing out farms–the dam was audacious. No one knew first of all if it could be done. The price tag was huge…a whopping 146 million. There were no companies big enough to even attempt the project. There was no infrastructure in the desert, no railroad tracks or roads. The entire Colorado river had to diverted while the dam was built. People doubted that anyone could ever dam the Colorado with a giant cement plug. People said we had enough problems without spending money on a giant public works project.
The damn was contentious from the start. Men died. The temperatures reached one hundred and thirty degrees. The contractors had strict deadlines and safety was not a premium. Men fell to their death, died from heat exhaustion, dynamite, trucks, steam shovels. But the work went on. Herbert Hoover made a speech at the ground breaking that went nowhere. People didn’t believe in him. FDR took over and immediately changed the name to Boulder Dam. No one wanted to think about Herbert Hoover now that unemployment had hit twenty five percent. The workers went on strike for better conditions and the construction companies hired more men and broke the strike. The work went on. Continue reading Maybe Healthcare Reform Is our Hoover Dam
November 9, 2009
“I have a constitutional duty to make the right decision for my district whether or not the decision was popular.”
When was the last time we heard that? It gets better. “I had to make a decision based on the needs of the people in my district…a lot of my constituents are uninsured, a lot of them are poor.” BOOM! Game over. Mr. Cao, a freshman republican from New Orleans just did the unthinkable–he voted to to help the people who ELECTED HIM. What a concept. Not an ideologue, not someone in it for personal gain. Mr. Cao just broke the mold of the modern American politician left and right–HE VOTED ON PRINCIPAL! I would vote for Mr. Cao because I have not heard these words out of anyone with integrity for so long. He went against his party and he will probably not be elected again.
We might be at the beginning of a movement here. Could it be called the play of the INDEPENDENT.
Mr. Cao might be onto something here. Fed up with politicians tied to ideologies regardless of consequence…there might be a new sheriff in town. Mr. Cao said he went over the entire health care bill and then made his decision. Then he ducked reporters and left. He will pay a price. He will be vilified by his own party for his vote. He will be the target of ideologues who can crank ratings over his defection. Continue reading Lets Hear it for Mr. Cao–Republican breaks ranks.
November 8, 2009
I know a man whose job it is to call up doctors and hospitals and knock down their fees. He has a large home and shiny sports cars and acreage and stocks and bonds and his kids will go to Big Ten schools and he is very affable and is known as a man who knows how to negotiate. But what Frank does is call up a doctor after you go and get a stress test and say, listen, we aren’t going to pay a thousand dollars for that stress test, we will only pay seven hundred. And right there the doctor takes the hit.
Or you have just gone into surgery and emerged minus an appendix and after all is said and done there is a bill for fifty thousand dollars then Frank swings back into action and tells the hospital that they need to knock it down to thirty thousand. That’s what Frank does. He decides what an insurance company will pay and the average is thirty percent that he knocks off the bill.
Imagine if someone came in and lopped off thirty percent from your paycheck just because. Or you have just charged a client to do their taxes or prepare their will or remodel their basement and you have figured your costs and then a middleman comes in and goes, nope, we get thirty percent of that and you are just out. Continue reading Insurance Companies Take Thirty Percent off the Top
November 8, 2009
Nancy Counts on Corruption
by John Armor
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, has regularly accused the Republicans in the House of displaying “a culture of corruption.” Yet the critical vote to get the House version of the health bill out of the House, demonstrates that Speaker Pelosi not only likes corruption, she counts on it. Remember her middle name because it figures in the proof.
On 7 November at 11:15 pm House bill 3962 passed by a vote of 220-215. Votes in favor of that bill included the following: Norm Dicks (D-Wash), Jane Harman (D-Cal), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), Alan Mollohan (D-WVa). Jim Moran (D-Va), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Laura Richardson (D-Cal) and Peter Visclosky (D-Ind). If just three had voted against the bill, or had not been in the House to vote for it, the bill would almost certainly have failed.
Why that curious comment about not being in the House? A staffer for the House Ethics Committee put an internal document on a home computer with file sharing capacities. As a result, the complete list of Members of Congress under ethics investigations escaped into the press. These yes votes on the health bill were provided by Members who might have been expelled, had their possible ethics violations had been promptly and adequately examined, decided and acted upon. Continue reading Nancy Counts on Corruption
October 26, 2009
Seven Million. That’s what insurance companies are spending a week to defeat this healthcare reform. Now why would that be? Is it because they are just so sure they are providing us the best healthcare out there and no other system could better serve the American public than the one where insurance companies decided who will get healthcare and who wont? Is it the altruism that is near and dear to the heart of insurance executives who determine pre existing conditions and cut off people just when they need their healthcare the most? Is it because they are morally opposed to Obamacare and believe that socialized medicine is against our democratic ideal and they don’t want us to be duped into something that smacks of those socialists across the ocean? Or is it because they are making so much money off Americans at their most vulnerable point that they can afford to spend seven million a week and still generate enormous profits.
Any industry that spends that kind of money to fight change is up to no good. On this we can agree. They are making so much money that they can blow twenty eight million a month to fight legislation that will give more Americans healthcare. This is evil. And we know it is evil. Somewhere people got inside the government and have gotten between the people and their elected leaders who job it is to protect the common good. We know this because of the one percent that is keeping all the money in this country now. We know this because Wall Street is giving away billions in bonuses again. We know this because forty six million people are without healthcare. Continue reading Seven Million Bucks a Week to Defeat Health Reform
October 4, 2009
I didn’t enter this world with any specific attitude towards the medical profession, so any opinions I now hold are entirely its own work.
As a child, especially as a child of the 1950s, you were used to adults paying you scant respect. For them, you as a child were merely a semi-trained adult. Consequently, they did not bother to disguise their underlying nature from you, and any child could have told you who were the deep-down kindly people and who were the rest (many animals can provide a similar service to this day).
However, even against this bleak landscape of general disdain, the medical profession stood out like the Spanish Inquisition. I could describe their collective attitude in one word – arrogant – or I could describe it in many – curt, rude, brutal, uncaring, cold, clinical, threatening, vain, pompous – but the overall message was clear: “You are not important. I don’t really have time for you and you are certainly not worth my time, but even though you don’t deserve it, I suppose …..” Continue reading Are all doctors Faustus?
October 3, 2009
Bob Ellal from this site has just written a book called ‘By These Things Men Live’ which is about his quadruple battle with cancer. That anybody should survive this recurrent battle at all is extraordinary. That s/he should do so and be a great raconteur into the bargain is even more amazing. Bob has got there and he has got beyond there.
Bob has completed his excellent book and is now trying to sell it. As the wise guy said “Anybody can write a book, but it takes a genius to sell it,” and part of the sales process will be for Bob to have a nice plump website full of thoughts about cancer.
These are mine. Please post some of your own so that Bob can add them to his website too.
* * *
I have known a lot of people to die of cancer. I am talking personally here. Not about celebrities or friends of friends I have never met, but people I have spoken to or who are related to me.
Despite the statistics which supposedly show an ever-increasing success rate, that is not my personal experience. I watch films on DVD and I see hospitals positively gloating in bright, shiny, intelligent, irrefutable medical and surgical gizmos. They are not my experience of the real world either. Product placement is great, but it hasn’t reached any UK hospital near me. Continue reading Cancer – the great wake-up call
September 30, 2009
It would certainly not be how the politicians did it. [...]
September 26, 2009
Posted by Alan Caruba in: Cap and Trade, Congress, Current Events, Democrat, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Governance, Healthcare, Opinion, Politics
By Alan Caruba
It is not a new observation, but it is one that needs review and repeating every so often. Why do liberals always seem to get on the side of any issue concerning America’s future? Its sovereignty? Its financial security? Its defense?
I think this question is particularly timely given the public discussion of Obamacare that included a huge peaceful protest march on Washington September 12th. The President’s non-stop campaign to get “reform” passed and the heated exchanges in Congress do not represent actual healthcare reform, but are testimony to a liberal obsession with a very bad idea.
You know something is desperately wrong when Democrats will not permit the proposed bill to enjoy a grace period of 72 hours during which both the public and members of Congress can actually read it before a vote is taken.
The irony of the current battle is that the bill will significantly change Medicare, a program advocated by liberals and, like Social Security, established by Democrats in Congress. It will destroy a free market for insurance programs individuals may choose to purchase. Or not.
There is no dispute that both programs, safety nets for Americans, have been helpful. Neither is voluntary There is no doubt that both are insolvent because they are unsustainable. This has been exacerbated by the way Congress has dipped into the funds intended to be set aside for them.
Obamacare will end up killing a lot of the people that Medicare was intended to save from the diseases and accidents that afflict the elderly. Continue reading Liberals are Killing America
September 23, 2009
Posted by scottqmarcus in: Attitude, Diet, Habit Change, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Inspiration & Motivation, Motivation, Personal Experiences, Self-Help, Weight loss, Wellness
From the moment she entered the jet, I could tell she did not want to be there. In addition to apologizing each time her overloaded “Big Brown Bag” banged someone in an aisle seat, she was having difficulty navigating her excessive size down the skeletal-sized aisle.
I knew the other passengers were thinking, “I hope she doesn’t sit next to me.” Plane seats are not known for roominess, and having someone else’s bulk overspill into one’s limited area was not something for which anyone eagerly plunked down a few hundred dollars.
My overweight past flooded to my forethought and I remembered being the recipient of “that look” in the other passengers’ eyes when I used to enter an airplane. I avoided eye contact; my method of signaling to each traveler, “Don’t worry. You’re safe. I’m not sitting next to you.”
Finally, I would locate my seat (God forbid it was a center seat). I’d smile and meekly point to the location into which I was supposed to compress. My neighbor would smile weakly, rise, and let me pass. After I settled in, he would reclaim his territory and – although he would usually try to hide it – I would notice a subtle, but definite, slight tilt in the opposite direction from me; trying to retain as much space as possible for himself.
All of those memories swamped my consciousness now and I knew what this woman walking the aisle was experiencing in this moment. Continue reading An Effort Either Way
September 22, 2009
Leopards don’t change their spots. We see this with the banks. The bankers will continue giving each  other bonuses and doing business as usual. Why? Because the market has not dictated they change. They received their TARP money are doing just fine thank you very much. Too late really. But this debate over health care is silly without a public option. If the market remains the same then health insurers will do nothing different. That unfortunately is capitalism.
We all know this. Free markets go to where the money can be made. If insurers can still make money knocking people off who have preexisting conditions or torpedoing people who get sick then they will continue to do it. Why wouldn’t they? That’s how they make money. It’s just business. Right. Right. But unfortunately this business affects peoples lives. So we can’t just let the free market dictate our health care. Not anymore. Continue reading Healthcare reform without a public option is a joke
September 18, 2009
It is not about healthcare
by Bill Hazelgrove
It is not about healthcare. It is the fear of the other. Rural whites and glenn beck runnaways have coalesced with a broad populace that has lost their credit their jobs and their homes. Swindled at the pump they believe ala cable heads there must be [...]
September 17, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
What continues to astound me is how wrong the Obama administration is on so many issues. It is not unusual to disagree with some element of the White House agenda, no matter who is president, but I keep looking for something, anything, with which to agree.
This is the price Americans who voted for “change” without actually asking or understanding what that change would be are paying. Most, I suspect, were so fixated on any change that did not include George W. Bush that it was no surprise that Obama’s initial answer to every question in the first few weeks of his term was to blame Bush for “the mess” he encountered.
The problem with that is that every president leaves his successor “a mess” in some respect. For ten years FDR never successfully figured a way out of the Great Depression until World War II solved that problem. When he died, Harry Truman had to conclude the war in the Pacific and did so with two A-bombs. Then he had to save Europe from Soviet ambitions and get the UN off the ground.
When I say “wrong”, I mean that it wasn’t just wrong to try to take over one sixth of the nation’s economy with a grandiose remaking of Medicare, but it was blindly arrogant and stupid. Medicare, heading toward insolvency and riddled with waste, was not the biggest problem to be solved, getting the nation’s financial house in order was. Continue reading Obama: Wrong, Just Wrong
September 17, 2009
The Acupuncturist and the Zen Rock Garden
Stephen Sangirardi— Bard715@aol.com
I insisted on a licensed Chinese acupuncturist and that’s exactly what I got right out of the Managed United Health Care Directory. Her waiting room featured Oriental motif, especially around the scrolled windows, and cool, sanitized air. New Age Music wafted about the room, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a Zen Rock Garden on a table next to the comfy leather armchair. At first glance, some Philistine could have mistaken the Rock Garden for an ashtray and snuffed out his cigarette butt in the sand, the way boorish cowboys use to misinterpret Etruscan vases for spittoons. (That hadn’t happened the eight sessions that I was there, so the Zen-ness was pure.) I saw ten small rocks, all of them different shapes and colors including a piece of obsidian, the Barbie-doll rake that Ken may have used for tilling the soil in an accessorized episode, and the other-worldly sand that could have been imported from Coney Island for all I knew. Wait. Someone had left his or her vivid signature in the Garden. It reminded me of contemporary poetry. No matter what configuration of rocks you arranged on the plate, it inevitably=2 0Stonehenged some profound verse in the sand that no Spenserian tide could wash away. You may have placed one of the asymmetrical stones atop another and curved the sandy grains in a backwards S—this could have indicated, possibly, a preference for solitude among the loons of the sea, or perhaps a predisposition for going to Wittenberg after all, when there were so many good State schools right here in Denmark. Who needed a Rorschach when a Zen Rock Garden lent itself the same purpose? Continue reading The Acupuncturist and the Zen Rock Garden
September 16, 2009
Due to the long lifespan of people and the rigors of the diet, studies of calorie restriction in humans are ongoing and have yet to show that people live longer. Nonetheless, thousands of individuals now follow calorie restriction diets, hoping to discover what Ponce de Leon did not. [...]
September 16, 2009
Posted by Alan Caruba in: Accountability, African-American, Business, Cap and Trade, Congress, Current Events, Democracy, Economic Crisis, Energy, Environmental Issues, Global Warming, Governance, Healthcare, Opinion, The Economy
 By Alan Caruba
I cannot tell you how relieved I was to hear Ben Bernake, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, announce that the United States is “technically” out of the recession. I spent much of the day waiting for my phone to ring with offers of work.
Chairman Bernake did add that jobs would lag, but all the experts say that jobs always lag and, if that’s the case, I am thinking this time around jobs are not only going to lag, they are going to disappear, run away, and leave much of the work force unable to live the “American dream.”
There was a time when the American dream included the opportunity for everyone to own their own home. That dream was based on having a steady job and a decent wage. It was dependent on people saving some of their income for a down payment. It was not dependent on federal government programs that put pressure on banks and mortgage lenders to make loans to people that ACORN had dragged in off the street.
I would feel a lot better about Bernake’s announcement if Congress wasn’t right now getting ready to pass a piece of legislation that every single poll says the MAJORITY of Americans do not like and do not want.
I speak of course of Obamacare. The same polls also suggest that the more Obama shows up on television giving speeches, being interviewed, and otherwise sucking all the air out of the room, the more a MAJORITY of Americans distrust and dislike him. Continue reading “Technically” We’re Out of a Recession
September 14, 2009
A Million People Prove NPR Doesn’t Count
by John Armor
How many people still listen to NPR (National “People’s” Radio) and take it seriously? Apparently that list doesn’t include the editors and reporters for NPR. Two cases in point, both having to do with numbers.
As I was driving up to D.C. for the Rally on the Mall on Saturday, I heard NPR gushing over (excuse me, reporting on) the President Obama’s speech to a Joint Meeting of Congress. In that speech, the President said that “there are 30 million uninsured Americans.” Notice that the number dropped from 45 million because that part of the uninsured are not Americans. They are mostly citizens of Mexico.
The polling of the American people on health care reform has made it crystal clear they do not want American tax dollars paying premiums for foreign citizens. Remember that Cong. Joe Wilson called out, “You lie,” when President Obama was claiming that health care “reform” did not include the illegal aliens. Joe should certainly apologize for interrupting the President, with a true statement. Continue reading A Million People Prove NPR Doesn’t Count
September 13, 2009
Bob Ellal’s ‘By These Things Men Live’ comes with a sucker punch in the final chapter (no, he doesn’t snuff it) but I shall declare my conclusion immediately. It is exquisite.
It plays towards one of my prejudices and against another.
The one it plays towards is my preference for novellas. You probably know the reply of the writer who was asked why his book had come in at seven hundred pages – “Because I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.” Bob did have time and it shows. He obviously even had time to really screw it up, but he didn’t – he polished it to a diamond instead, a blood diamond.
The prejudice he has confounded is my expectation of what a chemo-and-tell autobiography might play like. I was expecting a lot of trauma, a lot of drama, tears, emotions tumbling off the shelf, and long, lingering, mawkish thank yous to anyone and everyone he had ever met amid his endeavours to overcome his fate. While I would have been whole-heartedly sympathetic to anybody who had to go through that lot, this would have been a book I could have put down, and would have put down, easily. Continue reading Review of SWI’s own Bob Ellal’s ‘By These Things Men Live’
September 12, 2009
This maybe the year that I get a flu vaccination. I’ve never had one and during those years when the flu was raging never caught it. My elderly mother has already had hers, my husband might get one since he ended up with the flu- a different strain I promised him- two weeks after the shot. All in all I am for preventive measures when it comes to any kind of disease, but I am not always in favor of medications. They may help, most don’t cure and the side effects are killing us while the drug cartels get rich. Continue reading Side Effects- Do We Really Need All These Drugs?
September 11, 2009
By Alan Caruba
I think President Obama and the Democrats have found a way to move hated legislation through the houses of Congress. They intend to bore us to death.
Following his prime time speech to the joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening, on Sunday Obama will be featured in a segment on CBS’ “Sixty Minutes” and on Monday he will give a speech on the nation’s financial crisis.
The President has given over a hundred speeches regarding his still totally undefined “healthcare reform”, ceaselessly repeating the same vague notions of why a long established system cannot be fixed in its bad parts, but must be thrown overboard and recreated virtually from scratch.
The other element is to produce bills that are all a thousand pages or longer, ensuring that no Senator or Representative is ever going to read them. Their legislative aides are assigned that task and many can be seen wandering the streets of Washington in the late hours mumbling incoherently to themselves about Sub-Section B of Part A referencing Paragraph D. Continue reading Boring Us to Death
September 11, 2009
On September 9, President Barack Obama addressed Congress to discuss health care. The news media has focused on that speech, giving scant attention to his address to the nation’s school children one day earlier. Despite the dire predictions of the right-wing, the republic is, regardless of that speech, somehow still standing. No doubt the Rush Limbaughs of the world will explain how that is possible. But there is no need to wait! This writer has seen through Mr. Obama’s words. He was crafty: we must read between the lines to understand how he fostered his socialist agenda in his remarks to the United State’s students this week.
Space does not permit a line-by-line translation of the speech, so only some of the most salient points will be covered here.
What Mr. Obama said:
“When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.” Continue reading Education, Health Care and Hypocrisy
September 9, 2009
OK, so the headline is taken from a joke made by the UK satirical magazine Private Eye about early developments in IVF treatment, but the saying is increasingly applying to other areas of medicine as well.
Over the last 20-30 years there has been a quiet miracle in medicine. Surgeons would have you believe that it has taken place in their theatre of operations and to some significant extent they are correct. Minimally intrusive ‘key hole’ surgery has come a long way and has greatly benefited patients. Pharmaceutical companies would have you believe that it is down to their developments in drugs. Actually, this is fairly questionable. Yes, of course, there have been some developments, but largely they are in the muddled direction of one step forward, one step back. Nearly all drugs have side-effects and some of them are about as bad as the disease they set out to cure. Taking a drug is less to take a step down the road to recovery as to set off a chain reaction which could lead you anywhere.
The huge revolution is elsewhere. It is quiet not because it is unknown but because it is largely unintelligible and therefore rejected by the medical establishment, and consequently by the press, and it is a revolution because in many respects it has not moved forward but more around to what we knew before.
Many of the problems of ill-health over the centuries can be explained by one thing – starvation. When you do not have even the basic nutrients, your system collapses. When it collapses, you have no building blocks to put it back together again. Continue reading And you won’t even feel a little prick ….
September 8, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
The most troubling aspect of President Obama’s insistence on so-called healthcare reform is the way the proposed changes will harm the interests of those on Medicare or Medicaid, all 65 years and older.
In the interest of “reform” it is clear that healthcare for the elderly will be rationed in terms of what will be covered with age a factor in whether one’s life will be saved or not through medical procedures.
Americans are now living to an average age of 78 and, of course, many are living much longer. My Mother lived to 98 and my Father to 93. Both required medical procedures towards the end of their lives and, good Democrats that they were, both appreciated the protection and benefits offered by Medicare.
I am just shy of age 72 and quite healthy. Given the genes passed onto me by both parents, I expect to live at least another twenty years, but more importantly, I expect to be writing that long as well.
I got to thinking that many now officially considered “old” at 65 made considerable contributions, often based on the fact that age had equipped them with invaluable experience. Continue reading Old is not “Dead”
September 7, 2009
Posted by Alan Caruba in: Accountability, Congress, Current Events, Democracy, Democrat, Economic Crisis, Governance, Healthcare, Opinion, Politics, Republican
 By Alan Caruba
Barack Obama has crashed headlong into a wall of distrust. If he had any understanding of American history he would know why, but his sole interest is himself and he proved that by writing not one, but two memoirs.
The men who waged the American Revolution and then met in secret to write the U.S. Constitution all shared a distrust of government. They understood government was necessary, but they wanted to keep a federal government small and ensure that most powers resided in the individual states and in “the people.”
For most of American history, the federal government was small. Its main function was to maintain armies and navies to protect its sovereignty and its commercial interests. Early presidents encouraged the exploration of the continent and its populating by the many discontents who arrived seeking a better life than the Old World could or would provide.
America promised the intoxicating opportunity to be free to make a life for oneself that had few restraints so long as one did not break the law, honored one’s contracts, and took part in the process of debating issues and electing representatives. This necessity to rise above family bonds and other allegiances to participate in the affairs of one’s community, one’s state, and one’s nation has been the glue that has kept generations of old and new Americans connected. Continue reading A Very American Distrust
September 6, 2009
Posted by Tina Rae Collins in: Attitude, Cancer, Creative Writing, Family, General Topics, Healthcare, Inspiration & Motivation, Lifestyle, Marriage, Mental Health, Motivation, Poetry, Relationships, Self-Help, Spirituality, Wellness, Women's Perspective
When time stands still All you can do is ponder, And wonder how you got to where you are. Could you have foreseen it? Could you have prevented it? Will you look back in sorrow Or consider it a blessing? You find no answers But only long for the day When time resumes.
September 3, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
I, for one, am looking forward to President Obama’s address to both houses of Congress. I thought I would have to wait for a State of the Union speech before that happened or, God forbid, that the nation would be attacked as was the case of 9/11.
I am looking forward to his televised talk to all of the nation’s school children, too. What gems of wisdom will he share with them? How many potential community organizers will be sitting at their desks, paying attention, and maybe even taking notes?
I like it, too, when he sits down for a completely unscripted, informal chat with some network anchor. It would be really neat if he could do things like when, with Zen-like serenity, he swatted a fly.
Now, I know there are many who are crying out, “No! No! No!”
It has been my observation that the more President Obama speaks, the more his popularity and approval scores drop. By golly, I believe there is a connection!
It began when everyone noticed that he never spoke anywhere about anything without his TelePrompters. People began to snicker. Continue reading Speak Up, Mr. President, Speak Up!
September 2, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
On Sunday, I managed to “throw my back out”, something I do every few years; a muscle spasm that had nothing to do with lifing something heavy. Just whammo! I took some pain pills I had in the cabinet from a previous problem and on Monday morning I called my physician. By Noon I was in her office and receiving new prescriptions for pain pills and muscle relaxants. An hour later I had the pills in hand,
By this morning, Wednesday, I am thoroughly on the mend, though it will probably take until Friday before I am back to normal again. Thanks to Medicare, my pills cost me just over $10.00. My visit to the doctor will be covered as well.
So, tell me, what is it that needs to be “reformed” in the current system? And how long would it have taken to see my doctor under Obama’s socialized healthcare?
The current Medicare/Medicaid system is running out of money, but “reforming” it to a point where I would likely have had to wait a very long time to see my doctor is absurd. Continue reading Does Medicare Need Reform?
September 2, 2009
Posted by AngelaPoseyArnold in: Advice, Attitude, Biography & Memoir, Family, Freedom, General Topics, Healthcare, Inspiration & Motivation, Marriage, Recovery, Relationships, Religion, Short Stories, Social Issues, Spirituality, Uncategorized
On the Other Side of the Storm
By Angela Posey-Arnold RN BSN
We could not hear the deafening tornado siren as golf ball size hail pounded our metal roof during the vociferous storm upon us. The house shook, my heart beating so fast I forgot to breathe. The air thick as though it was being sucked out of the house. I thought our house would explode. Howling winds encircled and the hail continued the barrage on our usually peaceful quiet farm. Crouched in the safe room I held my two dogs with one hand and my hard hat with the other. Covered in pillows and a comforter I remember thinking, ‘when will it end?’ In six minutes it was over. I breathed.
Emerging outside to survey possible damage, the sun actually started to shine. The storm was gone. My adrenalin and heart rate returned to normal. We were on the other side of the storm, we survived.
Looking at the green leaves scattered on the porch they appeared to have been through a shredder. The hood of our truck dented and dinged, it took me back, reminiscent of the life storms we endured and survived. Continue reading On The Other Side of the Storm
September 1, 2009
Posted by Antonio de la Vega in: Cancer, Education, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Latino & Hispanic, Lifestyle, Medical, Mexico, Native American, Nature/Wildlife, Nutrition, Religion, Self-Help, Sex, Social Aspects, Social Classes, Social Issues, Sociology
Recientemente la Universidad Autónoma de México (U.N.A.M.) presentó el resultado de un esfuerzo monumental, consistente en la construcción de una enciclopedia multimedia especializada en la medicina tradicional mexicana. [...]
August 27, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
I am rather tired of having to panic every other day courtesy of the U.S. government. It started with seeing the former Secretary of the Treasury sweating profusely while demanding the Congress give him a blank check for $700 billion to bail out some financial institutions that probably should have been allowed to fail.
Many were given gobs of taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy. Others were merged with those that hadn’t been as profligate.
In October 1929, Variety, the show business newspaper, had a headline that said “Wall Street Lays an Egg.” What followed was some ten years of a Depression that would not go away because the government did everything possible to prolong it in the name of ending it.
The so-called “brain trust” around Franklin D. Roosevelt made every wrong decision available. The Supreme Court had to step in to limit some of the damage at one point. Constitution? What Constitution?
About the only thing we are being told is not a cause for panic is the “war on terror”, a phrase that is no longer allowed to be used in official Washington where, apparently, if you don’t call a duck a duck it is no longer a duck. Nonetheless, we are also told that Afghanistan is the “front line” of the war on you-know-what even though there are no “front lines” in insurgencies or guerrilla wars. Continue reading Don’t Just Stand There. Panic!
August 27, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
The only thing that is “shovel ready” in America today is Teddy Kennedy’s corpse and casket. Fortunately for his mortician, Kennedy had already embalmed himself.
One can only pray that his brand of insane, unrealistic, and very expensive liberalism will be buried with him, but that is not likely so long as our Marxist President draws breath.
With considerable schadenfreude I watched as William Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, choked back his utter disdain for Teddy Kennedy during a panel discussion on the Fox News. Columnist Charles Krauthammer had nothing good to say of Kennedy either and it was to both their credit they did not feign any regret over his passing beyond the standard expression of sympathy for his family. Continue reading Shovel Ready in America
August 23, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
Though most Americans are unaware of it, the rest of the world is taking an active interest in the sometimes heated debate we are having regarding the alleged healthcare “reform” that is, in fact, yet another effort to push the nation further into the same socialist tentacles that have been embraced elsewhere.
Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in America doesn’t stay in America. As the world’s sole superpower, the man we select to be our president becomes the de facto president of the world insofar as his decisions reach into dusty villages in Afghanistan, affect global stock and commodity markets, and can determine the success or failure of movements toward freedom everywhere.
There would be no “Pax Americana” if we were seen to abandon our allies.
The similarities between the Roman Empire and the young American Empire are examined in an excellent book by Thomas F. Madden, “Empires of Trust.” Continue reading America’s Empire of Trust
August 22, 2009
By Alan Caruba
Nine Trillion Dollars. That is what the Obama administration now says will be the national budget deficit in ten years. Our current GDP, give or take a trillion, is fourteen trillion a year so you do the math. In seven months President Obama and his Democrat minions in Congress have plunged the nation into debt not seen since the waging of World War II.
Medicare. A million Baby Boomers a year will sign up to receive their Medicare “entitlements” because the members of the population bulge that followed the end of World War II is now officially old. In 1965 Medicare was signed into law as part of the older Social Security system. The enrollment age was based on the fact that 65 was about when people started dying off back then. Now the average life expectancy is 78. And that’s just the average! Little wonder anyone with any sense doesn’t want a rationed Obamacare that will, indeed, let old people suffer in lieu of caring for them. And these are people who paid into the system.
Obesity. I still cannot understand why government at any level should have anything to say about what you eat, how much you eat, and whether you are fat. A lot of fat people had fat parents and fat grandparents. Much of the condition is genetic. The rest involves lots of very affordable and tasty so-called “junk food.” Your weight is your responsibility. Continue reading Saturday’s Random Thoughts
August 21, 2009
Posted by AngelaPoseyArnold in: Accountability, Attitude, Biography & Memoir, Book Marketing Online, Books, Family, General Topics, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Inspiration & Motivation, Marriage, Medical, Relationships, Religion, Social Aspects, Social Issues, Spirituality, Uncategorized, Wellness, Women's Perspective, Working Women, Workplace
By the time she arrived he had seen, diagnosed, and treated at least ten patients sometimes forgetting to charge them. Francie arrived to find her work cut out for her for the day. They worked all day sometimes without a break until dark, or until the last patient was seen whichever came first. [...]
August 20, 2009
 By Alan Caruba I have this theory that nations go crazy from time to time. Collectively they lose their wits or, as is often the case, the people either elect or have imposed on them a complete lunatic, discovering it in slow stages as reports of various horrors make their way to the countryside.
These days, those stages are greatly speeded up by the mass media that swiftly spread the word. Unlike the United States, in many nations the news is what the government says is news, but it must also be said that the mainstream media has utterly disgraced itself over the course of the recent campaign and the first months of the Obama administration. There are signs, however, some have rediscovered their role in our society.
The most vigorous signs of sanity among the general populace of America have been the recent town hall meetings. The tea parties, too. And just wait for the big march in Washington, D.C. on September 12!
That will surely put the fear of the people into the hearts of Congress men and women. It is far better that they fear us than the other way around. Continue reading Signs of Sanity
August 16, 2009
by Bill Hazelgrove
Do it for the forty six million. You may have health care, you may have very good health care and you don’t want anyone fooling with it. I get it. So why be in favor of health care reform? Do it for the forty six million who don’t have health care. These are your brothers and sisters and mothers and grandmothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and all the people you will never know–do it for them. These are your countrymen and we cannot leave them behind.
Maybe you work for a corporation. Maybe you are a teacher or a government worker. Good. You have health care. Of maybe you pay for it yourself like I do. Good. You have health care. But there are people who do not go to the doctor. They have the same fears as you do when they feel a pain except they cannot hear the words “you will be fine.” They have to tough it out. They have to wonder if they will be fine. And these are not bums. These are not street people or drug attics or welfare queens–these are every day mothers and fathers sons and daughters and they are you.
They have done nothing wrong. Maybe they don’t live in a big house. Maybe they were born in the wrong neighborhood. Maybe they were working and got laid off. Maybe they were realtor’s, mortgage brokers, construction workers, builders, carpenters, plumbers, adjunct teachers, professors, accountants, lawyers, bricklayers, hygienists, factory workers, autoworkers, bank representatives, data entry clerks, salesman, sales managers, architects, roofers, electricians, health care workers, nurses, pilots, stewardesses, title company employees, dishwashers, cooks, chefs, writers, poets…maybe they are you. And they do not have what three hundred other million Americans enjoy-the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and yes that includes health care. Continue reading Let’s do it for the Forty Six Million
August 14, 2009
RESPONSE TO A LIBERAL RELATIVE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM
By Ben Cerruti
A relative recently sent out an email asking relatives and friends against health care reform to keep an open mind to another point of view. That other point of view happened to emanate from MoveOn.Org, a liberal website primarily supported by George Soros who is an advocate for a two class new world order socialistic system. My response to the five individual points, which are called lies, follow each of them.
Response to your email.
Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!
Response: President Obama may not want to euthanize your grandma but he will not have the final say if HR3200 is enacted. Once enacted who knows what the end of life counseling panel would evolve into? It is well known that there is insufficient funding and presently not enough physicians and nurses to service the expanded number of people eligible under this plan. When the Government is making the decisions rather than patients and their family it stands to reason that they will be forced to make them for what the government determines is to the benefit of the country as a whole rather than for the individual patient. Common sense tells us this. I personally don’t want to lose control of this personal decision making for me and for Jan and I assume you would also not like this to happen relating to your father and mother. There is no Utopia, when Government takes over you lose control.
Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!! Continue reading RESPONSE TO A LIBERAL RELATIVE ON HEALTHCARE REFORM
August 13, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
Not long ago I published a list of elements of the original Obamacare bill that upset a lot of people who accused me of publishing lies about it, but the original bill—now something in the area of five different versions that the Senate and House will consider on their return—was every bit an abomination as the new ones.
Since then, a lot more people have undertaken the trial of reading the more than 1,000 pages intended, we’re told, to “reform” healthcare in America. One of them is Dr. Stephen Fraser. He recently wrote his Senator Evan Bayh (D) citing page by page why the current version of Obamacare is not a reform, but a total corruption of our current system.
Here are just a few of four pages of citations that will doom healthcare in America while putting the federal government in charge of the most intimate aspects of everyone’s lives.
Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the government will audit books of all employers that self insure!!
Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill: THERE WILL BE A GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.
Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!! Continue reading The Obamacare Abomination
August 13, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
All during the long campaign leading to his election and inauguration, the media kept telling us what a genius Barack Obama was. He was a lecturer on the Constitution at the University of Chicago. He was in the Illinois State legislature. He had graduated from Harvard Law School and, before that, Columbia University. Curiously, throughout all that time, few of his fellow students or faculty had any recall of him.
No records from those days exist or are available. He was (and is) a cipher.
When you’re the President of the United States, however, everything you say and do is under close examination. Obama must like that part of the job because he has held five prime time press conferences in the first six months, about the same amount as his predecessor held in eight years.
Unfortunately for Obama, the number of people tuning in became less and less with each press conference. The last one blew up in his face as he made an offhand remark about the arrest of a friend of his. At a recent town hall meeting to promote his healthcare “reform” plan, he compared it to the U.S. Postal Service, thus inadvertently telling the truth for a change.
None of these suggests a finely tuned sense of political reality and, in particular, the introduction of two pieces of legislation, Cap-and-Trade and Healthcare “reform”, that just about everyone hates except some brain-dead Democrats in Congress, now seem a very bad idea and very bad timing. Continue reading Obama: American Demagogue
August 11, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
The mainstream media is focused, as always, on the more dramatic aspects of the “town hall” meetings during which astonished members of Congress discover how total the disconnect between the machinations of Washington, D.C. and the rest of America is.
If the Democrat politicians could recall anything from the past they might draw some lessons from it, but they are fixated on expanding the federal government’s control over our lives while, at the same time, abandoning anything that passes for common sense.
In the July issue of Healthcare News, a publication of The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank headquartered in Chicago, Greg Scandlen, Heartland’s Director of Consumer Care Choices, recalled the reaction of Americans in 1988 when Congress passed the Medicare Catastrophic law. Like Obamacare, it was supported by the AARP, essentially a large insurance company, was passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress, and signed into law by Ronald Reagan.
“Except when the elderly found out they were about to be required to buy something they didn’t need, they were furious,” said Scandlen. “In a famous scene, a group of elderly people chased House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski down the streets of Chicago and beat on his car with their canes and picket signs when he tried to escape. Eighteen months after it was passed, the law was repealed.” Continue reading A Very American Protest
August 9, 2009
When One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center – he blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com [...]
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The Risk of Catastrophic Victory
The Gaslight Journal is Done
Begun back sometime in 2001, this book was originally a fluke of an idea… [...]