Families of Victims Must Matter Most

The desire to push the leftist agenda means that victims feelings must matter more than anyone elses. This logic pushed Cindy Sheehan upon us. As a poor victimized mother, she must matter more than all the rest of us.

Well, now that Barack Obama is Pres...other victims are speaking.

Families of 9/11 victims want to keep Guantanamo open

GUANTANAMO BAY US NAVAL BASE, Cuba, (AFP) – Parents of five 9/11 victims called for the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay to remain open and for the military commissions to try the five men accused of perpetrating the attacks.
"We demand that this camp stay open and that the process continue," said Joe Holland, whose son was killed during the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington.
"Right here, right now, this is a good process, they are getting a fair trial," Holland told reporters, referring to the military commissions established by the administration of President George W. Bush to try "war on terror" detainees held at the controversial facility.

Not that we care about these people. They're just...well....not people we like.

Tne End of a Fight that Shouldn't Have Happened

In New York, a battle over patients rights was about to go to court:

NEW YORK (AP) — A 12-year-old New York City boy whose family battled a Washington hospital over his care has died in the hospital, the family's lawyer said Sunday.
Motl Brody was pronounced dead Nov. 4 by Children's National Medical Center in Washington, but a machine continued to inflate and deflate his lungs.
His remaining bodily functions ceased Saturday, the lawyer, Jeffrey Zuckerman, said.
...
Motl had been diagnosed with severe brain cancer and was at the hospital for six months.
His parents, who are Orthodox Jews, had clashed with the hospital over the hospital's desire to disconnect the ventilator. Although Motl had been pronounced dead, his heart was still beating with the help of a cocktail of intravenous drugs and adrenaline.
That heartbeat prompted Motl's parents to refuse the hospital's request to remove all artificial life support.
...
The family had asked the hospital to leave the breathing machine on and keep administering drugs until the boy's heart and lungs no longer respond.
Disagreements between families and medical providers over when to end care for terminally ill patients are common, experts say, but this case wound up in court with unusual speed.
On Nov. 2, the family asked a federal judge to block the hospital from doing any further tests for brain activity.
The hospital responded by asking a District of Columbia Superior Court judge for permission to discontinue treatment.

Let us make this clear. There should have been no disagreement. And that a hospital took legal action to discontinue treatment of a patient is absolutely outrageous.

The role of the doctor is to provide expert medical advice. One that has been given, it is the right of the patient or caregivers of the patient to refuse or accept that advice. Even if it is hopeless, it is the right of either the patient or the family to continue to continue to fight, and receive care up until the moment of death.

The medical profession, having long ago given up, do no harm, has gone further and further away from the goal of treating patients without the tradition, and clearly understood doctor patient relationships...in favor of abritrarily deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.

It is not the job of doctors to discard people who are too costly, too old, too sick, or have too little of a chance of survival, but rather to treat patients and follow the wishes of the sick and injured without bias. That fights between doctors and terminal patients (or their families) about how much care they deserve is a frightening development in medicine. One we should all be leary of. That the courts can be used by doctors to get rid of inconvenient patients is terrifying.

If We Want to Talk Root Causes

How about we look at illegal immigration?

MEXICO CITY (AP) — More than 100,000 frustrated Mexicans, many carrying pictures of kidnapped loved ones, marched across the country Saturday to demand government action against a relentless tide of killings, abductions and shootouts.
The mass candlelight protests were a challenge to the government of President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting crime a priority and deployed more than 25,000 soldiers and federal police to wrest territory from powerful drug cartels
Cries of "enough" and "long live Mexico" rose up from sea of white-clad demonstrators filling Mexico City's enormous Zocalo square. The protesters held candles twinkling in the darkness as they sang the national anthem before dispersing.
...
In the capital, Romana Quintera, 72, wore T-shirt with a photograph of her baby grandson, who was kidnapped for ransom five years ago when gunmen burst into her home and killed her niece. Two people imprisoned for the attack have refused to reveal the boy's fate, and Quintera said investigators have given up on the case.
"We're desperate," she said, holding back tears. "We ask authorities with all our heart to be more sensitive. Maybe nothing like this has happened to them, or they would be more sensitive."
Despite the arrest of several drug kingpins, little has improved the ground since the Calderon government began its crackdown.
Homicides have surged as drug cartels battle each other for control of trafficking routes and stage vicious attacks against police nearly each day. In the gang-plagued border state of Chihuahua alone, there have been more than 800 killings this year, double the number during the same period last year.
This week, a dozen headless bodies were found in the Yucatan Peninsula, home to Mexico's most popular beach resort, Cancun.
While impoverished Mexicans stage almost daily strikes and protests, Saturday's marches brought out thousands of middle-class citizens who are often the targets of kidnappings. The protest was inspired by the abduction and murder of the 14-year-old son of a wealthy businessman — a case that provoked an outcry when prosecutors said a police detective was a key participant in the abduction for ransom.

If Mexico wasn't such a corrupt, impoverished, violent place, the people would stop fleeing in droves to make it here. I doubt we'll have any national discussions about this any time soon though.

Oh Mr. Biden

Even though it's been days since it happened, Joe Biden's speech to the Democratic Nation Convention, to accept his vice Presidental part of the ticket has stuck with me. Much ahs been made of other pronouncements the man has made, and his record examined, but to see the measure of the man, I don't think we have to look beyond this one speech.

That's the America that George Bush has left us, and that's the future John McCain will give us. These are not isolated discussions among families down on their luck. These are common stories among middle-class people who worked hard and played by the rules on the promise that their tomorrows would be better than their yesterdays.
That promise is the bedrock of America. It defines who we are as a people. And now it's in jeopardy. I know it. You know it. But John McCain doesn't get it.
...
John McCain is my friend. We've known each other for three decades. We've traveled the world together. It's a friendship that goes beyond politics. And the personal courage and heroism John demonstrated still amaze me.
But I profoundly disagree with the direction that John wants to take the country. For example,
John thinks that during the Bush years "we've made great progress economically." I think it's been abysmal.
And in the Senate, John sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time. Give me a break. When John McCain proposes $200 billion in new tax breaks for corporate America, $1 billion alone for just eight of the largest companies, but no relief for 100 million American families, that's not change; that's more of the same.
Even today, as oil companies post the biggest profits in history--a half trillion dollars in the last five years--he wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks. But he voted time and again against incentives for renewable energy: solar, wind, biofuels. That's not change; that's more of the same.
Millions of jobs have left our shores, yet John continues to support tax breaks for corporations that send them there. That's not change; that's more of the same.
He voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage. For people who are struggling just to get to the next day, that's not change; that's more of the same.
And when he says he will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq when Iraq is sitting on a surplus of nearly $80 billion, that's not change; that's more of the same.
...
As we gather here tonight, our country is less secure and more isolated than at any time in recent history. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has dug us into a very deep hole with very few friends to help us climb out. For the last seven years, this administration has failed to face the biggest forces shaping this century: the emergence of Russia, China and India as great powers; the spread of lethal weapons; the shortage of secure supplies of energy, food and water; the challenge of climate change; and the resurgence of fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the real central front against terrorism.
...
Again and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was proven right.
Folks, remember when the world used to trust us? When they looked to us for leadership? With Barack Obama as our president, they'll look to us again, they'll trust us again, and we'll be able to lead again.

The John McCain painted by Joe Biden is not a great person. He doesn't care about the poor. He refuses to help those who struggle, while going out of his way to make the rich richer, at the expense of the poor. He refuses to give cheap affordable energy to everyone, and instead wants us to continue to fund terrorism. He has emboldened our enemies and is making Americans less safe. Quite frankly, his foreign policy will end up killing scores of Americans, both soldier and civilian, and will lead to piles of dead bodies. Because of McCain, Israel may be annihilated, Georgia razed by Russia, Tibet run over with Chinese tanks. All because McCain won't just sit down and talk with these people and tell them the error of their ways. This John McCain is pretty damned evil, or, at the very least, cruelly indifferent. This John McCain has killed the American dream!

So why the hell is this man Joe Biden's friend? Why the hell would Joe Biden have a 30 year friendship with such a man, who is responsible for so much suffering? As Biden himself would say:

You know, I believe the measure of a man isn't just the road he's traveled; it's the choices he's made along the way.

So, for 30 years, Joe Biden has willingly associated with McCain. Either McCain is the monster he is, and Biden overlooked it, working on legislation with him out of political expediancy, or Biden is lying about his long time friend, and villifying him to advance his political career. Either way that's the bedrock of Washington politics. And, as Joe Biden now likes to say:

"That's not change; that's more of the same."

No Duh Story of the Day

Botox is Dangerous!

Months after US authorities sounded the alarm, European officials are warning of dangerous possible side effects from the wrinkle-smoothing injection Botox, according to a German news report.
The London-based European Medicines Agency had by August 2007 recorded more than 600 cases of negative effects potentially linked to the popular cosmetic treatment, Focus news weekly reported in its issue to be released Monday.

In 28 cases Botox users died.

While potentially devestating news to people trying to pretend they're 16 again, once you realize what botox is, it's not all that shocking.

The botulinum toxin is a natural poison found in decomposing food that is 40 million times more powerful than cyanide.

Injecting poison into yourself is bad? Whoda thunk it?

We banned wood treated with CCA because it contained small amounts of arsenic. Yet the FDA only notes that injecting something 40 million times more toxic than cyanide is a bad idea. No ban? What the hell good are they?

Another Hurdle for Clean Energy

A completely new NATIONWIDE infrastructure would have to be made for Wind to be a viable power source...

Sigh

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

So for wind power to even produce any power we have to tear down the system we have and start from scratch? That'll take decades, and billions. Hell, by that point, we're spending more money than we're saving. How viable is an energy source that needs an entirely new infrastructure?

HPV Vaccine Not Safe

From ABC:

First, Gardasil's long-term effectiveness is unclear. Because cervical cancer takes years to develop, critics say the current information is insufficient to determine whether Gardasil works.
"The overall effect of the vaccines on cervical cancer remains unknown," Dr. Carolyn J. Haug, the Journal of Norwegian Medical Association's editor, wrote in the New England Journal editorial. "The real impact of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer will not be observable for decades."
...
"Most of the information people have right now leads them to believe that if they're vaccinated with Gardasil, they're protected for life, and that's just not true," said Dr. Diane Harper of Dartmouth College.
There is also the issue of side effects. FDA records reveal that, since Gardasil's approval, nearly 9,000 girls had "bad health events" after receiving their shots. These included 78 reported outbreaks of genital warts, 18 deaths and six cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome, which can result in paralysis. It is unknown whether there are unseen side effects, like decreasing the body's ability to fight off other strains of the HPV virus.

To compare this against an unsafe drug...Fen Phen had less than 200 negative side effects, and 1 death, when it was pulled from the market. Guardasil has about 4500% more health problems related and 1700% more deaths than the "unsafe" Fen Phen. Far from being considered a health risk, it is potentially going to be forced on young girls by several different states. By any objective standard of risk, this drug qualifies. The lead toy, and date rape drug toy scandals of last Christmas claimed no lives, and injured few, yet they held the headlines for days. This drug has killed almost 20 and has maimed thousands, and yet may be forced upon unwilling teens?

Where the hell is the FDA?