Bush Still Doesn’t Get It

I didn’t want to write this story, but I just can’t let it go.

Ed Rollins wrote an article for CNN on January 13th, 2009 called, “Commentary: Bush still doesn’t get it.” I agree that Bush still doesn’t get it. The problem is that Ed Rollins still doesn’t get it either.

Rollins is a Republican strategist who was the national chairman of Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign. Take a minute and imagine how horrible you would feel right now if Huckabee was going to be inaugurated next Tuesday instead of Barack Obama.

Rollins says this about Bush in his article, “I don’t believe he is dishonest or an incompetent.” Well Ed, I think he is both.

Bush should have known, and I think he did, that the evidence for weapons of mass destruction was not credible. He should not have invaded another country based on the information that he had. I think that alone is evidence of both incompetence and dishonesty. Saddam Hussein may have been a ruthless dictator, but he wasn’t a threat to the United States.

Scooter Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff,  was convicted in a court of law for one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and lying to the FBI. There is no way that he deserved a pardon from Bush, but that is exactly what Bush did.  Libby did not serve 5 minutes of his 30 month sentence.

Judith Miller, a reporter for the New York Times, spent 12 weeks in jail for refusing to identify sources in this case. She didn’t disclose the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Libby did. The pardon is another example of dishonest and incompetent behavior by Bush.

Rollins brings up the fact that Bill Clinton was impeached. He asks (referring to Clinton and Bush), “Why did their presidencies not live up to those high expectations that we all have for our new leaders on Inauguration Day?”

How dare he compare Clinton to Bush. Comparing Bill Clinton to George Bush is ridiculous and obnoxious. It makes me want to spit. Clinton lied about something that was insignificant and trivial compared to war. Nobody died because of his lie. The impeachment proceedings distracted the president from running the country. What could he have accomplished if he had not been harassed by Congress? When Bill Clinton left office the United States was at peace and had a budget surplus.

Bush’s failures tower over Clinton’s. Bush should have been impeached for invading Iraq. I don’t understand why he wasn’t.

Thousands upon thousands of people have died because of his lies. Thousands more have been grievously wounded. Only Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich has had the courage to present Articles of Impeachment against Bush.

Throughout the article Rollins gives Barack Obama advice about things he should do and how he should do it. Ed, stop giving Barack advice. Stop telling him what he can and can’t do. You are very close to the bottom of the list for people giving Barack advice. You are somewhere down there with Rush Limbaugh.

Rollins says (to Bush), “Thank you, for serving your country.” I say good riddance. We would have been much better off without you.

I can’t wait for Tuesday when Barack Obama takes the oath of office.

P. S.

Barack Obama was asked recently if he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. He answered, ” I don’t believe that anybody is above the law, but we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

Paul Krugman wrote an article for the New York Times titled, “Forgive and Forget?” He believes that the Obama administration should investigate the crimes committed by the Bush administration. I agree completely.

If we don’t hold the Bush administration accountable for their crimes, then they are above the law.

How Much Vitamin C Is Enough?

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published the results of a study called “Vitamins E and C in the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Men.” The study lasted eight years and    14,641 male doctors over the age of 50 participated. They were divided into four groups and given either 400 I.U. of vitamin E every other day and 500 mg of vitamin C daily, vitamin C only, vitamin E only or just a placebo. Here is the link to an abstract of the study on the Journal of the American Medical Association website. It is the November 12, 2008 issue. 

The study concluded that, “In this large, long-term trial of male physicians, neither vitamin E nor vitamin C supplementation reduced the risk of major cardiovascular events.” In CNN’s story about the study the headline is, “Taking vitamins won’t    prevent heart disease, studies say.” The headline in the New York Times said, “Vitamins seen as no help in heart disease.” I think it would be more accurate to say that this particular amount of vitamin C did not appear to have any effect on cardiovascular disease. I think it will also, unfortunately, discourage some people from taking these vitamins.

The headlines jumped out at me because I have heart disease and I have been reading about ascorbic acid (vitamin C) over the past several days. In everything I have read, much larger doses of vitamin C are recommended. Perhaps the study failed because they didn’t use enough Vitamin C. Would they get the same result if they had used 5000 mg of vitamin C?

Linus Pauling, a famous American scientist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. He believed that ascorbic acid was important in preventing and treating the common cold, heart disease and cancer. He recommended 6,000 to 18,000 milligrams of vitamin C and 3,000 to 6,000 mg of Lysine a day for cardiovascular health. (Linus Pauling was also responsible for the banning of nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere and he was awarded the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his work).

Irwin Stone, in his article, “The Genetic Disease, Hypoascorbemia“, said that he was taking 3 to 5 grams of ascorbic acid daily for 10 years ( 1 gram = 1000 mg). He said that this was his estimate of what an adult human liver should be producing under unstressed conditions. He took 20 to 40 grams a day after being injured in a bad car accident.  In another article, “On the Genetic Etiology of Scurvy“, Stone suggests that 5,000 to 15,000 mg of ascorbic acid may be optimal based on studies of rats and how much ascorbic acid they make in a day. More scientific studies need to be done to determine just how much ascorbic acid other mammals, closer in size to humans, create.

Here is some other information about vitamin C that I found on the web.

Human beings lost the ability to manufacture ascorbic acid in their bodies around 60 million years ago due to a genetic mutation. Guinea pigs, certain types of monkeys and a fruit eating bat in India, can’t produce their own ascorbic acid either. That is why guinea pigs are sometimes used in ascorbic acid research.  Most other mammals, including goats, can manufacture their own vitamin C and, in times of stress, they can increase how much they make. A goat can produce 13000 mg of ascorbic acid per day.
The lack of one enzyme in the liver, L-gulonolactone oxidase, prevents humans from creating their own ascorbic acid.

Irwin Stone had this to say in his article “On the Genetic Etiology of Scurvy”,

“The whole field of the therapeutic use of ascorbic acid in many diseases other than scurvy is now dismissed because of the confusing and conflicting clinical results in the thousands of papers published in the last thirty years. The application of these genetic concepts to this vast medical literature brings a measure of order out of the chaos. Most of the clinical investigators reporting in these papers were trained to think of ascorbic acid as “vitamin C” and hence they treated these other clinical entities as if they were scurvy, giving only vitamin-like dosages of mg. per day and they reported poor or indifferent clinical results.

A few other workers fortuitously using ascorbic acid in doses of many gm. (grams) per day were the ones who were able to report clinical success and even dramatic cures. Unknowingly, these investigators had used ascorbic acid closer to the range occurring in mammalian synthesis and thereby had overcome the hypoascorbemia in their patients. In this manner they maintained physiological responses at optimal levels and were able to take advantage of many of ascorbic acid’s unique therapeutic properties. We have been engaged in the preparation of a comprehensive and critical review of the clinical work on the therapeutic use of ascorbic acid in diseases other than scurvy during the past three decades (Stone, in preparation). The results of this survey, to date, support the above thesis.”

Scurvy is a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C. If not treated, it is fatal. It has been estimated that 2 million sailors died from scurvy between 1500 and 1800. The British Navy began carrying lemons and limes on its ships around 1795 and their sailors stopped dying from scurvy. It’s interesting to me because I don’t recall learning about scurvy while studying the great explorers in grammar school.

It doesn’t take much vitamin C to prevent the symptoms of scurvy. Our food today is much fresher and varied than what sailors ate on board ships in the 1700’s and most people get enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy from the normal food that they eat. The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C is 60 mg. Linus Pauling, Irwin Stone and others believed that this was not enough for optimum health. They based their beliefs in part because of the amounts produced by animals that can produce their own ascorbic acid. It’s too bad that the latest study was based on only 400 mg of vitamin C.

I have started taking vitamin C and Lysine as recommended by Pauling. Last week I started taking 8,000 mg of vitamin C and 3,000 mg of Lysine a day. After researching this post, I am going to increase that to 10,000 mg of vitamin C and 5,000 of Lysine and see what happens.

Your comments are welcome.

Say No to the Bailout

Bush wants to shove this bailout down our throats and he is in an awful hurry to do it. Bush basically wants us to give him a  blank check and trust him to do the right thing. And he wants it done this week. Alarm bells should be clanging all over the country. He has not done the right thing in 8 years. Why would he start now? I don’t trust him AT ALL and you shouldn’t either. He lied to us about Iraq, lied to us about the Patriot Act and he lied to us about the tax cuts for the rich that he rammed through Congress when he first took office. He is lying now. He has never apologized or admitted that he is wrong and he never will. He is a a national disgrace.

I guarantee you that the bailout will be worse than the problem it is supposed to fix. It is an absolutely stupid idea that will reward the greedy, incompetent, morons on Wall Street for being greedy, incompetent morons. It will stick hard working Americans with another bill that they can’t afford. Let all the bigshots on Wall Street pay for the bailout with the millions and millions of dollars in their golden parachutes. They screwed it up big time and will walk away laughing, live in luxury and let some man or woman making $12 an hour pay the tab. No way.

I am afraid that our representatives in Congress will not have the backbone to stand up to him over this. I don’t understand why. Oh, they might put on a little show and complain a little bit, but they will probably cave in and give Bush what he wants. I don’t have any confidence in them at all that they will do the right thing either. It would be nice to see, but they will probably roll over like they usually do.

Maybe we can inspire them a little. Let them know we will stand with them if they will stand up to Bush.

Write your Senators and Congressman today. Right now. I did it this morning. It’s easy. In a few days it could all be over. Tell them to say no to the bailout. Tell them to say no to Bush. Tell them to come up with another solution instead of sticking it to the little guy. Tell them to have a backbone and do the right thing.

You can find your U.S. Senator’s email address here. You can do this in 10 minutes or less. Let them know you want them to stand up to Bush and say no to the bailout.

You can find your Representative’s email address here. It’s easy and takes 10 minutes or less.

You can get phone numbers and call them at either link too and regular mail addresses, but this is all going to be over in a matter of days.

You can email both of your Senators and your Representative in the time in takes to watch 1 half hour sitcom!

While you are at it, send an email to Barack Obama and John McCain and tell them to say no too. I’m going to do that right now.

Paul Krugman was on The Bill Maher show Friday night and said, “We really need a better government than the one we’ve got.” I love it.

I’m voting for Barack Obama. You should too.

Note added on October 22, 2013: For more information about the political process, both major parties and how our government works visit Politics.Answers.com.