NEW MAMMOGRAPHY GUIDELINES: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

About the new guidelines for breast cancer screening, the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology (ACR), and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), among others, find the new recommendations “objectionable.”

Shawn Farley, the director of public affairs for ACR, says: :

"If the USTSF recommendations are adopted as policy — particularly if Medicare and private insurers try to use them as an excuse to cut cost — many women will die unnecessarily from breast cancer (...) The treatment costs associated with the disease may rise because cancers would be found at a more advanced stage. For those women diagnosed at a later stage, they may experience more invasive techniques to remove the cancers because the disease is more advanced."

And here is the most damnable part: Not one, I repeat, NOT ONE oncologist served on the panel that recommended those revisions. To quote the source: “Let us just hope that our mostly male legislators and insurance CEOs have women that they are very fond of, and will work to protect this group of mostly female victims.” Never count on the goodwill of sexist pigs ... especially insurance company pigs and their Congre$$ional lackeys.

This post is a work-in-progress. Please look for a more detailed analysis on Monday.

The bow that shook the world

Actually it shook very little outside the Fox's den other than the behinds of the Wingnut Obama haters when President Obama did the traditional Japanese equivalent of the European handshake with the Emperor of Japan. Inside the borrow however, it was immediately dubbed the Bow-Gate in the tired old idiom of "let's get 'em back for what they did to Nixon."

Yes, we've all seen pictures of Don Rumsfeld bowing and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and we've seen too many pictures of George Bush lovingly caressing the Saudi Royals and all but making out with Prince Bandar -- not to speak of the Andrea Merkel supergaffe. What we haven't seen, except on blogs like The Reaction, is Richard Nixon bowing to Mao Zedong as though he were the Emperor of China.

Fox Folk may have short and selective memories, but the Internet remembers. To give him due credit, Nixon's little bow opened up an era of detente, increased cooperation and a liberalization of human rights in China. The internet remembers.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

And he said unto them that stood by, Take away from him the pound, and give it unto him that hath the ten pounds.

-Luke 19:24-

Once upon a time there were people who would lend you money at high rates of interest. We called them loan sharks and we put them in jail if we could catch them. We had usury laws to protect the public from being forced into ruinous transactions. We were just inches away from Marxism.

Then came the deregulators who told us that it was toxic government interference and was depriving us of our "freedoms" to apply the same laws to that class of supercitizens known as corporations and so now we are free to borrow at rates Don Corleone wished he could have charged. Sure, some states jumped in and capped payday loans and the government "protected" the military from being charged more than 36%, but of course that's an outrageous assault on our "freedoms" and sure enough, the lobbyists came out of the woodwork and bought themselves a House subcommittee which went to work legitimizing loans with a 391% APR. For many in the payday loan business, that's not enough.

H.R. 1214 introduced earlier this year by Congressman Rep. Luis "dances with jackals" Gutiérrez [D-IL4] is still in committee. Yes, Luis is a Democrat, let's give credit where it's due and Luis, who rose from poor Hispanic roots in Chicago promising to help others like him is now the champion of legalized juice loans and the big banks that screw the little guy in a big way.

The congressman got into trouble last year for getting a $200,000.00 loan from a contractor for whom he had intervened with the zoning board, but I'm sure he isn't paying 391%. A competing bill from Congressman Joe Baca would prevent States from capping rates at all and would allow much larger add-on fees and charges, but the really great feature would allow you to roll over the loan indefinitely, racking up that 400% or so until you're forced to commit suicide.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us who aren't desperate enough with trying to pay medical bills and mortgages we can't afford, the Credit companies are out to protect our freedom too. Faced with having to warn us they're tightening the screws in the near future, they're tightening them now without warning. I got a letter yesterday from my friendly MasterCard folk ( I won't mention the name but it rhymes with Citibank) informing me that since I've been such a good customer for 25 years and always paid the full balance on time, they would raise my interest rates to over 20%. Well to tell the truth there was a time or two when I got the un -postmarked bill on or after the due date although the last two times they tried that I'd switched to e-bills and had documentary proof that they sent the bill too late to be paid on time. They refunded the charges which would have amounted to nearly 100%, but I never got an apology for their attempt at petty larceny and I don't expect a letter of appreciation for my part ( and yours) in bailing them out when they choked on their own greed.

Yes, I know, when the Republicans justify their crimes by insisting the Democrats aren't pure at heart either, they don't avoid the guilt, but they're not always lying.

Adoration of the McCarthy Madonna

Credit: Sylvia Karl-Marquet from the art collection of (O)CT(O)PUS

Our media is again abuzz with non-stop crapola, and this time the subject is Sarah Palin’s latest book, Going Rogue. I prefer to avoid talking about Sarah Palin as I prefer to avoid talking about pneumonic plague or Pain-in-the-Neck-Beck, Cayenne Coulter, Gumbo-Limbaugh, and other vile creatures of the reactionary fringe. These loudmouth louts deserve no clout, no stage upon which to spout their reactionary stupidity.

Yet, mainstream media, and the liberal community especially, continues to fall sucker to blather and prattle. Why do we always bestow the legitimacy of public attention upon a lunatic fringe that deserves nothing more than to be marginalized to the bottom of the Sargasso Sea?

If there is at least one interesting thread amongst the hullabaloo, it is this article by Andrew Sullivan (h/t to Michael) who rains the blame mainly on McCain:

The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain. He picked her so carelessly, and his thought process was so cynical, that he should stand in the dock of public opinion before Palin does.

Cynical, feckless, and reckless, the choice of Sarah Palin was an opportunistic move to grab dispirited Hillary voters and appeal to the radical fringe of the GOP while raising to national prominence a VP candidate who represented the very opposite of women’s aspirations.

From the beginning, the God-Fearing, Wolf-Shooting, Caribou-Barbie, Soccer Mom from Wassila was anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-healthcare reform, anti-rights, anti-science, anti-everything but not against fear mongering, pandering, and demogoguery. Sarah Palin is no more analogous to Hillary Clinton than Clarence Thomas would be considered a worthy successor to Thurgood Marshall.

How quickly we forget this website, Women Against Sarah Palin, and the tens of thousands of voices who reacted bitterly to the nomination of Sarah Palin, such as Texas Mom who said:

Thank you, Gov. Palin, for being the ideal example of how maliciousness, pettiness, manipulativeness, and viciousness can hide behind an appealing, friendly smile and look and sound a lot like people you can trust.

Yet, here we are a year later. McCain/Palin lost the election, Alaska has a new governor, but Sarah continues to hack like a bad case of chronic bronchitis. A year later, look at the Hobson’s choice that has been forced upon us: A Healthcare reform bill with a Stupak amendment … all because we forfeited control of the public debate to Sarah and her teabagging rabble. Nice going!

The unbearable Liberalness of Truth

Rush Limbaugh may get his wish and what used to be a viable, if flawed democracy may just disappear into the kind of thing that used to go on in Michael Vick's back yard. Barking, snarling bared tooth and bloody clawed madness is everywhere, in the wild, outraged e-mail I got last night showing Barack Obama "refusing" to salute the flag on Veteran's day, to a new attempt to propagandize small children into supporting mad-dog mentality and bigoted mockery against liberal political figures, Jews, and gays. Even Geraldo Rivera, of all people, is calling Fox and Gretchen Carlson "preposterous and irresponsible" for insisting that trial by jury is dangerous. That may be the first time I've caught him in an understatement.

It doesn't help any more to refer the hoax spreaders to Snopes.com or FactCheck.org, since there are ten thousand web sites telling us that these sites and the facts they cite are wildly biased against the Gospel ofObamahate and never mind the unimpeachable sources they reference. Fox news? The voice of God, of course and we never question it. I don't think we have any chance to survive it.

It's chic to disparage American products. We can't make cars Americans say, but in China? They'd really rather have a Buick and the US is seen as an innovative technological leader with a competitive advantage over the rest of the world. We have the best health care we insist although our nation's capitol has a higher infant mortality rate thanSri Lanka . Socialism and terrorism are our biggest fears yet acetaminophen alone kills many times more people in a year than have ever died in all the terrorist attacks on our country while the healthiest, happiest, most prosperous, free countries offering the most opportunity for advancement are described as Socialist, third world hell-holes by people who can't find Denmark on a map.

The nativists are restless, the bigots are howling like banshees, the Christianists are speaking in tongues while we roll our eyes and babble about birth certificates, our Muslim president and Sarah the Rogue Palin who wants to lead us into a future although she insists the end is coming any day and traffic accidents are the result of witchcraft. Millions of my countrymen are as out of touch with reason and objectivity as anyone languishing in a padded cell ever was and I'm without hope. There is a tide of hate and madness in the lives of men and countries and I'm beginning to think we're surfing it straight to hell.

Ugly American

Have we become a nation of skateboard and spray can street brats who live just to piss off the adults and piss on everything we can just for the fun of it; laughing with idiot glee while impressing our idiot friends?

Maybe not all of us, but certainly the Tea Baggers and the third of us who think Sarah Palin would make an outstanding president and most assuredly the idiot CNN reporter who thought she could get noticed by wearing a T-shirt with the president of the US dressed as Mao Zedong in a Red Army uniform -- not at some idiotic Republican rally, not in a high school parking lot, but in the streets of Shanghai and while Barak Obama was making a historic visit to convince the world's largest country we're rational and dependable and trustworthy.

That's right - look at me folks, I'm an American and I'm an offensive and ignorant twit! One wonders at what feelings such a spectacle elicits in the Chinese. Mao, after all and after all the horrors, is still a hero of the "anti-Japanese War" and the man who ended much of the horror of Chinese history, albeit by instituting his own horror. Still, his picture looks down at Tian-an Men from the gates of the forbidden city.

Is this statement meant to say: "look, our leader is just like your great founding father, which might be an insult? Perhaps it means "look, your leader was a monster and so is ours" which would be a very confusing concept since drawing any parallels or valid comparisons between these two men is the stuff of foil hatted and straight jacketed ravers -- or unscrupulous reactionary propagandists. What must it seem like when a representative of the country that has everything China wants mocks the system that gave it to them by comparing it to the dark days of starvation and violent oppression?

Who knows, but if we hark back only a handful of months to when criticizing the US or it's leaders while abroad was considered treason - at least when non-Republicans did it, it would be confusing to anyone. No Chinese thinks Obama has anything to do with Communism, much less with the dictatorship of the Party or the Gang of Four or the Cultural Revolution.

Emily Chang, a Chinese based CNN reporter was hassled by Shanghai police who had put a ban on such display in order to avoid offending America. That an American news network would make an effort to openly flaunt it rather than some anti-American local must have seemed as strange as it seems to me, but perhaps no stranger than the tokens and tags of the domestic brat culture with its graffiti, self mutilation and 'attitude.'

Nice job Emily. Thanks for reminding the world that we're as sophomoric and scatter-brained as we ever were and the world can feel safe with us, our massive nuclear arsenal, our worshipful militarism, our xenophobia and the joy we feel in our disrespect for everything and everyone.

A LOOK AT THE BOOK

Here it is - the anthology containing my article on Michael Jackson is now in print. You can order a copy direct from the editor, details here, or get it from Amazon.com in a few weeks.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH…OR HARASSMENT AND SLANDER?

The story excerpted below can be read in its entirety HERE. h/t to ELIZABETH for posting this in her comments on my Kids Are Heroes post.

For Will Phillips, standing up to say the pledge of allegiance and repeating the words, “with liberty and justice for all” is something he refuses to do because he believes that these words are not true. And it has gotten him into hot water and garnered some unwanted attention.

See Will Phillips is only 10 years old, but a rather precocious 10 year old. He has skipped a grade this year and as his mother puts it, “Yes, my son is 10, but he's probably more aware of the meaning of the pledge than a lot of adults. He's not just doing it rote recitation. We raised him to be aware of what's right, what's wrong, and what's fair.”
“I've always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don't feel that there's currently liberty and justice for all.”

Will’s family have a number of gay friends and they have been actively involved in supporting gay rights by attending rallies and other functions. It is this failure to provide equal rights and protections to gays that Will finds objectionable.
Will and his parents have had to contend with the school system, of course, although they have backed down when Will’s mother pushed the issue of whether it is mandatory to say the pledge; it is not.
Will himself has had support from some students but has also had to deal with the derision and taunts from his detractors.

[Given that his protest is over the rights of gays and lesbians, the taunts have taken a predictable bent. “In the lunchroom and in the hallway, they've been making comments and doing pranks, and calling me gay,” he said. “It's always the same people, walking up and calling me a gaywad.”]
“They [the kids who don't support him] are much more crazy, and out of control and vocal about it than supporters are.”

When asked what being an American means, Will didn’t hesitate; “The freedom of speech. The freedom to disagree. That's what I think pretty much being an American represents.”

But the right to freedom of speech which Americans have long claimed also carries a great responsibility of how we use that freedom. When making this statement on other blogs I have been called Orwellian or the speech police.

And yet, I have never intimated that I would support suppressing speech but rather contend that people are responsible for the things they say. It is one thing to express your disagreement with say, a neighbor. That would be your right to free speech. But now imagine you speak about this neighbor to other neighbors, perhaps their children are listening as you claim the neighbor is selling drugs and sexually molesting his granddaughters and then state someone should blow his head off. If one of those children grows into a teen who believes this neighbor is a child molester and one day goes over there and blows the guy’s head off – are you in any way culpable? Can you simply hide behind the “freedom of speech” rag and declare you aren’t responsible for the actions of the kid; after all, you didn’t TELL him to do it.

I recently took this a step further on another blog, suggesting that the increasing violence in this country might be related to the increasing level of violent, angry rhetoric and use of shockingly violent images along with the spreading of rumors, lies and innuendo. And, predictably, the first amendment was dutifully trotted out.

There is a continuing apathy and a strong desire to deny the growing gang activity and the ensuing indoctrination of thousands of poor kids into these violent gangs that further feeds the culture of violence festering in this country. The screamers of death threats and bearers of violent images of death feel no shame for their wanton conduct nor any responsibility for further fanning the flames of violence.

It is one thing to disagree and voice your opinion. It is quite another to spread lies and call for violent action. So, when do we cross the line from first amendment protected free speech to harassment, libel, slander and inciting violence? Or does the first amendment mean that anything goes?

God is great - Bill O'Reilly? Not so much.

Blurry words and fuzzy logic are the tools of the deceiver. Take the word "terrorist." We're still trying to fit it into the Procrustean bed, or should we call it the Republican Bunk? In fact we can no longer distinguish between terror, the emotion or terrorism; the acts designed to produce terror. We're always arguing about who is a criminal and who is a terrorist but, always willing to help us find our balance, Fox news and Sean O'Reilly are on the job.

In order to keep the terror, angst and anger flowing and the ratings high, it's important to keep the supply of terrorists visible and to keep them ethnic -- and here comes Sean Hannity to tell us that what makes a terrorist a terrorist is that he praises God before he terrorizes. It's not all that simple though, he has to do that in Arabic otherwise every foxhole would be full of terrorists of many faiths.

It's simple enough however to say that because Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly said Allahu Akhbar before shooting up Fort Hood. On the other hand, attacks from the bombing of Guernica to the Rape of Nanjing to the shocking and awing of Baghdad are not. Simple haters like simple rules for hating. They like simple things that can be used to create convenient groups: tropes like "political correctness" of which O'Reilly accused The Washington Post's Sally Quinn Wednesday night. It's much easier to condemn a group fabricated for the purpose than to address her reluctance to call the man a "Muslim Terrorist."

"You have a hard time saying the words 'Muslim terrorist. I don't know why."

I do know why. If the only difference between Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, David, Son of Sam, Berkowitz and Major Hasan is religion, it becomes awfully hard to launch the Fox Crusade against Muslims alone. So one hates along with Bill, or one is politically correct which means unwilling to hate along with Bill. One jumps to convenient conclusions with him or one refuses in that politically correct way, thus defining PC as smart and honest and responsible for people more logically adept than the Fox Fools.

One must be a hater of Muslims or a terrorist supporter and without that assertion O'Reilly melts on the floor like the Wicked Witch. A nice binary, Good V. Evil choice to replace the kind of reasoning stupid people hate and fear and are incapable of: the kind of choice Lyin' Bill peddles like crack in the high school parking lot.

Shameless in the morning

Fox may just be the most busted name on Television, but it never seems to affect them or the faithfulness of their coven. We've heard plenty from them about how President Obama is a racist and the lack of evidence doesn't keep them from clinging to the slur or using it to disparage anyone who dares disagree. It also doesn't keep them from airing obnoxious and personal racist attacks without any disguise at all. What else would you call Bo Dietl, pulling on his eyes and mocking CBS anchor Katie Couric for looking Chinese and "oriental?" Probably the same thing he would call me if I put burned cork on my face and said "Holy Mackerel, Andy:" a racist idiot.

"Ten years ago, she looked American," Dietl remarked. "Today she is an Oriental"

as though nobody of Asian ancestry could possibly be an American. As though nobody with dark skin could possibly be one either. As though Dietl weren't a nasty little racist prick.



Dietl, who is a frequent Fox contributor, former Bush appointee and midwife to the "birther" hoax, chose Imus in the Morning simulcast on Fox for this infantile insult. In any other venue, he would immediately be fired and Imus, if he had a brain in that zombie-like head of his should have thrown him off instantly, but of course Imus is Imus and all he could do was to call Curic a rodent in that whiskey and heroin voice of his, but of course it was on Fox and the racism and ugly slander is fair and balanced, you dirty Liberals.

Sure, they'll have an excuse, it wasn't racist, he was misunderstood, Liberals have no sense of humor and yada yada. We've heard it all before. They'll get away with it because Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch and their employees are pigs who deserve nothing better for Christmas than to be visited by the ghost of Bruce Lee who can demonstrate to them just how hilariously funny it is to be Chinese.