Conservatives Hierarchy Stability No Empathy Liberals Caring Fairness Justice

Tags: Economic Stimulus Bill Will Not Work Scientific Studies Show Republicans Don't Care for Others

I started thinking about the implications about Obama’s bill because often my first impressions are wrong because I do not have enough information. Sanders provided much information and stories to convince me that we should vote against the bill and then try to pass the House bill only for all Americans. If not let it lapse and blame the Republicans every day until the elections.

The best way we can use the funds to improve jobs is to repair and build roads, bridges, sewers, electric grid, and dams. Many are on the brink of disaster. I know the stimulus helped greatly improve the roads in Eugene and even build and repair bridges. Oregon still has workers who almost always finish the job early and do a great job.

The Republicans are trying to steal the governorship. They want a recount when the Democrat won by over 10,000 votes in Oregon. It is ironic that the reason when I was a Republican who supported Al Gore because I was worried what Bush would do to the Supreme Court. My worst fears were realized.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been filibustering for Eight Hours so far. I was going to watch only a few minutes, but was so mesmerized by his speech that I ended up watching for three hours before taking a break. www.c-span.org

He was particularly effective when he talked about letters from his Vermont constituent who live mostly in small towns. Heating oil, gasoline costs, and average $10/hour wages if they have jobs, makes this recession especially worrying for many Americans.

Sanders Filibuster: Part 1 Sanders Filibuster: Part 2 Sanders Filibuster: Available Shortly

Speaker Pelosi Statement on Tax Cuts

Bloomberg: Dems Oppose Obama's Tax-Cut Plan

Sen. Reid tax cut legislation introduced yesterday

WSJ: Senate Unveils Tax Bill's Price Tag

He convinced me that we should all call our senators and House representative to vote against Obama/Republican Deal. Call your senators in your state after you listen to any part of Sanders’ speech and agree with him. www.vote-smart.org and your zip code. With the addition of 4 digit postal code, you can get your representative.

Obama should keep trying to pass the House bill on tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. Trickle down economics never worked and won’t work this time. How many castles can they buy here? The top percent makes more yearly income the the bottom 90 percent of Americans.

The top 0.24 percent now pay estate taxes because they cannot hide all their net worth. The danger of inherited wealth is that they are and will exert great power in electing senators, representatives, Presidents, and Supreme Courts that support them getting even richer as long as they get some of their offerings.

We already know that the current tax cuts by Bush in place has not resulted in extra spending by the rich. Continuing the tax cuts for the middleclass is very important. The bill on Social Security is based on an idea from Republicans who want to get rid of Social Security.

If Obama going to be another Bill Clinton who sacrificed the working Middleclass with NAFTA and the poor with Welfare Reform and Signed the deregulation bills which led Wall Street crash. Both Clinton and Obama have the weakness of needing the love of their enemies. Funding Social Security cuts with funds from our Treasury can be easily stopped because it will be considered Welfare Payments which it is not now.

During the Bush years the medium income of the middleclass went down $2,000 plus while the top one percent doubled already from a high basis.

Interview with John W. Dean who wrote Broken government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches

… Amazon.com: You describe yourself as a "Goldwater conservative on many issues," but note that conservatives' "fundamentally anti-governmental attitude" can make it hard for them to govern effectively. In other words, if people hate government, why would they be good at it? What do you think are the models of good conservative governance?

Dean: Senator Goldwater said during the 1964 presidential campaign--and I have found him saying the same thing years later in speeches--that when history looked back on his political philosophy that he would be called a liberal. Goldwater conservatism is actually drawn from classic liberalism.

I particularly admire Senator Goldwater's positions on "process" issues, the way he rejected the incivility and intellectual dishonesty that has overpowered conservatism. While he did not like big government--in fact, nobody does and he was merely ahead of his time in raising the issue--he believed that which was essential must function in the best interest of all Americans, not merely Republicans.

He never embraced the Reagan mantra that government is the problem not the solution. I always thought Senator Goldwater's definition of conservatism a good motto for good conservative governance: "a conservative draws on the wisdom and best of the past to apply it to the present and the future."

Today, conservatives are drawing on the worst of the past, not because they are true conservatives; rather they are radicals more interested in power for themselves and other Republicans instead of serving the general public interest.

Jim Kawakami, Dec 10, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2008) — Political conservatives operate out of a fear of chaos and absence of order while political liberals operate out of a fear of emptiness, a new Northwestern University study finds. … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080924124549.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2008) — Does your personality influence who you vote for? The short answer is yes, according to John Mayer, professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire. As Americans go to the polls in record numbers to vote for the next U.S. president, some voters will crave social stability and others will crave social change. Liberals and conservatives divide according to these personality preferences … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031161623.htm

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2007) — How much money would it take to get you to stick a pin into your palm? How much to stick a pin into the palm of a child you don't know? How much to slap a friend in the face (with his or her permission) as part of a comedy skit? Well, what about slapping you father (with his permission) as part of a skit? How you answer questions such as these may reveal something about your morality, and even your politics--conservatives, for example, tend to care more about issues of hierarchy and respect, while liberals concentrate on caring and fairness. … http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070517142545.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2010) — http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101209074403.htm

… "Getting things done in politics typically depends on competing viewpoints finding common ground," Smith said. "Our research is suggesting that's a lot tougher than it sounds, because the same piece of ground can look very different depending on which ideological hill you view it from." …

It goes without saying that conservatives and liberals don't see the world in the same way. Now, research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests that is exactly, and quite literally, the case.

In a new study, UNL researchers measured both liberals' and conservatives' reaction to "gaze cues" -- a person's tendency to shift attention in a direction consistent with another person's eye movements, even if it's irrelevant to their current task -- and found big differences between the two groups.

Liberals responded strongly to the prompts, consistently moving their attention in the direction suggested to them by a face on a computer screen. Conservatives, on the other hand, did not.

Why? Researchers suggested that conservatives' value on personal autonomy might make them less likely to be influenced by others, and therefore less responsive to the visual prompts.

"We thought that political temperament may moderate the magnitude of gaze-cuing effects, but we did not expect conservatives to be completely immune to these cues," said Michael Dodd, a UNL assistant professor of psychology and the lead author of the study.

Liberals may have followed the "gaze cues," meanwhile, because they tend to be more responsive to others, the study suggests.

"This study basically provides one more piece of evidence that liberals and conservatives perceive the world, and process information taken in from that world, in different ways," said Kevin Smith, UNL professor of political science and one of the study's authors.

"Understanding exactly why people have such different political perspectives and where those differences come from may help us better understand the roots of a lot of political conflict."

The study involved 72 people who sat in front of a white computer screen and were told to fixate on a small black cross in its center. The cross then disappeared and was replaced by a drawing of a face, but with eyes missing their pupils. Then, pupils appeared in the eyes, looking either left or right. Finally, a small, round target would appear either on the left or right side of the face drawing.

Dodd said the participants were told that the gaze cues in the study did not predict where the target would appear, so there was no reason for participants to attend to them. "But the nature of social interaction tends to make it very difficult to ignore the cues, even when they're meaningless," he said.

As soon as they saw the target, participants would tap the space bar on their keyboard, giving researchers information on their susceptibility to the "gaze cues." Each sequence, which lasted a few hundred milliseconds, was repeated hundreds of times.

Afterward, participants were surveyed on their beliefs on a range of political issues to establish their political ideology.

In addition to shedding light on the differences between the two political camps, researchers said the results add to growing indications that suggest biology plays a role determining one's political direction. Previous UNL research has delved into the physiology of political orientation, showing that those highly responsive to threatening images are likely to support defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq War.

Traditionally, political scientists have accounted for political differences purely in terms of environmental forces, but this study shows the potential role of cognitive biases -- wherever they may come from -- as a relevant area of future research.

"Getting things done in politics typically depends on competing viewpoints finding common ground," Smith said. "Our research is suggesting that's a lot tougher than it sounds, because the same piece of ground can look very different depending on which ideological hill you view it from."

The study, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, is in a forthcoming edition of the journal Attention, Perception & Psychophysics and is authored by UNL's Dodd, Smith and John R. Hibbing.

Education Why are Students in Western Countries Except Finland Poor Test Takers

Tags: Education Asians Finish Students Beat Americans and Europeans in Achievement Tests and Creativity Tests

We brag about a small change in school test schools as real achievements due to frequent testing. We call this teaching to the test. By this standard, we can never catch up to Asians and the Finland students. Would it not be better to do frequent testing in classes we teach to see if the students are learning? Reading levels went down after we introduced modern ways to teach reading. The same with math. Repetitious drills seems to be what we should go back to. When I visited schools in Japan, I found that teachers had a very prestigious jobs with good pay. We once did. It seems that Michelle Rhee on the cover of the recent Newsweek has the answer. Demand excellence and pay them a good professional salary so they can be true professionals and be proud being teachers.

Teacher unions demand of equal pay for unequal accomplishments must go.

My friend tutors children from the highest income area in New Jersey. He does not find both the children and parents are exceptionally bright or fast learners. He has tutored many children in math and reading who all go to private schools.

The educationally challenged son due to a traffic accident got into Harvard because he was Al Gore’s son. The Republican leader of the Senate before McConnell had a really dumb son who did not do well in prep school, but his transplant surgeon father got him into Princeton where he graduated in spite of his very poor scholarship.

With half of the students at Ivy League colleges enter for a legacy inheritance privilege, some on sport scholarships, and some get in due to a large donation by their parents, the less than half of the openings leads to very good students being rejected. Harvard gets their faculty mostly from other schools.

Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, asked the question whether it is worth your time and money to attend these schools. They conclude that it is not! “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What We Can Do About It.” Their criticism of both the cost and poor adjunct teachers replacing most professors at these Universities because so many professors are either on sabbatical or too busy making money consulting or doing research to teach. Many students do not even attend the lectures for that reason. Harvard Law School graduates President Obama and Michelle admit that were still paying their debts shortly before Obama ran for President! His best selling books bailed him out.

The education level at the best high schools in Japan, China, and Korea are so good that they are equivalent to some of the best colleges here. Also Asia students study very hard and long because they do not believe as we seem to here that genius is due to hard work and not inherent intelligence.

Hacker and Dreifus looked at a class from Princeton in I recall 1973 and looked to see if that class achieved success anymore than say a state school in the Middle West. The Princeton student graduates were just average. They also answered the obvious question about the achievements of the students at the Harvard Business School. Again half the students were not legacy students and they had a very successful career not being educated at the undergraduate level in an Ivy League school. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/books/19book.html

In the age of Google, some say that we do not have to know stuff because we can look it up. My question is how can we look it up if we don’t what questions to ask? Something is happening to the way we learn. Creativity has gone down 20 percent in recent decades. Do Republican policies make us dumb? Cut funding to the schools at every level and make them more efficient. Pay teachers a low a salary as we can. Garbage In, Garbage Out. The old way of rote learning has led to ghetto children scoring higher than advantaged suburban children. If we don’t have information already in our brain, we really cannot think well.

Jim Kawakami, Dec 8, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Shanghai Highest Test Scores Shocked the World Sam Dillon NY Times Dec 7, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html?_r=1&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all

… If Shanghai is a showcase of Chinese educational progress, America’s showcase would be Massachusetts, which has routinely scored higher than all other states on America’s main federal math test in recent years.

But in a 2007 study that correlated the results of that test with the results of an international math exam, Massachusetts students scored behind Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Shanghai did not participate in the test. …

“This is the first time that we have internationally comparable data on learning outcomes in China,” Mr. Schleicher said. “While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning.”

“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” he said. …

_____________________________________

… The test, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, was given to 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that includes the world’s major industrial powers. …

“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable, and we have to see them as a challenge to get better,” he added. “The United States came in 23rd or 24th in most subjects. We can quibble, or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.”

In math, the Shanghai students performed in a class by themselves, outperforming second-place Singapore, which has been seen as an educational superstar in recent years. The average math scores of American students put them below 30 other countries.

PISA scores are on a scale, with 500 as the average. Two-thirds of students in participating countries score between 400 and 600. On the math test last year, students in Shanghai scored 600, in Singapore 562, in Germany 513, and in the United States 487.

In reading, Shanghai students scored 556, ahead of second-place Korea with 539. The United States scored 500 and came in 17th, putting it on par with students in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and several other countries.

In science, Shanghai students scored 575. In second place was Finland, where the average score was 554. The United States scored 502 — in 23rd place — with a performance indistinguishable from Poland, Ireland, Norway, France and several other countries.

The testing in Shanghai was carried out by an international contractor, working with Chinese authorities, and overseen by the Australian Council for Educational Research, a nonprofit testing group, said Andreas Schleicher, who directs the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s international educational testing program.

Mark Schneider, a commissioner of the Department of Education’s research arm in the George W. Bush administration, who returned from an educational research visit to China on Friday, said he had been skeptical about some PISA results in the past. But Mr. Schneider said he considered the accuracy of these results to be unassailable. …

If Shanghai is a showcase of Chinese educational progress, America’s showcase would be Massachusetts, which has routinely scored higher than all other states on America’s main federal math test in recent years.

But in a 2007 study that correlated the results of that test with the results of an international math exam, Massachusetts students scored behind Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Shanghai did not participate in the test.

A 259-page Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report on the latest Pisa results notes that throughout its history, China has been organized around competitive examinations. “Schools work their students long hours every day, and the work weeks extend into the weekends,” it said.

Chinese students spend less time than American students on athletics, music and other activities not geared toward success on exams in core subjects. Also, in recent years, teaching has rapidly climbed up the ladder of preferred occupations in China, and salaries have risen. In Shanghai, the authorities have undertaken important curricular reforms, and educators have been given more freedom to experiment.

Ever since his organization received the Shanghai test scores last year, Mr. Schleicher said, international testing experts have investigated them to vouch for their accuracy, expecting that they would produce astonishment in many Western countries.

“This is the first time that we have internationally comparable data on learning outcomes in China,” Mr. Schleicher said. “While that’s important, for me the real significance of these results is that they refute the commonly held hypothesis that China just produces rote learning.”

“Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” he said. (complete table NYT)

Science	Reading	Math
Shanghai 575 Singapore 542	Shanghai 556 Singapore 526	Shanghai 600 Singapore 562
Korea 538 Finland 554	Korea 539 Finland 536	Korea 546 Finland 541
Canada 529 Japan 539	Canada 524 Japan 520	Canada 527 Japan 529

Britain 514 Ireland 508	Britain 494 Ireland 496	Britain 492 Ireland 487
Germany 520 France 498	Germany 497 France 496	Germany 513 France 497
USA 502 Poland 508	USA 500 Poland 500	USA 487 Poland 495

Depression ADHD Sunscreens Lack Vitamin D Poor Neurological Development

Tags: Depression ADHD Sunscreens Lack of Vitamin D Leads to Brain Defects Half College Use Pills to Concentrate Dynamic Therapy Works

… The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) was aware that there was no research to back up the assertion that 80 percent of depressed patients improve if they keep trying different medications, so NIMH funded “Sequential Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression” (STAR*D), the largest ever study of sequential depression treatments. STAR*D results were published in 2006. …

(An article in the recent Scientific American Mind indicates that cognitive therapy ignores the most important aspect of therapy which is emotional problems. Dynamic Therapy which emphasizes emotional problems in the Freud mode can be seen in Treatment on HBO. I believe cognitive therapy has been oversold and does not work for most patients, unfortunately. We operate much more from emotion than prefrontal cortical thinking and planning. Jim)

Remember that what is reported on television, including PBS, is “honestly” misreporting what they think is true. Remember propaganda simply involves emphasizing one point of view beyond all others. That is what happens on Meet the Press. Time who does the most talking.

In the recent past I reported to you what PBS reported on Depression, the pills used, and the success rate of these procedures. Apparently it might not be the whole truth. That is one reason I do not watch the NewsHour very often. I normally turn it off after ten minutes of watching. I know too much to believe what they are telling me.

Our corporations have even intruded into the world of science and health with owned scientists who support their corporate influenced academic scientists by offering them both research grants and lucrative consultantships. Of course the corporations hire those who have the most influence who can decide what gets published or not.

This has been the case with the impact to our health regarding poor safety studies on drugs, contaminated foods, sunscreens with a sharp increase in neurological diseases, flu, colds, and melanoma, high fructose corn syrup obesity and diabetes Type 2 crisis, fiberless and high salt and fructose and glucose sugars in high amounts in sodas and foods, allowing untested drugs from China such as the heparin disaster. Where at least 20 patients died.

Many counterfeit drugs from China passed on to Americans through pharmacies throughout our country may have led to undetected deaths and illnesses.

Wal Mart is now in the process of a Class Action Suit where women are suing because the management favored men over women for promotion not addressed in clever Wal Mart public relation ads on television. Unfortunately we have a corporate Supreme Court majority who call themselves conservatives, but a more appropriate term would be radical judges who overwhelming favor pro-corporate “clients” than the American people as seen clearly by their decisions.

Corporations are not people, but our Supreme Court treats them as such without taking away the special secrecy and tax privileges they have over we the people.

Since Reagan, we now live in a world where profits trump all other human needs except greed. More recently we have seen Big Pharma and our Health Insurance industries act in ways that are detrimental to our health and welfare. Corporations are amoral and the only way to control them is through laws and regulations.

It has always been this way forever once we became a larger society where expulsion of the crooks and killers is no longer as easy to do, especially if they are in positions of power.

We all do things which are less than admirable to survive whether at Universities, corporations, or living in large anonymous cities where relationships are difficult to form. Smaller towns and cities require more cooperation to survive in any function.

However, the biggest medical scam may have been with the push for use of antidepressants and for pills for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD. We now know that university students do use ADHD pills obtained legally or not at levels as high as 50 percent to allow them to concentrate during their studies. Perhaps it has been more than the Internet, ipods, and cell phones that led to greatly distracted and the inability of students at MIT admit they cannot write for longer than 15 minutes without taking a break.

Vitamin D3 formed in our skin by sunlight’s UVB burning rays is apparently necessary in much larger amounts than realized. I became interested in vitamin D when I saw an article mention that a White person with enough skin exposure can make 22,000 IU of vitamin D3 in just 15 minutes! I concluded immediately that vitamin D3 must be more important to our health than just bones.

Just a few years ago I had difficulty finding much data on sunscreens blocking UVB causing an increase in cancer except for a Swedish and Australian study in the 1980s that showed a mushrooming of Melanoma soon after the widespread use of sunscreens. Swedish people all have good incomes so they normally take long vacations in sunny climates during the winter. Sunscreens allowed they to stay in the sun longer, but the sunscreens above did not block out the penetrating UVA which likely causes melanoma.

Now we know beyond a reasonable doubt that vitamin D3 helps us prevent cancer for reasons I delineated a number of times. Search google “vitamin D and cancer” Bush’s FDA with lobbyists running the regulatory agencies prevented a French sunscreen which did block UVA until November 2006 from approval until American companies had a substitute. I had to buy this product from Canada in early 2000s.

During the spring, summer, and fall, try to get at least ten minutes of sun without sunscreen between 12-2 PM or more at higher latitudes above Los Angeles. Even those who live in sunscreen Miami have deficient vitamin D of 40-75 nanograms per milliliter of non-active metabolite 25-hydroxy vitamin D.

How does a corporation get around this embarrassing truth? By averaging all people in the world no matter what latitude they live at where sunlight is less prevalent. Looking at regions shows that health and latitude from the equator are very important for our health due to a lack of vitamin D3. These were large epidemiological studies done in various regions. The Framingham study just takes in one town.

Tanning beds are a perfect way to get vitamin D3. Don’t believe all the propaganda that tanning beds are responsible for an increase in melanoma. Perhaps redheads who use it a lot more than they should get melanoma. This is just another lie. The same people who use tanning salons are likely the same who spend hours on the beach with sunscreens. Look how healthy a regular tanning bed user Alaska’s Sarah Palin is!

Just use one with a higher level of UVB and use it for only a short time, or 5-10 minutes. I plan to use the one at my apartment complex soon. Sun makes us feel good just like eating cookies. The same brain chemicals emerge to make us feel good. It will keep us from getting depressed during the winter months. Yes, a tanning bed may be all you need to help cure your depression.

Take at least 2,000 IU, but more appropriately 4,000 IU of vitamin D3. Remember activated vitamin D in our cells help prevent cancer cells from growing. Pancreatic, ovarian, cervical, deadly form of fast growing surface prostate cancer undetected by the PSA test, and lung cancers which are well advanced before detection are especially important for prevention with vitamin D. Once cancers advance, they produce enough of a protein that prevents vitamin D from working.

Jim Kawakami, Dec 6, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Are Antidepressants a Scam? 5 Myths About How to Treat Depression

Many treatments for depression are no more effective than placebos.

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and his latest book is Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net

December 5, 2010 | http://www.alternet.org/story/149084/are_antidepressants_a_scam_5_myths_about_how_to_treat_depression_?page=entire

A warning: for people satisfied with their standard depression treatments, debunking myths about them may be troubling. However, for critically-thinking depression sufferers who have not been helped by antidepressants, psychotherapy, or other standard treatments, discovering truths about these treatments can provide ideas about what may actually work for them.

Critical thinkers have difficulty placing faith in any depression treatment because science tells them that these treatments often work no better than placebos or nothing at all, and if one lacks faith in a depression treatment, it is not likely to be effective. In fact, it is belief and faith—or what scientists call “expectations” and the “placebo effect”—that is mostly responsible for any depression treatment working. Critical-thinkers can find a way out of depression when their critical thinking about depression treatments is validated and respected, and they are challenged to think more critically about their critical thinking.

Myth 1: Antidepressants Are More Effective than Placebos

Many depressed people report that antidepressants have been effective for them, but do antidepressants work any better than a sugar pill? Researcher Irving Kirsch (professor of psychology at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom as well as professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and author of The Emperor’s New Drugs) has been trying to answer that question for a significant part of his career.

In 2002, Kirsch and his team at the University of Connecticut examined 47 depression treatment studies that had been sponsored by drug companies on the antidepressants Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone. Many of these studies had not been published, but all had been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so Kirsch used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to all the data. He discovered that in the majority of the trials, antidepressants failed to outperform sugar pill placebos.

“All antidepressants,” Kirsch reported in 2010, “including the well-known SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors], had no clinically significant benefit over a placebo.” While in aggregate, antidepressants slightly edge out placebos, the difference is so unremarkable that Kirsch and others describe it as “clinically negligible.”

Why are so many doctors unaware of the lack of superiority of antidepressants as compared to placebos? The answer became clear in 2008 when researcher and physician Erick Turner (currently at the Department of Psychiatry and Center for Ethics in Health Care, Oregon Health and Science University) discovered that antidepressant studies with favorable outcomes were far more likely to be published than those with unfavorable outcomes. Analyzing published and unpublished antidepressant studies registered with the FDA between 1987-2004, Turner found that 37 of 38 studies having positive results were published; however, Turner reported, “Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, [falsely] conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies).”

Myth 2: If the First Antidepressant Fails, Another Antidepressant Will Likely Succeed ... (This article is over ten pages long. Jim http://www.alternet.org/story/149084/are_antidepressants_a_scam_5_myths_about_how_to_treat_depression_?page=entire

Vitamin D Parkinson’s Finnish Study Highest Blood Levels 67 Percent Lower Risk

Tags: Vitamin D Parkinson's Finnish High Levels Lowers Chance of Disease

While I don’t know the exact mechanism about how vitamin D works in alleviating neurological diseases like MS, autism, and others, I strongly suspect it has to do with our run away immune system which attacks our normal nerve fibers including those in the brain. For example, the chance of a young kid living up to the age of 15 when nerve and brain development progresses most rapidly increase their chance of MS is 100%.

One of the most important roles for vitamin D is to control our immune system and activate our T-Cells so when real infections occur, they send the T-Cells to the source of the infection so our immune system can go into action.

Since every cell in our body has a receptor for vitamin D activated in the cell, we should take enough vitamin D3 and sun to get our level of non-active metabolite of vitamin D3 which is stored in our fat tissues, as high as we are comfortable in doing. The 25-hydroxy vitamin D inactive metabolite should be at levels of 75 or higher for you if your doctor says you are susceptible.

Ask him or her why they predict Parkinson’s?

I suspect you need to start at 50,000 IU of vitamin D3 a week for two or three months to catch up. Do it now after seeing your doctor. Don’t let them measure the active vitamin D or 1,25 dihydroxy vitamin D. It does not mean much because it various so much. Mine is about 73 nanograms/milliliter.

People feel good when they go into the sun without sunscreen because producing vitamin D3 also keeps us from being depressed. The longer we are depressed, the smaller our hippocampus becomes making coming out of depression harder. Shock Therapy under a sedative works faster too.

Jim Kawakami, Dec 5, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

ScienceDaily (July 13, 2010) — http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100712162624.htm Individuals with higher levels of vitamin D appear to have a reduced risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Vitamin D is known to play a role in bone health and may also be linked to cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, according to background information in the article. "Recently, chronically inadequate vitamin D intake was proposed to play a significant role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease," the authors write. "According to the suggested biological mechanism, Parkinson's disease may be caused by a continuously inadequate vitamin D status leading to a chronic loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain."

Paul Knekt, D.P.H., and colleagues at the National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland, studied 3,173 Finnish men and women age 50 to 79 who did not have Parkinson's disease at the beginning of the study, in 1978 to 1980. Participants completed questionnaires and interviews about socioeconomic and health background, underwent baseline examinations and provided blood samples for vitamin D analysis.

Over a 29-year follow-up, through 2007, 50 of the participants developed Parkinson's disease. After adjusting for potentially related factors, including physical activity and body mass index, individuals in the highest quartile (one-fourth of the study population) of serum vitamin D levels had a 67 percent lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease than those in the lowest quartile of vitamin D levels.

"Despite the overall low vitamin D levels in the study population, a dose-response relationship was found," the authors write. "This study was carried out in Finland, an area with restricted sunlight exposure, and is thus based on a population with a continuously low vitamin D status. Accordingly, the mean [average] serum vitamin D level in the present population was about 50 percent of the suggested optimal level (75 to 80 nanomoles per liter). Our findings are thus consistent with the hypothesis that chronic inadequacy of vitamin D is a risk factor for Parkinson's disease."

The exact mechanisms by which vitamin D levels may affect Parkinson's disease risk are unknown, but the nutrient has been shown to exert a protective effect on the brain through antioxidant activities, regulation of calcium levels, detoxification, modulation of the immune system and enhanced conduction of electricity through neurons, the authors note.

"In intervention trials focusing on effects of vitamin D supplements, the incidence of Parkinson disease merits follow up," they conclude.

Editorial: Findings Add to Research on Neurological Effects of Vitamin D

"The study by Knekt et al in this issue of the Archives is the first longitudinal analysis of vitamin D status as a risk of incident Parkinson's disease and examines a cohort of more than 3,000 participants from the Mini-Finland Health Survey," writes Marian Leslie Evatt, M.D., M.S., of Emory University, Atlanta, in an accompanying editorial.

"A growing body of basic research lends plausibility to a role for adequate vitamin D status protecting against development of Parkinson's disease," Dr. Evatt writes. "Knekt and colleagues' study provides the first promising human data to suggest that inadequate vitamin D status is associated with the risk of developing Parkinson's disease, but further work is needed in both basic and clinical arenas to elucidate the exact role, mechanisms and optimum concentration of vitamin D in Parkinson's disease."

"With the animal data showing a U-shaped curve for neuroprotective effects of vitamin D, it seems prudent to confirm the findings presented in this issue and investigate whether the apparent dose-response relationship observed in the current study maintains its slope, levels off or becomes negative with higher 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations. In the interim, data from interventional studies of fractures and falls appear to justify optimizing vitamin D levels to greater than 30 to 40 nanograms per milliliter."

Financial News CJR Dec 3, 2010, Bernanke Morgenson Mortgage Fraud

Tags: Bernanke Morgenson Mortgage Fraud Wide-Spread Corporate Corruption Anti-Christ Repubs

One of the strategies I use to keep up and understand important news is to use others to find them for me. I found that the Columbia Journalism Review, Democracy Now, The Raw Story, and AlterNet are good sources. Here are some stories from the recent past and today that might spark your interest.

Even though jobs and the economy are often tied together in the news, we have a system now where corporations continue to increase efficiency. In the latest Bloomberg Business Week, the story points out that corporations are now tapping into the ingenuity of its common workers to improve efficiency and productivity. The results have been outstanding with an increase of 50 percent in productivity.

I hope, but despair that since the bottom line controls everything we do including our morality or lack of and these productive workers will be fired because they did too good a job for the market. We have seen this recently in the hack "corporate-influenced" panel deciding that we don't need any vitamin D than we are getting now with 80 percent of Americans at levels 20-30 nanograms per milliliter of 25-hydroxy Vitamin D non-active metabolite.

Every cell in our body including our skin has a receptor for vitamin D. Cancer develops when our cells become less sticky and come apart. Vitamin D helps makes them stay together. Although I have not read anything yet about why we need higher levels of this metabolite in our blood, it is common sense that if we do not enough of this, it will be easier for cancers to thrive. When we are deficient in vitamin D metabolite in the blood, cancer cells develop a protein that blocks the vitamin D receptor when enough of these cells develops.

For example, ovarian cancers which are normally caught too late are very deadly even when the patient is given lots of vitamin D. Epidemiological studies show that those who live near the equator where they get lots of direct sun have 75 percent less breast cancer unless girls and women coverup such as in Saudi Arabia where many teenagers get breast cancer in a very sunny climate. Sunscreens do the same thing. They block UVB, the burning rays, which generate vitamin D3 in our skin.

For a light skin person without much clothing or sunscreen, in just 15 minutes in noon sun, they can make up to 22,000 IU of vitamin D3! This means our body needs lots of vitamin D!

Tanning salons which have been wrongly thought to cause cancer may do just the opposite. Just 5 minutes each day may be enough. Ignore those stories about redheads getting melanoma from overusing tanning salons. Remember even the smartest people make dumb decisions by relying on someone else doing their thinking for them. Start a new trend. Think! God would have invented sunscreens if the sun was so bad for us. Without it we know when to put on a shirt or go into the shade. We have a perfect enough alarm button!

The small amount of active 1,25-hydroxy Vitamin D metabolite from the kidneys is primarily used to transport calcium through the intestinal walls and deliver it to the bones. If we already have enough vitamin D3, increasing the non-active 25-hydroxy Vitamin D metabolite will not change the amount of active 1,25 hydroxy vitamin D in our blood. The active form is produced in all our cells from the non-active form and any excess is destroyed with an enzyme.

Children who are deficient in 25-hydroxy vitamin D metabolite up to the age of 15 have close a 100 percent chance of developing multiple sclerosis while those who do have enough at an early age do not develop MS even when they become deficient. The early years from the fetus age, brain development and synaptic connections require vitamin D metabolite. Mothers are now deficient because of sunscreen and more time spent indoors so breast feeding does not help much.

Jim Kawakami, Dec 3, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Dear reader,

Here's some of what's new and interesting on The Audit, the business desk of the Columbia Journalism Review. We hope you enjoy these now or over the holiday, and Happy Thanksgiving.

the editors

Bernanke Falls in the Forest: Audit Deputy Chief Ryan Chittum writes that Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, Republican, Bush appointee, calm technocrat, called for more fiscal stimulus (government spending and/or tax cuts) now to boost a flailing economy. Big story, huh? Maybe—just not in the press. This is a must-read on the press's deaf ear to a Fed chairman's unusual fiscal recommendation. …

Buried Lede: Chittum says all the biz/econobloggers went gaga over a nugget of information buried deep in Gretchen Morgenson’s column yesterday: that Countrywide held onto notes that it was supposed to have passed on to bond-servicing firms. This is not a detail, and could have wide implications in the foreclosure fiasco. That it was found in the 18th paragraphs says either that Morgenson has a lot in her notebook or she buried the lede. Probably both.

Screwed: Ryan Chittum tips his hat to The Miami Herald, which dug up a telling anecdote for the foreclosure scandal, the mortgage crisis, and how both are two sides of the same coin. It’s a stunning story about how a woman refinanced her home to get $50,000, wound up getting defrauded at every turn, and is set to lose it to the bank.

Thanks.

We hope that you'll visit us often, follow us on Twitter @CJR, and subscribe already—less than two $10 bills!—to our prizewinning print magazine. Think gift subscription!

http://rawstory.com Dec 3, 2010, The Raw Story UK

US CONTRACTOR BOUGHT DRUGS, BOYS FOR AFGHAN POLICE: CABLES

GOP 'DEATH PANEL' EMERGES: ARIZONA MEDICAID BUDGET CUTS TO LET POOR PATIENTS DIE...

Judge cites risk of 'harm', orders genetically modified crop destroyed

Gitmo detainees subjected to dangerous psychoactive drug

Palin handlers bully CNN cameraman at book signing

Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org Dec 3, 2010,

Corporate America Reports Record Profits

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/24/headlines New government data show U.S. corporations made record profits in the third quarter, earning at an annual rate of more than $1.6 trillion. That’s the highest figure since the government began keeping track 60 years ago. Overall corporate earnings are up 28 percent from the same time last year. Companies, however, have not been using the record profits to hire more workers. The Federal Reserve is predicting that the nation’s official unemployment rate will remain over 9 percent for at least another year.

Pope: Condoms Can Be Used to Stop AIDS

The Catholic Church appears to be easing its opposition to the use of condoms. In a new book, Pope Benedict endorses the use of condoms in order to prevent the spread of HIV, but the Church remains opposed to the widespread use of condoms and other forms of contraception. In South Africa Nonkosi Khumalo of the Treatment Action Campaign criticized the church’s record.

(Emperor Constantine decided to make Rome’s State Religion Christianity because he needed soldiers to maintain the Roman Empire. He also outlawed abortion and he and the new Christian Church wanted more babies for War and Church. This has been more important for the Catholic, Evangelical, and Mormon Churches than other religions. Jim)

Nonkosi Khumalo: "I think it is a bit too late for the Catholics to now, 2010, wake up and think, 'You know, we should now say it openly and say people should use condoms,' because there has been a lot of infections that could have been prevented, that we could not prevent because we hold dearly our values in terms of what the church expects of us. But I think it is taking us forward. I think we should welcome it. I think it is very liberal of the Catholic—I hope others would follow suit."

Tensions Escalate on Korean Peninsula

South Korea has found the bodies of two civilians who were killed Tuesday in a North Korean artillery attack on the island of Yeonpyeong near the disputed maritime border. The attack also killed two Korean Marines and injured over a dozen people. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Tuesday’s fighting one of the "gravest incidents" since the end of the Korean War. Meanwhile the Guardian newspaper reports South Korea’s defense minister has raised the possibility that U.S. nuclear weapons could be deployed in his country for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Major Investment Firms Subpoenaed in Insider-Trading Case

The Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan has subpoenaed several major investment firms as part of a widespread insider-trading investigation. Firms subpoenaed include hedge-fund giants SAC Capital Advisors and Citadel, the big mutual-fund company Janus Capital Group, and Wellington Management, one of the nation’s biggest institutional-investment firms.

News Summaries and Links Dec 2, 2010 Newsweek

Tags: Food Class Global Warming Now Practical governing or the Academic Brazil for Us, Asia Teach Us Retirement Income Gone

Newsweek went to essentially all column format which briefly gives us important readable information we need. I also find Bloomberg Business Week extremely good for investors by providing understanding about what is going on in the investment world. The articles are brief, but to the point.

Food Class, Global Warming Now, Practical governing or the Academic, Brazil for Us, Asia Teach Us, Retirement Income Gone

Jim Kawakami, Dec 2. 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

1. Food We Eat Depends on Our Income Newsweek Lisa Miller, In the book “Nickel and Dimed,” Barbara Ehrenreich told us that working at Wal Mart, waitress, and cleaning woman, she could not afford to buy kitchen utensils or save up enough for the normal security deposit for an apartment and was forced to live in a seedy motel and eat fast foods. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/22/what-food-says-about-class-in-america.html

1. When Climate Change Current and Future Dangers Ignored for Political and Current Profits, We Get Mealy-Mouth Saying What is Obvious is not necessarily true Newsweek Superb Science columnist Sharon Begley She points that it is already possible to calculate how much to attribute current weather phenomena to typical weather variation and how much to attribute to Climate Change.

In their biggest success, climate scientists led by Peter Stott of the British Met Office analyzed the 2003 European heat wave, when the mercury rose higher than at any time since the introduction of weather instruments (1851), and probably since at least 1500. After plugging in historical and paleo data, and working out climate patterns in a hypothetical world without a human-caused greenhouse effect, they conclude that our meddling was 75 percent to blame for the heat wave.

Put another way, we more than doubled the chance that it would happen, and it’s twice as likely to be human-caused than natural. That’s one beat shy of “Yes, we did it,” but better than “There’s no way to tell.”

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/27/can-we-blame-extreme-weather-on-climate-change.html

1. Why Governor Christie of NJ is More Successful than Obama and Still Popular Newsweek Andrew Romero “The easiest way to understand why Christie has flourished and why Obama has faltered is to look at the jobs they held before entering politics. From January 2002 to December 2008, Christie served as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor;

earlier, Obama spent 12 years as a constitutional-law professor at the University of Chicago. Today, Christie leads like the prosecutor he once was, identifying the crime, fingering the culprit, and methodically building a case designed to convince a jury of his peers.

“If you spend years exercising your biceps, those are muscles you’re going to have. Obama, meanwhile, leads like a professor, examining all angles of an issue and seeking evolutionary change by consensus. There are strengths and weaknesses in both approaches. But in an age of anger and austerity, Obama may have more to learn from Christie than the other way around.”

4. Are We Going to Become Another Brazil? Newsweekhttp://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/25/violence-rocks-rio-as-brazilian-police-pacify-favelas.html “Keeping the peace in Rio de Janeiro has never been a job description for the faint-hearted. But the mayhem that swept the streets of South America’s fairest city this week has been extreme even by outsize Brazilian standards. In a span of 72 hours, bands of outlaws with assault weapons staged a series of random assaults, machine-gunning police outposts, setting up roadblocks on main thoroughfares, and torching cars and buses.

Rio’s chief of public safety, José Mariano Beltrame, asserts that the rampage is a sure sign that the criminal gangs that have held this metropolis of 9 million people hostage to drugs and violence are losing their grip. The Cariocas, as the city’s residents are known--not to mention the international community that this emerging nation has so aggressively courted--would be forgiven for wondering.”

5. West Can Learn About Economics from Asia Raw Newsweek Kishore Mahbubani is dean of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

If Americans could only free themselves from their antigovernment straitjackets, they would begin to see that the U.S.’s problems are not insoluble. A few sensible federal measures could put the country back on the right path. A simple consumption tax of, say, 5 percent would make a significant dent in the country’s huge government deficit without damaging productivity. A small gasoline tax would help wean America from its dependence on oil imports and create incentives for green energy development. In the same way, a significant reduction of wasteful agricultural subsidies and other earmarks could also lower the deficit. But in order to capitalize on these common-sense solutions, Americans will have to put aside their own attachment to the rhetoric of smaller government and less regulation. American politicians will have to develop the courage to follow what is taught in all American public-policy schools: that there are good taxes and bad taxes. Asian countries have embraced this wisdom, and have built sound long-term fiscal policies as a result.

6. Your Retirement is Now Your Problem The Great Risk Shift Newsweek Ezra Klein Newsweekhttp://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/27/paying-for-retirement-is-now-your-own-problem.html We have a retirement-security problem. And when we look at one or another piece in isolation—as most of the deficit-reduction proposals do—we run the risk of making it much worse. To be more specific, we run the risk of continuing the great risk shift of the last decades of the 20th century, in which uncertainty that was once borne by employers and the government has increasingly been shunted onto individuals. By 1995 there were more 401(k)-type plans than traditional defined-benefit plans. Now there are about twice as many. And as Robert Hiltonsmith, a policy analyst at the think tank Demos, documents in a new report, they’re not working out that well. Retirement experts say average workers approaching retirement need about $250,000 in their 401(k)s to maintain their standard of living. They don’t have it. The number is closer to $98,000—not much more than a third of the recommended.