T'was that Saturday after Thanksgiving and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a Daily Kos editor. But the pundits... ah, the pundits...
Is there such a thing as communications malpractice? If so, we might consider the case of Women v. the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
I'm not talking about medical malpractice. The scientists who surveyed the mammogram studies did their job honorably.
The American economy is broken, ruined by the greed and irresponsibility of fabulously wealthy corporate chieftains and their shabby acolytes and enablers in government. While Wall Street is handing out billions in bonuses, American families are struggling with joblessness, home foreclosures and rampant debt. The economic woes are exacting a fierce toll on family life, and children are taking a big hit — emotionally, psychologically and otherwise.
One effect of the Great Recession, according to a recent series in The Times, has been a big jump in the number of runaway children, many of them living in dangerous conditions on the street.
Some people can't stand prosperity, my father used to say. Today, he might be talking about Republicans, who, in the midst of declining support for President Obama's hope-and-change agenda, are considering a "purity" pledge to weed out undesirables from their ever-shrinking party.
Just when independents and moderates were considering revisiting the GOP tent.
The Democrats, in our scary 2010 movie, will be heading toward the midterm elections hoping to preserve their 81-seat margin in the House. Vulnerable incumbents will be clamoring for more economic stimulus, but the Obama administration will be constrained by the huge budget deficits needed to bail out the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.
Trust the Villagers to get around to noticing the obvious. Once they do, you begin to question whether it's as true as they say.
Two events in the last month have raised the terror alert to red: the killing of 13 soldiers and police at Ford Hood, apparently by a Muslim psychiatrist, and the decision to try high-level 9/11 suspects in a civilian criminal court in New York City.
However, these events are being manipulated by the right wing to bang the alarm bells ever louder. From House Republican leader John Boehner and Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan to former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson and blogger Michelle Malkin, many on the right are grandstanding on both events with such force that it is cultivating terror in the American public.
Robert Read (UK):
Alongside improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and housing, vaccination has practically eliminated infectious diseases as a cause of childhood deaths in industrialised countries. Our children no longer die or are crippled by diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, or polio, to name a few examples. Even in the world's poorer countries that have yet to benefit from infrastructure improvements, vaccination has eradicated smallpox, is on the verge of doing the same for polio, and has cut deaths from measles by three quarters in the past decade alone. The countless millions of lives saved by vaccination are arguably science's greatest triumph.
The anti-vax movement is well organized and not going away. It will look for any opening to get a foot in the door. But Euro vaccine has adjuvant, and it's not as well studied as the rest of the vaccine components. This is one of those cases (vaccines are evil, buy my all-natural snake oil and make me rich instead; don't do any more studies) where you look at the extremes and say "a pox on both your houses".
