I love these year-end retrospectives. Everyone's doing them. Politifact, the unit of the St. Petersberg Times which won a Pultizer Prize in Journalism for being about accuracy (a rather sad commentary on the state of journalism), picks out the biggest lie of 2010: In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for … Read More
How Fox Slants The News
During the heated health care debates last year, the Washington editor of Fox News sent a memo to Fox News employees instructing them not to call it the "public option", but to call it the "government option". Why? Because polls showed that people had a much more negative reaction to "government option". From: Sammon, BillSent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 8:23 AMTo: 054 -FNSunday; … Read More
New Cigarette Packages
Well, that's not very subtle. Or that. Okay, wait. WTF? I'm not so sure that cigarettes are entirely at fault here. The mother is exhaling cigarette smoke directly into the child's face! Call family services somebody. On the other hand, there needs to be some connection between the harmed child and cigarettes. Thank you. I wasn't sure what the word "fatal" … Read More
The Unhealthy Diet
I saw the headline earlier today about some guy who lost 27 pounds on a "Twinkie" diet. This afternoon I read the full story — the guy was a nutrition professor: Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts. For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, … Read More
ObamaCare Is Constitutional
There are court challenges all over the country, but this is the first actual decision to come down. And it rules that Obamacare is constitutional. Which, of course, we already knew, but that doesn't stop wingnuts from making the argument.
McHealthcare
The Wall Street Journal got everyone all abuzz today with its "McDonald's May Drop Health Plan." The lede said: "McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul." The conservatives crowed: "Look what Obamacare has done! It's forcing McD's to … Read More
I’ll Drink To That
It's been reported for years that moderate drinking (1 to 3 drinks per day) – especially including red wines – is thought to improve heart circulation in some small way. But now we learn something new. Specifically, failure to drink moderately may actually increase your risk of dying: A new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — … Read More
E Coli Conservatism
"E Coli conservatism", a phrase coined by Rick Perlstein several years ago, speaks to the call by conservatives to streamline or cut away at government services, and the consequences of such efforts. We're experienceing e coli conservatism now, in the most literal sense of the phrase. You've likely heard about the egg recall that's currently underway, in the wake of … Read More
Chart Of The Day: Healthcare Reform
At some point on this blog, I posited that if healthcare reform legislation passed, and people had time to just live with it for a while — far removed from the Republican scare machine talking about "death panels" and so on — they would actually come to like it more and more. Okay, maybe I didn't say it on this blog. … Read More
Mississippi Is Fat
For the fifth year in a row, the fatty-fatheads of Mississippi take the cake (literally?) when it comes to obesity in the United States. Not surprisingly, the East and West coasts are the leanest, and the Southern and Midwest states are fatter. Maine rose the most places in the rankings over last year, while Oregon dropped the most, according to a … Read More
RIP, St. Vincent’s Hospital (1849-2010)
A well-known place to anyone who spent any significant time in Greenwich Village. A hospital which played important roles for both the sinking of the Titanic and the events of 9/11. Victim to the economic crisis. The New York Times has the obit.
Answering The Question
Over at The Corner, Ramesh Ponneru writes: Do the "bodily integrity" and "privacy" [rights] of which Obama speaks include a right to buy high-salt foods? I've never heard Obama speak of a right to "bodily integrity", so let's just dismiss that as a strawman. And you don't have a privacy right to buy high-salt food, unless you have warped idea, or … Read More
FDA To Regulate Salt
This is the kind of thing that will send the teabaggers off the edge: the communist-fascist-marxist government is coming to take your salt away: The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from … Read More
Double Down Not As Unhealthy As You Might Think… Or Is It?
In case you've been on another planet recently, you've probably heard about Kentucky Fried Chicken's latest culinary offer, the "Double Down" — a chicken, cheese, bacon, and mayonnaise sandwich where two boneless pieces of chicken serve as the bread. It's not the type of food to please the culinary folks at the New York Times, or even the culinary folks … Read More
Third Party Comes To North Carolina
It always warms my heart when I read and hear about Tea Partiers rebelling against the Repubican Party and forming their own third party. Nothing would ensure the future of the Democratic Party more than having conservatives divide their loyalty between the Grand Old Party and the Raging New Party. Which is what makes me concerned about this: North Carolina Democrats' … Read More