Obamas and Oprah Stump for Chi-Town Games

This week, the President, his wife and Oprah Winfrey are making a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark to lobby the International Olympic Committee to bring the 2016 Summer Games to their shared hometown of Chicago.  This is the very first time a US president has personally lobbied the IOC for this purpose.  Read More

Yet Another Reason to Love Online Education

It keeps your pooch or pootie from freaking out at “back to school” time.   According to Betsy Saul, founder of petfinder.com (link below the fold), back to school time frequently means empty houses once students return to classes and parents return to focus on work.   Man’s best friend can often feel left in the lurch […] Read More

Smoking Bans Credited with Lower Rates of Heart Attack

I was living in California when the smoking ban went into effect there.  Smokers and barroom patrons were very upset about the law’s passage.  I recall, as a musician playing in many bars and clubs, the friction caused by this switch.  But folks got over it.  Then I moved back to New York and remember […] Read More

FactCheck.org:Another Great Resource

With passions running so high in the healthcare debate, and with so many powerful forces trying to manipulate the process to suit their own agendas, it gets really hard to believe anything we hear.  How does one separate the truth from the lies, the policy positions from the propaganda, the facts from the noise?  Let […] Read More

MRSA: A Day at the Beach?

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the spread of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an antibiotic resistant pathogen.  The probable result of over use of penicillin in humans and in factory farm animals, this devastating illness was rarely contracted outside of hospitals.  But alarming and newly released studies show the presence of MRSA on US […] Read More

Constitution Day Reminds Us, Why Healthcare Reform?

September 17th is Constitution Day and will fall on this coming Thursday.   This holiday, sometimes referred to as Citizenship Day recognizes the ratification of the United States Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens. It is observed on September 17, the day the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787.  But this year, it […] Read More

Historic Healthcare Speech Tonight

Tonight, President Obama will address a full session of Congress in prime time on the topic of the healthcare legislation currently being debated on Capitol Hill.  Rarely do presidents address the fully assembled Congress outside of the annual State of the Union Address.  So this unusual step is designed to underscore the importance of this […] Read More