Thank you, Karen Pickering

Thank you, Karen Pickering, for your contribution to the Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/12/australia-america-inequality-guns-healthcare?CMP=ema_565#start-of-comments

The views you express from your vantage point are in keeping with the views that many Americans hold as well. Currently, we are suffering from a disease confined for the most part by geography, political affiliation and values. This disease was first seen decades ago by a group of very attuned Republicans who, over thirty or more years, consciously and with intent nurtured its development (read American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips).


Much has been taken out of our systems to ensure that over time ignorance would abound and the leadership of exalted figures would prevail, at all levels of government and within such seemingly obscure groups as boards of education. These innocuous groups are rewriting the text books for millions of children, altering history and science to fit their dogma.


To this day, we spend more than five times what China spends on military and more than the next 16 nations combined, all of whom are allies or bit players. (http://jmalgeri.blogspot.com/2013/10/so-many-complexes.html)

We spend less on our children than those same nations who, like China, India, and even Kenya are increasing spending to grow and nurture the health, education and overall well-being of their children. They see their actions as INVESTING in the future.

Corruption is rampant here, with politicians shills for corporations, working for their personal benefit at the expense of the nation's future. It is time again for Americans to say "enough is enough" and take our country back. We have a history of doing that, and it is once again time we reassert our rights.

The Light is Better Over Here

There’s a story about a fellow leaving a bar late at night. As he walks through the parking lot to his car, he sees a guy on all fours, moving first one way, then another, his hands moving from spot to spot in front of him.

“You all right?, “ he asks, “Something wrong?”

“Yeah”, the guy replies, “I lost my car keys.”

“Maybe I can help. Where’d you drop them?”

The guy points toward an area yards away from where they are. “Over there,”he says.

“Then why are you crawling around over here/”, the man asks.

“The light’s better over here.

That, my friends, is a metaphor for the Republican approach to cutting the budget.

The problem really is over there, some distance away. In the budget game, it’s  a decade or more away. Social Security is not bankrupt. And any problems with it long term are easily dealt with, if action is planned and taken sensibly. Medicare is in trouble, long term, but cutting its benefits is undermining the contract we made with our citizens, present and future.

These programs are labeled ‘entitlements’ as if entitlements is a pejorative term, They are entitlements – because the people who had monies taken out of their paychecks for decades did that so they would have the services they need when they need them. They paid for them – they’re entitled.

Even if there was need for financial adjustments, there is plenty of money to go around. If we cut waste. Now, let’s see if we can agree on where the waste is – what’s wasteful and what’s not.

Let’s look at defense spending. We’re coming off the second of two wars that cost lots of money and made lots of money – for a few Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Pratt & Whitney,  Halliburton, the list goes on.

It cost lives as well, hundreds of thousands of lives (over 8,000 US military, over 601,000 violent deaths for just the first three years in Iraq alone)  . It brought us an entirely new and HUMUNGOUS security infrastructure, threatened our privacy rights and militarized local and state police forces and national guards.

Our $700 BILLION defense budget is coming down, to just over $500 BILLION, still more than the TOTAL combined budgets the next 16 nations, most of whom are our allies, and some six times China’s budget.

Further, what it’s buying us is more military equipment, arms we’ll never use because the nature of warfare has changed, and that equipment is obsolete.

Let’s talk another time about Government programs that can be cut deeply and sensibly, were it not for the fact that the companies involved are major contributors to our legislators.

The best way to make sure we’re looking at ALL options is simply to look at the Cabinet posts:

Agriculture

Commerce

Defense

Education

Energy

Health and Human Services

Homeland Security

Housing and Urban Development

Interior

Labor

State

Transportation

Treasury

Veterans Affairs

Attorney General

Hell-o, Old Fart: A post to http://musingsofanoldfart.wordpress.com

Hell-o, Old Fart,

I just found your blogs as I was googling The Power of Habits and came across your post. Since then, I have been reading your other posts, heading toward the most recent. When I am caught up with the current posts, I’ll go back to the first one I found and backtrack. Seems like a plan.

I just finished reading your post, American Winter clearly defines what poverty looks like. I feel the need to commence a dialogue with you starting with it as the basis. Other posts will inevitably follow, as you are a terrific writer with compelling insights, and the thought of dialoguing with you is delightful.

I live in Tennessee, where the most uncaring among us all seem to work in the same industry: politics. With child poverty over 20%  statewide and near 50% poverty in pockets like Memphis, one would think that elected officials would be working overtime to resolve the issue, if only for the horrific long-term trends it portends. Instead, they cry out for cuts in vital programs and the need for austerity.

Study after study points out the link between poverty and poor performance in school. Study after study link poor performance in reading in third grade to school dropout rates and further correlates to the increase in prison populations. Yet, the budget takes priority. 

in the late ‘90s, Dr. Eddie Green, interim Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools,  spoke to an audience of well-to-do Rotarians in adjacent Troy, MI. He began by saying (I paraphrase here), “On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. A child coming to school, his last meal, lunch the day before, is thinking about lunch, not math or reading. Many of our children arrive at school on Monday morning, their last meal was lunch the previous Friday. They are not prepared to learn. 

“ On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. Children come to school in winter without coats. Their bodies shiver a good portion of the morning until the warmth settles in. Before the last bell rings, those same bodies again shiver, in anticipation of the trip home.

“On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. When squad cars fill the street corners adjacent to their school while a drug bust takes place, the school is in lockdown. No earning takes place.”

In 2013, in cities and towns across the nation, no learning takes place, for many of the same reasons and more. To them we add mass shootings.

Poverty kills. It kills bodies, minds and spirits. What it doesn’t kill it damages beyond repair. When the numbers of poor reach the tipping point, where barely adequate social nets no longer hold together, the people perish. Fortunately for many, they do so out of sight. Statistics on a page.

To Your Health! Dump the LDLs, Drop Pounds, enjoy life!

In February, I had a procedure to place four stents in my arteries. In June, I went for a check up with my internal medicine doctor and told him about the stents. He referred me to a lipid specialist. Long story short, the specialist drew blood samples and sent them to a lab that specializes in measuring lipids.

Three weeks later, I returned for a consult to review the numbers. I had a fair number of measurements in the red and yellow categories, high and intermediate risk ranges respectively. In the high range was LDL-P, which is explained better by others.*  As he explained it, there are two concerns with lipids; the number, which in my case was1842;    and size. For that, he asked me to imagine I was opening a kitchen wall cabinet door and lipids were falling out like balls. If the balls are like basketballs, it’s fine. Mine, he said, we golf ball size and they are the ones that cause plaque build up.

He recommended Niaspan, a slow acting version of niacin. Regular niacin, he told me, causes a severe flush on the skin, like a sunburn, so people don’t like to take it. Niaspan  doesn’t have that effect, or when it does, it’s tolerable.

I returned just under five months later for a repeat blood test and follow up. All the red and yellow  indicators were now green. The LDL-P score, 887, well in the desired range of <1000.  

Two things had happened in the intervening months. First, I read the book, Wheat Belly, which details the deleterious affects of wheat on the human body. The author, William Davis, MD, spells everything out in detail (if you’re interested, buy the book or get it from your library), with separate chapters for wheat and cardio, wheat and diabetes, etc. In my case, I went right to the cardio and discovered that the way wheat is processed by the liver, it generates tiny LDLs. That was one terrific piece of information.

Wheat, he said,  is in everything. It’s in bread, of course, and in cake (aargh! I love chocolate cake). It’s also in frosting -- and in processed foods of all types. Manufacturers like it because it’s an appetite stimulant. I didn’t know that.

Second, I found out how much Niaspan costs, over $200/month. That’s a deal breaker! To get my niacin at a reasonable cost, I went to Costco and bought 150 count bottle of over-the-counter SLO_Niacin for around $10. I take one in the a.m. and another at night. Let’s see that’s 2.5 months worth in a bottle. Over the five months, that’s two bottles (around $20) instead of five fills (over $1,000). I take the pills with food and a baby aspirin, and rarely do I experience the flushing. When I do, it’s tolerable and short lived.

Consider reading the book if you have any of the following issues. A chapter on each is in the book:

Wheat and Obesity

Wheat and Celiac Disease

Wheat and Insulin Resistance

Wheat and the Aging Process

Wheat and Heart Disease

Wheat and the Brain

Wheat’s Destructive Effect on the Skin

Buy the book new, Buy it used, Buy it on Kindle -- or borrow it from your local library.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609614798

* http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-vi  Scroll down to #8.