In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. George Orwell
"..... Nor is public insurance the silver bullet its proponents claim it to be, at least not in the manner in which they advertise it. “While the involuntarily uninsured were 7.1 percent more likely to die than the average,those with public insurance were 17.4 percent more likely to die than the average, with a death rate of 29.3 percent in 2002 and 39.7 percent in 2006,” Holt reported. “Those with public insurance were ten percent more likely to die than those who are involuntarily insured,” O’Neill said. (emphasis mine)
In fact, Americans do better with their patchwork system of health care than other nationalities do with “comprehensive” coverage. “Many European countries have organized screening programs, whereas the U. S. approach is relatively decentralized,” another team of researchers reported in the December 2009 issue of Health Affairs of international efforts at cancer detection. “Many European countries, unlike the United States, also impose upper age limits on screening.” (emphasis mine) .... read more
Wall Street Journal Jan. 14, 2010 Martha Coakley's Convictions
The role played by the U.S. Senate candidate in a notorious sex case raises questions about her judgment
The story of the Amiraults of Massachusetts, and of the prosecution that had turned the lives of this thriving American family to dust, was well known to the world by the year 2001. It was well known, especially, to District Attorney Martha Coakley, who had by then arrived to take a final, conspicuous, role in a case so notorious as to assure that the Amiraults' name would be known around the globe. more...
Another senseless death may have resulted from the manslaughter case, say some doctors, because the district attorney overruled a request from Costin's family to donate his heart in a transplant to save another person's life, according to an article in the January 25, 2002 issue of the Boston Globe.
"Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley blocked the donation of Costin's heart after he was diagnosed clinically brain-dead," writes Sean P Murphy of the Globe, "to preclude any possibility that his assailant's lawyer might contend at the trial that Costin died of a pre-existing heart condition rather than the beating."
Although the move may have made sense as a matter of legal strategy, Murphy notes, some doctors say that a patient was probably denied a heart transplant because of it, and that preserving the heart would not have strengthened the prosecution's case any further "because it was demonstrably healthy, and transplant surgeons would have rejected it if any defects were discovered." The medical evidence, they argue, showed overwhelmingly that Costin died from head trauma and that his heart was fine, and that would have been enough to counter any doubts raised by the defense by questioning the cause of death.
Yes it sucks. Yes you have to vote Coakley. posted Wed Jan 13, 2010 at 18:47:04 PM EST
Let's get this out of the way. You might not want to vote for Martha Coakley. You might think she deserves what's she's getting after an absentee, self-satisfied campaign (why should I bail her out?). You likely want to send a message to everyone from the attorney general all the way to every Democratic official in Washington, DC. Odds are you didn't vote for her in the primary. And, you might be wondering if it'll make a difference who wins this Tuesday.
You got every reason to be pissed, but it needs to be clear: not voting for Coakley is the same as voting for Brown. And voting for Brown is a very, very bad thing. Read more...
Salon.com: Brazilian, Dr. Zilda Arns Neumann, pediatrician and founder of Children’s Pastoral and Pastoral Care of the Elderly, was among those killed in the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Founder and director of one of Brazils most important NGOs, Zilda Arns' work focused on the monitoring of infants, children, and pregnant women. Her work resulted in a sharp decrease in infant mortality, both in Brazil and around the world. It was on just such a mission that she would end her life helping others in Haiti yesterday. Born in 1934 in Santa Catarina, Brazil, Dr. Zilda Arns was the mother of five chidren (four of whom survive her), and eight grandchildren. She was the sister of Dom Pauolo Evaristo Arns and Chrysostom.
Dedicated to helping children and women who struggle with extreme poverty and difficulties that go along with that, Zilda Arns coordinated over 155, 000 volunteers in Brazil with the Pastoral of the Child organization. When asked once if she thought she had a struggle breaking through barriers in the labor market because of her gender, she described never wanting gender to make a difference. She noted however, that she was passed over for higher and more important positions early in her career while working in Curitiba. She remarked, “Perhaps men have some limitations to find the capacity of women.” ... more
“He put the question to me explicitly — ‘The time is coming when something must be done,’ ” Freya von Moltke said. “ ‘I would like to have a hand in it, but I can only do so if you join in too,’ and I said, ‘Yes, it’s worth it.’ ”From Harper's Magazine
So, with a wife’s assent, began a famous challenge to Hitler. At the height of the Nazi victories, Count Helmuth James von Moltke invited about two dozen foes of Nazism, many of them aristocrats like himself, to imagine a new, better postwar Germany.
For him, his wife’s participation was essential, as she remembered the conversation in “Courageous Hearts: Women and the Anti-Hitler Plot of 1944,” a 1997 book by Dorothee von Meding.
The dissidents met at the count’s ancestral estate, Kreisau, which Bismarck had given his legendary great-great-uncle, Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, for his victories over Austria and France.
It was a perilous act of resistance. As many as half of the dissidents were later executed, some for actively plotting to kill Hitler, others for thinking the unthinkable: they had marshaled logical, moral and religious arguments to question the legitimacy of the Third Reich. Their high-minded planning for a future without Nazis angered a regime that expected to endure 1,000 years.
Mrs. Moltke, who disdained the title of countess, was the last living active participant in the group. She died of a viral infection on Jan. 1 at her home in Norwich, Vt., her son Helmuth said. She was 98.
"Moltke’s correspondence with his wife, published as Letters to Freya, constitutes, along with Anne Frank’s Diary, Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo, and a handful of other books, one of the great moral documents to emerge from World War II. In his letters, Moltke, the scion of Germany’s greatest military family, documents the mentality of war—what he called “cowardice, servility and mass-psychosis”–and how it undermined the moral essence of men and women, converting them to “machines with a particular function in a process.” Moltke was no pacifist, but he was a firm believer in international law and the laws of war as essential tools to protect the innocent and soften the harms of warfare. The processes he so skillfully observed can be found in some measure in every society enmeshed in war, not least of all in our own. Today, January 11, marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the death sentence that concluded his trial by the infamous Volksgericht for his courageous actions against the Hitler regime."
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