Author's posts
Mar 18 2010
Afternoon Edition
Here I am again, you substitute editor of the Afternoon Edition. Our editor-in-chief, ek hornbeck is recharging his “batteries” and gearing up to Live Blog the NCAA Championships. I’m even more clueless about basketball than I am about Baseball or American football, ask me about sailing or le football, I’m much better versed.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The NCAA tournament is famous for the little guys shocking the marquee powerhouses and turning into the darlings of March.
Upsets happen.
In every region, every year.
With one lopsided exception: No. 1 vs. No. 16.
When brackets are e-mailed to the office staff after the 65-team field is set, typing the “W” in that 1-16 matchup is about as automatic an annual occurrence as ringing in the New Year on Dec. 31. With good reason: The Washington Generals have better odds at victory over the Harlem Globetrotters than a No. 16 seed does over a No. 1.
Mar 17 2010
For Your Consideration: Countdown to HIR(?): Up Dated X 3
The latest whip count from the house from David Dayen at FDL reports New Health Care Whip Count: Still 191 Yes, 206 No (205-209 with leaners). Since Dennis Kucinich has now switched his vote to “yes”, Nancy Pelosi still finds that they are short voted to pass this travesty.
I think they are withholding the CBO score because without the Public Option, cutting back on the excise tax (Cadillac tax, yes they did that by giving Unions a reprieve, and not raising taxes on the wealthy, the House bill is more costly than even the Senate version. In order for it to pass via reconciliation the bill must be cost effective and in the case of this particular bell must cost less than the one the Senate has already passed. Ergo, hold back the CBO report until they can hammer out details that add to the cost to tax payers. Confused? That’s what they want.
Mar 16 2010
For Your Consideration: To Die for Health Care
This is chilling
Support the National Association of Free Clinics in memory of Keith Olbermann’s father
Mar 16 2010
Late Night Open Thread
Chew on this and have at it. I am done with these so-called Liberal/Progressives who support this crap of a bill and are willing to sacrifice their principles for Obama.
Why I can’t support the HCR bill (Updated)
Arguably, healthcare reform has been the be-all and end-all of this website since June 2009. So we’re almost at a full calendar year now since the monumental moment when this teeny, tiny, little hope-shaped baby was given to Congress by the White House, and President Obama basically said, “Do something with this! Make me proud!”
Unfortunately, both Congress (both houses, with more blame being placed upon the Senate rather than the House) and the White House have managed to fuck it up beyond all recognition.
After months of debating, and rolling the facts over in my head, I simply cannot support this healthcare “reform” package. Essentially, I think it’s a crock of shit. Unless this bill can and will include a public option (or if Alan Grayson’s bill gains any traction), then please (PLEASE!) kill this motherfucking piece of crap!
Colorado you Rock!
Mar 15 2010
For Your Consideration: Attacking Back
Jane Hamsher, again, says it quite eloquently when she calls out MoveOn.org for attacking Dennis Kucinich for sticking with his promise to not vote for a HCR bill that did not have a Public Option. Rep. Kucinich is being attack by the so-called “liberal” blogosphere that has now veered fo far right that it is unrecognizable to true progressives like Ms. Hamsher.
Last August, progressive groups including MoveOn, DFA and blogs across the country came together to raise over $430,000 for 65 members of Congress who pledged to vote against any health care bill that doesn’t have a public option.
Now every excuse made by the President and Congress for not including a public option has crumbled. MoveOn is against Kucinich for keeping that promise, and far from supporting members of Congress who keep that pledge, the unions are them with primaries.
If George Bush had tried to pass a health care bill that was the worst blow to the right to choose since the passage of the Hyde Amendment 35 years ago, liberal groups would be screaming bloody murder.
Mar 14 2010
In Memorium: The Passing of a Parent
Many of us have been down this road. One day we all will, just not as publicly.
My father died, in the city of his birth, New York, at 3:50 EST this afternoon.
Though the financial constraints of his youth made college infeasible, he accomplished the near-impossible, becoming an architect licensed in 40 states. Much of his work was commercial, for a series of shoe store chains and department stores. There was a time in the 1970’s when nearly all of the Baskin-Robbins outlets in the country had been built to his design, and under his direction. Through much of my youth and my early adult life, it was almost impossible to be anywhere in this country and not be a short drive to one of “his” stores.
My Dad was predeceased last year by my mother, Marie, his wife of nearly 60 years. He died peacefully after a long fight against the complications that ensued after successful colon surgery last September at the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center. My sister Jenna and I were at his side, and I was reading him his favorite James Thurber short stories, as he left us.
Blessed Be
May the Goddess guide him on his journey to the Summerlands. May Keith, his family , his friends and all of us find Peace.
Mar 13 2010
This Week In Health and Fitness
Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.
(Reuters) – Vitamin D is vital in activating human defences and low levels suffered by around half the world’s population may mean their immune systems’ killer T cells are poor at fighting infection, scientists said on Sunday.
The findings by Danish researchers could help the fight against infectious diseases and global epidemics, they said, and could be particularly useful in the search for new vaccines.
Vitamin D supplements may help prevent fractures in people over 65, provided they take enough of the right kind. A new review of clinical trials appears to show a strong dose-dependent effect for vitamin D in lowering the risk for nonvertebral fractures in the elderly.
Low blood levels of vitamin D may be associated with an increased risk for dementia, a British study has found.
Dermatologists routinely talk of the need to wear sunscreen. But the body needs sunlight to produce vitamin D, a crucial nutrient.
So is it possible that wearing sunscreen might interfere with the synthesis of vitamin D?
Yes. Studies have found that by blocking ultraviolet rays, sunscreen limits the vitamin D we produce. But the question is to what extent.
Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin that is stored in the body’s fatty tissue. It aids in the absorption of calcium and regulate the amount of calcium and phosphorus in the blood. The few food sources for Vitamin D are cheese, butter, cream, fortified milk (all milk in the U.S. is fortified with vitamin D), fish, oysters, fortified cereals and margarine. Anyone remember cod liver oil?
Vitamin D is also known as the “sunshine vitamin” because the body manufactures the vitamin after being exposed to sunshine. Ten to 15 minutes of sunshine 3 times weekly is enough to produce the body’s requirement of vitamin D. However, many people living in sunny climates still do not make enough vitamin D and need more from their diet or supplementation.
Too much Vitamin D can cause an increase of calcium in the blood that can result in an increase of calcium deposits in soft tissue such as the heart and lungs that reduces their ability to function. It can also cause kidney stones, muscle weakness and vomiting.
Too little Vitamin D can cause osteoporosis in adults and Rickets in children.
The tables for taking Vitamin D supplement can be found here
Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin D. However, before taking a Vitamin D supplement you should consult your doctor and or a nutritionist.
As is now custom, I’ll try to include the more interesting and pertinent articles that will help the community awareness of their health and bodies. This essay will not be posted anywhere else due to constraints on my time. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement and ask questions, I’ll answer as best I can.
Mar 13 2010
Catholic Charity at Work
With the advent of Gay couples gaining the right to legally marry in the Nation’s Capitol, the Catholic Charities found it self with a dilemma. They would have to give health care coverage to the spouses of gay employees. Solution, just don’t cover any employee’s spouse, gay or straight.
Employees at Catholic Charities were told Monday that the social services organization is changing its health coverage to avoid offering benefits to same-sex partners of its workers….
Starting Tuesday, Catholic Charities will not offer benefits to spouses of new employees or to spouses of current employees who are not already enrolled in the plan. A letter describing the change in health benefits was e-mailed to employees Monday, two days before same-sex marriage will become legal in the District.
So, just let them get sick and maybe die. What would Jesus say?
h/t Eli @ FDL
Mar 11 2010
For Your Consideration: The Health Care Fight That Was Never Fought
Jane Hamsher at FDL took more hyperbolic criticism at GOS for calling out Lynn Woolsey on her political naivity Lynn Woolsey: Closing Barn Doors Since 1993
Lynn Woolsey writes an op-ed in Roll Call today on her commitment to a public option, pandering to liberals who would indeed have to be “f*#king re#!rds” for it to make any sense. It comes on the heels of her public announcement that she will break every single pledge she’s ever made to vote against a health care bill without a public option.
It’s a paean to the importance of said public option, but the kicker is at the end:
Piecemeal tweaking of the health insurance system will not address this growing problem. We need to reform our health care system, and the public option must be included.
I will fight to include the public option in the final version of the health care reform legislation.
If it is not included, however, it will rise from the dead once again.
The day after the health care legislation is passed, I will introduce a bill calling for the public option.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Well, I agree with Jane. If either Woolsey is that politically naive about the Senate or thinks that progressives are that stupid to believe that a stand alone bill with a public option has a snowball’s chance, then she should step down as the chair of the Progressive Caucus.
But there is more that really had me amazed at those who so loudly claim that this bill is the beginning of health care reform
Mar 10 2010
For Your Consideration: War Crimes Continued
Anybody remember this?
Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to “immediately review the information that’s already there” and determine if an inquiry is warranted — but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as “a partisan witch hunt.” However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because “nobody is above the law.”
The question was inspired by a recent report by ABC News, confirmed by the Associated Press, that high-level officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, met in the White House and discussed the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on terrorism suspects.
Or this
Turley: Obama ‘owns’ Bush ‘war crimes’ if he looks the other way
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Raw Story
Tuesday, January 13, 2009President George W. Bush’s offhand acknowledgement in an interview Sunday with Fox’s Brit Hume that he personally authorized the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may create thorny legal and moral problems for incoming President Barack Obama.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Monday, “We now have President Bush speaking quite candidly that he was in the loop, we have Dick Cheney who almost bragged about it. The question for Barack Obama is whether he wants to own part of this by looking the other way.”
Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, “We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn’t mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation’s going to be to move forward.”
All most bragged about it? How about admitted it. Not only did the media “yawn”, so did the Obama and the Justice Department
Mar 06 2010
This Week In Health and Fitness
Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.
A family takes shelter in one of several extremely crowded displaced persons camps in and around Port-au-Prince.
Colette Gadenne, who has been managing Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) activities in Haiti over the last few weeks, and Christopher Stokes, General Director of MSF in Brussels, recently returned from Haiti. Almost two months after the devastating earthquake, they gave their views on the situation and stressed “broadly insufficient” aid on the ground.
As is now custom, I’ll try to include the more interesting and pertinent articles that will help the community awareness of their health and bodies. This essay will not be posted anywhere else due to constraints on my time. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement and ask questions, I’ll answer as best I can.