Okay. I mean, what do people usually have in mind when they tell some one to grow up? I guess in my book this means accepting full responsibility for the consequences of one's actions; comprehending right and wrong, and making a conscious choice to do the right thing. In Catholic theology there is an emphasis placed on the 'age of reason', the point at which the individual can be expected to understand basic moral choices and be held accountable. FYI, the Catholic Church has traditionally considered that to be somewhere around age 7.

However, telling someone to grow up generally doesn't mean encouraging them to ignore the concept of accountability, or to gloss over or ignore the catastrophic consequences of bad decisions. Quite the contrary.

Michael Hayden was pitched by Bush/Cheney as the ideal CIA director, with his years of experience directing the NSA and his military credentials. He was approved by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 78:15 in May 2006 with scarcely any inquiry into his position on warrantless spying or other relevant issues.

This week General Hayden has revealed his true colors. In an interview published in today's WaPo and referenced  here, Hayden claims that Al-Quaida is "near defeat". The most casually informed observers of the international scene, not to mention the CIA itself, know that this is a load of horseshit. Follow me.

I see that several Kossacks have noted that David Broder, the official fossil of print journalism, is accepting a "buy-out" and leaving his privileged position at WaPo. It's about freakin' time, given how utterly clueless Broder has become. His latest brain dropping in the Post demonstrates that Broder should warm up that rocking chair on the porch and retire from active "journalism". His brain is stuck in 1960. News flash, Dave: That was 48 years ago.
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Roman Catholics appalled by the long-running scandal of sexual abuse perpetrated by pedophile priests, and the revolting cover-up by enabling Bishops that followed, have been eagerly awaiting Pope Benedict's definitive answer to the crisis. Well, now we know. As indicated in this New York Times article, the faithful and the angry victims get a pat on the head, while Benedict makes the utterly repugnant claim that the Church is a victim too. Meanwhile, nothing will actually change. No one will be held accountable. It appears that Benedict is channeling George W. Bush.
Details below the fold.

Just a quick diary on the state of military medicine. Most of us are aware of the fact that Bush/Cheney have nearly ruined our Army and Marine Corps. Endless revolving door deployments, stop-loss orders, the back-door draft, inadequate body armor, worn out equipment, shortages of vehicles, structural failures in overused aircraft...it just goes on and on. Well, now the same factors are destroying military medicine. You could say that George W. Bush has the reverse Midas touch; everything he touches turns to...well, it's not gold.
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Just a quick comment on this card-carrying member of the pundit class. He's had a good run, and occasionally he's even made a few incisive observations. But this morning I had the misfortune to catch his "analysis" of Obama's historic speech on race relations in America. What a horse's ass.

sJust a quickie this morning. On MTP, Tim Russert has three pundits discussing the Democratic primary. It's David Broder, David Gregory, and Michele Norris. What's wrong with that you say? Follow me.

It's not enough that the FDA is officially indebted to the very industry it's supposed to regulate. (In case you didn't know, much of the FDA's budget comes directly from BigPharma explicitly to expedite approval of new drugs. And you can bet they want their money's worth.) It's not enough that the FDA has been asleep at the switch when it comes to enforcement of basic safety for medications like Vioxx or devices like pacemaker leads. It's now clear that the FDA has simply abdicated its responsibility to keep Americans safe from toxic or adulterated medications. Follow me to see how.

The whole moronic manufactured flag pin "controversy" got me thinking recently. It seems to go right to the heart of the fundamental difference between progressives and wingnuts—or liberals & conservatives if you like. It is truly a deep philosophical divide. I'm not talking Spinoza and Schopenauer here, but philosophy in the sense of the bedrock meaning and motivation that drives peoples' actions and the lives they choose to live. In my mind all the foaming-at-the-mouth bombast from the wingnuts on this subject has crystallized the difference between us and them. Follow me if you dare.

Just a quick diary to remind people how greedy and just plain evil our murder-by-spreadsheet, for-profit health insurance companies are. One of the recent bright spots in medicine has been a modest decline in overall cancer mortality, spearheaded by a drop in deaths due to colon cancer. Have no fear, though. Your ever helpful Aetna bean-counters are hard at work trying to wipe out that modest gain. Follow me.

Barack Obama is the most dynamic and exciting Democratic Presidential candidate I've seen in my lifetime. I truly believe he has the potential to transform the political landscape. But first he'll have to contend with the reality of virulent racism, vestiges of which permeate even supposedly educated populations. Just a very personal experience to relate, but it may be worth sharing. Follow me to see what I mean.

Most of us in medicine are aware of the fact that lack of insurance (or junk insurance) leads to worse outcomes for patients. There are studies out there demonstrating that uninsured kids are more likely to die of preventable diseases than the well insured, and that uninsured adults are more likely to die after suffering a heart attack than the well insured. But what about people with insurance that's just...you know...a little crappy? Insurance with annoying co-pays and barriers to care that add friction to the process. Well, now we know.

The redoubtable nyceve has done wonderful work informing Kossacks about the vile character of commercial health insurance in America, and the desperate need for genuine root and branch reform. I'd like to add another tale of woe to let folks know how bad it is for those with the best insurance available when they get truly sick.

Today's NYT Magazine includes a Feldman column (Vanishing Act) in which he notes that candidates on both sides of the Presidential race are studiously avoiding the subject of Iraq. Under the surface, however, Feldman intuits a convergence of the two parties toward a common stance. See below the fold why Noah Feldman is one of the very.important.people. who populate BroderWorld, not the real one we live in.

Please note that the following is merely my own brain-droppings; no greater meaning or documentation promised or implied.

George W. Bush knows more than the generals and admirals who won World War II. This is of course obvious from his brilliant conduct of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And since He's such a deep strategic thinker, naturally we should heed his advice and revisit some of the controversial military decisions made during WWII. Surely our operating principle must be, What Would George Do?

A recently published study in the journal Diabetes Care documents a 38% increase in the rate of hospitalization for diabetes among children and young adults, defined as ages 0 to 29, over the period from 1994 to 2003. The increased rate of hospitalization was almost entirely among young adults rather than children. The interpretation pitched by the mainstream media (Reuters Health for example) is that this is the result of the rising rate of diabetes. I think this is quite wrong. Follow me below the fold to see why.

I haven't seen this diaried yet, so I thought I'd give it a go. Mark Danner has written a number of articles in The New York Review of Books about Bush's deceitful march to war in Iraq, including a pithy discussion of the Downing Street Memo back in 2005. He has an excellent article in the current issue addressing a newly revealed and equally scandalous example of Bush's utter dishonesty and warmongering, originating in a meeting with the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in February 2003. Transcripts of this meeting were released in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, and they document Bush's lust for war.

David Plowdenis a documentary photographer whose active career (c.1958 – 2006) neatly encompasses the waning days of American exceptionalism. He spent his entire adult life photographing those elements—railroads, bridges, grain elevators, farms, rural small towns, Great Lakes steamers, barns and steel plants—that essentially defined mid-century America. His work is strongly reminiscent of the great photographers of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930's— Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lang, Horace Bristol and others. The difference is that he kept at it for almost a half-century, and has given us a remarkable record of the decline and fall of a more communal, cooperative way of life. Plowden's work shows us America before the suburb and the automobile.

And, just maybe, if we're lucky, what we may aspire to in the coming age of $100/barrel oil and $8/gallon gasoline.