First government panels of experts tell us that women should refrain from doing at-home breast exams and should postpone mammograms.  Then we were told that pap smears don’t need to be done yearly.  Now the elderly are being prohibited from getting swine flu vaccines.

Two months after H1N1 flu vaccine was first distributed to public health districts around the country, people 65 and older with serious medical conditions still can’t get vaccinated.

Anter’s doctors at Stanford University Hospital, where he received his transplant, tell him he has a compromised immune system and “the H1N1 flu could do me in.”

He takes at least nine prescription medications daily to stay alive.

“But when I try to get a shot, I’m told I’m too old ” he said as he sat in the study of his Peccole Ranch home.

“I feel that they see me and other older people as garbage and are just waiting for the trucks to come pick us up,” Anter said.

“I served my country. I enlisted during the Korean War. You don’t treat people this way just because they’re older.”

If we’re short on vaccines, we need to triage who gets vaccinated and who doesn’t.  But we’ve known about swine flu for over a year.

So for me,  the question is — why is the world’s superpower running out of flu vaccine — again?  (Remember 2002 and 2004 and the flu vaccine shortages?)  Other than the fact that inefficient government bureaucrats are controlling the supply.

The problem starts with regulation. Back in 1999, the Food and Drug Administration got a black eye after two children died from a recently approved diarrhea vaccine. The agency chose to bolster public confidence by cracking down on vaccine manufacturers. It used a new regulatory approach to ratchet up regulations, shut down plants and impose fines.

In October 2000, the FDA levied an extraordinary $30 million fine against Wyeth-Ayerst for manufacturing problems, though the government agency admitted it never found contaminated products. Several months later, citing business reasons, Wyeth got out of the market for tetanus products, leaving just one manufacturer. Wyeth and Baxter also both got out of vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP). Their exits created major shortages.

Approval-process costs have also climbed as the FDA increases its demands. Vaccine makers used to be allowed to perform their tests with hundreds of patients, but today they need tens of thousands. The FDA’s normal approval process takes six or seven years.

Demanding higher safety is reasonable, but the problem is that public officials refuse to pay for it. Thanks to a Clinton-era program, the CDC has socialized the market and currently buys more than half of all the vaccines in the country. The agency uses its buying clout and power over future vaccine recommendations to keep prices low. In many cases, the CDC pays less than half of what the private sector pays. (emphasis added)

And this is happening without the government controlling health care for us.  Any bets as to what happens when it does?

So the story is, these guys claim to have proof of a world ending calamity but didn’t think keeping the raw data was important?

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

What, nobody could run a backup onto disks or flash drives?  Or store boxes of hard copy in the back storage room?   Either they destroyed the data to prevent peer review fact checking/duplication, or they are lying through their teeth to avoid having to surrender the data and get called on their politically correct BS.  Not to mention, continuing to make a pile of money off it.

Look, I’m not saying man-made global warming is not real, I’m saying the people who claim it is, can’t back up their assertion.  And before we spend trillions of dollars destroying the world’s economy, I’d like to have the data recreated and verified in a 100% public manner.  You know, like science is supposed to.

If you were ever gullible enough to purchase shares in alternative energy companies, I’d start dumping them NOW.   A folder containing documents, data and emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU)  — about 61 MB worth - was hacked/leaked. Phil Jones, the director of CRU has confirmed that the incriminating documents, which have been widely disseminated online, are in fact genuine.

Emails exchanged by Phil Jones and other leading scientists who edit and control the content of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveal a conspiracy to falsify the actual temperature record and silence so-called “skeptics.”  And the list of apparent conspirators includes many of the world’s leading climate alarmists — the very scientists on whose work the entire anthropogenic global warming theory is based.

Remember: The IPCC was the group that, along with Al Gore, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Wait, hold on. Are you trying to tell me junk food isn’t healthy???? OMG! Everything I have ever believed has now been turned on its head!

Thank goodness ABC is around to ask the tough questions and make sure I’m informed…

Everyone expects to splurge a bit at the movies, but while your wallet may be able to handle an $8 tub of popcorn, your waistline may not — at least according to a new report released today by the consumers group Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Even popcorn did not escape the scrutiny of the report, which mentioned that even a small bag of the cinema favorite tips the scales at 700 calories and three days worth of saturated fat. …

The report looked at the popcorn, soda and candy sold at the country’s top three movie theater chains: Regal Entertainment Group, AMC Theaters, and Cinemark. The researchers tallied the calories, saturated fat, sugar, and sodium in each theater’s various sizes and combos. Based on their findings, the authors warn the public that their movie-time indulgences may be a lot more indulgent than they bargained for.

700 Hundred calories and 3 days worth of saturated fats? Given the crap that is most Hollywood movies these days, that’s the best argument for actually going to a movie than I’ve heard in years!

Jeffrey S. Flier – the dean of Harvard Med – has thrown doozie at ObamaCare/PelosiCare/Whatever You Want to Call It To Hide the Fact That It’s Not Really Care, in today’s WSJ – Health ‘Debate’ Deserves a Failing Grade:

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system.

But, hey, it’s only the Dean of Harvard Med. What would he know compared to such great clinicians as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi?  The rush to enact this self-serving legislation is pretty much the most disgraceful US governmental act of my lifetime – and I’m just about at the half-century mark.

Want more?  Here’s another memorable sentence from Dr. Flier: “Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.”

How’s that, Mr. Obama, Senators, Congresscritters? Mean anything? Probably not. It’s all politics all the time to you and your crew. Shame on you.

The Health Care Bill Passes. Blah. Blah. Blah. Historic vote. Blah. Blah. Blah. Catholic Church signs off on it…say what?????

By allowing a vote on the amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and other anti-abortion lawmakers, House leaders achieved the latter goal: The Catholic church signed off on the late-night deal and issued a letter early Saturday saying it provide a critical endorsement of the health care package if the amendment is adopted.

Excuse me — but did the POPE sign off on it? Perhaps maybe all the Cardinals in a special, Health-Care Conclave? Someone at the Roman Curia? Or even a Swiss Guard?

No, it was a staff member or spokesperson for the USCCB.  Hmm…could that be the same USCCB that has no real juridical authority in the United States according to Church Law? That same USCCB that has more staff working for it than the Vatican? Oh, in that case…

Sheesh, you’d think journalists (*spit*) might actually get their facts straight.  And don’t get me started on the $1.2 trillion cost that they’re reporting….it’s going to be way, way, way more than that.

The bill is front loaded with taxes, and back-loaded with spending in the first ten years. Since most of the spending in the House bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, the 10-year cost estimates based on the preliminary CBO score (for years 2010 through 2019) only account for six years of new spending under the plan. Once it is implemented (over a full 10-year window from years 2014 to 2023), the giant House health bill carries a price tag of $2.4 trillion, or as much as $2.6 trillion with the “doc fix.”

Thank you Congresscritters — for taxing me, my children and my grandchildren, and most likely, my great and great-great grandchildren, too.

Q: What’s the difference between Obama’s cabinet and a penitentiary?

A: One’s full of tax evaders, blackmailers, liars and threats to society. The other is for the ones that got caught.

The Ft. Hood tragedy appears at this point to have been a coordinated attack by ranking officers on a US military base. Until more facts come out, that’s about all I’m willing to say about that.

But then President Obama — at a press conference on the atrocity at Ft. Hood — goes on for just over two minutes, praising how well a Native American conference was going and giving shout outs (”I hear that Dr. Joe Medicine Crow was around, so I want to give a shoutout to that Congressional Medal of Honour winner. Good to see you”) before even addressing the Ft. Hood shootings.

I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when I first heard about this. But then I watched it…and good gravy, the man has no tact and is completely tone deaf.

Today is election day.

Thousands of men and women have died (and are currently dying) to preserve our right to vote.

Go vote. It’s the absolute least you can do.