If you don't support Obama, you'll kill him

So this is goodbye from me. At least for a while. I wish you all the best and i'll pray for Obama's safety every day, because i've seen first hand how tragic can be the end of a visionary and forward-looking leader, when right wing lunatics decide to eliminate him and the left leaves him all alone.

- Daily Kos diarist, blackwaterdog

[insert heavy sigh here]

It was bad enough when, during the campaign, people who criticized Obamalama were labeled "racists". Now, you are basically the one holding the gun to his head if you voice your opposition to his policies which, contrary to the laundry list of hyped-up crap in that diary, have been anything near "progressive".

But the Leave Obama Alone! crowd can't deal with reality hitting them in the face. Too much "doom and gloom", they say - as if it's all about how their poor feelings are getting hurt. Maybe they should sit down for a face to face with the families of the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and talk "feelings". Maybe they should have a face to face with those who've been tortured who won't see any justice done by this administration and talk "feelings". Maybe they should have a face to face with people who are dying from a lack of proper health care and talk "feelings".

But, no. If the "left" (whatever is left of the left in the US surely isn't in this Democratic party) abandons the Spelunker-in-Chief (I coined that term) who never met a cave he didn't like - he's as good as dead.

We joke about the insanity of the wingnuts who are showing up, completely misinformed while embarrassing themselves to no end, to the health care town halls. Pelosi and Hoyer have called their rabble-rousing "un-American". (Them's fighting words.) Meanwhile, the so-called "left" on blogs like Daily Kos - who loudly cheered the protests in Iran while posts about US protests for universal health care on the site faded quietly into oblivion - can't even bring themselves to get their asses off their chairs to get out there to fight for their rights in their country. No. Obama told them to write their congresspeople (because that's so effective, isn't it?).

Conservatives typically despise unruliness. Oh how they hated the 60s. And this centrist bunch of self-identified "pragmatic" Dems - who also chided every attempt by groups like Code Pink to bring attention to the horrific wrongs perpetrated by Bushco (and now continued by Obama's administration) - are stuck standing by while the right-wingers ironically claim the radical mantle of very public dissent. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Rahm Emanuel says that "Dems attacking other Dems are 'fucking stupid'". This, in the middle of a seriously muddled attempt to roll out a bill that the Dems have absolutely failed to explain.

Obama kicks the issue back to congress. But, because he believes he is the face of absolutely everything (and haven't you felt like selling your teevee too by now?), he owns this mess. And he owns the fact that the wingnuts are having an absolute field day (death panels, anyone?).

He owns every single bad policy decision his government has enacted since he's been in office. He wants to own it all. How many times have you seen one of his cabinet secretaries in the media explaining his policies? Does anybody even know who they are?

And, as has been noted ad nauseum by people who are actually in touch with reality on the real left and who won't be guilted into backing off from criticizing him because of ridiculous claims like the one made by the above-quoted Daily Kos diarist, Obama has committed a slough of very non-progressive missteps. He's only been in office 7 months!, they proclaim. As if he's going to change his very character and wake up one morning soon to unleash his hidden inner liberal. Or maybe, they hope, Michelle will make him do it. (No, really. Some have actually said that.)

Read my lips: that's not going to happen.

The Hopeyness train has left the station and it took the Changeyness policies with it.

You just can't call the wingnuts crazy while making equally crazy statements yourself.

If you can't stand the much-deserved criticism, refresh, refresh, refresh and leave the rest of us alone.

 

Your Neighbourhood Toxic Waste Dump

Yanks, do you know exactly what's in your neighbourhood? Besides the homes, stores and people, I mean?

Well, there's a handy little online service you should be very interested in. Brought to you by the EPA, it has a friendly, innocuous enough name: EviroMapper for Envirofacts. So, let's enter a zip code for, say, a few blocks in Buffalo, NY to see what we come up with.

Take a minute to have a look at that map.

I'll bet you never imagined so many hazardous waste sites could be located in such a concentrated, residential area. No. Neither did I.

I found the link to that site in a book I'm currently reading, The Autoimmune Epidemic, by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. It was recommended to me by a young mother I met recently who has Sjorgens when she found out that I have lupus (and fibromyalgia). The book is an eye opener so far - no doubt about that.

What's the connection between autoimmune disorders like lupus and hazardous waste sites, you ask? This 2007 article in The New Scientist, Lupus cluster at oilfield points finger at pollution, offers an example of the growing concerns:

An alarmingly high number of people living in houses built on top of a disused oilfield in New Mexico have been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease lupus. It is the latest in a growing number of lupus clusters near polluted areas, and points towards the environmental triggers for this complex disease.

When someone has lupus their immune system turns against them, attacking their own tissues, which can lead to joint pain, organ failure and even death. In the US, it is much more common in women and minority groups, especially African Americans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, estimates that the incidence of the disease has tripled in the past 40 years.

Pollutants seem to be the cause of lupus in people on a housing development in Hobbs, New Mexico, built in 1976 on land that was an active oilfield until the late 1960s. The community noticed an unusually high rate of lupus and contacted James Dahlgren, an environmental toxicologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dahlgren and his colleagues compared the prevalence of lupus in the Hobbs development to its prevalence in the general population and found that the rate of lupus in the Hobbs population was 30 to 99 times higher than estimates for the general population. "The rate is astronomically high," says Dahlgren. "It's a true cluster." All the cases in Hobbs occurred in several blocks of houses built on top of a waste pit.

As an Albertan, I have to wonder aloud if any such findings have been uncovered or even investigated in this oil-rich province.

The article also addresses what the residents of that Buffalo neighbourhood mapped above had to deal with - the case is more thoroughly outlined in the book by Jackson Nakazawa.

Other clusters of lupus have been documented in people exposed to industrial emissions, solvents and pesticides for a long time. A study under way in Buffalo, New York, has recorded 92 cases of lupus in an area near a lead-smelting plant that closed in the 1980s. Lead, mercury and arsenic are among the pollutants found at the site, says Edith Williams, a project coordinator for the study.

Behind each one of those numbers is someone like me who has had to deal with multiple, seemingly unrelated symptoms - several debilitating on their own - for years or even decades as I did. In my case, the diagnosis of lupus came by accident when, concerned about a small lump I'd found in my neck, my doctor sent me for a blood test that signaled lupus - a disease that, at that point, I knew absolutely nothing about even though it was clear to the rheumatologist I saw after the diagnosis that I had symptoms going back to my teen years.

There still is no definitive cause for lupus and there is no cure. But research is definitely pointing to genetic and/or environmental factors. Yet, as Jackson Nakazawa notes on her site:

The fact that the average American woman is eight times more likely to have autoimmune disease than breast cancer

Think about that when you see all of the advertizing coming at you from every direction these days to find that elusive cure for breast cancer (my best to all of you affected by cancer) while comparing that to the absolute silence about diseases and disorders most likely caused by environmental factors.

A political issue?

Absolutely no doubt about it.

Especially when there are corporations to protect from public scrutiny (<< must read news about the oilsands polluter, Suncor).

What can you do? Support research. Get involved. Make noise. Help someone who's sick. Rail against the polluters. Buy (authentic) organic. Live green. Learn more.

Protect yourself and your loved ones.

At the very least - care.

(On a personal note, I've just been too exhausted to blog lately and the daily depressingly dry economic news hasn't exactly been a motivator either. zzzzzzzzzzzzz... And I've been rather disgusted with the corporate sector lately, to say the least.)


Related:

Environment Canada's Chemical Substances site. No handy map feature there.

The NIH's list of Environmental Diseases from A to Z. (Oh, look. There's lupus.)

A link from that NIH page goes to several article links on Environews.
 

Harper's So-called Wait Times Solution

Gather round, folks. It seems we've just been handed yet another so-called health care fix to the tune of millions of federal dollars that is totally unnecessary in some provinces in this country.


And, let's not forget this little footnote as well:

Harper did not say how the federal government will ensure that the provinces and territories deliver on the guarantees and it was not clear how long individual waiting periods for various procedures will be.

Aren't these guys supposed to be the fiscally conservative and accountable "new" government?
 

Random News & Views Roundup

Catching up with the world...

- Diplomacy, what a concept. John Bolton and Dick Cheney cry.

- Let's hope those British captives aren't villified by the right-wingers like Jill Carroll was.

- Speaking of Bolton, who was appointed by Bush as ambassador to the UN while congress was on a recess because they wouldn't approve his nomination (twice), Bush has decided to pull the same stunt and has appointed former Swift Boat Veterans for Smears contributor Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium.

Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation in the Foreign Relations Committee, Bush withdrew the nomination last week. On Wednesday, with the Senate on a one-week break, the president used his power to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate confirmation.

This means Fox can remain ambassador until the end of the next session of Congress, effectively through the end of the Bush presidency.
[...]
Recess appointments are intended to give the president flexibility if Congress is out for a lengthy period of time, such as the four-week adjournment in summer. But Dodd said the law was not intended to circumvent lawmakers' approval.

"This is really now taking the recess appointment vehicle and abusing this beyond anyone's imagination," said Dodd, a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. "This is a travesty."

Bush? Abusing his authority? No way. I mean, c'mon...

- AttorneyGate update:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has retreated from public view this week in an intensive effort to save his job, spending hours practicing testimony and phoning lawmakers for support in preparation for pivotal appearances in the Senate this month, according to administration officials.

He should be practicing his golf swing and phoning for tee times instead.

- Condi, pussycat:

Julius Caesar, as is well known, reported to the Roman Senate, "I came. I saw. I conquered." Condoleezza could report to the U.S. Senate: "I came. I saw. I capitulated." To whom? To a failing Israeli prime minister, whose popularity rating is approaching zero and who practically nobody expects to survive to the end of the year.

In the ongoing debate about which is wagging which – the dog its tail or the tail its dog – the proponents of the tail have won the day. In the round just finished, Israel has won against the United States.

This bout started with President Bush deciding, it seems, to clear the decks for action. The U.S. is preparing for war against Iran. For that purpose, it has to put an end to the mess in Iraq, unify the pro-American Arab regimes, and find a solution to the Palestinian problem.

In the beginning, everything worked just fine.

read on...

- So-called "friendly fire" incidents are bad enough but, when a soldier involved in one wasn't even properly trained, because he was "rushed to the country in the "surge"", that lands right in Bush's lap.

"Zeimer arrived at Fort Stewart on Dec. 18 after basic training and deployed to Iraq just a few weeks later. He missed the brigade's intensive four-week mission rehearsal in October when more than 1,300 trainers and Iraqi role-players came to the post as part of the most realistic training program the Army offers for Iraq operations.

"The fact some of the brigade's 4,000 soldiers missed that training raises questions about how well the Army is preparing troops for war in the face of accelerated and repeat deployments."

- Wait times:

All 10 provinces and three territories have agreed to provide wait-time guarantees in a treatment area of their choosing by 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday.

That sounds good. What's the catch?

Harper did not say how the federal government will ensure that the provinces and territories deliver on the guarantees and it was not clear how long individual waiting periods for various procedures will be.

There you go. Just another day in health-care paradise waiting for something to happen while hoping someone might actually be held accountable if it doesn't. Looks good on paper though and that's what counts, isn't it?

- Hopefully, I'll be adding my Paypal donation button by the end of the week once my account is verified. Thanks to all of you who've been so supportive. It really has helped me tremendously. I'll keep you updated. My posting has been lighter than usual since I've been quite busy this week. Thanks for hanging in there with me.