Those socialist doctors did it again

Another groundbreaking medical procedure. The teabaggers are spot on that socialized health care never produces anything good and is a complete failure. Every good teabagger knows that the US health care system is the best in the world and nothing else is even close. Provided you ignore all of the advances, of course. When faced with examples of advances, the key is to simply re-state "the US has the greatest health care system in the world" louder or maybe write that on a poster with a picture of Obama as some evil character. That'll win 'em over every time.

British and Italian doctors have carried out groundbreaking surgery to rebuild the windpipe of a 10-year-old British boy using stem cells developed within his own body, they said.

In an operation Monday lasting nearly nine hours, doctors at London's Great Ormond Street children's hospital implanted the boy with a donor trachea, or windpipe, that had been stripped of its cells and injected with his own.

Over the next month, doctors expect the boy's bone marrow stem cells to begin transforming themselves within his body into tracheal cells -- a process that, if successful, could lead to a revolution in regenerative medicine.

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US to start testing organic products for pesticides

Not so surprisingly, they have discovered gaps in regulation. Imagine that. Business was allowed to do whatever they wanted during the Bush years. Self-regulation and all that nonsense failed yet another industry. Glad to see they're serious about this.

Spot testing is required by a 1990 law that established the basis for national organic standards, but in a report released on Thursday by the office of Phyllis K. Fong, the inspector general of agriculture, investigators wrote that regulators never made sure the testing was being carried out.

The report pointed to numerous shortcomings at the agriculture department’s National Organic Program, which regulates the industry, including poor oversight of some organic operations overseas and a lack of urgency in cracking down on marketers of bogus organic products.

The audit did not name growers or processors that marketed products falsely labeled organic or say where any such products had been sold.

If companies made "organic" profits they ought to be hit with penalties that are equally expensive. Read More......

Nestlé tried to censor Greenpeace advert but failed

Glad to see the attempts to block this video by Nestlé were defeated. Like the countless stories in recent years ago lead in toys or other harmful products introduced along the supply chain process, Nestlé is being targeted by Greenpeace because of the alleged ties to a company that is destroying the habitat of the endangered orangutan in Indonesia. Nestlé probably did Greenpeace a favor in making this an even bigger story by trying to use their legal team to stop the video. Remember, it's the best and brightest who go to work for these big corporates. Read More......

Teabagger protester on the Hill threatens gun violence if HCR isn't stopped

So does the White House still think these folks epitomize a long tradition of American free speech? Remember when Nancy Pelosi criticized the Teabaggers last summer the White House threw her under the bus. Since that time, Dems have been loathe to attack back against the Teabaggers. Perhaps it's time. Read More......

Teabagger protester yells 'faggot' at gay Rep. Barney Frank in US House bldg, another calls black congressman the n-word

UPDATE: Holy crap, Teabagger protesters reportedly also called African-American Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero, the n-word.

Unbelievable. Let's see if the media bothers to cover this. If we had any real gay groups, they'd be demanding the Teabaggers apologize, and any member of Congress and movie star who supports them. Read More......

GOP still blocking Treasury appointees and increase risk to US financial system

Do they ever do anything besides obstruct? The Democrats are going to have to step up the pressure here and do a much better job of showing how the Republicans are owned by Wall Street and are risking financial failure due to their policies. How is it possible to have gone through such a colossal financial failure that was so deeply tied to GOP policies and not give a damn about improving the system? That said, it's hard to believe how relaxed the Democrats are about this. How do they not make the GOP eat this issue?

For more than a year, the Treasury Department has grappled with a monumental global economic crisis while many of its most senior people have had to walk out of internal meetings at critical moments and have been barred from joining in-depth exchanges with foreign governments.

That's because the appointments of these officials have been blocked at times by various Republican senators. Until now, their reasons for thwarting the Treasury have been largely unknown beyond the halls of Congress.

It turns out the sources of discontent apparently were not the appointments themselves. In one case, it was a tax penalty on small businesses. In another, the passage of an anti-tobacco plan in Canada. Yet another involved a tussle over online gambling.

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Controversy surrounds death of jaguar caught in Arizona

I didn't even know there were jaguars in the United States. And, now there's one less. It doesn't sound like the animal should have been captured in the first place:

The curious case of Macho B, the jaguar captured in southern Arizona, has quickly descended into finger pointing and official investigations.

There are questions about whether the jaguar was euthanized too quickly, as well as accusations he was captured on purpose, not accidentally, as the Arizona Game and Fish Department has stated.

On Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said its law-enforcement division had begun a criminal investigation into all aspects of the capture and death of the animal.

It began its investigation after a request from U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva and because Game and Fish asked for an outside agency to look into what happened.

Already, the complicated legacy of the jaguar's capture and death stands in stark contrast to the simplicity of his life, when he roamed northern Mexico and southern Arizona for 15 years.

He'd probably still be roaming, absent the involvement of Arizona's Game and Fish department. Read More......

Stupak postpones key press conference

From Brian Beutler:

In somewhat dramatic fashion, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)--a leader of pro-life House Democrat--has indefinitely postponed a press conference that had been scheduled for 11 this morning, as House leadership seeks a solution to a dilemma over abortion language that's threatening to paralyze, or even kill, health care reform.

Some background here. Stupak, and perhaps 10 other Democrats, are unhappy with the Senate health care bill's language, which they believe expands federal funding for abortions, and they're threatening to switch their votes from yes to no unless they get some sort of deal

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Pope criticizes Irish bishops but fails to accept Vatican responsibility

Same old, same old. Not even a a single person punished for this horrible scandal. It is obvious to everyone else that there was a common approach to shelter child rapists from public scrutiny and relocate the offenders. Pick your country and it's the same story. It's a minimal start by the Pope to criticize but we're well past this stage now that stories from his own diocese are being made public. Members of the church who knowingly protected abusive priests should also be facing the courts and be held accountable. Strong letters won't cut it.

In a letter to the Irish faithful read across Europe amid a growing, multination abuse scandal, the pope he doled out no specific punishments to bishops blamed by victims and Irish government-ordered investigations for having covered up abuse of thousands of Irish children from the 1930s to the 1990s.

Ireland's main group of clerical-abuse victims, One in Four, said it was deeply disappointed by the letter because it failed to lay blame with the Vatican for what it called a "deliberate policy of the Catholic Church at the highest levels to protect sex offenders, thereby endangering children."

"If the church cannot acknowledge this fundamental truth, it is still in denial," the group said.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Busy weekend. The House votes on the health insurance bill tomorrow. Today, the President will venture up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to meet with House Democrats. It's looking more likely that the bill will pass.

There are rumblings that the Stupak/Catholic Bishops anti-choice amendment is back. So, there may be another showdown with the Catholic Bishops. Now, the Pope himself is entangled in a controversy over the cover up of child rape in Germany, something many, many American Bishops also did. It's hard to grasp how or why anyone on Capitol Hill would kowtow to the Catholic Bishops on this or any issue. The Catholic Bishops are enablers of child sexual abuse and protectors of child rapists. That's what they are.

Here's the President's weekly address, which isn't about health insurance. It's about financial reform:


Let's get this weekend started. Read More......

Mireille Mathieu

It's a gray, soggy morning over here but the plants really need the rain. The daffodils are now fully out around town and the forsythia bushes are getting closer. Where there is full sun, the forsythias are already blooming. I'm hoping the rain stops or at least slows this afternoon so I can ride comfortably for a few hours.

For now, it's one of those lazy mornings with music from Mireille Mathieu. John sent this to me the other day after a reader forwarded and I love it. Just try and stop humming this song all day. It's not possible. What a fun flashback! Read More......

Retired US general blames Srebrenica massacre on gay soldiers

The sooner we move away from the old guard military types like John Sheehan the better. The Dutch are furious, for good reason. What a creep.

"They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military – that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war," he said.

"The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs. The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them. That was the largest massacre in Europe since world war two."

He added that the Dutch chief of staff had told him that having gay soldiers at Srebrenica had sapped morale and contributed to the disaster.

"Total nonsense," said General Henk van den Breemen, the Dutch chief of staff at the time. The Dutch embassy in Washington dismissed the US officer's argument as worthless, Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch foreign minister said that it was not worth commenting on, and the Dutch defence ministry voiced incredulity.

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