Dogged Blog

Spine, Spine, Who's Got Spine?

So, Dick Cheney (you know, the one with the horns and tail?) offered some free advice to the Democratic Party not too long ago, letting us know that we'd make a mistake in making Howard Dean the head of the DNC. So, what did Howard say to that? This is what he told Chris Matthews:

You know, I generally try to avoid getting into telling who the Republicans should run their party.  And if the vice president wants to give us advice, we're very happy to put it where we take most advice from this administration.

This administration has failed America.  They can't manage the budget. They can't manage the defense.  If you can't manage the budget and you can't manage defense, then you probably shouldn't be president.  And these guys have not been able to do the job that's required of them to be president of the United States and to be in the administration of the United States.

They control the House, the Senate, the courts, the presidency.  The result is, we have the biggest deficits in the history of America; the highest number of people with no health insurance since health insurance came in; a war that doesn't appear to have an end; a constant threat from terrorists; a homeland that is not as secure.  We have a big problem on our hands, and I think Dick Cheney has a lot more to worry about than me.

Lots more good stuff here... I can't stand Matthews and you couldn't pay me to watch Hardball, but he got a few zingers at the administration in here himself, and he gave Gov. Dean every opportunity to frame this debate on his own terms. And Howard didn't miss a trick.

Oh, Canada!

Raven started chemo yesterday and I have been basically counting her breaths and obsessing over her every movement since then, but I did put my head out of the den long enough to blow a kiss northward, and smile. Marriage equality is now the law in Canada.

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website:

Supported by most members of the Liberals, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, the legislation passed easily, making Canada only the third country in the world, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to officially recognize same-sex marriage.

Now, was that so hard?

The Dems, They Are A'Changin'

Wow, the Democratic Party has a new website and it's really good. I mean, actually good, as in, well-designed and clever and full of excellent content and some sharp (even in-your-face) political commentary, and a blog that allows COMMENTS. It's so good, in fact, I double-checked to make sure it's really the official website of the official Democratic Party. It is. Really.

I'm going to guess that Howard "Yes, we wanted spine but not quite THAT much spine" Dean is behind this.  Just a hunch. Go visiting, bring a nice gift.

Nasty Little Liveblogging

8:05: "Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed." Unlike most Americans, I could have prevented it.

It's mean, it's dirty, it's ever-so-snide, it's Wonkette liveblogging Bush's speech at Fort Bragg tonight. Much better than the "real" thing.

Of course, I wouldn't really know because I can't watch him on TV. I have normal blood pressure most of the time, but for some reason when I hear even one syllable of his voice my veins all constrict and I get this pounding in the side of my neck. I'm fairly sure that's not good for me.

Wonkette, on the other hand, always makes me laugh, and they do say that's the best medicine. Bless her potty-mouthed little heart.

Late Night of the Gods, Media and Politics Divisions

Howard Dean was on Jon Stewart last week... bliss for a girl like me. Comedy Central has the clip here.

A few of my own personal highlights:

Stewart:  The Democrats have been criticized for not having a spine .... then you came in and now you're being criticized, now it's like hey jeez... that's a lot of spine.

And this:

Dean: They talk about morals but they don't do anything to help the poor. Helping the poor is mentioned over 3,000 times in the bible. I have yet to find one mention of gay marriage in the bible.

And:

Dean: Here the Republicans are going out to all the African-American churches in America, and  they won't even renew the Voting Rights Act. Give me a break.

And a little teamwork:

Stewart: Why don't the Democrats do this: Every day say what they Democratic government would have done in that situation.
Dean: I think that's a great idea. Would you like to be the shadow Secretary of State?

Getting Chills in the Grey Zone

Back in my radical youth, I would always object when the term "fascist" was applied to Reagan, because if we call Reagan a fascist, what do we call actual fascists? And as the great-granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and the daughter of a Jewish father, I take enormous offense at the casual use of "Hitler," "Storm Troopers," "SS," and other evocations of Nazism to describe political behavior of which the speaker disapproves. (Hell, I've heard people use it to describe  PET CARE behavior of which they disapprove!) Even when the political behavior in question amounts to torture and murder, it still feels wrong to me.

So when I read a recent blog entry by Coturnix, a biologist in North Carolina who comes from  Belgrade (or, as he describes himself, a "Red-State Serbian Jewish atheist liberal PhD student with Thesis-writing block and severe blogorrhea trying to understand US politics by making strange connections between science, religion, brain, language and sex"), over at Science and Politics, at first I just nodded my head along with him. He started out with a little bit of history:

Back in 1991, before I left Belgrade, we were demonstrating against Milosevic. Many plackards and graffiti at the time compared Milosevic to Saddam. They were mostly NOT comparing him to Hitler. Why? Not because we liked Milosevic and did not want to insult him. Not because we thought it was bad strategy. It was because we wanted to put him down, to show him how small he is, how transparent he is, how impotent he is.

He goes on to identify other reasons for not invoking Hitler in political dogfights - that  it tends to be a debate-stopper because of the emotions it provokes, that it's a cheap metaphor, and of course, that Hitler's acts were evil beyond anything even remotely perpetrated by those to whom he's being compared; that Bush has killed thousands but Hitler killed millions.

But then he veers right off in another direction, and gets me questioning everything I thought I believed on this issue  - enough so that I'll quote a bigger chunk than I normally do of someone else's writing:

Of course fascism will take different forms in different places and at different times. No state is going to resurrect the swastika today. The signs and emblems fascism do not make. It is the underlying ideology which can be coated in whatever symbols people are already used to - and proud of - including the American flag.

Perhaps due to my growing up in Europe, or being Jewish, or losing 42 family members in the Holocaust (including my maternal grandparents), I may be oversensitized. But, when I first heard GW Bush's campaign speeches in 1999, I got chills down my spine. I was able, due to my upbringing, to recognize something most Americans did not at the time, though many are waking up now. This was the rhetoric, the platform, the ideology, and the campaign strategy deeply soaked in fascistic way of thinking.

Neither Nazism nor Stalinism sprung up suddenly out of nowhere. Both built up gradually, over the years, slowly acclimating the populations to the ever-increasing levels of totalitarianism, and utilizing the fears and emotional insecurity of the few to rein in the many. The mass killings were just the last phase. It is like boiling a frog (or a lobster) alive: put it in cold water and warm up gradually. If you put a frog in hot water it will jump out, but if you warm it up gradually, it will just sit there until it is served well done.

I don't want to believe that we're facing a battle with fascism in this country, and  I don't like abandoning my moral certainty on this issue. Dick Cheney is a buzzing gnat compared to Hitler, and no one can change my mind on that. But.... go read and see what you think.

Corporate Medicine Eats Its Own Tail

Really, seriously... I like science, I like medicine, I just think it's all very wonderful. I often get savaged by other holistic breeders/dog owners for championing science and conventional medicine - I believe last time I took the Holistic Purity Litmus Test I got an F+.

BUT.... sometimes medicine behaves like such a complete and utter ass that a girl can only think.... maybe throwing a handful of herbs in a pot of boiling water really IS the answer. Because these folks are eating their own tails. Or perhaps they just have their heads up their asses. It's hard to tell because I really don't like to look that closely.

Via Ampersand at Alas, a Blog, from LAmom (who intriguingly describes herself as "a homeschooling mom, midwife, and Christian pro-life liberal"):

Dr. Helen Sandland, an obstetrician in North Carolina, is leaving the hospital where she had been practicing.  The reason?  Hospital administrators were pressuring her to do more cesarean sections.

In the decade she has delivered babies and cared for their mothers in New Hanover County, she [Dr. Sandland] has always had a [C-section] rate below 10 percent....

If her lack of medical malpractice lawsuits and gratitude of patients are of any account, she was not only popular, but also successful.

So what was the problem, exactly? I mean, since there wasn't any problem?

Read it here - be prepared to run screaming into the night.

Give That Blog a Nice Sardine

The guys (yes, they are all guys, they gotta do something about that) at no/se/nada did a follow up to their earlier terrific look at human vaccinations, which I blogged about yesterday. This one's even better.

Finally, in my reading of every book that I have found on vaccines, in my desire to construct a personal risk/reward equation for my child and my family's situation (I am a scientist after all, and doing this sort of stupid risk/reward calculation in my head is my mien), I have come to the following conclusion: some of the vaccines are very good, some are good, and some are entirely irrelevant. Every single vaccine carries some small risk (I would love to see a pro-vaccine advocate dispute this with multiple studies). So why would I choose to vaccinate with a vaccine I consider unnecessary? Because some doctor with very shaky data claims that vaccines and declines in public health outbreaks are strongly correlated? Out of some altruistic desire to help ensure that polio doesn't come back to our society, even at the risk of harming my child?

I don't normally put anything in my blogroll until it's a bit older than the few days this blog has been in existence, but I'm thinking about making an exception. Those words, if reworked to being about animals, sound like something I would say. Have said. Many times. If that blog were a dolphin I'd give it a fish. Common sense on the subject of vaccination? Whether  human or veterinary, it's in short supply.

Treat Yourself Like a Dog

I originally wrote these words a few years ago:

As I stood at the counter in the kitchen preparing a beautiful bowl full of range-fed meat, sprinkled with organic green veggies and nutritious supplements for my dogs, it struck me: When was the last time I'd made a meal for myself? Why was it ok for me to live on crackers and cheese, pizza, and microwaved, reheated coffee, but not ok for my animals?

It's very easy to fall into the trap of taking better care of everyone else in your life than you do of yourself. But you have to remember: You cannot give what you don't have. If you are sick, weak, badly fed, not getting enough sleep, not getting enough fresh air, sunshine, companionship, and mental stimulation, if you are stressed, if your life is out of balance, then you won't really be able to do your best for the people in your life or the animals in your care.

When I wrote that, I also created an email list for those of us who care for our animals much better than we care for ourselves - a human health list for animal lovers, with a nutrition/holistic slant. And since then I really have gotten much better at taking care of myself, especially in the meals department. But it's still all too easy to let my own needs and well-being go when there's a crisis with my animals, or even at work.

So today I started a challenge on the list, asking each listmember to post what they're going to do in the next week to treat themselves as well as they treat their animals.

I'm going to get a massage on Friday, to see if I can un-knot some of the stress and anxiety from caring for my dog, Raven, who has  osteosarcoma.

Who knows, maybe I'll get the hang of this "taking care of myself" thing someday. After all... my dogs need me.

I'm a Scientist, You're a Fool

Via Chris Mooney, some pithy comments on human vaccines from a new blog in town:

Best line:   

I am a scientist and you’re obviously a fool!

Best point:

Even without the blatant conflict of interest throughout the vaccination approval and recommendation system, the future is clear from the outset because CDC's vaccination schedule does not pass the most basic common sense test. CDC recommends that infants receive a Hepatitis-B vaccination within 24 - 48 hours of birth. I don't care if they study this issue for 100 years and find that a vast majority of infants have no detectable side effects from the Hep-B shot, introducing a foreign organism and mercury into a completely undeveloped immune system is strike one (they recently recommended a Hg-free Hep-B shot, but it is much more expensive and so the CDC still recommends the Hg-laden shot if the Hg-free shot is "unavailable"). Immunizing broadly and indiscriminately regardless of the mother's Hep-B status, which is the only reasonable way an infant can get Hep-B, is strike two. (By reasonable I mean to imply that an infant could be exposed if an infected IV drug user pricked the infant, but how reasonable of a risk is that?) That the CDC decided to implement universal Hep-B vaccination of newborns only because it was unsuccessful in targeting the community that is actually at risk of contracting Hep-B (same group as is high risk for HIV), is strike three. In other words, the fact that CDC even recommends Hep-B vaccinations for newborns destroys their credibility for me."

Best response to doctor who is both on the panel investigating vaccines AND the vaccine company's payroll:

Yes, my friend, that is exactly the way it works. Conflict of interest laws exist precisely because people like you think that way. In other words, you are not allowed to decide the merits of your own conflict of interest because you are not a disinterested, objective observer! Isn’t this obvious?

Gotta love it. Go read it.