Great American manufacturing conversation on Thom Hartmann Show on Air America Radio

Thom Hartmann spoke this afternoon (March 29, 2010) with Scott N. Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
(See AAM's general site at http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/

See their blog at "ManufactureThis.org.")

Paul debunked many trade myths, and he pointed out the heavy devastation that China has done to American manufacturing since 2000.

Go to this AAM site, "The China Job Drain: Millions of U.S. jobs lost in trade with China," for an interactive map on the loss of jobs in the United States, in every state, in every Congressional District.

Great links at AAM site:
e.g.,
At Daily KOS: "China Currency Manipulation Costs U.S. Jobs"
"WJBC News: A new report shows thousands [over 100,000] of IL jobs lost to China"

Militia terror mobilizes against police in Michigan and for armed rally across river from Washington

You thought that the right wing tea-partiers also known as tea-baggers were bad?

We've had frequent acts of right wing vandalism against Democratic office-holder and party offices since the longest weekend (March 21, 2010) House passage of the health care bill, H.R. 3962.

Now we've got a "Christian" militia group, Hutatree, mobilizing for attacks on local law enforcement in Michigan.
Justin Elliott, "Nine Christian Militia Members Charged With Seditious Conspiracy, Attempted Use Of WMD," as reported by TPM.com.
And see this CNN report, today, March 29, 2010: "'Christian warrior' militia accused in plot to kill police."

And, as DemocraticUnderground, TPM and OliverWillis tell us, the militia groups are mobilizing for an armed rally at Gravelly Point Park in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from Washington, D.C., on April 19, 2010. [See Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Special Intelligence Report, Spring 2010Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism.] You doubt this? Just google their code phrase, "open carry."
That is pretty scary. April 19 is a business day. The 111th Congress will be back in schedule, with the April Recess having finished a week before then.

The mainstream media have been slow to pay attention to this April 19 armed rally at Gravelly Point Park.
Greater attention, came first from the SPLC, Mother Jones and bloggers, for example: "Demagogues and Dictators," on March 25 called attention to this nasty mobilization, in "Upstaging Osama -- The Next Terrorist will be Domestic."

There are links between three extremist groups, the Oath Keepers, Committees of Safety, and the Three Percenter Movement, with the tea-party groups. Read Justine Sharrock's report in the March/April 2010 "Mother Jones": "Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason".
The left-leaning blog, The Raw Story, has compiled a series of incriminating videos, both by the armed factions of the right wing and by CNN.

Denouce the right's violent attacks against Democratic Congressmembers' families and offices!

Note these attacks and threats so far:

*Perhaps confusing Tom Perriello's brother's home for Congressman Tom Perriello's home, possibly vandals cut the gas line to the brother's home, CBS-TV news reported tonight. The online politics site, TPM Muckraker, reported on this potential political vandalism, Justin Elliott, "FBI Investigating Cut Gas Line At Home Of Dem Rep's Brother," dated March 24, 2010.
This came after "a tea party organizer (Mike Troxel) published the address of the brother of Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) in a blog post urging anti-health reform activists to 'drop by,' someone cut a propane gas line at the house, Politico is reporting."
AND:
"Another tea party activist who reportedly posted Periello's brother's address online, Nigel Coleman of the Danville Tea Party, wrote in a blog comment after learning about the mistaken address: 'Do you mean I posted his brother's address on my Facebook? Oh well, collateral damage.'"

ALL OF THIS comes just days after the historic House of Representatives vote on the health care reform bill. --and this came after attacks on the same weekend against the offices of different Democratic Congress representatives.

In the early hours of Friday, March 19, 2010, a person threw a brick through the window of Niagara Falls, New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter's district office. Elsewhere in the district, in Rochester, Monroe County, someone broke the window of the Democratic Committee office. A note attached to the window-smashing brick carried the conservative senator Barry Goldwater's legendary quote, "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice."
Other attacks occurred against Congress members or Democratic offices in:
*Tucson, Arizona
*Wichita, Kansas
*Cincinnati, Ohio

Republicans need to call out the extremists behind this violent harassment. They need to call out the voices of hate that created the groundwork for these attacks:
Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh.

See the Rachel Maddow video on the upper right, on MSNBC, denouncing this political violence.

On ABC's This Week:Karl Rove has hissy fit vs. Plouffe on health care bill

Watch Karl Rove's meltdown, vs. David Plouffe
on ABC-TV's "This Week" (March 21, 2010):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZubqALUwUs

And Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeIJC4lCGeo

You need to click on the above addresses, as ABC has blocked embedding video code for inserting in blogs.

Get your essential food, nutrient data; academic paper on vegetable lipids, functional foods

Go to this site for essential data on foods and nutrients:
http://www.nutritiondata.com/

The following is a valuable site as well:
This is an academic paper, "Vegetable Lipids as Components of Functional Foods," by the Czech or Slovak researchers Milan Struchlik and Stanislav Zak.

And of course, of great reference, the wikipedia article site, "Essential fatty acids."

OpenOffice bug warning!! Bad enough to go over to Microsoft

OpenOffice has put out a good product.

I have sworn by it and have promoted it as an alternative to MS Office.

Now, I am backing away from it. Anything, even MS Office, would be better. It generates macros in tables in Write, its word processor program, especially when you are entering number values. Statements like in <> carrot brackets appear in whatever empty cell you click into.
It is a terrible time-waster. Run far from this as soon as you can, and go to Microsoft or Corel for your office suite options.
The time lost is irreplaceable.

Slate.com's interactive map on job losses, by County, since Jan. 2007 -Depressing!

When Did Your County's Jobs Disappear?An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country, updated with the latest figures.
By Chris WilsonUpdated Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009, at 1:05 PM ET

The economic crisis, which has claimed more than 5 million jobs since the recession began, did not strike the entire country at once. A map of employment gains or losses by county tells the story of how those job losses first struck in the most vulnerable regions and then spread rapidly to the rest of the country. As early as August 2007, for example—several months before the recession officially began—jobs were already on the decline in southwest Florida; Orange County, Calif.; much of New Jersey; and Detroit, while other areas of the country remained on the uptick.

Using the Labor Department's local area unemployment statistics, Slate presents the recession as told by unemployment numbers for each county in America. Because the data are not seasonally adjusted for natural employment cycles throughout the year, the numbers you see show the change in the number of people employed compared with the same month in the previous year. Blue dots represent a net increase in jobs, while red dots indicate a decrease. The larger the dot, the greater the number of jobs gained or lost. Click the arrows or calendar at the bottom to see each month of data. Click the green play button to see an animation of the data.

Who is the progressive choice to succeed (bankers' friend) Sen. Chris Dodd?

I was quite pleased to see Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd announce his retirement.

He historically has had too close and friendly a relationship with the banking industry. As we see from this post, November, 2009, the Open Secrets site has gone into how Sen. Dodd got many generous contributions over the years from the banking industry.

Note: the following article updates a profile of Dodd that first appeared on Capital Eye in January.

(CORRECTION, 12/7/09: This article originally misstated information about Dodd's purchase of his cottage in Ireland. Dodd did not purchase the estate with Bearn Stearns principal Ed Downe. Rather, Dodd and his long-time friend, William Kessinger, purchased the estate together (and Dodd later bought out Kessinger). Kessinger and Dodd became friends through Downe, who was convicted of insider trading and later pardoned by President Clinton. Downe signed the official transfer document as a witness but had no financial role in the transaction. The Center regrets the error. The article has been updated accordingly.)

Name: Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)

PowerPlayers.JPGPosition: Chris Dodd is a native of Connecticut and the state's longest-serving U.S. senator, at nearly 30 years. His father, Thomas Dodd, also represented Connecticut for more than a decade as a Democratic senator, from 1959 to 1971. After college, Chris Dodd joined the Peace Corps and worked in the Dominican Republic. Upon his return, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve, while earning his law degree at the University of Louisville. In 1974, voters elected him to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until he ran for Senate in 1980.

Since the Democrats regained control of the Senate in 2007, Dodd has chaired the powerful Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. His committee oversees the nation's financial institutions, housing and mass transit programs. In this role, he has helped shape legislation to jump-start the economy and assist floundering companies. He is also at the helm as the committee debates new regulatory efforts.

Money Summary: Dodd has raised a total of $46.5 million since 1989 and has spent $45.5 million. His large war chest can be attributed, in part, to his presidential bid in 2008, which he abandoned after receiving less than 1 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus that kicked off the primary season. He raised $18 million in his attempt to win the White House.

Overall, Dodd has received 62 percent of his contributions from individuals (rather than the political action committees of unions and corporations) and is a popular beneficiary of Wall Street money, collecting $5.4 million from donors in New York City -- more than any other metro area. He's given other lawmakers and candidates 23 percent of the total $2.3 million that his leadership PAC, Chris PAC, has raised since the start of the 2004 election cycle.

Campaigns Donors: Not surprisingly, Dodd's most generous sector is finance, insurance and real estate, which is filled with companies directly affected by legislation shepherded by the Banking Committee. The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given Dodd a total of $13.9 million since 1989 -- nearly 3.5 times more than the next sector. In a distant second place, lawyers and lobbyists rank as Dodd's second most generous backer, giving him $4 million since 1989.

The securities and investment industry, insurance companies, real estate industry, commercial banks, accountants and finance and credit companies all rank among his top 20 industry donors.

Between 2005 and 2008, Dodd was among the top five recipients of money in the Senate from 19 industries, many of which are finance-related. He's currently the top recipient in the Senate of money from mortgage bankers and brokers, and the Senate's second highest beneficiary of money from insurance companies and finance and credit companies.

The $819,950 he has received during the past 20 years from hedge funds, which are a big industry in Connecticut, ranks him as the largest beneficiary of the industry currently serving in the Senate. In 2007, Dodd expressed concern over a bill that would have increased taxes on private-equity firms and hedge fund managers.

Dodd's most generous donors include many of the companies that have filed for bankruptcy or sought government help during the last year and a half: Citigroup ($427,700), Bear Stearns ($347,350), AIG ($281,000), Goldman Sachs ($274,450), Morgan Stanley ($211,300), Lehman Brothers ($185,100) and Merrill Lynch ($185,000).

Not all of Dodd's financial supporters, however, come from Wall Street.

Law firms, lobbyists, pharmaceutical companies, health professionals and the entertainment industry also rank among his most generous industries. During the race for the White House, the International Association of Fire Fighters endorsed Dodd and spent $202,300 independently to help him win. Dodd has sponsored bills to provide more funding to fire stations for equipment, training and staff.

Series_logo.JPGOn Financial Regulation: Dodd sponsored legislation (which President Barack Obama signed in August) to crack down on credit card companies. Provisions of the bill targeted "any time any reason" interest rate increases, charging interest on balances that consumers have already paid, deceptive marketing to young people and skyrocketing penalty interest rates.

Dodd is now spearheading new efforts to tackle financial sector regulatory reform. On Nov. 10, he unveiled new legislation with eight other Democrats on the Banking Committee. Dodd's proposal calls for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a new federal agency to advocate for consumers. It also seeks to end the concept of "too big to fail," including a requirement that large and complex financial institutions develop their own "funeral plans" for how to safely shut down without destabilizing the financial system.

The legislation also creates new regulations for payday lending, over-the-counter derivatives, hedge funds and other asset-backed securities. And it requires that the sponsor or broker of these investments retain "skin in the game," that is, maintain a certain level of financial investment in its performance. Furthermore, the bill would give shareholders more say in how executives are compensated, and it requires more transparency and accountability from credit rating agencies and the quality of their ratings. Dodd's plan would also keep in place a second system of banking for small community banks that pose less systemic risk.

Industry Favors: The U.S. Senate was called on in January to release the second half of the $700 billion bailout money. Despite strong financial backing from Wall Street interests, Dodd pushed for stronger oversight provisions and limits on executive compensation for the companies receiving a handout. Yet he also amended his executive pay limit provision at the time -- at the direction of the Obama administration and U.S. Treasury. The resulting change allowed some retroactive bonuses for bailout recipients, including insurance giant AIG. Dodd says this effect was unintentional and that he did not know that AIG would benefit from the amendment, but it still made him the target of significant public ire.

Invests in: Compared to the rest of the Senate, Dodd is middle class. In 2008 he was worth between $534,018 and $1.7 million, ranking him 66th among all senators. Like many lawmakers and investors during the recent economic crisis, his personal fortune has taken a hit. Between 2007 and 2008, his net worth fell by 15 to 20 percent. According to his most recent personal financial disclosure reports, the largest stock holding of he and his wife was $100,000 to $250,000 invested in company that runs the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. They further own between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of holdings in both Blockbuster and Brookdale Senior Living. They also have a few smaller investments in drug manufacturers including Pear Tree Pharmaceutical (worth between $1,001 and $15,000), Cardiome Pharma (worth between $0 and $4,000) and Javelin Pharmaceuticals (worth between $0 and $3,000).

Dodd also owns a cottage and a 10-acre estate in Ireland, which he purchased with a long-time friend whom he met through a Bear Stearns principal who was convicted of insider trading and later pardon by President Bill Clinton, reportedly at Dodd's urging. According to the 2008 filing, this estate is valued at 470,000 euros -- a value that puts it in the range of between $500,000 and $1 million on the same form.

Other Money Matters: When mortgage buyers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were in dire financial straits last year and seeking help from the government, Dodd came under some fire for having received more money from the two companies' employees and political action committees than any other lawmaker over time -- at $165,400. Dodd helped push through a rescue plan for the two companies last year, including better regulatory oversight in the measure.

The Senate Ethics Committee recently investigated Dodd over allegations that he received preferential treatment by Countrywide Financial when, in 2003, he refinanced his home mortgages. Dodd benefited from a VIP program, known as "Friends of Angelo," named after the Countrywide chief executive Angelo Mozilo. In August, the ethics probe cleared Dodd of any wrongdoing, saying there was "no substantial credible evidence" that the refinanced mortgages violated ethics rules or that Dodd used his position for personal gain.

In His Own Words: "We need to take action to restore Americans' confidence, their sense of optimism -- and their financial security -- by reforming a regulatory system that still contains far too many gaps, loopholes, and redundancies," Dodd said during a committee hearing earlier this fall. "The 20th century regulatory structure has been outpaced by the 21st century innovations in the financial services industry, and if we don't fix it, we could be right back where we were a year ago, facing a another dreadful choice between a massive outlay of taxpayer dollars or an unimaginable economic disaster for our nation and others around the globe."

I had often wondered: why did progressives pour all of their scorn on Joe Lieberman and not Chris Dodd? It was so intense, with so many plays on Lieberman's name. I wondered whether there was some anti-Semitism as the motivation.

*PROGESSIVE REPLACEMENTS?*
So, I hope that MoveOn, Progressive Democracy and other progressives can get into the open, the discussion: who is the more progressive of the potential replacements for Dodd?
*Former vet and Al Gore aide, Merrick Alpert
*Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal
*Former Bill Clinton aide, and 2002 gubernatorial candidate (to challenge John Rowland) Bill Curry
*Former eastern Connecticut Congressman, Sam Gejdenson
*Cable TV entrepreneur Ned Lamont, 2006 Democratic nominee, and challenger to Lieberman.
Chime in, at right, in my unscientific poll.

New station and time for All Souls Unitarian Radio Broadcasts

New Station and Time for All Souls Radio Broadcasts
(Unitarian Church, New York, New York):

Sundays at 11 AM on WWRL AM 1600
or www.wwrl1600.com

Personal actions will prevent contributing to the "Plastic Continent"

The other continent
Laura Rose

(From DivineCaroline.com) - When I heard about the "Plastic Continent" in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I have to admit that I thought it was just an urban myth or an overreaction by some extreme activists.

Much to my dismay, what I found by searching the Internet was that it was more of an understatement than an exaggeration. There it was "3.5 million tons of trash, 80 percent of it plastic" a mass twice the size of Texas. Yes, TEXAS!

At a cost of billions of dollars to clean up the mess, no country wants to take responsibility for it, and so it has continued to grow at a rate of tenfold per decade since 1950.

Sea turtles mistake plastic sandwich bags for jellyfish, and birds feed their young bottle caps and other plastic chards, unknowingly filling their stomachs to the point that they die of starvation. Beaches once scattered with drift wood and seashells are increasingly covered in plastic debris.

If you live in San Francisco, you now know why the Board of Supervisors, led by Ross Mirkarimi, outlawed the use of plastic bags in grocery stores and other retail outlets. Every city needs to follow their example and make this a priority.

Right now, there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about the garbage dump that churns between San Francisco and Hawaii, but we can do our part to keep it from growing.

1) Tell everyone you know about the Plastic Continent. The first step in solving any problem is awareness.

2) Use reusable shopping totes.

3) Get rid of the plastic sandwich bags in your child's lunch box, or at least reduce the number you use. Replace them with reusable containers or, at a minimum, rinse them and use again.

4) Buy a stainless water bottle. Make it a policy among friends and organizations to bring stainless bottles to soccer games and other sporting events and outings.

5) Write to your local, state, and national political leaders. Encourage them to outlaw the use of plastic bags. Know that lobbyists for plastic manufacturers are very influential; we need to influence with our letters and our votes.

6) Watch what you consume. Our lifestyle of constant consumerism and instant gratification hasn't just hurt our wallets, it's hurt our environment.

T.R. Reid from Washington Post., debunking myths about health care around world

From Washington Post, Aug. 23, 2009 ... Never too late.
5 Myths About Health Care Around the World
As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.
I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others -- for instance, Canada and Taiwan -- rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries -- including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland -- provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.

In some ways, health care is less "socialized" overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet's purest examples of government-run health care.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.

In France and Japan, you don't get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment -- and insurance has to pay.

Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for weekends at a health spa.

As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations -- Germany, Britain, Austria -- outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.
In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don't bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. "Why don't you just drop by?" the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon's office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. "When could we do it?" I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, "Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?"

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise -- private-sector, for-profit health insurance -- is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.
4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

5. Health insurance has to be cruel. Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" -- precisely the people most likely to need the insurers' service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer's "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive in a tough business.

Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can't cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. "Our customers love it," the group's chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.
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In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.
This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.

T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," [the NPR "Fresh Air" interview link] to be published Monday.

How Cong. Weiner helped bring public option back; challenging another way that Obama disappoints us

President Barack Obama is a colossal disappointment to progressives. Pick your issue. The Nobel Peace Prize winner is escalating the war in Afghanistan; Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan is short-sightedly pursuing a program to speed up the closure of "troubled schools" as a panacea to all ills in American education; he has restricted government generosity to bailing out the financial industry (OK, the federal bailout/ buy-out of General Motors, excepted), failing to address how the recovery is a jobless recovery. Now, he is settling for a terrible health care plan that rewards medical insurance companies and forces uninsured individuals to pick up their own health care costs.
To worsen matters on the last point, President Obama is dozens of potential allies on health reform. Meet Brooklyn/Queens (New York City) Congressman Anthony Weiner. And note well, how Obama responded to Weiner's hewing closer to principles with "I hope you are enjoying your last trip on Air Force One."
John Heilemann, "Back From the Death Panel: How the public option, helped by a congressman looking for an issue and a shrewdly silent White House, returned from the brink" "New York Magazine," October 11, 2009

On the night last week when much of Washington was joyously weeping over the seal of approval bestowed on the Baucus health-care bill by the Congressional Budget Office, Anthony Weiner was in his quarters in the Rayburn Building, merrily pissing all over the legislation instead. “It’s just too weak,” he told me. “It doesn’t do enough. It doesn’t achieve real cost savings. There’s no real competition. It’s pretty much a wish list for the insurance companies.” And those were merely Weiner’s substantive criticisms of the bill. His political assessment was even harsher: “It’s effectively dead,” he said.

Not a droplet of Weiner’s dismissal of the Baucus plan came as any sort of shock; he’s been trashing the Senate Finance Committee’s efforts for weeks. What’s surprising is that anyone gives a fig what Weiner has to say about the topic in the first place. Until six months ago, after all, the congressman was known more for his yearning to acquire the keys to Gracie Mansion than his mastery of the arcana of Medicare reimbursement rates. In fact, as Weiner would be the first to admit, his interest in, knowledge of, and record on health-care reform were perilously close to nonexistent.

And yet, since May, when he concluded that taking on Mike Bloomberg was a challenge that went beyond the Sisyphean into the realm of the just plain silly, Weiner has emerged as one of the few real stars in the marathon health-care debate: the clearest and savviest (and, as always, loudest and noodgiest) voice in favor of the public option. And though it’s plain that whatever bill eventually lands on Barack Obama’s desk—and, yes, I think the odds are now close to overwhelming that a big pile of health-care paper will wind up there—won’t be anything close to Weiner’s single-payer dream, his role in framing the terms of the discussion has been more than salutary. In some non-obvious ways, you could argue that it’s been essential.

I should confess at the outset that I have a long-standing soft spot for Weiner, whom I first met more than twenty years ago, when he was a budding Chuck Schumer protégé and we played on the same Capitol Hill softball team. Weiner then was strikingly similar to Weiner now: amped-up, ambitious, wicked smart, forever gauging all the angles, unafraid of being (actually, proud of being) a royal pain in the tuchis. All the qualities, in other words, that have served him so well in the wrangle over health care.

Weiner describes his efflorescence on the subject as a matter of opportunism, in the best sense of the word. “This was one of those unusual issues where we really didn’t have a mother ship that was directing the message, and that created an entrepreneurial environment,” he says. “You didn’t have the president out there speaking clearly about what he wanted. And among my colleagues, there weren’t people that jumped out who either had a comfort with the material or weren’t intimidated by the blowback.” Weiner laughs. “Frankly, I like the blowback. After my thirteenth town-hall meeting, someone on my staff said, ‘I can’t tell if you’re a sadist or a masochist.’ ”

Weiner is right about the nature of the vacuum that he smartly stepped in to fill, but there are at least two other proximate causes for it that should be added to his list: the illness and death of Ted Kennedy and the migration of Hillary Clinton out of the Senate and into Foggy Bottom, which deprived the debate of what would have been its two dominant liberal protagonists. For Weiner, Clinton’s absence and its implications carry a personal twist; he is engaged to Huma Abedin, Hillary’s longtime personal aide. “It’s a weird irony that I’m kind of part of the family now and this has become my issue,” Weiner says. “If Hillary had stayed in the Senate, I would never have had this opening.”

Weiner allows that he’s discussed the health-care battle with Clinton; what she’s told him he will not say. But one imagines she approves of the cleverness and chutzpa he’s displayed—especially in drawing an explicit analogy between the public option and Medicare, an equation that not only increases support for the proposal among voters but flushes out the phoniness of the Republican howls against a “government takeover” of health care. And one similarly imagines Madame Secretary’s chagrin at watching the Obama White House pursue a dance-of-the-seven-veils strategy explicitly designed to be the antithesis of the one she employed back in 1993 and 1994.

Weiner’s view of the administration’s approach hasn’t exactly been approving—a point he’s made abundantly and consistently clear over the past months. On the eve of Obama’s September speech before a joint session of Congress, Weiner cracked that “up to now, the messaging from the White House has been done by Sybil … They seem to have a different perspective on this every couple of hours.” And he’s apparently had no change of heart. “The president has been a miserable messenger on this by and large,” he tells me.

Read more: How Anthony Weiner Helped the Public Option Return From the Brink -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/59907/#ixzz0Zc6q2dVk

Back From the Death Panel

Such criticisms haven’t gone unnoticed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in no small part because Weiner—in a testament to his consistency, lunacy, inability to shut up, or all three—hasn’t shied away from making them directly. Indeed, on a recent flight back to Washington from New York on Air Force One, I’m told by one congressman who witnessed the scene, Weiner got into a testy exchange with Obama over the former’s ideas about how the latter might better prosecute the case for reform. When I ask Weiner about the incident, he refuses to divulge details, but notes that when it was over, the president said to him drily, “I hope you’re enjoying your last trip on Air Force One.” “He was kidding—I think,” adds Weiner.

In truth, Weiner has been on the receiving end of zero complaints from the White House for his potshots. “I see Rahm [Emanuel] at the House gym every morning, and he’s never beefed to me about this once,” Weiner says. “I think he needs this pressure from the left—it serves them. They needed someone to generate the heat of their base to give them the space to be the moderate voice. I’m convinced that if it weren’t me, they’d have to create me.”

Weiner’s theory is self-serving, but it makes a kind of sense. Over the summer, Weiner, by threatening to bottle up a vote on the main House health-care bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee, forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to grant him a floor vote this fall on a single-payer plan. Weiner believes in single-payer as a matter of policy—but he also sees the political advantage of putting forward a proposal that will at once satisfy certain elements of the base and create the appearance that the public option is itself a compromise toward the center. And his adamant advocacy of a robust public option itself generates breathing room for the sort of modified version that might win approval in both the House and Senate.

What Weiner has no doubt about now is that the final legislation will include just such a provision—because without it, there simply aren’t the votes in the House to pass a bill. “I think President Obama will put his finger on the scale at some point,” he says. In the end, it’s going to be simpler to corral one or two senators to accept a public option with some modifications than it’s going to be to get a hundred House members off their rebellious screed.

From what Weiner can divine from Emanuel and others in the White House, this kind of brass-tacks calculation—not the policy merits, not even the long-range political ramifications—is all that matters now. Obama’s bizarro, out-of-nowhere acquisition of the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of last week notwithstanding, the president has had a rough few months and badly needs to put a win on the board. And no one is looking to make that any harder than it’s been already.

To illustrate why that means the public option will prevail, Weiner colorfully sketches out his vision of the endgame: “Obama goes to Nancy and says, ‘I’ve decided I’m giving up the public option.’ And she says, ‘Well, dude, I can’t get this done then.’ So then he goes to Harry Reid and says, ‘We’re going with the public option. What do we have to do in Nebraska to get Ben Nelson onboard?’ That’s a much easier conversation.”

Read more: How Anthony Weiner Helped the Public Option Return From the Brink -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid/59907/index1.html#ixzz0Zc6LeVS3

Prevention Magazine: the Seven deadliest foods experts won't eat

I caught this earlier this week in yahoo's portal. These warnings generally steer people in the direction of more expensive choices. The sad truth is that people will often opt for many of these foods.
The real credit goes to:] Liz Vaccariello, Editor-in-Chief, PREVENTION, November 24, 2009, "The 7 foods experts won't eat"

How healthy (or not) certain foods are—for us, for the environment—is a hotly debated topic among experts and consumers alike, and there are no easy answers. But when Prevention talked to the people at the forefront of food safety and asked them one simple question—“What foods do you avoid?”—we got some pretty interesting answers. Although these foods don’t necessarily make up a "banned” list, as you head into the holidays—and all the grocery shopping that comes with it—their answers are, well, food for thought:

20 ways to feed your family for $100 a week.

1. Canned Tomatoes

The expert: Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, an endocrinologist at the University of Missouri who studies bisphenol-A

The problem: The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Unfortunately, acidity (a prominent characteristic of tomatoes) causes BPA to leach into your food. Studies show that the BPA in most people's body exceeds the amount that suppresses sperm production or causes chromosomal damage to the eggs of animals. "You can get 50 mcg of BPA per liter out of a tomato can, and that's a level that is going to impact people, particularly the young," says vom Saal. "I won't go near canned tomatoes."

The solution: Choose tomatoes in glass bottles (which do not need resin linings), such as the brands Bionaturae and Coluccio. You can also get several types in Tetra Pak boxes, like Trader Joe's and Pomi.

14 worst health mistakes even smart women make.

2. Corn-Fed Beef

The expert: Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms and author of half a dozen books on sustainable farming

The problem: Cattle evolved to eat grass, not grains. But farmers today feed their animals corn and soybeans, which fatten up the animals faster for slaughter. More money for cattle farmers (and lower prices at the grocery store) means a lot less nutrition for us. A recent comprehensive study conducted by the USDA and researchers from Clemson University found that compared with corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, magnesium, and potassium; lower in inflammatory omega-6s; and lower in saturated fats that have been linked to heart disease. "We need to respect the fact that cows are herbivores, and that does not mean feeding them corn and chicken manure," says Salatin.

The solution: Buy grass-fed beef, which can be found at specialty grocers, farmers' markets, and nationally at Whole Foods. It's usually labeled because it demands a premium, but if you don't see it, ask your butcher.

25 ridiculously healthy foods you should be eating now.

3. Microwave Popcorn

The expert: Olga Naidenko, PhD, a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group,

The problem: Chemicals, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in the lining of the bag, are part of a class of compounds that may be linked to infertility in humans, according to a recent study from UCLA. In animal testing, the chemicals cause liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Studies show that microwaving causes the chemicals to vaporize—and migrate into your popcorn. "They stay in your body for years and accumulate there," says Naidenko, which is why researchers worry that levels in humans could approach the amounts causing cancers in laboratory animals. DuPont and other manufacturers have promised to phase out PFOA by 2015 under a voluntary EPA plan, but millions of bags of popcorn will be sold between now and then.

The solution: Pop natural kernels the old-fashioned way: in a skillet. For flavorings, you can add real butter or dried seasonings, such as dillweed, vegetable flakes, or soup mix.

Your nutritional guide to grocery shopping.

4. Nonorganic Potatoes

The expert: Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board

The problem: Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes—the nation's most popular vegetable—they're treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they're dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting. "Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute (also owned by Rodale Inc., the publisher of Prevention). "I've talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals."

The solution: Buy organic potatoes. Washing isn't good enough if you're trying to remove chemicals that have been absorbed into the flesh.

14 ways to make veggies less boring.

5. Farmed Salmon

The expert: David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany and publisher of a major study in the journal Science on contamination in fish.

The problem: Nature didn't intend for salmon to be crammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT. According to Carpenter, the most contaminated fish come from Northern Europe, which can be found on American menus. "You can only safely eat one of these salmon dinners every 5 months without increasing your risk of cancer," says Carpenter, whose 2004 fish contamination study got broad media attention. "It's that bad." Preliminary science has also linked DDT to diabetes and obesity, but some nutritionists believe the benefits of omega-3s outweigh the risks. There is also concern about the high level of antibiotics and pesticides used to treat these fish. When you eat farmed salmon, you get dosed with the same drugs and chemicals.

The solution: Switch to wild-caught Alaska salmon. If the package says fresh Atlantic, it's farmed. There are no commercial fisheries left for wild Atlantic salmon.
Delicious and easy fish recipes

6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones

The expert: Rick North, project director of the Campaign for Safe Food at the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility and former CEO of the Oregon division of the American Cancer Society

The problem: Milk producers treat their dairy cattle with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST, as it is also known) to boost milk production. But rBGH also increases udder infections and even pus in the milk. It also leads to higher levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor in milk. In people, high levels of IGF-1 may contribute to breast, prostate, and colon cancers. "When the government approved rBGH, it was thought that IGF-1 from milk would be broken down in the human digestive tract," says North. As it turns out, the casein in milk protects most of it, according to several independent studies. "There's not 100% proof that this is increasing cancer in humans," admits North. "However, it's banned in most industrialized countries."

The solution: Check labels for rBGH-free, rBST-free, produced without artificial hormones, or organic milk. These phrases indicate rBGH-free products.
Don’t be fooled by these 11 health food imposters.

7. Conventional Apples

The expert: Mark Kastel, former executive for agribusiness and codirector of the Cornucopia Institute, a farm-policy research group that supports organic foods

The problem: If fall fruits held a "most doused in pesticides contest," apples would win. Why? They are individually grafted (descended from a single tree) so that each variety maintains its distinctive flavor. As such, apples don't develop resistance to pests and are sprayed frequently. The industry maintains that these residues are not harmful. But Kastel counters that it's just common sense to minimize exposure by avoiding the most doused produce, like apples. "Farm workers have higher rates of many cancers," he says. And increasing numbers of studies are starting to link a higher body burden of pesticides (from all sources) with Parkinson's disease.

The solution: Buy organic apples. If you can't afford organic, be sure to wash and peel them first.
How to pay less for organic.

Windows 7 Complaints Begin: installation and program migration can be buggy

Windows 7 Complaints Begin
by David Goldman
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 provided byCNNMoney.com

Users of the new operating system say the upgrading process is buggy. But once the kinks are worked out, customers are liking Windows 7 a lot more than Vista

Microsoft launched Windows 7 in late October to much fanfare. But, just like with previous Windows upgrades, complaints about bugs have already started rolling in.

A whopping 31% of clients have reported problems with upgrading to Windows 7, according to a recent survey of more than 100,000 customers conducted by consumer helpdesk firm iYogi.

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"Most of the problems that customers have with Windows 7 have to do with installation, or application and data migration," said Vishal Dhar, co-founder of iYogi. "These are all fixable problems, but they're annoyances and they're time consuming."

One common gripe, experienced by 9% of installers, is that the half-hour to an hour-long upgrade process gets to the "62% completed" point and then freezes. It's a problem that Microsoft is aware of, and can be fixed by rebooting the computer, going into advanced settings, and typing in a code that instructs the computer to ignore plug-ins.

However, issues didn't stop with the upgrade process. Many users still experienced glitches even after successfully installing Windows 7 on their machines.

Most common among those complaints was that basic "applet" programs, like Mail, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery, were missing. That's because Windows 7 deletes those programs and makes users download them from the Windows Live Essential Web site. IYogi said 26% of their customers were confused about that extra step.

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Visit the Family & Home Center

Others had problems getting their computers to work properly: Eight percent said their DVD drives couldn't be found and 2% couldn't sync their iPhones with Windows 7.

One in seven users also complained that the sleek new "Aero" theme doesn't work. The Aero theme enables users to see through a window to view the desktop or other programs that are open behind it. According to iYogi, most of the 14% of users that have problems with Aero don't have the graphics capabilities on their PCs to handle the program.

Other common complaints included an inability to view file extensions, too many "mini-dumps" (memory images saved on the computer when it crashes), problems with the "Aero snap" feature, changes to custom icons and problems with the new taskbar.

Microsoft (MSFT), which debuted Windows 7 on Oct. 22, did not return requests for comment.

Smoother sailing once it's debugged. Once the bugs from upgrading have been worked out, users have had a relatively hassle-free experience. And those who bought a new computer with Windows 7 preloaded have seen the fewest issues.

"Customers who finally get it up and running love Windows 7," said Dhar. "We haven't had a lot of people calling for usability issues, because it's a much more intuitive interface than Windows XP."

That's not to say that Windows 7 is perfect.

According to Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group, one of the biggest annoyances with the new operating system is that the "ribbon menus" at the top of programs have been redesigned and must be relearned. In previous Windows versions, the menus remained very consistent (File, Edit, View, Insert, etc.), but in Windows 7, they can be wildly different from application to application.

"It took me a long while to figure out how to print," said Kerravala. "Microsoft tried to improve the user interface, but there's a learning curve because it's inconsistent."

Microsoft also did away with many favorite applications like Windows Movie Maker, which is particularly surprising given the propensity of cell phone videos and Flip video camera movies.

But all of the gripes about Windows 7 pale in comparison to the angry complaints about Microsoft's previous Windows iteration, Windows Vista. That version was an outright disaster after it was released in 2007. Vista was plagued by bugs, software incompatibilities, sluggishness and annoying security alerts. The episode nearly destroyed the tech giant's reputation with consumers.

"While there are a few bugs, I haven't seen or heard of any show-stoppers," said Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC. "In fact, just the opposite. Some Vista users can't wait to upgrade. So far, this has been a home run for Microsoft."
Copyrighted, CNNMoney. All Rights Reserved.

Finding software reviews, comparisons, free software

A poster requested where to find the program XRumer 5.0 Palladium. He or she claims that the program is the best choice for putting advertising on the Internet.

I cannot comment one way or the other on that claim. I can suggest these sites for finding comparative reviews --or sole product reviews-- of software. So much software is available in a free format these days. I used one of these sites for finding reviews of free PDF editor programs. My favorite sites among the choices are CNET's site and the "TopTenREVIEWS" site.

http://download.cnet.com

http://software.toptenreviews.com

http://freedownloadscenter.com

http://www.topshareware.com

http://software.informer.com

When fired food began to be considered tasty

Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham on the key role cooking played in human evolution.
In "Scientific American.
Evolving Bigger Brains through Cooking: A Q&A with Richard Wrangham
Our intelligence has enabled us to conquer the world. The secret for the big brains, says biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, is cooking, which made digestion easier and liberated more calories.

A New York Times conversation:
A Conversation With Richard Wrangham
From Studying Chimps, a Theory on Cooking

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: April 20, 2009

Richard Wrangham, a primatologist and anthropologist, has spent four decades observing wild chimpanzees in Africa to see what their behavior might tell us about prehistoric humans. Dr. Wrangham, 60, was born in Britain and since 1989 has been at Harvard, where he is a professor of biological anthropology. His book, “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human,” will be published in late May. He was interviewed over a vegetarian lunch at last winter’s American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago and again later by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.
{Click the above hyperlink for the interview.}