We Would Have Never Guessed

When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

But Jason K. Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, says that Cheney's office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC's original draft testimony removed.

  ABC

I wonder - if BushCo hadn't so totally screwed up in the Iraq nightmare, would all these things that the press is now willing to print about what else they've done have gone unpublished?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Keepin' Us Healthy

The Defense Department, the nation's biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose "imminent and substantial" dangers to public health and the environment.

The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country.

  Truthout

Actually, I’m surprised the EPA under Bush is ordering clean-ups. Maybe they know it doesn’t matter if you don’t enforce the orders.

Pentagon officials say they are voluntarily cleaning up the three sites named in the EPA's "final orders" - Fort Meade in Maryland, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

But they don’t want anyone checking to make sure.

At all three sites, the military has released toxic chemicals - some known to cause cancer and other serious health problems - into the soil and groundwater.

[...]

EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said final orders were issued because the agency is worried about drinking water and soil contamination at Fort Meade, Tyndall and McGuire. "Under DOD's management, some of these sites have languished for years, with limited or no cleanup underway," she said.

[...]

Congress established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up the country's most contaminated places, and of the 1,255 sites on the list the Pentagon owns 129 - the most of any entity. Other federal agencies with properties on the list include NASA and the Energy Department, but they have signed EPA cleanup agreements without protest.

But Superfund sites are only one aspect of the Pentagon's environmental problems. It has about 25,000 contaminated properties in all 50 states, and it will cost billions and take decades to clean them up.

The Pentagon poisons American citizens, and its own troops. I assume the brass drink bottled water.

Botox on the Brain

Botulinum neurotoxin type A, sold as Allergan Inc.'s Botox remedy for wrinkles, can move from its injection site to the brain, a study shows.

  Bloomberg

And that’s bad – the brain is supposed to have wrinkles. That was a joke.

Do you think this is what happened to John Kerry? That was not a joke.

You know, I just don’t think I’d want to inject something named Botulinum neurotoxin into anything I didn’t want harmed. Both words sound like red flags to me.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Free Markets

Jim Hightower wonders why Monsanto hates the free market, lobbying the government to ban labels on milk produced without growth hormones that tell consumers the milk is BGH-free. Monsanto says that implies there's something wrong with BGH milk.

If they're so proud of BGH milk, they should have their own labels declaring: “Mmmm, yummy! Milk with artificial sex hormones added!”

  Jim Hightower

Indeed. Let’s show some respect for free market capitalism, Monsanto.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Bush's Ag Department Hates America

[The Bush Administration’s Agricultural Department’s] lackadaisical, laissez-fair approach to their job recently led to the largest beef recall in history, a third of which had already been shipped to such nutrition programs as school lunch. Well, you might think, at least the ag officials caught the perpetrators.

Wrong. It was the Humane Society that blew the whistle on a California slaughterhouse that was abusing cattle and putting sick cows called “downers” into America’s food supply. Downers are so sick they can’t stand up – a sign of illness that's even associated with Mad Cow disease. These lame, unhealthy cows had been banned from use as human food… until last year, when industry officials very quietly slipped a loophole into the ban, thus allowing beef processing corporations to slaughter downers and sell the meat to our families.

True to their corporate servility and ideological nuttiness, Bush ag officials stood with the industry, rather than the public, reaffirming their support for the downer loophole. Then they even chastised the Humane Society for going outside of official channels to inform the public.

  Jim Hightower

We're All Just Too Stressed Out

Last fall, the American Psychological Association released a major study that told us what we already knew—21st-century America is the most stressed-out place on Earth. A third of American adults are living with "extreme stress," and nearly half believe that their stress levels have increased in the past five years.

  Men’s Vogue

9/11 changed everything.

But, we can all calm down now. For the price of another gadget – about $300. Remember biofeedback? It used to be for hippies.

The little biofeedback machine, which is about the size of a BlackBerry, has an infrared fingertip sensor that monitors the way you breathe by translating pulse beats into waves that you can watch roll across the StressEraser's LCD.

I didn’t get into the extra fine print, but it looks suspiciously like a gizmo that tells you to breathe.

Hey, just in time for your tax rebate. (This week’s Newsweek has a little helpful article on what to do to “survive” our current economic woes advising you to pay down any loans or save that rebate. I dare say the government will not be too happy with that, since the purpose of the rebate is to have people spend some money, but anybody with any basic instinct and concern about a recession will already understand that socking away any give-back might be a good choice. )

Did you know there was such a publication as Men’s Vogue? Me neither.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Made in China

Jim Hightower argues that the rash of problems with imported Chinese goods is not a problem with Chinese goods so much as it is a problem with the American companies who manufacture and import through China while lobbying for relaxed oversight and deregulation of their industries.

Politicians are pointing their fingers at China’s lackadaisical approach to product safety. But wait a minute – where, oh where, are our own regulatory watchdogs?

The big shock is not that Chinese-made toys are laden with lead, but that America’s Consumer Product Safety Commission is a toothless watchdog that employs exactly one inspector to oversee the safety of all toys sold in the U.S. Likewise, the Food and Drug Administration has licensed 714 Chinese plants to manufacture the key ingredients for a growing percentage of the antibiotics, painkillers, and other drugs we buy, but provides practically no oversight of these plants. In 2007, for example, FDA inspected only 13 of them.

[...]

Mark Shapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, reports that while the European Union has banned the use of phthalates in products aimed at children under three years of age, our government has refused to act.

Thus, China has factories that manufacture two lines of toys – one without phthalates for shipment to European countries, and one with phthalates for export to our children.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

What Health Care Problem?

Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.

[...]

France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.

[...]

Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health insurance -- about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million, according to U.S. government estimates -- probably was a key factor in the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized nations in the study.

"I wouldn't say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don't, I think that's the main problem, isn't it?" Nolte said in a telephone interview.

  

Those people don't count. They probably got kicked off the voting rolls anyway.

Culling the Herd

About 30 million low-income American households who will need help paying heating bills this winter from a U.S. government program will be left in the cold because of a lack of funding for the program.

The poor, already digging deep to pay for expensive gasoline, also will face much higher heating fuel costs, especially if oil prices stay near record levels.

[...]

The government's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, only has enough funding to cover 16 percent of the 38 million poor households eligible for the program.

  Reuters

Federal research shows that while both rich and poor families increase their expenditures on home fuel during the winter, poor families offset this cost through decreasing food purchases, with an average 10 percent decrease in caloric intake. Parents know that children can freeze to death more quickly than they starve to death, and so most decrease food purchases first to pay for heat. Many inevitably sacrifice on both fronts, living with food scarcity while heating their homes with cooking stoves and space heaters, both of which dramatically increase the risk of fires, burns, and carbon monoxide poisoning.

  Peak Oil

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

  WaPo

And since we can privatize military operations, hiring mercenaries from the poor of third world countries, there isn't as much call any more to keep breeding our own.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

SCHIP

During a debate on children's health care Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark accused Republicans of sending troops to Iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

[...]

"You don't have money to fund the war or children," Stark accused Republicans. "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

[...]

Condemnations rolled in from Republican politicians, right-leaning bloggers had a field day, and a White House spokesman declined to "dignify those remarks" with a response.

  SF Gate

Conducting such a dignified war as it is. And, by the way, wasn’t that, in fact, a response?

Stark's comment came as the House failed Thursday to override President Bush's veto of legislation to expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program.

And Nancy Pelosi said his comments on the war were inappropriate and distracting. Heaven forbid the war should distract us from anything.

After numerous Republicans called on him to apologize, Stark said it was they who should be apologizing, for failing to provide the votes to override Bush's veto.

Go Big Pete.

This is something that the whole country seems to be able to get passionate about. It's the only issue I have yet seen anyone here on Galveston Island making a public statement about by gathering together and holding signs on street corners.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Trust Us

Humberto caught sight of something interesting off to his right, puffed up to hurricane force and headed east. So, my internet connection is still up....

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients' medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies."

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

  AP

Soon to Be Another Statistic

In February of 2005, my sister sent me a link to a story out of Kansas, which I posted here. Then-Attorney General Phill Klein, an abortion opponent, was investigating abortion clinics and seeking the private records of 90 women who had late-term abortions at Planned Parenthood.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline is demanding that two abortion clinics turn over the names, sexual histories and medical records of 90 women who received late-term abortions.

[...]

At a brief news conference he told reporters that the subpoenas sent to the clinics were meant to uncover evidence to be used in investigations of crimes that could include child rape.

[...]

In the brief filed this week, the clinics point out that Kline's requests single out women who received late-term abortions, and not specifically young girls who may have been raped.

How records without names or any other personal identification could be used to investigate child rape cases apparently couldn't be explained, and so Kline was permitted the records with all personal identification removed. Kline lost the next election to Paul Morrison on the basis, it's said, of the issue of right to privacy.

Attorney General Morrison is currently in a legal battle to have Mr. Kline, now the Johnson County District Attorney, return those subpoenaed records. And Kansas' late-term abortion law is still under scrutiny.

I am updating this story, which I had promptly forgotten after the original post, because while checking YWA site traffic, I found someone had visited the blog by a referral from a search engine while searching with the following terms: "how will you gain access to the materials i need for abortion." I'd like to say that hit came from a third-world country or a mysogynistic, oppressive regime. Alas, it came from Kentucky.

At least we can rule out third-world country.

Health Care: Our National Disgrace

If you haven't already seen the clip from the Democrats' AFL-CIO debate questioning the state of health care in this country, go have a look at it now.

More Cross-Species Research

If you suffer from blindness related to certain conditions, you may soon be in luck - you could have fish cell injections.

I have this recurring idea about the circles and cycles of life and the ring of infinity wherein our future meets a point where it is also our past. Perhaps something cataclysmic happens periodically, and the reset button is pushed on the earth, in essence. The remaining few humans are reduced to savage survival status and have to start all over. Millenia later, they reach the point where they have our level of technology, and off they go, as humans do, into areas of experimentation with things they know little or nothing about, and eventually wind up at the same ending/starting place. Reset.

These stories of cross-species experimentation always make me think of the stories about (mythological) creatures that were half man, half beast. How do stories get remembered and told and retold and passed down over the ages if they come through the minds of people who have had no institutions of learning for thousands of years? Maybe they become myths for future generations.

Sicko

Michael Moore gives Wolf Blitzer hell on air. Bill O'Reilly would have pulled the mike.

Update: Part 2

Good News for Bad Behavior

Obese people are more likely to survive a heart attack (even though they are also more likely to have one), and smokers are less likely to contract Parkinson's.

....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Universal Health Care

While Fox, MSNBC and followers are harping on national health care as a tool in the hands of terrorists, the WHO has a look at France's universal health care in comparison with our system.

In a recent World Health Organization health-care ranking, France came in first, while the U.S. scored 37th, slightly better than Cuba and one notch above Slovenia. France's infant death rate is 3.9 per 1,000 live births, compared with 7 in the U.S., and average life expectancy is 79.4 years, two years more than in the U.S. The country has far more hospital beds and doctors per capita than America, and far lower rates of death from diabetes and heart disease. The difference in deaths from respiratory disease, an often preventable form of mortality, is particularly striking: 31.2 per 100,000 people in France, vs. 61.5 per 100,000 in the U.S

That's not to say the French have solved all health-care riddles. Like every other nation, France is wrestling with runaway health-care inflation. That has led to some hefty tax hikes, and France is now considering U.S.-style health-maintenance organization tactics to rein in costs. Still, some 65% of French citizens express satisfaction with their system, compared with 40% of U.S. residents. And France spends just 10.7% of its gross domestic product on health care, while the U.S. lays out 16%, more than any other nation.

  Business Week

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

National Health Care Terror

It's picking up steam.

National Health Terrorism

MSNBC joins the bandwagon.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Private Health Care....

....a matter of national security?

Update: I want to pull out a section of Bob's comment (see comments link) and post it up front here:

Brilliant! That explains why 9/11 happened in Sweden, the anthrax attacks in Denmark, and the Oklahoma City bombing in Canada.