Op-Ed Columnist
The Rage Is Not About Health Care
By FRANK RICH
Published: March 27, 2010
THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.
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But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.
How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.
No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.
Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill!” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.
When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post, Alf Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign on a call for repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only pray that the G.O.P. will “go for it” again in 2010, as Obama goaded them on Thursday, and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by September will shower benefits on the elderly and children alike.) When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association.
But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.
If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.
•
Correction: Timothy Geithner’s title at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was president and chief executive officer, not chairman, as I wrote here last week.
Sign in to RecommendMore Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on March 28, 2010, on page WK10 of the New York edition.
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Past Coverage
The Crescendo of the Rally Cry (January 24, 2010)
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
From the Daily Green
23.2010 5:14 PM
Study: High Fructose Corn Syrup Worse Than Sugar
A new study finds high fructose corn syrup causes significantly more weight gain than table sugar.
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As if you needed another reason to avoid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS): researchers at Princeton University have found that HFCS is actually much worse than regular sugar when it comes to causing weight gain.
The study found that rats with access to HFCS gained significantly more weight than rats with access to table sugar -- even when they're caloric intake was the same. A second study by the researchers found that HFCS lead to long-term increases in body fat, obesity, and a rise in body fats called triglycerides.
Said Princeton psychology professor Bart Hoebel, "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."
This new study contradicts earlier beliefs that high fructose corn syrup and table sugar were similar in that they both contained high levels of fructose. Instead, say the Princeton researchers, they now believe that fructose -- in HFCS -- and glucose -- in table syrup, may be processed by the body differently. Fructose is metabolized to produce fat, they believe, while glucose is processed as energy or stored as a carbohydrate in the muscles and liver.
Researchers also pointed out that since high fructose corn syrup was introduced 40 years ago, U.S. obesity rates have skyrocketed. In 1970 15% of the population was considered obese, and today around 1/3 of American adults qualify as obese.
Find this article at: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/high-fructose-corn-syrup-synd
Study: High Fructose Corn Syrup Worse Than Sugar
A new study finds high fructose corn syrup causes significantly more weight gain than table sugar.
var isBlog = false;
var imageUrl = "/cm/thedailygreen/images/3Q/23-30days-fructose-lg.jpg";
var path = "/environmental-news/latest/";
var pathArray = new Array();
pathArray = path.split('/');
for( i = 1; i ');
}
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As if you needed another reason to avoid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS): researchers at Princeton University have found that HFCS is actually much worse than regular sugar when it comes to causing weight gain.
The study found that rats with access to HFCS gained significantly more weight than rats with access to table sugar -- even when they're caloric intake was the same. A second study by the researchers found that HFCS lead to long-term increases in body fat, obesity, and a rise in body fats called triglycerides.
Said Princeton psychology professor Bart Hoebel, "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."
This new study contradicts earlier beliefs that high fructose corn syrup and table sugar were similar in that they both contained high levels of fructose. Instead, say the Princeton researchers, they now believe that fructose -- in HFCS -- and glucose -- in table syrup, may be processed by the body differently. Fructose is metabolized to produce fat, they believe, while glucose is processed as energy or stored as a carbohydrate in the muscles and liver.
Researchers also pointed out that since high fructose corn syrup was introduced 40 years ago, U.S. obesity rates have skyrocketed. In 1970 15% of the population was considered obese, and today around 1/3 of American adults qualify as obese.
Find this article at: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/high-fructose-corn-syrup-synd
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
From the High Country News
Taking back the country
Colorado's political season got off to its official start on March 16 with precinct caucuses, but even before those gatherings, some candidates had ads on TV.
Among them was Jane Norton, former lieutenant governor and one of several candidates for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. The seat was won by Democrat Ken Salazar in 2004. He was appointed Secretary of the Interior, and his appointed replacement, Michael Bennet, is also involved in a contest for his party's nomination, and his campaign has also aired some advertising.
Back to Norton. Part of her televised message is "We can take our country back."
Like many GOP candidates this year, she's trying to get some Tea Party support. And there's a message you see and hear at Tea Party events: "Let's take our country back" or "It's time we took our country back" or some variation thereof.
Indeed, the unofficial anthem of the movement is a song called "Take our Country Back" by Chris Cassone, who performed it at the 9/12 Rally in front of the U.S. Capitol. He also plans to be there singing it on March 27, when a traveling Tea Party "Just vote them out" series of rallies starts in Searchlight, Nev. (home town of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), and wends toward Washington, D.C., through Arizona, Utah and Colorado.
But just what do they mean by "Take our country back"? The song lyrics aren't much help; the lines point to the sinister powers of an unnamed "they," as in "Draw a line in the sand so they all understand" or "Soon they'll try to take away the only voices left that say the truth."
The phrase "take our country back" implies that there was a time when "we" had "our country," that something happened since then to dispossess "us," but "we" can organize to get it back.
Now, if this were a rallying point for the Utes, Navajo, Lakota or similar Native American nation, "take our country back" would make sense. I'd understand it.
It might also make sense for hard-core Texans or Californians, since those states were independent republics before joining the United States. While there may be some secessionist sentiment in the Lone Star State these days, the "take our country back" attitude extends far beyond its borders.
So what do they have in mind? Who's the "they" that has at some point swiped the country from its rightful rulers?
Politicians? Since America started governing itself, the government has, pretty much by definition, been run by politicians. So they're nothing new.
Lobbyists? They've been around pretty much since, well, before America was a nation -- Benjamin Franklin went to London in 1757 to lobby the British parliament on behalf of Pennsylvania's.
Pundits? Well, there's Franklin again, along with many other founding fathers, like Alexendar Hamilton and James Madison when they produed the Federalist Papers.
As for economic domination, you could make the case that America was pretty well run by slaveholders before 1861, and after the Civil War came industrialists and financiers. So that may be what's changed, in the sense of there being something to go back to. But I seriously doubt that the "take our country back" rallies are really calling for a return to chattel slavery.
So even though "take our country back" resonates as a slogan, I can't figure out what it means. And I'm a rural white guy with no college degree -- that is, part of the demographic group that really should be able to understand Tea Party slogans.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Maybe, another interview
Someone from HR called me at home this afternoon, on Sunday no less, and asked me questions about my background and experience in preparation for, perhaps, an interview for a parttime bed placement position I have applied for. It may just be for a token interview, since she several times talked about how many "internal" applications there have been for the position. I don't know what mine was, if not "internal". At the end she did say she would forward my info to the hiring manager for the position first thing Monday morning. So maybe I will get an interview. That would be a perfect position. I would stay in touch with the ER and the ER people I worked with, without being exposed to every virus and sickness that crosses the threshold there. I love the ER, but I can barely afford to work there when I catch so many bugs and have to go to the doctor and/or call in sick.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Sick but working
Believe me, if I had health insurance, I would not be working tonight. But I can't afford to take the time off with no pay, no work, and I cant afford to go to the doctor without having insurance either. I probably should make a serious effort to transfer to Ob or Inpatient or SOMETHING else, as working in the ER seems to just cause a cycle of being sick, working, being sick, etc.
But most of my coworkers seem to be sick too. We have all had colds, and I at least am on the second round of a cold in the last month. SOre throat, congestion, coughing. Grrrrr.
But most of my coworkers seem to be sick too. We have all had colds, and I at least am on the second round of a cold in the last month. SOre throat, congestion, coughing. Grrrrr.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Bobcat encounter
I would like to give credit for this photo to whoever took it, but I can't find the original again. Sorry.
On my way home today, in broad daylight, a bobcat crossed the dirt road in front of me, less than 1/4 mile from home. I stopped, and he stopped, not 2 car lengths away from me, and we just looked at each other. Gosh, he was so beautiful, with deep rich color and his fur was thick and looked so soft. He was bigger than I thought bobcats are, about the size of Sam, when I thought they were about the size of Robin. Eventually, he turned and ambled away toward the river bottom.
On my way home today, in broad daylight, a bobcat crossed the dirt road in front of me, less than 1/4 mile from home. I stopped, and he stopped, not 2 car lengths away from me, and we just looked at each other. Gosh, he was so beautiful, with deep rich color and his fur was thick and looked so soft. He was bigger than I thought bobcats are, about the size of Sam, when I thought they were about the size of Robin. Eventually, he turned and ambled away toward the river bottom.
If a bobcat were to kill all our chickens, I guess we would just have to make our chicken pens stronger, because I wouldn't want to kill a bobcat since I have looked into his eyes.
My bobcat was a deeper richer brown than this photo, and his head was bigger in proportion to his body. This photo is of a Florida bobcat, and mine is an Arizona bobcat.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Bloglines - Who do our political parties really care about?
Bloglines user ajw1981@live.com has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:
He is SOOO right!
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Saturday, February 13, 2010
What am I working on now?
The top photo is of the wall hanging I started in the class with Suzanne Marshall at Quilting in the Desert. I am now officially obsessed with hand applique.
The photos with the black backgrounds are from a machine applique class I took from Sue Nichols at Quilting in the Desert a couple of years ago. It has been a UFO since then, but now I have pulled it out and will finish with mostly hand applique. The original pattern was 9 blocks, but I wanted it rectangular instead of square. So I have 5 more blocks to do. Yay, because I am doing them in a small blanket stitch and I can do that when watching DVDs. The needleturn of the top wall hanging (which still has the outer blue border to be done) requires very good light.
The very bottom picture is one block of a 4-block machine qpplique that I am doing as a series quilt in Quilters Newsletter. I am using a small satin stitch around the appliques. So on the rare occasions I get to work on a machine, I work on it.
New baby chicks
These chicks were hatched in Texas on 02112010 and sent priority mail to us, arriving Friday morning. We ordered 25 and Ideal Hatchery sent 28, all arriving in good health. These are Buff Cornish, adding to DH's Cornish flock. He already has Dark Cornish and White-Laced Red Cornish, and I have 2 Buff Orpingtons to provide a steady supply of eggs. All the Cornish are poor layers but great eating.
We will end up eating over half of these. All but one of the roosters will be food and likely some of the hens too. Depends on how much DH likes them when they grow up and whether he wants to interbreed with his other color varieties.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Monday, February 08, 2010
Accomplished
Well, assisted living is accomplished, and everybody is happy. She is in the same facility as her boyfriend and several doors down from him, as well as near the game room and library there. Suhc a relief, and what a novelty to spend the evening with my husband on my rare nights off from the ER.
I do seem to be posting my thoughts and links mostly to Facebook nowadays, though. I guess that is because maybe somebody will read it there, and very few people ever seem to read this blog.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Assisted living time
It looks like we are going to have to find a way to move my MIL into an assisted living facility. Since she broke her wrist last week, my DH has been staying with her and he has been observing her life and habits, and is also going over her finances. She has managed to lose a lot of the $ that were there when my FIL died, even over and above what we all lost when the stock market nose-dived. DH is seriously worried about letting her even continue to write checks, as she seems to have lost the ability to understand what happens when she does it. He has called upon his brother to come down and stay with her this weekend sohe can come home and regroup, and they will have to have a council to decide what to do. I am so glad I am working and will be unable to attend that one. Several W.....s in the same room, arguing, are the stuff of nightmares. I believe that their dead sister's husband will be there too, as he has actually been the most attentive child in recent years and was the one she called when she fell and broke her wrist.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
working hard
I so rarely have a chance to even think, much less write, while at work that I don't know what to do with myself. We are having a very slow day in the area I am working at, in the ER today, and I have nothing else to do. Everything is done, and I have no needlework or reading in my bag because I removed them to remove temptation. So I am stuck.
Last week my supervisor "counselled" me about doing anything at work besides work. Evidently someone had reported to her that they had seen me knitting while on duty and in front of a computer. It was puzzling to me, since I have never knitted at this job, but I took it, because I had done a little hand applique one very late, very slow night when there was nothing else to do. All I can figure is that either that nasty person doesn't know applique from knitting, or else she didnt tattle on me, but on somebody else who WAS knitting, and didnt give a name. Either way, I wish she/he had said something to me, as it had never occurred to me that it was verboten. I see others reading, or texting, or fooling around on the internet all the time. I guess its only something actually useful that is banned. Ok, that is a bit sarcastic. Probably the other things are not allowed either; just that nobody has felt they had to report those people. I must have make an enemy, although I have no idea who it might be. Oh well, enemies usually manage to make themselves known sooner or later.
Last week my supervisor "counselled" me about doing anything at work besides work. Evidently someone had reported to her that they had seen me knitting while on duty and in front of a computer. It was puzzling to me, since I have never knitted at this job, but I took it, because I had done a little hand applique one very late, very slow night when there was nothing else to do. All I can figure is that either that nasty person doesn't know applique from knitting, or else she didnt tattle on me, but on somebody else who WAS knitting, and didnt give a name. Either way, I wish she/he had said something to me, as it had never occurred to me that it was verboten. I see others reading, or texting, or fooling around on the internet all the time. I guess its only something actually useful that is banned. Ok, that is a bit sarcastic. Probably the other things are not allowed either; just that nobody has felt they had to report those people. I must have make an enemy, although I have no idea who it might be. Oh well, enemies usually manage to make themselves known sooner or later.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Friday, January 01, 2010
Emailing: 001, 002, 004, 005, 006
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Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Totally Useless StitchAlong
Lots of orts, not all from this little project. Also hand appliqued many circles for a quilt, of which the next picture is less than half. The others are on the outer border, which I am not finished with yet.
Friday, November 27, 2009
From EWG
Not in my cosmetics: The Series
NOVEMBER 23, 2009
If you love EWG's Skin Deep database, then this series is for you. If you've never even heard of our Skin Deep database, this series is also for you. And for pretty much anyone else on the planet who uses toothpaste, shampoo, diaper cream, lipstick, cologne, shaving cream, nail polish and basically any other "personal care product" you can think of.
We're kicking off the series with a True-False Quiz because, well, so few people know how bad it really is in the cosmetics aisles. How wildly unregulated. So if you get them all wrong, you're not alone. But you do need help. Ready?
QUESTION 1: Ingredients in personal care products are required to be proven safe for use before being sold in the US.
FALSE! "Cosmetic products and ingredients are not subject to FDA premarket approval authority, with the exception of color additives." - Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Nearly 80 percent of the 10,500 ingredients used in personal care products have not been evaluated for safety by the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, the industry's own public research organization, the FDA or any publicly accountable institution.
QUESTION 2. If you use a product without having a noticeable adverse reaction, it's safe.
FALSE! As you can tell from the first question, we really don't know. What is known is that common ingredients in personal care products have been linked to various concerns, such as reproductive issues, cancers and allergies. We also know that some of these ingredients can accumulate in our bodies. For example, phthalates, a group of common plasticizer, have been found in breast cancer tissue.
QUESTION 3. Avoiding a few key toxic ingredients will allow you to reduce your toxic exposure.
TRUE! While you can't shop your way around chemical exposures completely, you can avoid key cosmetic ingredient offenders, like fragrance and triclosan. You'll be doing yourself and the environment a huge favor. Hint - sign off one ingredient at a time. It's a lot more manageable, and allows you to focus your attention on one area while shopping, instead of examining every 15-letter word on the label.
QUESTION 4. Products labeled as having "natural" and "organic" ingredients are always safer than conventional ones.
FALSE! Just as ingredients aren't required to be tested for safety, there is no recognized standard for organic personal care products, either. A "natural" ingredient is not automatically safe. These ingredients can still be biologically active, and thus, have a strong effect on the human body, e.g. poison ivy.
Your best bet is to go with companies that fully disclose formulations, many of which proudly advertise certain missing toxic ingredients.
QUESTION 5. Personal care products can make their way inside your body.
TRUE! Whether a chemical is soaked in through the skin, or an aerosol spray is inhaled or suds wash down the drain and back into the drinking water supply - they can easily end up in your body. The musk xylene, which is commonly found in fragrances (and paint thinners!) has been found in human fat (link: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/research/whythismatters.php).
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) lists the skin as the "most common path of toxic substance exposure." No wonder, as it is the body's largest organ and has impressive absorption abilities. Medicinal dermal patches are an example of how reliable of an exposure route it really is. No need to swallow, inhale or inject - just apply to a small area and the skin will do the rest.
Stay tuned for future installments of Not in my cosmetics: The Series. Got a question you hope we include? Stop hoping and tell us - in the comments, please!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Bloglines - Experiential Gifts for the Holidays
Bloglines user ajw1981@live.com has sent this item to you, with the following personal message:
Check these out for those who don't want to buy consumer goods for the holidays.
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
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Emailing: OctNov2009 007 Totally Useless SAL
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I have mostly been knitting on this simple shawl since finishing a wedding quilt last week. Too dark in front of the DVD player to do much needlepoint.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
From the NY Times
A new type of visitor came to the National Mall this year, flitting past monuments and museums in favor of trees, flowers and plants. But this wasn’t just some horticultural tour; no, this was work. Each day they were abuzz, gathering and pollinating before returning home to modest quarters with tremendous security near Lafayette Park.
Meet the White House honeybee.
Numbering more than 65,000 at one point, the bees produced a bumper crop of honey this year, the first time honey has ever been made on White House grounds. The hive, located on the South Lawn, is a key part of First LadyMichelle Obama’s organic kitchen garden project.
Basswood and cherry trees helped create a unique taste for White House honey.The total haul was 134 pounds of honey, or roughly 11 gallons. Charlie Brandts, the White House beekeeper, couldn’t be more pleased. “I figured they would make 30 or so pounds of honey,” he said. “They surprised me.”
That access to the National Mall is one reason. “It’s just an abundance of blooms,” Mr. Brandts said, noting the local flowers, plants and trees were ripe with bee-attracting nectar. “The Ellipse and monument grounds are just a great source of clover. It’s like having a huge pasture.”
A White House carpenter for the past 25 years, Mr. Brandts started beekeeping in the backyard of his Maryland home three years ago.
The natural honey his hives produced drew the attention of White House chefs, who introduced him to Sam Kass, the Chicago chef who followed the Obamas from their hometown to the White House. Mr. Kass wondered whether beehives could be part of the White House garden.
“I said ‘I think it would be very doable,’ ” Mr. Brandt said, recalling the conversation. “It was that simple. It just gets complicated after that.”
For one, the beehive sits in the flight path of Marine One, President Obama’s helicopter. “We don’t worry about just the lid blowing off, we worry about the hive blowing over,” Mr. Brandts said.
Mr. Brandts lent the White House bee swarms from his own backyard, setting up the new hive in late March. The bees –which travel as far as three miles from the hive– started bringing in nectar in April.
“These bees on the South Grounds are such sweet bees,” Mr. Brandts said. “I don’t know if it’s because they are down there by themselves or they are just the best bees.”
In June, Mr. Brandts collected 42 pounds of honey in the first extraction. (Since he uses a handheld smoker to placate the bees, he alerts the Secret Service beforehand.) At first, the bees produced a mild, delicately flavored honey lightly tan in color. The Mall’s cherry trees, which bloomed in early April, provided some nectar for that first batch. Clover, black locust and basswood could also be detected. As the summer progressed, the honey’s color darkened, with the fifth and final extraction revealing honey almost chestnut in color.
“We really only got two pounds of that, it’s a rarity,” Mr. Brandts said, noting that one flower on the grounds could have had an influence. “The whole fountain had red salvia planted around it, and it was always covered with bees. I suspect it was from that.”
Now that the weather has cooled, the bees’ production has slowed, and Mr. Brandts hopes to keep them alive, however, sleepily, through the winter.
As for the abundance of honey, the White House has kept some for both the residence and for official events. During a Halloween party hosted by the White House on Saturday night, trick-or-treaters received a honey-sweetened shortbread cookie. And at Latin American concert last month, the menu included desserts made with honey.
In addition, spouses of world leaders received special jars of the honey as one of the gifts from Mrs. Obama at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh earlier this fall. Miriam’s Kitchen, a local food bank which serves meals to the homeless, has received honey along with produce from the garden.
“It doesn’t take a lot to make a difference,” said Steve Badt, kitchen operations director at Miriam’s Kitchen, where they have made fruit smoothies finished with a drizzle of White House honey. “Each blenderful gets a tablespoon or so. It’s a nice little touch, just like tea.”
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Who’s on Board?
Who’s on Board?
See this about avoiding the use of plastic. I have been trying to do this for a while, but its time to get serious!!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
From EWG
Something is amiss with our children
OCTOBER 22, 2009
Written by Alice Shabecoff, co-author with her husband Philip of Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on our Children
As we watched each of our five grandchildren and their friends enter this world and begin their life's journey, it became more and more clear that something is amiss with this generation. How are your children and your friends' children doing?
Most likely, one in three of the children you know in this generation suffers from a chronic illness. Perhaps it's cancer, or birth defects, perhaps asthma, or a problem that affects the child's mind and behavior, such as Downs Syndrome, learning disorders, ADHD or autism. Though one in three may sound exaggerated, unbelievable, the figures are there amidst various government files.
This generation is different.
Childhood cancer, once a medical rarity, has grown 67 percent since 1950. Asthma has increased 140 percent in the last twenty years and autism rates without a doubt have increased at least 200 percent. Miscarriages and premature births are also on the rise, while the ratio of male babies dwindles and teenage girls face endometriosis.
The generations born from 1970 on are the first to be raised in a truly toxified world. Even before conception and on into adulthood, the assault is everywhere: heavy metals and carcinogenic particles in air pollution; industrial solvents, household detergents, prozac and radioactive wastes in drinking water; pesticides in flea collars; artificial growth hormones in beef, arsenic in chicken; synthetic hormones in bottles, teething rings and medical devices; formaldehyde in cribs and nail polish, and even rocket fuel in lettuce. Pacifiers are now manufactured with nanoparticles from silver, to be sold as 'antibacterial.'
What's wrong with rinsing a pacifier in soapy water?
Despite naysayers (who pays them to say nay?--that's a whole story in itself), it's clear there is both an association and a causative connection between the vast explosion of poisons in our everyday lives and our childrens' "issues."
Over 80,000 industrial chemicals (tested only by the manufacturer) are in commerce in this country, produced or imported at 15 trillion pounds a year. Pesticide use has leaped from the troubling 400 million pounds Rachel Carson wrote about in the 1960s to the mind-boggling 4.4 billion pounds in use today. Nuclear power plants, aging and under-maintained, increasingly leak wastes, often without notifying their community.
What could be more elemental than our desire to protect our children? Children and fetuses, because of their undeveloped defense systems, are ten to sixty-five times more susceptible to specific toxics than adults. These toxics diminish the capacities of our children...the future of our families, our communities, our nation.
Illness does not necessarily show up in childhood. Environmental exposures, from conception to early life, can set a person´s cellular code for life and can cause disease at any time, through old age. This accounts for the rise in Parkinson´s and Alzheimer´s diseases, prostate and breast cancer.
A message of hope and optimism
Yet this is not the dispiriting 'Bad News' it might seem. It is, actually, a message of hope and optimism. We are fearful only when we are ignorant and powerless. Now that we know what is happening, we can determine not to let it happen further.
These poisons are manmade; manufacturers can take them out of our children´s lives and make profits from safe products. 'Green chemistry' can replace toxic molecules with harmless ones. We can connect global climate change actions to environmental health strategies. If we replace coal-fired power, in the process we reduce not only carbon but also emissions of the tons of lead, mercury, hydrochloric acid, chromium, arsenic, sulfur and nitrogen oxides that cause autism, Alzheimer's and other public health menaces.
In a riff on Pogo, let's say, "We have met the heroes and it is us." We cannot bury our heads and hope it will all go away. We cannot leave the job to someone else. Some may feel the problem is so massive, it's best to pretend it doesn't exist. But it isn't more massive than we allow it to be. It's totally within our reach.
We can make each other smarter and stronger. It is in our power to learn about what harms our children and to share our knowledge. It is in our power as a community of citizens and parents to demand action against the current harmful policies and practices and against the indiscriminate use of processes and practices that destroy and degrade all life on our planet.
Read EWG's review of the book and learn more about the Shabecoffs and Poisoned Profits here.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
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Saturday, October 17, 2009
Still sick
The occ health doctor listened to my lungs and refused to let me go back to work. He was actually very rude about it; said my lungs were full of junk and to go see my doctor. Since it was nearly 5 PM on a Friday, I asked if he could write me a prescription himself, but he said no, to go to Urgent Care if I couldn't go to my own doctor. One of those people who has never heard of anyone NOT having health insurance to pay the bills with, I guess.
In retrospective, I realize that he was just tired, overworked, and afraid of catching something from me, probably, but he is the first person I have encountered working for my new employer that has been anything but nice.
I was lucky. I did drive straight to my doctor's office and he agreed to see me right then. I was the very last person in the door. My own doctor also said my lungs are terrible, but he gave me a week's supply of a very pricey antibiotic and a script for a cheap steroid to get me started healing. So at least I didn't have to go another 2 or 3 days before getting on the road to health again.
My boss did say on the phone that another one of us has been out for 3 weeks already. I hope to be back at work by the middle of next week.
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