Month: November 2008

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Lock ’em all up!

“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to law, and particularly to deny him judgment by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian Governments, whether Nazi or Communist. It is only when extreme danger to the State can be pleaded that this power may be temporarily assumed by the Executive, and even so its working must be interpreted with the utmost vigilance by a Free Parliament. As the danger passes, persons so imprisoned, against whom there is no charge which courts and juries would accept, should be released, as you have been steadily doing, until hardly any are left. Extraordinary powers assumed by the Executive with the consent of Parliament in emergencies should be yielded up when and as the emergency declines.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.” – Winston Churchill

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Creating Science

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict told a gathering of scientists including the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Friday that there was no contradiction between believing in God and empirical science.

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Rough Honesty

The Safe Invisibility of Saints
Martin Vest


It’s hard to say now
when I turned and took this road;
a wild of cigarette-thickets in my lungs,
holding my breath
against the spark of whiskey
that will one day catch them fire.
Or when I first wore the feet
of Ichabod Crane
into the headless dark of a tavern
with the punched blood of my nose
three fingers of tin
hardening into silverware
at the back of my throat
for a breakfast of failing liver:

The lean white worms
of my face’s nerves twitch
in the wreckage beneath their scars—
the nerves of my mind,
squealing untied balloons
half-pinched, releasing their little wind
into a whirligig
of prescription slips and dander.

It’s hard to say when I started killing myself.
It was something about the American dream.
Something about fifty years of my father’s life
working him into bone—
Something about poverty of spirit
and the safe invisibility of saints.
I wanted to eat rocks. I wanted to say
that man does not live by bread at all.
I wanted to taste His blood in mine—
to buy a home in Oblivion with a money
that instinct invents along the way—
I wanted the world to forget my name.
It was something about saving my own life . . .

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Pain Mismanagement

Pain is the “all-time number one cause for people to seek medical attention”, but don’t listen to your doctor.

Doctors know very little about pain. Medical schools offer only one hour of training in how to understand and treat pain.

“Considering the available research and medical technology we have today, it’s a travesty that in 2008 so many pain sufferers are untreated or under-treated because of lack of awareness, education and misconceptions about pain and pain treatment.”

Bank on this:

“Pain costs an estimated $100 billion a year in medical care and lost work.”

The failure to treat pain adequately is the combined fault of doctors, patients, the legal system and the health care system as a whole.

Pain rewires our nervous system, quickly, and is both a disease and a primary cause of disease.

Less than two percent of patients using medication for pain become addicted. Addiction is a different process.

“The collision between the war on drugs and the war on pain has created a perfect storm of controversy.”

Bailout needed?
Ignorance and superstition about pain is costing our nation a great deal.

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Haters n Liars

Rush Limbaugh repeated the lie to 20 million listeners that Michelle Obama spent $450 on room service with caviar. He has not retracted. The NYTimes printed the story, but retracted it. Factcheck.org has the truth. [clip link]

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The Blue Eye Mutation

We are a DNA cocktail of eye color, hair color, baldness, freckles, skin color, but blue eyes are new and from one ancestor.

Think about this:

All blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor.

From the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Copenhagen:

Blue Eye Mutation“Originally, we all had brown eyes, but a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ‘switch’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes.

“Variation in the color of the eyes from brown to green can all be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes.

[tip clipmarks]
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Fist Jab Signals Armageddon

Getty: Obama fist bumpThe headline:

Fist Jab Fourth Sign Of Apocalypse

Conservative fundamentalists are fearful that Obama’s presidency will turn the US into the Soviet Empire, trigger Iran’s nuclear invasion of Israel, and bring on The Last Days.

Commie Obama indoctrinates underage Aryan children with hypnotic terrorist fist-jabs of Socialism.

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Obama 100% Citizen

One Republican FAIL bites the dust:

“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai‘i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record,” DOH Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said.

“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.

“No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai‘i.”