Dakota Today

*** SDPB-TV2 and Martin Luther

About 450 or 460 years ago, As a Catholic monk, Martin Luther was wondering deeply about the Roman Catholic Church selling indulgences to allow Catholics to escape years of agony in purgatory and also indulgences to ease the way of already dead relatives or friends into heaven. He was also unable to find Biblical justification for all the sacraments of the Catholic Church that put priests in as middlemen between God and man.

Martin Luther became a professor at the new university in Wittenburg at the bequest of the head Staupitz.   That study of the Bible led ultimately to Luther's revolution against excesses of the papacy and to the Reformation.

The program is interesting history.  It is unlikely to persuade anybody that either Lutheranism or Catholicism makes any real sense however...just that there are varying degrees of religious lunacy and corruption. The Roman Catholic church wanted heretics to be executed without spilling blood, so they were burned to death. Luther apparently approved of the slaughter of 100,000 peasants who used his idea of individual salvation apart from the Church as reason to pursue freedom from the temporal princes and lords of Germany, France, and Belgium.  This also led to many deaths in Britain under Cromwell's armies.  Luther also had little patience with Jews and their religion and we can only speculate on the connections between that  the horrors that followed in the next 460 years..

The program does conclude that the invention of moveable type and Luther's "heresy" of 95 thesis occuring at nearly the same time made Luther's ideas spread like wildfire and consequently end up with the deaths of thousands.  Luther was perhaps the first media hero.  The Roman Catholic church was perhaps the first embodiment of the modern police state..

And that revolution of reformation ultimately led to freedom of religion and freedom from religion in the US.   The DVD of the 120 minute 2002 program is available from Shop PBS.  Empires: Martin Luther DVD for $17.95

It might however be that the Martin Luther program on SDPB-TV today might better be shown before the 4th of July than on the day before Easter..or perhaps again before the Fourth of July..

*** Stay tuned even if you have no intention of nailing anything on any church doors anywhere, anytime --- Doug Wiken

 

*** Reality bites SCOTUS conservatives and the healthcare only for the rich mythology

Paul Begala has been a Democratic operative of some variety and now writes a politics column for Newsweek magazine.  In the April 9, 2012 issue he dumps in an interesting fact in a column which argues that "the Founding Fathers lived in the real world, not the rarefied world of bloodless abstractions preferred by the court's right-wing majority."  Begala might better have used "factless mythology" than "abstractions".

But here is the fact. A woman named Mary Brown, who was a small businesswoman, filed the initial lawsuit asserting her right not to buy health insurance which has turned into a case for the SCOTUS as Karen Harned, of the NFIB legal center, said two years ago when NFIB filed the lawsuit on Brown's behalf.  But, Brown is no longer named as a plaintiff.

Why drop Mary Brown from the suit?  Well she got very sick.  The bills rolled in.  Without health insurance, she went bankrupt.  She had to shutdown her auto-repair shop.  She stiffed her doctors and hospital leaving her uncovered bills for those of us who pick up the tab for the parasites who generate uncompensated care bills.  Begala says that  such freeriders or freeloaders tack on about $1,017 per year to your health insurance costs if you are responsible and do your best to cover your own health care by buying health insurance.

Showing his disconnect from the real world, Justice Alito (Who collects about $213,000 each year from taxpayers) said, A thousand bucks a year "is a very small part of what the mandate is doing".  There are two obvious problems with that. For many of us, making a $1000 gift each year to freeloaders is a big aggravation added to the fact we pay the most in the world for less than the best medical system.  The other problem with that statement is that the mandate is not doing anything.  It has not happened yet.  The court is meddling in a premptive war against the middle class as misplaced and arrogantly ignorant as another premptive war that sent our military on a fool's errand chasing non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Read Begala's original article to increase your blood pressure a bit more. A similar perspective is available at Truthdig.com by Editor Robert Scheer March 29, 20112

Scheer's column was also in the Rapid City Journal snail mail version Tuesday April 3, 2012 Opinion page A5.

As indicated by both these columns, we and Barack Obama would have been better off with the Medicare for all option pushed months ago by George McGovern.  McGovern has more foresight than a couple hundred Repubican retrogressives spewing mythology.

** Stay tuned, but don't try to use as a tax deduction $1,027 of your health insurance premiums as a donation to the poor--- Doug Wiken

 

*** A liberal, moderate, conservative walk into a bar.....

Time magazine put in a joke this week that is both funny and telling.

A moderate, a liberal, and a conservative walk into a bar.

The bartender says, ”Hello Mitt.”

An older description of Romney by another candidate, “Romney is a well-oiled weather vane.”

And close enough to April Fool's day, Dick Cheney gets a new heart.  He wanted a heart from a woman so he could feel closer to his gay daughter.  The real Cheney legacy won't be known until the proceedings of his secret White House energy group are released.  It is bad enough as it is, but is likely to get worse.  I doubt he will visit any country outside the US.

Well, I better quit typing. Gotta get my dog off the top of the car.

*** Eat S**** and Die?

This is kind of frightening.   I like cooked rice with some milk and a dusting ..well a dash..er several spoons full of sugar and a cup or so of milk for breakfast.   Also, I have not quite figured out how to swallow oatmeal without a little sugar. Most other prepared cereal is already loaded with sweetner.

CBS 60 Minutes this evening went after sugar as a killer with near narcotic effects on our brains.  Annual sugar and corn sweetner sales have taken off like rockets after a lot of fat was pulled out of prepared foods.  Sugar and corn sweetener took the place of the smoothing fat.

Tavis Smiley recently talked to Mark Human, MD who has written a book The Blood Sugar Solution.   He estimates that 95% of health problems result because of diet, environment and genes interacting.  Admitedly that seems to cover a lot of everything without explaining much.  Genetic research is making some progress in curing or preventing some serious diseases despite conservative retrogressive attacks on such research.  Current Republican retrogressives seem to also do their best to make such sure environmental poisoning can not be justified as a reason to control corporate rape of the environment. You can watch the show at the link above, or go to the Tavis Smiley link and select "View transcript" or "print" to get a text copy.  Compliments to Smiley for making such information available free.  It is a valuable education service.

Tavis Smiley...Mark Hyman, MD. On Sugar transcript

That leaves to us diet which we can control if we desire to enough. There does appear to be more evidence that we better decide we desire to improve our own diets.  Haymen says something to the effect that foods give our bodies information.  The wrong foods give us the wrong or conflicting information.  Then couple that with a medical system that seems to stress symptoms and then after-the-fact of whatever happens, such medicine works to fix the damage or relieve the symptoms.  "Functional medicine" on the other hand works to prevent disease by "treating" cause and system(s?) rather than symptoms.

Hyman claims 50% of US citizens have pre-diabetes.  Diabetes kills and maims.  Two weeks ago we were returning from the funeral of a family member who had survived juvenile onset diabetes for over 60 years.  His surgeon brother agreed that considering the severity of his illness, he was a "statistical outlier" for having survived as long as he had.  That may have been some consolation, but it did not negate the devastation diabetes causes.

Obviously, some of the 50% with pre-symptoms get it mostly because of their genes, but millions more get there because they and we eat to much sugar and corn sweetner.  Soda, pop, sweetened beverages add a bunch to the annual pounds of sugar many of us consume in a year.  Sugar in soft drinks generate $billions for the sweetner industries, but also generate $billions of needless medical costs.

Hyman gave an example of 15,000 people in some church that lost a total of 250,000 pounds by changing diet and exccise.  That works out to about 17 pounds of fat loss  per person..  We can do something ourselves without our government mandating it.

So, let's do it for ourselves and our families.  Drink water instead of sweetened, carbonated drinks.  Water may not trigger the same kind of response in your brain as do illicit drugs and sugar, but so what.  Good water costs less and does more good.

[[[ Note from Doug added April 3, 2012--- I finally checked Amazon about the book by Dr. Hyman.  The reviews there seem to raise some red flags.  Reviewers usually find something good about the book, but not usually the same things.  What is troubling is that it appears the recipes and foods he promotes are just plain not available in food deserts like Winner, SD.  He also promotes a lot of supplements and a program on his web site which costs something every month.  So, you may want to check the information below even if the book is available for $16 at Amazon;

Reader Reviews of The Blood Sugar Solution by Dr. Mark Hyman

I think I will see what I can cobble together that is edible yet at least a bit more healthy than my current diet and also made with what can be purchased locally. ]]]]]

*** Stay tuned even if nagging sends you to the refrigerator for Soda and ice--- Doug Wiken

 

 

*** CBS Face the Nation expands to 1 hour...someplaces

Near the end of last year, CBS announced the Bob Schieffer Face the Nation Sabbath gasbag program would be expanded from 30 minutes to 1 hour after the first of this year.  Well, the first of this year turned out to be Sunday April 1, 2012.

In the spirit of April Fool's Day, KELO carried only the first 30 minutes, so they could broadcast a full hour of men wearing dresses and very strange headgear propagandizing for dominion by an ancient  principality in Italy.

I am not a real fan of Bob Schieffer, but now and then he has somebody on who says something that makes a little sense even if Schieffer specializes in pompous generalities with mostly useless mythology and history..  Unfortunately in most of SD, ABC affiliate and CBS affiliates run most of their morning talk shows simultaneously.

CBS has been promoting the weekly morning "news" show as having more important news now that Charlie Rose sleeps through the morning there.  In advance, they have been hyping the really important upcoming "news"....an interview of Ophray Winfrey.   And just to make the morning celebrity trash shows more complete for a week, ABC will have on Katie Couric dispensing sweet, syrupy inanity.stirred to froth by Sarah Palin. (unless this is actually an April Fool's Day joke of course).

Almost enough to get me to waste money montly on cable or satelllite TV.

Last night, Bill Moyers and company was suggesting we get the records from local TV stations on who pays for what political ads and then getting the information to ProPublica and other sites.  Anybody in Sioux Falls have time to be a weekly pest at the local media outlets?

*** Stay tuned as the world turns and the climate heats up--- Doug Wiken