Sometimes you just really do have to say WTF?

Muff driving incident astounds Highway Patrol

A Florida Highway Patrol officer has admitted his incredulity at a woman who pranged her car while shaving her privates.

Megan Mariah Barnes, 37, was driving her Thunderbird in Key West last week when she piled into the back of a Chevrolet pickup carrying four people. Or rather, although she was in the driver's seat, it was actually her ex-hubby Charles Judy who was holding the wheel while she tidied herself up down below.

Highway Patrol spokesman explained that the pair drove on for about a kilometre down the road before pulling the old driver/passenger switcheroo - unsurprising since Barnes was the day before "convicted and sentenced to nine months of probation for DUI and driving with a suspended licence", deprived of her licence for five years and "ordered to get her car impounded".

Briton tells court of the moment he saw American activist fall as she tried to defend Palestinian homes

The final moments of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist crushed to death beneath a pile of earth and rubble in the path of an advancing Israeli army bulldozer, were described to an Israeli court by an eyewitness yesterday.

The parents of the 23-year-old, who was killed by the bulldozer in March 2003, were present to hear the harrowing account on the first day of hearings in a civil lawsuit they have brought against the state of Israel. The country has never acknowledged culpability over Ms Corrie's death.

Richard Purssell, a British activist with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), said he watched in horror as Ms Corrie was dragged four metres by the bulldozer moving forward at a "fast walking pace".

Fosamax, a drug used to strengthen the bones of women suffering from osteoporosis following menopause, may actually cause some of them to suffer leg fractures.

Following a report by ABC News' Dr. Richard Besser that linked long-term use of Fosamax to fractures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it would launch an investigation into the use of some osteoporosis drugs and a specific type of femur fracture.

Bisphosphonates, a class of bone-strengthening drugs that includes Fosamax, Boniva, Reclast, and Actonel, have raised safety concerns, including heart risks. In 2008, the FDA said it found no link between the drug and heart problems.

Foxamax has also been linked to severe musculoskeletal pain, as well as to a disease of the jaw bone called osteonecrosis. In January, a judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a woman alleging that Fosamax caused damage to her jaw.

The FDA issued a statement saying it had found no link between bisphosphonate osteoporosis medications, such as Fosamax, and atypical subtrochanteric femur fractures - bone fractures just below the hip joint. It recommended that patients continue their medications, but also suggested that the health industry be aware of a "possible risk" of the unusual fractures.  (As Usual?)

As we've come out of the frozen tundra of the Snowfecta, we might think "oh thank goodness winter is over and we won't have to worry about a blizzard for a while." While you may be right in that regard, we'd be missing the larger point: A lot of people were not prepared to handle this in any way, shape or form.

We witnessed Hipsters who were lined up outside the closed P street Whole Foods almost rioted as if someone had just told them that Fleet Foxes sucked. The shelves in produce aisles city wide were bare. There were major lines at area supermarets. It was so bad we even ran out of condoms. With some of the power outages, people ran out of firewood and burned furniture to stay warm. It as a lot of smart, well-educated people with good paying jobs in a predicament they simply did not plan for.

The old proverb rings true: "He who fails to plan, plans to fail"

WHAT ABOUT REAL HEALTH INSURANCE?

P.T. Barnum was right: There's a sucker born every minute

People are hitting the streets in the U.S. in masses. Every day, we see violent demonstrations. We have seen fights and even guns brandished by some of the protestors. Speakers at "town hall" meetings have been shouted down to the point that the meeting must cease. The subject of these raucous events is the proposed overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system by Barack Obama.

Let's be clear about one thing. Obama's plan is merely window-dressing for business as usual. The supporters of this scheme maintain the U.S. will finally have a national health service. This is only lip-service to the administration.

On the other hand, the opponents are using outright lies to denigrate the planned changes. They accuse the Obama administration of bringing socialism to the U.S., despite Obama's unashamed affinity to capitalism. Also, they maintain that the new legislation would require the killing of older people so the government would not have to pay for their health services.

Source: AlterNet via Tomdispatch.com

In the "era of colorblindness" there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have "moved beyond" race. We haven't.

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation's "triumph over race."

Obama's election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.

Obama's mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that "the land of the free" has finally made good on its promise of equality.  There's an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you.  If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you.  Trust us.  Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars.  You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand.  Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don't like it when I say this.  It makes them angry.  In the "era of colorblindness" there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have "moved beyond" race.  Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

*There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

A proposal to remove donor organs from patients who are dying before they are actually dead, published today in the Dutch medical journal Medisch Contact, has met with fierce criticism.

Dutch Protestant daily Trouw reports that many doctors and the Dutch Kidney Foundation both find the idea "terrible".