Where Are The Jobs?

President Obama has finally promised to give us his vision of a plan to increase employment in this country. Only problem is... his vision will not be forthcoming until the end of summer.

The question is, will the Republicans kill the plan by blocking it in the House or will they kill it by use of the unconstitutional fake filibuster in the Senate?

One way or the other, any program proposed by the President will be Dead on Arrival, courtesy of his Republican opponents.

Time Warner Cable Sucks!

Even though my take-home pay as a public school classroom teacher has gone down for each of the past four years, (soon to be five) Time Warner Cable continues to increase their fees every six months or so.

It's now gone up another 5%.

Long ago we gave up our H.B.O. and all other so-called "premium" services.

We're now down to Time Warner's basic package, which they have the nerve to call "Classic Cable." And since we live in a desert wasteland, going without some sort of cable television isn't really a viable option.

Time Warner Cable screws our family out of $68.53 each and every month.

That's over $822.00 per year for "basic" cable television.

Bastards.

Birther Hypocrisy

Once again, the wingnut birther conspiracy idiots are hollering about President Obama's alleged foreign birth.

Isn't it funny how these same birthers never have anything to say about the fact that their hero John McCain really was born overseas? It's true. You can look it up and see for yourself.

You can bet your last inflated paper dollar that if John McCain had been selected president by the electoral college, those looney-tooney birthers would not have had a damn thing to say about his birth outside of the United States.

Show me a wingnut birther and I'll show you a teabagging hypocrite every single time.

Davos: The Bankers' Yearly Junket

So. Here we go yet again.

While working folks all over our country are experiencing losses of income not seen since the Great Depression, the world's bankers, financiers, Wall Street types, and others who don't work for their money but whose money works for them, are traveling to Davos, Switzerland. It's time for their annual convention of back-slapping and mutual admiration amidst the type of unbelievable five-star luxury that most of us in the real world can only dream of.

And since these well-paid clowns will invariably deduct everything from booze to hookers on their taxes as so-called "business expenses" it's also a taxpayer-subsidized junket.

Unlike the Great Depression, the Great Recession doesn't seem to have made any paupers out of millionaires.

Federal Employees To Learn A Basic Truth

President Obama has indicated that Federal Employees will now have a two-year wage freeze.

Apparently, the freeze also includes the traditional "automatic" cost-of-living increase that was to have been 1.4% this year. (As always, this freeze won't include the U.S. Congress, they'll get their COLA.)

Teachers in our school district never get a "cost of living" increase.

Welcome to our world, federal employees!

EdWonk's Note to federal workers: Unlike the teachers in our district, at least your take-home pay isn't going to be cut, so your paycheck isn't getting smaller like mine has for years...

Why We Have Learned To Hate Citibank!

The other day, we received a letter from Citibank. Their latest missive read, in part, as follows:

Dear Ms. Wonk,

We are making changes to your account terms.

These changes include an increase in the variable APR for purchases to 23.99% and will take effect December 20, 2009.

This lastest rate increase comes on top of one that was foisted upon us about six months ago. For years, the interest rate had been 16% and then, suddenly, it went to 19.99%.

For no reason at all.

In the ten years that we've had this account, we've never been late with a single payment. We've never exceeded our credit limit. On point of fact, we've paid no credit card interest at all for over four years.

Each month, we pay the balance in full. So... barring some unforeseen disaster, this latest rate increase shouldn't cost us a single nickle.

But it's the principle of the thing.

This Is A Tragedy

Half of all kids in the United States will be on food stamps at one time or another in their young lives:

Half of American kids will live in households receiving food stamps before age 20, according to a study reported Monday in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Although one in five children rely on food stamps for years, many more live in families who turn to food stamps during a short-term crisis, says author Mark Rank of Washington University in St. Louis. He analyzed 30 years of data from the University of Michigan's Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey.

"This is what children can expect over a period of time, not just during a recession," Rank says. "It shows that the period of childhood, rather than a period of safety and security, is really a time, for a lot of kids, of economic turmoil and risk."

Rank says his study, the first of its kind, may underestimate how many families struggle with grocery bills. Only about 67% of people who are eligible for food stamps actually receive them, the Department of Agriculture says.

Good nutrition in childhood is crucial, doctors say.

Nutritional programs such as food stamps — officially known as the USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — improve children's health and help them do better in school, says James Weill of the advocacy group Food Research and Action Center, who wasn't involved in the new study.

More than 35.8 million Americans used food stamps in July — nearly 6.8 million more than a year earlier, Weill's group says. About half of food stamp recipients are children, Rank says.

"There is a large pool of people who are poor or who are living close to poverty at any given time," Weill says. "People don't like talking about it. They don't tell their neighbors, 'I was on food stamps 10 years ago.' "

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, says the study design and survey data are solid. But he says the findings are neither surprising nor troubling.

"That's effectively like saying that at some point in a 20-year period, a parent would be unemployed for a month or so," Rector says.

"There's no evidence that even consistent poverty in the U.S. produces a nutritional risk," he says, noting that rich and poor children tend to have about the same intake of protein, vitamins and minerals.

I guess that this is just one more sign that our society continues to evolve.... and for many, not neccessarily for the better.

Attention Pseudo Conservatives

This just in from our Upstate New York Bureau: when, thanks to the interference of outsiders such as Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Tim Pawlenty, and Glenn Beck, Republicans fight among themselves, Democrats will take advantage of the opportunity.

And who can really blame them?

Ed's Note to Cut-and-Run former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: Since you saw fit to pull the rug out from under a duly nominated female Republican Congressional candidate by endorsing a third-party challenger who doesn't even live in the district, thus fatally splitting Republican ranks, please don't whine about "sexism" next time you are criticized by the mainstream media for not knowing (with the exception of Roe v. Wade) the name of a single U.S. Supreme Court Decision with which you disagree.

My Goodness

And now it seems as though women aren't supposed to use the "L" Word first.

Heh. Are we supposed to teach that in our schools?

U.S. City Celebrates Mexican Independence Day

When it comes to governmental wastage of taxpayer funds, one has to look long and hard in order to exceed that peculiar type of corruption that is found here in the wasteland that is California's so-called "Imperial" Valley. But even here, where all kinds of corruption and nepotism are common-day occurrences, I was stunned to learn that the City of El Centro, California was proudly expending much-needed monies on the celebration of another country's independence day:

When El Centro City Councilman Efrain Silva was elected to the council last November, it led to the opening of doors between the city and Mexicali.

Silva said once he was elected he began communicating with the Mexican Consulate in Mexicali and eventually developed the idea of hosting a Mexican Independence Day event in El Centro.

“Calexico [California] had been doing it for years,” Silva said, “and I wanted to do something for the city of El Centro.”

On Saturday night El Centro, in joint efforts with the Mexican Consulate, hosted “El Grito de Independencia” at Bucklin Park as part of a Mexican Independence Day celebration.

“This was a tremendous opportunity for the community to celebrate Mexican Independence Day,” Silva said.

With thousands packing Bucklin Park, attendees were treated to food, drink and musical performances.

And while the event is celebrating Mexico’s independence from Spain, Silva said with “80 percent of Imperial County’s population of Mexican descent,” the “grito” is a natural part of this community.

“We’re honoring the beauty of the Mexican culture,” Silva said. “And I’m hoping everyone values it and everyone embraces the cultural differences.”

Sierra Gordon, special events coordinator for the city of El Centro, called the event “historic” and said she’d like “El Grito” to become an annual event held within the city.

“We’re not only here to celebrate the independence of our neighboring Mexico,” Gordon said, “but we’re also bringing out the roots of our Hispanic community.”

While I listened to the revelers at park repeatedly shout "Viva Mexico" at the top of their lungs in response to the emcee's Spanish-language promptings over the public-address system, (and yes, I am fluent in Spanish, having been married a Mexican lady for the last 20 years and having resided several years in Mexico) I couldn't help but wonder at the audacity of a California city council that would waste money on this type of nonsense activity while at the same time badgering the already over-taxed populace to vote this November to raise the sales tax another half-percent in order (the council says) to do much-needed pot-hole filling and other road repairs.

Now there are some out there who will invariably compare this celebration of Mexican Independence Day ("El Grito") with other "ethnic" commemorations such as St. Patrick's Day and Columbus Day.

The difference is that St. Patty's Day and Columbus Day are celebrations of a people while those American officials who spent American taxpayer money in order to commemorate Mexican Independence Day are observing the independence of another sovereign nation-state.

And no, the California city of El Centro does not stage a similar type of party on the Fourth of July.

Those Americans (both naturalized and native-born) who would so identify themselves with another nation-state while claiming all the rights and privileges of living in the United States would do well to consider the words of Theodore Roosevelt:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.

This is just as true of the man who puts “native” [Ed's note: in that time, the use of the word "native" referred to those who were born in the U.S. but claimed European decent.] before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.

But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

They might also think about listening to John Wayne read aloud his poem, "The Hyphen."

Hyphenated Americans are Divided Americans.

Sadly, in these times of political correctness run amok, the type of divisiveness that is exemplified by El Centro's celebration of another country's independence will only further deepen those divisions.

While those who even dare question the propriety of such expenditures of hard-earned American taxpayer monies will likely be subjected to charges of racism, and being anti-immigrant.

But such are the times in which we find ourselves living...

Getting Fraked

It's not often that we get to be in on the birth of an obscenity:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lee Goldberg thinks Glen A. Larson is a genius, and not because the prolific television writer and producer gave us "Knight Rider" and "B.J. and the Bear."

It was Larson who first used the faux curse word "frak" in the original "Battlestar Galactica." The word was mostly overlooked back in the '70s series but is working its way into popular vocabulary as SciFi's modern update winds down production.

"All joking aside, say what you will about what you might call the lowbrow nature of many of his shows, he did something truly amazing and subversive, up there with what Steven Bochco gets credit for, with 'frak,' " Goldberg said.

There's no question what the word stands for and it's used gleefully, as many as 20 times in some episodes.

"And he was saying it 30 years ago in the original goofy, god-awful 'Battlestar Galactica,' " said Goldberg, a television writer and novelist whose credits include "Monk" and "Diagnosis Murder."

The word is showing up everywhere -- on T-shirts, in sit-coms, best-selling novels and regular conversation.

"I have to start by saying that I'm drinking coffee out of a mug that says 'frak off' on the side of it, so much has it seeped into my life," "Galactica" star Jamie Bamber said.

The word is insinuating its way into popular vocabulary for a simple reason.

You can't get in trouble. It's a made-up word.

"It may have been the great George Carlin who talked about these things so cleverly," Larson said. "He'd say, 'Mother would say shoot, but she meant ... when she reached in and burned her fingers on the crocker.' And the child says, 'I know what you meant, Mom.' "

The word has slipped the bonds that tethered other pretenders like Mork's "shazbot" in "Mork & Mindy" or Col. Sherman T. Potter's "horse hockey" in "M*A*S*H." Its usage has moved from the small but fervent group of "Galactica" fans into everyday language. It's shown up in very mainstream shows like "The Office," "Gossip Girl" and "Scrubs." One YouTube posting has 2 minutes of sound bites that cover the gamut.

"I'm in my own little cocoon of science fictiondom, but it is certainly used around here and amongst the people I know," said Irene Gallo, art director at the sci-fi imprint Tor Books, where employees held a "frak party" to watch the season premiere. "It's sort of a way to be able to use a four-letter word without really getting into any kind of HR trouble or with people you're really not quite comfortable being yourself with."

The word has even appeared in the funny pages where Dilbert muttered a disconsolate "frack" -- the original spelling before producers of the current show changed it to a four-letter word -- after a particularly dumb order from his evil twit of a boss.

"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams calls the word "pure genius."

"At first I thought 'frak' was too contrived and it bothered me to hear it," Adams said. "Over time it merged in my mind with its coarser cousin and totally worked. The creators ingeniously found a way to make viewers curse in their own heads -- you tend to translate the word -- and yet the show is not profane."

Best-selling novelist Robert Crais slips the word into the prologue of his latest Elvis Cole mystery, "Chasing Darkness." He did it because "Galactica" is his favorite show, like calling out in the wilderness to his fellow fans. But he sees the word popping up everywhere, even among those who have never watched the show.

"It's viral, it spreads like a virus," Crais said. "That first wave of people who use it are all fans. They use it because they're tickled by it and like me they're paying an homage to the show. When they're using it, they're probably doing it with a sly wink. But as it gets heard and people use it, it spreads."

The re-imagined "Battlestar Galactica" tells the story of the human survivors of a war with a robotic race known as the Cylons. Fewer than 40,000 humans remain in a ragtag fleet being pursued across space by the Cylons, who wiped out the 12 colonies in a surprise nuclear holocaust.

Their destination is the mythical planet Earth, a legend passed down in religious texts. Shooting wrapped in July and the final 10 episodes will appear beginning in January.

Larson, one of television's most prolific and successful writers, doesn't much care for the new series. He used "frack" and its cousin "feldergarb" as alternates for curse words because the original "Battlestar" was family friendly and appeared on Sunday nights. The words fit in with his philosophy that while the show was about humans, it shouldn't have an Earthly feel.

In what he said was his first interview about the series, Larson says there were no red fire extinguishers on his Battlestar Galactica and characters wore original costumes, not suits and ties.

"Our point was to whenever possible make it a departure like you're visiting somewhere else," Larson said. "And we did coin certain phrases for use in expletive situations, but we tried to carry that over into a lot of other stuff, even push brooms and the coin of the realm."

When new series producer Ron Moore first introduced "frak" in early scripts, Bamber said the actors were dubious. But as writers expanded its use, they caught on to the possibilities.

"I mean why are we not offended by 'frak' because it means exactly the same thing as the other thing?" said Bamber, who plays fighter pilot-turned-president Lee "Apollo" Adama. "So it raises questions about language and why certain words are offensive. Is it their meaning? ... Clearly it's not their meaning. Clearly it's literally their sound."

Co-executive producer and writer Michael Angeli, an Emmy nominee for the episode "Six of One," said using the word in scripts is satisfying for anyone who's been censored over the years.

"It's a great way to do something naughty and get away with it," Angeli said. "One of the things that television shows do constantly is they battle with Standards and Practices over what can be seen and what can't be seen, what can be said and what can't be said.

"A lot of our characters are soldiers. That whole sort of view and that subculture, that's how they speak. They're rough and tumble, and they're bawdy and they swear."

He said producers have gotten no complaints from SciFi owner NBC Universal or the Federal Communications Commission.

Goldberg believes Larson should get more credit for "frak" and has posted an appreciation on his Web site. He even sought out Larson to let him know how he feels: "I told him, 'Frak is fraking brilliant, Glen.' "

I can't help but wonder if this non-word will show-up in our junior high's classrooms anytime soon.

This sorta reminds me of another television term that has found some popular acceptance: the purely-fictional holiday Festivus.

A final thought: If I consider the fact that I've been making pretty much the same take-home pay for six years now, I can at least take some "comfort" in the fact that I have a thorough knowledge of what it's like to get fraked and get fraked real good.

And not get paid for it.

Of Hurricanes And Cable News Sunday

As Hurricane Gustav bears-down on the Louisiana coast, the cable news channels have been covering the story all day. (See CNN's here.)

And so they should cover this major news event.

I grew-up in Florida, which is Hurricane Country.

And, interesting as it may seem, one of the things that many Florida folks used to say, (and many still do say) is that these monster storms don't hit the big coastal cities head-on.

At least they haven't hit them since the early 1960s.

Before that time, Hurricanes often did devastate large coastal cities.

These same people say that nowadays the storms "wobble" away from the larger coastal cities and strike nearby less populated (and most often relatively poorer) towns instead.

Among many other examples, they point to Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew while noting that each storm had major cities (New Orleans and Miami, respectively) in their sights and, within a few hours of landfall, "unexpectedly" veered away from their predicted courses. (Katrina devastated the Mississippi towns of Pass Christian and Biloxi while Andrew all-but-destroyed Homestead, Florida.)

With New Orleans again in peril, I hope and pray that there will be another "wobble" that takes the storm far enough westward into Louisiana's bayous thereby minimizing the damage to long-suffering New Orleans and the Mississippi coast.

We'll find out Monday when, (and if) various government officials use those oft-repeated phrases "we dodged a bullet," and "it could have been a lot worse."

Now for the record, we do not generally believe in conspiracy theories.

And we do not believe that anyone in the "government" can "make" such a gigantic force of nature as a Hurricane change its course one bit. At least not with current technologies.

But what if, hypothetically-speaking, somebody (or somebodies) in the "government" could influence the course taken by any one of these killer storms just enough to prevent a direct hit on a major coastal population center in the United States? Would we, the American People, be told about it?

Meanwhile, we'll continue to keep the people of the Gulf Coast in our thoughts and prayers.

Update: (Monday, Sept. 01, 2008, 4:05 P.D.S.T.) Brian Williams of NBC reported (to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) "Thank goodness Gustav took that little unexpected 'hick-up' to the left. We dodged a big bullet." [Ed's note: "to the left" was westward.]

Hmmm...

Los Angeles' Combat High School

Instead of concentrating on their reading, writing, and arithmetic, it seems as though a large number of "students" in one of our publicly-funded high schools have other priorities:

"A fight between rival groups of black and Latino students at Locke High School quickly escalated into a campus-wide melee Friday, with as many as 600 students brawling until police restored calm with billy clubs.

The troubled campus in South Los Angeles was locked down after the fight broke out at 12:55 p.m., as students returned from lunch to their fifth-period classes. Overwhelmed school officials called Los Angeles police for help, but students and faculty said it took about half an hour before dozens of officers, many in riot gear, restored order.

"The kids were crazy, running from place to place, jumping on other kids," said Reggie Smith, the school's band director, who said he ran to pull his students from the melee. "Some of my kids were crying because they were walking to class with friends and they got jumped."

Los Angeles Unified School District police said that there are only two officers assigned to Locke but that the school police force brought in about 60 officers after receiving word of the brawl. The Los Angeles Police Department also dispatched more than a dozen patrol cars and about 50 officers.

Susan Cox, an LAUSD spokeswoman, said police arrested four people -- three students for fighting and one non-student for illegal possession of a knife. Four students were treated in the school nurse's office for minor injuries.

The campus at 111th and San Pedro streets has long been one of the city's most troubled. This school year has been particularly difficult, with near-daily fights -- albeit on a much smaller scale -- during much of the fall and winter. Locke is about to be reorganized as a cluster of charter schools run by Green Dot Public Schools, which will take over in July, and some faculty and staff have accused the district of letting the campus drift in its final year as a traditional public school.

"Morale has really dropped because they don't feel like they have everybody behind them," cheerleading coach Marlo Jenkins said recently. "There are just fights upon fights upon fights now."

Faculty members and Green Dot complained that L.A. Unified nearly halved its funding for non-police security aides at the start of the year. The school has been especially plagued by tagging crews -- the school employs two full-time workers just to paint over graffiti, said Green Dot's Kelly Hurley, who is managing the transition.

Faculty members also complained repeatedly about in-school ditching and a massive tardiness problem. Finally, the district restored some of the trimmed security, faculty said, and also dispatched an additional administrator to help restore order. Until then, the district had relied on Principal Travis Kiel, who'd been brought back from retirement. In recent weeks, students and teachers have reported improved conditions -- less ditching, a little less graffiti.

But then came Friday's melee, which students and teachers said was by far the worst of the year, perhaps the worst in years.

Joseph Sherlock, a senior, 17, who has been at Locke for four years, called it "my first actual encounter with a riot." He added: "I've seen fights, and I've seen fights between black and brown, but I've never seen anything like this."

Sherlock, who said he saw police use pepper spray during the melee, said tensions between African American and Latino students have not been a serious problem at the school. With an enrollment of 2,600, Locke is 65% Latino and 35% African American.

"It's not the way it's portrayed in the media; that's not what it's like at all," said Sherlock, who is black. Another black student, Ronald White, said African American and Latino students commonly divide along ethnic lines but aren't necessarily hostile. "Everybody usually just sticks to themselves," he said.

White, a 17-year-old senior, said he had just stepped from a main building into the school's grassy quad when he was met with a scene of chaos.

Hundreds of students were outside, and from what he could see, "Most people was fighting." Eventually, police began to swarm onto the campus, and White said the students began fighting the officers, who responded with their batons.

"I was in the corner, just watching," he said. "I saw a girl get hit by the police and she went down."

Senior Victor Wong, 18, said the brawl grew out of a fight two days earlier between a Latino student and an African American student. Wong said Latino students who are friends of his asked him to participate in a fight planned for Friday that was to pit 10 Latino students against 10 African American students.

"It was a crew-on-crew thing," he said, referring to graffiti gangs. "They asked for my help, but I'm graduating," he said. "I'm done with all that."

Wong said the two groups of instigators met as planned at the school's handball courts, and "all of them started going at it." Within seconds, he said, the fight escalated beyond the original two groups, and people began running throughout the campus fighting.

"They would finish one place and run to another corner and fight," he said.

"Security didn't know where to go," Wong added. "They'd concentrate in one spot and something would happen somewhere else. This is the worst I've seen."

Minor injuries at the scene were treated by the school nurse and L.A. Fire Department personnel. No one required hospitalization, the school district said. There were, however, some descriptions of students being badly beaten.

Wong said he saw one student beaten unconscious on a handball court. Sherlock said he saw one Latino student walking along Saint Street, the road that bisects the campus, when he was surrounded by a large group of black students who began hitting and kicking him. "He was bleeding real bad," Sherlock said. "When they stood him up, he kind of collapsed back down."

Sherlock, who is a member of the Black Student Union and the school's new House of Representatives, which was formed to help guide the transition from traditional school to charter, added that he had tried to stop the fighting, but to little effect. After securing order, authorities rounded up the students who hadn't returned to class and segregated them by race, holding Latinos in the boys gym and African American students in Hobbs Hall, the school's multipurpose room.

Beginning at 2 p.m., school officials began releasing students in small groups to go home. The school remained on lockdown until the last group had left about 3:15 p.m.

LAUSD's Cox said that there would be an enhanced police presence at Locke during school hours next week and that the district would send human relations staff to the school to talk to students.

In recent years, melees have broken out periodically at many campuses with a black and Latino presence, including in Los Angeles, Lynwood and Compton. There have been fights between Latinos and Armenians in other areas that led to campus lockdowns.

In nearly all cases, no serious injuries have resulted, but the incidents have frightened students and parents, marred the reputation of schools and hindered the learning of students who frequently already face substantial academic challenges.

"How do you build anything here when something happens and adds to the negativity?" asked band leader Smith.

As one who has taught for many years in a California public school system, I continue be puzzled at how our school administrators continue tolerating this type of criminal behavior from certain students who view school as little more than a place to socialize and victimize those youngsters who do attend school in order to make something of themselves.

But until the parents of the good students unite and rise-up in defense of their kids, further incidents of this nature can and will continue to plague our public schools.

Meanwhile, the authorities will continue to take half-hearted measures that do little to actually solve the problem.

Life Expectancy Down For Some American Women

Saw this article in the Washington Post. It troubles me:

For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.

In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.

The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.

The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.

It may also represent the leading edge of the obesity epidemic. If so, women's life expectancy could decline broadly across the United States in coming years, ending a nearly unbroken rise that dates to the mid-1800s.

"I think this is a harbinger. This is not going to be isolated to this set of counties, is my guess," said Christopher J.L. Murray, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Washington who led the study. It is being published in PLoS Medicine, an open-access journal of the Public Library of Science.

Said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health: "The data demonstrate a very alarming and deeply concerning increase in health disparities in the United States."

The study found a smaller decline, in far fewer places, in the life expectancy of men in this country. In all, longevity is declining for about 4 percent of males.

The phenomenon appears to be not only new but distinctly American.

"If you look in Western Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, we don't see this," Murray said.

About half of all deaths in the United States are attributable to a small number of "modifiable" behaviors and exposures, such as smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise. Although it is impossible to know exactly what is going on in the 1,000 counties, Murray thinks it "would be a reasonably obvious strategy" to target them for aggressive public health campaigns.

Life expectancy is not a direct measure of how long people live. Instead, it is a prediction of how long the average person would live if the death rates at the time of his or her birth lasted a lifetime.

You really should consider going on and reading page 2.

So much of what harms us can be prevented by not engaging in risky behaviors such as smoking and poor diet.

And yet, in a free country, people should be allowed to make these choices.

As long as their choices don't cost me money.

And yet that's what is happening when people who don't have health insurance go to their local hospital's emergency room in order to get treatment for what ails them.

Their costs are passed along in the form of higher insurance premiums for everyone else.

Maybe the taxes collected on cigarettes would be better spent treating smokers for complications arising from their habit.

When They're Too Cool For School

Sad But True.

Heh. It's just a matter of time before those all-knowing Washington lawmakers and their associates accomplices over at The Kingdom Of Spellings will attempt to legislate an attitude-change for America's youth.

Censorchimps: The Mandarin Subspecies

In Communist China, if the powers-that-be don't like what you write, you'll do hard time:

A Chinese court Thursday sentenced an outspoken human rights advocate to three and a half years in prison after ruling that his critical essays and comments about Communist Party rule amounted to inciting subversion, his lawyer said.

The conviction of Hu Jia, 34, quickly brought outside criticism of China at a time when the government is already facing international concern over its handling of the Tibetan crisis. Hu's case has been followed closely, especially in Europe, and critics say his conviction is part of a government crackdown to silence dissidents before Beijing plays host to the Olympics in August.

Diane Sovereign, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, described the U.S. government's reaction to the verdict as "dismayed."

"Mr. Hu has consistently worked within China's legal system to protect the rights of his fellow citizens," Sovereign said. "These types of activities support China's efforts to institute the rule of law and should be applauded, not suppressed or punished."

Consider reading the whole thing.

I continue to be puzzled at how our federal government continues to appease Authoritarian China with such "perks" as "Most Favored Nation" trade status even though the Chinese government continues to exclude and/or heavily tax American-made products (such as Hollywood films and Harley-Davidson motorcycles) and worse, far worse, the Chinese regime's continued insults to our armed forces. (Such as denying our naval vessels safe port during storms and committing acts of air piracy against our military aircraft while flying in international airspace.)

And let's never forget how these thugs murdered untold numbers of their own people for the so-called "crime" of peacefully demonstrating their wish for a democratic government.

Let's also not forget what this criminal regime is doing to the people of occupied Tibet.

Have Nipple Ring, Won't Travel

Did you hear the one about the Texas woman who couldn't board the airliner without removing her nipple rings first?

As many of those federal TSA-types seem to be into pain, maybe Mandi Hamlin should have offered to use those pliers on those TSA agents as well as on herself.

Full Disc: I must confess that I find the mental picture of her using those pliers on attorney Gloria Allred (pictured, left) to be more entertaining.

Our Out Of Control Borders: Who's Accountable?

As a people, we are all paying the price for our federal government's refusal to secure our wide-open and out of control southern border. And some Americans are paying the ultimate price:

GRAYS WELLS — A Yuma Sector Border Patrol agent was killed Saturday morning when he was allegedly struck by a suspected drug smuggler’s vehicle.

The incident occurred at 9 a.m. Saturday about 40 miles east of El Centro.

“We had a smuggling vehicle that we were trying to stop with a spike strip, and the vehicle swerved toward our agent that was deploying that and intentionally ran into him,” Yuma Sector spokesman Eric Anderson said.

The name of the agent killed has not yet been released pending family notification.

Anderson said an “unknown” number of occupants were inside the suspected smuggler’s vehicle, which reportedly was driven directly into the victim as he attempted to place the spike strip.

“This happened in plain view of families and everybody out there having a good time in the dunes,” Anderson said. “The vehicle made it back to Mexico before we could stop it.”

As the agent’s family begins to mourn, Anderson said the death rings as a reminder to fellow agents that their job is indeed dangerous.

“Every agent’s going to be thinking very hard in their head of their job and they’re going to be safe out there,” Anderson said. “I mean, why did they swerve toward one of our agents to try to hit him?

“We’ve got to be out there and be vigilant at all times,” he said. “It’s just a tragedy that this agent lost his life to someone smuggling drugs who has no regard for human life.”

The border officer who was murdered by the drug smugglers was Senior Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar. He left behind a wife and kids:

The U.S. Border Patrol agent who was killed in the line of duty near Andrade on Saturday was a father of two small children and husband, officials said Sunday.

Senior Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was 32 and was assigned to the Yuma Border Patrol Station since graduating from the Border Patrol Academy on July 21, 2002, officials said. He also leaves behind a brother, a Border Patrol agent assigned to the Nogales Border Patrol Station. He was from El Paso, Texas.

The news of Aguilar’s death affected local agents assigned to the El Centro sector.

“It’s another reminder of the risks that the Border Patrol faces every day to secure our nation’s borders. This despicable act is something to remind our agents we have to be alert and vigilant at all times because things like this can happen at any time,” said El Centro Sector Senior Patrol Agent Enrique Lozano. He and other agents in the field were wearing mourning bands across their shields Monday.

Aguilar died when a fleeing suspected narcotics smuggler driving a brown Hummer ran over him as the six-year veteran attempted to deploy a tire deflation device at the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area near Andrade at about 9:30 a.m., Border Patrol officials said.

Officials are looking for the vehicle and a red Ford F-250 pickup that fled into Mexico in connection to the death.

Aguilar is the first Border Patrol agent to be killed in the line of duty in 2008.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham said Aguilar’s death will only inspire the agency to continue to secure the nation’s borders.

“We are already working today with support from many federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and the full cooperation of Mexican law enforcement and military authorities to find Agent Aguilar’s killers and bring them to justice,” Basham said in a press release late Saturday.

In spite of all the rhetoric and other pronouncements from the Central Government in Washington, the number of illegal aliens who continue to cross our southern border remains unchecked.

I know this for a fact as our family lives only ten miles north of the border and, for us, the consequences of our government's refusal to secure this broken down border isn't an abstraction, but an everyday fact of life as our schools, maternity wards, and hospital emergency rooms are overflowing with illegals aliens who are demanding (and getting) social services at taxpayers' expense.

Meanwhile, our federal government continues to do little to effectively remedy this chronic problem.

How many more of our law-enforcement officials and other citizens will be injured or killed in by these criminals (such as the vicious animal that calls himself Santana Aceves) because our government can't find the political balls wherewithal to build an effective barrier in order to help keep out unwanted and dangerous intruders?

It can be done.

If only someone in Washington can find the political will to do so.

Babies Having Babies: Now A Generational Problem

While I was reading this Iowa story about the 29-year-old grandmother, I wanted to tear my hair out in clumps:

Quad-City area teenagers are still having babies. But the good news is that fewer teens are doing so across the region — and in Iowa, Illinois and the United States as a whole — than 10 years ago.

Some say the teens who are having babies seem to be getting younger and younger, including a few junior high or middle school students, but the most recent state health department

statistics available do not closely track the ages of teen parents.

What the statistics do show is an overall decline in births among people younger than 20 years since about 1995.

And then there are stories such as Celia’s.

She sits clad in pink Eeyore pajamas, flipping through channels from her hospital bed.

The room is dark and quiet, just right for sleeping. But Celia Magee is wide-awake. She can’t stop looking down at the tiny boy cradled in her left arm.

“I don’t know even what color his eyes are yet,” she says. “He never opens his eyes.”

Russell Eugene is 1 day old.

His mother is 15.

She fidgets with a bottle of milk as she talks.

She can’t wait to get back into her old clothes. When will the baby weight go away?

And shopping. She loves to shop. She can’t believe her son already has more new clothes than she does.

Then, sitting up straighter in bed, she asks, “When do you think I can play basketball again? I want to go out for the team at school.”

She can’t yet imagine the sleepless nights, the responsibility.

Until a few days ago, Celia’s bedroom was the biggest in the house.

And she didn’t have to share it with anyone.

The big bed, the colorful comforter set, the fluffy pillows: She loved it all.

But the teen especially loved the sense of family, and the tranquility, that came with it.

For six months, Celia lived at the new Brighter Futures Maternity Home, which operates from a house in Davenport.

She had to find somewhere to live because her mother was so angry, she says.

And it turned out to be a good choice. The house parents and volunteers treated her like family. She still talks to them almost every day now that she has moved out.

Celia, who moved in when she was three months pregnant, was the first to finish the program and have her baby while living in the home.

“That was a special bond,” said Tammy Ryan, a member of the home’s board of directors and the resident child birth assistant and educator. “I got to know a lot about her.”

Celia’s mother, Leticia Magee, always warned her to never get pregnant. It would complicate things, she said.

Leticia is a grandmother at 29. She was 13 — a seventh-grader — and living in Chicago when she gave birth to her oldest child.

She lived with her grandmother and named the baby after her: Celia.

“I was determined to finish high school, but college wasn’t for me,” she said. “I was 20 when I had my next child.”

Now she has four: Celia; 9-year-old Romeo Johnson, 4-year-old Ramone Johnson and 1-year-old Romello Johnson.

She always urged Celia to tell her if she was having sex so she could arrange birth control for her.

But when Celia did tell her, it was too late. They found out during a doctor’s appointment that she was already pregnant.

“I cried,” Leticia said. “I was upset.”

Celia said she could not believe it, either.

She and Russell’s dad are not together. They are more like friends, she said.

Celia has known her own father, who lives in Chicago, only since she was 10.

She and Russell are living with her mother and three little brothers in the Lincoln Homes complex in Rock Island, where the family moved five years ago.

They left Chicago after Leticia heard about a friend moving to the Quad-Cities and how much low-income housing was available.

She wants to open a beauty shop, but for now she stays home with her youngest sons and new grandson.

Back at home with her mother and brothers, Celia — wearing pajamas and a do-rag that covers her hair — holds the baby. Her tank top shows off two black tattoos on her arms.

One, which winds down her forearm, reads “Tish,” her mom’s nickname. Another, below her shoulder, reads “Manica Magee,” which is the teen’s rap name.

Leticia told the girl she could get inked if she kept her grades up. They went to Chicago to get it done.

“She earned them,” Leticia said, nodding her head.

Celia writes rap songs in her spare time, but she does not foresee making a living by doing that.

“I want to do computers,” she said, or maybe health occupations.

Leticia wanted Celia “to have more out of life” than becoming a teenage parent.

“But anything can happen,” she said. “I want her to go to college.”

Her mother admits that sometimes she is “too much of a friend than a parent” to her daughter, who turned 16 on Oct. 18.

“Everybody’s gotta make their own decisions and your own choices, too,” Leticia said. “But she’s cool. She’s gonna be all right.”

Celia was supposed to return to Rock Island High School six weeks after having the baby Sept. 26.

But she and her mother say there was a mix-up with the credits she earned from the Kimberly Center in the Davenport School District while staying at the maternity home.

Celia finally returned to school Nov. 13, but not at Rocky. Now, she’s going to the district’s Thurgood Marshall alternative school, which offers “credit recovery,” she said.

By the end of the school year, she should qualify to start back in August as a junior at Rocky, she said. She is taking basic courses such as math, health, English and physical education.

And she’s dog-tired most days.

Russell — almost 2 months old now, wide-eyed and alert — does not sleep much at night.

“He got his days mixed up,” she said, gently rubbing Vaseline on his little face. “He sleeps all day. I try to switch him around, but he won’t.”

The baby has cradle cap on his scalp, too, she says. Her mother tells her not to worry: The baby will grow out of it.

So she tries to focus on school, but mostly she thinks about gym class.

“You can leave early, but I stay,” she said. “I play basketball.”

The hoops are unlike the ones near her apartment where people hang on the metal rims and bend them. At school, they’re just right.

She can’t wait to get back.

It's hard to know where to begin with this one. I feel so sorry for the kids who have to operate under such intolerable circumstances.

What's happened to our urban culture when so many young women don't seem to see that there is a problem with having children with multiple men? And what can be done to remedy the situation?

Worse, the so-called "fathers" who produce these children often give little, or no, financial support for their offspring.

But what must surely be the worst of all is that these "fathers" very rarely bother to invest any of their time with the kids. Consequently, these youngsters have few, if any, positive male role-models in their home lives, not to mention the structure that in-the-home dads usually provide for their children.

And for the sake of my own peace of mind, I'm not even going to delve into the sad fact that so many people who don't seem to be able to earn enough money to support themselves and their kids all-too-often seem to have enough cash on hand to pay for tattoos and other alleged body art.

And yes, according to the federally-imposed No Child Left Behind Act, the schools are solely responsible for ensuring that the children of such "parents" attain grade-level proficiency in reading, math, and science.

Sunday School For Atheists?

Yes indeedy in tony Palo Alto, California:

On Sunday mornings, most parents who don't believe in the Christian God, or any god at all, are probably making brunch or cheering at their kids' soccer game, or running errands or, with luck, sleeping in. Without religion, there's no need for church, right?

Maybe. But some nonbelievers are beginning to think they might need something for their children. "When you have kids," says Julie Willey, a design engineer, "you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on." So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for atheist Sunday school.

An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. "It's important for kids not to look weird," says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it's O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

Read the whole thing.

Heh. What EduInvention will those folks in the San Francisco area think of next?