common-sense

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Chuckles from the Top of Everest
by LuCxeed

Love delivers kisses aplenty
so does lust or affection
so does scheme or infatuation
so does courtesy or flirtation

chuckles from the top of Everest
laughing at the rest
of romance fled
as Daylight brooms the bedroom

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From pages 19 & 20 of the book: Love’s Footsteps ~ dedicated to a Bridge for Wisdom to Walk on

“Bailout” fever runs beyond the US, to affect Europe, to affect Asia… Market economy and private ownership - upon such economy systems democracy stands. The bailout tosses out dumb questions - don’t bailouts challenge the fundamentals of market economy? Impact on the ownership of the very top firms, the key performers in world’s major economies? Should market economy adjust itself or can it be rescued by bailouts? How many trillions would be enough in a global financial crisis? Who should not be bailed out?

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Has anyone bothered to ask: Why $700 billion? Why not $800 billion to bail out the economy? Or a trillion? Jeez, as long as the dam has burst, why not make it a cool $7 trillion?

Okay, $7 trillion it is, and if you think that's an exaggeration, you're wrong. In this year alone, we have committed an amount that is more than half of our entire annual gross national product to assorted bailouts and guarantees. No, that doesn't mean that we have diverted half our GNP for bailouts; it means that we have created half our gross national product virtually out of nothing.

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CT scans can be better medicine for doctors than for patients - they provide detailed views of internal organs, but the price is increased doses of radiation. A chest CT scan is equivalent to about 100 X-rays.

When Maureen Scanlan had a painful kidney stone episode four years ago, she was pleased that her doctor ordered an annual regimen of CT scans to monitor her condition. The scans involved hundreds of razor-thin X-rays of her innards stitched together by a computer into stunningly detailed 3-D images showing the size and location of the stone, down to the millimeter. What she didn't realize was that the perfection of the images was a result of a radiation dose equivalent to more than a dozen standard abdominal X-rays -- all for a condition that though painful is relatively mundane.

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Original Source: Reuters and CBS News

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As the race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president wears on, Republican Jack Schmidt is thinking the same thing many conservatives are -- this is good for Republicans.

"They are beating themselves up to McCain's advantage," said Schmidt, 79, a retired broker, referring to presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. "He's got some baggage too, but no one is paying attention to that."

"The longer they drag it out, the better for our candidate. The longer they beat each other up the less they're beating up our candidate. It's totally to our advantage and it's great," said Chelsea Chapman, an oil and gas accountant and the president of the Houston young Republicans.

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(AP) Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton should stop beating up on each other in the remaining Democratic contests and focus their ire on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, George McGovern said Tuesday.

In a letter published in the New York Times and at a news conference in Sioux Falls, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota and 1972 presidential nominee outlined what he called a formula to unify the party and defeat Sen. John McCain.

"We can reduce the danger of Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama criticizing each other for the next month and giving McCain a free ride," said McGovern, 85. "They are constantly pointing out weaknesses in the opposing candidate, which is what politicians do when they run for office. You can't blame them for that. But meanwhile, McCain is free to go around the country talking about motherhood and the flag and all those non-controversial things and looking like a statesman who is above the hurly-burly of politics."

McGovern's proposal is for Obama, the front runner, and Clinton to appear together at least once in each of the five remaining primaries in Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota. The plan also could be used in Michigan and Florida if the party reconsiders its decision not to count those states' delegates, he said.

"One of them is going to lose and this would send them out in harmony and place the party and country's interests above their own," he said.

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Photos courtesy of AP and National Ledger

Original Source: U.S. News and World Report

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The world food crisis has two faces. Here in the United States, shoppers stare in disbelief at the rising price of milk, meat, and eggs. But elsewhere on the globe, anguish spills into the streets, as in Somalia last week when tens of thousands of rioters converged on the capital to protest for food.

The strain on U.S. consumers, grappling with the sharpest increase in grocery prices in years, is small compared with the starvation that toppled Haiti's government, ignited riots around the world, and is deepening the tragedy of Myanmar's cyclone survivors. And yet the connection between the developed and developing worlds will be crucial to solving what one United Nations official has called a "silent tsunami" of food prices that has plunged 100 million people deeper into poverty. To stem the misery, relief officials are calling both for emergency aid and for changes in policy worldwide.

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...Among the proposed solutions:

• Take a Pause on Biofuels
• Improve Food Aid
• Produce Higher Yields
• Grow Better Crops
• Curb the Speculators
• Break Down Trade Barriers
• Eat Less Meat
• Share the Crowded Planet

Photos courtesy of Getty Images






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