Is Pres. Obama losing his steam?

There appears to be some signs that Pres. Obama is losing his steam. MSN has an article about it and a survey that you can take to express your opinion on how you feel Pres. Obama is doing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32049471/ns/politics-white_house

Real life....

This supposedly came from Bill Gates, but regardless of who it came from I like what it says… though, it may appear harsh to some….

Bill Gates gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up,it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

More drug news (acetaminophen, Vicodin and Percocet )

Apparently the FDA is starting to realize the damaging effects of acetaminophen, so they have decided to add new restrictions. They are also removing Vicodin and Percocet from the market.

Here is part of the article:
"Despite years of educational campaigns and other federal actions, acetaminophen remains the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S., according to the FDA."

For the full story go to this MSN link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31664450/ns/health-more_health_news

(You will have to copy and paste the link.)

When drugs aren't so good after all....

There have been some recent accounts of some of the negative side effects that certain medications have. Here is a link to some that made MSN news... Zicam, Viagra, Ambien, Chantix, Propecia, Requip, Alli, Olestra:

http://specials.msn.com/A-List/Zicam-side-effects.aspx?cp-searchtext=Zicam%20side%20effects

(You'll have to copy and paste the link.)

Mental Health Hotline

In my Clinical Psychology class, we are discussing personality disorders and this was brought up. This may appear mean to some, but at the same time it is interesting/funny. So which disorder do you have? =)


"Hello! Welcome to the Mental Health Hotline!

If you are Obsessive-Compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.

If you have Multiple Personalities, press 3, 4, 5, and 6.

If you are Paranoid, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.

If you are Delusional, press 7, and your call will be transferred to the Mother Ship.

If you are Schizophrenic, listen carefully, and a a small voice will tell you which number to press.

If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.

If you are Dyslexic, press 96969696969696969696.

If you have a Nervous Disorder, please fidget with the Pound Button until a representative comes on the line.

If you have Amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother's and grandmother's maiden names.

If you have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, slowly and carefully press 911.

If you have Bi-Polar Disorder, please leave a message after the beep. Or before the beep. Or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.

If you have Short-Term Memory Loss, please try your call again later.

If you have Low Self-Esteem, please hang up. All of our representatives are too busy to help worthless people like you."

It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

So, with all that is going on, I thought it appropriate to add "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" by R.E.M. to my collection of songs. If you actually understand the verses I am impressed. I looked up the lyrics online and realized that it is a lot of gibberish, but I'm sure they were trying to get some point across. I mainly like the music and the chorus. Enjoy!

Evolution of the computer....

Here is a humorous cartoon that I came across that I thought I would share....

...the endless possibilites for duct tape.

Here is part of an article from msn on home remedies that work:

Remove warts with duct tape

Why: Experts at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., found this remedy could clear warts in two months. There are a few theories about how it works. One is that duct tape irritates warts, causing an immune system reaction that attacks them. "Another is that the tape removes the virus-laden skin cells," says Anthony Mancini, M.D., professor of dermatology at Northwestern University.

How: Apply a piece of tape that's the same size as the wart and leave on for six days. (If tape falls off, replace ASAP.) Remove tape after the six days and clean area with soap and water; leave tape off overnight. In the morning, reapply tape, keep on for five days and repeat until wart disappears. It may take up to two months, says Dr. Mancini, but it's less painful and less expensive than repeated doctor visits.


Here is the link to the full article: http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100237727>1=31036

Depression pill for kids....

Isn't this great? Now there is a pill for depression in kids that was "approved" by the FDA despite allegations of illegal activity by the manufacturer. Here is part of the story: "Just weeks after prosecutors accused Forest Laboratories Inc. of illegally marketing its anti-depressants Celexa and Lexapro to children and paying pediatricians kickbacks, U.S. health regulators have approved Lexapro for depression in kids." So what does this say about our current U.S. "regulators"...?

For the full story go to:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29797423

FOCA is going stealth....

Here is a message that I received from the group fighting FOCA. Please read it and send an e-mail to your representative if you agree with fighting FOCA and it's initiatives.
________________________________________________________________________________
As you may have heard, Congress has not yet introduced the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). That's because the pro-abortion forces have heard your voice. Planned Parenhood President Cecile Richards told the Wall Street Journal:

We're going to be smart and strategic about our policy agenda to bring people together to make progress for women's health. The Freedom of Choice Act is very important . . . but we have a long list of things to get done that I think can address problems immediately that women are facing, that are really immediate concerns.

In other words, because of the more than 650,000 people like you who have stood up to Fight FOCA, pro-abortion forces are focusing on another tactic for now -- FOCA-by-Stealth.

They want to try to pass pieces of FOCA under your nose. The first target is your pocketbook.

The top priority for Planned Parenthood and their pro-abortion allies is to repeal the laws that prohibit federal funding of abortion. Often called pro-life "riders," the pro-abortion forces want House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to eliminate them and start using our tax dollars to pay for abortion-on-demand . . . nationwide.

Thankfully, a bi-partisan group of Members of Congress are standing up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood (who used to work for Speaker Pelosi). A letter to Speaker Pelosi written by Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio and Democrat Congressman Heath Schuler of North Carolina is being circulated for signatures by Members of Congress.

Please ask your member of Congress to sign the Jordan/Schuler letter.

Just click this link: https://secure3.convio.net/aulact/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=133

The deadline is this Friday, February 13.

Yours for Life,

Charmaine

Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D.
President & CEO
AUL Action The Legislative Arm of Americans United for Life
FightFOCA.com
FightFOCA@FightFOCA.com

The Super Bowl Commercial You Won't See

Check out the video on this website. I wonder if Pres. Obama "approved" this message? I don't think that he would have supported it (based on his political record) since there is a pro-life message conveyed in the video... but maybe he would since he is the child being depicted....

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Blog/Default.aspx?id=404524

Fight to Preserve Prop 8‏

Here is an update e-mail that I got from the group that is fighting to make sure that the people's vote be upheld... I know that it is a little long, but here it is:

January 21, 2009

Dear Friend,

I am writing to update you on our committee’s efforts to defend Prop 8 against legal challenges before the California Supreme Court.

ProtectMarriage.com is the only group before the Supreme Court that is defending Prop 8 and the rights of the people given to us by the Constitution. This is an expensive battle. We are up against the Attorney General and attorneys representing some of the state’s largest counties. Our adversaries enjoy taxpayer funding or represent well-heeled interest groups that support same-sex marriage. We are relying on you and other supporters of Prop 8 to help us defend traditional marriage in California. Please help us continue our fight by clicking here to make a contribution to the Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund. Your contribution is tax-deductible and will not be publicly disclosed.

On January 5th, we filed our answer to the brief of Attorney General Jerry Brown. The Attorney General agreed with us that Prop 8 is neither a revision to the state constitution, nor does it violate the separation of powers doctrine. Our brief embraced the Attorney General’s conclusions in these regards. However, one portion of the Attorney General brief advanced a novel legal theory that even though Prop 8 was a valid amendment to the state constitution, it should be invalidated because it allegedly violates the “inalienable” rights of same sex couples to liberty. Our answer noted that the Attorney General’s theory was “utterly without foundation in this Court’s case law.” The brief, submitted by Kenneth Starr, former Solicitor General of the United States, said, “The Attorney General’s theory fails at every level because the people have the final word on what the California Constitution says and there is no higher legal authority within California to which the judiciary can appeal.” The brief also warned that accepting the argument of the Attorney General, “is inviting this Court to declare a constitutional revolution” that would fundamentally alter the role of the judiciary, putting them in the role of “supreme overseer” of the people’s constitution-making power, a result patently contrary to popular sovereignty.

Today, ProtectMarriage.com filed briefs with the California Supreme Court in response to dozens of amicus (“friend of the court”) briefs filed urging the Court to invalidate Prop 8. Our brief summarizes their arguments thusly: “Invalidate the duly enacted provision of the Constitution. Ignore the will of the people, even if expressed following an open, fair election.”

Despite the emotions swirling among our opponents, the law is clear that Prop 8 is valid and that the democratic process should be respected. Of the argument of our opponents, the brief says, “Those sincerely-held emotions should play their way out in the ongoing democratic conversation about the future of marriage in a democratic society – where we the people govern. . .The Constitution has now been amended, by the sovereign people who are its creators. That is the beginning and end of this case.”

One of the questions to be decided in the litigation is the fate of the estimated 18,000 marriages performed in the interim between the time the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage and Election Day when the people enacted Proposition 8. Our brief today reminded the Court that despite losing the status of marriage, those same-sex couples will continue to enjoy virtually all the legal rights of marriage. In addition, they can avail themselves of California’s expansive domestic partnership legislation. These laws provide that domestic partners enjoy essentially all the legal rights, privileges, benefits and duties of marriage afforded by the state of California.

We are very fortunate to have such a prominent constitutional scholar as Kenneth Starr on our team of attorneys working to defend Proposition 8. But this defense is an expensive undertaking. Our opponents have unlimited access to taxpayer resources or can tap the support of wealthy groups fighting to legalize same-sex marriage. Please help us continue the fight to preserve Proposition 8 by making a contribution now. Your contribution will not be publicly disclosed, but will make a major difference in our ability to fight for traditional marriage.

Thank you for your support of traditional marriage.

NOTE: All the briefs that we have filed can be accessed from the California Supreme Court’s website at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/.

Thank you so much for your attention and support.

Very truly yours,

ANDREW P. PUGNO
General Counsel
Prop. 8 Legal Defense Fund
www.protectmarriage.com

Pentacel Vaccine and Aborted Fetal Cell Line MRC-5‏

I know that this is a bit delayed, but I figured that it was about time that I added this to my blog. Last year I had heard that some of the vaccines that are being used today where created using aborted human cells and to be honest I was somewhat disturbed by this. So I decided to look it up in the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) records. When I looked it up I soon found that there was pretty much nothing mentioned in there about it. Then, I decided to e-mail the NLM to see what information I could gather, and below is the e-mail correspondence that I had with them (starting from the bottom up you can see my e-mail and then their response). I know that a lot of the language in this e-mail may be a little hard to understand, but I thought that I would include it so that any of you who are curious would have the source to look at. To summarize their response, I learned that "Pentacel, which is a combination vaccine of Diptheria, Petrussis, Tetanus (DTap), HiB and Polio" was derived from a human fetus from a voluntary abortion. Also, "Poliomyelitis, Rubella, Vermicelli, Mumps, Rabies, adenoviruses and Hepatitis A" were also created from an aborted fetus. Is this disturbing to anyone else? Let me know your thoughts on this....

Dear,

We received the message you sent to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) asking about published information in medical journals concerning Pentacel containing Aborted Fetal Cell Line MRC-5. I searched the NLM database several ways and only found one article, still in the process of being indexed, which is in Spanish but has an English Abstract. Redondo Calderón JL.[Vaccines, Biotechnology and their Connection with Induced Abortion.]Cuad Bioet. 2008 May-Aug;19(66):321-53. Spanish. PMID: 18611078 [PubMed - in process] To see it, go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/ and type 18611078 into the search box. As you may know, Pentacel, which is a combination vaccine of Diptheria, Petrussis, Tetanus (DTap), HiB and Polio, is the first DTaP-based combination vaccine that includes polio and HiB vaccine components. The polio portion of this vaccine is grown on the MRC-5 cell line & derived from human fetuses. Fetal tissue research has been questioned in the literature by http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v357/n6378/pdf/357432c0.pdf The cell line was created in 1966 derived from a 14-week-old male fetus who was electively aborted. Leonard Hayflick, Ph. D., developed the WI-38 cell line in 1962 also doing research on cells from an aborted fetus. WI-38 is used to manufacture vaccines for Poliomyelitis, Rubella, Vermicelli, Mumps, Rabies, adenoviruses and Hepatitis A. If you want to search for published articles about the pros and cons of using fetal cells, you can search PubMed/MEDLINE using the following search string (cut and paste this into the search box) (aborted fetus[mh] AND vaccines[mh]) OR (aborted fetus[mh] AND (tissue OR cells) AND ban[ti]) Click on the Related Articles link to the right of the citations to get more citations If you want more searching to be done by a librarian, I encourage you to contact your local public or university library to ask about search services. Our library only does limited reference work in response to emails. I hope this is helpful.

Sincerely yours,

Marcia Zorn, Reference StaffNational Library of Medicine

------Original Message------ From: Sent:08/20/2008 17:03:20To: Custhelp@mail.nlm.nih.govSubject: Pentacel Vaccine and Aborted Fetal Cell Line MRC-5 SUBJECT: Pentacel Vaccine and Aborted Fetal Cell Line MRC-5 EMAIL: NAME: GROUP: Student STATE: CA COUNTRY: USA FROM: http://vsearch.nlm.nih.gov/vivisimo/cgi-bin/query-meta?input-form=simple&v%3Asources=nlm-main-website-bundle&v%3Aproject=nlm-main-website&query=Aborted+Fetal+Cell+Line+MRC-5 BROWSER: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; NovaPacs Viewer 6.6.246.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648) DATE: 08/20/2008

MESSAGE: To whom it may concern: I am searching for more information about the Pentacel Vaccine and Aborted Fetal Cell Line MRC-5. The only information that I can find is an article stating that Pentacel is now an approved vaccine. Why isn't there any information about it containing Aborted Fetal Cell Line MRC-5? Please let me know if there is more information available. There is information on the internet about this (http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/entertainment?type=entertainmentNews&w1=B7ovpm21IaDoL40ZFnNfGe&w2=B7uKSLYIvxu3zDSUkrYJp2Xj&src=blogBurst_entertainmentNews&bbPostId=BzDiQnMBguaCB3TPU7wKZdauCz6VbvRu4VgfTCz4t6GPDte2pe&bbParentWidgetId=B7uKSLYIvxu3zDSUkrYJp2Xj and other such websites); however I wanted to know what has been published on the issue in the medical journals. Thank you,

Fighting the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)

I hope that as a people we can prevent the FOCA from being signed into law by Pres. Elect Obama when he becomes president. He has already promised Planned Parenthood that he will... now it is up to us to make sure that he doesn't have the chance. Please watch this video and contact your elected officials to let your voice be heard. I have already done it at least once and I am going to do it again.

http://www.youtube.com/user/FightingFOCA