Before you get twisted about pap smears and mammograms…
Understand that the recent “news” about screening recommendations for them is being used as a tactic against health care reform. Let’s talk about Pap smear recommendations first. They have been evolving for years. In 2006 the first major revision was introduced, calling for Pap smears at age 21 or 3 years after a woman is first sexually active. This was based upon provable statistics indicating a realignment in the effective use of Pap smears for diagnosis. I did a quick search on WebMD and found the first revision in 2003 with a second in 2005, and another in 2006. The 2006 guidelines kept the age 21/3rd year after first sexually active, but spre

Comcast: All your media are belong to us. Your internets and your politics, too.
Watch out, folks. While heads are turned with non-issues like Sarah “no lie is too small” Palin, there’s a huge media consolidation taking place under your nose, and it won’t be pretty if it’s allowed to happen. Comcast is moving to buy NBC/Universal from General Electric on one side, and on the other, injecting themselves into the LiveNation/Ticketmaster merger in order to block anti-trust objections. Wha

Rebooting the Blog
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you might be scratching your head at the change in tone from “hey, this is what’s happening with my family…” to “stand up and be counted.” It’s intentional. During the election, I blogged politics on a separate site and lost focus on what to do here. Consequently, I gained a ton of readers to that blog and lost many on this one. After the election, I was somewhat burned out and mostly gob

49 million hungry in the US? That’s just WRONG.
We are in the middle of one of the biggest redistributions of wealth ever seen in this country, thanks to George W. Bush and the Republicans. Now their chickens are coming home to roost, and it’s a disgrace.  This is not the country I have lived in all my life. I certainly never imagined I would see a day where reports like these are commonplace: In 2008, one in five children went without needed food. That’s 17 million children. 17 MILLION. Of those, 1.1 million were outright hungry. The truly staggering statistic is the increase in number, from 12 milli

Congressmen, Beware: Oppose health care reform at your own peril
Some Democrats are already wringing their hands over the 2010 races. If they’re smart, they’ll have a look at what’s happening in Delaware and take heed: Beau Biden jumped 21 points in the polls to overtake incumbent GOP Representative Mike Castle after Castle voted against the House health care reform bill and for the Stupak amendment. From the Washington Independent: What’s responsible for the Biden surge? He’s grabbed the lead in vote-rich New Castle County, built up a 41-point lead among Democratic voters, and