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July 30, 2007
WaPo: Do It Yourself Delivery
Paul and Jenny Hatch - Jenny Hatchs Natural Family Site
The Paul Hatch Family
To Comment on this article Go Here
A Wonderful Conversation has been taking place on the internet: On Blogs, in Chat Rooms, and on news web sites discussing the pros and cons of Unassisted Homebirth.
Please click on this link
http://www.naturalfamilyblog.com/archives/cat_diy_homebirth_debate.html
for a complete overview of the various discussions that have been taking place the past few months. And thanks WAPO for adding another voice to the conversation!
Jenny Hatch
WWW.NaturalFamilyBLOG.com
Mother of Five, our last two sons born at home...Alone!
Printable Version of this Article:
Lynn Griesemers Unassisted Homebirth Site
The Griesemer Family
David and Laura Shanley - Laura Shanleys BornFree Site
The Shanley Clan
Laura Shanley and Mairi Breen-Rothman
Freebirth Movement Advocate; Certified Nursing Midwife
Tuesday, July 31, 2007; 1:00 PM
Debate the advantages and disadvantages of delivering a baby at home without the help of doctors or other trained professionals.
I would like to thank the Washington Post and Staff Writer Sandra G. Boodman for writing a great article on this topic!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:52 PM
NYT: Op-Ed Contributor: A War We Just Might Win
"VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference."
Amazingly Positive article from two Brookings Institutution members.
I wonder how long the drum beat of No Progress in Iraq will continue to pound over the next few months until Democrats are forced to accept that Iraq has in fact been improved by the Surge?
I could feel the thrill coming off the page at Iraq the Model as he documented the Soccer Win of his country this past weekend.
Such an amazing experience for that country to feel the pride and joy of a winning moment. Go read the post here, it was awesome.
Two big compelling news stories this week from Iraq.
It's all good!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 10:47 PM
The cry should go up in Europe: more babies, please
The cry should go up in Europe: more babies, please
"Of all the bogeys you might have thought well and truly nailed in the past decade or so, the population control movement seemed most obviously to have a stake through its heart."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 10:38 PM
WaPo: Midwives in Legal Limbo
"Athens, Ga.: What do you think about the free-birth movement? No mid-wives or any other medical professional, just the mother delivering the baby alone. I don't trust doctors or hospital at all. I think they're only out to charge you as much money as they can, without any regard to your health, so the free-birth idea appeals to me.
Kitty Ernst: I just read an article from Canada about this. Actually it has been going on for some time. I think we should have a system where women are not pumped up with fear and that would cover her no matter where she chose to give birth or with whom she chose or did not choose to be with her. I would counsel her that we are here if she needs us and educate her to the infrequent complications that may require medical intervention and then be available. There are few women in the U. S. that could or would take this leap."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 10:22 PM
Hugh Hewitt: Hillary Clinton - 30 Letters
Letters from Hillarys Young Days:
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 9:07 PM
New Book by Wendy Shalit: Girls Gone Mild!
Wendy Shalit, author of A return to Modesty has written a new book called Girls Gone Mild. Here is the Amazon Link
And the web site/blog devoted to promoting the book: Go Here
Chapter one of the book in PDF
Book Overview: Go Here
Modesty Zone Blog: Go Here
Modestly Yours Blog: Go Here
These trends are really awesome! As a mother with two teens who have made the choice to stay chaste until marriage, I love the idea of the new rebels being those women who choose abstinance and virtue over the girls gone wild insanity.
Home Childbirth fits into this paradigm as well. One of the main reasons I chose to come home to birth and took personal responsibility for my own female health care was because I hated the contact I had with various doctors. Vaginal Exams, pressure to go on birth control, pressure to limit the size of my family, etc etc etc... By pulling away from the gynocological world, I have been able to feel a sense of wholeness and privacy that comforts my mother heart and keeps me away from the various practitioners who have blood on their collective hands. So much of a gyns practice is dealing with those diseases and unwanted pregnancies that accompany a girls gone wild society.
I am not too interested in even being on the same examination table or having the same vaginal speculums and fingers shoved into my body that have been probing into the diseased bodies of those women who have gone mad with sexual promiscuity. I don't want to be around the doctors, clinics, and various proceedures and drugs that are so prevalent in our society to deal with STDs, bastard children, and the complications from abortions and miscarriages.
I have not had a vaginal exam since I gave birth to Andrew almost eleven years ago. And I don't ever plan to have one, ever again. Saving my sexual body for my husband in all aspects of my fertility has felt right and taking the modesty principle into the OB/GYN side of my life has felt very empowering. And it is a theme from unassisted birthers. They tend to mention how wonderful it is while giving birth NOT to have all those exams and nurses and doctors checking and probing.
While I birthed my third child in the hospital I felt like every nurse on the floor popped their head in during the final moments of birth. I would not have been surprised if the janitors, food service people, and any assorted strangers had come into the room to watch me give birth. Too many people around tends to lengthen the process, and contributes to a woman feeling violated and overwhelmed.
Giving birth alone and not even having a camera on, contributed to the feelings of privacy and wholeness I experienced while I gave birth to my four year old in 2002. It was Jeannine Baker who challenged me not to video tape the birth. She told me that the very presence of a camera can have a terrible effect on labor for some women and with my sexual abuse issues, it was better not to have the birth documented.
I'm grateful for the whole modesty movement and am thrilled by women like Wendy taking the time to write and share.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:57 AM
Fox Video: David Horowitz
David Horowitz on Hannity and Colmes
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:54 AM
NYT: Chief Mormon Explainer
This was an interesting article at the New York Times: Go Here
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:50 AM
July 28, 2007
Who and Why: Choosing a Do It Yourself Birth
Some of my readers might be interested to learn more about Freebirth by reading some of the discussion threads at Mothering.com. This is one of the only public Unassisted Childbirth Forums on the internet.
Here is a link to a post that includes links to several discussions about Freebirth.
Who and Why
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why do you choose UC?
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:46 AM
Newsmax: Homeland General: Attack 'Could Happen Any Day'
Homeland General: Attack 'Could Happen Any Day'
"The U.S. military commander in charge of defending the U.S. homeland said Tuesday that he believes there are al-Qaida cells in the United States or people working to create them.
Air Force Gen. Victor "Gene" Renuart said that while the terrorism threat within the nation's boundaries has increased in the past year, officials have strengthened intelligence sharing, particularly in an effort to shore up weaknesses in security at U.S. ports.
"I believe there are cells in the United States, or at least people who aspire to create cells in the United States," Renuart said in an interview with The Associated Press. "To assume that there are not those cells is naive and so we have to take that threat seriously."
He added, "Am I concerned that this will happen this summer, I have to be concerned that it could happen any day."
Other U.S. officials last week said they did not know of al-Qaida cells in the United States.
Renuart, who took over the job as the head of U.S. Northern Command just four months ago, said that to counter the growing threat, the military also needs to create two more brigade-size units to be available to respond to nuclear, chemical and biological incidents at home - because currently there is only one. A brigade is about 3,500 troops.
Renuart's comments came in the wake of a national intelligence report released last week, which concluded that al-Qaida is using its growing strength in the Middle East to plot attacks on U.S. soil.
Port security has long been identified as a key weak point, including the need to scan cargo containers coming into the country by ship.
Renuart said officials are expanding their use of sensors and other technologies that allow them to track ships, including their location, their speed and other commercial information. And, while he would not provide details, he said there has already been "real payback" in terms of identifying vessels of concern and either checking or boarding them well before they got into U.S. waters.
"Because the national intelligence estimate talks about the vulnerability of ports, and because of the importance that we place on the movement of a variety of goods through those ports, finding ways to improve that is a really important element of our day to day work," Renuart said.
At the same time, he said it will be a year or two before he is able to pull together the military units he needs to better be able to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear disaster in the U.S.
The units, he said, will be made up of active duty, reserves and National Guard troops. And while portions of the brigades will be located in different states, they will be expected to train together and be able to respond quickly to a disaster.
Overall, Renuart said that as the terror threat increases, the nation's ability to detect problems has also improved.
The intelligence report, he said, is a "summary of drumbeats, and the drumbeats are getting more prevalent out there. You cannot afford to ignore that." But he said, a few years ago, the nation was not as able to hear and interpret those drumbeats."
A Mother Thinks About Nuclear Survival
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:10 AM
July 27, 2007
A Canadian Doctor Describes How Socialized Medicine Doesn't Work
Investors Business Daily: A Canadian Doctor Describes How Socialized Medicine Doesn't Work
Privatize, Privatize, Privatize....come on....let's all say it together....Let the Market work its magic on health care. Privatize, Free Market, Privatize, get the government out of health care....Privatize Privatize.....PRIVATIZE!!!!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:44 AM
Life
Tonight is stake temple night and Paul and I plan to attend. This past week has been a very spiritual one for us as a family. Last sunday Michelle received her Patriarchal Blessing from our stake patriarch. Paul and I have been on a spiritual high since that event.
Last sunday we also had four members of our family speak in church. I was the final speaker in Sacrament meeting - topic was Creating a legacy for future generations. And Michelle was the youth speaker. She was asked to speak about her pioneer heritage and shared a wonderful story from one of our ancestors from Norway who immigrated to Utah as a young mother. Andy was the main speaker in primary, his talk was also on his pioneer ancestry, and Ben was asked to participate in Sharing time telling stories about how his family helps him grow closer to Jesus Christ. We had spent saturday preparing for all of these talks. It was a good experience and I loved sharing my views with the members of the ward.
On wednesday night Paul and I were invited to attend our Stake Preparedness Meeting. Paul was recently called to be the Elders Quorum president and I am still serving as the Welfare Specialist. We had a good turnout from the stake and a woman from the State of Colorado had been invited to speak to our group about Pandemic Flu. She gave about an hour presentation and then opened it up for Q & A. The state of Colorado is working hard to prepare for pandemic scenarios, however I felt that typical government style they are gearing up to hand out fish to the people, rather than teaching them how to fish in terms of what is being done to mitigate,
She talked alot about flu vaccines and tamiflu. She also said the main thrust of their efforts was going to be in food boxes being passed out to those people who cannot prepare for a time of living in their homes for a couple weeks of isolation from the community. The state is encouraging citizens to have on hand a two week supply of food and water, and as many months of medicine as money and insurance will allow them to purchase.
I raised my hand and asked her if anyone had brought up the issue of healthy pregnant women giving birth in a hospital overun with sick people. She said they had spent alot of time talking about it but had not come to any sort of a conclusion as to what to do.
Later in the evening I pressed the issue again by stating that during the 1918 pandemic most babies in Colorado were being born at home and an infrastructure was in place to help those women with birth. Also, most mothers were breastfeeding. I told her that the thing people start screaming for after every disaster is baby formula and plastic diapers, and that if the state really wanted people to prepare for a pandemic they should be pushing breastfeeding and a supply of cloth diapers. She sort of balked when I said that.
She said that they were pushing for families to have baby formula, a two week supply, because during a time of stress, mothers may not be able to produce breastmilk, especially if they were eating junk foods in the form of foods that are easy to prepare without electricity. I backed away at that point and did not press the issue further, especially after a neonatal nurse spoke up and claimed that during certain illnesses breastmilk could be worse for babies than formula.
What I predict if we have a pandemic in Colorado is a whole bunch of dead babies.
Now maybe with even being born to educated parents at home and breastfed by a mother who has stored the absolute best foods for survival, (wheat and beans), and cloth diapered during weeks of isolation in the home during a pandemic, some of those babes will die from flu. But looking at the odds, I would guess that a mother who births in a hospital overwhelmed with flu patients and dead bodies, bottle feeds with limited supplys of baby formula, and is diapered with whatever bits of disposable diapers can be purchased, the babe who is welcomed into the world under such conditions will not do as well as the baby born at home.
But I guess we will have to wait and see. While I thought the power point presentation from this woman was well put together and she had her facts straight about infectious disease, I was extremely dismayed, but not surprised, that most mitigation efforts are going to be put towards chemical interventions and stockpiling of food for the poor.
What this lady does not realize is that EVERY family can store food and water. If poor families were to be educated about the financial savings from eating whole foods, taught how to prepare these simple foods, and how to store them properly, every family could easily put together a three month supple of grains, beans, and salt that could help them to weather any storm.
Costs for a family of four is about two hundred bucks. And her assumption that it would only be the poor who did not have any supplies is extremely short sighted. Many families do not have more than a week supply of food on hand because of dependence on restaurants and take out food. Some of the wealthiest people in our society have the most beautiful pantrys on the planet, that are completely void of nourishing foods.
If I was king of the world, or head of the Colorado State preparedness task force, I would immediately begin an education campaign focusing on proper food and water storage, rotation of whole foods into the daily diet, and the very simple principles of caring for the sick without chemicals. I would offer home birth classes and push breastfeeding and use of cloth diapers and menstrual pads. I would not even think about food boxes or vaccine or chemical "cures" as these measures would basically be akin to rearanging deck chairs on the titanic while the ship went down.
If we truly want to save lives and mitigate for future pandemics, the people of Colorado should be educated with what will truly help rather than wait for a time of raw survival, when survival of the fittest and the law of the jungle will ensure that those who are not prepared will drop like flies.
Here, once again, are my primers on Flu and Emergency Childbirth.
Emergency Childbirth during a pandemic
And a complete roundup of my provident living information is found in that catagory. Go here
Emergency Preparedness Catagory
I believe that those families and individuals who believe government is going to "save them" during a pandemic by handing them a box of food and a shot of chemicals in the arm are very naive. Yet this is what the state of colorado is preparing to do at this point in case of a pandemic. Being at the meeting just furthered my resolve and focus that individual preparations for a pandemic are the best forms of mitigation and relying on the government will be a fruitless endeavor.
It was a good meeting overall and the final hour we spent talking about communications and how we as saints can watch over each other better, especially if communications and electricity were cut off. I was chuckling as we talked remembering the winter storms of last year. The stake president had asked that we account for every person in the stake and give him a report. We were called by a total of seven people during the worst blizzard. The checks and balances of the mormon people is a wonder to behold.
Many of our members are ready with short wave radios and generators - to be a communication tool in case the phones are out. We have a whole crew of guys in our ward who are ready to go with that endeavor.
I'm looking forward to being in the house of the Lord tonight. It will recharge my spiritual batteries.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:46 AM
NewsBusters: Sally Quinn: 'If You Talk to Dictators You Can Immediately Get Them on Your Side'
Sally Quinn: 'If You Talk to Dictators You Can Immediately Get Them on Your Side'
Here's what she said on this afternoon's "Hardball."
"SALLY QUINN: The fact is that the new word these days is 'dialogue.' [Ed.: New? Well shut Socrates mouth!] And so many of these dictators, quote, dictators [Ed.: we wouldn't want to offend Assad or Kim Jong Il] are really sort of shallow people who are looking for respect, and if you talk to them, you can immediately sort of get them down and get them on your side."
Mrs. Quinns attitude reminds me of the Zucker parody of Madeline Albright:
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:35 AM
Scientists link diabetes drugs to heart failure
Scientists link diabetes drugs to heart failure
The American Cycle of Botched, depressing birth, followed by raging depression, followed by anti-depressant use, followed by the pancreas being destroyed by those chemicals, followed by debilitating life long diabetes, followed by heart disease and/or manic depression is being played out in many many peoples lives.
If we go back to nature and trust birth works and then welcome the babes holistically, the cycle can be turned around from disease and disability to ecstatic joy and functionality.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:30 AM
July 26, 2007
Telegraph: Ritalin poses child crime risk
Ritalin poses child crime risk
CHILDREN who use Ritalin for a long period of time could be more at risk of delinquency and substance abuse, a study has found.
"Doctors are suggesting children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should take a break from medication after three years of use.
An American study - published in the Medical Observer _ has found that while drugs such as Ritalin can initially help sufferers, the benefit of prolonged use is in doubt.
Some children stay on medication until they reach 18, but researchers believe it may not protect them from all the symptoms.
Has your child been adversely affected by ADHD medication? Tell us your experience via feedback section below.
The US Multimodal Treatment Study of Children revealed the more days of prescribed medication, the more serious delinquency became.
In a cohort of 500 children with ADHD - followed for 36 months until they were 12 - researchers found 27 per cent were at a greater risk of committing crime, compared with 7 per cent among "normative" children.
Substance use also increased to 17 per cent in ADHD children - almost double the normal rate.
More than 30,000 children in Australia take Ritalin or a similar drug.
Jill Sewell, Associate Professor of the Royal Australian College of Physicians, said evidence suggested a break from medication was beneficial.
"Evidence shows that there is very clear benefit of taking medication for 12-18 months, but after three years it is not so clear," she said.
"Often in medications you do have to stop for a period of time to see if it is still effective."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:02 PM
A Tale of Two Sets of twins
This past week two sets of twin girls were born to mothers who were planning and hoping for unassisted births.
The Mothering Forum at Mothering.com is one of the only public UC Chat rooms on the web. Most of the chats for Freebirth are private, so it is nice to be able to share some birth stories with a public audience curious about how Freebirthers interact with each other on the web.
I think these twin stories are awesome. And the number one reason is because they illustrate a couple of points.
First and foremost Freebirthers do not reject modern medicine.
If a family feels that they will be served by interacting with a midwife or doctor, they seek out whatever level of prenatal and birth care feels right for them.
Second, the response to both of the mothers was also very indicative of how chat rooms welcome birth stories, no matter how the birth goes. The two birth stories were both greeted with wonderful acceptance and blessings, even though one momma had a section and the other had a freebirth.
Third, the bottom line for most freebirthing families is that the baby arrives safe, no matter where that birth takes place.
Here are the links to the various stories:
May I offer my hearty congrats to both families and pray that as women continue to get educated about proper nutrition for twins and what truly causes preeclampsia, they will be enabled to give birth in the most holistic way possible. The unique nutritional demands of a twin pregnancy can pose serious health risks to the babe if mother is not clued in to what she needs to eat daily to make healthy children. But this mother still built two very large twins and birthed her children in the way that made sense to her family - by c-section.
If you will search around the unassisted childbirth forum on mothering you can get a sense of how the women support and help each other.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:50 PM
Day at the Park
I am really enjoying how quickly One True Media Works to upload video and still pictures. It has been fun playing around with it the past few weeks.
Here is another montage of yet another day at the park.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:04 PM
GOPers Bail on YouTube Debate?
GOPers Bail on YouTube Debate?
Ruffini:
"
Over the last few hours, I'd been hearing buzz that GOP candidates were going wobbly on the CNN/YouTube debate. I was dismissive. Given the huge earned media hit the Democrats got this week, the fact that even the highly partisan questioners acquitted themselves better than Chris Matthews did in the first debate, and the sponsorship of the powerful Republican Party of Florida, I didn't think the GOP candidates would make the political mistake of passing up it up.
I was apparently wrong. Rudy Giuliani is unlikely to participate, according to an official source.
And Mitt Romney wouldn't commit, dissing the "snowman question."
Mitt Romney didn't like some of the more frivolous trappings and told the New Hampshire Union Leader that "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."
I would now expect numerous candidates to bail, just like they did at Ames, citing the lack of a frontrunner.
This is a big mistake. The Democrats are afraid to answer questions from Big Bad Fox News Anchors, and the Republicans are afraid to answer questions from regular people. Which is worse?
It's stuff like this that will set the GOP back an election cycle or more on the Internet. No matter the snazzy Web features and YouTube videos they may put up, if they're fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with real people online, what's the point?
Having spent the better part of a decade working at the intersection of politics and the Web, I can't help but feel of a deep, deep sense of dismay that we're missing something so basic. This is EXACTLY why I am afraid that we will be outraised by $100 million or more in 2008.
Yes, some of the questions on Monday were trivial. Yes, they were partisan. (I expect many of the 9/17 questioners to be partisan Republicans.) Yes, they were messy. But so is democracy. And the fact that some place so much faith in the broken mainstream media over a benign format like this one says a lot about the difficult straits the Republicans are in right now.
Perhaps the rest of the field will prove me wrong."
I bet Ron Paul will happily participate in th at You Tube debate. In fact, my gut feeling is that the frontrunners in the GOP are afraid of another Paul Blowout on the web. He has a debate style, clarity of views, and no holds barred affinity for the Constitution that is very reminiscent of Alan Keyes, and we all know what the GOP did to Keyes during a key republican debate.
"In Atlanta in 1996, GOP Presidential candidate Alan Keyes was invited to a televised candidate debate in Atlanta, but when he did not place in the top several candidates in the New Hampshire primary voting, the invitation was rescinded, and he was arrested when trying to gain entry."
I'd be scared too.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:28 PM
Fatherland, Socialism, or …er …uh …Something Better, Maybe?
Fatherland, Socialism, or …er …uh …Something Better, Maybe?
Our friends who live in post communist countries look at our Socialized Education establishment with horror and figure America has lost its soul. When we as a people allow marxists to spoonfeed cradle to grave socialism to our young people from preschool age up, something is very off in the hinter lands.
I pray America will not allow itself to become any more socialized than it already is. The entitlement generation is getting old and those of us coming along need to push hard for privatizing everything in our society before it all just melts into the great void of communist nothings.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 4:40 PM
The Baig Family
My best friend Susan Baig just sent some pictures sharing her life. She gave me permission to share them.
Susan and Robert have six children, four born at home and the last three were born unassisted. They are a homeschooling family and recently purchased some land in Missouri where they are renovating a farm house. Here is a montage of the pictures they shared.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 9:47 AM
Trip to Heritage Square
Yesterday I took the boys to Heritage Square in Golden Colorado.
We loved cruising around the go cart track, did that three times. Then we golfed on the putt putt course, and rode some kidde rides with Ben. We did the bumper boats, and spent some quality time in the arcade playing games. Ben loved the skateboarding video game that allowed him to stand on a board and pretend he was doing amazing tricks. Very interactive.
We listened to Brian Reagan in the car during the drive to and from the park. He was really funny. Here is a slide show I put together of the pics. When it became too hot to breathe we had a little water fight with our water bottles, that is why we are soaking wet in a couple pictures.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 9:14 AM
Jeff's scout hike
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:51 AM
Incredible! George S Patton's New Speech-Iraq & modern world
George Patton on the War on Terror: (Profanity alert)
Al Qaeda faces rebellion in the ranks
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:42 AM
New Documentary: The Call of the Entreprenuer
A new documentary I can't wait to see.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:34 AM
Front Page: Sicko Propaganda
Humberto Fontova, in his typical way, dismantles Castros Medical Haven for Michael Moore:
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:30 AM
WAPO: Shock Value
Shock Value - Electroconvulsive therapy on the upswing.
"The number of treatments in California -- one of the few states that have mandatory reporting -- increased from about 13,000 to more than 20,000 between 1994 and 2004. Although the District, Maryland and Virginia do not require such reporting, Johns Hopkins Hospital treats about 125 people with ECT annually, a number that has not changed much recently, according to Irving Reti, head of Hopkins's ECT unit; at Sheppard Pratt outside Baltimore, ECT physician Jack Vaeth says his service does about 60 treatments a week, an increase over the past decade.
While no one fully understands why ECT works, many psychiatrists believe that using an electric current to produce a "grand mal" -- or generalized brain -- seizure can "reboot" the brain when medications and psychotherapy fail. Just last week, a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggested that, despite its demonstrated effectiveness, ECT remains underused, primarily because of its stigmatized history."
Stigmatized history? Or the fact that it erases the memories of those who use it???
Sure you are not depressed anymore, we just turned your brain to mush and gellied up your tissues. You can't even remember who you are!!! But it was worth it because you are not depressed!!! What a load, this treatment should be BANNED!!!
I remember telling one of my therapists a few years ago that electroshock was on the upswing and he told me that I was wrong, it had been banned worldwide because it was ineffective. But the psychiatrists just keep on keepin on with failed treatments. Makes lots of money and shuts up those awful patients.
Wether you get a surgical lobotomy (which are also on the upswing, they just changed the name to cingulotomy, a chemical Lobotomy, or an electro lobotomy, the effect on the brain is the same. Major amounts of brain damage.
Recently a somewhat honest hearted psychiatrist made some public comments about his profession.
He said:
A Psychiatrist Airs His Professional Doubts
"Did you ever stop to wonder or ask yourself 'what am I doing?' I did and in many ways I wish I had not. As a Psychiatrist, I still do not know what our profession is trying to do. It seems we have a series of solutions and now we are trying to find the problems that they can solve. My observations are either anecdotal or part of research that I have done as a Psychiatric Auditor and are based on my 38 years experience in the field of Psychiatry.
Psychiatrists are treating two major populations: Adults and Juveniles. These populations are further subdivided into severe and mild disturbances.
I am not a Juvenile Psychiatrist, but I speak from impressions and my readings in the field. There is nothing more heart breaking than the severely mentally ill juvenile. We have increased our arsenal of medications, but in results and understanding, compared to other medical professions, our success rate is poor. Prevention is a distant dream.
The mildly mentally ill juveniles are a cause of concern to me. Psychiatry has waltzed into learning disorders with the crusading gusto that only psychiatrists seem to have. We are witnessing the 'medicinization' of a former outlawed drug. The criteria for using Ritalin far too often go unmet. There is no doubt in my mind that children that would not be given Ritalin by experts in the field are receiving it. No one can say with honesty and certainty what the effect of Ritalin use in juveniles will have on their brains as they age. Yet the Ritalin pushers have an almost messianic fervor for their 'solution'.
In the adult population, generally speaking, the influence of the Drug Companies is terrifying. Very few research projects disprove the efficacy of a drug when the trial is sponsored by the drug's manufacturer. Harmful facts that may be discovered are not disclosed. When they are, their importance and significance are downplayed. For example, one of the major, popular, new anti psychotic drugs actively and substantially increases the risk factors for heart attacks or CVAs. In all the adult population the major medical goal is to reduce these risk factors. Only severely mentally ill psychiatric patients are the exception.
It has been shown that after 10 years of illness a psychotic not taking medications is four times more likely to be symptom free than one that is taking medications. Read that again. You would expect the complete opposite. In spite of the hype, the quality of life in patients using the older medications are better than the new. So we are paying more, endangering more and getting less. Not very impressive is it?"
I appreciate his honesty, and wish more psychiatrists had the guts to do some introspection, you would think they would be the most honest in terms of "ANALYZING" themselves as a profession. But no, fearfully and sadly, many do not take the time to question all of the drug reps in the office, the perks, and the money rolling in earned off the tortured minds of the mentally ill. Here is a critique I wrote of a very pompous edict from the President of the APA a couple of years ago. He was publicly questioning certain practices in the profession.
I am a perfect example of someone who has healed holisticaly after psychosis. I had a post partum psychosis after the birth of my first babe, and was forced by the courts to take toxic drugs for 14 months. Then I went completely the other direction and used Sunriders Chinese Herbs, Nutrition, Shaklee Foods, and spent thousands of hours reading about the history of psychiatry, and quickly realized that a debate was raging and I was in the middle of it.
Since those days in 1989-90 when I was forced to eat toxic chemicals to make the chemicals in my brain "all better", I have not taken ONE PILL in the intervening years. Not one.
And I have given birth to four additional children.
I shudder to think what my life would have been like had I been on psychiatric meds for the past 16 years.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:05 AM
News Target: Ritalin Stunts the Growth of Children
Ritalin stunts the growth of children
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:02 AM
ACOG Annual Meeting - San Diego - Why Do Men Have Nipples?
Fruit of the womb blog: Why do men have nipples?
Dr. Ken waxed eloquent on his blog after looking at the logo of ACOG
"The first thing that piqued my imagination today was the ACOG logo. I had never looked at it closely, but first thing this morning I had that opportunity as it was flashed up on 6 very large screens at the start of the opening ceremonies and the “President’s Program,” comprised of keynote speakers to kick off the scientific sessions. What I learned was that ACOG was founded the year I was born, in 1951. Well, so what? Being one of those people who truly believes that things really don’t happen by chance, that struck me as bearing some (unexplained) significance at a higher level as to the ‘bass ackwards’ way I ended up in my chosen profession to begin with (read one or two of my earliest posts on this site if you don’t believe me!). ACOG and I are growing old at the same rate, both in our 56th years! Fortunately, I am sure the society will long outlive me."
I think a better question than asking why do men have nipples is to query why the doctor in the ACOG logo is wearing a Superman Cape.
While the good doctor was musing about male nipples at his recent acog meeting, I wrote him a comment to be posted on his excellent blog. He did not post it, so for my readers pleasure I will post it here.
COMMENT NOT posted on his blog:
Doctor,
Men have nipples because they are fully capable of breastfeeding.
As a freebirthing woman who has completely rejected the goals, agendas, and darwinist philosophies of modern obstetrics, I just put together a montage on my blog, you might want to give it a look!
Freebirthers have realized a couple of things about childbirth that you evolutionary doctors seem to be quite ignorant of. Namely that birth is a sexual event and should be conducted privately in the bedroom of the couple involved in creating the child.
Jenny Hatch
WWW.NaturalFamilyBLOG.com
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:46 AM
No Silence Here - Bloggers Vs. Journalism
Bloggers Vs. Journalists
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:43 AM
CNN: U.N. suspends peacekeepers amid sex abuse charges
U.N. suspends peacekeepers amid sex abuse charges
More perverts posing as Peacekeepers at the UN.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:41 AM
Chat Room Discussion about Freebirth
I participated in this chat at the Tilted Forum Project a couple of weeks ago. Page six of the chat had the most interesting exchange of information.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:38 AM
Rixa blogging at The True Face of Birth
Pregnant Women are second class citizens
Rixa has some interesting insights about birth politics in the US.
QUOTE: (Yes, gun to your head obstetrics is happening in America)
"Ms. P was continuing her labor at home when there was a knock on the door. She opened the door to the local sheriff, who was a friend of hers and a member of her church. The sheriff said, "I'm really terribly sorry, Ms. P, but I have here a warrant for your arrest." Shocked, Ms. P said, "What on earth for?" The sheriff answered, "I'm terribly sorry. I don't know what the hell is going on. My orders are to take you to the hospital, in handcuffs if necessary."
Against her wishes and the repeated objections of her husband, Ms. P was taken to the hospital, taken to the surgery ward, tied down on an operating table, and given a forced C-section. The story doesn't end here. Ms. P and her husband sued the doctors and the hospital. However, in Florida a judge must decide if a case deserves to go to trial, and another local judge decided that Ms. P's case was not worthy of proceeding, so her case never went to trial—a shocking miscarriage of justice, given the serious violation of Ms. P's basic rights. Since then, Ms. P has had another baby, born vaginally at home with no problems. Needless to say, there was no visit to the hospital during the labor.
It is important that women in this country become aware of the danger to birthing women and join the movement to protect them. Ms. P's family's wishes were not honored, and her body was invaded against her will. Her human rights were violated.... Treating pregnant women in this manner goes against the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Accord, which explicitly state an individual has absolute rights over her or his own body and no medical treatment can ever be forced. Cases like this indicate a dangerous trend in U.S. maternity care toward totalitarian control of a woman's reproductive life by doctors.
Here is a link to the case of Laura Pemberton.
References:
Samuels TA, Minkoff H, Feldman J, Awonuga A, Wilson TE. “Obstetricians, health attorneys, and court-ordered cesarean sections.” Womens Health Issues. 2007 Mar-Apr;17(2): 107-14.
Veronika E.B. Kolder, Janet Gallagher, and Michael T. Parsons. “Court-Ordered Obstetrical Interventions.” NEJM 316.19 (May 7, 1987): 1192-1196.
Patient’s Rights: issues in Risk Management
Marsden Wagner. Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First (University of California Press: 2006)."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:27 AM
Shauna over at the Blog The Laundry Line
Shauna has some great insights into Home Making at her Blog The Laundry Line:
And her Natural Family Living Web Site
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:21 AM
Eve Magazine: Freebirthing Would you Lock the Midwives out?
Laura Shanley scanned the Eve Freebirth Article and posted the scan on her web site. Here is the link.
The Editor sent my copy in the mail on monday. She finished her article with my interview. I thought overall she did a good job with the whole tone, the stories shared, and the various quotes. However, I thought it strange that she titled my interview "Mum or Criminal?"
I wonder if she was writing an article on Abortion if she would even think of tossing around the words criminal when talking about those parents who choose to murder their little ones in the womb. I was telling one of my friends about this whole childbirth debate, and she made the comment that the very people who are the most threatened and upset by home birth are the ones who would completely support a womans right to have an abortion. I totally agreed.
She did get one thing right though, at the very end of the article she said:
"It seems that as the debate rages on, Freebirth believers are standing firm."
That is right. I will not be bullied, stereotyped, or threatened into backing down one inch from my stance that Freebirth is best for the baby.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:09 AM
July 21, 2007
The Obstetric Wall
The Obstetric Wall
Obstetric Practice creates a wall between what is happening now in Childbirth and ultimate Divine Feminine Ecstatic JOY!
Song Provided Courtesy of the Rock Band Kansas. Go Here to visit the web site.
My all time favorite Rock band is Rush, but Kansas is a close second. I love this band! Thanks for the lyrics guys, they fit perfectly!!!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 5:04 PM
Mothering Magazine: Pregnancy after Psychosis
Victory over Post Partum Psychosis
The author of this excellent and timely article contacted me about 18 months ago. She had read my story in Kathy Kendall Tackets first book titled Postpartum Depression, A Nurse's Guide. She asked if I would be willing to be a part of her article and I agreed. This huge article just appeared in the May/June issue of Mothering, and the digital version is up for those who would like to pay for it.
My story is included in a side bar titled, Pregnancy after Psychosis, and appears on page 61 of the magazine.
I was thrilled by the excellent information shared with Mothering readers and predict this article will go down as one of the best primers on Post Partum Psychosis that has ever been written. The fact that it was written by a mother who experienced Psychosis after the birth of her second child makes it that much more credible.
Sarah Fields, the author of this article, is expecting her third child right now.
She told me that the message of healing in my journal which was included in Kathys book really helped her gain some perspective while putting her mind back together after her hospitalization.
I was healed somewhat by reading her story of being able to continue breastfeeding, even while on meds, and the way that the hospital was so open to her husband and baby staying in her hospital room with her. They pushed a couple of beds together to make a big family bed right in the mental hospital.
Being forced to wean my daughter, compelled by a court order to take a cocktail of psychiatric meds and my six week hospitalization traumetized me just as much as the actual psychotic episode I experienced after the birth of my first child. I was also raped in the State Hospital by four orderlies the first night I was committed on a medical certificate. These horrors just put layer upon layer of trauma into the cells of my body, and made it very difficult to heal.
It comforted me to read Sarahs Story and realize that progress has indeed been made in how psychotic women are treated in mental hospitals. Being forced to take meds and stop nursing my daughter were complete injustices perpetrated by ignorant, power hungry professionals. My heart literally broke when the judge sentenced me to 90 days of forced incarceration in that evil state mental hospital in Pontiac Michigan and forced me to eat their dope.
During the six days before I went to court, I spent quite a bit of time singing patriotic hymns very loudly during my various stays in the seclusion room. This annoyed the employees, but it gave vent to my very frustrated state of mind. I suppose we never really appreciate what it means to be free until that right is taken away and we have to fight to get it back. The six weeks I spent in the hospital were a defining moment in my life. And because I was so young, only 21, and just beginning my adult life, starting my "mature" years with the stigma of mental illness was pure horror. After a couple of years it dawned on me how freeing this event had actually been.
So many people live their lives afraid of what others think of them. I don't. I honestly do not have that fear, and I believe it is because having been crazy, I know that it is not all bad.
As I have lived these past 18 years as a wife and mother, I have always been able to follow my conscience, even when doing so was a difficult choice, simply because I had no fear of others thinking I was nuts. And following my heart has taken me to amazing places as a woman.
When I was a teen I used to wear a button that said "why be normal?".
Normalcy tends to lead to conformity, which leads to a loss of freedom, which can eventually lead to slavery.
I'm not too interested in living my life as a slave. To anyone or anything. For 14 months I was a slave to the psychiatrists and their socerers chemical cocktail which deprived me of my health, my libido, my emotions, and filled up my body and mind with a toxic soup that took years to cleanse out of my tissues. (Haldol, Stelazine, Lithium, and Prozac)
Never Again!!!
May each mother find the healing she and her family so richly deserve, and may the truth set our world free from the conspiracies of very, very wealthy men and women, who are living most deliciously off the tortured minds of the mentally ill.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 1:55 AM
Confederate Yankee: A Matter of lessening credibility
A matter of lessening credibility
The Yankee takes on the New Republic.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 1:53 AM
Protein Wisdom: Everything that rises must converge: Vietnam edition
Everything that rises must converge: Vietnam edition
"From Breitbart TV (via Tom Maguire and Don Surber), here’s the Darling of Davos, John Kerry, laying out some Brahman truthiness for the proles on C-Span:
Sen. John Kerry said during a C-Span appearance that fears of a bloodbath after the US withdrawal from Vietnam never materialized. He says he’s met survivors of the “reeducation camps” who are thriving in modern Vietnam. An award-winning investigation by the Orange County Register concludes that at least 165,000 people perished in the camps.
Well, sure. But those were just the stubborn ones who refused to be “re-educated.” And sometimes you have kill off 165,000 people to save them.
Not to mention a couple million Cambodians — though the “war protesters” of that era, and their historical apologists, like to lay those deaths at the feet of Nixon and Kissinger in precisely the same way today’s anti-war crowd is angling to lay any Iraqi civil war and sectarian purge at the feet of Bushco, once they’ve forced a retreat and created a power vacuum."
More on this topic from Tiger Hawk: Reinventing history
"The Democrats, many of whom have labored mightily to compare Iraq to Vietnam in the hope of sustaining the "quagmire" narrative, find that the comparison is suddenly and maddeningly inconvenient. After all, Vietnamese and Cambodians suffered a great deal of violence and persecution in the years following the American withdrawal from Indochina and nobody -- other than Iranians, perhaps -- wants to see similar ugliness in Iraq.
Fortunately, John Kerry, who knows all about the advantages and disadvantages of invoking Vietnam for political ends, has hit upon a solution. Rather than admitting that there is a huge risk that violence will escalate in Iraq as it did after the American withdrawal from Indochina, he is reinventing the history of the earlier war and claiming that no such bloodbath occurred.
It will be interesting to see whether other Democrats follow Kerry off that cliff."
It will indeed...
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 1:48 AM
July 20, 2007
Cooking for seven people on a hot JULY day 2007
A Short video of my cooking adventures for the day. Too hot and tired to type out recipes...
And yes, I did have a fantasy of participating on the Food Network "Be the next food network star", even opened up the audition form. When I read....must be able to work 100 hour weeks and stand on your feet 12 hours a day....I clicked on out of the site....I love my naps and my family more than that.
We have enjoyed watching bits of the contest here and there though these past few months. I personally hope Rory wins on sunday because I do not want to see Amy leave her family just to be a television star.
Hey Amy, if you use One True Media, you can be on television on your blog!!!
Here are my cooking adventures for the day...
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 3:57 PM
White House: Fact Sheet: Implementation of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
Fact Sheet: Implementation of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
I'm glad the government is gearing up for the next pandemic, I think this effort is long overdue. However, in reviewing the materials, the focus from these professionals is, as far as as I could tell, almost exclusively on pharmaceuticals for prevention (vaccines) and treatment (antibiotics).
While I am sure this focus is thrilling for our friends at Big Pharma, for those of us not interested in using drugs or vaccines for our health care needs, yes, even during a world wide pandemic, all the effort, mitigating, and planning is much ado about nothing.
And as far as I can tell, nobody is talking about birthing women. Over at the Mass Medical Care with scarce resources web site - go here the most recent report includes information on:
The circumstances that communities are likely to face in an MCE.
Key constructs, principles, and structures to be incorporated into the planning for an MCE.
Approaches and strategies that could be used to provide the most appropriate standards of care possible under the circumstances.
Examples of tools and resources to help States and communities in their planning process.
Illustrative examples of how specific health systems, communities, or States have approached various issues in their MCE-related planning efforts.
While I am thrilled with the efforts put forward, no one is talking about the one million babies that could be born in American during a three month flu pandemic. If the hospital is over run with sick people, healthy women will not want to give birth in a hospital. America does not have enough trained midwives to help with those births.
The answer for that scenario is for parents to take personal responsibility for their own births, and to that end, Freebirth fits the bill. The last pandemic happened while most babies were still being born at home in 1918 and an infrastructure was in place to enable those women to birth at home. That structure has been carefully and systematically taken down in America and is also being replaced all over the world. Did you know that 50% of Chinese babies are born by c-section today?
I wish someone in the Government would start thinking about this topic, and instead of using precious resources to make loads of money for the makers of drugs and vaccines that probably won't work anyway, use those dollars to educate the American People in Provident Living and Pro-active realities around survival living.
Home Childbirth is one of the most important skills that families could realistically master ahead of time for mitigating against a flu pandemic and the harsh realities that would soon present to the birthing mothers of America as people start dropping like flies from a deadly virus.
But ACOG would have problems with that....wouldn't they.....And we don't want the doctors to get upset....so much lovely money and power is at stake.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 12:45 PM
Ann Coulter: The Bumper Sticker that Blew Up
Which side are the democrats on?
Ann has another great column this week!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 12:42 PM
World Net Daily: Deadly and Dangerous Psychiatric Medications
On the cover of this months whistleblower magazine was an expose on Psychiatric Meds.
This timely and informative story is available from WND. Go Here.
MANIA
The shocking link between psychiatric drugs,
suicide, violence and mass murder
"From Columbine to Virginia Tech, every time another headline-making mass murderer is discovered to have taken antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs, rumors and speculation abound regarding the possible connection between the medications and the violence.
Now, reports the July 2007 edition of WND's elite monthly Whistleblower magazine, the time for speculation and guessing is over. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable, says Whistleblower's groundbreaking investigative report: Mood-altering psychiatric drugs – taken every day by tens of millions of Americans, including millions of children – actually can push some users over the edge into mania, suicide and horrific violence.
The issue is titled "MANIA: The shocking truth about psychiatric drugs and their link to suicide, violence and mass murder."
To begin with, many of the most notorious mass killers in recent memory have been on, or just coming off, prescription mood-altering drugs. Remember these headline names?
Andrea Yates, in one of the most heartbreaking crimes in modern history, drowned all five of her children – aged 7 years down to 6 months – in a bathtub. Insisting inner voices commanded her to kill her kids, she had become increasingly psychotic over the course of several years.
Yates had been taking the antidepressant Effexor. In November 2005, more than four years after Yates drowned her children, Effexor manufacturer Wyeth Pharmaceuticals quietly added "homicidal ideation" to the drug's list of "rare adverse events." But "rare" is defined by the FDA as occurring in less than one in 1,000 people. And since, according to an Associated Press report, about 19.2 million prescriptions for Effexor were filled in the U.S. alone in 2005, that means statistically almost 20,000 Americans could experience "homicidal ideation" – that is, murderous thoughts – as a result of taking just this one antidepressant drug.
Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking the widely prescribed antidepressant Luvox when he and fellow student Dylan Klebold went on a hellish school shooting rampage in 1999, killing 12 students and a teacher and wounding 24 others before turning their guns on themselves.
Luvox manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals concedes that 4 percent of children and youth taking Luvox developed "mania" – a serious mental derangement characterized by extreme excitement and delusion – during short-term controlled clinical trials.
Authorities investigating Cho Seung-Hui, who murdered 32 at Virginia Tech in April, reportedly found "prescription drugs" for the treatment of psychological problems among his possessions. Joseph Aust, Cho's roommate, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch Cho's routine each morning had included taking prescription drugs.
So what kind of meds had Cho been taking? Strangely, his medical records have yet to be released to the public – authorities claiming it's because an investigation is still ongoing, although critics suggest the purpose may be to protect the drug companies from liability claims.
Meanwhile, the list of killers who happened to be taking psychiatric medications is long and chilling. Remember these headline names?
Patrick Purdy's 1989 schoolyard shooting rampage in Stockton, Calif., was the catalyst for the legislative frenzy to ban "semiautomatic assault weapons" in California and the nation. The 25-year-old Purdy, who murdered five children and wounded 30, had been on Amitriptyline, an antidepressant, as well as the antipsychotic drug Thorazine.
Kip Kinkel, 15, murdered his parents in 1998 and the next day went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Ore., and opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 others. He had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.
In 1988, 31-year-old Laurie Dann went on a shooting rampage in a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Ill., killing one child and wounding six. She had been taking the antidepressant Anafranil as well as Lithium, long used to treat mania.
All very interesting, you may be thinking, but what do the drug companies say in their defense?
One of the most widely prescribed antidepressants today is Paxil, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.
Paxil's known "adverse drug reactions" – according to the drug's own 2001 FDA-approved label – include "mania," "insomnia," "anxiety," "agitation," "confusion," "amnesia," "depression," "paranoid reaction," "psychosis," "hostility," "delirium," "hallucinations," "abnormal thinking," "depersonalization" and "lack of emotion," among others.
With a rap sheet like that, no wonder pharmaceutical companies are nervous about liability lawsuits over the "rare adverse effects" of their medications. In 1998, for example, GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $6.4 million to Donald Schnell's surviving family members after the 60-year-old man, just two days after taking Paxil, murdered his wife, daughter and granddaughter in a fit of rage.
But reporting the truth about the relationship between psychiatric medications and mass murderers is just the beginning. "MANIA" also reveals clear and compelling evidence that psychiatric drugs hurt children physically – causing shrinkage of their brains, damage to their hearts and other significant effects.
Perhaps even more disconcerting, "MANIA" exposes the federal government's bizarre preoccupation with screening all American school kids to see if they're mentally ill – a process that often leads directly to a prescription for mood-altering drugs for the child who didn't answer the questions properly.
"The problem," said David Kupelian, managing editor of WND and Whistleblower, "is that many Americans don't exactly trust the federal government to determine what constitutes 'mental health.'" Incredibly, as this issue reveals, there is even a government effort to proclaim an infant-and-toddler mental health crisis!
With the numbers of people taking prescription psychiatric medications in the tens of millions and growing every day, this issue will touch virtually every reader in a profound way.
"I think this is one of the most important and frankly mind-boggling editions of Whistleblower we've ever produced," said Kupelian. "The information in it could very well be life-changing – or even life-saving."
I'm wondering when the MSM is going to have the guts to take on this huge story.... With every other ad on television selling anti-depressants to the American Public, I guess it will be a while....don't want to make the advertisers mad, but if they were real journalists, they would take it on with a vengeance.
Please get this isue of Whistleblower and start educating yourself on the perils of psychiatric meds.
PS If you would like to understand how Psychiatric Meds fit into the whole scheme of things in terms of mind control and the whole Big Socialistic takeover of the world, as well as the role that Big Pharma is playing to help along the World Government Agendas, please watch this movie End Game Produced by Alex Jones.
(I don't agree with everything in this documentary, but the population control information during the last hour is spot on, and fits with many other things I have researched) The whole movie is compelling. As always one of the best ways to fight those who would seek power over our lives is to educate yourself towards medical self sufficiency and give birth at home alone, and then keep your kids away from doctors and fight every day to make a good marriage and family life for your loved ones.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 12:08 PM
Childbirth, A Much better way birth stories: Mommy Blogger
A huge Blog that contains awesome information about homebirth.
Go Check it out!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 12:04 PM
UK: Drugs for hyperactive children soar
If you knew that using drugs during your childs birth would lead to hyperactivity later on, don't you think you might be motivated to learn how to give birth without any drugs, typically called Natural Childbirth?
If hyperactivity is on the rise, why do we think more drugs are the answer?
Drug use soars
A LOST generation of children are growing up taking powerful prescription pills.
Super-strength drugs to tackle a severe childhood behavioural condition are soaring on Tyneside.
According to new figures seen by the Chronicle, the number of youngsters on medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly known as ADHD, has doubled in Newcastle over the last two years.
Other areas are seeing an increase in the prescribing of strong stimulants such as Ritalin, Modafinil, and Dexedrine, as well as antidepressant Atomoxetine – which can all counteract hyperactivity.
The figures show prescriptions in the Newcastle Primary Care Trust area alone shot up from 2,284 in 2005-06 to 4,073 in 2006-07.
In North Tyneside, prescription numbers exploded from 528 in 2005/06 to 2,367 in 2006/07.
Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland and Durham City also saw an increase in the number of prescriptions.
Children as young as six could be getting the drugs, and the rise in prescriptions has been blasted by a psychiatric health watchdog, the Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights, which claims children are being “drugged into submission”.
ADHD expert Paul McArdle, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist based at Newcastle’s Flemming Nuffield Unit, says the drugs can dramatically improve a child’s quality of life.
But he admits medicating the hyperactive is cheaper than other methods.
He explained: “With the right diagnosis and the right dose of medication, these drugs can help a child lead a more normal life and reduce a lot of the distress ADHD causes.
“There are other ways of dealing with children who have ADHD, such as specialist group work, but the investment needed for that is colossal and the funds are just not available.
“So we’re left with a real dilemma – medicate, or leave the child in an impossible situation where the future looks very bleak. One of the reasons for the increase in prescriptions could be that we are now giving out monthly doses of medication rather than previously, when we would prescribe around three months.”
ADHD severely affects around one in every 100 children in the UK, but many more are mildly affected – thought to be as many as 10%. There are thought to be more than one million adult sufferers.
The condition is caused by a dysfunction in the brain which leads the child to become overloaded with information which cannot be processed.
It is estimated that ADHD drugs cost the Newcastle PCT alone more than £198,000 in the past year and some argue they are not necessary and could even harm a child.
Brian Daniels, from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, said: “Children do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles.
“But to represent that these troubles are caused by chemical imbalances or incurable brain diseases that can only be alleviated with dangerous drugs is dishonest, harmful and often deadly.
“They mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future.”
Mum Deborah Bennett, from Washington, has decided against drugs to treat her nine-year-old son Jack’s ADHD, despite being offered Ritalin and a way to cope with his uncontrollable behaviour.
Jack, a pupil at Maplewood School in Sunderland, which specialises in helping children with conditions such as ADHD, is prone to uncontrollable swearing and aggressive outbursts towards other children, and can seldom be left alone.
Deborah, 38, said: “I was worried about the effects drugs would have on him because sometimes they can make the children seem like zombies.
“Although the summer holidays are coming up and I’m concerned about how I’ll manage his behaviour, I won’t go for drugs – and I only would as a very last resort.”
---------------------------------------------------------
Drug makes family life better
WITHOUT powerful ADHD medication, family life for the Fosters would be fraught with difficulties.
Jordan Foster was just five when he was given Ritalin by experts to control the condition, making him the youngest child in Gateshead to ever be given the drug.
Consultants were stunned when they visited the Fosters at their home in Low Fell, and saw the unruly youngster dart around the house attempting to rip radiators from walls and hurl toys at them.
They immediately diagnosed ADHD and Jordan is currently on a slow-release form of Ritalin 12 hours a day.
The drug often causes the youngster, now nine, to lose his appetite, but mum Christine, 43, maintains they have never looked back on their decision.
“Jordan’s behaviour was very destructive and we couldn’t do anything together as a family,” said Christine, who also has sons George, 12, and Andrew, 18, with husband Frank, 49.
“I would end up taking Jordan out separately to Frank and the boys because someone needed to control him constantly.
“We could never go out for family meals because his behaviour would cause people to stare and tut at us.
“But since the medication started, things have changed a lot and Jordan is more stable. We know what he is going to do and how he is going to react.”
Electrician Frank and Christine were initially hesitant about giving Jordan such strong medication, but were worried the condition would disrupt the youngster’s education.
And to make matters worse, Jordan, a pupil at Lindisfarne School in Gateshead, has also been diagnosed with autism.
“Initially we just gave him Ritalin during school hours and it improved his concentration a lot,” added Christine, who now runs a counselling service for families with children who have ADHD.
“He can behave more like a normal little boy and make friends, whereas before, his behaviour and the noises he made scared the other children.
“Putting Jordan on medication was a very difficult decision, but it has so many benefits and our family life is now a lot better.”
But isn't that decision made so much easier simply because the drugs exist and are widely available?
Nutrition, gentle natural birth, and attachment parenting are the answer for this "LOST generation of children"
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:56 AM
More Trauma from botched hospital birth: Boy 14 = Cerebral Palsy
UK - Boy 14 damaged by his medical birth
Boy,14, £2.6m for injuries suffered at birth Jul 18 2007
A 14-YEAR-OLD boy left facing a lifetime of catastrophic disability by injuries suffered during his birth has won a £2.6 million compensation deal at London's High Court.
Callum Halliday, of Hunter's Chase, South Godstone, was born by Caesarean section at East Surrey Hospital, Redhill, in May 1993.
But oxygen starvation has left him a victim of quadriplegic cerebral palsy, confined to a wheelchair and totally dependent on others for all his care needs.
His legal team argued that, had it not been for a negligent delay in his delivery, Callum would have escaped serious injury.
Through his mother Linda, Callum sued the hospital's managers,Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, who agreed to settle his case for £2.6 million.
The settlement was reached without any admission of liability by the NHS Trust.
Announcing the deal on July 10, Callum's QC, Simon Taylor, said the decision had been taken to do a deal as there would have been a real risk, had there been a contested trial and the trust found blameless, that Callum would have come away with "absolutely nothing".
Defence counsel Ben Browne QC, emphasised that no fault by medics had been admitted, but expressed the trust's "great regret" over Callum's injuries.
He told Justice Silber: "Anyone reading the papers in this case is bound to be struck by the enormous degree of affection and care shown to Callum by his parents and extended family.
"He has realised every bit of potential left to him, entirely thanks to the devoted care given to him by his family and we pay tribute to them for that."
How touching that the medics have such "great regret" for this oxygen deprived boy. I wonder how his life would have been if his momma had stayed home and been taught some deep breathing exercises to use during her labor to ensure that her child received all the oxygen he needed during the birth process. And how would it have been if instead of being in a smelly, toxic hospital, perhaps given an epidural that was in fact what may have disrupted the proper flow of oxygen to that childs blood stream, if his mother had been enabled to labor comfortably at home away from drugs and machines???
The funky breathing patterns of the modern Lamaze Method of childbirth has also been implicated in oxygen deprivation for babies. When a mother hyperventilates during her birth, the child tends to panic in the womb because of the disruption in proper flows of oxygen to his body. Women need to be taught deep, quiet breathing for labor, as is taught in Bradley Method childbirth classes.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:46 AM
Hugh Hewitt: The Collapse of the Newspapers
Another battle in my favorite blood sport:
The collapse of the Newspapers
Ha ha ha ha Hee hee hee
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:40 AM
The Politico: Romneys new tv spot
Video of Mitt Romneys new ad for his campaign.... Go Here!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:23 AM
Letters from Laura Blog: Unassisted Childbirth in the UK
Laura Shanley just traveled over to the UK to appear on a daytime talk show about UC Birth.
Here is her blog entry detailing her adventures.
"At last it was time for our segment! The three of us were led onto the stage where we met Richard and Judy just seconds before they said "action!" or "we're on!" or whatever it is they say when the cameras start rolling. I actually wasn't nervous but for some reason I don't remember much of what happened once we went on the air. Later that night I remembered that when I said to Richard, "The same consciousness that knows how to grow an egg and a sperm (can I say sperm?!) into a human being, knows how to complete the process" he said, "That's ridiculous." Overall the man was not receptive to our ideas!
But Julia and Natalie were brilliant (which is a word people use a lot over there but in this case it's true)! They talked about how empowering their births were, and the problems they endured in their previous midwife-assisted births. I managed to get in a few words about the dangers of hospital birth, as I was essentially put on the defensive. I barely got to talk about unassisted childbirth, although I believe I may have mentioned my breech birth.
And then before we knew it, it was over and we returned to the green room for wine and h'orderves. There was one sobering moment when I said to Julia that I would have liked to have told Richard that 2-6% of babies are cut into during C-sections (I rarely bring up hospital birth statistics during interviews but Richard was so ademant in his belief in the safety of hospital birth). At that point, Julia pointed to a scar running down her cheek and said, "How do you think I got this? The doctor who did my mother's C-section was drunk and cut right into my face." I only wish I would have had this information PRIOR to going on the air!
I'm looking forward to watching a tape of the show (one is supposedly on the way). I've heard from two friends, Patrick Houser and Veronika Robinson (who just happened to catch the show!) that all of us were "brilliant"! Veronika also wrote about it in her blog."
Thanks for sharing Laura!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:17 AM
Business Week: When do you stop the presses?
Business Week: When do you stop the presses?
Ha Ha heh heh heh, snort, hee, hee, hee, ROTFLOL!!!!!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:11 AM
Newsmax: Vaccines and Brain Disorders
"Is there a link between childhood vaccines and autism? The pendulum keeps swinging in opposite directions as this skin wrenching emotional and scientific national debate continues.
In the meantime, we continue to play risky "cocktail" roulette with the health of our children.
Generation Rescue commissioned SurveyUSA, an independent opinion research team, to interview parents in nine counties in California and Oregon.
Methodology closely mirrored that used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish the national prevalence for neurological disorders such as "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder," "Attention Deficit Disorder," "Asperger's Syndrome," "Pervasive Development Disorder," "Not Otherwise Specified," or "Autism."
Roll Call, a leading publication for congressional news and information, recently drew attention to this survey that showed vaccinated boys had a 2.5 times higher risk of neurological disorders than unvaccinated boys, and calling for a national study to explore these disturbing results.
Based on interviews of 11,817 households, involving 17,674 children aged 417, the data showed:
Vaccinated boys, compared with unvaccinated boys, were 155 percent more likely to have a neurological disorder (relative risk RR 2.55), 224 percent more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.24, and 61 percent more likely to have autism (RR 1.61).
All vaccinated boys and girls, compared with unvaccinated children, were 120 percent more likely to have asthma (RR 2.20).
Comments J.B. Handley of Generation Rescue, "For less than $200,000, we were able to complete a study that the CDC, with an $8 billion a year budget, has been unable or unwilling to do. We think the results of our survey lend credibility to the urgent need to do a larger scale study to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children for neuro developmental outcomes."
At a press conference in summer 2005, Dan Olmsted of United Press International asked CDC Director Julie Geberding whether the government has ever looked at autism rates in the unvaccinated population.
She responded, "In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination . . . and I think this year we have record immunization levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated group) on a population basis that would be representative to look at incidence in that population compared to the other population would be something that could be done . . ."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:06 AM
Domestic Goddess Blog: Homebirth Resource
I really like this womans blog:
Go check out her Homebirth Resource Page....awesome!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 11:01 AM
WSJ: Happy Blogiversary
Ten Years!!!
"The consumption of blogs is often avid and occasionally obsessive. But more commonly, it is utterly natural, as if turning to them were no stranger than (dare one say this here?) picking one's way through the morning's newspapers. The daily reading of virtually everyone under 40 -- and a fair few folk over that age -- now includes a blog or two, and this reflects as much the quality of today's bloggers as it does a techno-psychological revolution among readers of news and opinion."
I think of myself as a blogging novice, but have to take the time to thank all of you who come in every month. This adventure of the past two years has been one of the most satisfying things I have ever taken on!
Total Traffic for Natural Family Blog as of today: (I started on July 4th, 2005)
Totals
KBytes - 3,4373,952
Visits - 148,625
Pages - 364,209
Files - 749,692
Hits - 960,734
For those of you who have come in as Unique Visitors (even writing the number 148,625 people is mind boggling to my sensibilities) and have bookmarked and come back and time or two....thankyou!
As I've said before, I am not a writer.
But I am a very opinionated mother. And now, a passionate blogger.
Let Freedom RING!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 8:13 AM
The JAWA report: Iraqis and American Soldiers dancing in Anbar streets!
JAWA:
Iraqis/Troops Dancing in the Streets!
Celebrating the Anbar Awakening:
Go Watch this video at Jawa, its really cool!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 8:10 AM
Breitbart: Valerie Plame's Lawsuit Dismissed
Valerie Plame's Lawsuit Dismissed
"WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge dismissed former CIA operative Valerie Plame's lawsuit against members of the Bush administration Thursday, eliminating one of the last courtroom remnants of the leak scandal.
Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had accused Vice President Dick Cheney and others of conspiring to leak her identity in Plame said that violated her privacy rights and was illegal retribution for her husband's criticism of the administration.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and said he would not express an opinion on the constitutional arguments. Bates dismissed the case against all defendants: Cheney, White House political adviser Karl Rove, former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage."
It bothers me somewhat to even give this case space on my blog, and I know that this last parting PIFF from the moonbattery of Wilson and his wife will go on for generations to come in certain peoples minds and in certain places in the deep dark recesses of the media and on the web, but hopefully, outside of the perfunctory Olivery Stone movie, this whole farce is over.
More here:
Quote from Hot Air:
"For the reasons given above, plaintiffs have failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted with respect to their four causes of action asserted directly under the Constitution. Furthermore, this Court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ claim for public disclosure of private facts."
"So the AP has evidently mischaracterized the ruling, and this case is dead, dead, dead."
Maybe Mr. Stone can give it a good hollywood ending, you know, Bush is impeached for crimes against humanity, Cheney is assasinated by a disgruntled Halliburton employee, and Scooter is given a lobotomy for even daring to try to defend himself from these imbeciles.
And of course, how can we forget the harbingers of truth themselves, the Wilsons?
Hmmm, a good Hollywood ending....
Valerie is ensconced in the White House as Head of the Thought Police in Hillarys Cabinet, and Ol' Joe himself is made Secretary General of the United Nations....Uhhh, can't do that, cause Bill Clinton has his eye on the job. Maybe Hill could make "Honest Abe Wilson" head of the "lost and secret files and documents" unit of her in house secret police force.
Nawwww.....
UPDATE: Movie about the Judith Miller part of this story is being cast and written....Ugghhhhh.
"'Truth' lures writer-director Lurie
Political drama parallels Plame case
By MICHAEL FLEMINGRod Lurie will next direct his script "Nothing but the Truth," a drama about a D.C.-based female newspaper reporter who outs a CIA agent and is imprisoned for refusing to reveal her source.
Cast is mobilizing for an October production start. Talks are under way for Kate Beckinsale to play the journalist, Matt Dillon the prosecutor, Vera Farmiga the CIA agent, Edie Falco (in her first role since "The Sopranos") the editor of the newspaper that published the story and Alan Alda the attorney who tries to free the reporter from jail.
Marc Frydman will produce and the Yari Film Group will finance. Bob Yari bought the spec script after working with Lurie on the Josh Hartnett-Samuel L. Jackson starrer "Resurrecting the Champ," which the Yari Film Group releases next month.
"Nothing but the Truth" parallels the case of Valerie Plame, whose status as a CIA agent was exposed in the media after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, wrote a New York Times op-ed piece charging the Bush administration with manipulating intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail to protect her sources, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of perjury, making false statements to federal investigators and obstruction of justice. President Bush commuted his 30-month jail sentence.
Lurie, who tackled D.C. politics with his breakthrough film "The Contender," aims to start his pic well ahead of a WB project that will be told from the vantage point of Plame and Wilson.
Jez and John Butterworth are already scripting the Warner pic and Akiva Goldsman and Jerry and Janet Zucker are producing."
I'm starting to feel really nauseated just reading these words...bleeech....
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:44 AM
July 19, 2007
A Day at the Beach
I took six young boys to the Boulder Res today. Each of my three sons invited a friend. It was really fun. And yes, we listened to Weird Al's Albeuquerque four times in the car.
Here is a slideshow:
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 4:17 PM
July 15, 2007
JOYFUL Freebirth: Jenny Hatch Births Benjamin Hatch
NOTES on this slide show:
At the end of this slide show I am shown singing the song, Families can be together forever, and then a short clip from A German Requiem is shared. This performance was with the Broomfield Choral Festival. I am standing in the back row on the left. This particular text from Brahms Requiem is simply "joyful JOYFUL! Joyful, Joyful....Joy EverLASTING, FOREVER on their heads....shall be. Joy and delight shall seize them and posses them, and pain and sighing, shall flee, shall flee, from them....Joy and delight shall seize them and posses them."
I did a huge blog entry last summer explaining my interpretation of the requiem. Go here to read it.
I believe the Biblical Texts Brahms chose to use for this master choral work is simply describing the Divine Feminine as defined by Husband and Wife Unassisted Birth.
Here is the text of my blog post on Joyful Freebirth:
These past few weeks I have been forced to consider once again the difficulty that comes into my life with the Promotion of Unassisted Childbirth. As I have participated in a variety of news, magazine, and online conversations about childbirth, it has been a rude awakening to realize how truly controversial this lifestyle is.
I am so in the habit of socializing with people who have reconciled our life choices, and don't feel the need to give us any grief about it, that when I am thrust into a situation where that old hostility rears its ugly head, it is always a shock to my sensibilities to listen to and read the pure venom that is reserved for those of us who have pulled away from the Birth Machine.
I have spent some quality time these past few weeks participating in online forums, blogs, and talking to reporters about Freebirth. I am so in the habit of thinking of this as a valid and realistic alternative to hospital birth, that it is easy to forget my own long journey to home birth and give others the same grace and space to reconcile it in their own minds.
I realized during a recent chat that those I was talking to wanted me to erase all of their fears and phobias around birth with a wave of a magic wand. They wanted me to reassure and give them the words and evidence that would allow them to let go of all of their own programming around birth fears and give the evidence that would enable them to quickly shift to a new way of thinking. Wether they knew it or not, this is an impossible task to request of any one person, and the reason why is because those who give birth at home unassisted are working in the faith realm. And for those steeped in medical childbirth, they are so far removed from faith, working in the fleshy realm of the tests, drugs, procedures, and practices of birth that to ask a person of faith to "hand over" a testimony of birth is an unrealistic request.
It is as if an atheist asked a person who believed in God to simplistically and without any effort on the atheists part, impart a faithful testimony of God into their heart.
Life does not work that way. In the faith realm, even after years of difficult reprogramming of mental attitudes towards birth, filling the mind with new beliefs, thrusting out of ones life the people, attitudes, and philosophies that are frustrating the freebirth process (and this is in fact the main reason I took on the task of doing my own prenatal care), and doing every proactive thing possible in terms of nutrition and exercise....even then....
GIVING BIRTH ALONE IS A LEAP OF FAITH!!!
Paul and I were talking about this topic during the days leading up to Bens Birth. We had been in email contact with another LDS couple who were planning an unassisted birth, and the mother had written, "If I could only be assured that nothing bad would happen, then I think I could give birth alone." She shared with us how she had begged the Lord to assure her that everything would be fine.... and the heavens were silent.
The question is, Would it have been a leap of faith on her part if the Lord had told her before the baby came, that everything would in fact be fine; no worries, no problems?
Nope. The law that governs the universe is the Law of Opposites. If couples want to work in the medical realm where every step of the way they can be assured by technology that "everything is fine", I believe they are cutting themselves off from the potential JOY and fulfillment that comes with the leap. Wether they are aware of it or not, they also welcome into their lives the various pitfalls and iantrogenic problems that accompany technological birth.
With unassisted birth, it often feels like a couple is standing on the edge of a cliff, with rocks and briars in the valley below. When that husband and wife make the decision to stand away from the edge, grasp hands, and then take a flying leap into the unknown, it can indeed look to outsiders as irresponsible as any intentional jump off a cliff would appear. Yet if that same couple claims the scriptural promises that Faith will indeed proceed the miracle, and assume that God will be waiting with outstretched hands to catch them before they hit bottom, the pure joy and happiness that can be a part of that union of Father, Mother, and Heavenly Father working in harmony together is difficult to put into words.
This is birth. It is a life and death moment. A mother walks into the valley of the shadow of death to grasp her childs hand and walk with him or her into mortality. The veil is very thin and during this moment, just about anything can happen.
Modern Medicine would never have been able to make the obscene amounts of money from the pelvic goldmine if this were not the case. Fathers and Mothers would have never submitted to the level of intervention and costs associated with allopathy, if this were not the case. Heck, Anakin Skywalker would have never become Darth Vadar if this were not the case.
So the question must be asked, How is it possible for me to convince you in a matter of days, weeks, or just a few months that the way I give birth is "safe, best for the baby, best for the family, and best for a husband and wifes married life together", if it took me years of difficult work to get to the place where I myself felt comfortable with it?
How could I find the words to convince you, if after all these years, I have barely been able to convince my own husband? And I can promise you we have spent more hours talking and discussing birth than just about any other subject in our life together.
That request, that I convince you with just a few written words that unassisted childbirth is safe and desirable, is simply impossible to do.
The challenge I have for those of you reading is to do your own research, to logically and systematically reason it out in your own mind, to learn for yourself the facts of making a healthy baby, and then when the time comes, TAKE THE LEAP OF FAITH THAT WILL LAND YOU SAFELY IN THE WORLD OF PROACTIVE PARENTING. Asking that I prove this with a study or a statistic is simply impossible.
Yet, being personally responsible for this life choice will change everything in your life. Few things have affected me so profoundly as taking personal responsibility for my own life, my own health, and my childrens heath. The satisfaction and thrill that I have felt these past ten years since making the determination that this was what I was going to do, has brought amazing amounts of joy, pure spirit, pure love into my life. Conversely, and this is the law of opposites kicking in again, making this decision has also brought incredible amounts of pain and trauma into my heart.
I have reconciled my life choices. But many around me have NOT reconciled my life choices, especially as it relates to their own life experiences. Non conformity has a price. And it is up to each individual couple how much of a price they are willing to pay for that non conforming to societies expectations and rules of conduct.
Like it or not, we live in a world where technology is God. All of the civic laws, rules of conduct, expectations, and assumptions revolve around that reality. And when you step out of that reality into something completely different, it can make those around you assume that you have lost your marbles. Some individuals are better able to reconcile that rejection and reality. Some are not able, and often divorce or even death results. I have known several unassisted birthing mothers who simply died. No, not during the birth, but in the months after the birth, once the rejection from peers reached fever pitch, a couple of them have simply died. Mostly of heart attack, heart ache. I believe they could not reconcile the reality of the amazing joy and sacredness of the birth experience with all of the layers of dung being thrown at them afterwards by family, friends, social workers, doctors, and society in general.
So, how to do we go from a society that is running at a dead heat towards technological interventions as God, to a society where God is God and we have the faith and trust to believe in him and claim his promises as our own?
I have a few ideas for how this is going to happen. But I am not going to share them in this post. I will share a scripture however, and leave it up to you the reader to ponder it in your own mind.
The Lord will wash away the filth.
Preparing a people for the Millennium.
If anyone believes that Zion living and Zion families are going to be the fruit of Babylonian Birthing and Babylonian living, well, I am not going to try to convince you otherwise.
But I will end this post by sharing my testimony.
I testify in the name of Jesus Christ that a powerful, real, unbreakable bond is created between a father and his children when he is the first to touch that child after birth. This first touching is the key to hearts being melded together in eternal love. If we don't move towards this type of birth, this type of living, we move step by step away from the spirit of Elijah, towards that wasting place of the whole purpose of the earth being frustrated.
Please consider these realities when making these most important health decisions for yourself and your child. And go find out for yourself if a faith leap around birth makes sense for you and your family.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 12:02 PM
July 14, 2007
Hugh Hewitt and ABCnews.coms Jake Tapper
When you have an hour or so, go check out the whole thing, covered in three posts: Here, Here, and Here.
And this is the post that started it all: Go Here
Mr. Hewitt does have a way with words....
"I have just concluded a 60 minute interview with ABCNews.com's Jake Tapper, which concluded with Jake promising me that "it is my intention to put up as much of this as possible," which means the public will have available to it a quite spirited discussion of MSM and its ethics, as well as David Vitter's troubles, old journalism's biases, and Mitt Romney and my book."
"It isn't journalism they practice, but a sort of high-end yodeling: shouting out cliches which, when echoed back, they take for proof positive of their prejudices. It is all very amusing --until you realize that the lives of millions of Iraqis and eventually millions of Americans areimperiled by their collective incompetence. Walter Duranty was knowing dupe of mass murderers, and this generation of MSM dupes are not knowing at all. But their reckless disregard for the obvious consequences of their one-sided approach to the war and politics will be as infamous as Duranty's, and the disdain for their "work" just as deep a generation down the road."
And this:
"Mr. Tapper requested that Hugh, in his position of influence, give MSM the benefit of the doubt in how they are trying to do their job. Perpahs that can begin the moment the same MSM, in their position of influence, begin to give General Petraeus and the troops the same benefit of the doubt by covering the sincerity and intent of their job, and fairly report on the progress and outcome of the surge."
Once again, Mr. Hewitt is spot on with his analysis of dino media. Go Hugh GO!
PS I've mentioned before that one of my favorite sports is watching the slow and painful death of old media. It brings so much joy to my heart, and has provided many laugh out loud moments of fun and revelry at our house. Go read this entry, lately it has been getting tons of traffic....har har
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:58 PM
News Target: Free Speech and Dietary Supplements: A health freedom speech by Rep. Ron Paul
Free Speech and Dietary Supplements: A health freedom speech by Rep. Ron Paul
*Please note this speech was given in 2005, and this bill was recently killed by Nancy Pelosi.
"Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Health Freedom Protection Act. This bill restores the First Amendment rights of consumers to receive truthful information regarding the benefits of foods and dietary supplements by codifying the First Amendment standards used by federal courts to strike down the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) efforts to censor truthful health claims. The Health Freedom Protection Act also stops the Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) from censoring truthful health care claims.
.....Mr. Speaker, if we are serious about putting people in charge of their health care, then shouldn't we stop federal bureaucrats from preventing Americans from learning about simple ways to improve their health. I therefore call on my colleagues to stand up for good health care and the First Amendment by cosponsoring the Health Freedom Protection Act."
HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
BEFORE THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
November 10, 2005
Thanks for trying Doctor Paul!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:47 PM
Front Page Magazine: Who Killed Health Care?
Regina Herzlinger, a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow who was the first woman to EARN tenure at the Harvard Business School as the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration. She has been dubbed “the godmother of consumer-driven health care” by Money and a “health care heretic” by The Economist for her bold consumer-oriented views.
Good Stuff over at Front Page.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:25 PM
July 13, 2007
The White House: President Bush: Press Conference by the President
Press Conference by the President
"As President, my most solemn responsibility is to keep the American people safe. So on my orders, good men and women are now fighting the terrorists on the front lines in Iraq. I've given our troops in Iraq clear objectives. And as they risk their lives to achieve these objectives, they need to know they have the unwavering support from the Commander-in-Chief, and they do. And they need the enemy to know that America is not going to back down. So when I speak to the American people about Iraq, I often emphasize the importance of maintaining our resolve and meeting our objectives."
President George W. Bush
July 12, 2007
Not so fast, says a democrat controlled congress, who seem to forget that they have absolutely no authority over the war except as related to funding it. Nancy, Harry, why don't you two go read the constitution and remind yourselves WHO the commander in chief of our armed forces is.
HuffPo: House Votes for Withdrawal From Iraq
"Within hours, the House voted to withdraw U.S. troops by spring.
The House measure passed 223-201 in the Democratic-controlled chamber despite a veto threat from President Bush, who has ruled out any change in war policy before September.
......A few hours after Bush's remarks, Democratic leaders engineered passage of legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops to begin within 120 days, and to be completed by April 1, 2008. The measure envisions a limited residual force to train Iraqis, protect U.S. assets and fight al-Qaida and other terrorists.
The vote generally followed party lines: 219 Democrats and four Republicans in favor, and 191 Republicans and 10 Democrats opposed.
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., voted for troop withdrawals for the first time, contending that while she still opposes a swift pullout, "staying in Iraq indefinitely is equally unacceptable."
"The report makes clear that not even the White House can conclude there has been significant progress," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif."
To Bush and others who seek more time for the administration's policy to work, she said, "We have already waited too long."
Here is the text of President Bushs whole press conference, (With video and audio links).
Paul and I watched it live and we were both thrilled by his continued strong stance.
Text of Conference, with questions and answers by the press included (My comments are in intalics):
10:31 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Thank you. Yesterday, America lost an extraordinary First Lady and a fine Texan, Lady Bird Johnson. She brought grace to the White House and beauty to our country. On behalf of the American people, Laura and I send our condolences to her daughters, Lynda and Luci, and we offer our prayers to the Johnson family.
Before I answer some of your questions, today I'd like to provide the American people with an update on the situation in Iraq. Since America began military operations in Iraq, the conflict there has gone through four major phases. The first phase was the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein. The second phase was the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people and the holding of free elections. The third phase was the tragic escalation of sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
We've entered a fourth phase: deploying reinforcements and launching new operations to help Iraqis bring security to their people. I'm going to explain why the success of this new strategy is vital for protecting our people and bringing our troops home, which is a goal shared by all Americans. I'll brief you on the report we are sending to Congress. I'll discuss why a drawdown of forces that is not linked to the success of our operations would be a disaster.
As President, my most solemn responsibility is to keep the American people safe. So on my orders, good men and women are now fighting the terrorists on the front lines in Iraq. I've given our troops in Iraq clear objectives. And as they risk their lives to achieve these objectives, they need to know they have the unwavering support from the Commander-in-Chief, and they do. And they need the enemy to know that America is not going to back down. So when I speak to the American people about Iraq, I often emphasize the importance of maintaining our resolve and meeting our objectives.
As a result, sometimes the debate over Iraq is cast as a disagreement between those who want to keep our troops in Iraq and those who want to bring our troops home. And this is not the real debate. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to see the day when our brave servicemen and women can start coming home.
In my address to the nation in January, I put it this way: If we increase our support at this crucial moment we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home. The real debate over Iraq is between those who think the fight is lost or not worth the cost, and those that believe the fight can be won and that, as difficult as the fight is, the cost of defeat would be far higher.
I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must. So we're working to defeat al Qaeda and other extremists, and aid the rise of an Iraqi government that can protect its people, deliver basic services, and be an ally in the war against these extremists and radicals. By doing this, we'll create the conditions that would allow our troops to begin coming home, while securing our long-term national interest in Iraq and in the region.
When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq it will be because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it will be good politics. The strategy I announced in January is designed to seize the initiative and create those conditions. It's aimed at helping the Iraqis strengthen their government so that it can function even amid violence. It seeks to open space for Iraq's political leaders to advance the difficult process of national reconciliation, which is essential to lasting security and stability. It is focused on applying sustained military pressure to rout out terrorist networks in Baghdad and surrounding areas. It is committed to using diplomacy to strengthen regional and international support for Iraq's democratic government.
Doing all these things is intended to make possible a more limited role in Iraq for the United States. It's the goal outlined by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. It's the goal shared by the Iraqis and our coalition partners. It is the goal that Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus and our troops are working hard to make a reality.
Our top priority is to help the Iraqis protect their population. So we have launched an offensive in and around Baghdad to go after extremists, to buy more time for Iraqi forces to develop, and to help normal life and civil society take root in communities and neighborhoods throughout the country. We're helping enhance the size, capabilities and effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces so the Iraqis can take over the defense of their own country. We're helping the Iraqis take back their neighborhoods from the extremists. In Anbar province, Sunni tribes that were once fighting alongside al Qaeda against our coalition are now fighting alongside our coalition against al Qaeda. We're working to replicate the success in Anbar and other parts of the country.
Two months ago, in the supplemental appropriations bill funding our troops, Congress established 18 benchmarks to gauge the progress of the Iraqi government. They required we submit a full report to Congress by September the 15th. Today my administration has submitted to Congress an interim report that requires us to assess -- and I quote the bill -- "whether satisfactory progress toward meeting these benchmarks is or is not being achieved."
Of the 18 benchmarks Congress asked us to measure, we can report that satisfactory progress is being made in eight areas. For example, Iraqis provided the three brigades they promised for operations in and around Baghdad. And the Iraqi government is spending nearly $7.3 billion from its own funds this year to train, equip and modernize its forces. In eight other areas, the Iraqis have much more work to do. For example, they have not done enough to prepare for local elections or pass a law to share oil revenues. And in two remaining areas, progress was too mixed to be characterized one way or the other.
Those who believe that the battle in Iraq is lost will likely point to the unsatisfactory performance on some of the political benchmarks. Those of us who believe the battle in Iraq can and must be won see the satisfactory performance on several of the security benchmarks as a cause for optimism. Our strategy is built on a premise that progress on security will pave the way for political progress. So it's not surprising that political progress is lagging behind the security gains we are seeing. Economic development funds are critical to helping Iraq make this political progress. Today, I'm exercising the waiver authority granted me by Congress to release a substantial portion of those funds.
The bottom line is that this is a preliminary report and it comes less than a month after the final reinforcements arrived in Iraq. This September, as Congress has required, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will return to Washington to provide a more comprehensive assessment. By that time, we hope to see further improvement in the positive areas, the beginning of improvement in the negative areas. We'll also have a clearer picture of how the new strategy is unfolding, and be in a better position to judge where we need to make any adjustments.
I will rely on General Petraeus to give me his recommendations for the appropriate troop levels in Iraq. I will discuss the recommendation with the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will continue consultations with members of the United States Congress from both sides of the aisle, and then I'll make a decision.
I know some in Washington would like us to start leaving Iraq now. To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region, and for the United States. It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we'd be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we'd allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.
The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that's unfolding across the region. The same region in Iran -- the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map is also providing sophisticated IEDs to extremists in Iraq who are using them to kill American soldiers. The same Hezbollah terrorists who are waging war against the forces of democracy in Lebanon are training extremists to do the same against coalition forces in Iraq. The same Syrian regime that provides support and sanctuary for Islamic jihad and Hamas has refused to close its airport in Damascus to suicide bombers headed to Iraq. All these extremist groups would be emboldened by a precipitous American withdrawal, which would confuse and frighten friends and allies in the region.
Nations throughout the Middle East have a stake in a stable Iraq. To protect our interests and to show our commitment to our friends in the region, we are enhancing our military presence, improving our bilateral security ties, and supporting those fighting the extremists across the Middle East. We're also using the tools of diplomacy to strengthen regional and international support for Iraq's democratic government.
So I'm sending Secretary Gates and Secretary Rice to the region in early August. They will meet with our allies, reemphasize our commitment to the International Compact of Sharm el Sheikh, reassure our friends that the Middle East remains a vital strategic priority for the United States.
There is a conversion of visions between what Iraqi leaders want, what our partners want and what our friends in the region want, and the vision articulated by my administration, the Iraq Study Group and others here at home. The Iraqis do not want U.S. troops patrolling their cities forever, any more than the American people do. But we need to ensure that when U.S. forces do pull back that terrorists and extremists cannot take control.
The strategy that General Petraeus and the troops he commands are now carrying out is the best opportunity to bring us to this point. So I ask Congress to provide them with the time and resources they need. The men and women of the United States military have made enormous sacrifices in Iraq. They have achieved great things, and the best way to begin bringing them home is to make sure our new strategy succeeds.
And now I'll be glad to answer a few questions, starting with Ms. Thomas.
Q Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point -- bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don't you understand, you brought the al Qaeda into Iraq.
Come on Helen, what a stupid analysis of the situation....
THE PRESIDENT: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course.
Q Didn't we go into Iraq --
THE PRESIDENT: It was his decision to make. Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make, to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq. I firmly believe the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. Now the fundamental question facing America is will we stand with this young democracy, will we help them achieve stability, will we help them become an ally in this war against extremists and radicals that is not only evident in Iraq, but it's evident in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan.
We're at the beginning stages of a great ideological conflict between those who yearn for peace and those who want their children to grow up in a normal, decent society, and radicals and extremists who want to impose their dark vision on people throughout the world. Iraq is obviously -- Helen, it's got the attention of the American people, as it should; this is a difficult war and it's a tough war. But as I have consistently stated throughout this presidency, it is a necessary war to secure our peace.
I find it interesting that as this young democracy has taken hold, radicals and extremists kill innocent people to stop its advance. And that ought to be a clear signal to the American people that these are dangerous people and their ambition is not just contained to Iraq. Their ambition is to continue to hurt the American people. My attitude is we ought to defeat them there so we don't have to face them here, and that we ought to defeat their ideology with a more hopeful form of government.
Terry.
Q Mr. President, you're facing a rebellion from Republican -- key Republican senators who want you to change course and begin reducing the U.S. combat role. Given the mixed report that you present today, how do you persuade Republicans to stick with you as they look ahead to the next elections?
THE PRESIDENT: A couple of things. First of all, I respect those Republicans that you're referring to. I presume you're referring to friends of mine, like Lugar -- Senator Lugar, Domenici, yes. These are good, honorable people. I've spoken to them and I listen very carefully to what they have to say.
First of all, they share my concern that a precipitous withdrawal would embolden al Qaeda. And they also understand that we can't let al Qaeda gain safe haven inside of Iraq. I appreciate their calls and I appreciate their desire to work with the White House to be in a position where we can sustain a presence in Iraq.
What I tell them is this, just what I've told you, is that as the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military ever, I have an obligation, a sincere and serious obligation, to hear out my commander on the ground. And I will take his recommendation. And as I mentioned, to talk to Bob Gates about it, as well as the Joint Chiefs about it, as well as consult with members of the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, as I make a decision about the way forward in Iraq.
And so I -- you know, I value the advice of those senators. I appreciate their concerns about the situation in Iraq, and I am going to continue listening to them.
Toby.
Q Mr. President, in addition to members of your own party, the American public is clamoring for a change of course in Iraq. Why are you so resistant to that idea, and how much longer are you willing to give the surge to work before considering a change in this policy?
THE PRESIDENT: First, I understand why the American people are -- you know, they're tired of the war. There is -- people are -- there is a war fatigue in America. It's affecting our psychology. I've said this before. I understand that this is an ugly war. It's a war in which an enemy will kill innocent men, women and children in order to achieve a political objective. It doesn't surprise me that there is deep concern amongst our people.
Part of that concern is whether or not we can win; whether or not the objective is achievable. People don't want our troops in harm's way if that which we are trying to achieve can't be accomplished. I feel the same way. I cannot look a mother and father of a troop in the eye and say, I'm sending your kid into combat, but I don't think we can achieve the objective. I wouldn't do that to a parent or a husband or wife of a soldier.
I believe we can succeed and I believe we are making security progress that will enable the political tract to succeed, as well. And the report, by the way, which is, as accurately noted, is being submitted today, is written a little less than a month after the full complement of troops arrived.
I went to the country in January and said I have made this decision. I said what was happening on the ground was unsatisfactory in Iraq. In consultation with a lot of folks, I came to the conclusion that we needed to send more troops into Iraq, not less, in order to provide stability, in order to be able to enhance the security of the people there. And David asked for a certain number of troops -- David Petraeus asked for a certain number -- General Petraeus asked for a certain number of troops, and he just got them a couple of weeks ago.
Military -- it takes a while to move our troops, as the experts know. You just can't load them all in one airplane or one big ship and get them into theater. We had to stage the arrival of our troops. And after they arrived in Iraq, it took a while to get them into their missions. Since the reinforcements arrived, things have changed.
For example, I would remind you that Anbar province was considered lost. Maybe some of you reported that last fall. And yet, today, because of what we call bottom-up reconciliation, Anbar province has changed dramatically. The same thing is now beginning to happen in Diyala province. There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where violence is down. There are still car bombs, most of which have the al Qaeda signature on them, but they're declining. In other words, so there's some measurable progress.
And you asked, how long does one wait? I will repeat, as the Commander-in-Chief of a great military who has supported this military and will continue to support this military, not only with my -- with insisting that we get resources to them, but with -- by respecting the command structure, I'm going to wait for David to come back -- David Petraeus to come back and give us the report on what he sees. And then we'll use that data, that -- his report to work with the rest of the military chain of command, and members of Congress, to make another decision, if need be.
Yes, Martha.
Q You talk about all the troops now being in place, and only in place the last three weeks or a month. Yet three-quarters of the troops for the surge were in place during the period when this July interim report was written. Are you willing to keep the surge going, no matter what General Petraeus says, if there is no substantial Iraqi political progress by September?
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. You're asking me to speculate on what my frame of mind will be in September, and I would just ask that you give -- General Petraeus to come back and brief me. And then, of course, I'll be glad to answer your questions along that line.
Q But there has been no substantial political progress, even with three-quarters of the troops in there.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I mentioned --
Q Will you keep that going through September, even if there isn't?
Give it up moron, he told you what he intended to do.
THE PRESIDENT: Martha, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we have felt all along that the security situation needed to change in order for there to be political progress. It's very hard for a young democracy to function with the violence that was raging. Secondly, there's a lot of -- a lot of the past that needs to be worked through the system. I mean, living under the brutal tyrant Saddam Hussein created a lot of anxiety and a lot of tensions and a lot of rivalry, and it's going to take a while to work it through. But they couldn't work through those tensions and rivalries in the midst of serious violence.
And so the strategy was, move in more troops to cause the violence to abate. And that's what David Petraeus will be reporting on.
Yes, Jim.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. A question for you about the process you're describing of your decision-making as Commander-in-Chief. Have you entertained the idea that at some point Congress may take some of that sole decision-making power away, through legislation? And can you tell us, are you still committed to vetoing any troop withdrawal deadline?
Have you entertained the idea that Congress could stage a revolt and completely ignore their constitutional duties and take over YOUR JOB???
THE PRESIDENT: You mean in this interim period? Yes. I don't think Congress ought to be running the war. I think they ought to be funding our troops. I'm certainly interested in their opinion, but trying to run a war through resolution is a prescription for failure, as far as I'm concerned, and we can't afford to fail.
I'll work with Congress; I'll listen to Congress. Congress has got all the right to appropriate money. But the idea of telling our military how to conduct operations, for example, or how to deal with troop strength, I don't think it makes sense. I don't think it makes sense today, nor do I think it's a good precedent for the future. And so the role of the Commander-in-Chief is, of course, to consult with Congress.
Q So if Reed-Levin or anything like it were to pass and set a --
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I would hope they wouldn't pass, Jim. But I --
Q But what if they've got --
THE PRESIDENT: Let me make sure you understand what I'm saying. Congress has all the right in the world to fund. That's their main involvement in this war, which is to provide funds for our troops. What you're asking is whether or not Congress ought to be basically determining how troops are positioned, or troop strength. And I don't think that would be good for the country.
David.
Q Mr. President, you've said many times this war at this stage is about the Iraqi government creating a self-sustaining, stable government. Last November, your own CIA Director, according to The Washington Post, told you about that government: "The inability of the government to govern seems irreversible. He could not point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around." And he said, in talking about the government, that it's balanced, but it cannot function.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q When you heard that, since that point, you think of how many hundreds of soldiers have been killed, how much money has been spent. Why shouldn't people conclude that you are either stubborn, in denial, but certainly not realistic about the strategy that you've pursued since then?
THE PRESIDENT: You know, it's interesting, it turns out Mike Hayden -- I think you're quoting Mike Hayden there -- was in this morning to give me his weekly briefing, and I asked him about that newspaper article from which you quote. His answer was -- his comments to the Iraq Study Group were a little more nuanced than the quotation you read.
He said that he made it clear the current strategy in Iraq wasn't working -- this is his recollection of the briefing to the Iraq Study Group. He briefed them to the fact it wasn't working and that we needed a change of direction. He also said that those who suggest that we back away and let the Iraqi government do -- this is in November 2006 -- let the Iraqis handle it, don't understand the inability of the Iraq government at that time to take on that responsibility.
He then went on to say -- this is what he -- his recollection of his conversation -- was that our strategy needed to help get the violence down so that there could be political reconciliation from the top down, as well as the bottom up.
There has been political reconciliation, Martha, from the bottom up. Anbar province is a place where the experts had -- an expert had said that it was impossible for us to achieve our objective. This was the part of the country of Iraq where al Qaeda had made it clear that they would like to establish a safe haven from which to plan, plot further attacks, to spread their ideology throughout the Middle East. Since then, since this November 2006 report, and since that statement to the Iraq Study Group, things have changed appreciably on the ground in Anbar province.
And they're beginning to have the same change -- because the people on the ground there are sick and tired of violence and being threatened by people like al Qaeda, who have no positive vision for the future. And there's been a significant turn, where now Sunni sheikhs and Sunni citizens are working with the coalition to bring justice to al Qaeda killers. And that same approach is being taken in Diyala.
And so there's a lot of focus, and should be, frankly, on oil laws or elections. But remember, there's another political reconciliation track taking place, as well, and that's the one that's taking place at the grassroots level. Mike Hayden talked about that, as well.
Q But you think you've been realistic about the strategy and what's possible?
THE PRESIDENT: Well -- thank you for the follow-up -- nothing has changed in the new room. Anyway -- yes. As I told you last November, right about this time, I was part of that group of Americans who didn't approve of what was taking place in Iraq because it looked like all the efforts we had taken to that point in time were about to fail. In other words, sectarian violence was really raging. And I had a choice to make, and that was to pull back, as some suggested, and hope that the chaos and violence that might occur in the capital would not spill out across the country, or send more troops in to prevent the chaos and violence from happening in the first place -- and that's the decision I made. So it was a realistic appraisal by me.
What's realistic, as well, is to understand the consequences of what will happen if we fail in Iraq. In other words, people aren't just going to be content with driving America out of Iraq. Al Qaeda wants to hurt us here. That's their objective. That's what they would like to do. They have got an ideology that they believe that the world ought to live under, and that one way to help spread that ideology is to harm the American people, harm American interests. The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.
So I've been realistic about the consequences of failure. I have been realistic about what needs to happen on the ground in order for there to be success. And it's been hard work, and the American people see this hard work. And one of the reasons it is hard work is because on our TV screens are these violent killings, perpetuated by people who have done us harm in the past. And that ought to be a lesson for the American people, to understand that what happens in Iraq and overseas matters to the security of the United States of America.
Yes, ma'am.
Q But, sir, on that point, what evidence can you present to the American people that the people who attacked the United States on September the 11th are, in fact, the same people who are responsible for the bombings taking place in Iraq? What evidence can you present? And also, are you saying, sir, that al Qaeda in Iraq is the same organization being run by Osama bin Laden, himself?
THE PRESIDENT: Al Qaeda in Iraq has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And the guys who had perpetuated the attacks on America -- obviously, the guys on the airplane are dead, and the commanders, many of those are either dead or in captivity, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But the people in Iraq, al Qaeda in Iraq, has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And we need to take al Qaeda in Iraq seriously, just like we need to take al Qaeda anywhere in the world seriously.
Let's see here. Working my way around here. Sheryl.
Q Mr. President, in Jordan in November, you stood by Prime Minister Maliki and said he's the right guy for Iraq. Given this report card today and given the lack of top-down political reconciliation, can you tell the American people that you still believe he's the right guy for Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: I believe that he understands that there needs to be serious reconciliation, a need to get law passed; firmly believe that. I have had a series of conference calls with the Prime Minister, as well as the presidency council. The presidency council, you have the President Talabani, you have the two Vice Presidents, al-Mahdi and Hashimi as well as the Prime Minister. And I have urged them to work together to get a law passed. It's not easy to get law passed through certain legislatures, like theirs. There's a lot of work that has to be done. And I will continue to urge, but --
Q Do you have confidence in them?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm almost through with the first one; I'll come back to the second one.
And so I'll continue to urge the Iraqis to show us that they're capable of passing legislation. But it's not just us, it's the Iraqi people. And what really matters is whether or not life is improving for the Iraqi people on the ground.
And, yes, I've got confidence in them, but I also understand how difficult it is. I'm not making excuses, but it is hard. It's hard work for them to get law passed. And sometimes it's hard work for people to get law passed here. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to work to achieve an objective, which is a government that is able to provide security for its people and provide basic services, and, as importantly, serve as an ally against these extremists and radicals.
Yes, sir.
Q Thank you, Mr. President --
THE PRESIDENT: No, not you. Michael.
Q Oh.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, was that harsh?
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Like the new hall, I should have been more gentle? (Laughter.) Do we ever use "kinder and gentler"? No.
Go ahead, Michael. And then you're next.
Q If I could just switch subjects for a second to another big decision you made recently, which was in the Scooter Libby case.
Barf, gag, I feel myself getting very very very nauseated at this point.....ug urp.....bleeech
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
Q You spoke very soberly and seriously in your statement about how you weighed different legal questions in coming to your decision on that commutation. But one issue that you did not address was the issue of the morality of your most senior advisors leaking the name of a confidential intelligence operator. Now that the case is over -- it's not something you've ever spoken to -- can you say whether you're at all disappointed in the behavior of those senior advisors? And have you communicated that disappointment to them in any way?
Why didn't you dudes in the press go after Armitage???? He's the one who suffers from leaky mouth syndrome.....
THE PRESIDENT: Michael, I -- first of all, the Scooter Libby decision was, I thought, a fair and balanced decision. Secondly, I haven't spent a lot of time talking about the testimony that people throughout my administration were forced to give as a result of the special prosecutor. I didn't ask them during the time and I haven't asked them since.
I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person, and I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, I did it. Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter? But it's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House, and it's run its course and now we're going to move on.
Wendell.
Q Mr. President, you have spoken passionately --
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I'm sorry.
Q Are you taking it away from me?
THE PRESIDENT: I am --
Q After doing the "fair and balanced," you're going to take it away -- (laughter.)
Q Ohhh. (Laughter.)
Q You're going to come back to me, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: You got the mic -- a possession deal, you know what I'm saying? (Laughter.)
Q Thank you, sir. You have spoken passionately about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Your critics say you failed to send enough troops there at the start, failed to keep al Qaeda from stepping into the void created by the collapse of Saddam's army, failed to put enough pressure on Iraq's government to make the political reconciliation necessary to keep the sectarian violence the country is suffering from now from occurring. So why should the American people feel you have the vision for victory in Iraq, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: Those are all legitimate questions that I'm sure historians will analyze. I mean, one of the questions is, should we have sent more in the beginning? Well, I asked that question, do you need more, to General Tommy Franks. In the first phase of this operation, General Franks was obviously in charge, and during our discussions in the run up to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein after he ignored the Security Council resolutions. My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes.
Now, history is going to look back to determine whether or not there might have been a different decision made. But at the time, the only thing I can tell you, Wendell, is that I relied upon our military commander to make the proper decision about troop strength. And I can remember a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, who said, we've reviewed the plan. I remember -- and seemed satisfied with it. I remember sitting in the PEOC, or the Situation Room, downstairs here at the White House, and I went to commander and commander that were all responsible of different aspects of the operation to remove Saddam. I said to each one of them, do you have what it takes? Are you satisfied with the strategy? And the answer was, yes.
We have worked hard to help this country reconcile. After all, they do have a modern constitution, which is kind of a framework for reconciliation. And after all, there was a significant series of votes where the people were given a chance to express their desire to live in a free society. As a matter of fact, 12 million Iraqis went to the polls.
What happened then, of course, is that the enemy, al Qaeda, attacks the Samarra Mosque, which, of course, created anxiety and anger amongst the Shia. And then all of a sudden the sectarian violence began to spiral. Reconciliation hadn't taken hold deep enough in society to prevent this violence from taking hold. And so I have a -- you know, I've got to decide whether or not it's okay for that violence to continue, or whether or not it makes sense for us to try to send more troops in to quell the violence, to give the reconciliation process further time to advance.
My concern is, is that as a result of violence and killing, there would be chaos. Now that's a state of affairs that thugs, like al Qaeda, need to survive. They like chaos. As a matter of fact, they like to create chaos in order to create conditions of fear and anxiety and doubt. Out of that chaos would come -- could come a further escalation of violence in the Middle East. And this is what's important for the American people to understand: That violence and that chaos would embolden extremist groups, whether they be Shia or Sunni, and they would then be into competition with each other.
Such chaos and violence would send a mixed signal to the Iranians, who have stated that they believe Israel ought to be wiped off the map. People would begin to wonder about America's resolve. Al Qaeda would certainly be in a better position to raise money and recruit. And what makes all this scenario doubly dangerous is that they have proven themselves able to attack us and kill nearly 3,000 of our citizens. And they would like to do it again.
And, therefore, the strategy has got to be to help this government become an ally against these people. What happens in Iraq -- and I understand how difficult it's been. It's been hard. I have received a lot of inspiration, however, from meeting with our troops, who understand the stakes of this fight, and meeting with their families. And we owe it to our troops to support our commanders -- smart, capable people who are devising a strategy that will enable us to succeed and prevent the conditions I just talked about from happening.
Ed -- no, John. Just kidding.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Your administration has cited al Qaeda leaders such as Zawahiri as saying that if we leave prematurely, it would be a glorious victory for al Qaeda. But the reason that we can't leave or haven't been able to leave is not because we're getting defeated in any way militarily, it's because the Iraqis can't get it together so far. So why can't we counter those messages, and obviously not withdraw precipitously, but begin some sort of gradual withdrawal that prevents ethnic cleansing, but also allows our military to get out?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, there's a lot of discussion about a scenario in which our troop posture would be to guard the territorial integrity of the country of Iraq, to embed and train, to help the Iraqi security forces deal with violent elements in their society, as well as keep enough Special Forces there to chase down al Qaeda. As a matter of fact, that is something that I've spoken in public about, said that's a position I'd like to see us in.
However, I felt like we needed to send more troops to be able to get the situation to quiet down enough to be able to end in that position.
And in terms of my own decision making, as I mentioned earlier, I definitely need to be in consultation, and will be, with General David Petraeus, who asked for the additional troops in the first place -- troops which have been in place, fully in place for about three weeks.
And so I would ask members of Congress to give the general a chance to come back and to give us a full assessment of whether this is succeeding or not. And it's at that point in time that I will consult with members of Congress and make a decision about the way forward -- all aiming to succeed in making sure that al Qaeda and other extremists do not benefit from a decision I might have to make.
Mark.
Q Yes, sir, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir. Mark. (Laughter.)
Q Thank you. Thank you, sir. How comfortable are you -- sir, how comfortable are you with your Homeland Security Secretary saying, in the face of no credible intelligence of an imminent threat against the United States, that he has a gut feeling that one is coming this summer? And, sir, what does your gut tell you?
THE PRESIDENT: My gut tells me that -- which my head tells me, as well -- is that when we find a credible threat, I'll share it with people, to make sure that we protect the homeland. My head also tells me that al Qaeda is a serious threat to our homeland, and we've got to continue making sure we've got good intelligence, good response mechanisms in place, that we've got to make sure we don't embolden them with -- by failing in certain theaters of war where they're confronting us, that we ought to continue to keep the pressure on them. We need to chase them down and bring them to justice before they come home to hurt us again.
And so it's a -- this is a serious issue that is going to outlast my presidency. As I say, this is the beginning stages of what I believe is a ideological conflict that -- where you've got competing visions about what the world ought to be like. What makes this more difficult than previous conflicts is that there's the asymmetrical use of power -- in other words, IEDs and suicide bombers are the main tactical device used by these thugs to try to achieve strategic objectives.
Their objective is to impose their vision on the world. Their objective is to drive the United States out of parts of the world. They want safe haven. They love a society where women have no rights, just like the society that they worked to impose with the Taliban on the women of Afghanistan. That's their vision. And it's in our interest to defend ourselves by staying on the offense against them. And it's in our interest to spread an alternative ideology.
We have done this before in our nation's history. We have helped people realize the blessings of liberty, even though they may have been our enemy. And freedom has an amazing way of helping lay the foundation for peace. And it's really important, as we head into this ideological struggle in the 21st century, that we not forget that liberty can transform societies.
Now, the interesting debate is whether or not a nation like Iraq can self-govern; whether or not these people even care about liberty. As you've heard me say before, I believe -- strongly believe -- that freedom is a universal value; that freedom isn't just for Americans, or Methodists, that freedom is universal in its application. And so when they voted in '05, I wasn't surprised -- I was pleased that the numbers were as big as they were, to defy that many threats and car bombers, but I wasn't surprised.
I also was not surprised at the resounding success of the various Iraq elections, I predicted success in a couple of chat rooms I was in, laughed to scorn, and then banned and thrust off the board when I called my liberal anti-war friends on their hypocrisy.... Go Here to read the whole story...
And this is the real challenge we face. And Iraq is just a part of a broader war against these jihadists and extremists, Mark. It is a -- we will be dealing with this issue for a while, just like we dealt with other ideologies for a while. It takes time for ideologies to take root.
I firmly believe that you'll see the democracy movement continue to advance throughout the Middle East if the United States doesn't become isolationist. That's why I've told you that I'm making sure that we continue to stay diplomatically involved in the region. Condi Rice and Bob Gates will be traveling there in early August, to continue to remind our friends and allies that we're -- one, we view them as strategic partners; and, secondly, that we want them to work toward freer societies, and to help this Iraqi government survive. It's in their interests that Iraq become a stable partner.
And I believe we can achieve that objective. And not only do I believe we can achieve, I know we've got to achieve the objective, so we will have done our duty. This is hard work. And one of the things I talked about in the opening comments was, do we do it now, or basically pull back, let the Gallup poll or whatever poll there are decide the fate of the country? And my view is, is that if that were to happen, we would then have to go back in with greater force in order to protect ourselves, because one of the facts of the 21st century is that what happens overseas matters to the security of our country.
Ed.
Q Good morning, Mr. President. Given the events on the ground in Iraq and the politics here at home, has U.S. military deployment to Iraq reached the ceiling, or can you allow any further military escalation?
THE PRESIDENT: You're trying to do what Martha very skillfully tried to get me to do, and that was to --
Q Can I have a follow-up?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, you can, because you're about to realize I'm not going to answer your question -- (laughter) -- except to say this: There's going to be great temptation to -- not "temptation," you won't be tempted, you will actually ask me to speculate about what David Petraeus will talk to us about when he comes home. And I just ask the American people to understand that the Commander-in-Chief must rely upon the wisdom and judgment of the military thinkers and planners. It's very important that there be that solid connection of trust between me and those who are in the field taking incredible risk.
And so, Ed, I'm going to wait to see what David has to say. I'm not going to prejudge what he may say. I trust David Petraeus, his judgment. He's an honest man. Those of you who have interviewed him know that he's a straight shooter, he's an innovative thinker. I was briefed by members of the CODEL that came back, that said that it appeared to them that our troops have high respect for our commanders in Baghdad, as do I.
Now, do you have a follow-up, perhaps another subject, another area, another --
Q Same subject.
THE PRESIDENT: Same question?
Q Different approach.
THE PRESIDENT: It's a different approach; yes, good. (Laughter.)
Q How hard is it for you to conduct the war without popular support? Do you, personally -- do you ever have trouble balancing between doing what you think is the right thing and following the will of the majority of the public, which is really the essence of democracy?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it is. And, first of all, I can fully understand why people are tired of the war. The question they have is, can we win it? And of course I'm concerned about whether or not the American people are in this fight. I believe, however, that when they really think about the consequences if we were to precipitously withdraw, they begin to say to themselves, maybe we ought to win this, maybe we ought to have a stable Iraq.
Their question, it seems like to me, is, can we succeed? And that's a very important, legitimate question for anybody to ask. I think many people understand we must succeed, and I think a lot of people understand we've got to wait for the generals to make these military decisions. I suspect -- I know this, Ed, that if our troops thought that I was taking a poll to decide how to conduct this war, they would be very concerned about the mission. In other words, if our troops said, well, here we are in combat, and we've got a Commander-in-Chief who is running a focus group -- in other words, politics is more important to him than our safety and/or our strategy -- that would dispirit our troops.
And there's a lot of constituencies in this fight -- clearly the American people, who are paying for this, is the major constituency. And I repeat to you, Ed, I understand that there -- this violence has affected them. And a lot of people don't think we can win. There's a lot of people in Congress who don't think we can win, as well, and therefore their attitude is, get out.
My concern with that strategy, something that Mike Hayden also discussed, is that just getting out may sound simple, and it may affect polls, but it would have long-term, serious security consequences for the United States. And so, Ed, sometimes you just have to make the decisions based upon what you think is right. My most important job is to help secure this country, and therefore, the decisions in Iraq are all aimed at helping do that job. And that's what I firmly believe.
A second constituency is the military. And I repeat to you, I'm pretty confident our military do not want their Commander-in-Chief making political decisions about their future.
A third constituency that matters to me a lot is military families. These are good folks who are making huge sacrifices, and they support their loved ones. And I don't think they want their Commander-in-Chief making decisions based upon popularity.
Another constituency group that is important for me to talk to is the Iraqis. Obviously, I want the Iraqi government to understand that we expect there to be reconciliation top down; that we want to see laws passed. I think they've got that message. They know full well that the American government and the American people expect to see tangible evidence of working together; that's what the benchmarks are aimed to do.
But they also need to know that I am making decisions based upon our security interests, of course, but also helping them succeed, and that a poll is not going to determine the course of action by the United States. What will determine the course of actions is, will the decisions that we have made help secure our country for the long run?
And, finally, another constituency is the enemy, who are wondering whether or not America has got the resolve and the determination to stay after them. And so that's what I think about, Ed.
You know, I guess I'm like any other political figure -- everybody wants to be loved, just sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved. And so when it's all said and done, Ed, if you ever come down and visit the old, tired, me down there in Crawford, I will be able to say I looked in the mirror and made decisions based upon principle, not based upon politics. And that's important to me.
Thank you all for your time. I loved being here at this new building. Thank you.
Q Can we just ask you about the al Qaeda intelligence report, please?
THE PRESIDENT: What was that? This is amazing.
Q I know, I know.
THE PRESIDENT: The new me.
The al Qaeda intelligence report.
Q The intelligence analysts are saying al Qaeda has reconstituted in areas of Pakistan, saying the threat to the West is greater than ever now, as great as 2001. What's --
THE PRESIDENT: Okay --
Q Okay, you tell us what --
THE PRESIDENT: I'm glad you asked, thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that opportunity to --
Q Thank you for coming back, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm happy to do it. This is not the new me. I mean, this is just an aberration. In other words --
Q It's over next time.
THE PRESIDENT: -- I'm not going to leave and then come back because somebody yells something at me.
Q Like China.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, exactly. (Laughter.) Thank you, David. I appreciate that. Exactly.
There is a perception in the coverage that al Qaeda may be as strong today as they were prior to September the 11th. That's just simply not the case. I think the report will say, since 2001, not prior to September the 11th, 2001.
Secondly, that because of the actions we have taken, al Qaeda is weaker today than they would have been. They are still a threat. They are still dangerous. And that is why it is important that we succeed in Afghanistan and Iraq and anywhere else we find them. That's our strategy, is to stay on the offense against al Qaeda.
Elaine asked the question, is it al Qaeda in Iraq? Yes, it is al Qaeda, just like it's al Qaeda in parts of Pakistan. And I'm working with President Musharraf to be able to -- he doesn't want them in his country; he doesn't want foreign fighters in outposts of his country. And so we're working to make sure that we continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda.
But no question al Qaeda is dangerous for the American people, and that's why -- as well as other people that love freedom -- and that's why we're working hard with allies and friends to enhance our intelligence. That's why we need terrorist surveillance programs. That's why it's important for us to keep -- you know, would hope Congress would modernize that bill. And that's why we're keeping on the offense.
Ultimately, the way to defeat these radicals and extremists is to offer alternative ways of life so that they're unable to recruit; that they can use -- they like to use frustration and hopelessness. The societies that don't provide hope will become the societies where al Qaeda has got the capacity to convince a youngster to go blow himself up. What we need to do is help governments provide brighter futures for their people so they won't sign up.
And the fundamental question facing the world on this issue is whether or not it makes sense to try to promote an alternative ideology. I happen to think it does. They say, he's idealistic. Yes, I'm idealistic, but I'm also realistic in understanding if there is not an alternative ideology presented, these thugs will be able to continue the recruit. They'll use hopelessness to be able to recruit. And so it's -- thank you for asking that question.
Thank you all.
END 11:30 A.M. EST
Thank you Mr. President. You still have a devoted and strong supporter in this Neo Con Mama. I have every hope and confidence that Iraq will be a thriving democracy in the near future, and look forward to traveling there to enjoy a wonderful vacation with my family.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:42 AM
Hugh Hewitt:Michael Yon reports from Baquba, Iraq that the surge appears to be working
Michael Yon reports from Baquba, Iraq that the surge appears to be working
"HH: Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?
MY: He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed. And you know, I’m kind of stretching a little bit, because we haven’t gone too far into it, but I can see it from my travels around, for instance, in Anbar and out here in Diyala Province as well.
Baghdad’s still very problematic. But there’s other areas where you can clearly see that there is a positive effect. And the first and foremost thing we have to do is knock down al Qaeda. And with them alienating so many Iraqis, I mean, they’re almost doing it for us. I mean, yeah, it takes military might to finally like wipe them out of Baquba, but it’s working. I mean, I sense that the surge is working. Reid is just wrong."
WOO HOOOOOO!!!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:37 AM
China Daily: Official's death sentence a warning
Official's death sentence a warning - paper
"BEIJING - China said on Thursday that the death sentence given to the former head of its drug and food watchdog for corruption was a warning to top officials.
Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, faces execution after a Beijing court on convicted him on Tuesday of graft and dereliction of duty.
He left his post before a recent wave of medicine safety scandals engulfed China. But state media have acclaimed the unusually harsh sentence as showing the Communist Party's determination to purge corruption."
Man, how would it be if our government made it a goal to send that sort of a message to our FDA???
"Zheng, 62, head of the drug and food agency from 1998 to 2005, took bribes worth some 6.5 million yuan ($850,000) from eight companies.
During his tenure, dozens died in China from fake or bad drugs and food products. In one of the most notorious cases, in 2004, at least 13 babies died of malnutrition in Anhui province after being fed fake milk powder with no nutritional value."
More at the New York Times: China Sentences Former Drug Regulator to Death
"The court accused Mr. Zheng of accepting about $850,000 in bribes in exchange for approving drug production licenses.
Worried that some of those drugs may be substandard, China is now reviewing more than 170,000 production licenses issued by food and drug agency over the past decade.
Some drug experts in China agreed that Mr. Zheng deserved the death sentence because abuses in the drug industry became widespread during his tenure."
Death Penalty for corruption in the drug industry. Hmmmmm, maybe China is on to something here.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:27 AM
July 12, 2007
News Target: FDA tyranny to become law: HR.2900 analysis by Richards and Adams
"On July 11, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 2900, blocking debate on the law and preventing the introduction of any amendments that might have provided meaningful drug safety protections for consumers. This action demonstrates that the House of Representatives, much like the Senate, is utterly controlled by Big Pharma and has abandoned any responsibility to defend the interests of the voters. Drug companies now have complete control over the U.S. Congress, and through a campaign of intense lobbying and financial influence, they have managed to easily water down a law that once proposed to end the American monopoly on pharmaceuticals and ban advertising on new drugs.
Instead of placing new restrictions on Big Pharma and the increasingly dangerous power of the FDA, this new law (a combination of HR.2900 and S.1082, when it is hammered out in conference) grants more power to the FDA while deepening the financial ties between the agency and drug companies. The law effectively surrenders America to a system of medical tyranny under which a criminally-operated FDA will continue to promote pharmaceuticals, censor nutritional education and discredit alternatives that threaten drug company profits. Nothing in the new law protects consumers' access to dietary supplements or natural medicine......"
......Notice, too, that this sellout crosses party lines and involves both Democrats and Republicans. Only one Congressman, Rep. Ron Paul (a Libertarian-leaning Republican), was attempting to introduce meaningful amendments that would protect the interests of the people. His efforts were blocked by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat......
The passage of this FDA reform law is merely one more sign of how thoroughly committed the U.S. Congress is to creating a future of death, disease and bankruptcy for the American people. You gotta give 'em kudos on consistency, however. At least the lawmakers are predictable.
Welcome to the United States of Big Pharma."
Byron Richards
"On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 the House passed HR.2900 without allowing the Ron Paul (R-TX) amendments to protect dietary supplements. Representatives Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), John Dingell (D-MI), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and others falsely proclaimed that they were doing America a favor by passing this sweeping FDA-supported legislation that grants the rouge agency more power and money, and even transforms it into a quasi drug company.
Both the House and Senate (S.1082) have made the fatally flawed assumption that the reason for so many deaths and injuries from drugs was due to the FDA's lack of resources. In reality, it is the INTENTION of FDA management that is the problem, combined with the simple fact that multiple drugs are extremely toxic and don't work as advertised. Giving the FDA more power and money will only cause the agency to speed more drugs onto the market faster with even less safety testing -- while abusing its power and actively stamping out competition to drugs.
FDA management is in bed with Big Pharma and this new legislation makes matters significantly worse through the creation of the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA. This new entity places the FDA in charge of drug design, drug patents, drug licenses, and the creation of new marketing entities/companies. Such a relationship with private industry is an unprecedented conflict of interest, totally at odds with drug safety. The current commissioner of the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. is little more than a Big Biotech sales rep with massive industry connections.
The House, like the Senate, will continue to allow direct to consumer advertising of new drugs with unknown risks -- a flagrant safety risk that will cost many people their lives. Congressional leaders said they couldn't prevent this advertisement for fear of violating the first amendment rights of drug companies. What a joke. The FDA routinely squashes the first amendment rights of American citizens to understand natural health options and the science that explains how they can prevent and treat disease. Thus, the first amendment argument is simply a matter of convenience.
The FDA wants to actively suppress information that will help people, yet allow highly risky and misleading promotion of toxic substances often for untested uses. The FDA even wants to prevent citizens from suing drug companies when they are injured, thus protecting Big Pharma. FDA tyranny, based on this type of arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power, is used to promote and protect the pharmaceutical industry while at the same time undermining the dietary supplement industry.....
....A new tone has been set. A new chart has been plotted. Congress has transformed the FDA into a quasi drug company with unprecedented new regulatory power to control all health options in America. How many deaths and injuries will it take for a comatose and medicinally-overdosed public to wake up?"
I believe it will take fifty years before America fully wakes up and realizes that we have sown the wind as a society and we are about to reap the WHIRLWIND....
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 10:05 AM
July 11, 2007
Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007
Watch the slide show on this site, Lady Bird was quite a woman.
RIP Sister
QUOTE:
"The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom"
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 4:37 PM
Eve Magazine: Freebirthing, Would you lock out the midwife?
Eve Magazine: Freebirthing, Would you lock out the midwife?
Meet the new ‘freebirthers’, who believe mums know best – strictly no docs, no drugs, no help allowed.
Sharon Wright reports
"On the night Tabitha O’Melay went into labour, there was no grabbing the pre-packed hospital bag while husband Karl pulled on his trousers in a panic and bundled her into the car. There was no ringing a midwife to say: ‘Get here quick!’ either. Tabitha turned off the lights and spent most of her labour alone, finally calling Karl so he could help her catch their baby.
Tabitha, 26, didn’t give birth to her third child without any medical assistance by accident. Seven-month-old Anatoly’s birth at their home in Missouri went exactly to plan. ‘I learned from my previous births that I didn’t want anyone observing me except Karl and my children,’ she says. ‘During labour with Anatoly I realised I didn’t even want them. I felt more calm and safe hiding in the birth tub or in the dark, alone. Giving birth without an audience just felt right.’
Welcome to freebirthing – a world where no doctors or midwives are allowed. This radical new trend is growing fast in the States, where going solo is a reaction to what freebirthers see as the medicalisation of birth gone mad. Almost a third of all births in the US are now Caesareans, the number rocketing by 40% in the last decade. Strict protocol on what counts as a ‘normal’ birth makes interventions such as induction, drugs and surgery routine. And with no NHS and complicated health insurance rules, a hospital birth can cost more than £3,000.
Freebirthers say hospitals have turned a natural process into a medical crisis. They are usually women who hated a previous hospital experience and are determined to have a natural birth this time round. But in states where it’s illegal for a midwife to attend a home birth or where it will cost you up to £1,800, people are turning to DIY. There are no official freebirth statistics, but the internet buzzes with women swapping stories."
To Subscribe to this Magazine Go Here.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 12:17 PM
Ann Blake Tracy on God's Healing Word Broadcast - Psychiatric Drugs - the spiritual nature
Ann Blake Tracy on God's Healing Word Broadcast - Psychiatric Drugs - the spiritual nature
And please click on this link to a follow along essential oils worksheet titled Essential Oils and Healing from a Christian Perspective.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:12 AM
Fox News: Chertoff Warns of Increased Summertime Al Qaeda Threat - Preparedness Links by Jenny Hatch
Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff Warns of Increased Summertime Al Qaeda Threat
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
WASHINGTON —
"U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given Al Qaeda's apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased Al Qaeda training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region......
Chertoff said he is convinced that terrorists are regrouping. "Our edge is technology and the vigilance of the ordinary citizen," he said."
Here are a couple of posts from The Natural Family BLOG that share tips and skills necessary for Family Survival during a Terrorist Attack:
72 Hour Kits (With a video Tour of the Hatch Storage Room)
72 Hour Kit Backpack Contents Explained in Detail (With Video and Pictures)
A Mother Think About Nuclear Survival
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:49 AM
July 10, 2007
Fox News: Study: Organic Fruit, Vegetables Better for the Heart
Study: Organic Fruit, Vegetables Better for the Heart
"Mitchell said that previously it had been hard to make comparisons between organic and conventionally grown produce because of difficulties in comparing soil quality, irrigation practices and the handling of harvested produce. But, for this study, researchers used data from a long-term project in which standardized farming techniques were used to reveal trends in crop productivity.
The team believes that the different levels of flavonoids in tomatoes are due to the absence of fertilizers in organic farming."
I think they meant to say, the absence of chemical fertilizers.
Good for the heart, and they also taste better!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 1:20 PM
Front Page: Anti War Moonbat puts bullet in heart of War Hero and Media yawns....
Media Silence on Antiwar Violence
Patrick Poole:
Airforce Airman Jonathan Schrieken, 22, is fighting for his life after being shot in the heart while standing outside his home near McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey on July 4th by a gunman intending to make an antiwar statement. Airman Schrieken, a loadmaster with the 6th Airlift Squadron based at McGuire, remains in critical condition at a Camden, New Jersey hospital. The antiwar gunman, Matthew J. Marren, killed himself after shooting Schrieken and left two suicide notes explaining that he was “mad at the government”.
Meanwhile, the establishment media ignores the story. The initial Associated Press report on the incident never mentions Marren’s motive for shooting Schrieken. The first media outlet to discuss Marren’s intent to make an antiwar statement on the 4th of July by killing a member of our military was Phillyburbs.com, and the story has only gained national attention after a post over the weekend at LittleGreenFootballs.com.
A member of Marren’s family described to Phillyburbs.com his reasons behind the attack:
Marren’s aunt, Terina Henderson of Trion, Ga., said she spoke to Marren’s mother yesterday who told her Marren left two notes, one in his home and one in his car, indicating he was upset with the government.
She said she did not know the exact wording in the notes, but said Marren was “mad at the government and wanted to make a statement … that’s why he did what he did on the Fourth of July.”
Over at LGF, a friend of the Schrieken family described the attack:
He had been on leave here in Ohio and got back to his home off base and was unpacking stuff from his car when this 22 year old guy walked up to him and asked him if he lived in the house. When Jon said yes, the guy said “not any more” and shot him point blank in the chest. He tried to shoot him again, but his gun jammed. Jonathan made it into the house. The guy then shot himself.
This makes it clear that Marren had nothing short of murder on his mind. Providentially, the gun jammed, allowing for Schrieken to escape into his house, where he lived with several other Airmen.
If Airman Schrieken had been an abortionist or homosexual, this story would be front page news for the New York Times and the lead story on CBS News with Katie Couric for at least the next month. But since Schrieken is serving in the military, even his hometown newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, has ignored this story."
My prayers are with Airman Schrieken as he fights for his life.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 1:09 PM
HuffPo: Michael Moore Blasts Blitzer: "Why Don't You Tell The Truth To The American People?"
Michael Moore Blasts Blitzer: "Why Don't You Tell The Truth To The American People?"
I LOVE Rachel Sklar over at the Huffington Post. Very funny lady. She has put together a nice overview of a recent interview Wolf Blitzer did with Michael Moore on CNN.
Here is her intro:
"Ooh, wow — somebody's going viral: Earlier this afternoon on CNN's "The Situation Room," Michael Moore went berzerko on Wolf Blitzer"
She has nice links and a video. I'm planning to go see Sicko, so I can blog it properly. My very first post at Free Republic was writing a movie review for Farenheit 9-11. I was enraged after watching that movie, especially since my brother was in Iraq when I went to see it.
I anticipate enjoying Sicko though because I have heard that in it Moore uses his special propaganda skills to take on Big Pharma. And that is a battle that only someone with MM's special Michigonian set of cahones should take on. As a fellow Michigander, I understand his debate style, use of certain gotcha tactics, and use of hyperbole to make a point. I met many people like him where I grew up. His accent is so familiar, it feels like being home.
I totally disagree that the answer for our health care is to socialize it, and I know he makes the case for socializing and that he is in fact going to be hammered by the evidence piling up about socialized countries ineptitude and inefficiency around medical care.
Privatizing the whole thing is the only way to sort our ways out of this health care mess.
However, I am happy to join an alliance with Mr. Moore in his desire to see the Pharmaceutical companies reigned in and held accountable for crimes against humanity, especially as related to psychiatric drugs. Click on this link to watch a short clip of Moore talking about Anti-Depressants. (Scroll down just a bit)
And the whole Movie:
More Here:
"The president of the Galen Institute, Grace-Marie Turner, who spoke to reporters during the call, said later that "I don't know how good he is a filmmaker, but he certainly is a master of hype."
Last week, her organization held a symposium on single-payer health care, the timing of which Mrs. Turner described as coincidental to the impending release of Mr. Moore's film.
Not that the release hasn't advanced her cause.
"It's created a buzz and what we're doing is trying to use the opportunity to get out what it's like to live under a single-payer system," she said."
I appreciate the conservatives (backed up by the pharma companies) using Moore's film to help educate the public about the dangers of socialism and socialized medicine. And I am completely on board with that effort, because Socialism as a political entity is indefensible. However, I wish those same Conservative Institutions would apply equal time to the very real hazzards of having our FDA in bed with the drug companies. I don't see it happening in the short term, but Ron Paul, who is running for President, as a doctor, understands this issue very well and I believe will help educate the public about the dangers of Big Pharma Running the world. Here is a video of him talking about it:
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:14 AM
July 8, 2007
Pageant season continues with the Hill Cumorah, Nauvoo, and Oakland pageants in July and the Castle Valley and Clarkston pageants in August
For those of you out and about during the summer, Mormon pageants are a sight to behold. I saw the Hill Cumorah Pageant when I was a teen. One of my old acting buddies is now the choreographer for the show, and it is an amazing experience to watch. From California to New York, these shows are a must see, and are free to the public!
Pageant season continues with the Hill Cumorah, Nauvoo, and Oakland pageants in July and the Castle Valley and Clarkston pageants in August. For more information Go Here.
Paul and I have set a goal to be actors in the Hill Cumorah Pageant sometime in the next ten years!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 8:11 PM
NRO: Victor Davis Hansen: Virtual War
Virtual War: We are on a collective animal farm
"For our more engaged and partisan elites, these outrages are more cause for politicking that prompt the old blame game. “The War on Terror” is now a mere bumper sticker, some sort of discredited neocon conspiracy to enrich Dick Cheney and shill for Israel, as the Left alleges unnecessary war abroad and at home a police state followed from trumping up the danger from radical Islam.
Like an oxygen-starved fish flopping about on the pier, we are frenetic, but also exhausted from the press wars over WMD, Halliburton, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Joe Wilson, and Valerie Plame. Most of those associated with the Iraqi war are either gone or had their reputations nearly ruined: Paul Bremmer, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and Paul Wolfowitz. Dick Cheney and George Bush are demonized as more the real threats for trying to stop al Qaeda than al Qaeda is for trying to wipe us out.
In short, we are much madder at ourselves than we are at the Islamic radicals who wage war to kill us. So while the terrorists keep at it, we keep at it too — suing in our courts over the rights of terrorists and enemy combatants.
Our senators demand only one answer from our generals — how soon can we flee the ‘mess’ in Iraq? Didn’t the Bush administration’s unwillingness to give aid to Hamas, or to negotiate with Syria and Iran, or sending too few or surging too many to Iraq cause our problems?
Can’t we subpoena the president, the vice president, or at least impeach somebody to express our furor? Isn’t there a word in the English lexicon worse than “the worst” for some blathering news reader to rant about George Bush each night on television?
We may disagree over why Westerners are bickering among themselves and why Muslims want to blow up innocent civilians. But the better question is Why does it all continue?
Simple. So far the Islamic radicals have failed to repeat mass murder of the magnitude of September 11.
Their only success in killing Westerners is in Iraq, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. And in the postmodern Western paradigm of least resistance, thus the response is simple. Get out of Iraq, then most of our losses cease and the good life goes on and on.
It is hard to describe the leftist approach to the present war, much less to lump together all its various strains. But a common, though unspoken, assumption is simply that so far Western intelligence services, law enforcement, and the U.S. military have so infiltrated, thwarted, scattered, or killed off enough jihadists that for the moment the Islamists no longer possess the ability to kill thousands more Westerners.
As long as that dodge from the terrorist bullet continues, we are thus freed up to bicker and slur — but only up to a certain fuzzy point where even the loud Left is somewhat hesitant to repeal the Patriot Act, stop wiretaps, shut down Guantanamo, withdraw from Iraq, ease up in Afghanistan, and let Iran be Iran. Do all that and today’s incompetent jihadists who can’t even light up a propane tank might well have better luck with a dirty bomb. We are on a collective Animal Farm: Good wiretaps bad!
The result is that we are ever so insidiously slouching back into a 1990s Clintonian mood of lackadaisicalness. If we get out of Iraq and 9/11 passes its sixth anniversary in quiet, we can relax and keep feeding al Qaeda a few diplomats, attaches, or soldiers in godforsaken places where they ought not be anyway.
If worse comes to worse, and al Qaeda gets greedy and harvests more than a few dozen, there is always the cruise missile or Operation Desert Something to bomb camps. But then we blink and get to go back to Paris, Anna Nicole’s ghost, Halliburton, and Dick Cheney’s shotgun. Soon the old Democratic two-step may return: Launch a Clinton cruise missile, followed by the landing party of Jimmy Carter to blame the launcher.
I wouldn’t suggest that such a strategy won’t work. While we speak, the formidable powers of globalized communications and commerce, Western popular culture, seductive egalitarianism, consumerism, and informality are relentlessly tearing down the hierarchies within the Muslim world.
Hence follows the real rage of the radical Islamists at our DVDs, Internet, cell phones, CDs, jeans, T-shirts, and belly buttons. Those manifestations of a frantic culture seems to drive Dr. Zawahiri himself almost to the point of giving up his Western-inspired infomercials.
Perhaps, there is no antidote to Westernization. In the end, Ahmed and Buffy will alike soon be smirking to a morning show or on The Simpsons, fake listening to rap, hypnotized by video games, discussing our addictions with worldwide Oprah, and nodding to Anderson Cooper’s banalities anyway.
But until we get there, in the exhaustion after Iraq, we are returning to our therapeutic attitude about the harvesting of our citizens here and there. We caricature and slander those in the West who install video cameras, interrogate killers at Gitmo, slug it out in Anbar — all on the expectation that Islamic killers won’t harvest any more than a half dozen or so Westerners each month.
And mostly those reaped in this virtual war will be soldiers, diplomats, or random citizens supposedly in the wrong job, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:58 PM
Hugh Hewitt: Woodenstock: The Day After
"Al Gore, the slapstick Odysseus, trying to get back to significance and moving further and further away. Run, Al, run. The country needs you to need yourself some more. Bring along Jimmy Carter, your party's other ball-and-chain. The former gave us the bitter politics of resentment and paranoia, the latter Khomeni's Iran. They ought to have a monument together --perhaps at Yasgur's farm."
Oh for the glory days before the internet, when politicians were gods and the little guy just had to keep his thoughts to himself. Poor, Poor, Al Gore.....
Al for president in 08 and Jimmy for Vice Pres. I think I'm going to be sicko....
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:53 PM
July 7, 2007
THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS Live Webcast With Dr. Ann Blake Tracy and Jim Lynn
THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS Live Webcast With Dr. Ann Blake Tracy and Jim Lynn
Ann Tracy is going to be on Jim Lynns radio show this week! Click on the link to get more information. Here is an article by Jim Lynn on Prescription drugs
The Spiritual Nature of Prescription Drugs
By Jim Lynn, Copyrighted 2007
“Just say no to drugs.” How many times have people heard this advice, yet still think nothing of going to the local pharmacy to pick up their drug prescriptions?
Drugs have become so mainstream; North America is awash in a sea of drugs, both legal and illegal. Prescription drugs have become so prevalent; traces of them are now showing up in the food chain and in our drinking water.1
What perhaps is most astounding is the number of people who die every year from adverse reactions to prescription drugs. The tally is so high, USA Today listed adverse drug reactions as the 4th leading cause of mortality on their list of Top Ten Killers in the USA.2
With such a record, the pharmaceutical industry (and the medical profession which prescribes drugs) would be considered criminal by any other civilized standard. However, prescription drugs are not only legal, they are encouraged by both modern medicine, and the Christian Church in the U.S.A.
That’s interesting because the Bible, the standard by which Christians live their lives, condemns the everyday use of any kind of drugs, potions, or spells, as well as poisoning or witchcraft. It’s called pharmakeia in the original text and can be found in Galatians 5:19-21.
When confronted with the teaching that God condemns pharmakeia, most Christians believe the Apostle Paul had to be referring to illegal drugs (like marijuana and heroin), when he wrote his letter to the Church at Galatia, surely not prescription drugs. They are at least right about the first part.
Narcotics and hallucinogenic drugs were not uncommon in 1st century AD. For instance, the Oracles of Delphi apparently used Datura, a kind of Jimson plant that contained powerful alkaloids, during their quests for visions.
So Christians have no trouble in defining pharmakeia within the parameter of mind altering or hallucinogenic drugs. It’s with the legal drugs that many Christians fail to see a dangerous and sinister spiritual connection.
In fact: If Christians were as much concerned about taking prescription drugs as they are about their children getting involved with illegal drugs, there would be far fewer deaths. That’s because deaths from adverse prescription drug reactions are many times greater then deaths caused by illegal drugs. As a matter of fact, deaths caused by illegal drugs did not muster up the numbers even to make the top ten killers list from USA Today. Yet many Christians fret over the latter (as though they are a scourge, and they are), while overlooking the physical and spiritual danger of the former.
Many Christians think legal drugs are different because they are part of our medical system. Simply said, they trust anyone wearing white robes to prescribe and dispense drugs. They do so without understanding that everything about the pharmaceutical industry violates the spiritual foundational truth and teaching of God.
There are many reasons why God condemns pharmakeia. Perhaps the primary reason is that God calls Himself Jehovah-rapha, God our Healer (Exodus 15:26). He wants us to look to Him for healing (to make us whole), because only He and what He has provided to us for healing can heal. King David acknowledged this foundational truth when he wrote:
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-- who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion…Psalm 103:2-4
When Christians place dependency on drugs, they unknowingly deny God the glory and the ability to heal them. I know this is a hard word of knowledge for many to accept, because many Christians depend on drugs. But they do so only because they do not see God in their heart and mind as their Healer. They think the age of divine healing is over, so their faith for healing is now bound to a lie (a work of the flesh) called pharmakeia.
God is a jealous God. So when we place our dependency in anything other than in God, we are in effect, turning our backs to Him. We are saying, “God is not sufficient for me. He cannot or will not heal me.”
That’s not to say we shouldn’t seek medical help from a physician. The problem, however, is most physicians are secular and know only pharmakeia, surgery and radiation. They do not know Yehovah-rapha or the healing provision He placed in the plant kingdom for our health and well-being. But in most cases it’s not the physician’s fault. Physicians only know to treat patients according to the modality they were taught.
God’s Word tells us, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits” (I John 4:1). And again, “Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil” (I Thessalonians 5:21-22)
If drugs actually worked and healed people, without killing or hospitalizing many of those who take them, you wouldn’t be reading this article. But drugs do not heal. They at best only suppress symptoms. At their worst they hospitalize over two million people and kill hundreds of thousands more every year.3 Does this sound like a good spirit (good medicine) to you?
We all should understand there is both good and bad medicine. The difference between the two is that good medicine only heals and never harms. Bad medicine never heals and kills. Drugs that kill in the name of healing are not from God. They belong to Satan.
God cannot embrace any medicine that kills or maims in the name of healing. Such a modality stands opposed to everything God stands for. God receives no glory in death. God receives glory in healing the sick!
The pharmaceutical industry has no interest in healing the sick. Its only interest is in selling more drugs, and getting as many people as it can started on drugs and keeping them there for the rest of their lives.4
That last sentence, “keeping them there for the rest of their lives,” plays a big role over what God is concerned with. When you read Galatians 5:21, you will see the following text: “Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The word “live” refers to everyday use, to be dependent upon, to make routine. In other words: To live by.
This brings us to the role drugs play in hospital emergency rooms and ICU’s. Drugs used here are used primarily on a temporary basis to stabilize patients for medical procedures and control of pain. Without question, when used in this manner, drugs have saved many lives. This is good!
People whose lives are saved in this manner do not normally stay on those drugs that saved them. It’s the people who “live” and stay on drugs to “manage” their lives that creates the spiritual dynamic opposed to God.
Today one can be prescribed drugs for almost any physical, lifestyle or emotional complaint: Male impotency, baldness, lack of sleep, arthritis, depression, pre and post menopause, acid reflux, anxiety, osteoporosis, acne, A.D.D., constipation and diabetes to name a few.
Drugs for these are many others of life’s complaints confuse us by counterfeiting the will of God in our lives. By creating alternative realities, the spirit behind these drugs can move us away from God’s will into an illusion, a false reality of truth.
God’s Word lists pharmakeia as a work of the flesh, because those who turn to drugs (and those who encourage their use) place dependency on a false reality (an illusion) instead of in God our Healer. It is an insidious scheme, one that has kept millions from knowing the power of healing afforded to them by God.
Healing of disease is one of God’s blessings to mankind. He never intended one should have to spend half their income on a man-made drug to live. He never intended that medicine should come at the price of “acceptable risk.” That’s why God created provisions for our well-being and placed those provisions in the plant kingdom for the generations of mankind to come (Genesis 1:29).
It is only the greed in man that creates a man-made substitute from those provisions and then foists them on an ignorant people as the latest miracle drug. The truth is all man-made drugs are far inferior to the real thing. They are but one reason why God calls us to be sober and avoid attacks from Satan (I Peter 5:8).
But God didn’t place every provision for healing in the plant kingdom. For He knew there would also be illnesses and disease visited on man through man’s sins of the heart. These sins include fear, worry, jealously, hatred, guilt and the like. The spiritual root cause causing these certain diseases require a cleansing of the heart only God can reach for healing to become reality.
As long as mankind looks to itself for answers to life’s problems, there will always be confusion, human suffering and unnecessary deaths. God alone holds the answer to life’s issues, including the well being of our bodies and heart. He is our creator. He knows you and I as individuals like no one else can. He is our all in all, Our God, Our Savior, Our Provider, Our Healer. He alone is Yehovah-rapha.
References:
1. A nationwide U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report of water samples tested in 30 states for 95 different prescription and OTC drugs found two or more drugs in 75% of the water tested. 54% of the samples had 5 or more drugs. 34% of samples had 10 or more drugs. The survey found painkillers, tranquilizers antidepressants, antibiotics, birth control pills and chemotherapy agents to name a few in our drinking water http://mercola.com
2. Top Ten Killers In The USA; USA Today, April 24, 1998
3. Journal of American Medicine, April 1998
4. "The pharmaceutical industry offers "health" to millions of patients - but does not deliver the goods. Instead it delivers products that merely alleviate symptoms while promoting the underlying disease as a precondition for its future business. To cover the fraud, this industry spends twice the amount of money in covering it up than it spends on research on future therapies." Dr. Rath Lays Charge of Genocide on Pharmavia ICC at The Hague. http://www.healingcelebrations.com/hague.htm
About the Author: Jim Lynn is Director of God’s Healing Word, a ministry dedicated to putting God back into healing, and healing back into the Body of Christ, His Church. Jim is also the author of The Miracle of Healing In Your Church Today. For more information, visit http://GodsHealingWord.org
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 3:25 PM
Rush Limbaugh: Mrs. Clinton's Finance Chair Indicted
Mrs. Clinton's Finance Chair Indicted
"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's former finance director," a guy named David Rosen, "has been indicted on charges of filing fictitious reports that misstated contributions for a Hollywood fund-raising gala for the senator, the Justice Department said Friday. The indictment, rare for a political campaign, was unsealed in Los Angeles charging David Rosen with four counts of filing false reports with the Federal Election Commission. The charges focus on an Aug. 12, 2000, dinner and concert supported by more than $1.1 million in 'in-kind contributions' -- goods and services provided for free or below cost. The event was estimated to cost more than $1.2 million.
The FBI previously said in court papers that it had evidence the former first lady's campaign deliberately understated its fund-raising costs so it would have more money to spend on her campaign. While the event allegedly cost more than $1.2 million, the indictment said, Rosen reported contributions of about $400,000, knowing the figure to be false. The indictment charged that he provided some documents to an FEC compliance officer but withheld the true costs of the event and provided false documents to substantiate the lower figure."
Bummer for Hilary!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 3:12 PM
Freebirth: A Message to Obstetricians from Jenny Hatch, "Physician Heal THYSELF!!"
In the past two months four obstetrics societies have made public statements about Unassisted Childbirth.
The Canadian Doctors (SOGC):
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC)
The Australian and New Zealand Doctors:
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
The Royal College (RCOG) in the UK:
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG)
And in a recent article in the Denver Westword Newspaper (I was interviewed for this story)
A Spokesperson for ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) claimed freebirth was "dangerous".
Childbirth goes solo.
By Jared Jacang Maher
Published: May 10, 2007
"According to the guidelines of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the organization "strongly opposes" any birth not performed inside a hospital. A spokesman for the ACOG has a one-word assessment of freebirth: "dangerous."
I have just one message for these doctors, and it is this:
"The moral of the proverb is counsel to prove your trustworthiness with your own affairs before attempting to tell others what they should do."
Break out of the Matrix!
When the various obstetrics societies PROVE that they have the will to reform themselves internally by setting up standards of care that are more about the mother and the baby than they are about the doctor and staff at the hospital, then I will feel more open about listening to any edicts they have about my lifestyle.
Hey Doctors: why don't you set some goals....
1. No inductions before 41 weeks
2. 10% C-section rate
3. No elective C-sections
4. Full acceptance of Lay and Nurse Midwifery both in the home and at the hospital
5. A Complete and total acceptance of VBAC (Vaginal Birth after Cesarean)
6. A willingness to embrace proper prenatal nutrition as the foundation for a healthy pregnancy as outlined by the Brewer Pregnancy Diet
When society stops locking up our midwives for bogus reasons, embrace and promote natural mothering as the IDEAL for a new baby (Natural Childbirth, Attachment Parenting, and Long Term Ecological Breastfeeding), then I will believe you have found your soul as doctors.
Until then? Well, I am going to continue promoting freebirth and encouraging families to break away from your way of giving birth, because frankly, the way you do it stinks.
Lamaze International has a white paper on Elective cesarean Vs. Vaginal Birth (PDF)
American College of Nurse Midwives:
RISKS OF CESAREAN DELIVERY ARE UNDERREPORTED,
BENEFITS OVERSTATED
Media Briefing Highlights Concerns In Advance of NIH Conference
QUOTE:
"Only women themselves can tell us if they are actually demanding cesarean section surgery. With what we are learning from Childbirth Connection today, we now know that women VERY rarely schedule first cesareans by choice without a medical reason," says Susan Hodges, president of Citizens for Midwifery. "Only women can tell us what kind of informed consent process was provided to them. Citizens for Midwifery believes that women are not being given adequate and unbiased information about all the risks and benefits of cesarean sections. Research is needed to understand who and what are now influencing decisions to perform major abdominal surgery 'for no medical reason' despite substantial evidence that all cesareans increase harmful risks for mothers and babies."
Free yourself from the Matrix~!
Jenny Hatch
The Natural Family BLOG
The Natural Family Company
"Healthy Families Make A Healthy World!"
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:27 AM
July 6, 2007
Fairness Doctrine Watch
New Web Site - go ahead and add it to your favorites and check back frequently.
"Those of us who work in and close to the world of talk radio --and there are thousands whose livelihoods depend upon it-- know that Democrats wouldn't hesitate to snuff out talk radio regardless of the damage done to the free flow of information or the loss of economic activity and jobs it would bring about. They'd much rather have the right silenced and ineffective in the face of the left wing media that dominates the television networks and major papers. Democrats also recognize that the failure of Air America underscores that there is no room for growth for left wing talk radio given the domination of that space by the left's anchor network, NPR.
So I applaud N.Z. Bear for getting this site going as a place to see the latest news and commentary on the left's attempt to get the Fairness Doctrine out of its much deserved grave. Democrats aren't going to give up their effort to gag the center-right's most effective medium to communicate with the public, but this site will help keep their collective bent towards censorship front and center before the voters."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 3:40 PM
New York Times: G.I.’s Forge Sunni Tie in Bid to Squeeze Militants
G.I.’s Forge Sunni Tie in Bid to Squeeze Militants
QUOTE:
"The American military has struggled for more than four years to train and equip the Iraqi Army. But here the local Sunni residents, including a number of former insurgents from the 1920s Revolution Brigades, have emerged as a linchpin of the American strategy.
The new coalition reflects some hard-headed calculations on both sides. Eager for intelligence on their elusive foes, American officers have been willing to overlook the past of some of their newfound allies.
Many Sunnis, for their part, are less inclined to see the soldiers as occupiers now that it is clear that American troop reductions are all but inevitable, and they are more concerned with strengthening their ability to fend off threats from Sunni jihadists and Shiite militias. In a surprising twist, the jihadists — the Americans’ most ardent foes — made the new strategy possible. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi organization with a small but significant foreign component, severely overplayed its hand, spawning resentment by many residents and other insurgent groups.
Imposing a severe version of Islamic law, the group installed its own clerics, established an Islamic court and banned the sale of cigarettes, which even this week were nowhere to be found in the humble shops in western Baquba to the consternation of patrolling Iraqi troops.
The fighters raised funds by kidnapping local Iraqis, found accommodations by evicting some residents from their homes and killed with abandon when anyone got in their way, residents say. A small group of bearded black-clad militants took down the Iraqi flag and raised the banner of their self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq.
“They used religion as a ploy to get in and exploit people’s passions,” said one member of the Kit Carson scouts, who gave his name as Haidar. “They were Iraqis and other Arabs from Syria, Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. They started kicking people out of their houses and getting ransom from rich people. They would shoot people in front of their houses to scare the others.”
Collaborations like the one with the scouts in Baquba are slowly beginning to emerge in other parts of Iraq. In Baquba they face some notable obstacles, primarily from the Shiite-dominated provincial and Baghdad ministries that are worried about American efforts to rally the Sunnis and institutionalize them as a security force.
But with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government showing scant progress toward political reconciliation and the American military eager to achieve a measure of stability before its elevated troop levels begin to shrink, American commanders appear determined to proceed with this more decentralized strategy — one that relies less on initiatives taken by Iraqi leaders in Baghdad and more on newly forged coalitions with local Iraqis.
A West Point graduate, Idaho native and former Mormon missionary who worked for two years with Chinese immigrants in Canada, Captain Richards commands Bronco Troop, First Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment. When the 31-year-old officer was first sent to Buhritz in mid-March as part of a battalion-size task force, he encountered a deeply entrenched foe who numbered in the thousands.
Many of the members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia were ensconced in a sprawling palm grove-laden sanctuary south of Baquba and east of the Diyala River. The area, which is still under the group’s control, is still so replete with arms caches, insurgent leaders, fighters and their supporters that American soldiers have taken to calling it the Al Qaeda Fob, or forward operating base in American military jargon.
The insurgents also had a firm grip on the city, the provincial capital of Diyala, which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi made the center of his self-styled Islamic caliphate before he was killed in an airstrike near Baquba last year. The key supply and communications lines between the insurgents’ rural staging area and the city ran through the Buhritz, making it vital ground for Al Qaeda."
...."Captain Richards rejected a group of Shiite police recruits from Baghdad, fearing they might be penetrated by Shiite militias. Determined to get his scouts hired, he loaded 50 scouts and other residents on his Stryker vehicles and drove them to the provincial headquarters over the insurgent-threatened roads.
Today, the police number only 170, a fraction of the police force in adjoining areas. The small police force, made up of scouts and Sunni residents, was provided with only two trucks, seven radios and a paltry supply of ammunition that the Sunni residents have managed to supplement by buying ammunition on the black market from corrupt Interior Ministry officials in Baghdad. Another 150 scouts participate as unpaid monitors in a neighborhood watch program to guard key routes in and out of the area that Captain Richards oversees."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 3:26 PM
World Net Daily: MANIA
MANIA
The shocking link between psychiatric drugs,
suicide, violence and mass murder
"Andrea Yates, in one of the most heartbreaking crimes in modern history, drowned all five of her children – aged 7 years down to 6 months – in a bathtub. Insisting inner voices commanded her to kill her kids, she had become increasingly psychotic over the course of several years.
Yates had been taking the antidepressant Effexor.
In November 2005, more than four years after Yates drowned her children, Effexor manufacturer Wyeth Pharmaceuticals quietly added "homicidal ideation" to the drug's list of "rare adverse events." But "rare" is defined by the FDA as occurring in less than one in 1,000 people. And since, according to an Associated Press report, about 19.2 million prescriptions for Effexor were filled in the U.S. alone in 2005, that means statistically almost 20,000 Americans could experience "homicidal ideation" – that is, murderous thoughts – as a result of taking just this one antidepressant drug.
Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking the widely prescribed antidepressant Luvox when he and fellow student Dylan Klebold went on a hellish school shooting rampage in 1999, killing 12 students and a teacher and wounding 24 others before turning their guns on themselves.
Dr. Peter Breggin, a top expert on the adverse effects of psychiatric drugs, has analyzed in detail "the clinical and scientific reasons for believing that Eric Harris's violence was caused by prescribed Luvox."
Beyond showing how meds like Luvox can cause "command auditory hallucinations" and many other scary, suicidal and homicidal "rare adverse events," Breggin cites Luvox manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals as conceding that 4 percent of children and youth taking Luvox developed mania during short-term controlled clinical trials.
"Mania," explains Breggin, "is a psychosis which can produce bizarre, grandiose, highly elaborated destructive plans, including mass murder."
Authorities investigating Cho Seung-Hui, who murdered 32 at Virginia Tech in April, reportedly found "prescription drugs" for the treatment of psychological problems among his possessions. Joseph Aust, Cho's roommate, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch Cho's routine each morning had included taking prescription drugs.
And while the autopsy report says no drugs were found in Cho's bloodstream on the day of the murders, April 16, Breggin says Cho could well "have been tipped over into violent madness weeks or months earlier by a drug like Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft."
Cho's medical records have yet to be released to the public – authorities claiming it's because a criminal investigation is ongoing, while Breggin suspects "maybe they're protecting drug companies," citing the serious problems withdrawal from psychiatric drugs have been known to cause."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 3:13 PM
July 5, 2007
Front Page Magazine: Independence Forever
Matthew Spaulding:
The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to renew our dedication to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in what Thomas Jefferson called "the declaratory charter of our rights."
QUOTATIONS ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph.
John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!
John Hancock (attributed), upon signing the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Benjamin Franklin (attributed), at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, September 12, 1821
With respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825
Independence Forever.
John Adams, toast for the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826
I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" July 5, 1852
The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.
Abraham Lincoln, speech on the Dred Scott Decision, June 26, 1857
We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
Abraham Lincoln, speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858
We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.
Calvin Coolidge, speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926
Today, 186 years later, that Declaration whose yellowing parchment and fading, almost illegible lines I saw in the past week in the National Archives in Washington is still a revolutionary document. To read it today is to hear a trumpet call. For that Declaration unleashed not merely a revolution against the British, but a revolution in human affairs. . . . The theory of independence is as old as man himself, and it was not invented in this hall. But it was in this hall that the theory became a practice; that the word went out to all, in Thomas Jefferson's phrase, that "the God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." And today this Nation—conceived in revolution, nurtured in liberty, maturing in independence—has no intention of abdicating its leadership in that worldwide movement for independence to any nation or society committed to systematic human oppression.
John F. Kennedy, address at Independence Hall, July 4, 1962
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
Martin Luther King, "I Have A Dream," August 28, 1963
Our Declaration of Independence has been copied by emerging nations around the globe, its themes adopted in places many of us have never heard of. Here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted it by the people. There have been revolutions before and since ours, revolutions that simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a philosophical revolution that changed the very concept of government.
Ronald Reagan, address at Yorktown, October 19, 1981
A NOTE ON THE SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
"...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
(Each year information about those who signed the Declaration of Independence is circulated, not all of which is accurate. The following note is based on research in several established sources, which are noted below.)
Fifty-six individuals from each of the original 13 colonies participated in the Second Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. Pennsylvania sent nine delegates to the congress, followed by Virginia with seven and Massachusetts and New Jersey with five. Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and South Carolina each sent four delegates. Delaware, Georgia, New Hampshire, and North Carolina each sent three. Rhode Island, the smallest colony, sent only two delegates to Philadelphia.
Eight of the signers were immigrants, two were brothers, two were cousins, and one was an orphan. The average age of a signer was 45. The oldest delegate was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, who was 70 when he signed the Declaration. The youngest was Thomas Lynch, Jr., of South Carolina, who was 27.
Eighteen of the signers were merchants or businessmen, 14 were farmers, and four were doctors. Forty-two signers had served in their colonial legislatures. Twenty-two were lawyers—although William Hooper of North Carolina was "disbarred" when he spoke out against the Crown—and nine were judges. Stephen Hopkins had been Governor of Rhode Island.
Although two others had been clergy previously, John Witherspoon of New Jersey was the only active clergyman to attend—he wore his pontificals to the sessions. Almost all were Protestant Christians; Charles Carroll of Maryland was the only Roman Catholic signer.
Seven of the signers were educated at Harvard, four each at Yale and William & Mary, and three at Princeton. John Witherspoon was the president of Princeton and George Wythe was a professor at William & Mary, where his students included the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.
Seventeen of the signers served in the military during the American Revolution. Thomas Nelson was a colonel in the Second Virginia Regiment and then commanded Virginia military forces at the Battle of Yorktown. William Whipple served with the New Hampshire militia and was one of the commanding officers in the decisive Saratoga campaign. Oliver Wolcott led the Connecticut regiments sent for the defense of New York and commanded a brigade of militia that took part in the defeat of General Burgoyne. Caesar Rodney was a Major General in the Delaware militia and John Hancock was the same in the Massachusetts militia.
Five of the signers were captured by the British during the war. Captains Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, and Arthur Middleton (South Carolina) were all captured at the Battle of Charleston in 1780; Colonel George Walton was wounded and captured at the Battle of Savannah. Richard Stockton of New Jersey never recovered from his incarceration at the hands of British Loyalists and died in 1781.
Colonel Thomas McKean of Delaware wrote John Adams that he was "hunted like a fox by the enemy—compelled to remove my family five times in a few months, and at last fixed them in a little log house on the banks of the Susquehanna . . . and they were soon obliged to move again on account of the incursions of the Indians." Abraham Clark of New Jersey had two of his sons captured by the British during the war. The son of John Witherspoon, a major in the New Jersey Brigade, was killed at the Battle of Germantown.
Eleven signers had their homes and property destroyed. Francis Lewis's New York home was destroyed and his wife was taken prisoner. John Hart's farm and mills were destroyed when the British invaded New Jersey and he died while fleeing capture. Carter Braxton and Thomas Nelson (both of Virginia) lent large sums of their personal fortunes to support the war effort, but were never repaid.
Fifteen of the signers participated in their states' constitutional conventions, and six—Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin, George Clymer, James Wilson, and George Reed—signed the United States Constitution. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts attended the federal convention and, though he later supported the document, refused to sign the Constitution.
After the Revolution, 13 of the signers went on to become governors, and 18 served in their state legislatures. Sixteen became state and federal judges. Seven became members of the United States House of Representatives, and six became United States Senators. James Wilson and Samuel Chase became Justices of the United States Supreme Court.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Elbridge Gerry each became Vice President, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson became President. The sons of signers John Adams and Benjamin Harrison also became Presidents.
Five signers played major roles in the establishment of colleges and universities: Benjamin Franklin and the University of Pennsylvania; Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia; Benjamin Rush and Dickinson College; Lewis Morris and New York University; and George Walton and the University of Georgia.
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Carroll were the longest surviving signers. Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Carroll of Maryland was the last signer to die—in 1832 at the age of 95.
Sources: Robert Lincoln, Lives of the Presidents of the United States, with Biographical Notices of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (Brattleboro Typographical Company, 1839); John and Katherine Bakeless, Signers of the Declaration (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969); Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-1989 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989).
This essay was published June 28, 2007. Originally published as Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1451 on June 19, 2001.
Let Freedom Ring!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:38 PM
Michelle Malkin: Zawahiri’s new fireside chat
SITE notes that Zawahiri quotes from Bob Woodward’s book and a PBS documentary in a broadside against Saudi Arabia, and lauds the jihadis use of the Internet. Interestingly, there is no mention of the most recent jihadi attempts in London and Glasgow. They must be in the studio cutting that one now.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:26 PM
Hugh Hewitt: "The Republican's Mr. Fix-It"
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:15 PM
Freebirthing, Are you people nuts?
Freebirthing, are you people nuts?
I been engaged in a lively conversation with the folks over at the Titled Forum Project, who have the words: The evolution of Humanity, Sexuality, and Philosophy as the stated point of their site.
I have found those who post to be extremely intelligent and we have had a wonderful conversation. My posts start on page two, but the whole five pages are worth perusing.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 8:30 AM
July 3, 2007
BBC: UK Maternity care failings debated
Maternity care failings debated
The Royal College of Midwives says the care of women is at risk
MPs are to debate growing concerns over failings in NHS maternity services.
It comes ahead of a BBC Panorama programme which shows the pressure hospitals are under and claims wards are buckling under a midwife shortage.
In the programme, a reporter, posing as a volunteer, discovers a woman in labour being left in a corridor because there are no beds.
The government says maternity services are safer than ever and that it is up to trusts to decide on staffing levels.
BBC correspondent Sophie Hutchinson said the programme, which uses hidden cameras, paints "an extremely dismal picture" of NHS maternity services.
We spoke to women across the UK who reported problems similar to those that we saw undercover
And some families are shown giving harrowing accounts of how they believe poor care has led to their baby's disability or even death.
Undercover reporter Hayley Cutts said: "We spoke to women across the UK who reported problems similar to those that we saw undercover so there's no reason to believe that they just apply to the two hospitals that we went into.
....The programme will do little to dampen the concerns of opposition MPs who argue that a shortage of midwives has sparked a crisis.
But the government insists the UK remains one of the safest countries in the world in which to have a baby and that increased investment will see the number of midwives rise.
....Wayne Coyne's baby daughter Caitlin died after she was starved of oxygen during an emergency Caesarean in hospital three years ago.
This Nationalized/Socialized system is the very thing Hillary Clinton wants to impose on American Women.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 8:21 PM
July 2, 2007
A More Perfect Union: BYU Television airs patriotic documentary
Click on this famous painting by the artist Christy depicting the images of Liberty, Peace, and Justice watching over the signing of the Constitution to get to the original document that our founders signed.
Click here to get to an amazing compilation of other important historical documents.
It is no coincidence that a group of brilliant men came together at the right place and time to form an unprecedented government. This historical drama shows the events and philosophies that influenced the Founding Fathers as they united in a political battle to forge the Constitution of the fledgling United States.
This documentary is one of the best I have ever watched on the making of the Constitution.
Paul and I plan to watch A More Perfect Union with our children on July 4th.
If you would like to watch it on BYU Television, here are the times. If you don't have cable connectivity, you can watch it live on the internet with a variety of streaming technologies.
Sunday, July 1, at 12pm
Wednesday, July 4, at 3pm
Thursday, July 5, at 7 & 10pm
Saturday, July 7, at 12am
For live streaming: Click Here
For me one of the fun parts of watching the documentary is seeing various BYU Theatre Profs playing certain rolls in this excellent film.
"This program is the first comprehensive recreation of the stirring, heating debates that lead to the creation of a new government in 1787. Filmed on location at Independence Hall, Williamsburg, Virginia and other historical sites, it dramatically chronicles how America became a nation and those underlying principles that guard our freedoms today."
"America, 1786. A handful of brilliant men including George Washington, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin, lead a political battle to create a new form of government, one that will establish the standard of self-government to all the world.
This is the comprehensive recreation of those stirring, heated debates during the summer of 1787. Filmed on location at Independence Hall, Williamsburg, Virginia and other historical sites, it dramatically chronicles how America became a nation and the underlying principles that guard our freedom today. This award-winning production was officially recognized by the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:26 PM
Deseret News: Mitt's LDS roots run deep
"NANTES, France — Elder Romney didn't even have time to put on his shoes.
The 19-year-old missionary was in his apartment when a woman burst in to say some Frenchmen were beating up one of his fellow Mormons down the street.
The barefoot Mitt Romney, who had been in France for just six months, joined his roommates in rushing into the snowy night.
They found a team of rugby players, drowning their sorrows after a lost match, hassling two female missionaries. The women had cried out "Allez-y!" which means "go on," rather than "Allez-vous en," meaning "go away." The male missionary who leapt to their defense had been punched out. Romney ended up with a badly bruised jaw.
"There were about 20 guys, very large and very muscular, and we were a group of very young and very small American guys," Romney would recall 40 years later. "If you get into a fight with Muhammad Ali, you don't return the punch, you just put your arms up."
.......
But his family's history, like that of his church, is an ever-present part of his life: In the first-floor hallway of his home the portraits of five generations of Romneys hang in an unbroken line: Miles Archibald, Miles Park, Gaskell, George and Mitt."
FYI Mormon missionaries are still getting beat up, My nephew Michael had his nose broken and his shoulder dislocated last year by a couple of drunks in the Ukraine.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 8:19 AM
Michael Yon: Bless the Beasts and Children
"Captain Clayton Combs has been fighting hard in Diyala for about ten months, much of it side-by-side with Iraqi soldiers from the 5th Division. Each time I’ve come into contact with the 5th, they seem far better than most. American officers and sergeants who work with the 5th have good things to report about them, saying that although the 5th still has far to go, and cannot sustain itself logistically, it can fight.
Captain Combs said this particular Iraqi unit, the 3-25, has never run away from combat, and never refused to close on the enemy. Combs said, “I’ve fought with 3-25 for 10 months in Diyala and they have always come when I am in trouble. They always go on patrols when I ask. They never back down.”
I asked Captain Combs to repeat what he said, making sure he knew I was planning to quote him directly. A veteran like Combs would be unlikely to append his name to such words if he weren’t dead serious. Captain Combs repeated his words and stuck by them. He then demonstrated that faith when we took off deeper into the danger zone with nine soldiers from 5th IA: just Captain Combs, Iraqi soldiers and me. As we passed through the village, Captain Combs pointed out the nice houses, saying the people had been simple farmers with comfortable homes and lives.
Until al Qaeda came.
I told the Iraqi commander, Captain Baker, that it was important that Americans see this; he took me around the graves and showed more than I wanted to see. He said the people had been murdered by al Qaeda. I made video of him speaking, and of the horrible scene. The heat and stench were crushingly oppressive and broken only by the sounds of shovels as Iraqi soldiers kept digging.
Go look at the pictures, they are grim, but I believe important for everyone to see. Some of Michael Moore's "freedom fighter's" did this.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 8:07 AM
Mark Steyn: Immigration
QUOTE:
"On the eve of Independence Day, the people of this great republic declared their independence from the United States Senate under the stirring battle-cry, "No legislation without explanation!" The geniuses who'd cooked up the "comprehensive" immigration bill's "grand bargain" behind the scenes in the pork-filled rooms had originally planned to ram it through in 48 hours before Memorial Day. And, right to the end, the bipartisan Emirs-for-life of Incumbistan gave the strong impression they regarded it as an affront to be required by the impertinent whippersnappers of the citizenry to address the actual content of the legislation.
Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., dismissed critics of the bill as "racist."
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, complained that the peasants had somehow got hold of his phone number, and he felt "intimidated."
Sen. Trenthorn Lotthorn, R-Lottissippi, said: Who cares if they call? They could call 1-800-BLOWHARD (and leave off the "D" for "Deal's already done") 24 hours a day, and he still wasn't going to listen to them. "To think that you're going to intimidate a senator," he scoffed, "into voting one way or the other by gorging your phones with phone calls – most of whom don't even know where Gulfport is." (Gulfport is a port in the Gulf emirate whose grateful people Sultan Trent has ruled o'er lo these many years.)
More artfully, the Democrats' leader, Harry Reid, instead of insulting his old base, invented a new one. Among the torrent of calls from racist intimidatory talk-radio listeners who don't know where Gulfport is, Sen. Reid had somehow managed to get through to the one constituent worth staying on the line for, a man who supports the bill. Who is he? Well, according to the Senator Majority Leader, his name is, er, "Tommy."
Tommy Hilfiger? Tommy Lasorda? Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra with vocal refrain by Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers? Tommy Lee in the director's cut, where in the hitherto deleted scene right at the end he says to Pamela Anderson, "Sorry, honey, I'd love to carry on for another 20 minutes but I gotta call Sen. Reid in Washington. If you hardworking Canadians are going to do the jobs Americans won't do, I need to get your X-visa sorted out"?
Ah, but Sen. Reid explained that he couldn't identify the Tommy in question in case he was arrested and deported. This Tommy has to stay "living in the shadows," like Tommy Lee in the bit where he's partly obscured by Pamela's embonpoint. Alas, this heartwarming vignette left many cynics unmoved.
On the radio, Laura Ingraham suggested that "Tommy" might be entirely fictional and merely Harry Reid's imaginary friend. I proposed to Laura that "Tommy" might like to start dating John Edwards' "coatless girl," whose Dickensian tale of woe figures in every Edwards stump speech: Apparently she goes to sleep shivering every night because her daddy was laid off at the mill and she can't afford a winter coat. If Tommy and the coatless girl married, he could buy her a coat for $9.99 at Wal-Mart, and she could fill in a routine Spousal Application form with U.S. Immigration, which only takes 10 years to process, as opposed to the cumbersome and time-consuming 24-hour instant amnesty visa for seasonal fruit-pickers and seasonal jihadists contained in the Senate bill."
Steyn is right every time!
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:57 AM
Freepers are talking about Freebirth
My pals over at Free Republic are talking about Freebirth too!
My favorite comment was the second one:
"Hey, if that’s what they want, good luck to them.
The government should stay out of it."
Amen and Amen.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:59 AM
What do you know? The high standard Aussie Doctors are ALSO against Freebirth
"DO-IT-YOURSELF home birth websites are putting women at risk by encouraging them to have babies without medical help, doctors have warned."
But yesterday, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists warned women that "free birth" was the least safe way to have a child.
President of the college, obstetrician Christine Tippett, said women should be grateful for Australia's high standards of maternity services.
"We have an incredibly safe system," she said. "I think we should acknowledge that luxury, because there are women around the world who are very envious of us.
"Women getting information about 'free births' from the web need to make sure they don't just access the sites that are very enthusiastic about this.
"If something goes wrong, it could end up in a very sad outcome."
I loved the comments attached to this article, our Australian and New Zealand sisters definitely have the issues down pat.
This was my favorite comment:
"I'm so sick of reading narrowminded views on birth. I read a GOOD article recently where the author stated that it seems as far as birth goes, choice is a one way street.
So we are allowed to choose a medically unnecessary caesarean (and the hospitals are allowed to inflict enough interventions on us to guarantee an unnecessary caesarean - been there done that!) but we are irresponsible to choose to take on the responsibility of birthing our babies by ourselves?
I know of NO women who have chosen to freebirth due to it being "free" - believe me it's not, my first child was born completely free in the public system (well the cost of it cannot be measured in monetary terms anyway) and this birth is going to cost me considerably more, even without a midwife. I certainly don't just consult websites either.
Perhaps the College of Midwives needs to point out how the Queensland Nursing Council has an agenda against QLD homebirth midwives, making it virtually impossible for QLD homebirthers to find a suitable midwife.
Personally, I would rather have no midwife than an unsuitable midwife as my first birth was destroyed by my (Birth Centre) midwife breaching the trust I placed in her - so although I did choose a midwife at the start of this pregnancy, when she pulled out on me due to HER issues I decided I had to trust myself instead.
I think most women are intelligent enough to transfer to hospital if trouble arises (and women who plan freebirth are usually well-researched, not following a stupid trend like this article implies).
Oh and Christine Tippett - safe by whose standards? Typical that an obstetrician would speak out against something that takes the power away from them and puts it back in the hands of birthing women."
Posted by: Gollum of Gold Coast 5:14pm June 03, 2007
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:44 AM
July 1, 2007
Growing 'freebirth' trend alarms doctors
Growing 'freebirth' trend alarms doctors
"Dr. David Stronge, a retired physician from Lantzville, said he can think of multiple reasons why freebirth is a bad idea.
"You will have no method of dealing with an obstructed labour," he said. "I've delivered babies at home. It's pretty gruesome."
Stronge said if a woman starts to hemorrhage, the situation becomes very serious.
"You just bleed out. You can't deal with a ruptured uterus," he said.
"It is inappropriate in a modern society to deliver at home."
Angela Flegel works as a doula, still a relatively unknown profession, in Nanaimo.
"I'm a professional support person," said Flegel.
Flegel also helps fathers provide support to the mother and works in conjunction with a doctor or midwife.
"I can offer suggestions that will help with comfort," she said.
"But I don't attend the births alone, that's a big no-no. Doulas are strictly for emotional support."
This line was the kicker for me:
"It is inappropriate in a modern society to deliver at home"
I really believe these doctors are suffering from a complete failure of imagination about our society. They have spent two hundred years convincing mothers that birth is dangerous and only a professional can attend a birth, yet they believe our society is just going to continue as is with no major infrastructure disruptions to make it impossible to birth with a professional.
I believe those disruptions are just around the corner and it is going to be interesting to watch our civilization contort and twist to adjust to the realities that may smack and hit the innocent most painfully. The last time we had a pandemic, most babies in america were being born at home. The vast migration from home to hospital did not happen until the 40's and 50's.
When hospitals are overun with disease, mommas are going to want to stay home. Bringing hospital birth to home is what is deadly and dangerous. And the first problem crops up with the positioning of the mother. My own religion, which is so focused on Provident Living, must have had a doctor write a primer on Emergency Childbirth contained in the churchs preparedness manual. Because it tells the support person to help the mother lie down on her back to "assist" her with the delivery. This immediately puts the baby into distress and makes the contractions more painful for the mother.
Teaching parents practical information about natural childbirth, which the doctors themselves don't know and are in no position to teach, is the best step our society could take to help mitigate the deadly childbirth situations that will immediately present once a virus starts raging around the planet.
But no, the medicos have nothing but scorn for those of us who are seeking to learn for ourselves the facts of birth.
Doctor Stronge, what is inappropriate is for you to live in your la la land of "modern" unreality and believe that everything is going to stay as is for the duration of my birthing life.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:36 PM
A Nice Freebirth Slide Show
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 7:33 PM