The website ThinkProgress has had a great couple of days:
77 percent of Arizonans want Obama to pass immigration reform – they prefer a federal law over their own brand-new, idiotic state law. (elsewhere on the net, Republican operatives have admitted privately that they chose Tampa rather than Phoenix for their 2012 convention partly because the new Arizona immigration law would make the GOP look bad. Ouch!).
Maine Republican caucus-goers were forced to apologize for vandalizing a junior-high building. They tore down a poster, went through a teacher’s personal effects, and stole property. Even the kids were incensed. My favorite quote: “Republicans opened a closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk and later objected to the fact that it contained copies of the U.S. Constitution donated to the school by the American Civil Liberties Union. “ After busting into the guy’s private effects, they complained that he had a copy of the Constitution!
More frat-house hijinx! The House GOP killed a jobs bill by attaching poison-pill language calling for any federal worker who even sees pornography to be fired. One giggling Republican brayed “We certainly should do more of this type of thing!” And actually they have played this kind of frat-house stunt to obstruct an energy efficiency bill, a health care bill, and a health and education bill. And if the Democrats don’t fold, the Republicans run ads like “Barbara Boxer Votes To Allow Convicted Sex Offenders To Receive Taxpayer-Funded Viagra!”
[ As we noted earlier, the Republicans are stomping all over Democratic ideas because, as they have admitted, they have no ideas of their own. They launched an abortive effort to set up a fancy cool-ideas council which really consisted of holding town halls so the party leaders could crib from the ideas that the voters themselves suggested. Then they set up a remake of “Contract With America” which, again, is just a suggestion box so that voters can do the party’s homework for them. And now House GOP leader Cantor has set up a website called “YOUCUT”, and again the idea is that you, the voter, come up with ideas for how to cut government spending. The problem with the plan is that the cuts proposed on the site are described dishonestly, and even if voters chose all of the cuts, it would only save a billion out of a trillion-dollar budget. So the Republicans are dishonest AND lazy AND futile. ]
The Oklahoma legislature has passed legislation mandating that abortion patients must: give up their personal details so they can be posted on a website, look at an ultrasound of their embryos, give up the right to sue a doctor if he lies about the state of the fetus, and give up any form of insurance coverage for abortion, unless you get a special policy.
http://thinkprogress.org/
And some other reasons to smile:
A new poll shows that a majority of voters would not support Sarah Palin for presidency. A majority of ALASKANS. One of the most conservative, Republican states in the union, and they don’t want her to run. Meanwhile, her opponent should she get the nomination, Obama, is hitting his highest approvals since October 2009, according to a new PPP poll.
The latest USA Today analysis shows that Americans are paying less tax than at any time in the last 60 years – going all the way back to Harry Truman. This is largely based on the middle class tax cut in the stimulus bill that the GOP opposed. So much for the teabaggers – their whole reason for existing is a gigantic fraud. “Taxed enough already” indeed.
Not that this is really good news, but Obama’s effort to pass climate energy legislation seemingly gets another boost every week: coal mines blow up, oil wells spill, nuclear reactors leak radioactive waste into drinking water….just as the nonsense in Arizona gives new momentum to another Obama initiative, immigration reform. Two other issues are also boosting the immigration effort: evangelicals who hope Latinos will vote GOP if the GOP stops fighting immigration reform, are defying rightwingers who want to block reform; also, people are beginning to ask how the Republican plan to build some sort of Maginot Line along the Mexican border can possibly work, when almost half of illegal immigrants cross the border legally and then overstay their visas. And a lot of the rest of them use tunnels, which makes a fence kinda stupid.
As we learned earlier, the GOP leadership said publicly that they would not defend its incumbents against attacks from the right by teabag candidates. Senator Bob Bennett was just tossed out of his own reelection race by the Utah GOP, and some raised the prospect of Bennett running as a write-in; John Cornyn, head of the Republican committee that is set up to elect Republicans to the Senate, reiterated that Bennett will get not a nickel from the party. Wouldn’t it be neat if Bennett stuck it to the Republicans by (a) switching parties, or (b) backing Harry Reid in shooting down GOP filibusters?
For that matter, since the Maine GOP has been hiacked by teabaggers, and has approved a platform slamming Obamacare, unions, motor voter which helps minorities too much, apparently), gay marriage, climate change legislation….isn’t this the perfect time for Collins and Snowe to quit a party that clearly doesn’t want them anymore, and join the Democrats? Particularly when their fellow Maine Republicans are acting like a Mongol horde?
And lastly, I finally figured out why I keep laughing involuntarily whenever John Boehner comes on TV to yell and scream about Obama’s evil communist plots. It’s because he sounds exactly like Sylvester the Cat. Suffering succotash! That one had been bothering me all year.
Showing posts with label friends and foes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends and foes. Show all posts
Friday, 14 May 2010
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Guest contributor reports on health reform opponents who fudge the figures on cancer
Cancer Treatment and Health Care Reform
One argument you may hear against health care reform concerns cancer survival rates. The United States has higher cancer survivor rates than countries with national health care systems, we’re told. Doesn’t this mean we should keep what we’ve got and not change it?
Certainly cancer survival rates are a critical issue for people suffering from the deadly lung mesothelioma cancer. So let’s look at this claim and see if there is any substance to it.
First, it’s important to understand that “cancer survival rate” doesn’t mean the rate of people who are cured of a cancer. The cancer survival rate is the percentage of people who survive a certain type of cancer for a specific amount of time, usually five years after diagnosis.
For example, according to the Mayo Clinic, the survivor rate of prostate cancer in the United States is 98 percent. This means that 98 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive five years later. However, this statistic does not tell us whether the men who have survived for five years still have cancer or what number of them may die from it eventually.
Misunderstanding of the term “survivor rate” sometimes is exploited to make misleading claims. For example, in 2007 a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug used to treat colon cancer released statistics showing superior survival rates for its drug over other treatments. Some journalists who used this data in their reporting assumed it meant that the people who survived were cured of cancer, and they wrote that the drug “saved lives.” The drug did extend the lives of of patients, on average by a few months. However, the mortality rate for people who used this drug — meaning the rate of patients who died of the disease — was not improved.
But bloggers and editorial writers who oppose health care reform seized these stories about “saving lives,” noting that this wondrous drug was available in the United States for at least a year before it was in use in Great Britain. Further, Britain has lower cancer survival rates than the U.S. This proved, they said, the superiority of U.S. health care over “socialist” countries.
This is one way propagandists use data to argue that health care in the United States is superior to countries with government-funded health care systems. They selectively compare the most favorable data from the United States with data from the nations least successful at treating cancer. A favorite “comparison” country is Great Britain, whose underfunded National Health Service is struggling.
It is true that the United States compares very well in the area of cancer survival rates, but other countries with national health care systems have similar results.
For example, in 2008 the British medical journal Lancet Oncology published a widely hailed study comparing cancer survival rates in 31 countries. Called the CONCORD study, the researchers found that United States has the highest survival rates for breast and prostate cancer. However, Japan has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in men, and France has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in women. Canada and Australia also ranked relatively high for most cancers. The differences in the survival data for these “best” countries is very small, and is possibly caused by discrepancies in reporting of data and not the treatment result itself.
And it should be noted that Japan, France, Canada and Australia all have government-funded national health care systems. So, there is no reason to assume that changing the way health care is funded in the U.S. would reduce the quality of cancer care.
— Barbara O’Brien
www.maacenter.org
One argument you may hear against health care reform concerns cancer survival rates. The United States has higher cancer survivor rates than countries with national health care systems, we’re told. Doesn’t this mean we should keep what we’ve got and not change it?
Certainly cancer survival rates are a critical issue for people suffering from the deadly lung mesothelioma cancer. So let’s look at this claim and see if there is any substance to it.
First, it’s important to understand that “cancer survival rate” doesn’t mean the rate of people who are cured of a cancer. The cancer survival rate is the percentage of people who survive a certain type of cancer for a specific amount of time, usually five years after diagnosis.
For example, according to the Mayo Clinic, the survivor rate of prostate cancer in the United States is 98 percent. This means that 98 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive five years later. However, this statistic does not tell us whether the men who have survived for five years still have cancer or what number of them may die from it eventually.
Misunderstanding of the term “survivor rate” sometimes is exploited to make misleading claims. For example, in 2007 a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug used to treat colon cancer released statistics showing superior survival rates for its drug over other treatments. Some journalists who used this data in their reporting assumed it meant that the people who survived were cured of cancer, and they wrote that the drug “saved lives.” The drug did extend the lives of of patients, on average by a few months. However, the mortality rate for people who used this drug — meaning the rate of patients who died of the disease — was not improved.
But bloggers and editorial writers who oppose health care reform seized these stories about “saving lives,” noting that this wondrous drug was available in the United States for at least a year before it was in use in Great Britain. Further, Britain has lower cancer survival rates than the U.S. This proved, they said, the superiority of U.S. health care over “socialist” countries.
This is one way propagandists use data to argue that health care in the United States is superior to countries with government-funded health care systems. They selectively compare the most favorable data from the United States with data from the nations least successful at treating cancer. A favorite “comparison” country is Great Britain, whose underfunded National Health Service is struggling.
It is true that the United States compares very well in the area of cancer survival rates, but other countries with national health care systems have similar results.
For example, in 2008 the British medical journal Lancet Oncology published a widely hailed study comparing cancer survival rates in 31 countries. Called the CONCORD study, the researchers found that United States has the highest survival rates for breast and prostate cancer. However, Japan has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in men, and France has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in women. Canada and Australia also ranked relatively high for most cancers. The differences in the survival data for these “best” countries is very small, and is possibly caused by discrepancies in reporting of data and not the treatment result itself.
And it should be noted that Japan, France, Canada and Australia all have government-funded national health care systems. So, there is no reason to assume that changing the way health care is funded in the U.S. would reduce the quality of cancer care.
— Barbara O’Brien
www.maacenter.org
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
In praise of Digby
Today I must give a hat tip to the Digby site, because they have come up with so much neat stuff in the last week or so that you really need to spend some time over there.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
Recent topics include:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
Recent topics include:
- The recent rant by Joe the Plumber against gays
- A new novelty item for pro-gun extremists: a "liberal hunting permit", no bag limit
- The opportunism of switching parties
- The disastrous history of Smithfield Foods, who helped cause the swine flu crisis
- Secessionist sentiments in Georgia
- Senator Nelson selling out on health care
- The rather appalling history of Jeff Sessions
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
GUEST COLUMNIST: The New Face of Republicanism
I am handing over the soap box, temporarily, to guest reporter Angel of Mercy:
Has it occurred to anyone else out there that the vast, immutable forces of fate and Karma are conspiring to make the radical right appear even more preposterously irrational than usual? It's scary.
Back when President Barack Obama was trying to get his stimulus package up to escape velocity, Republicans who had executed a 180ยบ turn from the profligacy of the Cheney/Bush years were loudly bemoaning irresponsible Democratic big government spending. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, almost the only person of color in that entire misbegotten party, roundly denounced the $140 million slated for "volcano monitoring" back in January...and then Mt. Redoubt, located in Sarah-cuda Palin's Alaska [ http://www.adn.com/volcano/story/738389.html">] belched smoke, fire and molten lava about nine different times just one month later.
Maybe you also remember that GOP Senators Susan Collins and Arlen Specter, spurred on by a mocking Turdblossom Rove, stripped $900 million from that very same bill for "pandemic flu preparedness." And now we have our Southern neighbor, Mexico, under virtual lock-down quarantine [ http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1894063,00.html">] this past weekend from a terrifying outbreak of Swine Flu.
This is incredible to me.
We all knew they were playing politics with these objections and their howls of "porkulus," which isn't even a word! It's what they always do...but to have their insidious game exposed so dramatically and so quickly makes me think that God is maybe a trifle fed up with their frivolous and frequent invoking of Her name for their own selfish ends. I would purely love to believe that's true...
It doesn't just stop there, either. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security released a report entitled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" warning of the inherent dangers of closet Klansmen, neo-Nazi white supremacists and heavily armed militia groups capitalizing upon the recession and the election of the nation's first Black president to recruit members. This is the hardcore bigot base, never entirely sane at the best of times, kept at a full rolling boil by a steady stream of hysterical rhetoric from AM Hate Radio and Faux News spokesliars.
Of course, there was the expected foaming chorus of outraged denials and accusations of victimization and media bias from Republican pundits...but merely days earlier, Richard Poplawski, your basic lowdown rightwing mutant, had [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/04/05/alleged-cop-killer-linked-to-white-supremacist-beliefs/"] killed three policemen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, believing that the new president was going to take his guns away.
Now, this is old news. A compelling argument can be made that a paranoid Looney Tune of this caliber didn't deserve to possess anything more lethal than a water pistol. But that isn't even really the point. Last July, Jim David Adkisson [ http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/Jul/28/church-shooting-police-find-manifesto-suspects-car/ ">] killed two and wounded six at a church in Knoxville, Tennessee, claiming that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country. At his home, police found copies of books by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. A month later, Timothy Dale Johnson, another [ http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/08/right-wing-violence-and-mental-illness.html ">] rightwing headcase with anger management issues, shot and killed Arkansas Democratic state party chairman Bill Gwatney.
Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, [ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/twitterraid ">] was arrested by FBI agents on April 15 who identified him as the Twitter user "CitizenQuasar." In a series of tweets beginning April 11, "Quasar" vowed to start a war against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city’s version of the 'teabagging' protests. At least they got to him before anybody died...but no reasonable person should be the least bit surprised by this result of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire stirring the pot non-stop.
And dip me in dirty water if another Obama-hating cop-killer didn't just crawl out of the woodwork, this one [ http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/cartwright_16963___article.html/elizabeth_deputies.html ">] killing two sheriff's deputies in Okaloosa County, Florida. Does anybody think now that Homeland Security was exaggerating in their report? And Obama's been in office not even quite 100 days yet...
There is no moderation on the right anymore. None. The GOP has driven its least radical elements away and left only an ugly nub and core of hate. Conservatism is now become a fright mask, as horrifying outwardly as it has always been intellectually, appealing to nought but the basest motivations of man--greed, frustration, unfocussed anger--and pitting each against the other.
Has it occurred to anyone else out there that the vast, immutable forces of fate and Karma are conspiring to make the radical right appear even more preposterously irrational than usual? It's scary.
Back when President Barack Obama was trying to get his stimulus package up to escape velocity, Republicans who had executed a 180ยบ turn from the profligacy of the Cheney/Bush years were loudly bemoaning irresponsible Democratic big government spending. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, almost the only person of color in that entire misbegotten party, roundly denounced the $140 million slated for "volcano monitoring" back in January...and then Mt. Redoubt, located in Sarah-cuda Palin's Alaska [ http://www.adn.com/volcano/story/738389.html">] belched smoke, fire and molten lava about nine different times just one month later.
Maybe you also remember that GOP Senators Susan Collins and Arlen Specter, spurred on by a mocking Turdblossom Rove, stripped $900 million from that very same bill for "pandemic flu preparedness." And now we have our Southern neighbor, Mexico, under virtual lock-down quarantine [ http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1894063,00.html">] this past weekend from a terrifying outbreak of Swine Flu.
This is incredible to me.
We all knew they were playing politics with these objections and their howls of "porkulus," which isn't even a word! It's what they always do...but to have their insidious game exposed so dramatically and so quickly makes me think that God is maybe a trifle fed up with their frivolous and frequent invoking of Her name for their own selfish ends. I would purely love to believe that's true...
It doesn't just stop there, either. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security released a report entitled "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" warning of the inherent dangers of closet Klansmen, neo-Nazi white supremacists and heavily armed militia groups capitalizing upon the recession and the election of the nation's first Black president to recruit members. This is the hardcore bigot base, never entirely sane at the best of times, kept at a full rolling boil by a steady stream of hysterical rhetoric from AM Hate Radio and Faux News spokesliars.
Of course, there was the expected foaming chorus of outraged denials and accusations of victimization and media bias from Republican pundits...but merely days earlier, Richard Poplawski, your basic lowdown rightwing mutant, had [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/04/05/alleged-cop-killer-linked-to-white-supremacist-beliefs/"] killed three policemen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, believing that the new president was going to take his guns away.
Now, this is old news. A compelling argument can be made that a paranoid Looney Tune of this caliber didn't deserve to possess anything more lethal than a water pistol. But that isn't even really the point. Last July, Jim David Adkisson [ http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/Jul/28/church-shooting-police-find-manifesto-suspects-car/ ">] killed two and wounded six at a church in Knoxville, Tennessee, claiming that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country. At his home, police found copies of books by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. A month later, Timothy Dale Johnson, another [ http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/08/right-wing-violence-and-mental-illness.html ">] rightwing headcase with anger management issues, shot and killed Arkansas Democratic state party chairman Bill Gwatney.
Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, [ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/twitterraid ">] was arrested by FBI agents on April 15 who identified him as the Twitter user "CitizenQuasar." In a series of tweets beginning April 11, "Quasar" vowed to start a war against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city’s version of the 'teabagging' protests. At least they got to him before anybody died...but no reasonable person should be the least bit surprised by this result of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire stirring the pot non-stop.
And dip me in dirty water if another Obama-hating cop-killer didn't just crawl out of the woodwork, this one [ http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/cartwright_16963___article.html/elizabeth_deputies.html ">] killing two sheriff's deputies in Okaloosa County, Florida. Does anybody think now that Homeland Security was exaggerating in their report? And Obama's been in office not even quite 100 days yet...
There is no moderation on the right anymore. None. The GOP has driven its least radical elements away and left only an ugly nub and core of hate. Conservatism is now become a fright mask, as horrifying outwardly as it has always been intellectually, appealing to nought but the basest motivations of man--greed, frustration, unfocussed anger--and pitting each against the other.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)