It's already after noon. I'm still drinking coffee so this still qualifies as my afternoon coffee muse. As I write this the first rumbles of thunder are rolling around the house. The thunderstorms the prognosticators were foretelling of are making their presence known. I've been perusing the interwebs this morning.…
It's been mostly cloudy this morning. Already, at midmorning, the temperature is 85. I've spent the morning doing chores, so even though today's photos are from the front porch. I didn't spend my morning muse time out in the heat and humidity. I stopped at the local HEB yesterday afternoon.…
Well, they did it... Now I start dealing with my Republican Senators. As far I'm concerned my Repugnant Representative will have one very pissed of old hippy doing everything I can to see that he has to go back to fixing air conditioners.
Yesterday my wife came home with a passel of worries about Obamacare. She wanted me to go online and find out if what she had been told was true. It seems one of her coworkers had heard something on the radio that had her worried. There was talk about the IRS, an…
Now that the Supreme Court has declared the ACA to be constitutional I find most people still don't know what is in the law... I don't really know. My wife doesn't understand it. I know most of the folks I talk to don't. From the comments and email I get,…
I always knew that red state Texas was stingy. Governor Perry has spent most of his decade in office turning down federal money to help the poor. But this paragraph really spelled out the extent of Texas stinginess. The biggest losers are Medicaid and the poor. Very quietly, the Affordable Care Act…
Yes it does... Mitt Romney may have joked yesterday that the White House was “not sleeping real well” last night. But a lot of people tonight and in the future will sleep a lot better for this result. Young people, people with pre-existing conditions and mainly people who through the…
"The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care — is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but…
Reading Mark Bittman's blog this morning I saw this lead-in to a link I had to follow: Here’s the thing. A lot of stuff isn’t directly about food, but TB – that’s tuberculosis – is becoming, has become, antibiotic-resistant. And a lot of antibiotic resistance may be because there are…
Crooks and Liars has a list working of what we can expect in the first year while we wait for the full bill to kick in... Here are ten benefits which come online within six months of the President's signature on the health care bill: 1. Adult children may remain…
I found out about these Blue Zones a month or so ago. Went on the expedition with them to a Greek Island (virtually), read the info on their website, was intrigued by...And impressed with the simplicity of the idea. So when this TED Talk popped up on my Facebook Feed…
To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them — cause substantial greenhouse gases. It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian.
It's understandable the drugmakers would want a roll-call accounting of who their friends and enemies are, considering the size of the investment they are making on Capitol Hill: in the first six months of this year alone, drug and biotech companies and their trade associations spent more than $110 million…
Eating a hamburger should not be a death-defying experience. Too often it is. via Editorial - Toxic Hamburgers - NYTimes.com. This is where Food Policy and Health Policy come together. And the American people get taken for a ride by the corporate penny pinching policies and the lack of enforcement…
"We as a party have spent the last six months, the greatest minds in our party, dwelling on the question, the unbelievably consuming question of how to get Olympia Snowe to vote on health care reform. I want to remind us all that Olympia Snowe was not elected President last…
Churchill's argument was this"I have heard it said that the government had no mandate such a doctrine is wholly inadmissible. The responsibility for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate!" And there is the essence of what this is. What, on the eternal list of priorities, precedes health?…
The insurance industry, of course, loves the Baucus plan. Need we say more? via Paul Krugman - Baucus and the Threshold - NYTimes.com.
I grew up with a strong support for the power of technology...But the abuses perpetrated in the name of technological advancement of agriculture in the past few decades have left a foul taste in my mouth. It appears I share that distaste wit Verlyn Klinkenborg... There is no disputing the…
Something I keep pushing in the healthcare reform debate...Agriculture is key to real reform. Recently a team of designers from M.I.T. and Columbia was asked by the foundation of the insurer UnitedHealthcare to develop an innovative systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in America. Their conclusion surprised the designers as…
I keep reading how this reform is dead. We have Texas Republicans in Congress claiming if the Dems pass a plan they will be back in power and repeal it. Yet, the only alternative they seem to have to offer is Health Savings Plans...Call me stupid, but exactly where do…
Nicholas Kristof, writing in his column, had what I think is probably the best definition I have ever seen of the state of our agriculture... I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture. It’s not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste and overuses antibiotics…
...the public — struggling with the worst economic downturn since the 1930s — is looking on with great anxiety and confusion. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind. Bob Herbert said it today, I've been…
There are times my hometown newspaper makes me proud...This is one of them. In an editorial yesterday they laid out the argument for health care reform and touched many of the reasons that what is being argued in Congress is just BS. These three paragraphs tell the story... but you…
Think of the 47 million Americans who lack insurance. They are less likely to receive flu vaccines (which might or might not help), less likely to receive prompt care when they get sick, and less able financially to stay home from work — and thus they are more likely both…
Leave to a youngish mind in a middleaged, out of shape body to discover the hard way (always the hard way) that he cannot still do everything he once did. Yesterday I decided, at long last, to finish the distruction of our dog pen that Ike had started. Bearing in…
The cornbread I put aside for the next day...did not make it that long.
I woke this morning to a still, clear, cold sunrise. There was a layer of frost on the freshly cut grass out back. The scratchy throat, runny eyes and stuffy nose had managed to transform into a full blown cold. Herbal teas and sweatsuit time... And yes the wildflowers have…
Latest measles case brings total to 14 - The Boston Globe: "June 21, 2006 The Massachusetts Department of Public Health confirmed another case of measles yesterday, bringing the total to 14 since early May. The patient, a woman in her early 20s, has recovered from the disease and is back…
