“Don’t let the bedbugs bite” is no longer a fashionable good-night wish for Big Apple kids, even in the city’s high-rent districts and posh hotels. Growing infestations of the ravenous bloodsuckers have New Yorkers annoyed, anguished, angry about officialdom’s inadequate responses, and “itching” for answers.

Instead, their Bedbug Advisory Board recommends a bedbug team and educational website. Residents, it advises, should monitor and report infestations. Use blowdryers to flush out (maybe 5% of) the bugs, then sweep them into a plastic bag and dispose properly. Throw away (thousands of dollars worth of) infested clothing, bedding, carpeting and furniture.

Hire (expensive) professionals who (may) have insecticides that (may) eradicate the pests – and hope you don’t get scammed. Don’t use “risky” pesticides yourself. Follow guideline for donating potentially infested furnishings, and be wary of bedbug risks from donated furniture and mattresses.

New Yorkers want real solutions, including affordable insecticides that work. Fear and loathing, from decades of chemophobic indoctrination, are slowly giving way to a healthy renewed recognition that the risk of not using chemicals can be greater than the risk of using them (carefully). Eco-myths are being replaced with more informed discussions about alleged effects of DDT and other pesticides on humans and wildlife.

Thankfully, bedbugs have not been linked to disease – except sometimes severe emotional distress associated with obstinate infestations, incessant itching, and pathetic “proactive” advice, rules and “solutions” right out of Saturday Night Live.

It is hellish for people who must live with bedbugs, and can’t afford professional eradication like what Hilton Hotels or Mayor Bloomberg might hire. But imagine what it’s like for two billion people who live 24/7/365 with insects that definitely are responsible for disease: malarial mosquitoes.

Malaria infects over 300 million people annually. For weeks or months on end, it renders them unable to work, attend school or care for their families – and far more susceptible to death from tuberculosis, dysentery, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition and other diseases that still stalk their impoverished lands.

This vicious disease causes low birth weights in babies and leaves millions permanently brain-damaged. It kills over a million annually, most of them children and mothers, the vast majority of them in Africa. It drains families’ meager savings, and magnifies and perpetuates the region’s endemic poverty.

Emotional distress? Imagine the stress that comes from having no escape from destitution and disease; having to support a child with a perpetual ten-year-old’s mental functions; burying your baby, wife or sibling; or wondering whether you can walk twenty miles to a clinic, before the child you are carrying dies, and whether the clinic will have (non-counterfeit) medicine to cure her.

Frustration over absurd bedbug “solutions”? Imagine the reaction Africans must have to “malaria no more” campaigns that claim they will (eventually) eradicate the disease solely with insecticide-treated bed nets, drugs, “capacity building,” education and (maybe someday) mosquitoes genetically engineered not to carry malaria parasites. As to insecticide spraying, and especially DDT – fuggetaboutit.

DDT is the most powerful, effective, long-lasting mosquito repellant ever invented. Spraying the eaves and inside walls of mud huts and cinderblock homes every six months keeps 80% of the flying killers from entering. It irritates most that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. However, many aid agencies refuse to encourage, endorse or fund spraying.

Many don’t even want to monitor mosquito and malaria outbreaks, or determine actual success in reducing disease and death rates. That would be more difficult and expensive than counting the number of bed nets distributed, and underscore the embarrassing reality that their “comprehensive” (and politically correct) insecticide-free programs achieve only 20-40% reductions in morbidity and mortality. By contrast, as South Africa and other countries have demonstrated, adding insecticides and DDT can bring 95% success.

We would never consider 20-40% fewer deaths a “success” for American children. Why should Africa?

Since EPA banned DDT in 1972 – after the United States and Europe had eradicated malaria – billions have been stricken by the vicious diseases, and tens of millions have died. That is intolerable.

We need adult supervision and informed debate on pesticide policies, laws and regulations. We can no longer leave those decisions to unaccountable anti-chemical activists in pressure groups and government agencies. These zealots are making decisions that determine the quality of life for millions of Americans, especially poor families – and life itself for billions of malaria-threatened people worldwide.

If not for the economic and mental health of Americans afflicted by bedbugs – support responsible, ethical policies for Africa’s sick, brain-damaged, and dying parents and children.

Most every child has sought to fulfill their entrepreneurial spirit by opening a sidewalk lemonade stand. It’s as American as hotdogs, apple pie and… lemonade.

And as 7-year-old Julie Murphy of Oregon made plans do the same thing millions of kids have done before her—during an art fair held the last Thursday of each month on the streets of Northeast Portland and conveniently called Last Thursday—she never dreamed she’d be violating a government regulation.

Well, little Julie has now had her first experience with our boot-on-the-throat authorities. The local food police shut her down.

Julie and her mom toted gallons of bottled water, packets of Kool-Aid, bags of ice and some plastic gloves to a spot on the sidewalk July 29 and Julie set about selling lemonade to the hot and sweaty patrons and vendors. Then a “woman with a clipboard” walked up and asked to see her $120 temporary restaurant license.

“What? No license?,” asked the lady in the clipboard, who turned out to be county health inspector. “Well pack up or we’ll fine you $500.”

Well Oregonians tend to be prickly lot, and as Julie and her mom began packing, up nearby vendors and patrons suggested they stay, telling them the regulation-happy clipboard lady had no right to run them off. They suggested Julie offer her lemonade for free and accept donations. And business picked up.

But it wasn’t long until clipboard lady came back with help. Julie started crying, and patrons and vendors confronted the government thugs, creating quite a scene, as Julie’s mom told the local paper.

Multnomah County Health Department Supervisor Jon Kawaguchi told The Oregonian that, “…we still need to put the public’s health first.”

But, Eric Pippert, the food-borne illness prevention manager of the state’s public health division got to the heart of the matter when he said that technically, any lemonade stand—even one on your front lawn—must be licensed under state law, but inspectors are unlikely to go after kids selling lemonade, unless you’re on Alberta Street during Last Thursday. In other words, if you stand to make real money.

And then he made this telling statement: “When you go to a public event and set up shop, you’re suddenly engaging in commerce.” And government bureaucrats were afraid it was commerce outside their control.

After a week’s worth of hue and cry from the Portland masses, Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen gave a reprieve to Julie and her fellow child-entrepreneurs. Cogan said he directed county health department workers to use “professional discretion” in doing their job.

“A lemonade stand is a classic, iconic American kid thing to do,” Cogen told The Oregonian. “I don’t want them to be in the business of shutting that down.” He also called Julie’s mom and apologized.

So, sanity is temporarily restored in Portland.  But not so in Los Angeles, where four armed food-police thugs raided a natural market with guns drawn last month, ordering store workers to drop their mashed coconut cream and step away from the nuts, as The Los Angeles Times reported. Original story and video here.

It seems those dastardly marketers at Rawesome Foods were selling raw cow and goat milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese. Oh, the horrors.

“This is about control and profit, not our health,” Rawsome Foods co-founder Aajonus Vonderplanitz told The Times. “How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?”

Because that freedom was taken away by our fascist Big Government at the behest of Big Food corporations like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland who spend Big Bucks to elect politicians and write laws ensuring they maintain a monopoly on food production while keeping the populace as unhealthy as possible so Big Pharma can continue to drug us into a stupor.

This commentary was posted as a comment on this site, but is too important to be hidden among the comments. So here it is. Thanks for sharing and I hope everyone takes note.

WHO AM I?

I was born in one country, raised in another.
My father was born in another country.
I was not his only child.
He fathered several children with numerous women.

I became very close to my mother, as my father showed no interest in me.
My mother died at an early age from cancer.

Although my father deserted me and my mother raised me,
I later wrote a book idolizing my father not my mother.

Later in life, questions arose over my real name.
My birth records were sketchy. No one was able to produce a legitimate, reliable birth certificate.

I grew up practicing one faith but converted to Christianity, as it was widely accepted in my new country, but I practiced non-traditional beliefs and didn’t follow Christianity, except in the public eye under scrutiny.

I worked and lived among lower-class people as a young adult, disguising myself as someone who really cared about them. That was before I decided it was time to get serious about my life. and I embarked on a new career.

I wrote a book about my struggles growing up.
It was clear to those who read my memoirs, that I had difficulties accepting that my father abandoned me as a child.

I became active in local politics in my 30′s then, with help behind the scenes,
I literally burst onto the scene as a candidate for national office in my 40s.
They said I had a golden tongue and could talk anyone into anything.
I had a virtually non-existent resume, little work history, and no experience in leading a single organization.
Yet I was a powerful speaker and citizens were drawn to me, as though I were a magnet and they were small roofing tacks.
I drew incredibly large crowds during my public appearances.
This bolstered my ego.

At first, my political campaign focused on my country’s foreign policy…
I was very critical of my country in the last war, and seized every opportunity to bash my country.

But what launched my rise to national prominence were my views on the country’s economy.
I pretended to have a really good plan on how we could do better, and every poor person would be fed and housed for free.
I knew which group was responsible for getting us into this mess.
It was the free market, banks and corporations.
I decided to start making citizens hate them and, if they became envious of others who did well, the plan was clinched tight.

I called mine “A People’s Campaign”. That sounded good to all people.

I was the surprise candidate because I emerged from outside the traditional path of politics and was able to gain widespread popular support. I knew that if I merely offered the people ‘hope’, together we could change our country and the world.

So, I started to make my speeches sound like they were on behalf of the downtrodden, poor, ignorant to include “persecuted minorities”.
My true views were not widely known and I kept them unknown, until after I became my nation’s leader.
I had to carefully guard reality, as anybody could have easily found out what I really believed, if they had simply read my writings and examined those people I associated with.
I’m glad they didn’t.

Then I became the most powerful man in the world.

And the world learned the truth.

Who am I?

ADOLPH HITLER

If you were thinking SOMEONE ELSE

You Should Be Scared, Very Scared!

The question was answered on June 16 by the Committee to Protect Journalists‘ Executive Director, Joel Simon. The setting was a hearing on “Press Freedom in the Americas,” held by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. And quite interestingly, none of that very “press” in the “Americas” has seen fit to report this item. Hummmm?

So let’s ask the multiple-Peabody and Emmy award-winning American journalist Dan Rather if he knows who jails and tortures the most journalists on earth.

Fidel Castro is Cuba’s Elvis!

Nope. Seems that Dan’s no help.

Okay, now let’s ask the same question to Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism-winner Andrea Mitchell:

Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly — even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!

Nope. Seems that Ms. Mitchell is also in the dark.

Okay, let’s go over to multiple-Emmy-winning journalist Barbara Walters.

Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding.

Oops, looks like we draw another blank.

Over to Peabody Award-winner Dianne Sawyer now — but on the way, we trip over this item:

Diane Sawyer was so overcome in Fidel Castro’s presence [during a dinner party at Mort Zuckerman's Manhattan pad] that she rushed up, broke into that toothy smile of hers, wrapped her arms around Castro and smooched him warmly on the cheek.

So lets’ skip her and try eminent Newsweek and Los Angeles Times journalist Eleanor Clift.

To be a poor child in Cuba might be better than being a poor child in Miami.

Dang! Another bum steer with Ms. Clift, it appears.

Moving down a few notches, let’s try CNN’s former Havana Bureau chief Lucia Newman (nowadays with Al  Jazeera):

In Cuba we will be given total freedom to do what we want and to work without any censorship” [italics mine] … No dubious campaign spending here [in Cuba]. No mud slinging — a system President [italics mine] Castro boasts is the most democratic and cleanest in the world!

Ms. Newman, it seems, is no help. But perhaps CNN’s higher-ups can help. Heck, let’s go straight to the top: CNN’s very founder, Ted Turner: “Fidel Castro is one helluva guy! You people [Harvard Law School audience] would love him!”

OK, enough with the “fun.” (All quotes above are fully documented, by the way.)

In case you hadn’t guessed, Castro’s fiefdom wins the prize “for most journalists jailed (by far!) per capita on earth. In fact, in total numbers jailed, Cuba (a nation of 11 million subjects) is only slightly behind China (a nation of 1.4 billion!).

According to the Paris-based (not Miami — please note!) Reporters Without Borders, Cuba today holds 20 percent of the world’s jailed journalists. Imagine Castroite repression with China’s population! The Cuban “Law 88,” passed in February 1999, cranked up the repression several notches, mandating up to twenty years in prison for “providing information that could be useful to U.S. policy.”

Imagine a similar law in the U.S. that jailed reporters for “providing information useful to,” say, “al-Qaeda or Taliban policy.” Imagine the news: “An eerie silence enshrouds New York’s near-empty newsrooms and editorial offices as long queues of fresh convicts shuffle into the nation’s federal prisons…”

Today, Cuba — a nation that in 1958 had more TVs, telephones, and newspapers per capita than any continental European country — has one newspaper and fewer internet connections than Uganda, the lowest number in the hemisphere.

As fate would have it, in a gesture hailed by the worldwide media as an exemplar of magnanimity, a journalist Castro arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 25 years in his torture chambers for the crime of “disobedience” (he wrote article hailing the U.N. declaration on Human Rights), was released just this week.

These pictures compare his (Ariel Sigler’s) condition upon arrest in 2003 to those upon release last week. Now imagine the international media uproar (!!!) if something remotely similar could be shown regarding those other prisoners in Cuba (Guantanamo)!

Now see if you can find this heroic man (Ariel Sigler)’s pictures anywhere in the MSM.

Michelle Obama’s unwaivering committment to ensuring that our kids don’t get too fat to join the military rolls on unabated.

The Let’s Move program has been going on for some time, but now it’s being extended to include summer vacation. The motivation to move forward came as a result of one of the kids asking with great concern, “Mommy, have you plugged their pieholes yet?”:

CHICAGO — School is out for much of the country, and kids everywhere are looking forward to a few months off.

But nutrition and education experts warn that for too many kids, summer break is also a time when they backslide educationally and fall into bad eating habits.

On Tuesday, first lady Michelle Obama helped launch another component to her campaign to tackle childhood obesity, this time targeting summer vacation.

She joined several members of the Obama Cabinet in announcing the administration’s new “Let’s Read. Let’s Move.” campaign, aimed at promoting exercise, healthy eating, and reading among kids on break from school.

The campaign will be coordinated by the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal government agency that supports such programs as AmeriCorps and Senior Corps.

Well, if the First Family knows about anything, it’s what to do while on vacation.

From the Let’s Read, Let’s Move website:

So America’s greatest liability, a rapidly expanding and recklessly irresponsible government, wants to keep their tentacles on “America’s greatest assets” year-’round? No thanks.

Another stated goal is to “bring grocery stores to poor neighborhoods.”

So… we’re trying to get kids to lose weight by trucking the food in closer? What’s Michelle’s next brilliant move? Build bars next door to alcoholics to help them quit drinking?

And it’s an odd coincidence that the SEIU is also gung-ho over the “Let’s Move” program — I wonder why?

Tell Congress: Strengthen our Child Nutrition Programs

Successful, cost-effective child nutrition programs — school lunch and breakfast, child care and WIC, summer feeding and afterschool snacks and meals — play a critical role in helping children achieve access to quality nutrition, child care, and educational enrichment activities while improving their overall health, development, and school achievement.

“Free lunch includes complimentary purple wristband!”

The day before the unveiling of the new summer edition of “Let’s Move,” the government announced that $234 million will be granted to “organizations using service as a solution to social and economic issues” — including, of course, the aforementioned AmeriCorps.

Incoming search terms:

• J D Hall - Lets Move

A real case of government healthcare…

One of my daughters became pregnant and found to everyone’s surprise she was going to have identical twins.  The news came with mixed emotions as well as difficult decisions.  This was not her first child and she, like many in the family, believes in natural childbirth without medication.  Only her first child was born in a hospital while all the others were born at home with a midwife.

She initially started seeing her midwife for prenatal visits, but when they discovered she was expecting twins the reality of government interference took hold.  The state of Arizona does not allow midwives to knowingly delivery twins, so they had to find a doctor.  They are on the state insurance, which poses it’s own challenges.  However, trying to find a doctor that not only would accept the state insurance but would also deliver twins and accept a patient at 10 weeks became almost an impossible task.  It took her a month to even obtain the booklet of doctors she requested from the state to start her search.  She went through the book and was more often turned down because the doctors no longer accepted the state insurance.  With the help of her midwife and fortunately a state employee willing to help, she was able to obtain the services of a high-risk OB team.

Through the ultrasounds they discovered the babies were identical twins, had separate bags of water but shared one placenta.  This put her in a higher risk category.  At one point during the pregnancy they determined she was experiencing twin-to-twin transfer and was then referred to a specialist.  Because of this the doctors wanted to see her 3 times a week and she underwent regular ultrasounds and non-stress tests.  During her third trimester an ultrasound indicated she actually had two placentas; that there was a division in the placenta that had not previously been noticed; the twins may not be identical.  At that time it was also revealed that she had not actual experienced twin-to-twin transfer, it was only borderline.  With only 4 weeks remaining until her due date the doctor told her she needed to find another doctor because she was now no longer considered high risk!

She took childbirth classes at the hospital she was to deliver at.  She is also a childbirth instructor so these classes were quite unnecessary from a childbirth aspect, but with this unusual pregnancy she wanted to be informed about the hospital, their procedures, as well as the special considerations in delivering twins.

During her regular doctor visits they discussed the expectations of delivery.  This resulted in a difference of opinion from the doctors and expectant parents.  The doctors believed in a medicated birth with a likely outcome of an induced labor as well as a cesarean delivery.  The parents believed in an unmedicated birth, as natural as possible, and only in an emergency to save the mother and/or babies did they want a cesarean.  They created their birth plan and the doctors made their modifications.  They were able to “negotiate” delaying an induction until 38 weeks.

She went in to labor naturally and the first baby came quickly.  They never made it to the hospital.  Labor never stopped and what seemed like a very short time later the second baby was delivered; he was a breech delivery.  Both babies were well and of good size, especially for twins (7 lbs. 14 oz. and 6 lbs. 9 oz.) with the mother and father cooperating during delivery; no one else was present.  This was a Sunday and at this point they did not want to go to the hospital because there was no need.  So they contacted one of their midwifes who came over to make sure mother and babies were okay – everyone was fine.  It also turns out the twins are identical, sharing only one placenta – the latest ultrasounds were wrong!

On Monday morning they contacted the OB doctors and told them the babies were delivered.  The parents asked if they should come in to be seen by the doctors and were told by the doctor’s office that they should come in 2 weeks.  The parents questioned this and the doctors decided they should make an appointment for that Thursday.  Everything seemed fine.

However, the parents received a call from the referring midwife indicating the doctor had issued a 911 call and told her to see the mother and babies immediately.  This second midwife came over Monday and checked everyone out – everyone was fine.

They kept their appointment on Thursday with the doctors, and again everyone was fine – or so they thought.  They expected to return to the doctor for her 6-week visit.

However, about a week later they were contacted by CPS (Child Protective Services) who was going to come out to the house on an investigation.  They had received a complaint because the twins were delivered at home.  They complied and the investigator came out for her visit.

During this visit they learned the doctors had filed the complaint with CPS sighting negligence.  Their complaint also included an objection to a delivery without heavy medication.  It further stated that my daughter cannot read a clock.  She happens to be dyslexic and CAN read a clock, but needs to have things read to her verbally – especially legal or medical documents – to be sure she fully understands them before giving informed consent.  Apparently a learning disability makes you unable to deliver a baby without heavy medication, at least according to the doctors.  Fortunately the CPS investigator was knowledgeable and unbiased, learned from both sides of the complaint, and found the complaint was invalid and determined the doctors should not have filed the complaint.

This is only a start in what we all might expect in a government controlled health care system like the ones being considered in both the House and Senate.  Government control leads to limited or no choice by the patient, with total doctor and government control.  If you do not comply, CPS or possibly legal action could be a real consequence.  Your rights mean nothing to a system like this – they are in control and they will tell you what you can and cannot do, what medical treatment you will obtain, must obtain and will not obtain.

If you are one with views from a more natural approach to medicine, you could quickly find yourself in a battle between the health care you desire and believe you should have the right to choose, and one with the government telling you that it is not acceptable care and demand you receive government approved treatment.  Parents concerned about the number and types of vaccinations required for their children could face another government battle, with the government dictating even more vaccinations and tests of newborns and children, regardless of parental preferences.  Everyone could face mandatory flu vaccinations.

Since when it is “illegal” to deliver a baby at home?  Why should it be a “requirement” to be heavily medicated during childbirth?  What happened to parent’s rights?  I thought these issues had been addressed back in the 1970’s when I delivered my first child and had similar battles.  Childbirth is a natural process done by women throughout the ages without access to modern medicine.  Granted, in some circumstances modern medicine has decreased infant and mother mortality rates, but that interference is not required in most cases.  How does one “trust” their doctors when they turn around and report patients to CPS (or what other government agencies)?

CPS investigators aren’t always unbiased as the one my daughter had, often instilling their own morals and values upon the parents in question.  With the healthcare bill including home health services for post-partum mothers and infants one can only imagine what government interference a new parent may face.

Government health care does not have your best interests in mind.  It is an attempt by the government to take control of your life.  It is all about control – control by the government.  What my daughter faced is only the start of what we can all expect if the government takes over.