Liz Cheney -- wow

I don't get it -- is she supposed to be offering intelligent discourse?

She makes Meghan McCain sound like the late William F. Buckley's intellectual equal.

Hell, Liz Cheney's idiocies make the woman who was very briefly Miss USA -- Carrie Prejean -- sound, when she spouts her version of things metaphysical and religious -- makes her sound as if she ranks in intelligence and insight with Paul Tillich or Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.

Even people who worship the Three Stooges feel embarrassed when they listen to her.

Wait wait wait wait -- WHO has endangered the USA the MOST?

According to what he himself says, it was Dick Cheney --

He excoriates President Obama for his plan to close Guantanamo because "all the innocent ones were released long ago and many of them shouldn't have been because MANY OF THEM RETURNED TO JIHAD...

So whose fucking fault is that, Dick?
Who was the boss when the wrong guys got released?

I seem to recall that you and your sock puppet were the guys in charge when that fuckup happened.

So why in hell should we consider ANYTHING you say more relevant than anything someone like Anne Coulter says?

You've told us and made it clear that you didn't know what you were doing, not on September 10th 2001, and not since.

So why not shut the fuck up, you creep, and let a real man deal with the mess you made?

Ooops -- had the wrong numbers --

In the Robert Louis Stevenson posting below, I used the numbers of 18,00 dead per year (directly the result of no access to medical care) -- 1500 a month, 50 each day -- slightly over 2 per hour.

OOOPS.

The actual numbers are as follows:

45,000 dead each year from lack of access to medical care

in other parameters, the death toll is:

3750 each month


125 each day


just over 5 dead each and ever hour, 24 hours a day.

So I repeat my charge that the foot dragging on universal health care, the "Yassuh, boss" response those public bribes we so laughingly call "campaign contributions," coming from pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies this amounts to nothing other than murder for money (and some privileges).


THEY ARE WILLING TO ACCEPT THE DEATHS
OF 5 AMERICANS EVERY HOUR, 24/7 
because someone has paid them to do so. 

It's nothing new -- Upton Sinclair noted and commented on the same phenomenon many years ago:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it."




                                  

Robert Louis Stephenson on Big Pharma

As the corrupted scumbags of the senate begin spewing out their hypocritical pretenses to deny that they actually have taken bribes from Health Care interests, delaying delaying delaying as 50 people die each day from causes directly related to their lack of access to health care (true -- 2+ die each hour .... 1500 dead each month... 18,000 each year) -- and the Princes and Princesses of Pomposity doing their damnedest to kill reform with the same delay they use to be complicit in killing those 50 people each and every week -- Sundays and Holidays included -- making them party to something very much like Murder for Hire ---

I am reminded of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped, a man who knew quite well how to do justice in this sort of situation.  Here is how he saw it in the simpler days of the late 19th century.

ROBIN AND BEN: OR, 
THE PIRATE AND THE APOTHECARY

Come, lend me an attentive ear
A startling moral tale to hear,
Of Pirate Rob and Chemist Ben,
And different destinies of men.

Deep in the greenest of the vales
That nestle near the coast of Wales,
The heaving main but just in view,
Robin and Ben together grew,
Together worked and played the fool,
Together shunned the Sunday school,
And pulled each other's youthful noses
Around the cots, among the roses.

Together but unlike they grew;
Robin was rough, and through and through
Bold, inconsiderate, and manly,
Like some historic Bruce or Stanley.
Ben had a mean and servile soul,
He robbed not, though he often stole.
He sang on Sunday in the choir,
And tamely capped the passing Squire.

At length, intolerant of trammels -
Wild as the wild Bithynian camels,
Wild as the wild sea-eagles--Bob
His widowed dam contrives to rob,
And thus with great originality
Effectuates his personality.
Thenceforth his terror-haunted flight
He follows through the starry night;
And with the early morning breeze,
Behold him on the azure seas.
The master of a trading dandy
Hires Robin for a go of brandy;
And all the happy hills of home
Vanish beyond the fields of foam.

Ben, meanwhile, like a tin reflector,
Attended on the worthy rector;
Opened his eyes and held his breath,
And flattered to the point of death;
And was at last, by that good fairy,
Apprenticed to the Apothecary.

So Ben, while Robin chose to roam,
A rising chemist was at home,
Tended his shop with learned air,
Watered his drugs and oiled his hair,
And gave advice to the unwary,
Like any sleek apothecary.

Meanwhile upon the deep afar
Robin the brave was waging war,
With other tarry desperadoes
About the latitude of Barbadoes.
He knew no touch of craven fear;
His voice was thunder in the cheer;
First, from the main-to'-gallan' high,
The skulking merchantmen to spy -
The first to bound upon the deck,
The last to leave the sinking wreck.
His hand was steel, his word was law,
His mates regarded him with awe.
No pirate in the whole profession
Held a more honourable position.

At length, from years of anxious toil,
Bold Robin seeks his native soil;
Wisely arranges his affairs,
And to his native dale repairs.
The Bristol SWALLOW sets him down
Beside the well-remembered town.
He sighs, he spits, he marks the scene,
Proudly he treads the village green;
And, free from pettiness and rancour,
Takes lodgings at the 'Crown and Anchor.'

Strange, when a man so great and good
Once more in his home-country stood,
Strange that the sordid clowns should show
A dull desire to have him go.

His clinging breeks, his tarry hat,
The way he swore, the way he spat,
A certain quality of manner,
Alarming like the pirate's banner -
Something that did not seem to suit all -
Something, O call it bluff, not brutal -
Something at least, howe'er it's called,
Made Robin generally black-balled.

His soul was wounded; proud and glum,
Alone he sat and swigged his rum,
And took a great distaste to men
Till he encountered Chemist Ben.
Bright was the hour and bright the day
That threw them in each other's way;
Glad were their mutual salutations,
Long their respective revelations.
Before the inn in sultry weather
They talked of this and that together;
Ben told the tale of his indentures,
And Rob narrated his adventures.

Last, as the point of greatest weight,
The pair contrasted their estate,
And Robin, like a boastful sailor,
Despised the other for a tailor.

'See,' he remarked, 'with envy, see
A man with such a fist as me!
Bearded and ringed, and big, and brown,
I sit and toss the stingo down.
Hear the gold jingle in my bag -
All won beneath the Jolly Flag!'

Ben moralised and shook his head:
'You wanderers earn and eat your bread.
The foe is found, beats or is beaten,
And, either how, the wage is eaten.
And after all your pully-hauly
Your proceeds look uncommon small-ly.
You had done better here to tarry
Apprentice to the Apothecary.
The silent pirates of the shore
Eat and sleep soft, and pocket more

Than any red, robustious ranger
Who picks his farthings hot from danger.
You clank your guineas on the board;
Mine are with several bankers stored.
You reckon riches on your digits,
You dash in chase of Sals and Bridgets,
You drink and risk delirium tremens,
Your whole estate a common seaman's!
Regard your friend and school companion,
Soon to be wed to Miss Trevanion
(Smooth, honourable, fat and flowery,
With Heaven knows how much land in dowry),
Look at me--Am I in good case?
Look at my hands, look at my face;
Look at the cloth of my apparel;
Try me and test me, lock and barrel;
And own, to give the devil his due,
I have made more of life than you.
Yet I nor sought nor risked a life;
I shudder at an open knife;
The perilous seas I still avoided
And stuck to land whate'er betided.
I had no gold, no marble quarry,
I was a poor apothecary,
Yet here I stand, at thirty-eight,
A man of an assured estate.'

'Well,' answered Robin--'well, and how?'

The smiling chemist tapped his brow.
'Rob,' he replied, 'this throbbing brain
Still worked and hankered after gain.
By day and night, to work my will,
It pounded like a powder mill;
And marking how the world went round
A theory of theft it found.
Here is the key to right and wrong:
STEAL LITTLE, BUT STEAL ALL DAY LONG;
And this invaluable plan
Marks what is called the Honest Man.
When first I served with Doctor Pill,
My hand was ever in the till.
Now that I am myself a master,
My gains come softer still and faster.
As thus: on Wednesday, a maid
Came to me in the way of trade.
Her mother, an old farmer's wife,
Required a drug to save her life.
'At once, my dear, at once,' I said,
Patted the child upon the head,
Bade her be still a loving daughter,
And filled the bottle up with water.'

'Well, and the mother?' Robin cried.

'O she!' said Ben--'I think she died.'

'Battle and blood, death and disease,
Upon the tainted Tropic seas -
The attendant sharks that chew the cud -
The abhorred scuppers spouting blood -
The untended dead, the Tropic sun -
The thunder of the murderous gun -
The cut-throat crew--the Captain's curse -
The tempest blustering worse and worse -
These have I known and these can stand,
But you--I settle out of hand!'

Out flashed the cutlass, down went Ben
Dead and rotten, there and then.

Link

And the Award.goes to...Grandpa Khaddafi

I thought I had seen enough infantile insanity from the 2009 Republicans -- supposedly grown men throwing quiet tantrums, people so removed from reality -- Governor Sanford, Chuck Grassley, Senator Ensign and/or his aide who tells people that pornography causes homosexuality, all the rest of them, more or less, with a few notable exceptions like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and a few others -- I'd seen enough of those men that I assumed we'd ALWAYS be the world champs.

True, the Iranian Prez was  in pretty close contention when he was last here -- and he still keeps his hand in the game -- but we're Americans and we do things BETTER!

Gawd -- remember Newt Gingrich's tantrum back in the 90's when he did the congressional version of lying on the floor and kicking and screaming, saying "Mommy! Mommy!! We won't pass ANY budget unless you give us what we want! You're a horrible mommy and we hate you!!"

Now THAT was some world class infantile obstinacy**.

But Moamar Khaddafy's speech at the UN today won him the James Joyce Memorial "Crazy as a Shithouse Rat" Award*, probably well enough to get the trophy permanently.

It was the first time I've ever heard a UN simultaneous translator obviously confounded by what the speaker was saying, even to the point of being relieved by a fresh one late in the 27-hour speech (REALLY? Only 2 hours? It seemed a lot longer than that -- my mistake.) Maybe the translator was just exhausted from the first hour or so, but figuring out how to translate statements that ended up with such English-language gems as "And Lee Oswald killed Kennedy and then was killed by Jack Ruby. Why did the Israeli shoot Oswald?" And all the way back to "Why did they kill Lumumba? And "Why did they kill..." every other person or nation assassinated or massacred, usually, according to him, by America (and he may have been right about some of them) but it would have been more credible if he ALSO mentioned the ones he sent out to blow up civilian planes (not just at Lockerbee) and the ones he personally trained to go to such West African countries as Sierra Leone and Liberia and show the west how to REALLY do the genocidal tango. (He also provided arms for the IRA, but then so did I, on a much smaller level, always putting cash in the unmarked white donation cans barkeeps set out for us. It may have been wrong, but it was up against the Bloody Black and Tan, so ....  like some other things, how could it be bad when it felt so good?)

Back to Khaddafi.

He rode a long time on his country's oil and the fact that he looked really cool in the great uniform back in the 60's and 70's. But now he looks like somebody's senile grandfather who doesn't remember how to button his clothes, waggling his finger at us and yelling about 'The Way It Was Back Then' and all the injustices everyone else committed -- as if they were directed personally against him (i.e., anywhere in the Arab or African World)-- I'm guessing at that last comment since he told us all how much he loved President Obama because Obama was "MY Son -- a son of Africa."

And they say being a diplomat is easy -- how'd you like to have to sit through that entire rant if -- unlike Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- you were too slow to get the hell out of the room before he got to the podium?***

--------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------

*Joyce used the Irish slang in Ulysses

** And they still seem to have mommy problems -- these days with the Speaker of the House --  is it the maternal bosom? Or just that she's a woman, and even worse, a woman who is a Democrat and who speaks her mind without first checking with a man? 


*** And I'm a child of the 60's -- I actually enjoy most insane rants.
--------------------------------------------

It's bad enough that Huckabee is a sleazy smiling huckster..

but like most demagogues (anti-choice or otherwise), he completely misses the point.

Yammering about how "If the government can decide who can be born, then they also can decide who dies..."

First of all, that's pure bullshit -- the government allows a woman to decide if SHE is willing to give birth...


BUT...

the real issue is this:

The federal government does not have a legitimate interest in whether a woman chooses abortion or birth -- the Supremes did NOT decide to legalize abortion or mandate the government to decide... they just decided that the feds don't have a constitutionally legitimate interest in the subject....
not "Go ahead and have an abortion,"
but "Not our right to decide."

Here's the rub, and the anti-choice people just can't seem to understand:

IF the government decides it DOES have a legitimate interest in a woman's reproductive rights and decides it CAN make abortion illegal, then, by that standard, it can apply the same decision to making abortion MANDATORY under whichever circumstances that band of paid-off hypocrites in fed and/or state legislatures decides gets them the most votes and/or money.

Today it's "You can't -- you can't"
Tomorrow it's "You must -- you must."

Remember --if we GIVE THEM THE POWER to say "NO!"we also give them the power to say anything else that's convenient.

Oh -- one other thing -- he doesn't seem to realize that having gained back most of that weight loss that was his platform ("Vote for me -- I went on a diet.") pretty much eliminates his dream of candidacy. 

The right is delighted

They scared Nancy Pelosi.

Boehner is Delighted.

Grassley is Delighted.

Cantor is delighted.

Limbaugh is pissing his pants with delight.

Glenn Beck is crapping in his pants with glee.

I have long held doubts that these people are actually human.
They must be -- no one would build such a substandard animatronic pseudo-human.

But human or not, they're obviously not even civilized enough to pull a long face.

("Well, hell, she's talkin' about someone killin' a faggot and a liberal long time ago. Hurrhh, hurrhh, hurrrh.")

The facts of what she said -- -zippp -- right over their heads.

These are Video Game Patriots, people to whom the TV series 24 and X-box realities ARE reality.

They live in their X-Box and Playstation fantasies.
Not even as close to reality as Wii.
Just front brain fantasies.
They have no concept of reality, history, or simple human decency.
They have no memory of yesterday or last week.

Vapid hollow creatures through which time passes and comes out as hate-filled noise.

Grand Theft Government -- the new game.

Why can't they be civil and rational?
Because they lost the election and so are totally willing to destroy the constitutional government that allowed someone they don't like to sit in the big chair.

Video Gamers.

When they find out you can't just hit reset,
they'll be sorry, but it'll be too late.

It's not rocket science or open heart surgery ---

A great man -- one who spent his life getting some form of justice for people who had been injured --said it succinctly. Referring to insurance companies he said:

"The sonsofbitches forget whose money it is 
           when it's time to pay off."

His name was Melvin Belli and it was his job, for many years, to remind those sonsofbitches of their obligations..

We still miss him.
  

 

Have another donut -- it's for the children.

It's not just an epidemic of obesity -- it's a movement! 

It's an entire generation sacrificing themselves to make the world a better place for those to come.

We're not fat -- we're the hope of the future!

------------------------------------------------

(CNN) -- You know that fat in your body you wish you didn't have? 

It turns out those cells could be used to create stem cells that one day may be able to cure disease.

Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that the millions of fat cells removed during liposuction can be easily and quickly turned into induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, more easily than the skin cells that researchers used when the first iPS cells were created in 2007.

These iPS cells, like stem cells derived from embryos, can be turned into many different kinds of cells, and researchers believe they eventually could be used to regenerate tissue for organs and repair damage.

Embryonic stem cells are controversial because the embryos are destroyed when the stem cells are removed for research. The iPS cells, which have many of the same basic properties, do not raise the same ethical questions as embryonic stem cells because they come from skin or now fat cells that have been reprogrammed to go back in time, so to speak, and have the ability to turn into any other kind of cell in the body. 

When embryonic stem cells were a highly controversial topic at the beginning of the decade, some companies offered to store fat cells from liposuction for a fee after it was discovered that there were stem cells in the fat, but their practical use had not been established. Now, the Stanford study has shown fat cells can be a player in the quickly evolving area of iPS stem cell research, not because they have their own stem cells but because the fat cells can be turned into iPS cells. 

When the first iPS cells were developed two years ago in Japan and the United States, skin cells were reprogrammed to be able to have properties similar to a human embryonic stem cell. That is, the cell could be "coached" into becoming any type of tissue or cell in the body. 

It takes about four weeks for a skin cell to be "primed" for reprogramming, and then it takes an additional three to four weeks for iPS colonies to grow, according to Dr. Joseph Wu, study co-author and assistant professor of cardiology and radiology at Stanford's School of Medicine. 

The method that uses fat cells can be as much as six weeks faster, Wu said, because the cells retrieved through liposuction are so plentiful, they can start reprogramming right away and have iPS cells in about two weeks.

"We've been focused -- Dr. Wu's Lab and my lab -- on fat because there's just so much of it," said study co-author Dr. Michael Longaker, a plastic surgeon and stem cell biologist at Stanford. "Unfortunately, it's a great resource in America."

These fat-derived cells used in the research are probably smooth muscle cells, not the actual blubber within a fat cell, Longaker said. The doctors' study was published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although the average amount of fat removed for liposuction is 2 to 3 quarts, not much is required for stem cell research purposes -- less than half the volume of a can of Diet Coke, Longaker said.

One application of this research would be for helping heart attack patients. The goal is to take a person's fat to make iPS cells, which are then coached to become heart cells. Then they could be injected directly into the heart to regenerate heart muscle. 

Potentially, iPS cells, which can in theory become any type of tissue, also could help stroke patients and people who have large scars or skeletal defects, Longaker said.


Dr. Timothy Kamp, professor of medicine and stem cell researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in this research, said it's a big leap forward that researchers were able to show that fat cells can be turned into cells that have the potential to become any tissue in the body. "This is another proof of principle ... another way to get stem cells," Kamp said.

Another issue is that liposuction is a more involved procedure than a blood test, or even a skin biopsy, Kamp said.


To what extent the human body would reject iPS cells from other donors remains unknown. The researchers in this study posit that one day iPS cells could be standardized according to different immune properties, and there could be a bank where patients would be matched with one of perhaps 200 varieties. These would be the 200 most common types of cells, to limit the amount of rejection.

Both Wu and Longaker are practicing physicians and are eager to make their research translate into clinical applications for their patients.


Still, the field of stem cell research is constantly evolving, and researchers said it's impossible to know how many years it will take before the fat removed from one person by liposuction could lead to the repair of scarred heart tissue in someone else.

***********************************************

 See also:

Stem cells may offer promise for damaged hearts

MayoClinic.com: Stem cells -- what they are, what they do

************************************************

 

Link

Not racism? Cut me a break...

Oh but it's not BECAUSE he's black that we want to throw crap at anything Obama wants or says, drive him out of Washington humiliated and broken, tarred and feathered.

It's not because he's black.

It's only coincidental that we're all white.

Come on.

Baseball fans did it to Hank Greenberg

and did it to Jackie Robinson

But they wouldn't have a problem with a black man being Commander-in-Chief.

Get real.

You think the insane foam-flecked ravings against Obama are NOT melanin-based?

So you say: "Hmm why are they doing that?" And wonder: "Is there possibly some truth in what they're yelling at the top of their lungs?

Maybe he DOES want to kill my granny. After all, he's not even an American. 

You know, THOSE guys are always shifty and ... politicians, not Negroes. Politicians.

You lefty America-haters always try to paint us like a bunch of red-faced rubes screaming like a lynch mob. It's YOU who are prejudiced. YOU."

Right.   But just for laughs, try this:

Next time Mitch McConnell and Boner and the rest stand up there the way they do, like some sort of small-town-in-the-south jury, Klansmen in civvies, really look at them:

They've got everything but the hoods and the rope.

And those are the ones who sometimes don't pant and drool and stab their desks with hunting knives.

We may have come a long way, 

but we still got a mighty long way to go.