The Hollywood Liberal

Breastfeeding: Good for Moms, Too

There have already been various studies about the beneficial effects of breastfeeding vis-à-vis infants, and now there’s evidence that this essential maternal activity can help protect mothers from heart attack, heart disease or stroke. Salud!

BBC:

A US study found women who breastfed for more than a year were 10% less likely to develop the conditions than those who never breastfed.

Even breastfeeding for at least a month may cut the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

The research features in the journal Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

The study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting breastfeeding has health benefits for both mother and baby.

Read more

READ THE WHOLE ITEM

Related Entries

• April 21, 2009 Torturers Should Be Punished
• April 21, 2009 When Fascism Came to America
• April 21, 2009 15 or Not, Alleged Pirate Will Be Tried as Adult
• April 21, 2009 Committee OKs Sebelius Over Republican Objections
• April 21, 2009 Obama: Justice Could Prosecute Torture Lawyers

Prosecutors Considering Dropping Espionage Charges Against Former AIPAC Lobbyists

Christopher Hill, New Iraq Envoy, Confirmed By Senate
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Barack Obama’s choice to be the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq despite fierce opposition from conservatives who…

As Report Shows Bybee’s Torture Culpability, Conyers Says: ‘We’re Coming After These Guys’
Bush administration attorney Jay Bybee, now a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals serving a lifetime appointment, crafted legal justifications for torture after…

Contradicting Bush Justice Dept., Angle equated waterboarding of terrorists, trainees

On the April 20 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle asserted that “the odd thing … is that President Obama has decided that waterboarding, which we have done, by the way, to thousands of our own people in the military — pilots and Special Forces are often trained by being waterboarded. We’ve done it to thousands of our own people. He has decided it is too harsh to use on terrorists.” However, according to a recently released May 2005 Office of Legal Counsel memo by Steven G. Bradbury, the Bush administration’s principal deputy assistant attorney general at the time, individuals undergoing waterboarding as part of the U.S. military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training are “obviously in a very different situation from detainees undergoing interrogation; SERE trainees know it is part of a training program, not a real-life interrogation regime, they presumably know it will last only a short time, and they presumably have assurances that they will not be significantly harmed by the training.” The memo further states that the waterboard technique was used “quite sparingly” in SERE training — “at most two times on a trainee for at most 40 seconds each time” — whereas the CIA used the tactic at least 83 times on Abu Zubaydah in August 2002 and 183 times on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in March 2003.

From the May 30, 2005, Office of Legal Counsel memo:

From the April 20 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor:

BILL O’REILLY (host): Now, what — what is the prevailing wisdom within the CIA? Not just the former directors and the big shots but among the rank and file?

ANGLE: Well, look, they — this is a very difficult job. And President Obama went out there today to tell them that, that he understands what a predicament they are in, that they have to do some very difficult things and to sort of reassure them that releasing these memos was not an attack on them. Now, he says he released them because they were mostly public. That is not entirely true, because a lot of the details weren’t public.

And there was an interesting — another interesting development today, Bill. And that is that Vice President Cheney is upping the ante here. He is saying, “Look, if you’re going to declassify all the legal documents that justify these harsh interrogation techniques while arguing that these interrogation techniques did not help, then you should also declassify a lot of the reports I saw, which showed that they did, indeed, help, that they kept us from being attacked again, that they were extremely useful. So if you’re going to declassify the other thing, how about declassifying the reports I’m talking about?”

O’REILLY: And also, I think there’s criticism about President Obama, you know, sending drones in and blowing up people, sometimes civilians. But then making a big deal out of this.

ANGLE: Well, you know, the odd thing about this, Bill, is that President Obama has decided that waterboarding, which we have done, by the way, to thousands of our own people in the military — pilots and Special Forces are often trained by being waterboarded. We’ve done it to thousands of our own people. He has decided it is too harsh to use on terrorists.

On the other hand, days after he took office, he approved air strikes on terrorists in their homes and in Pakistan, for instance. And they’re in their homes, presumably with their wives and children, so you get a lot of civilians who were killed. You certainly get the terrorists who were killed. One could argue that waterboarding isn’t nearly as bad as being blown up. But that is not the position that President Obama has taken.

O’REILLY: All right. Jim, we appreciate it. Thanks very much, as always.

CAP Circulating Petition To Impeach Bybee
Think Progress, the blog of the Center for American Progress, is circulating an online petition calling on Congress to impeach Jay Bybee, who, while at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote one of the torture memos released last…

Conyers To Hold Hearings On Torture Memos
Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary committee, has announced that he plans to hold hearings into the Bush-era OLC memos released last week. Despite his pledge to hold hearings in his own committee, Conyers said he agrees with…

CORRECTED: CQ’s Stein On Countdown
We didn’t have the chance to get to this earlier but CQ’s Jeff Stein went on MSNBC’s Countdown last night to talk about his now-famous report on Jane Harman and AIPAC*. Among other things, Stein said that there are “several…

Rush’s Bully Course

Fox News’ Unhinged, Irrational Obama Attacks Stir up Violent Right-Wing Militants
Paranoid anti-government radicals used to have to rely on crude, inefficient methods of communication. Now they have Fox News.

Tough Guys Hayden and Mukasey Defend Torture, Decry Release of the OLC Memos: Why They’re Wrong
Former Bush officials are trying to avoid accountability for their inhumane crimes. There is much you can do to make sure they don’t get away with it.

For 8 Years, George Bush Turned America Into an Episode of Beverly Hills, 90210
In George W. Bush’s America High, it was decided that the best way to deal with countries they decided were NOT cool, was to not talk to them.

Why Voting is Linked to Income
Andrew is certainly a bit too modest when he says that Red State, Blue State does not offer many explanations for the voting patterns it documents. The book has a lot to say both about why the patterns exist…

The bizarre case of pirates’ human rights
We are told that the reasons we have such a hard time stopping the pirates is that our forces have a very hard time locating them in the vast sea. An odd statement, given that the pirates have no trouble…

Rotwang Ruminates
That’s entertainment. I’ve got to start recording Glenn Beck. That dude is special. Is our bankers learning. The mortgage guys I talk to all urge me to hurry up and refinance before the value of my house sinks further. That…

Serious Healthcare Reform – Part Two (Goals)

So, what are the goals of health care reform? Some believe that the goals are just to rearrange the deck chairs. In my mind, we’re sailing on the Titanic; therefore, rearranging the deck chairs is not going to fix the problem. Instead, I think we need to take this opportunity to perform a comprehensive overhaul of our health care system. We must remember that our system developed over the last 100 years. It has developed mostly as a hodgepodge. There hasn’t been one person or one group of people who sat down and thought about how health care will be delivered.

Let’s guarantee health care for all. In my mind, universal coverage is the only way to get this done. This does not mean that everybody deserves or should be covered for everything. Instead, I do believe that office visits and hospitalizations need to be covered. Preventive medicine needs to be covered along with mental health care. Physical therapy and occupational therapy, prescriptions and dental care all need to be covered. What’s left? Plastic surgery, reproductive health and cosmetic dentistry to name a few.

There has to be some mechanism to control costs. We’ve seen over the years that without cost controls medical costs skyrocket. Does every hospital need the latest CT scanner?

Americans should be able to choose their own physician and their own hospital. Also, Americans need better data on what they are choosing. How good is that hospital, really? That data should be readily available. If you’re going to a surgeon for a hernia repair, what is his/her rate of recurrence? What is the infection rates?

We need to fix the problem concerning access to health care. Many patients complain about being unable to see a physician. When most doctors offices are open from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon and most people work from 8:30 in the morning until 5:30 in the afternoon, no wonder there’s an access problem. We need clinics to be open earlier and stay open later. We need clinics open on the weekends.

Health care reform must include high-quality, coordinated health care. We have to have a mechanism to control medical errors. How do we decrease or eliminate hospital-acquired infections? How do we guarantee that we are not paying for procedures that have not been proven to be of benefit? These things need to be worked out in order to control costs. A patient who is in a car crash in northern Pennsylvania is currently without his medical records. His physicians are flying blind, as it were. We should be able to put a system in place where his physicians have timely access to his records even if he’s from southern Florida.

We have to do something about malpractice. There’s not a day that goes by that physicians don’t worry about malpractice. Many physicians practice defensive medicine, driving costs up and doesn’t necessarily add to the quality of medicine that they are delivering. We need to develop a malpractice system were patient grievances are compensated adequately and quickly. On the other hand, frivolous lawsuits also need to be handled with minimal costs to physicians, hospitals and insurance companies.

Finally, we have to fund the system in such a way that is fair to all Americans. Everyone should have to pay their fair share.

I believe that these are the correct goals for reforming our health care system. What are your thoughts?

Iraqis outraged over Blackwater’s slow exit from the country.
In January, the Iraqi government announced that it would “not issue a new operating license to Blackwater Worldwide,” which is now known as Xe, and that the company would have to be out of the country “as soon as a joint Iraqi-U.S. committee finishes drawing up guidelines for private contractors.” But the AP reports today […]

In January, the Iraqi government announced that it would “not issue a new operating license to Blackwater Worldwide,” which is now known as Xe, and that the company would have to be out of the country “as soon as a joint Iraqi-U.S. committee finishes drawing up guidelines for private contractors.” But the AP reports today that the company is “still protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq, even though the company has no license to operate there and has been told by the State Department its contracts will not be renewed two years after a lethal firefight that stirred outrage in Baghdad.” Some victims of that firefight are angry that the company has yet to leave:

Some Iraqis wounded in the September 2007 shootout by guards for the former Backwater Worldwide security firm expressed anger and dismay Tuesday after reports that the company will continue work in Iraq longer than previously thought.

Hussein Jabber, a Baghdad lawyer hit by gunfire in the deadly melee, says he was outraged at the Iraqi government for not taking a harder stance against the company, now known as Xe.

“The Blackwater personnel are mercenaries. The Iraqi government knows that very well,” said Jabber, who still has bullet fragments in his arm and side from the Sept. 16, 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead and another 20 wounded in Baghdad’s busy Nisoor Square.

The State Department has said that the company’s guards will stop protecting U.S. diplomats on the ground in Baghdad on May 7, when that specific contract is up. But the AP reports that the company’s guards “are slated to continue ground operations in parts of Iraq long into the summer, far longer than had previously been acknowledged.”

Harman: ‘I’m Just Very Disappointed’ NSA Wiretapped Me, After I Voted To Allow Them To
On Sunday, CQ reported that the NSA had wiretapped Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), listening in on a call in which she apparently offered a quid pro quo to a lobbyist group. Harman has vigorously denied the reports. Today, she appeared on MSNBC to express her shock and outrage that her phone calls were listened to, […]

On Sunday, CQ reported that the NSA had wiretapped Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), listening in on a call in which she apparently offered a quid pro quo to a lobbyist group. Harman has vigorously denied the reports. Today, she appeared on MSNBC to express her shock and outrage that her phone calls were listened to, saying she was “disappointed” that the U.S. could have allowed such “a gross abuse of power”:

HARMAN: I’m just very disappointed that my country — I’m an American citizen just like you are — could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I’m one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, but I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I’m thinking about others who have no bully pulpit and may not be aware, as I was not, that right now somewhere, someone’s listening in on their conversations, and they’re innocent Americans.

Watch it:

Harman’s anger seems a bit disingenuous, considering that she was one of the earliest supporters of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. When the practice was revealed by the New York Times in 2005, she defended it as “essential,” though admitted she was “concerned” about its scope:

“I have been briefed since 2003 on a highly classified NSA foreign collection program that targeted Al Qaeda. I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities,” Harman said. “Like many Americans, I am deeply concerned by reports that this program in fact goes far beyond the measures to target Al Qaeda about which I was briefed.”

In fact, in 2004 she “urged that The [New York] Times not publish the article” revealing Bush’s program.

Indeed, she issued a press release in 2007 specifically highlighting that the updated FISA bill she approved of would fully allow warrantless wiretapping:

This bill does a good job — a far better job than the bill reported last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee. … This legislation arms our intelligence professionals with the ability to listen to foreign targets — without a warrant — to uncover plots that threaten US national security. The bill also protects the Constitutional rights of Americans by requiring the FISA court, an Article III Court, to approve procedures to ensure that Americans are not targeted for warrantless surveillance.

To her credit, Harman warned against “a slippery legal slope to potential unprecedented abuse of innocent Americans’ privacy” and stated her opposition to granting telecommunications companies retroactive immunity. Perhaps her outrage at being a target of wiretapping herself will force her to realize that the program she deemed “essential” invaded the privacy of untold millions of Americans.

President Obama Delivers Remarks at Signing of Edward Kennedy Service America Act
SPEAKERS: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA SEN. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, D-MASS. [*] KENNEDY: This is a wonderful day… (APPLAUSE) … for all of our country and all Americans who will now have a chance and the opportunity to give back to their communities and the nation, the nation that we love so much. S…

President Obama and King Abdullah of Jordan Hold Media Availability
SPEAKERS: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA KING ABDULLAH OF JORDAN [*] (JOINED IN PROGRESS) QUESTION: … when do you expect that actually to happen? And how does the Arab peace initiative feature (OFF-MIKE) OBAMA: Well, first of all, we have gone out of our way to compliment the efforts of those Arab…

Obama Says Bush Officials Behind Interrogation Policy Could Be Prosecuted
President Obama yesterday declined to rule out legal consequences for Bush administration officials who authorized the harsh interrogation techniques applied to “high-value” terrorism suspects, saying the attorney general should determine whether they broke the law.

Firms Infused With Rescue Cash Find Money to Fund Lobbying
Top recipients of federal bailout money spent more than $10 million on political lobbying in the first three months of this year, including aggressive efforts aimed at blocking executive pay limits and tougher financial regulations, according to newly filed disclosure records.

Harsh Tactics Readied Before Their Approval
Intelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods — and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect, Senate investigators have concluded.