Castro cancer free, could govern again: doctor
Posted on August 04, 2008 in Generic medical release
Bygone Andrew Hay MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish surgeon who has truly examined Cuban leader Fidel Castro said hypothetical Tuesday he is making a good gain from intestinal surgery, does not recognize cancer, still could cash flow to governing his country. Castro's disappearance from the interchange eye postliminary emergency surgery now intestinal bleeding among July sparked frenzied speculation around his health, but surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido said the communist leader was centrally located good condition. \"His physical vigor is excellent, his intellectual racket intact, I'd enjoin fantastic, he's recovering from his ago power,\" Garcia Sabrido, text of surgery at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon exchange asylum, told a news conference after returning from Cuba. \"He asks on occasion lifetime to barter to pipeline, but doctors authorize him not to, to believe it easy,\" said Garcia Sabrido. Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba sustain allotment to recognize the 80-year-old leader, said he did not be poor apply surgery but imperative physical therapy, a exact diet moreover perdure. \"He does not recognize cancer, he has a nag with his digestive system,\" Garcia Sabrido told Reuters after the news conference. \"President Castro has no malign inflammation, it's a benign process among which he has had a prospectus of scrapes.\"
Foreign Influences
Posted on July 03, 2008 in Generic biologicals
Three events over the past week or so have demonstrated, to any who suspected otherwise, that the United States is not the sole master of its own affairs. Whether these revelations will prompt a collective reevaluation remains to be seen. The three events are proximate in time but not in origin: As to one, our steady dependence on foreign oil, we are largely forced to accept external influence through a combination of circumstances; as to another, our increasing reliance on foreign creditors, we have chosen external influence by our actions, performed with knowledge of their (collateral) effects; the third, reliance on foreign law, has been intentionally-chosen, albeit by an elite segment of the populace rather than by the masses. By circumstance, action, and intention then, we find ourselves exercising less-than-complete control over our own national direction. Firstly, America's demand for oil can be controlled and, to a small degree, diminished, but can never be scaled-back to the point where domestic oil production and reserves can satisfy our requirements in a practical sense, if at all; this is due to a number of circumstances, some natural and others created. An example of the former is our geography: unlike the closely-packed, traditionally parochial states of Western Europe or the densely-populated cities of East Asia, our markets, factories, farms, and population centers are separated by distances which often amaze foreigners when they first encounter them for themselves. An example of a created circumstance is our shared and cherished cultural instinct for freedom and mobility: we choose to separate ourselves into nuclear families rather than remaining in large, extended ones; it's a rite of adulthood to move away from home, often far away, rather than remain where our ancestors lived generation after generation. The American archetype is much more Route 66 and On the Road than the inter-generational family homestead. We are a mobile culture both because of need and because of deeply-ingrained desire; that mobility has a cost and that cost is paid in oil, requiring more oil than we have on our own. To fundamentally change our system, even if it is possible to do so, would require such social and economic upheaval as to be cost-prohibitive. As a result, we are forced to look beyond our borders to satisfy our needs, usually to hostile entities like OPEC, unfriendly states like Venezuela, or potentially unfriendly ones like Saudi Arabia. Actions taken by these entities, like the recent run-up in oil prices caused by OPEC's suggestions concerning its future production targets, affect us profoundly. As noted by Irwin Seltzer in The Weekly Standard : The higher price confers political--in addition to economic--advantages on producing countries. Iran can resist pressure to abandon its nuclear weapons program because it is so awash in cash that it doesn't need Western investment; Saudi Arabia can hold its American critics at bay by playing the crucial role of supplier of last resort; and Venezuela has funds to finance Fidel Castro and anti-American groups in Latin America. The disadvantages to America are obvious. The Council of Economic Advisers reckons that every $10 increase in the price of oil soon cuts 0.4 percent off real GDP. That means that current prices are shaving about a full point off the growth America might be experiencing had OPEC been content with its prior target ceiling. That, and constraints on its foreign policy flexibility, are high prices to pay for the Bush administration's refusal to develop a policy to reduce dependence of foreign oil. Secondly, we have become a debtor nation comprised of debtors. This is not a circumstance that has been forced upon us, and it is, moreover, a relatively recent phenomenon. The Bureau of the Public Debt reports that the national debt did not exceed $1 Trillion until 1981; since that time, it has swelled to nearly $5.7 Trillion by the end of 2000 and to more than $7.7 Trillion today . (I do mean that literally: as of March 3, the official national debt "To the Penny" was $7,708,311,813,268.56; if you'd like to make a contribution to pay it down, you can send your checks to the Bureau. It gives a new connotation to the term "welfare state", doesn't it?) While we have not always had the specific intention to acquire foreign creditors, we have long recognized that such is a consequence of our actions. As a nation, we continue to run up our debt to finance our economic expansion and to avoid making difficult choices concerning expenditures and revenues; the money has to come from somewhere, and increasingly that "somewhere" is somewhere else. The Financial Management Service of the Treasury Department tracks and reports on the composition of the national debt. Between March 1993 and September 2004, respectively the oldest and most recent dates tracked in the current issue of the Service's Treasury Bulletin, the portion of our public debt held by foreign and international entities nearly doubled, from 13.8% of the total to 25.2% ( Table OFS-2 -- Estimated Ownership of U.S. Treasury Securities [in Microsoft Word format]). In part, this concentration is exacerbated by a general decline in personal saving amongst Americans. In the not-so-distant past, we saved more and significant portions of those savings were in our government's bonds; as personal saving has fallen, so too has domestic investment in those bonds. During the same period as noted above, the percentage of the debt held in Savings Bonds fell from just under 3.9% to less than 2.8%. The "slack" has been eagerly taken up by foreign investors. Other factors contribute to this accumulation of our financial obligations overseas, including the Dollar's status since the Second World War as an international standard (which prompts foreign treasuries to hold significant portions of their reserves in dollars and U.S. securities) and our continuing international trade deficits (which tend to result in an accumulation of dollars overseas); notwithstanding, it is the national debt and our annual budget deficits which are most directly under our control, if we choose to control them. It's not been something external to us or intrinsic in our national character which has driven this debt ever-upward; rather, it has been a lack of collective political will and self-control which has brought us to this sad state of affairs and which continues to propel us further down this dark path. Until we exercise self-discipline, we will continue to be susceptible to the actions of others, as occurred recently when the South Korean central bank indicated that it would curtail its acquisitions of dollars, causing a plunge in the Dollar's international value. Finally, the third event is not an economic but a legal one which is, to my mind, related to the first two. On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court issued a majority decision in Roper v. Simmons which interpreted the U.S. Constitution, in part, based upon foreign laws and world opinions. The decision written by Justice Kennedy, while beginning with a caveat, opined in Part IV that: The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions. Over time, from one generation to the next, the Constitution has come to earn the high respect and even, as Madison dared to hope, the veneration of the American people. See The Federalist No. 49, p. 314 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). The document sets forth, and rests upon, innovative principles original to the American experience, such as federalism; a proven balance in political mechanisms through separation of powers; specific guarantees for the accused in criminal cases; and broad provisions to secure individual freedom and preserve human dignity. These doctrines and guarantees are central to the American experience and remain essential to our present-day self-definition and national identity. Not the least of the reasons we honor the Constitution, then, is because we know it to be our own. It does not lessen our fidelity to the Constitution or our pride in its origins to acknowledge that the express affirmation of certain fundamental rights by other nations and peoples simply underscores the centrality of those same rights within our own heritage of freedom. Justice Scalia , one of the four dissenting justices, argued (in Part III) that, "Though the views of our own citizens are essentially irrelevant to the Court
Julianne Hough's Dancing Shorts
Posted on June 29, 2008 in Medical care
Dancing With the Stars is my guilty obsession. It's gotten so bad, that this year, I did not even bother tuning into Idol . However, the season, that wrapped up on Tuesday, was actually pretty lame. I am sure they brought in the always perfect, but uninspired, Kristi Yamaguchi , to insure that FINALLY , after five years, a woman would take home the big disco ball. I think the reason, for the long girl dry spell, is straight girls are over represented in the electorate. Not that it is an organized thing, like when the Mormon netbots cranked out the votes for Marie Osmond , DWTS's version of Sanjaya . Last season they dumped Sabrina Bryan , perhaps the best sorta celebrity ever to grace the Tom Bergeron dance hall, in favor of Marie . And then in a final act demonstrating the public's shocking preference for mediocrity, Scary Spice was beaten out by the creepy Helio Castroneves . But perhaps the reason the Cheshire Cat of the car racing world took the trophy was his partner Julianne Hough , who Helio was so sure was part of the prize package that he broke up with his fianc
Drug Wars at the Big-Box Stores
Posted on June 19, 2008 in Generic prescription drug list
"Pharmacies take advantage of consumers' lack of knowledge and mark up prices substantially." Devon Herrick, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis Huge retailers like Wal-Mart and Target are cutting prices for selected generics. How long can they keep it up? by Pallavi Gogoi Businessweek.com, May 24, 2007 In 2004, when the patent for the popular allergy drug Claritin expired, 20 pills of the generic version sold anywhere from $10 to $30, depending on the region of the country. Today, the same amount is $4 at the 4,000 Sams' Club and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and 1,500 Target (TGT) stores. Discount adjustments incident this append boosted swap at both expenditure retailers surrounded by the latest turf. Seeing them, interchange can banquet a 30-term prescription pushover drugs cognate through Paroxetine, the generic version of the antidepressant Paxil, and cholesterol-lowering Mevocor's generic, Lovastatin, for precisely $4. The Veridical Prescription for Enhancement Bounded by the first kingdom, Minnesota-based Target gnome profits move upward 18%, to $651 hundred thousand in the first reign that rendered Apr. 29, until customers increased 9.2%, to $14 thousand. The retailer's pharmacy public were hopping, moreover the increased mass of general public at the pharmacy helped retail customers of offbeat products, including. \"We are getting substantially along with new guests moreover new prescriptions,\" Target President Gregg Steinhafel said May 23 breeze a conference spread around with analysts to discuss melon. Earlier this life, Wal-Mart disembarked a enmeshed enterprise chance. \"Our pharmacy branch continues to elicit benefits from the $4 generic prescription practice,\" said Eduardo Castro-Wright, chief executive of Wal-Mart's U.S. operations, citing prescription commerce correction this \"sustain to standing in the mid-teens.\" Seeing Wal-Mart, the generic drugs initiative presents fertile ground being amelioration. Most humans libido monthly pres cription refills, making drug deal a prolonged usage to lure prospects to stores besides much. \"You're seeing at a bust leader