Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

I have spent my entire life as an animal rights advocate. As a lawyer, I have represented owners of domestic pets in states where pets none-the-less had no legal rights.I have made an effort to personally save any injured animal that has ever crossed my path. When possible, I bury the dead animals I encounter that we term “road kill.” I take spiders and insects out of my house rather than step on them (with the one exception being scorpions, as I live in Texas). I have always had an extraordinary, in the literal sense of the word, compassion and even empathy for the plight of the animal and insect kingdoms. I have often wondered if my compassion for animals actually exceeds that of my compassion for my fellow humans.

That is, until recently.

While I wept for Cecil the lion, I am revolted and outraged by what Planned Parenthood has done, and continues to do without conscience, to innocent life for profit. I am certain that we will be held accountable, and suffer the consequences, of allowing such depravity to occur on our watch. The “straw-man arguments” that 1) it’s about a woman’s right to choose and 2) that de-funding Planned Parenthood is an assault on women’s healthcare are each deliberately deceitful.

I have written about a woman’s right to choose previously. So I’ll reiterate my thought here. If it were really about that, then every time a woman has her breasts removed as a preventative measure to preempt a genetic predisposition to cancer, or her face peeled off and tightened to look younger, or her uterus removed once its past it usefulness there would be protestors marching outside the facilities where such procedures were being performed. But there are not.

Protestations against abortion are different. Those protestors are not protesting again the woman’s right to do whatever she wishes to do to her body.  She is free to do with her body what she chooses without raising societal reaction. Protests against abortion, in particular, are about preventing a woman from doing to someone else’s body whatever she chooses. (I am not unconditionally against abortion. In the instances of rape, incest or life of the mother I understand the larger issues and defer to the life of the mother as well as to the medical and biblical prohibitions and their outcomes).

As for an assault on women’s healthcare, there are 9000 government funded clinics in this country, separate from Planned Parenthood, where the same women who would seek out Planned Parenthood can receive pre and post-natal care along with a variety of other additional healthcare procedures.

If you are Pro-Choice, and are willing to watch this latest video release of Planned Parenthood’s practices, and remain Pro-Choice after watching, I respect your right to maintain that opinion. I simply could not identify your humanity. I could only further assume that you would have had no problem watching Mengele’s experiments of placing newborns on their mothers’ stomachs while taping the mothers’ breasts over so the infants slowly starved to death while their mothers looked on…helpless to intervene. Planned Parenthood isn’t doing anything to “tissue.” When the laboratory dish contains easily identifiable arms, legs, fingers, toes, eyeballs, and brain matter… “tissue” is the euphemism, the comfortable word you prefer so that you can live yourself. A human, in fact, is what it is.

We have turned into a Nation that uses abortion as 1) a remedy for self-gratifying sex whenever and wherever we want it without taking personal responsibility and 2) a means of limiting the growth of poor and minority populations. If you think that sounds like a crazy or conspiratorial opinion, read about Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, and what her stated intentions were.

Decades ago, a good friend of mine and practicing psychologist told me, “Every culture that has abandoned its children has not survived.” At the time, she was troubled by 1,000,000 runaways annually in this country.  Her comment is historically correct. So ponder this:

What are our chances of survival, not in the face of radical Islamic extremists, but in the face of our indifference, willful blindness and hardheartedness to the mutilation of our children… a/k/a/ the “tissue” on the laboratory tabletops of Planned Parenthood?

I believe that all Americans have a right to be concerned about efforts being made to limit citizen exposure to Ebola.

I believe that our government is taking a passive role, for whatever politically correct reason, in failing to take reasonable and prudent steps to protect our citizens.

I believe we have the power as individuals to unite in a way that sends a message to this Administration that we want definitive and expeditious action taken to close our borders to unnecessary risk.

I believe that this thinking is neither racist nor nationalistic but rather a commonsense response to an unreasonable and deadly risk.

If you too believe that preventing additional potentially infected and sick individuals from entering this country is an obligation of this President and his Administration DRIVE WITH YOUR HEADLIGHTS ON until our numbers are great enough that they have no choice but to stop flights in and out of West Africa and seal off any other known access points for the entry of communicable disease.

There are more of us than there are of them.

On our podcasts all this week, Steve Clark and I have been addressing “authenticity.”  Authenticity is the opposite of political correctness. We have killed authenticity in this country by allowing political correctness to govern how we express ourselves. Political correctness is the muzzle that gags the First Amendment of the United States Constitution’s right to free speech. Nowhere can the chilling and deadly effects of political correctness be more clearly demonstrated than in the past month as it pertains to two diverse issues: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the spread of Ebola.

Israel probably has the most advanced national security system in place of any country in the world. It has to because its citizens live daily with an imminent threat of death by acts of terror. Consequently, no airline is safer than El Al and no airport safer than Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv. Yet, during the recent conflict, the United States government by way of our State Department, shut down all flights to Israel on the erroneous presumption that a missile from Gaze might take down an incoming aircraft. This despite the fact that, even if this preposterous assumption were true, El Al was totally avoiding Gaza airspace during the conflict by circling incoming and outgoing aircraft to the West rather than the usual eastern flight path. I know this to be true because one month ago, during the war, I flew into and out of Ben Gurion.

But the truth has no place in the world of political correctness.

Now, Ebola, the disease which we were assured could not come to our shores, has arrived in Dallas by way of an infected Liberian traveler visiting family.  Logic and common sense both dictate that all flights in and out of West Africa be suspended until this disease is under control or we have in place functional and effective means of prohibiting infected persons from entering the country.

But logic and common sense have no place in an environment of political correctness.

The same terrorists that commit global acts of jihad, slaughtering and beheading in the name of their God, are free to enter the United States through an open border with Mexico, the same open border that infected persons with tuberculosis and even Ebola are free to enter. Prioritizing safety measures that would secure the border and prevent both terrorists and sickness from entering our country would be the sane thing to do.

But there is no room or call for sanity in a politically correct culture.

It won’t take an EMP or pandemic to annihilate us. All we need do is continue to deny the demands of reality, worry more about not offending Muslims and foreigners than securing our nation, and live in fear of being authentic in expressing truth to power.

It’s that simple.

Steve Clark (my co-host on Above The Fray Podcast) and I post independently of one another. I get to read his blogs the same way you do which is when they’re published. Yesterday, when I read his post titled “We’re All Drug Addicts” I knew I had to write my own thoughts on a topic about which I have first-hand knowledge. In fact, when Heath Ledger overdosed, I was contacted by several media outlets to weigh in on the subjects of addiction, suicide and drug overdose. (A fully developed interview of me following Ledger’s death can be listened to here.)

Anti-depressants are proven to lead to and/or increase incidents of suicidal thinking. In my twenties I battled depression and anxiety. A physician put me on anti-depressants and tranquilizers to combat the condition. When I realized I was addicted to the medications I decided to stop taking them. Shortly thereafter, I tried to commit suicide and came very close to succeeding. It was a turning point in my life as it awakened me to the realization that I  had to either do it again and succeed or begin to live my life differently. I choose the latter.

It is now decades later and I live a joyful and rewarding life. In no small part it’s due to a different addiction. I mediate daily. Your reaction may be “Well, that’s stretching it a bit since mediation is hardly an addiction.”

But it is.

I need to meditate every day. I’m at a loss when I don’t get my “fix” of that meditative state. Without those feelings of peace, joy, calm and clarity that I receive from meditation I feel tense, discontent, frazzled and off my game. So you see, I am addicted. But I’ve also consciously chosen my addiction because it enhances rather than diminishes the quality of my life.

The point is that it may just be human nature to be addicted. Some choose alcohol, drugs, pornography, chocolate, gambling, serial adultery, masturbation, twitter, clothes shopping…whatever. Regardless, we humans have Free Will and so get to choose that to which we are addicted.

For me, the contrast is no contest. On drugs, I was sedated, slow of thought and harming vital organs with unnecessary and toxic side effects. On meditation, I am sharp of mind, peaceful of spirit, accepting of life and creative of soul.

So to paraphrase Steve, if we’re all addicted remember: You get to choose to what.

Many scoffed at members of the “spiritual communities” that began warning at least 5-7 years ago that we were going through a “paradigm shift.” The forewarning was that systems which had been in place for hundreds, if not thousands, of years would be breaking down. The breakdown in the integrity and effectiveness of the Federal government and its administrative agencies has been increasingly evident over that same time period but nothing can compare to the VA scandal… and for very good reason.

It was inevitable that without awakening and addressing the negligence and corruption of government, we were destined to come face to face with the undeniable. For it is only the undeniable that has historically, too often, been the only catalyst for our awareness and action. The VA scandal, the total disregard for the well-being of honorable men and women who served this country upon a belief and a promise that they would be cared for and supported both in battle and upon their return is the undeniable proof of the incompetence, impotence and corruption endemic within our government.

Just as it isn’t change that causes stress but rather resistance to change that is its cause, so too is it not our system of governance that is corrupt and broken but rather the deliberate misuse of that system by its leaders for personal aggrandizement, financial gain and control.

Within and during the worst of times there is always a purpose and a higher perspective. Sadly, we humans too often fail to see either until adverse circumstances reach critical mass. The VA scandal is such a moment of critical mass. It is also, therefore, a moment of profound enlightenment and transcendence for those with eyes to see and the courage to act.

We are awake and able to discern deception in any disguise. We are awake and feel insincerity wherever it resides. We are awake and throw off the bonds of an enslaved consciousness. We are awake and know fear and separation for the tools of manipulation that they are. We are awake and as loving expressions of Creator we own our role in Divine Being. We are awake and we will never be returned to ignorance, slumber, and denial.

Knowing plus action is the key. Let those currently in service, as well as our Veterans, now be served.

In every other aspect of our lives, let Truth be spoken, let Love unite and above all let darkness be enveloped and transformed by Light.

 

 

If you cannot imagine how or why the Veterans Administration has been so shamefully negligent and criminally deceptive in its treatment and record keeping look no further than what Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said on March 12, 2009. At that time, he stated that the Obama Administration had a proposal which would require U.S. military personnel to pay for their own medical treatment for injuries sustained while in the line of duty. A proposal the Administration refused to take off the table when petitioned to do so by Veterans’ groups. Yes, you read that correctly. U.S. soldiers to pay for injuries sustained while fighting or defending, for or on behalf of this country, with private medical insurance paid for by those same  soldiers out-of-pocket.

Fast forward 5 years and what do we discover? The same Administration and the same players, President Obama and Secretary Shinseki, have allowed or created a system of medical care for Vets so negligent, so duplicitous and so deadly that it just might either 1) cause soldiers to actually seek private medical insurance or 2) convince the public that the VA can no longer  afford to effectively and efficiently manage the system…thereby recommending some private form of self-insurance.

Do you really believe that people who think our soldiers should pay for their own healthcare for injuries sustained in the line of battle are going to efficiently, and with integrity, administer VA hospitals in a way that encourages Vets to seek treatment?  President Obama is “madder than hell?” You believe he cares! Why in the world would you?

The ends justifies the means. The motto of an Obama Presidency and Progressives generally.

Whether its leaving behind 4 Americans in Benghazi, turning a blind eye for 52 days to a Vet chained to pirson walls in Mexico for having made a wrong turn on the freeway at the U.S.-Mexico border, or failing to provide the most basic medical care to courageous men and women who answered this Nation’s call to service, this Administration is a disgrace and so too will be a Nation that allows itself to continue to be duped and manipulated by these same people and a complicitous media.

Stupid is as stupid does. The problem isn’t them. Its us.

Do you realize we have just had 139 primary races across this country in advance of the November mid-term elections and NOT ONE incumbent was outvoted by their challenger. We just voted to keep the same crooks, incompetents, and professional political class in office in which we have a 20% trust factor.

I know you’re busy and dancing as fast as you can to keep up with your life. But that’s the plan. Overwhelm you so you’re just too tired and feel too helpless to affect anything. Exhaust you so you’re a good little sheep and go your merry way…never realizing the whole herd is being driven right off a cliff.

Stop feeling dis-empowered. Its the wrong attitude and leads to a disastrous outcome. Until we find a better shepherd for this flock let’s stop following the one we’ve got and start thinking for ourselves.

I’ve had an “aha” moment. This isn’t a conspiracy theory although it may read like one. Oftentimes, a new and innovative way of looking at the status quo, that calls into question an established view or pattern, can be misinterpreted as conspiratorial. Let’s not go there. Keep an open mind as you read on and you may have an “aha” moment of your own.

In his latest book “Focus” Daniel Goleman states:

“Survival in the wild, some neuroscientists argue, may have depended at crucial moments on a rapidly shifting attention and swift action, without hesitation to think what to do. What we now diagnose as Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.) may reflect a natural variation in focusing styles that had an advantage in evolution–and so continue to be dispersed in our gene pool.”

Goleman’s words gave me that “aha” moment.

We are living in a time when political, economic and social systems are breaking down all around us. Its certainly reasonable to posit that all the resulting chaos raises a “warning/danger” response in the primal area of our brains.  Accordingly, we are hard wired to respond to threats to our well being and/or our very existence exactly as Goleman and his neuroscientsists observed… “with rapidly shifting attention and swift action, without hesitation to think what to do.” Also known as A.D.D.

Here’s where you’ll have to suspend your tendency to conclude conspiracy.

Approximately 7.5% of school aged children in the United States have been diagnosed with A.D.D.  Unmedicated, they are also (to use Darwin’s phrase) the “fittest” for this phase of conscious evolution we must now navigate. I suddenly understood why the “powers that be” want to medicate A.D.D.  A narrowly focused population that cannot think expansively, change focus rapidly, or multitask with ease is more readily controlled that one that can.  These A.D.D individuals are the seers and the innovators of our day. It is they who will be the ones to usher in new ways of doing things in this age of breakdowns

If you have A.D.D, or know someone who does, perhaps you might want to pay more attention to the wanderings of that rapid mind….and less attention to what “the experts” say about medication.

All our futures may depend on it.

In the book African Genesis the author puts forth the concept of “Blessed Anger.” Blessed Anger is what an animal in the wild exhibits when the minimal amount of space it needs to survive is encroached upon.  Animals have an instinct to “stake out” conceptually where that line of safety is in relation to their location. If another animal approaches, there will be no action taken unless the approaching animal crosses that invisible line. Should that occur, the resting animal will go on offense and attack the incoming foe.

I think its reasonable to assume that such Blessed Anger would be exhibited, and justifiable, by any parent in regard to their child. Anyone who has ever had a child knows the instinctive, protective feeling of rising to meet any person or force that poses a threat to your child’s safety and well being. With that in mind, meet Joe Pelletier.

Joe Pelletier has today been charged with Contempt of Court for violating a gag Order imposed by a judge in Massachusetts. Mr. Pelletier is, in fact, in violation of that Order. He knowingly and willfully chose to speak out publicly about the kidnapping and medical malpractice that his teenage daughter, Justina, is now the victim of as perpetuated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.

Mr. Pelletier’s decision to violate that Order was made in an effort to save his daughter’s life. Justina suffers from mitochondrial disease, a medical condition diagnosed by Tufts Hospital in Connecticut and for which treating physicians there performed abdominal surgery, where, among other procedures, an elimination tube was inserted in her torso. Yet subsequently and without basis, Boston Children’s Hospital has found that Justina has no medical conditions but rather a psychiatric condition whereby she imagines all of her symptoms, one of  which is continual pain. Therefore, the hospital has denied her ALL medical treatment and forces her to attend psychiatric sessions. Further, with Justina now in a wheelchair as her physical condition deteriorates, Boston Children’s Hospital has transferred her to a facility that houses only non-medical, short-term recovering psychiatric and drug rehab patients.

As a former lawyer who practiced Family Law for 13 years and had my share of custody cases involving the state and agenicies such as DCF, I can assure you that the abuses perpetrated by both the Courts and state child protective service agencies can far exceed the conditions from which the child has been removed under the legal standard of “in the best interest of the child.”

Justina Pelletier is my child and your child. She is everyone’s child. And this is every parent’s nightmare. Justina is running out of time. The Pelletier family is mentally, physically and emotionally devastated. They have been financially ruined.

We are the reserves and the reinforcements. Each person reading this must choose one of the below listed methods to be heard and immediately do something about it. Every minute you hesitate is another minute you now know the Pelletier family is suffering. Ever minute you hesitate Justina Pelletier is deteriorating and denied medical attention.

You now have knowing. You now have personal responsibility. We are all connected. You have the right to Blessed Anger.

Allow it to move you.

 

Governor Duval Patrick
Phone: 617.725.4005 (out of state)
888.870.7770 (in state)
email page
Fax: 617.727.9725

Olga Roche, DCF Commissioner / email: dcfcommissioner@state.ma.us

Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Attorney General
Phone: (617) 727-2200

Boston Children’s Hospital
(617) 355-6000

Free Justina facebook page

Twitter

 

 

 

I am not in favor of anyone who is ill being unable to get medical care. I can’t imagine any rational, compassionate person who would be. But perfection is hard to come by, even in healthcare, and so for quite some time now we in the United States have been the beneficiaries of an imperfect healthcare system…albeit the best in the world.

So, in full disclosure, I was never in favor of Obamacare.  From Obamacare’s inception until today, I believe the free market to be the best arena in which good ideas can be born and maintained within a free society. Government runs very little, if anything, efficiently. The prospect of it successfully overseeing the creation and “enforcement” of healthcare for 317,000,000 citizens seemed almost laughable.

However, I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t in favor of Obamacare to solve our healthcare shortcomings. Neither was President Obama.

As far back as 2003 during his days as a U.S. Senator, President Obama was an advocate of a “single-payer” system whereby the private insurance industry would be eliminated and replaced by the federal government. Single-payer is what is also referred to as nationalized or socialized medicine. The government that would run Obama’s single-payer system is the same government that cannot seem to efficiently run the U.S. Postal Service or effectively manage immigration.

Now, with the fiasco that has become known as Obamacare, President Obama may be on the road to getting his wish.  The progressive state of Vermont is attempting to implement single-payer healthcare to circumvent the seemingly endless challenges and foibles that are Obamacare.

It’s been a long, circuitous, and deceptive route getting to where we are but it may yet payoff for those who, like New Yorkers with the recent election of Bill de Blasio as Mayor, think that Socialism and Communism are inherently more efficient and just systems than the Constitutional Republic under which we in the United States have lived since our inception. This, of course, will come as a shock to the hundreds of millions of people slaughtered by tyrannical or fascistic leaders in countries that have tried both alternative systems.

Economic equality is not equal opportunity. Economic equality among a populace is sought, but never achieved, by way of redistribution of wealth…which always ends with a few having achieved their wealth, literally, upon the bodies of those who bought the fiction that a government can and will give you all things for nothing. There is, in such cases, always a price paid in blood.  On the other hand, equal opportunity is the right of every individual living in a free society to pursue their dreams unobstructed by specifically targeted governmental restraints .

Obamacare was the wrong solution. Vermont is on the wrong track.  Free market  health care, with purchase rights across state lines and accountability for insurers and providers alike, with provisions for preexisting conditions and those truly unable to secure health insurance is the answer.

But the slope from freedom to bondage is a slippery one. Vermont’s efforts are the latest indication that we are on the down slope.

 

It didn’t work in Detroit when the progressive “Model City” plan was implemented. It didn’t work when U.S. banks stopped requiring credit thresholds before issuing new mortgages. It didn’t work when Congress rammed through the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare) and it will not work as The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) now tries to cure diversity “shortfalls” in our neighborhoods by imposing mandatory diversity regulations.

Social engineering and redistribution simply do not work.

The “Model City” plan in Detroit bankrupted the city and brought the 4^th largest city in the United States in 1970 to its knees by 2013. By turning on the spigots of home loans absent verified credit, banks brought the housing market to its knees and precipitated the stock market crash of 2008. Obamacare, promised not to be a tax then upheld by the Supreme Court as a tax now seems to be underfunded, impossible to implement and creating more problems across the economy that it could ever have solved. It may bring the economy of the nation to its knees. HUD will, if it has its way, be a significant nail in the coffin of Liberty by regulating who gets to live where based upon subjective and arbitrary rules and regulations rather than effort and achievement.

Social engineering and redistribution of wealth and services are the cornerstones of this Administration. They are the tools of transformation by which Progressives in both political parties seek to ever-enlarge a centralized government while simultaneously diminishing the individual.

If you think you can do nothing you are wrong. Find like-minded people and join together to voice, in whatever ways are peaceful and law abiding, your refusal to go quietly into the night.

Robert F. Kennedy said: “Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”