McCain's me-too thing

With McCain choosing a celebrity, Sarah Palin, it becomes increasingly obvious that he is chasing Obama's shadow. What do we have here with McCain. Is he engaging in old fashioned dialectic or is he just chasing something elusive like a rainbow that dissolves every time he nearly reaches it.

I know the republican party has its talking points. But this presidential candidate seemed to be turning around everything that comes in his way to make it seem like something favorable before he has actually thought about it carefully. First he says Obama is a celebrity and then he chooses a celebrity as a VP candidate. He complains that Obama goes to Europe to gain experience and then he sends his wife Cindy to Georgia--no not in the US. Was that mission designed to get her to gain experience for him? Or did he really want to check out the Vogue cover in person without Cindy's interference.

One more. Why is McCain going to the gulf coast? Isn't that the President's job? Why get himself into harms way if he really thinks that people might be harmed down there? Or is he a risk taker as becomes obvious looking at his biography, or is that really merely grandstanding and getting in the way in a potentially dangerous situation? That kind of President we don't need.

Another autism theory to chew on

In the website of the Vitamin D Council, Dr. John Jacob Cannell, Executive Director of the Vitamin D Council, Vitamin D Theory of autism connects the theory of Vitamin D with that of toxic heavy metals (mercury, zinc etc.) as a combined cause for autism:

Does vitamin D explain the role of vaccines, mercury, and heavy metals? Vitamin D's role in increasing glutathione levels may explain the link between mercury and other heavy metals, oxidative stress, and autism. For example, activated vitamin D lessens heavy metal induced oxidative injuries in rat brain. The primary route for brain toxicity of most heavy metals is through depletion of glutathione. Besides its function as a master antioxidant, glutathione acts as a chelating (binding) agent to remove heavy metals, like mercury. Autistic individuals have difficulty excreting heavy metals, like mercury. If brain levels of activated vitamin D are too low to employ glutathione properly, and thus unable to remove heavy metals, they may be damaged by heavy metal loads normal children easily excrete. That is, the mercury in Thimerosal vaccines may have injured vitamin D deficient children while normal children would have easily bound the mercury and excreted it. These studies offer further hope that sun-exposure or vitamin D supplements may help autistic children by increasing glutathione and removing heavy metals. Not only do we have more clues that vitamin D is involved in autism, the vitamin D theory just did something else: it explained two other theories of autism, the mercury accumulation theory and the oxidative stress theory. (Lin AM, Chen KB, Chao PL Antioxidative effect of vitamin D3 on zinc-induced oxidative stress in CNS.Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2005 Aug;1053:319–29. Valko M, Morris H, Cronin MT Metals, toxicity and oxidative stress.Curr Med Chem. 2005;12(10):1161–208. Kern JK, Jones AM Evidence of toxicity, oxidative stress, and neuronal insult in autism.J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev. 2006 Nov–Dec;9(6):485–99).

It bears repeating that the amount of activated vitamin D in the brain directly depends on the amount of vitamin D made in the skin or ingested orally.

One more on propaganda

I am reading "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays again. He wrote the book in 1928 and it is as true today as when dictators of Europe read it then. When we acknowledge that Bernays' writing fits all themes in the current election campaign we have to also admit that we are guilty of complicity in much of what our news media are doing. I am quoting from the book:

Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts.

I conclude from this and it confirms my belief that each of our opinions count for something. They are important in the same way as the belief that the agitation of the air resulting from a butterfly moving its wings in India may cause a hurricane in the United States. Underestimating ones own power causes acquiescence and that we should avoid.

Where did the news go anyway?

The news is a virgin. So where did it go? It was sacrificed to the Propaganda God and, being a voracious eater, he got bigger and bigger.

So much information, so little news

Media people, please, get with it! There is actually news out there. What do you do instead? You report on the Bush family congratulating Rush Limbaugh for having been on the air for 20 years. Coming from Maine it couldn't even have been hot air. It is so disappointing that you can't even find a worthwhile story out there. I could tell you one that might make your hair stand up. But I don't think that's what you want right now, real news. Spinning yarns, that's what you prefer, and making certain people (presidential candidates) look bad. Where is your sense of pride. And if there is a more than trivial story, you pass it by because it doesn't fit the current sense of drivel. I guess you have lost a sense for news. Wait, it might be under the bed somewhere.