Newtongate shakes anthropogenically-generated mathematics at the foundation

Satire, hoax, fact — how can we tell the difference?

Maybe more importantly, how can we tell early on that the “Climategate” kerfuffle, involving purloined, but otherwise dull e-mails from climate scientists, is nothing to worry about?

Look at history!  Remember Newtongate?  Read it here, at Carbon Fixated.

If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton’s private correspondence were compiled and published.

When you read some of these letters, you realise just why Newton and his collaborators might have preferred to keep them confidential. This scandal could well be the biggest in Renaissance science. These alleged letters – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists behind really hard math lessons – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in covering up the truth, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

But perhaps the most damaging revelations are those concerning the way these math nerd scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence to support their cause.

What kind of conspiracy keeps calculus being taught to innocent children today?  Exactly the same conspiracy that causes scientists to sound the alarms about climate change.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Tim Lambert at Deltoid.

The birth of death panels in the unprincipled opposition to improving health care in America

Heckuva story.  Earl Blumenauer is the man responsible for the language in H.R. 3200 that Sarah Palin erroneously claimed created “death panels.”

He’s a Congressman from Oregon.

In Saturday’s New York Times he detailed how critics hijacked the debate with false claims.  Fascinating story.

A very odd result:  Because of the false claims, a provision to help people plan to avoid death panels was stricken from health care reform proposals.  More citizens will face death panel-like decisions as a result.

Previously I thought Orwell was convoluted.

Who are those Boy Scouts in 1943?

A posed photograph:  Three Boy Scouts, from at least two different units, holding a poster Scouts were distributing about international cooperation in World War II.  They are saluting, and behind them rises the dome of the U.S. Capitol on a brilliantly sunny day.

Caption from the U.S. Senate Historical Office: "Boy Scouts aid the war effort by delivering posters that encourage a united fight for freedom, ca.1943. credit: Library of Congress"

1943?  Who were the Scouts?

The photo is online in the collection of the U.S. Senate Historical Office (a good source of images, by the way).

I just wondered, who are those Scouts, and where are they today?

Boy Scouts assisted war efforts in a lot of ways in a lot of American cities, towns and villages.  Affiliates at the Tom Harbin Scout Museum at Camp Wisdom in Dallas (Circle 10 Council) have papers documenting and detailing massive scrap and paper drives, and a lot of other activities we probably wouldn’t let Scouts get into today.

The three Scouts in the photo wear what appears to be two different neckerchiefs, suggesting they come from at least two different troops or other units.  All three wear the uniform of the Boy Scouts of America, but two of the three look as though they may be immigrants or children of immigrants.

The date given is a “circa 1943.”  But the poster plugs a “United Nations” — could it have been as late as 1945 or 1946 and the official organizing of the United Nations?

What do you think?  What do you know?

Update: Wikimedia puts the date of the poster as 1941.  Shorpy says the photo is 1943:

“Washington, 1943. “United Nations Fight for Freedom: Colored, white and Chinese Boy Scouts in front of Capitol. They help out by delivering posters to help the war effort.” View full size. 4×5 Kodachrome transparency by John Rous for the Office of War Information. What photo expert out there can tell us about the numbers on these Kodachromes — how and at what point in the manufacturing/ exposure/ developing process they were made, and what they signify.

All those details and not the names of the Scouts?  In comments at Shorpy we also see that the temporary patch for the Scout on the left is for a 1942 campout.  So we know the photo was later than 1941.  The community patch for the Scout on the right says Washington where the city patch should be, with no state patch (if they had separate patches then).  So it’s probably a Washington, D.C. unit — and it’s Troop 11.  Anybody from National Capital Council ever read this site?  Were all three of these Scouts from Troop 11?

I have found, but cannot yet examine, another photo from the same roll of film, showing just the Scout in the middle.

Update 2: This may identify one of the Scouts, with an astounding story:

Caption from CityDesk.net: "July 1941. Local Boy Scout Anderson Grimes in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., holding a copy of a WPA poster designed for the city’s landmark water conservation program."

That solo Scout is clearly the same one in the first photo, so we have one name:  Anderson Grimes.

But the entire story from CityDesk.net is more amazing, if true:

July 1941. Local Boy Scout Anderson Grimes in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., holding a copy of a WPA poster designed for the city’s landmark water conservation program. Shortly after this photo was taken, he was to present the poster to local congressman Harford Collins in a brief ceremony. Tragically, Grimes, along with several local reporters and congressional aides, instead found Senator Collins slumped over his desk, dead from a heart attack.

Thirty years later, Grimes ended up serving the same seat in Congress for four terms. He did not die in office.
- RJ White

If true?  I can’t find a listing for a Sen. Harford Collins in the Congressional biography pages, nor for any Member in either house named Anderson Grimes.

More mystery.  Is the Scout even named Anderson Grimes?

Okay, after j. a. higginbotham wrote in, I finally got it:  CityDesk.net is a satire site.  They wrote a phony story to accompany the photograph.

That’s right:  I got hoaxed.

Still looking for information on the Scouts and their troop(s).

Update, November 15: Is the water conservation poster in the version above a PhotoShop addition?  Here’s a photo held by the Library of Congress:

From Library of Congress: "United Nations Fight for Freedom: Boy Scout in front of Capitol. They help out by delivering posters to help the war effort"

Does Michelle Obama have the largest staff of any First Lady? No . . .

You probably have gotten the e-mail that claims Michelle Obama has the largest staff of any First Lady.  Either you dismissed it as great sour grapes, or you may have given it a moment’s consideration before hitting delete.

Did you wonder whether the charge is true?  Mudflats, the great blog from Alaska, tracked down the sources.  Mudflats’ discoveries are well worth the read.  You may want to bookmark that site for the next time you get the e-mail.  You know there will be a next time.

Wall of shame:  Sites that pass on the gossip as fact

• Daily Liberty Research; who then inexplicably defends the error
• NorCal Blogs
• The Big Feed, who then shamefully claims children guests in the White House garden are child laborers

Tip of the old scrub brush to Dr. Bumsted.

What’s a journalist’s duty? Limbaugh ignores warning signs, punks himself

Millard Fillmore’s bathtub came out of a hoax story written in 1917 by one of America’s greatest cynics and writers, H. L. Mencken. Mencken lived to regret that he ever wrote the piece, after it was cited as fact by encyclopedias and critics of Fillmore’s presidency.

Mencken’s story holds a moral, a lesson for all critics of the American scene, and especially anyone who comments on political figures:  Verify everything.

Ernest Hemingway put it best, if crudely:   “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”*

If a writer or reporter doesn’t have one of those devices built-in, he is likely to find himself up to his chin in it after having failed to detect it in time to avoid the plunge.

Rush Limbaugh is in it up to his chin right now, after following Michael Ledeen off the dock.

Faithful readers here — all dozen of ‘em — may remember last January when we spotlighted a hoax at a blog called Jumping in Pools; the author claimed President Obama had ordered members our armed forces to take an oath of allegiance to Obama in place of their regular oath to the nation.

Orson Welles was on to something with his “War of the Worlds” broadcast.  In fact, after that first night of panic, the same script was used on other occasions, and people still got suckered in.  (Listen to the RadioLab feature on this phenomenon — it’s wonderful.)

It’s almost as if people were going around with signs on their backs that say “Lie to me, baby!”  Only, the people put the signs on their shirts and blouses themselves.

For whatever ill-thought, malicious reason, somebody invented an absolutely unbelievable hoax that President Obama asked the Pentagon to have military people swear allegiance to him, instead of the nation. Jumping in Pools posted it.

Jumping in Pools also listed it as satire, in tags.

But the hoax sucked in the gullible all over the web.

Limbaugh?  Ledeen?  Y’all would do well to read this blog, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.  You might have recognized the name of the blog, Jumping in Pools, that carried that phantasmagorical story about Barack Obama’s student essay, finally being released in part to Time Magazine’s Joe Klein.

Yahoo!’s Buzz Up explained the story, with links you ought to check out:

It must have seemed so perfect. An obscure blogger unearths some pages of President Obama’s college thesis. The report supposedly comes from big-time journalist Joe Klein of Time magazine. And the thesis has some real gems: like Obama’s disdain for the Constitution.

The whole thing was nothing more than a satirical post on a humor blog. But Rush Limbaugh, who quoted from the supposed thesis on his radio show, sure wasn’t laughing. Here’s how it went down.

An unknown blogger picked up on a made-up post meant as a joke, which claimed that Joe Klein had gotten his hands on 10 pages of student Obama’s college thesis. Rush Limbaugh jumped on it, which immediately sparked Web searches on “obama thesis.”

Supposedly titled “Aristocracy Revisited,” the excerpt revealed the president had “doubts” about the “so-called founders.” Juicy. Except not true. Limbaugh discovered halfway through his show that he’d been had, but defended himself by saying basically the thesis felt true. Listen in to Rush’s mea sorta culpa.

Joe Klein finally jumped in, and called the report “nonsense” on his Swampland blog, and the blogger who thought the hoax was real also apologized.

Michael Ledeen writing at Pajamas Media was that “blogger who thought the hoax was real.”

Ledeen had the good grace to apologize (and in doing so reveal that he really should have been much more en garde):

The hoax/satire was written in August, so it’s not connected to any current event.  I cam across it on Twitter, read the blog, found it interesting, and posted on it.  I failed to notice that one of the tags was “satire.”

So he got me, and lots of others. It worked because it’s plausible.  I’ve done satirical pieces myself, and I know how they can take off.  I once wrote one that said that Bill Casey did not die, and was hiding in a bunker under the St Andrews golf course from which he was running Mikhail Gorbachev.  I thought it was obviously satirical, but it went like wildfire all over the world.  And that was in the days before the Internet.

So I should have picked up some hint, but I didn’t.  Shame on me.

But Limbaugh?  He railed on for more than half an hour on the evils of Obama revealed in the completely fictional essay; and then when he was alerted to the fact that it was a hoax, he didn’t apologize.  He said he was suckered in because the hoax was plausible, and Obama might have done such a thing.

“I know Obama thinks it,” Limbaugh said, purporting to channel the guy he despises only too openly.

I’m trying to suppress it, but Limbaugh’s actions remind me mightily of an old Cheech and Chong routine.  One wonders what Obama’s more rabid critics would not grant credence to.

Wall of Shame

• American Thinker, host of a thousand neuroses and great lack of judgment, jumped right on it
• Fox Nation also fell victim
• Tundra Tabloid
• Mercifully short Wall of Shame this time, no?

What would Hemingway have reported?

Other thoughts:

• Jonathan Last’s article for the Templeton Foundation’s In Character Journal wonders about how we choose what to believe, and whom.  The Dallas Morning News carried the article in the “Points” section this morning, but it’s not up on their website; look at the article at the Templeton Foundation site.

________
* I’m convinced he said it. I’m relying here on Elizabeth Dewberry’s contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway, “Hemingway’s Journalism and the Realist Dilemma,” on page 25.  She cites to an interview, but I’ve misplaced the rest of that note for the moment, and for some odd reason the page with the citation isn’t included on Google Books (the pain of internet research, to get to the information you need out of the haystack, and find that particular needle has been intentionally removed).  Read Dewberry, though, for a much longer and informative discussion about hoaxes and fakery in journalism, which is the problem discussed in this post.

Don’t let your friends be bamboozled, pass the word:

White House Christmas tree, and another hoax about Obama

First, the press release from the National Christmas Tree Association:

White House Christmas Tree: 2009
White House Staff Select Blue Room Christmas Tree

Chesterfield, MO (October 20, 2009) — A beautiful Douglas-fir from Shepherdstown, W.V., will be the official White House Christmas Tree this year.

The Blue Room Christmas Tree will be officially presented to First Lady Michelle Obama by Christmas Tree growers Eric and Gloria Sundback. The Sundbacks earned this honor by winning the National Christmas Tree Association’s (NCTA) national Christmas Tree contest held in August 2009 in Chattanooga, Tenn., and becoming Grand Champion.

The Blue Room Christmas Tree was handpicked by Director of the Executive Residence and White House Chief Usher Stephen Rochon and Superintendent of Grounds Dale Haney on Oct. 20, 2009. The tree, which was planted by the Sundbacks in 1996, will be cut in late November and sent to Washington, D.C.

Eric and Gloria are no strangers to the White House Christmas experience. This will be the fourth time that the couple has won the contest and presented a tree to the First Lady. “It is always an exciting time and it is interesting to meet all the First Ladies,” Gloria says.

The couple first began growing Christmas Trees in 1956 in western Pennsylvania. In 1959, Eric’s work as a landscape architect took them to the Washington, D.C., area where they began a search for land to continue their Christmas Tree farming on the best soil possible, settling near Shepherdstown, W.V. In 1967, Eric and Gloria started retail lots in Bethesda, Md. and Washington, D.C., which they operated for 40 years before passing the retail side of their business to two veteran employees. Both in their 80s, Eric and Gloria continue development of the seed orchard part of their farm.

The presentation to the White House is tentatively scheduled to take place on Nov. 27, 2009. The tree will be set up in the Blue Room later that day, where the White House Floral Department staff and volunteers will decorate it.

Members of the National Christmas Tree Association have presented the official White House Christmas Tree for display in the Blue Room since 1966.

I post the press release here because — you just knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? — someone is passing around a hoax letter claiming President Obama has banned the mention of Christmas.

Really.

I caught the word from Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars; he got the word from Politico.

The White House Historical Association has been receiving calls and emails about an alleged Obama decree that the Christmas trees in the White House would now be known as “holiday trees.” And artists submitting designs for ornaments on the Blue Room tree were not allowed to depict Christian themes.

“It’s strange,” said Maria Downs, the historical association’s spokeswoman. “They’re almost saying, ‘Are you aware of this?’”

One of the chain emails circulating around in-boxes claims that “a friend at church who is a very talented artist” got a letter from the White House saying not to send any ornaments painted with a religious theme.

“Just thought you should know what the new residents in the WH plan for the future of America,” concludes the email hoax. “If you missed his statement that ‘we do not consider ourselves a Christian Nation’ this should confirm that he plans to take us away from our religious foundation as quickly as possible.”

The truth is the White House has already made plans to celebrate Christmas this year. In August the National Christmas Tree Association announced that a couple from West Virginia will “present the official White House Christmas Tree to First Lady Michelle Obama for the 2009 Christmas season.”

Never mind that historical association sells the official White House ornament, not the actual ornaments that go on the White House tree. How does it respond to concerned citizens? “We just tell them no,” said Downs.

So if somebody sends you an e-mail asking you to get steamed up over this issue, send them the press release from the tree growers, and invite them to buy an ornament from the White House Historical Association.

Maybe Larry T. Doughty could be persuaded to buy an ornament, instead of spreading false rumors.  How many other bloggers fell for this hoax?  (Both Snopes.com and Urban Legends have posts debunking the hoax; also see Media Matters Action Network.)

Native American tree

Douglas Fir needles and the unique, identifying cone - USDA Forest Service image, courtesy the Hunt Institute

Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) does not grow natively in West Virginia — it’s a western tree famous for growing to massive size, and famous for providing timber from western forests.  We found it in stands throughout Utah and New Mexico in our air pollution studies, but the biggest ones grow along the Pacific Coast from northern California, through Oregon and Washington into Canada.  It’s not a true fir.  Classifying the tree was problematic for years.  The name it was mostly known by when we worked on them was Pseudotsuga taxifolia, which is “false hemlock with yew-like leaves. “  It’s still classed as a false hemlock.  I see on some sites that there are five different species in the genus recognized around the world.  Douglas fir has a unique cone that usually will identify the tree dispositively.

So the White House Christmas Tree to be displayed in the Blue Room this year is a native American tree, important to the lumber industry, raised by a prize-winning Christmas tree farmer in West Virginia.

Who says we don’t have culture?

USDA Forest Service photo of Douglas Firs in a U.S. National Forest -- via UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO); FAO notes that trees of this species this large are unlikely to be found outside of National Parks today.

Watts falls victim to Monckton’s voodoo

Among those who call themselves “skeptical” of claims about climate change, Anthony Watts has distinguished himself from time to time for often using solid science and raising good questions.  His campaign to look at the placement of weather reporting stations indicates an understanding of the way science should work (though we haven’t seen results).

So, what’s Watts doing repeating Monckton’s hysterical, inaccurate rant?  We already know Monckton’s testimony is impeached.

Is Watts so politically naive as to think any nation would cede sovereignty on an issue of climate change? One more indication that people should stick to their knitting, and not venture into areas where they have no expertise.

Cranks refuse to budge on influenza hoaxes

Friday came and went.  President Obama did as he was scheduled to do, chairing a session of the United Nations Security Council in a meeting directed at nuclear weapons non-proliferation.

This should have silenced some of the cranks, crackpots, crank scientists and hoaxters who had “warned” us that Obama was going to use that opportunity to take over the world and order people to get inoculated against influenza — with some unstated fears that those inoculations would be more dangerous than the flu itself, or turn us all into Volvo-driving, chablis-loving, union-belonging, line-dancing Democrats, or something like that.

:::Sigh:::

No.  Never such luck.

At the post where I debunked the claim that WHO is planning to take over the world with inoculations at the point of a gun, instead of with Auric Goldfinger, SMERSH, KAOS, or Lex Luther, a guy named Simon McDermott complains I don’t give him enough credence.  His letter doesn’t help.

Look:  The World Health Organization is a group of distinguished medical care specialists, public health specialists, and policy wonks, most of whom are too nerdy to want to hold great power — heading up WHO is a stepping stone to no great governmental power position anyone has ever found, least of all at the United Nations, which has no army, no troops of its own of any sort, and advises nations on bettering health care.

The claim that WHO is plotting to take over the world is not just moonbat-shagging silly, it’s completely insane.  It makes no sense on any level, nor is there any evidence to corroborate the claims.  Jane Burgermeister’s website notwithstanding, I have my doubts that she could demonstrate mental competence to enlist as a private in the Russian armed forces.

Moreover, the world faces a crisis in influenza.  With luck and a lot of hard work, we can avoid a spread of a killer flu virus that might make Zero Population Growth look optimistic.  We don’t need hoaxsters, pranksters and fools claiming that influenza is all a great hoax.

Simon said:

I am a freelance writer and have heavily researched the ‘well known’ and ‘established facts’ written in my article that I posted in my previous comment.

The facts are that the H1N1 vaccine has not been safely tested. It takes years to accurately test and research the effects of a new vaccine.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208716/Half-GPs-refuse-swine-flu-vaccine-testing-fears.html

I have posted a link above to the Mail Online a highly respected national newspaper here in Britain.

The article says that health officials say the vaccine has been thoroughly tested.  No one in the article offers any credible denial of that fact.  The headlines feature an earlier poll of general practitioners alleging that they said the vaccine had not been tested well enough.

Simon:  An out-of-date, nonscientific poll of  GPs in Britain who were underinformed, is not science.

Nor is your reading that story doing “heavy research.”  Googling is not generally considered serious research.

‘First, you exaggerate. Second, that outbreak and the aftereffects are very much on the minds of health officials. Guillan Barre was never linked to the vaccine, by the way. Get some facts, will you?’

This is established fact; although experts now believe that it will be more like one in one million that will contract GBS rather than one in ten thousand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcnIojjzvvg

No, a badly researched, poorly produced story on a local CBS affiliate, migrated to YouTube, does not make something “established fact.”

GBS is rare, but occurs all the time.  We don’t know the cause, and no one has been able to pin any vaccine as a cause of GBS.  After several million people were vaccinated, a few fell ill from GBS.  No research has ever been able to establish any vaccine as a cause of GBS, however — it may be that those people would have fallen ill with GBS whether they got any vaccine or not.  See the CDC’s information page on GBS:

What causes GBS?

It is thought that GBS may be triggered by an infection. The infection that most commonly precedes GBS is caused by a bacterium called Campylobacter jejuni. Other respiratory or intestinal illnesses and other triggers may also precede an episode of GBS. In 1976, vaccination with the swine flu vaccine was associated with getting GBS. Several studies have been done to evaluate if other flu vaccines since 1976 were associated with GBS. Only one of the studies showed an association. That study suggested that one person out of 1 million vaccinated persons may be at risk of GBS associated with the vaccine.

We’ve had that many kids die of swine flu already this year, in Dallas and Tarrant counties in Texas.    Right now, GBS from all causes is less prevalent than deaths from swine flu.

Also here is a list of dangerous substances that are in other vaccines; we can also expect similar material to be in the swine flu vaccine.

http://www.stunnedmullets.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=130:official-facts-on-vaccines&catid=78:vaccines&Itemid=141

Did you know that potatoes contain carcinogens?  Are you aware that the essential nutrient, selenium, is also carcinogenic?  Did you know that an excess of salt can kill a person?  Are you aware that plain old tap water can be deadly, in several ways?

Gosh, a list of “dangerous substances.”  Did you look at the list?  Did you see that the “dangerous substances” include eggs and yeast?  Are you aware that almost every loaf of bread in America contains more eggs and yeast than three years’ worth of all vaccines for a person?

You’re being irresponsible to the point of recklessness. Yes, people with allergies to eggs should avoid flu vaccines.  No, that doesn’t mean the vaccines are inherently dangerous, that they vaccines don’t work, nor does it mean eggs are inherently dangerous.

It means people who are allergic to eggs should avoid flu vaccines (vaccines are grown in eggs, and some egg proteins remain in influenza vaccines).

Almost all substances are dangerous, when out of place, or in the wrong quantities.  You could note that fact without alarmism and without hysterics.  Dangerous things are all around us.  Flu vaccines fall near the bottom of the danger scales, but near the top of the life-saving scale.

You’re aware that we annually lose around 30,000 people to the pedestrian, seasonal flu?  How many thousands of times greater is the risk of death to flu than death by vaccine?

Research has shown that there are plenty of natural preventative actions that can be taken to protect against catching flu viruses. These are a healthy organic diet, vitamins; such as vitamin D3, regular exercise and certain herbs – all of these are known to boost and strengthen the immune system.

Staying healthy is always a good idea.  H1N1, however, attacks healthy kids. It’s not a question of natural prevention.  Some people have never been exposed to this particular strain or its cousins, and they have no natural immunity to it.  When it strikes, it strikes quickly.  Most of the deaths in the U.S. from H1N1 are to young people who have taken your natural preventive actions.  Vitamins and organic diets don’t work.

In fact, that’s dangerous advice right there.  A medical professional could be subject to malpractice for the advice you just issued.   Kids, Simon is an amateur — don’t try that at home.

I used to regularly take the seasonal flu vaccine before finding out the dangers of vaccines in general; on the two occasions that I did take it I ended up getting flu shortly after taking the vaccine. Since then I have not taken it and decided to go down the alternative route, which has served me very well as I have not had so much as a cold in over three years.

As people grow older they have fewer colds — you never get the same cold virus twice.  When you’re over 30 or 40, you’ve been exposed to most of the variations on cold viruses.  Your reduction in colds is because you’re older, not because you’re healthier.

Ironically, that’s exactly what you argue against.  You’re more resistant to colds because you’ve been “vaccinated” against them.  The vaccination was natural, by catching the viruses and developing immunity.  For flu, we have to have flu shots for the greatest safety.

Don’t argue against flu vaccines by telling us how effectively the natural method of vaccination has protected you from colds, okay?  You look like an idiot when you do that, suggesting you really don’t understand viruses, how they are passed, nor how human immunity occurs.

Since you seem so eager to poison your body with a substance which is clearly more dangerous than swine flu itself, then who am I to stand in your way.

That’s just a crass, cold and craven lie.  There is not even an insane argument to be made that flu vaccines this year are more dangerous than the flu itself.  That’s crazy talk, terrorist talk.  What do you have against old people that you want to see thousands of them die from the flu?   Since the “death panels” claim turned out to be bogus, you decided to go on a one-man campaign to encourage death among the elderly and ill?

Since you are so eager to poison minds with completely bogus attacks on science, let me urge you to volunteer to forego all flu vaccines, but be exposed to the viruses, for the sake of research.  That way the rest of us could benefit from your bizarre animus to life.

I am sorry to hear that there have been a couple of deaths where you live due to swine flu, but there are much safer alternative and natural preventative actions that can be taken. A healthy nutritionally rich diet should be first on the list before we even consider vaccines, of which there is a huge amount of evidence calling into question, their overall safety and effectiveness when fighting disease.

Call the CDC.  Volunteer for flu exposure now, before the rush.  You’re not sure that the vaccines are safe, but you argue that the flu IS safe?  Let’s see you put your life where your mouth is.

I don’t think you’re that big a fool.  Your that whopping dishonest, but not so big a fool.

The problem is that the majority of western doctors are taught absolute fallacies at medical school and in some cases have been brought up to become nothing more than glorified pill prescribers.

The human immune is an extremely powerful and efficient tool when it comes to fighting disease. The reason that it is susceptible to diseases like swine flu at all is because our diets are so nutritionally poor. In many cases this is due to processed foods (filled with additives and preservatives) and poisons such as aspartame in many of our soft drinks.

http://www.naturalnews.com/026168.html

I have posted a link above to a site that lists natural preventives and explains that viruses such as swine flu cannot be contracted by a healthy well maintained immune system.

Don’t look now, but you’re obviously suffering a dementia produced by lack of immunity.

In your case, that dementia could be cured with a trip to a library.

What you wrote in that last excerpt is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Thank you, but we’ve already heard the “smart pills” joke.

I am not a ‘crack pot’ and neither are others who show a distinct lack of trust in bodies like the WHO and companies such as Baxter, because history has taught us that they have seriously let us down in the past.

You mean, you advocate crackpot ideas for noble reasons?  Alas, that leaves you in the category of crackpot.  Anyone who thinks killer flu is safer than vaccines is a crackpot, or an idiot, or an agent of evil.  I’m assuming you’re not an idiot, and not an agent of evil.  Can you convince me otherwise?

If after examining the evidence that I have provided you still believe that the vaccine is safe, then be my guest, take it, it is your right to choose, but please do not belittle with your derogatory use of humour those who do not!

The reason I talk about this information is because I want people to be safe, and nobody wants a repeat of the 1976 debacle.

Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Shut up.  Nobody wants a repeat of the 1918 debacle, either — and you should be ashamed of campaigning for it as you are.

If we all lived clean and healthy natural lives then there would be no need for vaccines at all.

There you go with that crackpot stuff again.  If you think that chicken pox and shingles would disappear without vaccines, you’re a fool.  If you fail to understand that polio can’t be beaten without vaccines, you’re a greater fool.

If you claim that people could beat chicken pox, smallpox, measles and polio without vaccines, you’re a dangerous tool of crackpot evil.

Maybe it is our social system that needs a rethink, because if you examine Amazonian tribal communities, who have had little to no contact with the outside world, you find a distinct lack of disease in these societies.

There’s a whopper I’d like to see some serious studies on.

That testifies to a lack of virus transmission, but you will also find a distinct surplus of diseases that diet can’t cure.  Someday spend some time studying Huntington’s Disease, Huntington’s Chorea, and how the prevalence of the disease in one of those isolated Amazonian tribes contributed to the search for a cause.  Of course, almost every member of that tribe had the disease.  (It’s genetic, and no vaccine can prevent or cure — yet.)  You’ll also find they die of bacterial diseases that modern medicine can treat — those physicians you mock.

Dirty living equals disease; an unclean polluted environment equals disease; the addition of chemicals to our food, drink and drinking water equals disease; when are we going to wake up and realise that the cause of disease is not some unknown, unfortunate ‘random factor’, but the way we live our lives.

Of course, clean living increases asthma.  A lack of pollution tends to correlate with lack of civilization.  The absence of chlorine in our drinking water contributes to cholera epidemics and typhoid, the lack of fluorine in our water means more dental caries and brain infections.  Trace amounts of iodine in salt have all but eliminated goiter.  When are you going to wake up and realize that some disease causes are well known, some diseases easily preventable, and life is complex and cannot be made perfectly safe with today’s technology, but was a minefield of deadly infections without today’s technology?

If we live our lives soaked in superstition and crank science, we haven’t even a prayer (full irony intended).  You’re not advocating for better health.  You’re ranting about stuff you don’t know about.

Although in the case of Baxter the cause of the so called ’swine flu virus’ may well have been them!

I think there’s a better case that you are the cause of swine flu than there is a case that any drug company manufactured the stuff.  Among other clues you should look at is the prevalence of swine flu in swine populations around the world — today and historically.  Influenza viruses tend to be species specific, and it’s actually quite rare for them to jump species.  That’s why, when they jump, they can be so deadly.

But then, that’s what you’re campaigning for, right?  You’d love to see a virus wipe out most people, especially those with scientific knowledge — right, Simon?

Ugh.

Get an education about flu and other viruses:

• Centers for Disease Control page on 2009-2010 flu viruses
• Tara Smith, at Aetiology, “Why I’ll be getting my kids their flu vaccines”; also “What does WHO’s pandemic scale mean? And why is anyone worried about this?”
• Public Health experts puzzle over why H1N1 is so much more deadly for kids
• A real physician explains why he got his flu shot
• revere at Effects Measure explains why one should always get a flu vaccine

Don’t let your friends go without this information, please:

Van Jones: LGF got it right

Van Jones’s advantages, added together, summed too closely to the detrimental sum of having him as an advisor in the executive branch, I think.

But Glenn Beck’s unprincipled attack on Jones as a “9/11 truther” brought up issues that were not among the baggage Jones carried. Little Green Footballs explained that Jones’s statement that he didn’t call for an investigation of George Bush seems to be accurate.  LGF has no authors who trend to the liberal side (are there even any Dems there?).

With such a target-rich guy as Jones, why does Beck go with the least credible evidence possible?  When the facts flow your way, why make stuff up?  Beck’s bizarre claims about DDT offer more evidence the guy has just floated around the bend in the reality and ethical river.  More on that later.

Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub said Little Green Footballs was right? Better spread that news!

Denying Darwin’s God

While we’re at it, note that Cornelius Hunter is both a propagandist, and a bit of a coward.  Truth wins in a fair fight, so Hunter can’t afford to allow a fair fight to break out in the comments section of his blog.

I don’t know what his readership is, but were he to open his blog to comments, he could learn a lot.  As it is, he’s spreading false information a lot.  Let’s hope his readership is small, as are his arguments against science.

Seriously:  Does he really believe in point #1 that DNA does not demonstrate family relationships?  Or is this just his subtle way of saying no one is legitimate, trying desperately to avoid the “b” word?

The blog is an embarrassment to Christians.

Oh, but now I see why.  He’s a fellow at Discovery Institute.  It’s normal for those who can’t be embarrassed by their own errors.

End the hoaxes, part 3a: Government plans pay for cancer treatment, private insurance no better

Sad story out of Oregon, but a familiar story to anyone who has followed health care issues during any part of the past 40 years:  A woman gets cancer, her physician recommends a pharmaceutical or surgical procedure, but the insurance company denies coverage.

In this case, the story is being pushed by opponents to health care reform as a scare tactic.  ‘Health care reform means cancer-fighting drugs won’t be covered.’  The tenuous link to reality this argument has is this:  The woman is insured by Oregon’s public insurance alternative, a one-state effort to do what private insurance failed to do.  So, the critics reason, if she can’t get coverage under Oregon’s public plan, no one will get coverage under any government plan.

The pharmaceutical is a recently-developed cancer fighter, Tarceva.

It’s a crude bluff.  Reality is different.

1. Medicare may pay for coverage of the drug in question, Tarceva. The Oregon public program has a rather high standard for coverage — 5% chance of survival for 5 months or more, established in clinical trials — but Medicare supplemental insurance plans, a federal program, will pay for Tarceva for non-small cell lung cancer treatments.  Oregon’s program may not be equivalent to the federal program proposed.
2. Private insurance companies often deny coverage for cancer treatments. The story from Oregon shows the disparities in care, and it demonstrates well that rationing of health care is a key feature of the current system, a key reason to work for reform.  But denial of coverage occurs across the nation, and, I think statistics would show, more often from private insurance companies, often for less judicious reasons.  In Kansas, Mary Casey got the rejection from her private insurance company:  “But when Casey went to fill her Tarceva prescription at the pharmacy, her insurer, Coventry Health Care of Kansas, denied her coverage for the drug, saying it considered Tarceva experimental in her case, even though Tarceva is FDA approved for other lung and pancreatic cancers.”  There is no significant difference between private coverage and the Oregon public plan.
3. Private insurance failed:  This woman is on the Oregon plan because private insurance didn’t provide any coverage for her.

Barabara Wagner’s story troubles anyone with a heart.  It’s not an argument against reforming health care and health care insurance, however, because Wagner wouldn’t be alive to this point without a government plan in Oregon, analogous to the public option proposed in the House bill; because private insurance does not differ significantly in its coverage of cancer victims; and because this woman is on a public program in the first place because private insurance simply failed to cover her at all.  Under private insurance, this woman would have been dead months ago, if not longer.

Other notes:

• Genentech is the inventor of the this drug.  Genentech offers assistance to people who cannot otherwise afford it.  (Therapy with Tarceva generally runs in the thousands of dollars per month.)  (One more pharmaceutical brought to you couresy of applied evolution theory.  Do creationists refuse the therapy because it’s Darwinian?)

MomsRising Healthcare Truth Squad

I get e-mail.  In all the discouraging folderol on the health care debate, it’s nice to know that a few people are carrying the torch for democracy and good republican government like these ladies.

Red caped mothers and others in Baltimore, before the U.S.S. Constellation, campaigning to dispel false rumors about health care reform, on August 19, 2009. Image from MomsRising.com

Watch for the ladies in red capes.  Barney Frank won’t ask what planet they spend their time on, I’ll wager.

Note links to more information, or to join in their merriment, in the letter.

Faster than a toddler crawling toward an uncovered electrical outlet and more powerful than a teenager’s social networking skills, moms across the country have been fanning out to dispel the unfounded rumors, misconceptions, and lies about healthcare reform.

MomsRising Healthcare Truth Squad members, dressed in red capes, have been distributing powerful truth flyers across the nation to passersby to educate them about what healthcare reform will really do, and about how it will help to ensure the economic security of families across the country.

“I must admit that I don’t normally wear a cape in public, but it was oddly empowering.  We knew we were having an impact on the larger conversation about healthcare when a news camera starting following us around. I definitely recommend life as a superhero,” say Donna, a cape wearing SuperMom for Healthcare.

*Let’s give our caped myth-busting moms some “online backup” by Truth Tagging friends with healthcare reform myths & facts today–it’s a virtual distribution of the same facts that the MomsRising Healthcare Truth Squad members are handing out in-person:

http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/tellafriend.jsp?tell_a_friend_KEY=4728

It’s going to take thousands of super heroines speaking up in order to get the healthcare debate back on track. We can’t all be out on the streets in capes, so please take a moment now to spread the word and bust some myths via email to friends and family by clicking the link above.

Why’s this so important to moms right now? Over 46 million people in our nation don’t have any healthcare coverage at all, including millions of children. Not only are families struggling with getting children the healthcare coverage they need for a healthy start, but 7 out of 10 women are either uninsured, underinsured, or are in significant debt due to healthcare costs. In fact, a leading cause of bankruptcy is healthcare costs — and over 70% of those who do go bankrupt due to healthcare costs had insurance at the start of their illness. Clearly we need to fix our broken healthcare system!

Don’t forget to help put some more truth into the mix of the national dialogue on healthcare reform right now:

http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/tellafriend.jsp?tell_a_friend_KEY=4728

Onward!
–Kristin, Joan, Donna, Ashley, Julia, Dionna, Katie, Anita, Sarah, Mary, and the entire MomsRising Team

P.S.  We’ve been hearing so much positive feedback about our caped crusading moms that it might be time to lead a giant march of moms on the National Capitol Mall.  Tell us what you think: http://www.momsrising.org/blog/bust-a-myth-tag-a-friend-with-the-truth-about-healthcare/

P.P.S.  Want to get more involved with the MomsRising Healthcare Truth Squad members? Click here: http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/t/9251/signUp.jsp?key=4284

P.P.P.S. When you go to the Truth Squad Tag page, you can also see a video of our MomsRising Healthcare Truth Squad in action wearing capes! http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/tellafriend.jsp?tell_a_friend_KEY=4727

Here’s the video:

Pritchett confesses scare tactics, shows lunacy

I sent my response to Lou Pritchett.  He responded in e-mail:

Since my ‘you scare me’  letter got your shorts in such a knot I hope the following two will increase  the discomfort. Lou Pritchett

PUBLISHED IN FLORIDA TIMES/UNION  NOV. 6, 2008, A FEW DAYS AFTER THE ELECTION

Farewell America–We’ll  really miss you!

Farewell to  the America we have loved for two centuries and hello to a new far-left driven president who promised change and will most likely deliver on it,

Farewell, to an  America  driven by individuals with strong work ethics to one which will resemble French, German, and British societies where big government, big welfare, union controlled labor,  four  day work weeks, ten  week vacations are the rule. Societies which constantly ask  “—where’s mine?”

Farewell to capitalism, job creation, lower taxes, smaller government, fewer entitlements, safer cities, personal responsibility  and sound work ethics.

Farewell to adequate military defense spending to protect us from our enemies who wish and plan  to kill us.

Farewell to  close ties with our  best and  only friend in the middle east—Israel.

Farewell to maintaining a conservative Supreme Court.

Farewell to any chance of keeping Health Care out of the hands and control  of   government.

Farewell to the famous American standard of living–a magnet to the world.

Farewell to conservative ‘talk radio’  as an antidote to the biased media. The Fairness Doctrine will return.

Farewell to any hope for educating our college kids in something other than liberal mush.

Today is truly a sad day for millions of Americans as they slowly  allow the election results to sink in. Today, for the first time in modern history,  America took a giant  step toward changing not only  the direction,  but the entire  character of the country from  free enterprise driven  to  big  government driven.

Our only hope is to start now planning and building a strong conservative base which can  reclaim the Presidency and Congress in four years and start repairing the damage. God help us if we fail.  Lou Pritchett  (www.loupritchett.com)

PUBLISHED IN FLORIDA TIMES/UNION  AUGUST 3, 2009

Take heart America!   In only six months President Obama  has finally awakened the ‘600 pound average American gorilla’  by his  “Ready, Fire, Aim”  approach with the auto industry, the unions, the banks,  Guantanamo, health care, czars, credit cards, and energy. His strategy of deliberately overloading the system with program after program designed to both confuse and deceive the public is right out of the anarchist play book and clearly proves how dangerous he, his administration and his  agenda are.  A universal truth states that the best indication of what a man will do in the future is what a man has done in the past. Given this,  another three and a half years of Obama will be totally disastrous, both financially and morally, for this country. Our only hope is to dump the Congressional clowns and elect adults in 2010 in order to stop the bleeding and then to finish the job by sending Obama back to the thing he does best–community organizing—in Chicago in 2012. Failing this, we fail our children and we fail our country. Lou Pritchett

“Anarchist handbook?”  Well, if Lou Pritchett is reading such things, you can bet it’s not because he wants to know what anarchists might do to him.  He’s looking for tactics.

Some of the things he claims he fears now, a rational patriot might hope for.  Talk radio replaced by fair discussion?  Certainly George Washington would have been encouraged by that.

If Pritchett goes on long enough, he starts making Obama look good.  Sunshine does not favor the pathogens.

Voltaire’s prayer still applies; one worries when so many come up looking so foolish, however.

One wishes Pritchett would go back to lecturing businesses on how to partner with Wal-Mart.  The cynic in him appears to have abandoned all hope in any entrepreneurial spirit left in America.  Too bad.

Can somebody get Pritchett a library card?

Lou Pritchett, you make me fear for my nation – an open letter to a former soap salesman

It looks like an internet hoax, but it’s not. It’s worse than that.  It is a triumph of cynicism and pessimism wedded to false claims, crafted to impugn a good man.  Lou Pritchett’s letter is scary because he appears to believe it, and others may, too.

It usually comes with this line:  “Subject:  Letter from Procter & Gamble Exec to Obama.”  It may be entitled “An Open Letter to President Obama.”  It’s a letter filled with rant and inaccurate claims against Obama.  But it demonstrates something troubling.  It’s a letter from a guy who should know better, from a guy who can read newspapers and check faacts for himself, but a guy who has been suckered in by every false and calumnous claim made against our President.

In short, it’s a letter from a supreme cynic, who has every reason to know better but appears to refuse to think.

Below the fold, I post the letter completely as it came to me, and I respond, with an Open Letter to Former Soap Salesman Lou Pritchett.

End the hoaxes, part 1: Health care costs cause bankruptcies

Health care costs, especially coupled with lack of adequate insurance even for insured people, drove our nation to the brink of economic collapse.

We need health care reform now, to help get our economy back on its feet.

“Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country,” says lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Mass. “If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that’s the major finding in our study.”

Woolhandler and her colleagues surveyed a random sample of 2,314 people who filed for bankruptcy in early 2007, looked at their court records, and then interviewed more than 1,000 of them. Health.com: Expert advice on getting health insurance and affordable care for chronic pain.

They concluded that 62.1 percent of the bankruptcies were medically related because the individuals either had more than $5,000 (or 10 percent of their pretax income) in medical bills, mortgaged their home to pay for medical bills, or lost significant income due to an illness. On average, medically bankrupt families had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses, including $26,971 for those who lacked insurance and $17,749 who had insurance at some point.

Overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance, they say.

“That was actually the predominant problem in patients in our study — 78 percent of them had health insurance, but many of them were bankrupted anyway because there were gaps in their coverage like co-payments and deductibles and uncovered services,” says Woolhandler. “Other people had private insurance but got so sick that they lost their job and lost their insurance.” Health.com: Where the money goes — A breast cancer donation guide.

Personal bankruptcies played a large role in the banking crisis of late last year and early 2009.  Personal bankruptcies played a huge role in the collapse of mortgage securities markets, which prompted the banking crises.

If anything, current proposals do not go far enough in reforming insurance.

“To ignore the fact that medical costs are an underlying problem of the economic meltdown we’ve experienced would be to turn a blind eye to a significant problem that we can solve,” she said [Elizabeth Edwards, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress].

Edwards was joined by Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the Harvard study [discussed above] who sharply criticized current reform efforts.

“Private insurance is a defective product that leaves millions of middle-class families vulnerable to financial ruin. Unfortunately, the health reform plan now under consideration in the House would do little to address this grave problem,” Woolhandler said.

Without new legislation along the lines of the Democratic proposals in Congress, our nation faces economic doom.

Phony assertions of “death panels,” phony assertions of “creeping socialism,” phony claims about bad care in England, Canada and France, are all tools that help push our nation to economic failure.

Please do not be hoaxed.

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