Occasionally the good guys win big, and that happened yesterday when the US Senate killed S 3297, the Coburn Cloture Bill, which contained the Mother’s Act Bill and 36 unrelated measures. Sixty votes were needed to close debate and bring the bill to a final vote. It received only 52 votes — there were 40 […]
Archive | Opinion
Oregon receives $3 Million in Bristol-Myers Squibb fraud settlement.
The Oregon State Department of Justice published this press release on July 16. This was a medicaid fraud settlement based on Bristol-Myers Squibb’s antipsychotic drug Abilify being used for kids and the elderly when it wasn’t approved by the FDA for that, yet it was aggressively marketed for those uses, including bribes paid to psychiatrists […]
PhotoCycle with Marc Silber – FastCompany.TV
My friend and client Marc Silber has put up a video trailer that explains his most recent project, a PhotoCycle on FastCompany.TV. I love the photo Marc took of Annie Liebowitz on Marc’s blog, where she is standing in front of her famous nude portrait of Demi Moore. There’s a lot of life in Annie […]
“These are not dark days…”
When I see the news with its talk of ruin, injustice, inequities (and iniquities) and failures in the world, it all seems very “gloom and doom”. Terrorism, the rise of militant Islam in the world, the impossibly high cost of health care, the high taxes, the unemployment, the failing educational system, man-made global warming etc., […]
Tax Freedom Day – Thomas Jefferson quote
The group Downsize DC has put up a good quote from Thomas Jefferson about taxes, which I’m adopting and putting on my quotes page: “We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our […]
Global Warming Test
Global warming is happening – there’s little controversy over that (although with snow here in Oregon in mid April, it’s sometimes hard to believe that other areas are warming up enough to average it out). There’s a lot of controversy over how much, and to what degree it is caused by human activities. Here’s a […]
Humor
I rarely post humor. Something about Gaping Void (cartoons from Hugh MacLeod, a cartoonist currently living in Alpine, Texas) got me laughing. There’s not enough of some kinds of laughter in the world, and too much of the laughter out there is mean-spirited. This cartoonist seems to have done a good job of being — […]
Spring is here at last
Just a couple of weeks ago our grandkids were building little snowmen after what was probably the last snowfall of the season: It seems like Spring only arrived yesterday, in that we haven’t had to have a fire going in the woodstove the last couple of days. That’s a lovely break as it seems like […]
Prescription for Violence – psych drugs causing school shootings
A new hard-hitting anti-psych video from CCHR, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, of which I’ve been a member since 1972, highlights the firm link between school shootings and the drugs that the shooters were on. Drugs like Ritalin and Prozac ARE the reason these school shootings are taking place. These drugs need to be […]
Marianne Williamson quote (mis-attributed to Nelson Mandella)
I subscribe to a weekly newsletter called “Optimism“, put out by Cecile Vowles of Sydney, Australia. It’s very uplifting, as the title implies, and has her marvelous humor sprinkled throughout. Today Cecile quoted Nelson Mandella, who was apparently quoting from Marianne Williamson’s 1992 book, “A RETURN TO LOVE” : Our deepest fear is not that […]