What Pres. Lincoln should have said was, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and that's good enough to win an election." Neither candidate for the highest office in the land has mentioned who would be on their respective cabinets, who would play for all the swell programs they are promising, or how soon we would see "change." Rather we have "deuling lipstick" comments! I try to keep a stiff upper lip on my European trips, but it is getting harder and harder to explain what we are doing over here.

Once upon a time, you could remake your image and get away with it. Now, we have everything on tape and can replay it at a moment's notice. Unfortunately, we are not only lazy, but ignorant. [Why else would all those emails from "former Finance Ministers of Nigeria" and the such scam us?] The other night Jon Stewart (Daily Show) played the acceptance speeches of Mr. Bush at the 2000 GOP convention and Sen. McCain's this year. If some of the contestants on "America's Got Talent" could be that synched, they could win. But, like a lot of seniors, what America's Got is not talent, but short-term memory. If we actually took the time to watch earlier speeches by politicians, we would see thay all pretty much "flip-flop." It's just that the first to shout "flip-flopper" wins the propaganda war.

While Congress has  a 14% approival rating, over 90% of the incumbants will be re-elected. Telling the truth will get you ousted. Remember Jimmy Carter saying we have an energy crisis and we're addicted to oil? Threw the bum out, didn't we? How do you like $4/gal gas, hmmmm? If any of the people in Congress actually laid out the problems, we'd throw them out, too. We don't want to hear that we're pampered (give up our SUVs or air conditioning just to save the world...hah!) or use too many resources (why fix something when you can throw it out and get a new one?). Since people are voting against their financial interests, there must be a reason. Maybe fear has something to do with it.

Obama made the mistake of exposing the GOP plan: raise tensions so the masses will cling to their religion and guns! When we are convinced that the "bad guys" are coming to kill us, we attend church (or synagogue or whatever) and stockpile arms. [Within minutes of John Kerry announcing his VP candidate, Homeland Security raised the color warning. No reason other than to re-focus the public on being afraid, I fear.] I seem to remember that the safest place to be was in Red Square in Moscow during the Cold War. You would never be bothered by a petty thief or mugger. All freedoms were taken away for absolute security...the KGB would protect you for that little price. So now, the Homeland Security bill allows wiretapping without warrent, the gov. can ask what books you read, hold you forever "on suspicion", etc. All in the name of security, we have our freedoms taken away. Why? So we can protect our freedoms, of course!

Try putting lipstick on that pig!

In the 1960s and 1970s, I was quite vocal about women's rights: equal pay, advancement opportunities, etc. What I found, in a large number of settings, was that the males agreed with me (mostly). Where I was amazed was the responses of a large number of women. Many made comments like, "that's a man's job" or "a woman's place is in the home." I was hoping that women were no longer their own worst enemies...then Denver happened.

Now, when a woman was made a vice-presidential candidate, her policies or experience didn't seem to matter to many people. Polls show a major swing in "white women" to the Republican ticket. I am especially warmed by the fact that the long-standing values of non-violence (gun control, especially) can be forgotten for a rifle-toting, moose hunter... as long as the person has two X-chromosomes.

Worse yet, her "home life" is out of bounds. However, I wonder what the "well-known" churchmen on the far right (silent on the matter) would make of Obama's daughter being pregnant and unmarried. I'm sure they would point out that it was the logical consequence of the promiscuous liberal ideals she has. [These would be the same people who claimed the flooding in New Orleans four years ago was retribution by God for the sinful lifestyles of the locals. Funny: I didn't hear anything of the sort this year when Iowa and several other WHITE, CHRISTIAN states (all who voted "correctly" in the last election) were flooded.] I know we all have faults, I just like to think we accept and work with others, not condemn them because they are different.

In any case, I would expect in the 21st century, that voters look beyond race and gender and actually read something about the accomplishments of each candidate. What a concept! While I'm not about to break into John Lennon's Imagine, I would like to see a little more kindness and openmindedness in our relationships.

Can we actually THINK for ourselves once in a while and not follow the pack over the cliff?

Watching the Olympics is amazing...even when Bob Costas interviewed our Commander-in-Chief. However, when Bob asked, "How can you seriously address the Russia-Georgia issue with so many problems at home?" I waited for a reasoned response. Silly me...after 7 1/2 years? When "W" answered, "What problems? We have no problems." I remembered a neat bumper sticker I saw the other day:

 January 20, 2009: the end of an error

Live long and prosper, y'all. GO, Team USA!!! What a great bunch of young people, no? Makes a future seem possible.

I have a neat idea: why don't we flood Beijing with fake tickets to the Olympics? Give them a taste of counterfeiting, eh? Maybe a blast of overbooking of seats will show the government our displeasure at them not doing a whole bunch to stop phoney drugs from being made and distributed to the world.

My idea is a prank, but a seriously ill person taking a placebo or, worse yet, a toxic chemical isn't very funny. It is difficult to put any pressure on a country from whom we are borrowing billions a day, I would guess. What would we threaten: that we will repay it faster?

Maybe it's time for a "food tester," such as royalty used in the Middle Ages. We ask the vendors to take the drug, eat the dog food, or brush with the toothpaste before we buy it. We could always employ "Dog, the Bounty Hunter" to go after the counterfeiters, but he might not easily move about in China.

Or, we could remember, if a deal sounds too good to be real...it isn't (real, that is...duh).

Most of us use fillers when we speak: uh, um, you know, clearly, like, and that's what I'm talkin' about. The latest insult to our collective mind is "It is what it is." (Duh!) I can only imagine Glog's mate complaining about how damp and wet the cave is...and his reply? "It is what it is!" That is not the attitude that gave us central heat, electricity in our homes, medicines that save our lives, and reality TV. [Three out of four ain't bad.]

The @#$%-ed saying is a "cop-out' (from my generation) for not bothering to try to improve the human condition. Crooked politics? "It is what it is." Higher and higher enegy? "I.I.W.I.I" Thanks to Pres. RR, we have the trickle down effect in play. Garbage can full? IIWII!

 Could we make an effort to stop with "like, um, er, IIWII, and you know?" PLEASE!?! I was just watching Brian Williams give the news; it was succinct, gramatically correct, without hesitation or fillers. It was beautiful (not the news, itself, but the presentation). I just had to say, "Now,that's what I'm talkin' about!"

A few years ago the American Cancer Society used vanity to help women stop smoking. Apparently, cancer, stroke, and heart disease weren't convincing them to quit, so the ACS used vanity: it disclosed that nicotine caused capillaries to constrict. Now, that didn't matter when it came to lung disease, but it caused crow's feet, too! In other words derath wasn't as scarey as looking older.

Now, last night, I saw a commercial for ED. Plenty of those around, you would say. However, this one was pushing a cholesterol lowering product. Seems that when your arteries clog (forget heart attacks and stroke), a certain organ doesn't get enough blood. Seems that men care more about sex than health. So, vanity is not the property of women...both genders seem to care more about appearances than their health. (Ask any body-builder about his steroid use and see what I measn.)

 Good thing Proscar grows hair, too, otherwise we'd all have enlarged prostates!

Are health costs too high? Yes! Are the pharmaceutical industry-types to blame? Not so much. The "cost" of health care that includes drugs is only a small fraction of what we spend. The far greatest cost, from knowing a number of doictors, is the "cost of doing business."

The reason we are losing OBY-GYNs in this country is that, no matter how much a pregnant mother smokes, drinks, uses drugs, and makes other unhealthy life choices, whan her child is born with any type of infirmity, there is a lawsuit against the doctor who delivered the baby. Insurance is so high, trauma  to the doctors' families so bad, most either opt out of the practice or forego entering it, in the first place.

In so many cases, when a patient dies during an operation, there are "ambulance-chasers" there to sue the anethesiologist. Insurance for anethesiologists was over $100,000 a year in 2000. Lord knows what it is up to now.

To avoid lawsuits or be given cover in the inevitable ones, doctors order many, many more tests than are warrented for all patients. The appearance that "we did all we could" needs to be maintained...for the inevitable court appearance.

Do doctors, nurses (underpaid and understaffed), and pharmacists make mistakes? Of course. Last time I looked they were still human. Part of the problem is that hospitals are overcrowded because the "Emergency Rooms" are the only place many millions of (uninsured) people can get any type of care. The result? Crowded hospitals, stretched personnel, pressure on facilities and equipment. The end result? And mistakes by harried health care personnel.

We don't seem to care that the massive American embassy in Iraq will cost $2+ billion a year to maintain or that the war has cost (directly) $400 Billion (so far... plus the rehab costs for Vets in the future and replacement of all the equipment left behind), why should we fight so hard not to spend a few hundred million to insure all Americans? If all people had access to yearly exams and preventative medical care, there would be fewer "emergencies." If we get dental check-ups and fillings, there would be fewer emergency extractions with resultant complications.

Remember the old commercial: "Pay me now or pay me later"? 

The "whipping boy" in the title is the pharmaceutical industry. They make a profit, so they are bad! Hey! Could we start with "Big Oil" who is, after all, merely "passing along costs" and scraping by with $40 billion/quarter profits? Whatever the faults of Big Pharma, they are still saving millions of lives. Or, have we forgotten Malaria, Small Pox, Polio, etc. already? 

Since (as I mentioned) the "cure" for drugs in groundwater is not going to happen quickly, there is something we can do right now. There are, approximately, 20 million people without healthcare in the US of A at the moment. That means they might be able to get medical attention at a hospital emergency room or free clinic. However, they may not be able to obtain needed medicines.

Since the first step in groundwater remediation is analyzing what is in the water at the various locations, anyway, we can use this information in the meantime to alleviate one other problem. Whynot publish the information of which drugs are at which location? That way, if someone needed Prozac, they could be sent to City "X" and drink the water. Need a "statin?" Why, just move to City "Y." We will know the levels of each drug, so the emergency room doctor can prescribe how much free water each patient should drink each day from the tap at any given city.

This will modify a common phrase to "drink two gallons and call me in the morning." But, it will be (as Ann Landers used to say) "when life hands you a lemon, make (highly diluted, in this case) lemonade."

Thus, we will be (pun intended) "killing two birds with one stone."

There have been reports lately about prescription drugs being found in our drinking water. The levels are relatively low, so no flares were sent up by the EPA. It is somewhat like the lead in toys from China: probably been there for some time, just not looked for until now.

The source of industrial pollution is somewhat easy to discover: air monitoring at an indistrial site, checking the effluent from a plant, looking for seepage from underground tanks are all standard procedues for state and the federal EPA/DoEP. But, where do these drugs come from?

Well, as I once pointed out to a friend, individual humans are a terrible source of pollution. [Imagine the formaldehyde from cemetaries, not to mention the plutonium in buried pacemakers because we didn't want to desecrate poor aunt Myrtle.] We excrete both unused drug entities and metabolies continuously. Multiply what we excrete by millions and you see where we are.

The problem is made more difficult by the huge number of chemicals, all physiologically active, we need to screen for in drinking water. Literally thousands of chemicals, not to mention industrial chemicals, need to be discovered and removed from or water supply. This will not be fast or inexpensive. New and better ways are going to be needed to bring our water back to where it is, once more, the elixer of life....and we can once again recommend drinking at least 6 glasses a day.

Bottled water is suggested as an answer to the pollution by drugs (by bottled water sellers, obviously). One minor problem with that idea: most commercial bottled water comes from the same municipal sources we all use right now. Obvioulsy, merely passing it through charcoal doesn't work, since that what many municipalities already do! (Forget for a minute the benzene found in Perrier a few years ago: that was an industrial accident.)

So the water bottlers want you to believe that paying $20/gallon for their water, pumped from the same sources you are already drinking makes them any safer? To answer Agnes' blog (On Pharma) question: Evian spelled backwards is Naive...what the bottled water people hope you are! Me? I'll stay with single malt whiskey for now. (After all, "whiskey" is an Irish word for water of life, anyway ;-D)

I just got back from Amsterdam where Europe was having some of the nastiest weather in many years. The winds were gusting to (at least) gale force and, in some cases, such as the UK, approximately hurricane force. Heavy rain was coming at me horizontally. So, while sitting in my 16th floor hotel room on an artificial island behind the Amsterdam train station (also on a man-made island), I thought of Katrina and New Orleans. Would I have been so calm there?

No one was panicing and there was absolutely no question whether Northern Holland, even further under sea level than NO, might flood. I guess that when the national, regional, and local governments are not corrupt and do care about the people, good things tend to happen. There are no inspectors being paid under the table to certify that defective seawalls are ok. There was never a question of how the residents voted in the last election. And the Dutch army was all in-country, able to help with any disaster. Of course, it helps that the government officials live below sea level, too.

So, let's see: competent government, enough resources allocated, top-flight engineers with a working budget, and everyone "in the same boat" (in case of a flood) adds up to a "perfect non-storm." Maybe the "old-fashioned" Europeans do have some things to teach us, after all