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Healthcare Debate Takes on Baby Talk

Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) appeared on the House floor on Saturday with an adorable little baby named “Maddie” on his shoulder pitching his case against the healthcare reform bill which was later passed.

“This is Maddie.  Maddie likes America because we have freedom here and Maddie believes in patient choice healthcare.  She has come here to say she doesn’t want government to take over healthcare.  She wants to keep her plan,” Rep. Shadegg said.

“Maddie knows if this bill passes, she knows her mom’s health care will go away and won’t be around for five years.  If the bill passes then no more healthcare for her mom because it has to change.  Maddie wants patient choice.”

“She doesn’t want her mom’s premiums to go up.  She doesn’t want her mom’s taxes to go up by $730 billion, do you Maddie?”

“She wants America’s health insurance companies to have to compete with each other.  She believes in choices, but most of all she says, don’t tax me to pay for healthcare that you guys want.  If you want healthcare, pay for it yourself because it’s not fair to pass your healthcare bills on to me and my grandchildren,” said Rep. Shadegg.

This morning columnist and screenwriter Robert J. Elisberg mocked the Arizona congressman in Baby Talk Comes to Congress by taking the opposite position.  Elisberg thought about using a ventriloquist’s dummy, but recruited a real baby known as “Jo Jo” to give voice to his political concerns about the Republican party.

“Jo Jo wants me to tell you how upset he is about the Republicans trying to block healthcare.  He says that their actions are anathema to democracy (his words) and unpatriotic.  Further, baby Jo Jo wants me to say that he thinks Birthers are ‘poopies,’ Deathers are ’sad crustaceans’ and Tea Partyers ‘don’t have the sensibility of ’strained peas.’ All his words.”

Elisberg broadens Jo Jo’s discussion to send love to the people of New Orleans wiped out by Katrina and then asks the Republicans to quit saying, “NoNoNoNoNo” about everything because “You’re beginning to sound like me when I’m tired, hungry and getting cranky, and even I think I sound like a big baby then.”

I guess it is proven fact that sometimes the innocence, purity and hope for the future symbolized in a real live baby transcends what we are incapable of saying in other words.  Health care reform in America has become the great concern of all Americans it seems.  But have all the rhetoric and political battles forgotten what the real issue is?  Does anyone even remember what the original goal was?

As the health care reform battle continues in the U.S. Senate, can we get past the baby talk and do what is good for America — now and future, instead of playing politics?

         

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Alan Sugar’s views of women are, “dated” and belittling say critics

Lord Alan Sugar was criticized by the Trades Union Congress, (TUC) today after suggesting that women are more likely than men to discriminate against female employees.

Alan Sugar, the TV star of The Apprentice and successful businessman also hinted he would be reluctant to give a full-time job to a pregnant woman, further, suggesting, in a toy’s out of the pram moment, that because of negative press he may resign his position as the government’s enterprise “champion”.

What makes for good TV entertainment doesn’t fair well in the political world it would appear. Some Labour government figures found the way that Sugar treated female contestants on The Apprentice cause for complaint, ahead of his appointment by Gordon Brown.

In an interview at the weekend, Alan Sugar said the suggestion he did not employ women was “outrageous”.

“Women are the biggest offenders. Women know about women,”said Alan. “They think to themselves, she’s young, she’s attractive, she’s going to get a boyfriend, what’s going to happen. Women think about it more than men, in my opinion.”

When questioned if he would give a job to a woman who was pregnant, he told the interviewer: “Why would anyone give anybody a job knowing … unless it was a temporary job.”

The TUC’s head of equality and employment rights, Sarah Veale said: “It’s this kind of dated attitude that makes working life a real struggle for many women.”

Sugar has had second thoughts about accepting the Brown appointed post, in a rather wimpish quote saying: “Too much negative stuff is really unhelpful. I may decide that this is simply not worth it, when you are giving your time free of charge for no agenda,”

I’ll show you…I’ll fire myself?

         

Probiotics Found To Get Rid Of ‘Flabby Tums’ After Pregnancy

Probiotics have been found to help get rid of ‘baby bellies’ after pregnancy. The new research from the University of Turku in Finland was released at the 17th European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The study followed 256 pregnant women to find out more about weight gain during and after pregnancy.

All of the women, who were in their first trimester of pregnancy, were divided into three groups for the study. Two of the groups received dietary counseling on which food they should eat for a healthy weight gain and for optimum development of their unborn child. They were provided with foods high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, and fiber-enriched foods such as pasta and cereals.

One of the group, in addition to this support, were supplied with probiotic capsules containing lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. Probiotics have become popular over the last decade with their ability to improve digestion. They contain “friendly” bacteria which improves the health of the gut. The second group was provided with ‘dummy’ capsules.

The final group received ‘dummy’ capsules and no dietary counseling.

Researchers weighed the women at the start of the study, and again one year after they had given birth. Waist circumference and skin fold thickness were also recorded.

From the data collected, 25 percent of the women who had been adviced on what food to eat and given probiotics had a body mass index of 30 or more, and defined as centrally obese.

The group which was not provided with probiotics, 43 percent of the women were described to have central obesity.

For the third group which did not take probiotics or receive dietary advice, 40 percent had central obesity.

Central obesity, when combined with more fat around the belly, is considered to be particularly unhealthy.
The study also showed that there was a lower average in body fat percentage in the group which took probiotics.

Nutritionalist Kirsi Laitinen said “The women who got the probiotics fared best,”

“One year after childbirth, they had the lowest levels of central obesity as well as the lowest body fat percentage.”

Laitinen said that more research is needed to learn more about the effects of taking a probiotic to reduce a ‘flabby tum’ and on the health of the children.