by Barry Hastings
… if I told you the third le
ading cause of death among Americans is “medical error?” Heart disease is #1, cancer #2, mistakes by medical professionals #3. So, it seems, our, “best medical care in the world,” which costs more than medical care anywhere else in the world (and is not even easily available to huge numbers of us), kills Americans at a rate surpassed only by the two deadliest diseases known to medical science.
Go ahead, put your life in the hands of a doctor, clinic or hospital, and don’t worry about it, or check past records. They’ve sworn to “do no harm.” It’s somewhat like putting your beloved military veteran into the care of the Grand Rapids Home for Veterans, an institution with a long history of abusing the trust (and health) of vets for many, far too many, years.
Of course, most of us are at blame for our own unhealthiness. Every time I go to the grocery store, I see long lines of grossly obese (read ‘FAT’) men, women, and children lined-up at the bottle/can return station just inside the doors. They’re returning grocery carts filled with large plastic trash bags. The bags are full of plastic bottles and aluminum soda cans (often enough, by the hundreds). Stick around for an hour, and you’ll see them waddling back out to the parking lot, their carts now stuffed full of cheese nachos, potato chips, cheap bags of candy, cheap cookies, frozen TV dinners, and fresh 12-packs of soda pop. The kids trailing behind appear, for all the world, perfect miniatures of the overweight mother in spandex leggings, or the dad who can’t keep his pants around his waist as the law of gravity overpowers belt or suspenders. Very sad.
The U.S. Army tells us that about a third of age-eligible recruits are so badly overweight they cannot qualify to serve; are so badly overweight, in fact, it’s not worthwhile to try whipping them into shape after induction. Type 2 diabetes is the fastest-growing health problem in America. Once you’ve got it, you’re caught, for life, in a world of insulin, needles, doctor and hospital visits you’ll never escape. It’s a hell of a mess to push your kids into (by example), and one they’ll never escape. And so it goes, ge
neration after generation.
Some truths about Burr and Hamilton:
The Broadway musical topping everyone’s list is Hamilton. Problem is, it shows us little, to nothing, about Hamilton “the man.” He was, to put it bluntly and succinctly, a Jerk (with a capitol ‘J’). Few of his fellow founding fathers liked him, many of them couldn’t stand him.
One of them was Aaron Burr. Like Hamilton, Burr served as a staff officer with General George Washington during the war to preserve our political revolution. He left the General’s staff (returning to field service) after numerous disagreements with Washington about strategy against the Brits. (He had a fire-eating temperament, wanted more head-on combat.) Hamilton, later, found himself having the same disagreements with the General, and he, as well, left Washington’s staff. Burr became an advocate (after the war was won) of “regular” people, and alliance with the French (whose army supplied Washington with many soldiers; whose Navy won the war for us with victory in a huge fleet action with the Royal Navy off the Chesapeake Capes, leaving British General Cornwallis with no alternative to surrender).
Hamilton and Burr became bitter adversaries in New York after the war, during the constitutional debates, and across the spectrum of our early U.S. politics (they’d not exactly been comrades-in-arms during the war). The former became the advocate of wealthy business and landowning interests. The latter, a supporter of working people, who ran against Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 Presidential election. They tied, each gaining 14 electoral votes. Hamilton stirred up House of Representative members against Burr, who became vice president, while TJ took the White House. Burr, though he disliked the politics of both men, served Jefferson loyally and well as V.P.
Where Burr had problems with Hamilton was in New York — city and state. On many (and I mean many) occasions in speeches and public political meetings, Hamilton made scathing attacks on Burr, which the victim took very very much to heart. He personally confronted Hamilton over such charges several times, and Hamilton always apologized privately (face to face), but never publicly (so people never learned he’d lied). On one occasion in 1804, Hamilton went too far, and when Burr confronted him demanding a public apology, would not supply one.
A short time later, Burr challenged him to duel, and the two men were rowed to a small island off Manhattan (in separate boats) accompanied by “seconds” and a doctor, where each was handed a dueling pistol. The better shot (and I believe a much better man/person) fatally wounded Hamilton, who died in agony the next day. Burr was tried by a jury of peers who, though duels were illegal, found him innocent. Burr was later tried for conspiracy in the General James Wilkinson scandals (look it up) several times, but was always exonerated.
History has been kinder to Hamilton than to Burr, who wanted to prepare a defense that would restore him to a place of honor in the nation. His public papers were stored at his daughter’s home in South Carolina. He wrote her, asking that she load them in a ship and bring them to him in New York. She complied, loaded the ship, then boarded and sailed north. Unfortunately for Burr, his daughter, and his rightful place in the nation’s history, the ship sailed into a huge storm off the Carolina Capes, and sank with no survivors. Burr died in poverty, the last of his immediate line, at 80 years of age.
His story is little known, even less understood, and very much worthy of study by the people of this land. (Feisty American politics is far older, far more common, than many/most of us realize, shows little sign of ending despite the country’s sorry position in today’s very dangerous world.)
Czar Vladimir I
Putin has created a new National Guard to solidify his position as ‘top gun’ in Russia. It’s nothing new, Russian leaders from Ivan the Terrible, to Stalin, to Putin have used such quasi-military organizations to cow Russian citizens, prevent uprisings, jail news reporters, squash publications, since time immemorial.
The new outfit represents unification of several domestic security organizations under one roof, and place the new unified force under direct control of Putin. An article in the Financial Times, Says analysts can see no need for unification of internal security forces other than serious worry about domestic unrest. A Russian political analyst, Dmitry Oreshkin, says it’s an indicator of Putin’s fear for his “personal safety.”
