Categories
Author: merketcreative
Obama today will declare about 500,000 acres as the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. About half of that land is expected to be set aside as wilderness, meaning it will be closed to vehicles and construction. Though completely legal, it is a slap in the face of the local ranchers, especially Cliven Bundy.
The point is that Obama is a sore loser. Instead of accepting the loss at the Bundy ranch, he again acts like a spoiled despot and does whatever he wants, despite the implications.
Local ranchers say it’s a land grab that will interfere with their grazing rights, and border security advocates said the move will make it tougher for federal agents and local police to patrol the land, leaving a security gap that Mexican smuggling cartels will exploit.
“This is about opposing so many thousands of acres that is going to create nothing more than a pathway for criminals to get into this country to do their criminal acts,” Dona Ana County Sheriff Todd Garrison told The Washington Times in a telephone interview Monday.
The monument has been in the works for some time and has been controversial from the start. But land rights advocates said it is the precursor to more conflicts like the recent standoff in Nevada, where a rancher refused to comply with a court order that he stop grazing on Bureau of Land Management property, prompting the BLM to confiscate his cattle. The BLM, which is part of the Interior Department, will administer the national monument.
The land contains five mountain ranges with fragile landscapes, prehistoric rock art and more recent historic sites such as a training area for the Apollo astronauts.
The monument would cover hundreds of thousands of acres right next to the Mexican border.
If you haven’t felt as if the president has become tyrannical, this should be the final straw.
To quote a recent MedPage report by Michael Smith, the total number of cases of the Middle East coronavirus has nearly tripled in the past month and a half, according to the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC).
But those cases do not include new cases reported today from Saudi Arabia, which recorded another six patients and three deaths. That brings the nation’s own totals to 520 cases with 163 deaths, up nine and three respectively. Also, it does not include the Illinois hospital worker who contracted the virus without showing signs of infection.
Saudi Arabia is followed in number of cases — although not closely — by the United Arab Emirates, which has recorded 67 cases and nine deaths, according to the ECDC. Seven other countries in the region have a total of 24 cases and 12 deaths.
Other regions — Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas — have seen a total of 19 cases and seven deaths and all patients have had primary epidemiological links to the Middle East.
The exact number of cases is a moving target and has been dogged by delays in reporting. The World Health Organization, for instance, reported Thursday it had been officially informed of just 572 laboratory-confirmed cases, with 173 deaths.
While the virus continues to cause several cases a day in Saudi Arabia, the risk for people outside the Middle East is said to be extremely low. However, 22 U.S. airports are now displaying signs that warn of the virus.
Returning travelers, the agency says, should monitor their own health and see a doctor if they have respiratory symptoms within 2 weeks of coming home. Importantly, they should call first and mention the travel history so the doctor’s office can ensure that proper precautions are taken.
Remember the day when new hospitals were being built and greater health services were being created every day? Remember when it wasn’t such a fight to get what your insurance owed you, the services that were recommended or the prescriptions the doctor’s gave you?
Unfortunately, there has been a complete unraveling of our medical system, with Obamacare being the final straw. As reimbursement continue to plummet and the expectation of services rise, many hospitals are left either closing their doors or laying of their employees. With less hospital workers or worse yet, less hospitals, care for the sicker patients of our communities is being decimated by the day.
Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines had to lay off 29 people this week. The president of the medical center said that this is a direct effect from both Obamacare and cutting Medicare benefits.
“As the federal government and state payment systems continue to ratchet down on what they pay us and our costs go up, we have to look for opportunities to create cost efficiencies,” the president of Mercy Medical Center said. “And one way you do that is you reduce your management costs. So if we have a department that has a director and a manager and two supervisors for let’s say 75 staff, we may remove one of those positions to what we say are the layers of management.”
Here is the biggest question: if the federal government can’t afford Medicare expenses, how can they afford a multi-trillion dollar Obamacare plan? I’m not an economist but I can do simple math. Obamacare + Increased Medicaid + Increased federal spending + Increased Federal Giveaways + Increased Americans on the Federal dole + the costs of Michelle Obama’s vacations = more debt = more dependence on China = A DECLINING AMERICA.
Will this be the epitaph of our country? I don’t know but there is one person who wishes it to be– Obama.
Will the entire US healthcare system look like the current VA system in a few years? Unfortunately, the trend is going that way, and there is absolutely no indication that there is any signs of improvement.
The first, real question each American should ask is why would the US government try to institute a massive medical overhaul with Obamacare when its track record in healthcare delivery is deplorable? The VA system has always had problems, but now under the Obama administration the situation has turned critical.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing mounting evidence that some of the hospitals it runs have been keeping two sets of books to make it look as if they were reducing waiting times to see a doctor. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing mounting evidence that some of the hospitals it runs have been keeping two sets of books to make it look as if they were reducing waiting times to see a doctor. More damning, the department is investigating the claims of a whistleblower doctor in Arizona that dozens of patients at one hospital died while they were languishing on a hidden waiting list without ever being given an appointment.
Richard Griffin, the department’s acting inspector general, admitted on Thursday that its review could lead to criminal charges. In the first political casualty of the scandal, Robert Petzel, the department’s undersecretary for heath, resigned on Friday.
The budget for the VA has risen from $73.1bn in 2006 to $153.8bn this year. However, the number of outpatient visits at its facilities has increased from 46.5m in 2002 to 83.6m in 2012.
While there have been reports for several years that the new waiting line system was being abused, the subject really began to gather steam three weeks ago when CNN interviewed Sam Foote, who had recently retired as a doctor after working for 24 years for VA hospitals in Phoenix, Arizona.
He said that as many as 40 patients had died after being placed on a hidden waiting list that could last for up to a year, while officials at the hospital shredded documents and faked evidence to make it seem as if waiting times were under control.
Since then, whistleblowers have alleged similar practices at least seven other VA hospitals around the country and claimed that officials at the hospitals were sometimes paid bonuses for reducing declared waiting times.
This is what the US government delivers to the nation’s finest—long waits and insufficient care. Unfortunately, this is what awaits the rest of America under Obama.
Many people are not aware that Hillary Clinton actually had a stroke. However, the type of stroke she had is a rare form and with long term possible complications. Despite her stroke, no one is talking about any long term effects it may have on her. Some have suggested there may be some residual problems. However, nothing has been confirmed other than she is wearing new glasses for double vision. As a physician, I can only conjecture that this complication was directly due to the stroke we know she suffered, or that she may suffered a second stroke effecting the muscles of one of her eyes.
Regardless, the glasses do raise some suspicion about her long term health. As publicized by the American Stroke Association, some long term possible consequences of Clinton’s stroke are as follows:
-
6.5% chance of recurrent clot
-
½ patients left with permanent psychiatric disease
-
Up to 21% do not reach complete recovery
-
50% suffer from chronic headaches
-
Up to 32% with residual seizures
What, if any of these problems does Clinton have, I do not know?
Categories
List of Why GMOs Unsafe
Genetically modified foods are more widely grown and distributed than many people realize. In fact, people don’t realize it because warning labels are not required when selling these foods. Though genetic manipulation may sound logical to some, the consequences of transforming the food is yet to be determined. I have found an interesting list of reason genetically modified foods are worrisome:
-
Genetic engineering reduces genetic diversity. When genes are more diverse, they are more robust; this is why a pure bred dog tends to have greater health problems than the dear old mutt. Plants with reduced genetic diversity cannot handle drought, fungus invasions or insects nearly as well as natural plants, which could have dire consequences for farmers and communities dependent on GMO crops for survival.
-
Once the mutant genes are out of the bag, there is no going back. Genetically modified organisms contaminate existing seeds with their altered material, passing on modified traits to non-target species. This creates a new strain of plant that was never intended in the laboratory. In North Dakota, recent studies show that 80% of wild canola plants tested contained at least one transgene.
-
GMOs are not the answer for global food security. Genetically engineered crops have shown no increase in yield and no decrease in pesticide use.
-
Genetically engineered foods have not been proven to be safe, but the few studies conducted don’t look so hot. The organs of rats who ate genetically modified potatoes showed signs of chronic wasting, and female rates fed a diet of herbicide-resistant soybeans gave birth to stunted and sterile pups.
-
Big biotech firms have very sketchy track records, but then again what would you expect from organizations who want to patent the world’s food supply?
-
GMOs require massive amounts of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. These things are poisons, and should not be eaten or allowed to run off into our water supply. But they are, every day, by companies who care far more about the bottom line than they do about your health, your environment or your children’s future.
-
No one monitors human health impacts of GM foods. If the foods were creating health problems in the US population, it might take years or decades before we identified the cause.
-
There can be nutritional difference between GM food and non-GM food. A 2012 nutritional analysis of GM versus non-GM corn showed shocking differences in nutritional content. Non-GM corn contains 437 times more calcium, 56 times more magnesium, and 7 times more manganese than GM corn. GM corn was also found to contain 13 ppm of glyphosate, a pesticide so toxic that it may be carcinogenic in the parts-per-trillion range, compared to zero in non-GM corn.
Remember, gene therapy even in humans has never been proven to be completely safe. Remember the deaths and disease caused by gene therapy over the past 20 years? Scientists claimed it was safe. However, the people at placed at risk in these gene therapy studies are minor compared all those at risk from consuming GMO food products.
Categories
Precaution Heighten on MERS Victim
Precautions heighten as the Saudi resident in a Florida hospital still has a low-grade fever and is being treated in isolation for the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Caretakers have to wear goggles, gloves and a special suit while tending to him. Dr. Antonio Crespo says two hospital workers were showing flu-like symptoms after coming into contact with the 44-year-old man. One was cleared, but the other was admitted to the hospital.
About 15 other workers, including two physicians at the hospital, as well as five workers at Orlando Regional Medical Center where the Saudi resident also visited, have been asked to stay home from work for two weeks until they are cleared of having the virus.
Because modern medicine still does not know the exact mechanism of transmission of the virus and because there is no treatment, patients are now being kept in extreme isolation. Plus, healthcare workers need to don safety equipment similar to that which was worn during the Ebola outbreak. Is this just a precaution or is it what is needed? Time will tell.
Categories
Second US Case of MERS
Health officials have confirmed a second U.S. case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Florida this week. Not a native of the states, the victim was visiting from Saudi Arabia. Health officials say this case is unrelated to the other recent one diagnosed in Indiana.
“The risk to the public remains very low,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, health officials are trying to contact all the passengers on the planes the man took to inform them to watch out for early signs of the MERS virus.
This virus has been found in camels, but officials don’t know how it is spreading to humans. It can spread from person to person, but officials believe that happens only after close contact. Not all those exposed to the virus become ill.
But it appears to be unusually lethal – some estimates have suggested it has killed nearly a third of the people it sickened. The estimate has been dropping as health officials have begun diagnosing more and more cases with less severe illness. But the estimated fatality rate for MERS still is far higher than what’s seen with seasonal flu or other routine infections.
Are we looking at the beginning of a new pandemic? As a physician, I seriously doubt it. However, what if this virus mutates into something more contagious? Though slim, the possibility is there. Like all viruses, MERS is prone to frequent mutations, and does have the potential to become more infectious. And what makes this scary is that we still have no treatment, prevention or source for this virus.