Dreams of Their Fathers

New England Journal of Medicine

MSN:

Should Short Boys Take Growth Hormone?

Parents often worry when their child, especially a son, is much shorter than average. But as long as there is no medical cause, parents can rest easy, experts say.

Writing in the March 28 New England Journal of Medicine, two pediatric endocrinologists describe a scenario pediatricians see all the time: Parents bring in their 11-year-old son because he’s substantially shorter than his classmates, and his growth seems to have slowed in recent years.

Their concern is reasonable, said Dr. David Allen, co-author of the article and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.

(snip)

Allen said there are instances where healthy children are extremely short, and “it’s appropriate to help them grow.” But for most kids, it’s “reasonable” to just keep watching their growth rate and reassure the parents.

Often, parents worry about their child (again, usually a son) being teased, or — as an adult — feeling unhappy or even being at a disadvantage career-wise.

But studies have not borne out those worries, Allen said. Short children and adults do not seem less happy than their taller peers, and there’s no proof that treating idiopathic short stature improves quality of life.

“The more we look into this ‘assumed morbidity’ associated with short stature, the less we find,” Allen said. “And it’s been very difficult to show that treating (idiopathic short stature) improves kids’ well-being as adults.”

As far as safety, growth hormone “has an excellent track record while kids are on it,” Allen said. But no one knows yet if there are risks later in life. In theory, growth hormone might raise the odds of diabetes or certain cancers down the road. But for now, those are theoretical risks, Allen said.

The other big issue is cost. A conservative estimate is that each inch of height gained with growth hormone treatment would ring up at $35,000 to $50,000, Allen said.

Growth hormone is not the only option for idiopathic short stature. Boys can be given low doses of androgens, or “male” hormones. This therapy boosts boys’ growth rate in the short term, but there’s no evidence it increases their adult height, Allen said.

“It’s always reasonable to say, ‘Let’s just watch this,’” Allen said. At first, the gap might worsen if a short child’s peers hit puberty earlier and their growth takes off, he noted. But once a “late bloomer” starts puberty himself, his growth will accelerate, too.

My HBD radar is going off.

What’s going on here?  Answer:  White fathers of white sons nearing or very early in puberty are freaking out because they think there’s something abnormally or pathologically wrong with their sons, simply because they’re a lot shorter than their black male classmates who have already started puberty and are therefore experiencing their growth spurts.  Often these white fathers fear that their white sons won’t be able to make or do well on sports teams, simply because their late blooming white sons are having to compete with early blooming bigger stronger taller faster blacks.  Yep, it’s a combination of the sports cult, fathers living out their failed sports cult dreams through their sons, and our collective inability to accept racial differences.  Therefore, we’re pumping late prepubescent and early pubescent boys with hormones they don’t need, because all they need to be given is time, and maybe the option of self-actualization in some venue other than a field, pitch or court.

Show Me Something Different

EIB Network

Rush:

RUSH: This is Barney in Tucson.  Barney, I’m glad you waited, sir.  Great to have you on the program.  Hi.

CALLER:  Rush, there’s another hidden reason why the problem with nobody having any money is gonna get much worse under this Medicaid expansion.  There’s an additional Trojan horse in this legislation where the government will seize as much of the estates of Medicaid recipients when they die as it takes to reimburse the government for the services it provided.  And nothing’s gonna be off-limits, including homes which have been in families for generations.  It’s not a brand-new thing.  It goes back to the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, and it’s called estate recovery and it mandates –

RUSH:  Under what auspices can they seize a home?  Under what auspices can they seize a home from somebody’s estate?

CALLER: They already have the provision set up, but states have not pursued it aggressively. There is an accounting procedure there where they track what benefits have gone to recipients, and a spouse is living in the house, there are provisions for them, but if it’s the only asset, nobody’s living there, they will be able to seize it when they die.

(snip)

RUSH: But here it is: ” States try harder to recover their losses from providing healthcare to the poor — even seizing homes…. In the face of soaring Medicaid” — remember, folks, now, this is seven years old now. States try harder, “[i]n the face of soaring Medicaid costs, Tennessee and every other state are required to set up a Medicaid estate-recovery program. Many have been launched only recently, and some — like Tennessee’s — are becoming more aggressive. Often, they target the home because it’s all that’s left after beneficiaries have spent their assets to pay for nursing-home care.”

Now, from the article: “States base their programs” — like what you said — “on a 1993 federal law mandating that they recover what Medicaid spends on a beneficiary’s long-term care. Congress approved the law to prevent states from forcing the sale of beneficiaries’ homes while they were still living, in case their conditions improve and they can return home”.

So the way I’m reading this, somebody’s not living there. They’re either in a convalescent home, or they die, and if nobody’s in the home and the state calculates that it’s gone bankrupt or gone — not bankrupt — if the states calculated that the amount of money they have spent treating this person has resulted in a net loss, they can try to recoup what they’ve spent by seizing the person’s house.

(snip)

CALLER: Well that’s just means they’ll be able to get their homes sooner. A lot of states have not been pursuing this aggressively and they’ve made provisions for individuals and surviving spouses to be able to keep the homes permanently, but the pressures put on by this legislation is likely to force states to recover costs wherever they can.

I know that in his last term (2004-2008) as Missouri Attorney General, now-Gov. Jay Nixon (Democrat) went one step further — He interpreted these provisions to mean that the state can intercede and seize the house even if one of the spouses is still both living and living in the house. IOW, the state isn’t waiting around for both spouses to be dead before they file a lien on the estate, they’re filing the lien interfering with what should be the natural transfer of the deed or equity of the house between widow(er) and widow(er). And yes, the living remaining spouse is thrown out of the house.

Buffaloed

Buffalo, New York

Sounds like what happened in St. Louis, the only slight difference is that St. Louis involved improperly sterilized dental equipment, and Buffalo involves recycled insulin syringues.

I’m betting on these two similiarities:

1.  Affirmative action black VA employees

2.  If the Congressman whose Congressional district overlays this VA hospital is black, a neighboring white Congress/wo/man will have to do all the investigative legwork.

Cornball White Person

Alabama

Well, what else would you call someone who would operate on a cornball brother?

I dunno, I just feel more comfortable when old white men with gray hair are doing things like operating on me and running countries.

“Improve Access to Drug Treatment”

Trenton, New Jersey

HuffPo:

Chris Christie: Gun Control Measures Must Be Part Of Wider Debate

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he’s willing to have a conversation about stricter gun laws, but says policymakers also must address the mental health system, improve access to drug treatment and look at the impact of violent video games.

Christie made the comments on NBC’s “Today” show, one of five national television appearances he was making Wednesday morning, one day after his annual State of the State address.

Christie was asked about specific gun control measures, and instead talked about violent video games. “We don’t allow those games into our house…we think it desensitizes children to all the effects of violence,” and added that all of the issues related to gun violence needed to be dealt with.

So, the Krispinator is on record now of blaming guns and video games, but not SSRIs.  In fact, he wants to “improve access to drug treatment,” but certainly not examining how too much legal dope might be a cause.

Gee, I wonder why that is.

Advertising Works

Madison Avenue and Capitol Hill

Me, December 22:

If firearms mfg. corporations had interlocking relationships with media conglomerates, and/or if there were far many more gun ads on TV, the media would love the NRA. The media hate tobacco because there are no consequences in doing so — Cigarette advertising has been FCC banned since 1970 or so. All about the money.

WND wonders why there has been virtually no media scrutiny about SSRIs.  (No link, b/c WND names the Nutmeg Nutbar.)  Duh — Pharma shovels a lot of money into media advertisements, and in fact, there were until fairly recently prime time buys for SSRIs themselves, (e.g. Prozac, Zoloft).  Michael Savage has half jokingly half not called for drug testing Congress, and I’m sure we’d find out that a good chunk of it and most Democrats are on SSRIs.  People bitch about the NRA’s lobbying budget, but Pharma’s lobbying budget is probably 20 times as big.  Oops, did I say 20?  I meant to say 80.  Pharma helped to get REPUBLICANS to vote for what was at the time the biggest expansion of the social welfare state since the Great Society, that being Medicare Part D in 2003.  (Not making a moral judgment about whether we needed Medicare D or not, I’m just making an observation about politics and pressure.)

Ya’ll Come Armed

American Media

Libs orgasmic over “gun control” and practically getting their rocks off over “assault weapons.”

Ironically, as I told you back in the spring, lib law profs were floating the trial balloon to use the Militia Act of 1792 to defend ObamaCare’s individual mandate.  That act required able bodied white men 17-45 to buy what was an “assault weapon” (for its day) plus an armament that was the rough equivalent of a handgun, plus enough gunpowder, ammo and a bayonet, among other things.  I’m not a big gun geek, but I am told that roughly translating the construction of the MA 1792 to modern times, it would mandate an AR-15 and a Ruger 9, not based on raw functionality compared to each other, but based on common availability and affordability and their functionality relative to the available armaments of the day in the same class.  Likewise, the best selling four-door family sedan in 2011 would be a far better more powerful more reliable car than the best selling four-door family sedan in 1957, (I know I’ll get some argument there), so if there was a law in 1957 that required every nuclear family to buy a Ford Fairlane, the best selling four-door sedan of that model year, the equivalently crafted law in 2011 would require every nuclear family to buy a Toyota Camry, ibid.

I don’t know if the Obamaites actually used that argument at SCOTUS, but I don’t remember any final SCOTUS opinion on ObamaCare, either majority, concurring or dissenting, mentioning it at all much less endorsing it or rebuking it as legal reasoning, so my guess is that they didn’t and it was just a leftist trial balloon.  All I know is that Benedict Dyslexic Roberts somehow read “mandate” in the bill and wound up interpreting “tax” out of it.

UPDATE 12/22

Bob Owens over at PJ Media kinda makes this same point.

Pair of Docs

ObamaCare America

ABC:

Doctor Shortage Could Cause Health Care Crash

The United States will require at least 52,000 more family doctors in the year 2025 to keep up with the growing and increasingly older U.S. population, a new study found.

The predictions also reflect the passage of the Affordable Care Act — a change that will expand health insurance coverage to an additional 38 million Americans.

“The health care consumer that values the relationship with a personal physician, particularly in areas already struggling with access to primary care physicians should be aware of potential access challenges that they may face in the future if the production of primary care physicians does not increase,” said Dr. Andrew Bazemore, director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Primary Care and co-author of the study published Monday in the Annals of Family Medicine.

Stephen Petterson, senior health policy researcher at the Robert Graham Center, said the government should take steps — and quickly — to address the problem before it gets out of hand.

“There needs to be more primary care incentive programs that give a bonus to physicians who treat Medicaid patients in effort to reduce the compensation gap between specialists and primary care physicians,” said Petterson, who co-authored the study with Bazemore.

Wait, don’t tell me:

1.  More H-1B visas for Indians and Asians for fake pieces of paper from Asian degree mills

2.  More affirmative action to get barely-above-the-white-IQ-average blacks a piece of paper so he and she can play with a Fisher Price doctor kit.

While that’s not stated in here, you know they’re thinking it, and you know it’s coming.

Bend Over. This Won’t Hurt a Bit.

Obamaland

“It was just a tax,” John Roberts said.

“Taxes are perfectly constitutional,” John Roberts said.

Stoopid John Roberts.

OTOH, we now have 4th Amendment grounds to use to attack the IM in Federal court.

No Fun League

Chicago

CBS:

Pediatricians warn against trampoline use at home, citing injury risks

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is discouraging the recreational use of trampolines, saying the activity poses a major injury risk for kids and there’s no clear way to reduce chances of getting hurt.

The modern trampoline was patented by competitive gymnast George Nissen in 1945, designed for acrobats, gymnasts and eventually used by the military for training, according to the AAP. But at-home recreational trampoline use has increased in recent decades as the products have become more affordable.

Despite statements from numerous medical groups that discourage trampoline use and warnings to exercise caution on trampolines at home or on the playground, the AAP says trampoline use and injuries remain a big problem.

(snip)

The AAP recommends avoiding recreational trampoline use entirely. If a child or teen still wants a trampoline in their lives, the academy says using a structured sports training program with appropriate supervision, coaching and safety measures already in place. If a family still wants a trampoline at home, check with your insurance provider to make sure it covers trampoline-related injury claims.

Sure, because all parents with kids can afford “structred sports programs,” especially here in the Era of Dope and Change when median household incomes do nothing but decline.

The AAP doesn’t like trampolines, or much of anything else that is fun.  How do they suggest children should be able to have fun?  The answer is they don’t want kids to have fun.  They want them to be bored out of their mind so their depression can be “cured” by an AAP member pediatrician writing a script for a mind altering drug because the drug’s maker bribes the pediatrician in question to write as many scripts as possible for their company’s drugs.  Oh yeah, I had that little culture of corruption thing figured out since I was 12 years old.

What Tragic Consequences?

India

Daily Mail:

NHS hospitals sending your confidential notes to India to be typed up

Hospitals are sending hundreds of thousands of confidential letters about patients to India to be typed up by poorly-paid workers.

NHS trusts have been accused of laying off their secretaries and instead dispatching patients’ notes more than 6,000 miles to save money on staffing costs.

In the last year, at least 650,000 letters containing sensitive medical information are known to have been sent to India by a total of eight trusts, but many others are likely to be doing the same.

MPs warn that complicated medical terms may be mis-translated by the Indian workers leading to ‘tragic consequences’.

What tragic consequences?  The NHS needed to be more diverse, and our diversity is our strength.  There is no tragedy in diversity — Only a knuckledragging white racist would think that there is.

One Man’s Waste

Washington, D.C.

Federal beancounters figure that about 30% of American health care spending is pure waste.

Not everyone would agree with that.

One man’s waste is another man’s celebrating diversity.  Would Michelle Obama call the $300K salary that the University of Chicago Hospital System paid her for her no show sinecure “job” (except when she coordinated dumping indigent patients off on other health care providers) a waste?  If you call it a waste…then…you know…racism.

 

Looks Are Deceiving

Tower Grove East

If you thought the pictures were any indication, then Roosevelt High is 50% white, 25% black and 25% Asian.  In reality, it’s 82% black, 11% white, and 7% others.  The only reason it’s not 100% black is that the 1998-99 influx of Bosnian refugees to St. Louis largely settled Bosnians into Roosevelt’s service area, and that has partially inflated the school’s white student stats.  A few years ago, the local snooze did a story that for the first time in forever, Roosevelt has a soccer team, and the team is mostly Bosnian.  Some of the other “whites” are only marginally white.  Plain words, you can count the number of native “plain ole American” white students at that school on two hands.  There is a small contingent of Asians at that school, because Roosevelt’s service area includes the “We Are the World” part of town, where most of the city’s Vietnamese and Cambodian population lives, the neighborhood where Knockout Martin Luther King became an epidemic.  That’s why Roosevelt students win a lot of math contests.

The Other Nine Soon to Follow

ObamaCare

Washington Times:

Nearly one in 10 employers to drop health coverage

About one in 10 employers plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now, according to a survey to be released Tuesday by the consulting company Deloitte.

Nine percent of companies said they expect to stop offering coverage to their workers in the next one to three years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Around 81 percent said they would continue providing benefits and 10 percent said they weren’t sure.

Yeah, it begins.  As we knew it would — Who do you think has been pushing behind the scenes for HillaryCare and ObamaCare?  It’s a perfect way to offload costs to you and me.

Stop Taking About “Asses”

Washington, D.C.

I’ll make this really easy for you.

The 74-page report, “Back of the Line: The State of AIDS Among Black Gay Men in America,” says black gay and bisexual men make up one in 500 Americans overall, but account for one in four new HIV infections in the United States.

And:

Wilson also faulted mainstream gay rights groups for putting the HIV-AIDS crisis on the back burner, now that it is no longer a pressing issue for affluent gays in big cities whose bigger concern today is marriage equality.

“There are almost no national LGBT organizations today that give a rat’s ass about the lives of black gay men as they are impacted by HIV-AIDS, and that’s disgraceful,” he said.

Why should the “mainstream” (read: white) LGBTQMIALOLPLPLTH orgs worry that much about HIV/AIDS, when condoms and ARV drugs, and now the new blocker drug, has halted the spread of HIV/AIDS among those who take proper precautions?

Follow the Label

Washington, D.C.

FDA green lights the first HIV prevention pill.

But:

…HIV experts have raised concerns that patients might not use the drug correctly. Dr. Tom Giordano of Baylor College of Medicine said Monday the drug must be taken every day to be effective, and would be most effective for a relatively small group of people.

“It’s been most effective in people who are at very high risk and are able to take the drug on a regular basis,” said Giordano, who served on the FDA panel that recommended approving the drug. “When you really boil it down that’s going to be a relatively focused population, but it’s an important population to treat.”

The drug’s label carries a warning that people should be tested to make sure they don’t have HIV before starting Truvada. Patients who already have the virus could develop resistance to the drug, making their disease more difficult to treat. The label also warns of side effects, including kidney and liver problems.

Certain patients might not use the drug correctly.  The ones that don’t follow the TB treatment regimen correctly.  The ones that think that the current ARV cocktail “cures” them after only a few days of use, so they go out and start fucking around like there’s no tomorrow, and spread HIV even further.

Prediction:  People who truly want HIV-AIDS under control are going to rue this day.

Don’t You Know? That’s Racism.

Northern Virginia

Washington Examiner:

Northern Virginia pair charged with $400k Medicaid fraud

Two Prince William County residents have been charged in connection with a health care fraud scam that investigators say bilked Medicaid out of hundreds of thousands of dollars over a three-year period.

Federal officials charged Irvine Johnston King, 46, and Aisha Rashidatu King, 40, with more than two dozen fraud-related offenses on Thursday. The two own Bright Beginnings Healthcare Services, a home health care business in Woodbridge that provides in-home care and private nursing services to Medicaid-eligible patients.

The Feds rarely release mugshots, but “Aisha Rashidatu” is telling enough.

Don’t expect these criminal proceedings to go by with someone screaming racism.  Oh no.

And also, reparations for slavery.

Taking Up Space and Money

Daily Mail:

Top doctor’s chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year

NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.

Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.

It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.

It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.

There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP.

Don’t they know?  It’s the duty of old white people to die and get out of the way, so that the space and money can be used on non-whites that make Britain so very diverse, vibrant and strong.  An additional benefit is that it pushes up the glorious date in the future that Britain becomes majority non-white.

And also, Labour Party hegemony.

Perception Problem

C-Trib:

On the front lines of city’s violence

By the time paramedics wheeled Daniel Dilce into Stroger Hospital’s busy trauma unit early Sunday, there was little doctors could do to save his life.

Blood leaked from the 35-year-old’s wounds and radiated across the white sheets beneath him as a heart monitor reported an unbroken flat line. CPR hadn’t worked during the ambulance ride from the North Austin neighborhood, where he was shot while sitting in a vehicle outside his home. He hadn’t had a pulse in 20 minutes.

“So the time of death is now,” trauma surgeon Dr. Andrew Dennis said at 2:13 a.m. to the paramedics huddled around the body. Periods of silence followed as Dennis examined the wounds to Dilce’s back, shoulder and face.

“There are patients you can save and there are patients you can’t. You have to work within the confines God gives you,” said Dennis, his eyes ringed by dark circles during the overnight shift at one of the country’s busiest trauma centers.

Dilce was one of five people fatally shot in Chicago during the hot, violent weekend. Thirty-four others were shot. The numbers come on top of a bloody 2012 so far. As of early last week, homicides had risen about 35 percent compared with the same period in 2011; shootings had increased 11 percent.

It was a stressful weekend for Chicago police. For the first time this year, the department offered overtime to officers in an effort to tamp down violence in gang-infested neighborhoods on the South and West sides, prevent mob attacks such as the ones along the Michigan Avenue corridor last weekend and provide security for a visit from President Barack Obama.

When the inevitable gun violence erupted, Dennis and his team at Stroger rushed to rescue the wounded, treating seven gunshot victims from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon.

Some weekend nights bring as many as 15 gunshot victims into the county hospital’s trauma unit, Dennis said. Though he tired visibly as the hours passed, Dennis, the head surgeon for the night, brought energy to his work making incisions, finding buried bullets, sewing up wounds and coaching less experienced doctors. He joked about fatigue, but he also made critical remarks to doctors as he supervised.

As of 1:10 a.m., 12 of the unit’s 14 stations designated for trauma patients were filled. The injured were attached to machines that fed fluids and monitored hearts. It was so busy that Dennis called another trauma surgeon for help, something he’s done only a handful of times in the last several years.

Dr. Dennis must be imagining things.  Gerry McCarthy said that all this is just a perception, a mirage.  All those people in those trauma stations whose pals made holes in them?  They’re not really there.  They are just figments of his imagination, and the C-Trib is leading us on a wild goose chase.  If he’s really fatigued, it must be because of something else.

Particularly Prolific

Depressing.

Just what I need after a couple of good days in a row — Bad news.

AIDS won’t kill black Africa.

Though I shouldn’t be crying in my morning coffee too much, because I knew it wouldn’t.  The article mentions honkey’s ARV drugs, and that’s contributing.  But even if they weren’t available, AIDS (or more accurately, its complications) won’t kill you before you can get a lot of procreation done, especially if you’re particularly prolific in that regard.  And we know certain people are.

Finding Fault

As the Cochran VA Center Turns.

5:

John Cochran VA Medical Center raising concerns among Missouri lawmakers

(snip)

Republican Sen. Roy Blunt called continued problems at Cochran “unacceptable.”

But what of the affirmative action hiring and promotion which caused the chronic problems at Cochran?

UPDATE

“The nurse wasn’t paying attention.”  Why should she?  She’s black, which means I’ll win Powerball before she can be fired.  She has no incentive to do her job.

Your Wild Oats Have Gotten Cold

“If it feels good, do it” at 20 turns into Hep C at 60.

Life has this incredible way of evening itself out.  Or, to put it another way, karma is a stole cold beyotch.

Silence in a Pill

5:

Adam Jones accused of giving student Xanax

Council Bluffs, IA (KPTM/CNN) – A high school teacher in Iowa is accused of giving a student the prescription drug Xanax.

Adam Jones, 40, of Council Bluffs was arrested on Friday.

Students at Thomas Jefferson High School say they can’t believe one of their favorite teachers is being charged for giving drugs to a student.

“I didn’t think that actually happened, I just thought it was some rumor going around,” said student Rachel Autera.

Investigators say they believe Adam Jones offered the prescription drug Xanax to one of his students, who in turn accepted several of the pills. It’s a prescription drug that helps people with anxiety, but can be taken illegally to feel relaxed.

How dare a teacher give one of his students Xanax to keep her quiet.  That’s what Ritalin is for.

The River Flows Downstream

Washington Times:

In a move that could help the government trim its burgeoning health care costs, the Food and Drug Administration may soon permit Americans to obtain some drugs used to treat conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes without obtaining a prescription.

The FDA says over-the-counter distribution would let patients get drugs for many common conditions without the time and expense of visiting a doctor, but medical providers call the change medically unsound and note that it also may mean that insurance no longer will pay for the drugs.

Run this river upstream, and the inference is easy — If you force a drug to be prescription-only, it makes it more expensive.

Which means all the cops and sheriffs running around here wanting pseudo-ephederine to be prescription-only want to make it more expensive.  You don’t think someone will me making that money, do you?  The FBI should deploy a few forensic accountants to St. Louis to see what kind of bribes are being passed from certain health care industry concerns to these given officers of the law.

I Choose “None of the Above”

MyFoxDC:

DC Councilmember Marion Barry raises more eyebrows with nurses comment

WASHINGTON – D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry’s words are causing folks to talk again. Just a few weeks ago, Barry got himself into hot water when he talked about Asian-owned businesses in Ward 8. During a meeting on Monday, Barry raised some eyebrows as he spoke about the need for local nurses in D.C. at a University of the District of Columbia budget hearing.

So, the choice is between Filipino H-1B imports and local blacks.

Is “white” an option?

Back to Basics

USNWR consistently has Wash. U. Med in the top ten of American med schools, and has had it rated as high as #3.

If they’re #3, then after reading this, it should worry you if you’re in a fourth or below med school:

Doctors Appalled By 10-Year-Old Giving Birth

A 10-year-old girl in Colombia recently gave birth via caesarian section, placing her among the youngest mothers in the world. Though the girl is now recovering, her case highlights the dangers of pregnancy before maturity, doctors say.

“No 10-year-old anywhere in the world should be having a baby,” Lewis Wall, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told LiveScience.

Repeating for those needing:  A young woman is capable of becoming pregnant and giving birth at any moment once she starts ovulating.  This isn’t med school material, this is stuff I learned when I was a student at an elementary school whose building was very near that particular med school.

The Doctor Is In

Politico:

Calderon says U.S. should follow Mexico’s example on health care

Mexican president Felipe Calderón had a message for Americans: Check out Mexico’s health care system.

In a joint appearance with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Calderón held up Mexico’s health care system as a possible model if the Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act.

“Full, free health care coverage for all people up to 18 years of age,” Calderón said Tuesday, via a translator, about his country’s system. “I would hope that one of the greatest countries in the world could follow our example.”

Oh, so that’s why half of Mexico under the age of 18 (and a lot of it over 18) is mooching health care from American emergency rooms.

Let me translate Calderon’s bullshit into English:

Please, Gringo, enact another entitlement so we can dump even more of our undesirables on you!

Never Send a Political Scientist to Do a Doctor’s Job

Kathleen Sebelius, author of Coughing for Dummies, displays her medical researcher credentials:

Sebelius: Youth Violence Leads to Asthma and Obesity

(CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said on Monday that youth violence is a “chronic health issue” that can lead to asthma, obesity, or depression for “the youth who are involved,” although she did not make clear whether she was speaking solely about the victims of youth violence or the perpetrators or both.

“But it’s important to remember–you just heard from the law enforcement side of this–it’s important to remember that the costs of violence go beyond deaths or injuries or tolls on families and communities,” Sebelius said at a Department of Justice conference Monday on youth violence. “Violence is also a chronic health issue.”

“It leads to asthma, it leads to obesity or depression among the youth who are involved,” Sebelius said at the event in Washington, D.C.

I guess she must have skipped logic class on her way to getting a masters degree in public administration.

It’s a simple correlation-causation thing, dear.

Violence doesn’t cause (black) “youths” to get asthma.  The violence and the asthma are two totally unrelated things.

As an aside, real research on the part of real health care professionals with advanced degrees in medicine and specialties in immunology, not political hacks with degrees in politics, shows that babies who aren’t carried to term run a much higher risk for asthma and allergies, because it takes the entirety of the gestation period for mother to pass her immune system on to her child.  That magic happens in the last three weeks.  Since allergies are a major asthma trigger, someone who is allergic to a lot of stuff will also tend to have a lot of asthma attacks.  Therefore, Dr. Sebelius, you would do well to find out why a lot of the mothers of these asthma victims delivered prematurely.  Drugs?  Stress?

When Is Not a Tax Not a Tax?

Kinda sorta good news from SCOTUS on the health care hearings:

They turned away the Obamaite procedural trick to get SCOTUS to delay these hearings until 2015.  The trick was that the Obama crowd wanted SCOTUS to think that the individual mandate isn’t a mandate, but merely a specific dollar amount per person per year tax on people who both have at least a certain income level and don’t have an approved insurance plan.  Because an 1867 Federal law prohibits the Judiciary from hearing the constitutionality of tax issues until the tax is law and has been collected, the Obama gang hoped that SCOTUS would buy the “individual mandate as tax” bullshit.  They didn’t, so the hearings begin now.

Why is this good news?

I highly doubt the same SCOTUS which didn’t buy “individual mandate as tax” in March 2012 as part of a procedural maneuver will turn around and buy it in June 2012 if/when they ultimately rule.  This is important because “individual mandate as tax” was the sharpest arrow the Obamaites had in their quiver to defend the individual mandate.  SCOTUS has already tipped over their hand that they don’t buy it.  And if the individual mandate falls, ObamaCare falls.

Remember, the only reason the individual mandate exists is that the Obama White House needed to make nice with Karen Ignagni, the chief lobbyist for the health care industry, in order to keep the industry from running Harry & Louise TV spots like they did in 1993, which helped to kill ClintonCare.  The economic and fiscal and financial rationale for the individual mandate might be true, but they’re not germane to the politics of the matter.

Never Make Jokes About What Liberals Will Do

It only gives them ideas.

Some of us in our niche of the blogosphere have been making jokes for months that apologists for the individual mandate of ObamaCare would dig up the Militia Act of 1792. The reason we thought it was just a joke, and we didn’t take ourselves seriously, is because that act requires certain people (white men within a certain age range) to own firearms, ammunition and certain other kinds of deadly weapons, and that it would be too much of a contradiction for the modern day left to bear. I’m sure “white men gun militia” really gives most leftists the creeps, and I thought they wouldn’t want to go there in having to defend ObamaCare.

I’ll be damned. They up and did it.

Why did they go there?  Answer:  While left-wingers surely hate white men and guns, they want ObamaCare even more, because it’s the keystone to redefining permanently the relationship between citizen and government in favor of government.  That, and they don’t much care about the consistency of their legal jurisprudence.

Note:  This is the 9,000th post on this medium.  I’ll probably hit 10,000 later this year, though I doubt anyone will be throwing me a party.