A mean spirited law suit

Read the whole story at American Daughter. If the Sunrise Rock cross comes down (right now they've just covered it with plywood), don't you think for a minute that will be the last of it.

Currently, the Supreme Court’s nine justices are divided on the issue along progressive and conservative lines. Progressive justices view the Constitution as a living, breathing document emanating meanings from ethereal penumbras of the actual text, which often contradict the plain understanding of the words themselves; and conservative justices focus on a strict interpretation of the text of the Constitution based on the originally intended meaning of the text.

When it comes to the Establishment Clause, progressive justices have interpreted the emanations from the clause to mean government hostility toward religion in general and Christianity in particular; whereas conservative justices have interpreted the clause to mean government neutrality toward religion and accommodation for Christianity in particular.

However, the final battle won’t be won until the Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of Ninth Circuit’s ruling, and that could take weeks. It’s also quite possible the high court will ignore the broader question of whether the presence of the cross on a federal preserve establishes a religion, and will address the narrower question of whether Congress was right to transfer the land on which the cross sits to private ownership.

It's not called the 9th circus for nothing.

$54 billion in 10 years

That's all. The CBO says tort reform would reduce health care spending by .05 percent. Lawyers must be wetting their pants. Now, to the rest of us, that sounds like A LOT of money, but in government, which now doesn't bat an eyelash at trillions and thinks the stimulus actually stimulated something, that's nothing. That's play money. That's Monopoly money in pretty colors. We could save more than that by just cleaning up graft in the food insecurity programs in USDA.

Tort reform could affect costs for health care both directly and indirectly: directly, by lowering premiums for medical liability insurance; and indirectly, by reducing the use of diagnostic tests and other health care services when providers recommend those services principally to reduce their potential exposure to lawsuits. Because of mixed evidence about whether tort reform affects the utilization of health care services, past analyses by CBO have focused on the impact of tort reform on premiums for malpractice insurance. However, more recent research has provided additional evidence to suggest that lowering the cost of medical malpractice tends to reduce the use of health care services.

CBO now estimates that implementing a typical package of tort reform proposals nationwide would reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009). That figure is the sum of a direct reduction in spending of 0.2 percent from lower medical liability premiums and an additional indirect reduction of 0.3 percent from slightly less utilization of health care services. (Those estimates take into account the fact that because many states have already implemented some of the changes in the package, a significant fraction of the potential cost savings has already been realized.)

Saving these lives gets no peace prize or international praise

"I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It's the founding conviction of our country, that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Karen Hughes, former Bush adviser, speaking on CNN April 24, 2004.

But the No-bel judges were correct in stating that Obama had caught the world's attention--during the long campaign and his 10 months in office he talks mostly about himself (which may have cost Chicago the Olympics), which necessarily deceases the emphasis on the United States, which enormously pleases both our enemies and envious friends. Link.

Wealth For Life Principles

These were found at Black Enterprise. I was reading an on-line article on how to survive on one income for a formerly 2-income household, although I'm not sure these 10 were part of that article.

1. I Will Live Within My Means
2. I Will Maximize My Income Potential Through Education and Training
3. I Will Effectively Manage My Budget, Credit, Debt, and Tax Obligations
4. I Will Save At Least 10% of My Income
5. I Will Use Homeownership as a Foundation For Building Wealth
6. I Will Devise An Investment Plan For My Retirement Needs And Childrens’ Education
7. I Will Ensure That My Entire Family Adheres To Sensible Money Management Principles
8. I Will Support the Creation and Growth of Minority-Owned Businesses
9. I Will Guarantee My Wealth Is Passed On To Future Generations Through Proper Insurance And Estate Planning
10. I Will Strengthen My Community Through Philanthropy.

I think it is an excellent list, although most of them we didn't follow (especially #8--even most hair products and hiphop music are white controlled). We were in our upper 40s by the time we even thought about saving for retirement (there weren't as many tax shelters back in the old days for the ordinary citizen). That's when I went back to work and joined a tax deferred savings plan. Before we became DINKS, everything that didn't go for the kids went to the house. We learned in our 30s about tithing our income (loosely #10), and I think that's a tremendous advantage to start at a young age. Just take it off the top, from the gross, not the net. I have my personal doubts that home ownership (#5) builds wealth. . . although its better than owning a boat. Owning income property and renting does create an investment, however. It's a huge hassle and one I wouldn't recommend for the faint of heart, but that crummy duplex we bought in 1962 put us on the road, not to wealth, but to better housing and income growth for us. For the first 25 years of our marriage our savings (#4) was "put and take" certainly nothing for the long run.

Catching up with California

That's what Lisa Jackson, EPA, wants the rest of the country to do. From her speech analysis at The Foundry, Heritage Society.

"According to Jackson, climate change regulations have their “roots” in California, and much of what the President is trying to accomplish is guided by what California has already achieved. She touts that the United States is finally “catching up with what’s happening [in California]”

But what do we want to catch up to? A report by the American Lung Association from May 17, 2009 shows that Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Visalia, and Hanford all rank in the top ten of one or all three categories of pollution: short-term particle pollution, ozone pollution and year-round particle pollution. Maybe the results will come in the future but it’s highly unlikely the economic pain will be worth the negligible environmental benefits.

California’s unemployment rate for August 2009 was 12.2 percent, nearly 5 percentage points higher than a year ago and tied for fourth highest in the country. While supporters argue that thousands of green jobs will be created, David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation warns that green job growth is “grossly overstated because they don’t take into account the jobs lost elsewhere.”

The irony of mainstream environmentalists praising one of the most polluted states as a model to follow in one of the most polluted cities in America has not been lost on critics. It has become very clear that the concern is not so much for the pollution itself: mainstream environmentalists offer effulgent praise to California, calling it a “green state” not because it is clean but because it has installed stringent greenhouse gas regulations. The California energy plan should be used as a lessons learned model rather than hailed as a success.

In April she spoke to Black Enterprise, praising Van Jones, who is the unvetted, avowed Communist with a prison record, who resigned in the middle of the night when the president's closed circle of marxist appointees decided he was expendable (moved over to Podesta's think tank).

"We’re already seeing political and local leaders be very thoughtful about ways to really be transformative [with her share of $7 billion in ARRA]. Obviously the job part of it we touch, but we’re not leading. The White House has hired Van Jones from Green for All to be the special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the Council on Environmental Quality." Lisa Jackson, EPA

How long to read the bill?

I actually know Bonnie James, quoted in this article, who teaches speed reading.

"We read the entire House version when it came out in July. Certainly, at just over 1,000 pages, it was long. At times, it was exceedingly boring. We took frequent Diet Coke breaks. Day passed into night, then day, then night, then ... memory fails. We're sorry to report that we didn't think to time how long we took.

So to explore Bachmann's comment, we wanted a back-of-the-envelope estimate of how much time it might take the average person to literally read the text of the bill. A computer program told us the House bill weighed in at 163,000 words. The average adult, meanwhile, can read passages aloud at an average rate of 154 words per minute, according to a 2003 measurement of basic adult literacy by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. At that rate, the average person would need about 18 hours to read the bill aloud. So if you had the three days Pelosi would guarantee, you'd only have to spend six hours per day reading the bill.

Most people, though, can read faster when they're reading silently. The estimates we found for adult readers ranged from 200 to 400 words per minute. At those rates, a person could conquer the bill in seven to 13 hours.

Let's say that you're a better-than-average reader, though -- even a speed reader. We spoke with Bonnie James, the president of Advanced Reading Concepts, an organization that teaches speed reading to students at weekend courses and in corporate settings. James said that graduates of her classes can read, on average, anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 words per minute. At that rate, you could read the bill in about two or three hours.

But those times would be for someone who had a general understanding of the material and what it contained, James said.

"A trained speed reader, looking for specific things, could probably go through it at 1,200 words a minute," James said. "But you don't just open the bill and then read it really, really fast. You need to be looking for information, looking for certain words. You don't just go into a trance." Polifact.com

The real cost of the Baucus bill--$2 trillion

"The CBO score of the Baucus bill is like a mystery novel with the last 50 pages missing. It fails to reveal both the full cost of the bill and the budget gimmicks that Mr. Baucus uses to hide that cost.

The Baucus bill will not reduce the deficit, and it would ultimately cost taxpayers more than $2 trillion—just like every other bill Congress has produced so far."
Cato Institute

Social media

I guess I'm still back in the dark ages.

Ideas on downsizing the government

Now this should shake a few people up, the Cato Institute's Downsizing the Federal Government. Downsize agriculture? Although if the problem is shifted to the states, the taxpayer won't save anything.

All agricultural and rural subsidies in the Department of Agriculture’s budget should be abolished to save taxpayers $25 billion annually. In addition, agricultural trade barriers should be repealed. Current agricultural and rural policies are economically and environmentally damaging, and they create unfair transfers of wealth.

The department's food subsidy activities—food stamps, school lunches, and WIC—are properly local and private functions. They should be devolved to the states, with each state determining appropriate policies for its own residents. Such reforms would save federal taxpayers $79 billion annually. Some states may decide to fund food subsidies on their own, but competition between the states would likely result in smaller, more innovative programs.

Forest Service subsidies to state governments and private businesses should be ended. Congress should also explore options to transfer the national forests to the states or to new independent trusts that would be self-funded from forest-related receipts.

The table shows that these reforms would eliminate more than 90 percent of the USDA’s budget, saving federal taxpayers $108 billion annually, or about $923 per U.S. household. Under the proposal, the USDA would retain responsibility for animal and plant health inspections, food safety, grain and packing inspections, and conservation activities. Department of Agriculture

Notice Medicare and Medicaid together total more than defense. And bailouts and interest total more than Medicare. I wonder what's in "other."

But they can't do anything about illegal immigrants?

Local law enforcement agencies aren't allowed to do much about illegals--they aren't Homeland Security or ICE trained, they aren't federal agents. So why were police in Missouri last year asked to participate in Obama "truth squads?"

"One year ago on September 23rd, KMOV Channel 4 in St. Louis reported that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough and St. Louis Circuit attorney Jennifer Joyce joined a high-profile group of law enforcement officials (including Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer) threatening to invoke “Missouri ethics laws” against anyone the prosecutors determined had spread misleading information about Obama." Big Government

Which is a more serious infraction of the law and more expensive to the state: illegals taking jobs from Americans, joining criminal gangs and sucking up benefits or a nasty campaign ad?

"Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has just ordered Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to stop arresting suspects based solely on the fact that they are illegal aliens. The Arizona sheriff who has been called the “toughest” in America, defiantly said he will continue his sweeps which have netted thousands of illegal aliens.

Sheriff Arpaio has vowed to maintain his “crime suppression operations,” conducting street patrols looking for suspected illegal aliens. He says that he can still operate within the law, under Arizona human smuggling laws.

“It’s all politics,” Arpaio told reporters.

Earlier this year, the Maricopa County Sheriff said: “If I'm told not to enforce immigration law except if the alien is a violent criminal, my answer to that is we are still going to do the same thing, 287g or not. We have been very successful."

Under Sheriff Arpaio, his department has either identified in jail, or arrested on the street more than 30,000 illegal aliens in and around Phoenix, AZ." Examiner.com

"The issue under consideration today is the use of the E-Verify system in Ohio. Although the E-Verify system is not a panacea, it is a relatively inexpensive ($100 or less per employer), efficient (an inquiry takes 15 seconds or less), and reliable (96 percent) online method of ensuring that Ohio jobs are filled only by Ohioans and those who are lawfully present. With Ohio's unemployment rate at 10.8 percent and increasing, such a law would provide much-needed job opportunities for those out-of-work Ohioans at both the unskilled and skilled lev­els. Specifically, many entry-level jobs currently filled by illegal border crossers (who make up 60 percent of all illegals) and some technical-level jobs currently filled by individuals who have overstayed their work or education visas (40 percent of all ille­gals) would become open as those holding the jobs illegally were let go." Controlling Illegal Immigration, Ohio House Bill 184.

"Eight officers returned Tuesday from four weeks of special training that allows them to perform some limited immigration-related duties.

As a result, the Butler County Sheriff's Office became the first police agency in the Midwest to receive immigration enforcement powers that are typically reserved for federal agencies, authorities said Thursday - about a year-and-a-half after Sheriff Rick Jones first tried to get those powers." Feb. 8 2008, Cincinnati Enquirer.

This ACORN mess is in Ohio

"The activist group ACORN, which has long worked with criminals as it preys on the weak and the troubled, is on the verge of yet another public relations catastrophe.

That's because a cross-dressing Ohio male escort whom ACORN registered multiple times to vote was convicted of full-fledged vote fraud in addition to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud. A spokesman for Cleveland prosecutor Bill Mason confirmed yesterday that a local investigation of ACORN remains wide open."

Story at American Spectator

After seeing what went on here in Franklin County where they bussed in the voters and brought in the phony registration workers, I don't expect much action on this Cleveland case.

ACORN worker claims they threw out Republican votes

Interesting comments from a Black Republican, who registered voters, and voted for Barack Obama.

" “This is my first experience” with ACORN, [Fathiyyah] Muhammad said. “This was before Obama got the nomination, long before then….I heard about this group that was paying $3.00 per person, to go out and to get people to sign up to vote. So I went over, I thought that well this is a good way to make some money because I know everybody, you know. I went over there and this guy signed me up and everything, and gave me my little pad, all this stuff.”

Muhammad went to the ACORN office in Jacksonville. There she encountered a young man speaking to a room of about twenty people. “He was telling us, you know, about his experience, he was from Brooklyn, he wasn’t from this area. He was just here recruiting people to register people to vote. They had a big office here, and I would say maybe about ten or twelve people at there.”

She went to work: “Well, I went out and got a lot of people, homeless people, but of course I signed everybody up as a Republican, and I would have put people had they been Democrats.” She was not forcing people to sign up as Republicans: “You could put down anything you wanted.” But when she got back to ACORN, a group leader was not pleased: “So I showed what I had, and he said, “No, no, you a fraud, there can’t be any black Republicans,’ and oh, he just kind of hung me out to dry…. But of course their main aim was to register only Democrats. They’re not interested in registering Republicans.”

She saw ACORN officials in Jacksonville throw out the Republican registrations she made. “They just discarded those, they weren’t valid. All of the registrations… they just threw those out.” Yet she says that she is sure that the people she registered were actually going to vote: “Yes, they all were going to vote, I just didn’t want to get anybody just to get the three dollars, I wasn’t desperate for three dollars.”

ACORN did not honor its agreement to pay three dollars for each registered voter. “He took my papers,” says Muhammad, “didn’t pay me anything and I just left, I just figured that this is just another scam…. Everyone else got paid, all the other people got paid, but I didn’t. And I didn’t make a big deal about it, I just figured that it was another one of life’s experiences.”

Now maybe she's no more reliable than other ACORN employees, but this wouldn't be the first time Democrats have tried to claim there are no black Republicans (which is really odd because I link to a lot of them). ACORN in Minnesota which helped that comic get elected also needs to be investigated for not being able to find Republicans. These would be much easier to track down than hanging chads.

Link to original article at Big Government.

Medical education

The Sept 23/30 (v302, n.12) of JAMA is on medical education. Just a few items gleaned to throw into the health care mix and to ponder whether universal health care will help or hurt medical care.

• Up to 60% of practicing physicians report symptoms of burnout, defined as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low sense of accomplishment.
  
  
• Physicians can now get CMEs for "mindful meditation," i.e. learning to pay attention and listen.
  
  
• 60% of the schools that responded to a survey on web 2.0 reported medical students were posting unprofessionally online.
  
  
• Although medical educators have been working on better feedback for 25 years, learners still complain. There seems to be evidence that physicians overestimate their abilities.
  
  
• There is little evidence that continuing medical education improves practicing physicians' clinical reasoning and the quality of care. Electronic sources aren't too great either.
  
  
• Getting information faster doesn't mean you remember it. There are two types of memory--verbatim and gist. As we age, our verbatim box is less accessible so we rely more on the gist box.
  
  
• It seems medical schools aren't doing a great job of teaching doctors about health care for people with disabilities. The report was issued in 2005 so I assume the research pre-dates that. And since those goals weren't met, bigger better larger and more expensive goals are suggested.

As I found out from my years in academe, educators are terrific at setting goals; not so great at solving problems. I think you get money for setting goals. Not so much for solving problems.

Carol Diedrichs named Director of Ohio State University Libraries

"Carol Pitts Diedrichs has been recommended to serve as Director of University Libraries at Ohio State. Subject to approval by the Board of Trustees, her appointment will be effective Jan. 5, 2010. Diedrichs is currently serving as Dean of Libraries and the William T. Young Endowed Chair at the University of Kentucky, the flagship institution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. She has vast experience in library administration and at UK provides intellectual leadership for the educational and service programs of 12 libraries; administers a budget of more than $21 million; and is a member of the Provost's Dean's Council.

Diedrichs served at Ohio State from 1987-2003, most recently as assistant director for technical services and collections and professor." OSU Today, Oct. 9

I worked with Carol during my years as Veterinary Medicine Librarian, and I am quite happy with this choice.

George Gilder on Silicon Israel

In the Summer 2009 City Journal there is a must read article about Israeli Jews and investment in technological innovation.

“The most precious resource in the world economy is human genius, which we may define as the ability to devise significant inventions that enhance survival and prosperity. At any one time, genius is embodied in just a few score thousand people, a creative minority that accounts for most human accomplishment and wealth. Cities and nations rise and thrive when they welcome entrepreneurial and technical genius; when they overtax, criminalize, or ostracize it, they wither.

During the twentieth century, an astounding proportion of geniuses have been Jewish, and the fate of nations from Russia westward has largely reflected how they have treated their Jews. When Jews lived in Vienna and Budapest early in the century, these cities of the Hapsburg Empire were world centers of intellectual activity and economic growth; then the Nazis came to power, the Jews fled or were killed, and growth and culture disappeared with them. When Jews came to New York and Los Angeles, those cities towered over the global economy and culture. When Jews escaped Europe for Los Alamos and, more recently, for Silicon Valley, the world’s economy and military balance shifted decisively. Thus many nations have faced a crucial moral test: Will they admire, reward, and emulate a minority that has achieved towering accomplishments? Or will they writhe in resentment and plot its destruction?”

It would seem like a no-brainer that Israel should have gone to the top with all those talented, creative Jews, but no, in the early years of that tiny nation they repeated all the mistakes of 20th century European socialism--high taxation to redistribute wealth, a welfare state mentality, communal experiments in which both the family and private property were put at risk, public ownership of major companies, and huge bureaucratic barriers. Yes, it was, in my opinion on a smaller scale, our own Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod experiment with Barack Obama fronting the show. But all that has changed now, says Gilder. In the last 25 years there was an flood of Soviet Jews, disdainful of socialism, who had honed their minds in math and science, and an influx of Americans bringing Silicon Valley know-how with them.

“Mix the leadership of these dynamic capitalists with a million restive and insurgent Soviets, and the reaction was economically incandescent. . . Today, immigrants from the former Soviet Union constitute fully half of Israel’s high-tech workers.” [And having been there in March I think the rest are in the diamond retail industry.]

This is a critically important article on capitalism and the economy for you to read. Don’t miss it.

Sleep Apnea Research at OSU

Occasionally I stop by the web page of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science at Ohio State University--mainly to ponder "what does translational mean." Believe it or not, it's getting ARRA (stimulus) money--over $1.6 million for some new computer grid--and I also ponder how that will do one thing to improve the economy. Although I still haven't answered those questions, I did note some interesting research on sleep apnea, which if successful, looks a whole lot easier than wearing one of those awful masks in order to have a good night and safe night's sleep.

"Dr. Magalang, an Associate Professor in the Divison of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, along with his research team will examine the effects of mandibular advancement devices [MAD] treatment on insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, psychologic well-being, and quality of life in patients with OSA who are unable to tolerate Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) therapy.

Sleep apnea affects more than 20 million Americans and occurs when the area behind the tongue and soft palate becomes obstructed repeatedly, causing a person to stop breathing numerous times during sleep. It can range from mild to severe and the condition has been associated with an increased risk for stroke, hypertension, heart disease, depression, and diabetes.

The most common treatment for OSA patients is CPAP, delivered by a machine through a specially designed mask that prevents the throat from collapsing during sleep. While CPAP is a highly effective treatment for sleep apnea, it is estimated that at best, only 50% of patients tolerate and continue to use the machine long term.

Thus, Dr. Magalang and his team have proposed a study to better understand the effects of MAD for the treatment of sleep apnea. MAD is a dental device that is worn by the patient only during sleep and protrudes the lower jaw forward, preventing the airway from collapsing.

“There is a need for alternative therapy for sleep apnea,” says Magalang. “MAD has been used in the past to treat OSA, but the health outcomes as a result of this treatment have not really been evaluated. Some patients just cannot tolerate CPAP and we need to know the health outcomes of these alternative therapies.”

Dr. Magalang hopes that by providing evidence for the effects of MAD therapy on selected health outcomes, practitioners will consider this form of treatment when the patient is unable to tolerate CPAP.

“There is good evidence that the hypoxic stress, caused by the repetitive dipping of the oxygen levels in sleep apnea, is associated with insulin resistance, a marker for the development of diabetes and also an important risk factor for heart disease,” he said. “We need to know whether MAD treatment improves insulin resistance.”

Over the course of 3 months, the study will examine 40 randomized subjects who have reported that they cannot tolerate CPAP. The research team also includes: Dr. Allen Firestone, Department of Orthodontics; Dr. Dara Schuster, Divison of Endocrinology; and Dr. Sharla Wells-DiGregorio, Department of Psychiatry."

My husband says that when I lost 20 lbs I stopped snoring. Do thin people snore?

After they get the death panels in place . . .

there should be more room in nursing homes. "Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday that she is pursuing plans to remove some captured illegal aliens from “prison-like or jail-like circumstances” and put them in converted hotels and nursing homes . . . Our detention system has some who have committed crimes, others whose crimes under federal law is a misdemeanor, others who have as I said before not committed a crime at all,” Napolitano said, apparently not including being arrested from breaking federal immigration law as a crime." CNS News

The H1N1 vaccine

"A recent poll by Consumer Reports found that two-thirds of parents plan to delay or skip getting their children the H1N1 shot altogether.

Some believe the vaccine was rushed and not adequately tested. Others just don’t trust flu shots in general and avoid them each winter like the plague.

But government officials say those concerns are irrational. H1N1 flu has hit children particularly hard — 36 youths in the U.S. had died from it through August — so they are advising parents very strongly to do what's best for their kids and get them vaccinated." Fox News

There's an easy way to reassure the public. The HHS and CDC families get it first. If all goes well, it's probably OK.

WSJ reported that state and local budget cuts coupled with limits on who can administer the vaccine would hamstring the delivery of the vaccines, even if you convince people to get it. Manufacturers are still in production, and it has been rushed to market.

But never mind. Rahm Emanuel assures us they'll never waste a crisis, so it's all for the good.

Update: Carol's granddaughter has cancer. She wants everyone to get the vaccine. Read why.

Don't they have insurance?

I was reading a blogger today who was enjoying Britain's health system and couldn't imagine why Americans didn't want it. Maybe it's these stats:

"According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data, there were 26.6 MRI machines in the U.S. per million people in 2004. In Canada, there were 4.9 such devices, while Britain enjoyed 5. For every 100,000 Americans, 2006 saw 436.8 receive angioplasties. Among Canadians, that figure was 135.9, while only 93.2 Britons per 100,000 got that cardiac procedure.

Maybe that’s why, among American men, heart-attack deaths in 2004 stood at 53.8 per 100,000. In Canada, 58.3 men per 100,000 died of cardiac arrest, while coronaries buried 69.5 of every 100,000 British males.

The fatality rate for breast cancer, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis and Lancet Oncology, is 25 percent in the U.S., 28 percent in Canada, and 46 percent in Great Britain.

Among those diagnosed with prostate cancer, 19 percent die of the disease in America. In Canada, 25 percent of such patients succumb to this disease. And in Great Britain — an Anglophone NATO member and America’s closest ally — prostate cancer kills 57 percent of those who contract it. That is triple the American fatality rate." Deroy Murdock

In comparing life expectancy you need to start at about age 40--that's when we start falling apart, and that's when you need decent medical care.

A Bill Ayers theory

Ann Althouse has a plausible theory on why Bill Ayers would admit to authoring Obama's book, Dreams from my father. Wanting to get back in the news would get my vote. Getting back at Obama who has been a big disappointment to the far left would come in second. But Marxists lie, so who would believe him? I'll let this one pass.