MediCare - Can any folks here help me walk thru the maze

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Wednesday December 03, 2014 · 2:18 PM PST

2014/12/03 · 14:18

Of options that is MediCare.

I have until December 7th to figure out MediCare.

I know very little, only that MediCare Part A is provided to everyone and is not a selection. Not fully aware of what Part A does, but it's ours.

I know nothing about Part B and Advantage.

And is there a Part C? I do remember a lot of fuss about Part D, but can't for the life of me remember what is good or bad about it.

Great globs of gratitude to anyone who will reply.

Policy Wonks - Science Gurus - what do you think?

EliseMattu

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Tuesday September 09, 2014 · 3:36 PM PDT

2014/09/09 · 15:36

Here are two professional scientists/researchers, Dr Geier Sr and his son, also Dr Geier, discussing their experiences in trying to access a data base held by the CDC/National Health Institute. The purpose of their need to access this data base was so they could put together the numbers on which their study could ascertain the safety, or lack of safety, in adminsitering vaccinations to children if the vaccines contain the Thimerosal.

Many questions come up for me as I watch this. If a database that has led to scientific conclusions on the part of various CDC officials is supposedly protected by a 195 million dollar budget, and exists in part for the express purpose of being accessed by citizen scientists, why did officials thwart this duo of decent scientists? And in thwarting the scientists, they apparently allowed the data base to be destroyed! Which then invalidates one of the more famous governmental "proofs" of the safety of Thimerosal. (After all, no scientific study holds any credence after the data base upon which it was based has been destroyed.)

And even more importantly, these two men had been told by Congress to undertake their investigations.

A wealth of information is contained inside this video. It should give pause to anyone still accepting the notion that our governmental bodies are looking out for us citizens and the youngsters in our families, with regards to the vaccine program.

https://www.youtube.com/...

I can, however, answer the question that the older Dr Geier keeps asking, toward the conclusion of the program. The reason that the officals do not want to have any lawsuits undertaken is on account of the revolving door employment policy. Although the senior Dr Geier seems to think that these "governmental officials" are employed by our government, in fact, almost 95% of the officials and top employees who work inside governmental agencies relating to health matters are there due to how the top executives at Big Pharma and certain Congress people and Seantors have kept open the revolving door to that type of person. Spend a stint at NHI or at CDC, and do the "right thing for industry" during your time there, and a lucrative job inside industry will be waiting for you once you tire of working for Uncle Sam.

Thoughts on remaining Healthy in our 21st Century Society

EliseMattu

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Sunday August 10, 2014 · 12:50 PM PDT

2014/08/10 · 12:50

These are some random thoughts about being healthy. I would enjoy hearing from other people as to their take on the matters presented below.

I suffer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. For years I have been in a group of mostly women, all of us who are challenged on a daily basis to avoid certain chemicals. Few of us get cancer, as we have to avoid so many things. To accomplish this we try very hard to get our lifestyles back to the basics. Most of us have life styles similar to how people lived fifty if not one hundred and fifty years ago.

I had to quit working in an office environment, as at night the cleaning crews spray so many things, from furniture polish to Lysol to Febreeze. And of course, during the day there are perfumes, copy toners, etc in many office environments.

Due to this development, I made much less money, as I went into the field of Home Health Aide work. But it was a rewarding line of work. (I am now retired.) Of course, I turned down many clients, as I was not willing to spray the great auntie's home with poisons, just so that some nitwit relative would have the false assurance that auntie's home was clean! (Decades ago, when someone's natural processes made a bathroom a bit stinky, a match was lit, but these days, we are taught to use half a spray can of Glade or Febreeze to dispel the odor.)

Everywhere I turn, there are organizations that are supposedly "trying to stop cancer." Yet IMNSHO the best way to stop cancer would be to ensure that the nasty crap in this and that product was not allowed to be sold to us in the first place. Almost all air fresheners contain either benzene or formaldehyde. The reason that companies sell these products is so they don't have to bundle up that benzene or formaldehyde and put it into containers and send it off to SuperFund sites! So they make money just by their saving on that aspect of their madness. Notice that the commercials never present spoken words to tell you that air fresheners or Lysol or other air products are safe to use around pets or children or in the nursery. But they imply this through the settings of the commercials. (Back when Elliot Spitzer was Attorney General he once fined Monsanto some $ 50,000 for making claims about the safety of RoundUp. So the companies have learned they cannot say in spoken words that their product is safe, but they can imply it through the visuals they present to the TV viewer.)

If you use shampoo, and suffer from cancer, make sure you are not using a paraben or formaldehyde-containing shampoo. (The key word for formaldehyde is Quaternium, that is the "aka" for formaldehyde.) Right now it is nigh impossible to find a shampoo free from those two things. If you have MS, it is also important to avoid formaldehyde, so finding out whether your shampoo has Quaternium is important for you as well.

Perhaps one of the key things to avoid in order for a human being to remain healthy (and even, cancer-free) is dirty air. Experts have stated for years that living inside a big city is the equivalent of smoking two and a half boxes of cigarettes a day! For years, I lived in the San Francisco Bay area. I never felt "quite right." I tried eating macrobiotic. I tried living without grains, or without meat, or without sugar. Sometimes I noticed a minor improvement in my health, but nothing major. Nothing that I tried ever made me feel that eating this way or that way made much of a difference. (I never eat junk food, or processed food, but I now eat a moderate amount of meat, and although I am wheat free, as the formaldehyde tainted wheat we have in the USA is very bad for me, I do indulge in sugar and dairy.)

Then I moved out to Lake County Calif, which has the best air in the nation. I suddenly felt good again, and it amazed me that with all the time and energy I had spent on "getting my diet right" not only had the idea of clean air evaded me, but health professionals I consulted also rarely if ever mentioned air as a consideration.

If you have to live in the city, get a decent air cleaner. I understand many people like the concept of open windows, but even using the air cleaner half the time should make a difference.

Lastly we should all pause and consider water. Where I live is off of a "soda bay" springs area. The water tastes as though it has about a tablespoon of baking soda per eight ounce glass. And the local water treatment people add in a ton of bleach, and who knows how much fluoride. My household decided to use distilled water, to avoid what was in the tap water. But one day recently, I happened to notice some Pellegrino water at the grocery store. O(n impulse, I bought ten bottles, and brought them home. Within three days, I felt like I was back in my thirties. Also, although the Pellegrino is expensive, it knocked my appetite down by a factor of five. I was not craving large entrees at the main meal, and no longer wanted snacks.

I also found I loved drinking water! I have not loved drinking water since living in the MidWest, some forty years back. Speaking strictly for myself, I had more energy, (which in the summer, living in a place that is close to 100 degrees during the day, is amazing!) My memory seemed sharper. My outlook seemed brighter. And I really loved drinking water.

Within a month of using the Pellegrino, I had lost eight pounds. Toxins were being flushed from my body and I imagine other processes were taking place that helped me shed some weight. (Of course, more energy means weight loss,a s a person usually gets more active when they have energy,)

I want to close with the bit of cautionary information I found out about Lysol. The product itself is not at all carcinogenic. But it contains Alkyl's, which prevent the body from flushing out the cancer cells that each of us have in our bodies. So those cells are not flushed out, and then the cancers have a better chance of taking up resident. My philosophy is it is better to experience some germs floating around in the air, than to be affected by the Alkyl.

Truth-Respecting Scientists - there be dragons from

EliseMattu

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Tuesday March 25, 2014 · 3:37 PM PDT

2014/03/25 · 15:37

This point on.

The first cluster of information I wish to present was written by my good friend TrueDelphi back in 2008. The link to the information is here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...

The above writing is a step by step record that occurred over a three year period, of what the Mainstream Media did when Big Oil was tied to one product, MTBE, that was finally discovered to be extremely toxic.

The story that is related is not a very pretty picture, is it? Not pretty at all - the ongoing obfuscation, the cover ups, the delays in printing the Truth. And then at the very end of the matter, when Truth as embodied by MTBE researcher John Froines will not issue the statements that Industry needs, the press then simply substitutes outright lies by creating, out of whole cloth, fabricated quotes supposedly uttered by John Froines .

Now this MTBE substance is the only actual chemical for which TrueDelphi could report on as she did above. No other substance took up as much of her time, to the exclusion of other matters.

But by inference, it is possible to assume that the same sort of activity and the same sort of coverups are induced by Associated Press and by other Big Media agents and reporters, every single time that Big Industry is threatened, be it by the Big Industry of Gm seeds and crops, or by the Big Industry of E cigs or by the Big Industry responsible for vaccines.

Recently, here on Daily Kos, I was asked to reference those scientific citations by which I could back up my concerns about Gm seeds and crops.

Immediately what came to my mind was the Serralini study. This 2012 study was published under the auspices of a research laboratory at the University of Caens France. The landmark study found that rats fed for two years with Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant NK603 maize (corn) developed many more tumors and died earlier than control animals. It also found that the rats developed tumors when glyphosate (Roundup), the herbicide used with GM maize, was added to their drinking water.

However, Big Industry now has such persuasive abilities that almost immediately the critics who are allied with the vast powers of the Gm Industry were allowed to attack the findings of Serralin and his team.

Sidebar please: I am not the only person in the world who frequently pauses to consider the powers of Big Industry. To that end, Sonoma State University annually releases the top 25 most censored stories. Often scientific research studies relating to risks that the public undertakes through their use of "Safe Products" are mentioned as being involved as the subjects of one or more of the 25 articles named in the release.

Also, in 2005, the monthly "The Coastal Post, an ACLU-decorated newspaper that often brings to the fore the same "hidden issues" that the Sonoma State University "Most Censored" Project mentions. So let me refer you to a 2005 article that discusses the pernicious and ubiquitous hold that Industry has over modern day science:

http://www.coastalpost.com/...
From the above article, again by Daily Kos writer Carol Sterritt (TrueDelphi)
Recently the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) made an important announcement. It will no longer concern itself with the possible conflict of interest when an industry's money pays for scientific research. Apparently, there is simply so much meddling between industrial concerns that possess the big bucks and laboratories doing the research, be the labs university-owned, or private, that the Journal will now simply overlook whatever conflict of interest there might be and go ahead, full-throttle, to publish the results.

The fact that industry critics point to industry demanding "adjustments" in the data, omitting data results that are not favorable, and in other ways tampering with the findings, no longer seems to concern NEJM.

Up to now, the Journal tried to avoid publishing research that might be tainted. Now they stipulate that the influence can not be significant (Ah, they still possess some scruples!)
####

So in other words, rather than fold up publication, The Journal will publish any and all "studies" taht come to them, as Industry's hold is too ubiquitous that the only other alternative is for The Journal's editors to cease its existence.

A more elegant way of saying this: "Currently, Truth will be whatever the People with the most money can tell us it is!"

So in ending the sidebar, I wish to go back to the issue of the Serralini study.

I wish to sum up what happened in the wake of this peer reviewed, and journal-published science study which exposed the risks of Gm through its linking the feeding of Gm Maize to rats to a proliferation of tumors can be summed up in one sentence:

Industry with its huge and substantial control over scientists and with its exorbitant
numbers of jobs to offer, and with its ability to control the positions and awesome amounts of money to throw at any situation deleterious to their profit margin can indeed destroy even the best researched data and conclusions that exist.

Although this Univ. of Caens' research was a stepping stone that should have assisted other researchers with future incursions of studies of such risks to mammalian life, instead we activists see the strong arm tactics of Monsanto and other Gm firms that attack truth. With the Power Plays they have at their disposal, the Big Gm Industry firms have unfairly knocked apart both the indications of Serralini's research and also his reputation.

So be forewarned, other noble Guardians of Truth - the consequences of playing against the Big Boys and Girls of Industry are as treacherous as playing with dragons. Only those scientists and researchers who do not need a job or income or do not care for their reputation need put forth the efforts to go against the Vampire Squid control exerted by the Gm industry.

May I link to two other scientists who are concerned about truth as serralini?
http://permaculturenews.org/...

The following few paragraphs are from the above link, and are written by by Dr Mae-Wan Ho and Prof Peter Saundersby. (I will end this diary with their words) :
What followed was a concerted worldwide campaign to discredit the findings, including the appointment of ex-Monsanto scientist Richard Goodman to the newly created post of associate post of associate editor for biotechnology at FCT [4]. Soon after Goodman’s appointment, a study by researchers in Brazil also finding potentially harmful effects from GMOs was withdrawn from FCT, but reappeared almost immediately in another journal.

On 27 November 2013, FCT editor Wallace Hayes wrote to Séralini’s team requesting them to retract their paper published just over a year ago on grounds that it was “inconclusive”, not because there was fraud or errors [5].

In fact, the paper was published after peer review by 5 referees – the usual number being 2 or 3 – and the criticisms post-publication answered in full by the team, and
appeared in the same journal [6].
(SNIP)

The reason the OECD protocol specifies larger groups for cancer testing than for toxicity is that cancer is less common and takes longer to become apparent and is therefore more likely to be missed, i.e. the aim is to avoid a false negative. The fact that excess tumours and cancer was detected even in 10 animals is arguably all the more significant, and may be due to the strong carcinogenic potential of the agents tested (see [7] Excess Cancers and Deaths with GM Feed: the Stats Stand Up, SiS 56). Even though the study was not designed to test for cancer, it would have been totally irresponsible for Séralini and his group not to report what they had found. Equally it is important for the article to remain in the public record for its implications on public health.
####

Shame on Us. As We Forget Marijuana's Original Pioneers

EliseMattu

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Sunday February 23, 2014 · 1:11 PM PST

2014/02/23 · 13:11

So three weeks ago, I went down to Marin County to help out a friend.

This friend's name is Lynnette Shaw. For anyone living in California, who possesses a valid med marijuana card, Lynnette's name should be a household name.

She was among the original group of five who put together the wording of Proposition 215. The wording of the Proposition can be found here:

http://vote96.sos.ca.gov/...

I know that to some of you , Prop 215 is "old news." And hardly worth re-visiting. And for others on this board, there is criticism - why in the world weren't Californian activists smart enough to put together legislation that would legalize marijuana as a recreational drug, overall, instead of this halfway measure?

To the last point, I would say that no one criticizes Alexander Graham Bell for not coming up with the cell phone.

What was done in Calif. was the first step taken by citizenry in any of the 50 states, and the action took place way back in 1996. This was a full 18 years ago. The people here were ready and determined to approve med marijuana. However, anything more, at that early point in the game, would not have passed as a legalized measure.

So why am I bringing Lynnette to your attention? Because right now, the woman is facing a life of governmental harassment, poverty and unemployment, and all due to her selfless devotion to this issue.

Due to her success in setting up the Fairfax club, and her overseeing the Marin Alliance for Medicinal Marijuana, she was very early on targeted by authorities. By 1999, the authorities had her in their sights. President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno jointly issued a citation that would bar her forever from any involvement with any medical marijuana dispensary. Knowing the law fairly well, Shaw fought off this injunction successfully for over a decade. Her legal battle allowed her to continue to run the Fairfax dispensary.

But in 2011, the Ninth District Court of California gained a new and ambitious prosecutor, one Melinda Haag. This woman had as her top two goals the total destruction of Lynnette Shaw, legally financially and personally! and also the closure of the Fairfax dispensary, which was the first dispensary to open its doors inside the state, and which served as the model for the other dispensaries.

By the end of that year, Haag had closed the Fairfax dispensary and helped the Feds in their efforts to destroy Shaw. In all of Marin County, population 250,000, there remains only one open and operating dispensary, in the town of Corte Madera. And activists fear that dispensary will be closed soon.

Among the things that have happened to Lynnette since 2011 are these: the declaration by the IRS that she owed the government some 10 million dollars, the seizure of her personal bank account, worth $ 10,000, the closure of her dispensary, which not only meant that Marin County patients had to find another source to meet their needs, but that she no longer had her job there. She is also the first and only American citizen whose Social Security earnings have been zeroed out!

Due to the fact that she has not worked since 2011, her car was re-possessed.

The 10 million dollar IRS finding was later lowered to a mere 3 million dollars plus change. Much of this ruling has to do with the IRS not allowing various normal overhead costs to be declared as business expenses. Then when this ruling was fought by Shaw lawyers, it was decided that seven million dollars of business expenses would be allowed, but the other 3 million plus would not be.

There is a huge irony in the IRS' ruling - for the first five years of her operating the Fairfax dispensary, she was audited twice a year, and she did everything by the book. For each year she was audited, the IRS signed off on her business operations and tax declarations. So for the hammer to fall on her some 10 years down the road seems capricious, illogical and possibly illegal.

The one thing saving Ms Shaw at this point is Eric Holder's most recent decision that banks must treat marijuana growers with their income the same way that any other customers and their income would be treated. This decree by Holder indicates that perhaps all of Shaw's IRS penalties and owed money amounts will be stricken from her record. If bankers have been told to treat their marijuana customers the same way they treat other customers, then it stands to reason that the IRS must treat citizens' operating med marijuana dispensaries the same way. (I wish also to point out that for all the years that Shaw served as the director for the Fairfax dispensary, she never paid herself more than $ 38,000.)

The local newspaper in Marin County, The Marin Independent Journal, had one of its finer reporters write the following article:

http://www.marinij.com/...

Anyone wishing to help out Ms Shaw can "friend" her at Facebook, "Lynnette Mont-eton Shaw," and then contact her directly. At that Facebook site, she can offer you her phone number or other means of more private contact.

If Gm crops are not as productive

EliseMattu

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday January 06, 2014 · 5:01 PM PST

2014/01/06 · 17:01

As farmers were told they would be,
if Gm crops are not as nutritious as we were told they would be,
if Gm foods allow for the domination of several large Big Ag companies, (and if Gm crops are promoted, then there is no real way around that monopolization),
if Gm crops end up being MORE expensive and more work intensive as they now require the use of adding nutrients into the soil to make up for the fungal material and mold that is promoted in the soil devastated by the use of RoundUp, and if Gm crops require more pesticides, just why is it considered scientifically sound to support Gm crops?

Of course then there is also the "promise" of lateral gene transfer! Inside the video recording Don Huber Interview, that I post at the bottom of this diary, there is a "micro" toxin, viral in nature, that is causing infertility due to whatever processes are going on inside the plant world, and then of course, since humans eat the plants, WHAM within 48 hours of eating plants contaminated with this micro entity, infertility and/or miscarriage occurs.

Citation regarding the increase in use of pesticides: Reuters version: http://www.reuters.com/...
European journal version: http://www.enveurope.com/...

Citations regarding the lack of nutrition in Gm crops and foods: http://genok.no/...
From Don Huber: http://www.gmwatch.org/...

Citation regarding the domination and monopolization of Monsanto and three other Big Ag firms hold sway over the "industry" connected to bringing the American people their food: http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/...

Citation: Don Huber Interview: Crop Pathology, Infertility and Miscarriage, brought to us humans via Gm agriculture methods: http://www.youtube.com/...

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