patrick.net

I'm conservative and have never felt like the conservative POV was not tolerated here. I question this administration because it acts more liberal than I believe Obama will be. Therefore, since they have betrayed my trust I won't be voting for McCain.

"there are no such studies unless you are very “liberal” with your definition of peer reviewed. But let’s say there are. What, in your estimation would be the “appropriate” number to kill? Since you object to the number, you must have one in mind yourself.

By the way, try calling a GI a mass murderer to his face. If I’m there, I’ll hold you down for him you piece of shit."

Ther are two or three studies conducted of Iraqi deaths since the US/UK invasion and occupation. The first was reviewed by Johns Hopkins University and the last one or two were done by a British pollster who was surprised by the results.
Like many of the disconnected-from-reality participants in this forum, I find your comments offensive.

Most people who claim to be “saving the planet” actually want a (very small) lifestyle change (so they can feel smug).

Yes, but they want a small lifestyle change now only because they somehow believe sea level will rise and eat up their beach houses. ;)

Malcolm, I agree that Bush is too liberal...

Are you sure Obama will be better?

Anyway, ABC seems to be winning the election, which is a good thing. :)

Can anyone believe that I consider myself an environmentalist? However, I believe humanity is the root cause of the problem. Unless we regulate population growth under an economically efficient system, we have no future.

Vaccination programs are an enormous cash cow for certain big pharma interests, and there is little available data on the long term effects of receiving an ever increasing number of them.

There is undeniable evidence that vaccinations trigger autism in certain children. The mechanisms are not understood.

Based on the clear uncertainty of the health ramifications of being vaccinated, combined with the clear misinformation being propagated by the related financial interests, I for one don't trust them at all.

There is absolutely no evidence that water fluoridation reduces incidence of tooth decay or issues compared to non fluoridated study groups. Indeed, comparing populations in Europe vs US has revealed the opposite.

Fluorides are known to reduce aggressive tendencies and act as a mild sedative in humans. Useful to fluorinate water supplies in populations where real estate value declines might lead to mass hysteria and insurrection. ;-)

Here is an entertaining, if painful, account of a fella from Santa Cruz happily preparing to jingle mail and walk from his 8 houses. And with a big smile on his face. :-)

This is a very real shadow inventory problem coming, as analysts continue to make the same optimistic mistakes in models. It is unlikely the modelers behind this guys foreclosures could see this coming. AAA paper to smoking hole overnight with no warning.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN0952458820080511?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

One for Surfer X etal. They are calling the boomer kids "baby losers" across the pond.

"Across Spain, France and Italy, young middle-class professionals with good degrees and diplomas are facing a lifetime on low salaries with unrewarding jobs, forever poorer than their parents."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/spain.france

Great story, northernvirginiarenter. It is solid proof that welfare state does nothing to improve wealth disparity.

Hopefully, those young people will migrate here and start their enterprises. Then, they will help us compete. Europe is about to learn a painful lesson. Only Free Market can liberate them this time around.

It seems young professionals in UK are doing better simply because their country embraces capitalism.

This is a warning for us. If we turn left, we will suffer.

Socialized health care will also hurt us. However, if we must have free health care for special interest groups (like old people), we may just as well have universal health care.

There is undeniable evidence that vaccinations trigger autism in certain children. The mechanisms are not understood.

That is patently false. This is exactly the misguided thinking that leads to events like the whooping cough outbreak in question. There is no peer-reviewed conclusive evidence that suggests anything of the sort.

Fluoridinated water is in the same boat.

Fluoridinated water is in the same boat.

Also, "mercury" in fish.

This is a great site for debunking the mercury myth.

http://www.mercuryfacts.org/

Skibum, you are not completely informed.

Ref Blaylock below:

In 1976, children received 10 vaccines before attending school. Today they will receive over 36 injections. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Center for Disease Control assured parents that it was safe to not only give these vaccines, but that they could be given at one time with complete safety.

Is this true? Or are we being lied to on a grand scale?

The proponents of vaccination safety can just say they are safe, without any supporting evidence what-so-ever, and it is to be accepted without question. They can announce that mercury is not only safe, but that it seems to actually increase the IQ, and we are to accept it. They can proclaim thimerosal safe to use in vaccines without their having ever been a single study on its safety in over 60 years of use, and we are to accept it.

Yet, let me, or anyone else, suggest that excessive vaccination can increase the risk of not only autism, but also schizophrenia and neurodegenerative diseases, and they will scream like banshees –Where is the evidence? Where is the evidence?

When we produce study after study, they always proclaim them to be insufficient evidence or unacceptable studies. More often than not, they just completely ignore the evidence. This is despite the fact that we produce dozens or even hundreds of studies that not only demonstrate the link clinically and scientifically, but also clearly show the mechanism by which the damage is being done –even on a molecular level. These include cell culture studies, mixed cell cultures, organotypic tissue studies, in vivo animal studies using multiple species and even human studies.

To the defenders of vaccine safety-our evidence is never sufficient and, if we face reality – never will be.

The medical establishment has created a set of terms, which they use constantly to boost their egos and firm up their authority as the unique holders of medical wisdom–the mantra is “evidence-based medicine”, as if everything outside their anointing touch is bogus and suspect. A careful examination of many of the accepted treatments reveals that most have little or no scientific “evidence-based” data to support it.

One often repeated study found that almost 80 percent of medical practice had no scientific backing.

That is patently false.

Skibum, you are incorrect. I personally know several physicians who also believe the non sense put out by the AMA and pharma interests, so you are not alone. Fact is, there is definitive evidence that suggests this very thing.

Here is the head of the CDC admitting that vaccinations trigger autism, again in certain subsets of children.

http://v.mercola.com/blogs/public_blog/Head-of-CDC-Admits-on-CNN-that-Vaccines-can-Trigger-Autism-59487.aspx

The US Fed Court system is now admitting a link, not that they necessarily represent scientific authority but given enormous legal liabilities and potential for disruption....well, it makes a point.

"After years of insisting there is no evidence to link vaccines with the onset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the US government has quietly conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims.

The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff’s identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.

The claim, one of 4,900 autism cases currently pending in Federal “Vaccine Court,” was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and other Justice Department officials, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the “defendant” in all Vaccine Court cases.

The child’s claim against the government — that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism — was supposed to be one of three “test cases” for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court."

Google the topic on the science side, read critically, and one will come to the inescapable conclusion that there exists a link. I had a conversation last summer with an NIH researcher on the subject, who admitted that it was clear environmental factors were involved in the autism epidemic. She did not conclude vaccinations were directly related, but did admit there seemed to be a causal link in certain cases. (I recently dated someone with an autistic son, which sent me down deep into this wormhole)

Europe is about to learn a painful lesson. Only Free Market can liberate them this time around.

At least they have a free market in Europe, unlike the United States, where the market is totally fixed.

As a mom who has vaccinated her kids, I think the problem with vaccinations may be in the way they bundle them now. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to pump kids full of 4-5 or more vaccinations at one time, but it's not unreasonable to think that might overwhelm the immune system of a small child.

I think we need to look at how immunizations are administered. I wouldn't be surprised if the rise in autism came at the same time doctors started giving children multiple immunizations at one time. Just my 2 cents.

Thank God my kids are healthy.

Fluoride is more toxic to humans than lead. Science fact. This is disconcerting:

http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/accidents/f-lead.html

And this below is also appears to be factual, though who knows what to make of it. (Entertainment value, I'm not saying this is going on today btw)

"While there he was told by German chemists of a scheme which had been worked out by them during the war and adopted by the German General Staff.

"This was to control the population in any given area through mass medication of drinking water. In this scheme, sodium fluoride occupied a prominent place.

"Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual's power to resist domination by slowly poisoning and narcotizing a certain area of the brain and will thus make him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him. "Both the Germans and the Russians added sodium fluoride to the drinking water of prisoners of war to make them stupid and docile."

Here is the head of the CDC admitting that vaccinations trigger autism, again in certain subsets of children.

Sorry, but that link reeks of desperate and biased proselytizing.

I don't see any real, statistically sound, peer-reviewed data pointed to by that link. It's an anecdote, sad for sure, but an anecdote. Public health and medical policy decisions should not be made on anecdotes.

Skibum

I think you're right in that decisions can't be made anecdotally. But there has been such a huge increase in autism we should be looking at everything-- including immunizations.

For the longest time I was an ardent defender of immunizations-- and I still think it's irresponsible not to get them. But if I had another child I would space them out more and insist that my kids not get so many at once. The Federal settlement in the case of the child in Georgia who developed autism-like symptoms after receiving 5 shots for 9 vaccines makes me think there is more to this than meets the eye.

I've had conversations with my doctor about this and they admit that most of their training is geared toward administering prescriptions and following the old-school way of doing things. Which essentially means not questioning the medical establishment.

I'm not saying immunizations are causing autism. But until we know what is causing such a dramatic rise in the number of children being diagnosed with the condition, we have to keep looking for answers.

I think you’re right in that decisions can’t be made anecdotally. But there has been such a huge increase in autism we should be looking at everything– including immunizations.

Links between immunizations and autism are in fact being actively investigated. I'm not a mouthpiece for the CDC or the pharma industry that supplies vaccines, but this is a situation where the risks are far, far outweighed by the benefits, both for the individual child and for the community at large. It is irresponsible for parents to withhold vaccinations from their children.

Try this link, from the CDC as opposed to some rabid one-cause group:

http://www.cdc.gov/news/2008/03/VaccineQuestions.html

Folks, thermisol has been phased out from vaccines, though this might not show up in your google search as consipiracy theory sites seem to dominate. Please immunize your children. If I were to place a bet, I woiuld go with body burden and a metabolic defect that that prevents the body from excreting mercury. There have been some promising studies showing lower levels of mercury in hair (excreted) of autistic children and higher levels in teeth (retained). In that case, environmental mecury may be more of the issue (given autism rates in countries that had already banned mecury in vaccines a while back are not much different). Clearly, more studies need to be done.

Also, another reason not to vaccinate is an adverse reaction to the vaccine itself... I consider this extremely selfish as you're then relying on "herd protection". Something a prisoners dilema, though. (Yikes!)

And now for something closer to home:
The Geek Syndrome

Autism - and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome - is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math-and-tech genes to blame?

By Steve Silberman

It's a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics - coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours - are residing somewhere in Asperger's domain. Kathryn Stewart, director of the Orion Academy, a high school for high-functioning kids in Moraga, California, calls Asperger's syndrome "the engineers' disorder." Bill Gates is regularly diagnosed in the press: His single-minded focus on technical minutiae, rocking motions, and flat tone of voice are all suggestive of an adult with some trace of the disorder. Dov's father told me that his friends in the Valley say many of their coworkers "could be diagnosed with ODD - they're odd." In Microserfs, novelist Douglas Coupland observes, "I think all tech people are slightly autistic."
....
Clumsy and easily overwhelmed in the physical world, autistic minds soar in the virtual realms of mathematics, symbols, and code. Asperger compared the children in his clinic to calculating machines: "intelligent automata" - a metaphor employed by many autistic people themselves to describe their own rule-based, image-driven thought processes. In her autobiography, Thinking in Pictures, Grandin compares her mind to a VCR. When she hears the word dog, she mentally replays what she calls "videotapes" of various dogs that she's seen, to arrive at something close to the average person's abstract notion of the category that includes all dogs. This visual concreteness has been a boon to her work as a designer of more humane machinery for handling livestock. Grandin sees the machines in her head and sets them running, debugging as she goes. When the design in her mind does everything it's supposed to, she draws a blueprint of what she sees.

"In another age, these men would have been monks, developing new ink for printing presses. Suddenly, they're reproducing at a much higher rate."

More:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

SQT Says:

> I think you’re right in that decisions can’t be made
> anecdotally. But there has been such a huge increase
> in autism we should be looking at everything– including
> immunizations.

We have known for generations that having babies over 30 increases the odds of autism (and breast cancer) and having babies over 40 really increases the odds of autism (and breast cancer) so it is no surprise that now with more moms having kids over 30 (and 40) that we have more autism (and breast cancer)...

EBGuy,
Thanks for that article link. Humorous, but it definitely rings true...

FAB

Excellent point. Mothers are much older now so that of course could be a factor.

Don't get me wrong-- I believe in immunizations. My kids have had all of theirs and I wouldn't dream of not doing it. I think not immunizing your kids is foolish. I just worry that we don't want to look at how the medical industry is giving immunizations in a knee-jerk fashion. But then, I suppose people are protesting immunizations in knee-jerk fashion too...

EBGuy

What I find especially interesting about that article is that it makes the point that autism (and the related syndromes) may have always been around in the same numbers as now-- just without the diagnoses.

Society has become so prone to medicating kids nowadays that virtually every kid can get a diagnoses of some sort if you go to the doctor. I'd be willing to bet that if I went to the doctor tomorrow and complained that my son was hyperactive they would put him on Ritalin in no time flat. It's scary.

I am a strong believer in holistic medicine. Besides, I believe people will be a lot healthier (physically) if they can fix their minds.

That said, I think immunization has a good reward/risk ratio. Even my cats are vaccinated.

Not medical advice

Monkframe says

I find your comments offensive.

Oh that's just so precious! You show up and call us all racists, those of us who are American fat-assed ignoramuses and the US armed forces mass murderers.

You then profess to take offense that I called you a piece of shit in response to all your garbage propaganda. I can only hope your delicate sensibilities were offended enough by my uncivilized namecalling, to give you a stroke.

BAI, it is just said that America-bashing is so trendy nowadays. :(

Peter P
when has it NOT been trendy? ;-)

This was to good to pass up in light of the recent discussion:
Doerr [of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers] likes to invest in "white male nerds who've dropped out of Harvard or Stanford, and they have absolutely no social life." That's why he backed Netscape, Amazon, Yahoo and Google.

On the vaccine topic, a case was brought to federal court just today.

"Court hears claim linking vaccines to autism"

http://tinyurl.com/4j44kl

"Oh that’s just so precious! You show up and call us all racists, those of us who are American fat-assed ignoramuses and the US armed forces mass murderers.

You then profess to take offense that I called you a piece of shit in response to all your garbage propaganda. I can only hope your delicate sensibilities were offended enough by my uncivilized namecalling, to give you a stroke."

What about the American service people you profess to care about so much? 18 suicides per day out of 32 attempts AFTER they return to the home of the brain-dead "patriots" who love them so much--until they get in the way on a street corner when you're trying to get to your "steak & prawn" joint.

Yes, you do offend.

This is why as a society we need to offer help to veterans.

I do not understand the logic. People want to call this idiot President a Savior because he is doing something that a few individuals approve of; the logic does not hold.

The President (and conservatives) are the reasons there is a Housing crisis. If Americans could take a step back and look at what has happened over this last 30 years, they would realize that this is not the first housing mess that we have faced.

The first was in the early 80's when Ballon-payments were used as a substitute for an increase in salaries. The second time was with the Savings and Loan Crisis; lax standards.

Now, we are experiencing a third housing crisis and you what to praise this idiot (and perhpas the conservatives as well). If this is the logic that exists in America to praise someone who appears to be a Savior when he actually caused the problem with his failure to have his regulators perform their jobs, then no wonder we are in trouble.

Now, this is not to say that his position is wrong; but to consider him a Savior is a sign of desparation. No one should be judged on one act or position taken. This is the reason we are in Iraq right now.

Generally speaking, Patick.Net is the most informative site relative to this topic, but this article has gone too far. Further, it amazes me that when someone wants something and they happen to agree with the respective politician then that politician is a Savior or Hero when collectively speaking the politician, President Bush, has been a complete failure.

Lastly, this article reminds me of the guy went hiking alone and got his arm stuck in some rocks and he ultimately had to cut-off his arm to save his life and the media made this idiot a hero when he should not have ever gone hiking alone.

So please, please, please do not tell me that who ever wrote this article/post needs and wants a house this badly to consider President Bush a Savior. He may have finally did something correctly after 7 1 /2 years, but he is NO Damn Savior!!! Get a grip on yourself and stop being so one-dimensional.

Fascinating blast from the past -(10 years ago)!

This thread is very wide ranging and filled with interesting comments from educated articulate posters.

Contrast that to the current environment where Patnet content is 90% one liners and meme pictures, in response to generally nonsense topics....

@Patrick - Note, I am not trying to denigrate 2018 posters as I too like to crack jokes and fling poo on occasion. Still even when the issue isn't housing, how did the TONE of this site change from this thread to what it is now?

10 years ago, memes weren't as prevalent.

You might be trying to make a point about PatNet itself, but you're ignoring the larger cultural bubble that PatNet resides within.

He screwed up big time, I wouldn't call him a hero. Hero is reserved for people who endanger themselves to help others, he did no such thing. He's just a failed politician. Let's leave past in the past... and work on the future instead.

I voted for Obama, not because Obama was great, but because I saw McCain as another Bush, and Bush was a failure for everyone. He failed conservatives, he failed America.

anon_470e9 says

@Patrick - Note, I am not trying to denigrate 2018 posters as I too like to crack jokes and fling poo on occasion. Still even when the issue isn't housing, how did the TONE of this site change from this thread to what it is now?

@Patrick - it would be great that Anons that gripe about the "Way Pat.net used to be before Donald Trump won the election." could be labeled "Anonymous Flouncer Returned_1A" or some such.

Also can I suggest this as an anti-Bot measure for Anon posts?