One of my favorite blogs, 3 Quarks Daily has announced the third of its slated competitions in best writing on blogs. This round is for the three best political blog posts published anywhere in the blogosphere during the last 12 months. Please see the contest rules and deadlines and submit a post that you consider worthy of a prize. Remember it does not have to be just American politics. Keep an eye on the contest even if you don't submit a post.
Sarah Palin made it to my corner of the woods, this Saturday afternoon. "Thousands" lined up to meet her, per the gushing report from the Washington PA Observer-Reporter
(Note, the website page had been read 297 times by the time I saw it. Are there thousands of people in Washington PA, or was the true number of gawkers and admirers just barely over 2000, which would have qualified for the use of the plural?)
"Thousands of people stood in a queue outside Sam’s Club at Trinity
Point Saturday morning, many standing in line overnight, for a chance
to see Sarah Palin and have her autograph a copy of her new book.
…
Sharon Jacobs of Greer, S.C., along with her sister, Amy Gerwing of
Venetia, got into line about 8:30 p.m. Friday outside the store. For
Gerwing, it was not only an opportunity to have her books signed but to
thank Palin for the note she sent to the Peters Township woman when she
was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Palin sent her a note offering words of encouragement from herself and
her husband, Todd Palin. Gerwing said a friend of hers sent Palin an
e-mail about her diagnosis. Palin sent the note a few weeks later.
Jacobs said while her sister is a big Palin supporter, she was
ambivalent about the former Republican vice presidential nominee who
may be pointing for her own run to the White House.
“I am trying to educate myself and learn more about her,” Jacobs said.
———–
Why didn't the folksy note translate into unquestioning adoration for Palin, I wonder. Maybe Palin's early departure leaving 400-odd unsigned books at Noblesville, Indiana yesterday had them wondering about the wisdom of relying on Palin.
Also, some camped there overnight in their enthusiasm – at least 40 people were in line at 8:30 pm on Friday, as they formed new friendships over mutual admiration of Palin. "He said Palin is likable because she is a down-to-earth conservative woman. "She hunts," he added."
For this area, like many others, is Hunter's Paradise, the land of the brave, the free, the 'bitter who cling to their guns and religion'.
A few days ago, the headlines blared that a federally appointed Task Force of doctors and scientists recommended that the age for using mammography as a screening tool to detect breast cancer be increased from the current 40-49 years to 50-59 years, be dispensed with for those older than 75 and be biannual for those in the suggested age range for screening, rather than annual, also that breast self-exam teaching to women was essentially useless and generated more anxiety than results.
A furore erupted. The American Cancer Society and almost all major medical bodies vehemently attacked these recommendations as being unwarranted, given that the screening for women aged 40-49 has saved many lives. The emotional/familial cost benefit of a life saved vs. a thousand more women subjected to 'anxiety from needless tests' was vastly more than the corresponding economic cost benefit.
These recommendations are what happen when the cold realities of models and benefits of screenings vs. lives saved are weighed as the major factor in deciding public policy.
Among the studies quoted by the task force:
JAMA- "Rethinking screening for Breast and Prostate Cancer"
"After 20 years of screening for breast and prostate cancer, several observations can be made. First, the incidence of these cancers increased after the introduction of screening but has never returned to prescreening levels. Second, the increase in the relative fraction of early stage cancers has increased. Third, the incidence of regional cancers has not decreased at a commensurate rate. One possible explanation is that screening may be increasing the burden of low-risk cancers without significantly reducing the burden of more aggressively growing cancers and therefore not resulting in the anticipated reduction in cancer mortality. To reduce morbidity and mortality from prostate cancer and breast cancer, new approaches for screening, early detection, and prevention for both diseases should be considered."
"SEER Incidence
From 2002-2006, the median age at diagnosis for cancer of the breast was 61 years of age3.
Approximately 0.0% were diagnosed under age 20; 1.9% between 20 and 34;
10.5% between 35 and 44; 22.5% between 45 and 54; 23.7% between 55 and
64; 19.6% between 65 and 74; 16.2% between 75 and 84; and 5.5% 85+
years of age."
Compared with say, lung cancer, the number of women per 100,000 who die of lung cancer is approximately 40, as opposed to 24 in 100,000 due to breast cancer, from the SEER website. So breast cancer is not the number-one killer cancer of women, though with all the pink ribbons, we might think that it is the most deadly cancer for women in the US.
So, the good doctors assembled and came to the conclusion that pushing for early screenings for a cancer that is deadlier in an older age group is nonsensical, and that it causes unnecessary scaremongering for younger women who aren't quite as likely to die of breast cancer. Hence the recommendations.
But here's when the intersection occurs of 'One life saved is worth it' and emotional appeals from 100,000 women freshly diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ at the age of 40 or thereabouts, followed by chemotherapy regimens designed to kill those and label all of them as breast cancer survivors who proudly wear pink ribbons to announce their status, even as they muster courage to fight on, while death is held at bay through expensive medication to prevent recurrence. The argument moves from the numbers and public health policy decisions to that of emotional appeals.
As for me, maybe I'll take the middle way out, given that I live in a much more xenoestrogenic environment in the US, as opposed to where I was born and brought up. I'll mammo after another 4-5 years, rather than immediately.
As for Pap smears, there appears to be no hue and cry over the new recommendations by the physicians' body for OB-Gynes, so I'll take their word for it and postpone those uncomfortable tests to match their new suggested schedule.
"Dr. Iglesia said the argument for changing Pap screening was more
compelling than that for cutting back on mammography — which the
obstetricians’ group has staunchly opposed — because there is more
potential for harm from the overuse of Pap tests. The reason is that
young women are especially prone to develop abnormalities in the cervix
that appear to be precancerous, but that will go away if left alone.
But when Pap tests find the growths, doctors often remove them, with
procedures that can injure the cervix and lead to problems later when a
woman becomes pregnant, including premature birth and an increased risk
of needing a Caesarean."
An attractive visual time line of the disappearance of world empires. (via 3 Quarks Daily)
For some people nothing President Obama does can pass leadership muster. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, "If Barack Obama walks on water, some will criticize him for not knowing how to swim."
Okay, okay, so Obama bowed a bit too deeply before the emperor of Japan. May be he wasn't coached properly by the White House protocol office. Or perhaps, he is just too polite. Whatever. At least he didn't hold hands and do a silly dance with the Saudi royals. And since when is Dick "shoot your friend in the face" Cheney the model of courteous behavior?
What’s going on here? It’s a bittersweet human interest tale with some facts and figures mixed in, not too cloying.
Blacks and whites have encountered one another in increasing numbers recently in the crowded waiting rooms of the welfare office and at the food pantry, where many of both races have ventured for the first time. Struggling black-owned businesses are attracting the attention of white patrons. Neighbors are commiserating across racial lines.
[…]
Across the country, there have been many reports about the recession’s racial divide, as blacks have lost their jobs and houses at far higher rates than whites. But Henry County, about a 30-minute drive south of downtown Atlanta, has a very different profile from the rest of the nation. In Henry, the median income of black families, $56,715 in 2008, approaches that of whites, $69,728 (nationally, the average income gap was $20,000). Blacks in Henry County, many of whom are retirees from the North or professionals who work in Atlanta, are more likely than whites to have a college degree.
That does not mean that Henry County is a perfect laboratory of equality. Blacks made up a disproportionately high number of those seeking government assistance both before and after the slowdown. Since 2006, the number of blacks on Medicaid has more than tripled, outpacing the increase among whites.
But it seems as if a point is being missed when a black man’s preemptive apology—”I’m not racist, but it’s harder for black men.”—goes unremarked, indeed, is used to convey a facile notion of equality, one for which racism is little more than a personal preference. I have a hard time swallowing the notion that the leveling phenomenon of Henry County is a silver lining of the economic cloud. If a bridge is spanning a racial divide, it’s more likely due to a shared oppression than to a sudden recognition of common needs and ambitions. Wealth and power can be wholesomely color-blind when targeting subjects to exploit.
Two views on why it happened:
Charles Krauthammer's "call it like it is" excoriation of political correctness.
What a surprise — that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan's religious beliefs. …
….Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague's religion?
One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.
What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn't cry "Allahu Akbar" as they squeezed the trigger.
The delicacy about the religion in question — condescending, politically correct and deadly — is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: "Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center."
Ah yes, those Jersey men — so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.
Frank Rich's more nuanced and actually, more scary analysis of the danger that lurks in places from Killeen to Kabul. (Read the whole article)
Here are the suggestions of Sujatha, the humble not-so-uber-geeky blogger, on C&Ping from webpages when composing blog posts:
1. Focus on Tested Websites, not obscurities. (Psalm 345:1-3)
Notice how Sujatha extols Google first. Then, in comparison to Google, she has no need of alternate search engines.
"The Google is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?"
"The Google is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
Undoubtedly one of the greatest hurdles to overcome in blogging is fear, the fear of PC Viruses, Trojans and Malware.
Sujatha did not let fear take the blog out of her life.
Blogger Ruchira shares the story of a person who had a very bad day.
"Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it's your reputation that's stolen."
It began when Mike was suspected based on his internet charges by his employers of excessive internet usage. An investigation turned up pornographic pictures on his computer, which cost him his job and thousands of dollars in money spent to clear himself of the charges, which were found to have been the result of PC viruses downloading porn on his computer when he wasn't even at work.
Have you ever felt like that? One minute you’re whistling through life, blogging away happily and the next you’re caught up in a whirlwind of stress, as unwanted ads pop up on your blog's webpage. Life sucks you up into its vortex and just when you think you’ve recovered from one trouble another wind of adversity blows in your direction.
Don’t be like Mike. Don’t let the blog go out of your life.
But how is this possible? It becomes possible when we focus on who the Devil WebAdsman is. In the case of Ruchira and her blog, it was the material cut and pasted from the Smithsonian website, that had the horrendous hidden code, which showed up C&Ping to Notepad. It quoth "Read more:http://smithsonian.blah.blah.blah.com" and stealthily, like the verily serpent that is Satan, downloaded Ads for cars and other monuments to human greed to tempt us faithful bloggers from the path of righteousness.
He is our light. He is our salvation. We are no longer living in the darkness of sin. We will diligently check for hidden code when we cut and paste from internet sources. No enemy can take the Internet’s salvation from us! No enemy can impose Satanic Ads on our blog posts!
–With apologies to The original sermon creator and a tip of the hat to Margaret Atwood and her marvellous alternate theology of The God's Gardeners in her latest book "The Year of the Flood"
The Chinese enthusiastically await President Obama. He is by far the most popular foreign leader in China. To commemorate the visit artists have created the likeness of Obama in Chinese Red Guard uniform on t-shirts and other paraphernalia (not for sale) and a flaming Obama statue (because he is so hot).
Actually, this is all about the automobile. Normally, given the same circumstances – on an interstate feeder road near a hurricane levee between Houston and Galveston, a car veers off into 3 feet of water and no one is hurt, the news would have only made it to the police blotter or perhaps garnered a few lines in the local news section of the city paper. Instead it was plastered on the front pages of Texas newspapers and has appeared in several news outlets and blogs all over the country. By curious coincidence, on last Wednesday, the day the accident took place, the brown pelican was deemed safely out of the endangered list by the Texas Audubon Society and the US Department of the Interior. See the full man-bird-car story here.
(A Bugatti Veyron EB and a brown pelican in flight)
No sitting US president has ever visited the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only major urban centers on earth that bear testimony to the effects of nuclear warfare. President Jimmy Carter went to Hiroshima as an ex-president. Nancy Pelosi is the highest ranking US official to have paid a visit to Hiroshima while in office.
President Obama will visit Japan during his Asian trip. Obama is hugely popular there and his winning the Nobel Peace Prize had raised the hopes of Japanese citizens that he might become the first US president to set foot in one of the two cities that the Japanese consider the strongest case against future nuclear proliferation and for banning nuclear weapons altogether. But Obama's tight schedule includes only a brief stop in Tokyo with no time left to go to either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Obama did assure the Japanese press in an interview that he will one day visit both places during his presidency. Incidentally, no sitting Japanese prime minister has ever visited Pearl Harbor.
The Light Bulb Factory in Hiroshima – Ground Zero on August 6, 1945
Since Ronald Reagan first began flirting with the religious right, the ultra conservative base of the Republican Party has become steadily more empowered. Although for both Reagan and Bush Sr. lip service to the far right wing was political expediency, nearly three decades later, the one time fringe players have become the king makers of the GOP. Paul Krugman chronicles the transformation of the wing nuts from the role of the exploited to that of whip crackers. Conservatism is no longer defined merely by its opposition to taxes and social services. Anyone seeking leadership in the Republican Party must also prove their Christian credentials. Rather unsurprisingly, the party's politicians are caught in a trap of their own making. As Pakistan is finding out, you cannot cynically pander to religious fundamentalism for political gain and hope not to play by its rules. Newt Gingrich is the latest GOP hot shot to realize that to succeed in his own party, he must bear the cross.
In another part of the world, where the west is fighting an ill defined war, it is hard to tell between friend and foe. Sometimes therefore, friends end up paying a steep price. (Link: my sister, Mandira)
The American Medical Association (AMA) has just concluded its bi-annual policy conference in Houston during which the organization addressed public health policies including the cost and management of medical care in America. This year the AMA has come out in favor of health care and insurance reform. Also, it has weighed in on gay marriage and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of the US military. The AMA favors the former and opposes the latter. According to the largest physicians' group in the US, denying marriage (or legal partnership) rights to gay Americans and requring them to conceal their sexual orientation while serving in the armed forces, jeopardize their health.
Weighing in on two contentious gay-rights issues, the nation's largest group of doctors sent the message Tuesday that government policy is hazardous to homosexuals' health.
The policy-making arm of the American Medical Association, wrapping up its four-day biannual meeting in Houston, adopted one resolution saying that bans on same-sex marriage contribute to health care disparities, and another calling for a repeal of the military's “don't ask, don't tell” policy because the AMA says it's detrimental to the health of gay and lesbian individuals in the service.
“The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force thanks the AMA for taking these positions today,” Rea Carey, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy organization, said in a statement. “The AMA is making it clear that these discriminatory policies pose significant, real-life threats to the health and well-being of thousands of people across the country.”
Jenny Tyree of the Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family responded that the same-sex marriage resolution seemed based on information drawn from gay rights groups and reflected that “political agenda.” She said such disparities are a health insurance problem, not a marriage problem, and added that the insurance problem “should be fixed rather than mess with marriage.”
The AMA took no position on whether gay marriage should be legal.
(cartoon by Tom Toles)
Babies and cute animals sell products. Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona set out to take that marketing ploy a bit too far, in fact nauseatingly so. During last Saturday's debate on health care reform, he used an infant like a ventriloquist's dummy to make his case against publicly funded medical insurance. Even by the low standards of honesty and decency set by the Republicans, Rep Shadegg's exploitative grandstanding was cringeworthy.
Meanwhile, the number of uninsured Arizonans is depressingly high and rising.
Accidental Blogger 