A hyena will scavenge graves for food. It is an animal that shows no respect for the dead. Instead, it merely regards the misfortune of once-living carcasses as an opportunity.

In east Nigeria they have a belief that there are people who are capable of turning themselves into hyenas at will. Rush Limbaugh gave credence to that Nigerian superstition last week when he used the tragedy of 100,000 Haitian men, women, and children to promote himself as America’s number one radio thug without a conscience.

The pseudo-manly, rational thinker without a heart radio bit is nothing new for Rush. He has built his career by giving his listeners reasons to hate, fear, judge, and attack the easiest targets among our fellow man. Recently that target was dead, dying, starving, terrified Haitians who ranged in age from newborn to 90. Rush picks his targets well. While the world was seeing pictures of the bodies of Haitian children being dug up from earthquake rubble, Rush was once again reasserting himself as the “dispassionate”, “clear thinking”, wannabe tough guy who masters concepts that are beyond the grasp of less insightful observers. That is the Rush shtick. He projects this idea that as America’s conservative brain trust he is one of the few insightful thinkers capable of rising above those lesser human emotions like compassion, empathy, and decency. His 12 years in school no doubt equipped him for that. Rush is always selling himself as a character you might find in the cult books of Nietzsche or Ayn Rand. His listeners seem to eat up the idea of him being wholly unsympathetic but thoroughly narcissistic and all-knowing when everyone else around him is weighted down with those weak-minded beliefs that the well-being of our fellow man actually matters.

Limbaugh is much like that Nigerian mythical creature who evolved to the point that he is more hyena than human. When he suggested last week that there was no need for Americans to provide for Haitians because we have already paid income tax, he knew that statement would improve his radio ratings. A real “ditto head” would embrace that idea, and he knew it. After that, he used his mic time to politicize the tragedy by suggesting that, in keeping with Obama’s new healthcare reform “death panel” policies, Americans would be giving pills to Haitians to end their lives and their suffering. That was great radio entertainment in Rush’s world and I’m certain that as he spoke those words he was focused on how his clever snarkiness could extract bigger Nielsen ratings from the dead bodies of Haitian earthquake victims.

Haitians are easy targets for hate talkers like Rush. After all, they are black. And as we have heard from every neocon nut with a microphone, they pose an illegal immigration problem in America. They live in self-imposed and self-perpetuated poverty on a useless island. Worse yet, if you believe the TV evangelist Pat Robertson, they are Satan worshippers, capable of black magic and sorcery. As I watch this story unfold, I am hopeful that a surviving Haitian will use sorcery to change Rush’s bloated figure from a hyena back into a human being.

Trying to Save
a Flawed Technology

It has always been known that mammograms carry a significant risk of causing and spreading breast cancer, yet it has been widely ignored by mainstream medicine. Mammograms can cause breast cancer through repeated irradiation of the breasts and spread cancer by the fracturing of the fibrous capsule surrounding the tumor through compression of the breasts. In 2005, the Nuclear Information Resource Service concluded that all levels of radiation are confirmed to cause cancer.

I was thrilled when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued its report last month regarding new mammography recommendations and questioning the need for women to get routine mammograms in their 40s. At least the Task Force’s recommendation was a move in the right direction.

Why are the Spin Doctors, those involved in the politics of cancer and in the mammography industry, in an uproar and defensive when new scientific discoveries are made?

Is it because mammography is a multi-billion dollar industry? Are they trying to create a scientifically ignorant society? Are we going to allow it?
Ladies, wake up! Be your own health advocate. Women have the most influential impact on the new generation. We are the educators and nurturers; we must lead by example. We owe it to ourselves, our sisters, our daughters and our mothers to stand together and demand better screening methods be made available, along with preventative therapies.

Breast thermography is a non-invasive state-of-the-art digital infrared thermal imaging technology that empowers women in prevention and the earliest detection of even the most microscopic physiological changes in their breast tissue.
Quite a few women I’ve met have had the unpleasant experience of receiving a biopsy after their mammogram discovered a mass. Some still suffer from pain and tenderness at the biopsy site years later. Not to mention the emotional toll it takes. Less than 17% of biopsies are positive; most masses are benign.

With this in mind, if you did choose to have a mammogram and there was a mass discovered, why wouldn’t you be sent for a breast thermogram to determine if the area has a significant heat signature or abnormal vascular pattern?  The heat created by an abnormal vascular signature is easily detected by a thermogram. This could help a patient and their healthcare provider decide if a biopsy is truly necessary.
While the Spin Doctors and critics have denounced the new recommendations by the independent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, shouldn’t we ask, what does the Task Force have to gain by releasing an unsubstantiated report?  These are objective scientists who simply reported their findings.

We need to look at the evidence and be open to considering new recommendations, especially when the mortality rate from breast cancer has not changed much in over 40 years. The fact is, doubts about mammography have been mounting for decades. Many, on both sides of the argument, agree that the value of mammograms may have been over-exaggerated while some of the drawbacks, dangers and risks of subjecting many women to unnecessary treatment have been minimized or ignored.

If we want different results, we must do things differently. Do your own research, know your body and don’t let the Spin Doctors bombard you with misinformation and negativity about breasts? Our breasts are not the enemy or time-bombs waiting to go off. Most women do not get breast cancer.
All breasts are a work of art and should be celebrated as the beautiful wonders they are.

Gaea Powell, CTT
Atascadero

The slogan, “Buy American,” makes good sense during a time when America is digging its way out of a recession that took 8 years to create. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has lost sight of who they use to represent, so they are spending millions to make sure that Americans ignore the slogan, “Buy American.” The U.S. Chamber has hired Madison Avenue PR firms to discourage any “Buy American” trend from taking hold with consumers.
When you understand that the U.S. Chamber no longer represents mom-and-pop businesses, that Chamber position makes sense. The organization that use to represent small business interests has morphed into a lapdog that serves a new master. That master is international mega corporations.
The Chamber went as far as lobbying to exclude “Buy American” provisions in economic stimulus programs. When the clunkers-for-cash program sold 700,000 new automobiles, the Japanese did cartwheels while American auto factory workers stood in unemployment lines.
For decades, the U.S. Chamber has operated below the radar while they promoted campaigns that have pandered to the big money power that controls their organization. They campaigned to promote illegal immigration in order to secure cheap labor. They have campaigned to expand offshore tax haven laws that move 100 billion dollars a year away from America’s tax base, while average American taxpayers take up the slack. They lobbied to make it more lucrative for America’s mega corporations to ship jobs overseas. When the Chamber unleashed their lobbying efforts on healthcare reform, their approach was predictable. They came to the defense of America’s largest insurance companies. Those massive insurance companies were terrified of free market competition with a public option plan. The Chamber makes small business the victim. Some small businesses have seen 400% premium increases in their employee health plans in just the last ten years because there are no options.
It doesn’t stop there. When big box retail stores come to town to put mom-and-pop small family stores out of business, you will always find the U.S. Chamber’s efforts siding with Goliath against David. But in past weeks, Apple and Nike Corporations focused some light on how out of touch the U.S. Chamber leadership has become. Those two giants abandoned the Chamber because of its flat-earth position on climate change. The Chamber is trying to stop legislation directed at lowering greenhouse gases. Their talking points are that severe climate change actually is taking place, but a warmer climate will be healthier for our world’s population. Cold is bad, warm is good – is the psychotic lunacy being pitched by the dinosaurs who call the shots for the U.S. Chamber. That caliber of demented talk is too weird for corporations that have abandoned the Chamber in the last month. The real benefit to all this is that it is becoming difficult for the Chamber to operate unnoticed in its altered reality world. Witless babble is always an attention-getter.
Local chambers are the engines that drive sustainable capitalism because they represent mom-and-pop business. It is that smaller business group that should get a queasy feeling every time they send support money to a U.S. Chamber that is so out of touch with America in 2009.

Remember the “War on Drugs?” coined by Nixon in 1969, and discontinued by the Obama Administration in May 2009. This “war” has raged for forty years and poured billions annually into failed programs. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in just one year, 2003, we spent $19 billion on fighting drugs.
Today, jails are overflowing with millions of addicts and the American drug habit has created a criminal empire that has destabilized Mexico and Columbia.
Treating addicts as criminals isn’t helping; punishment doesn’t stop drug use. Locking people up, for decades, for possession, selling and using has taken a huge toll on society. Besides the money, the lock-‘em-up-and-throw-the-key-away mindset ruins lives needlessly, tears families apart and has created the billion dollar prison guard and private prison industries. Here, in California, prison system costs have become a giant albatross around the neck of the Governor, the legislature, and us taxpayers.
There is another way: decriminalize addiction. Treat addicts as patients rather than criminals. Send eligible drug-addicted persons to Drug Court instead of placing them in the criminal justice system.
Pioneers from the first twelve Drug Courts in the nation, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and clinical professionals, formed the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) in 1994 This organization seeks to improve the judicial system in drug cases by using a combination of judicial monitoring and effective treatment to compel drug offenders to change their lives.  Data shows that locking someone up for years will not cure his or her addiction. It’s hardly news that almost all users return to their habit after release, creating a revolving door of incarceration.
The Drug Court reviews each offender’s case and develops a program to break addiction in a very controlled environment. Individuals are kept in treatment long enough for it to work, while supervising them closely. For a minimum term of one year, participants receive intensive treatment and other services they require to get and stay clean and sober. They are accountable to the Drug Court judge for meeting their obligations to the court, society, themselves and their families. They are regularly and randomly tested for drug use and required to appear in court frequently so that the judge may review their progress and are rewarded for doing well or sanctioned when they do not live up to their obligations. Data shows that seventy-five percent of graduates never return to the justice prison. The benefits of saving lives and reuniting families are incalculable.
The Drug Court cost savings per client ranges from $4,000 to $12,000. These cost savings reflect reduced prison costs, reduced revolving-door arrests and trials, and reduced victimization.
There are 1.2 million drug-addicted people behind bars. Using Drug Courts is a way of ending their addiction and giving them and their families a new and sober life.
For more information of drug Courts log on to www.nadcp.org