A jaunty tune for Yes on h8 supporters

Senator Bribe-Us Baucus sells out U.S.

The Shocking Doctrine that's killing U.S.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Extend immunosuppressive drug coverage for kidney transplant patients!

Help people with kidney transplants! Ask your Representative to co-sponsor HR 1458, legislation that would extend Medicare coverage of immunosuppressive drugs beyond the first 36 month after transplant. Since this alert was launched last week, 400 messages have been sent to Congress, and health care reform is building momentum, and we need you to act now by telling your Representative to act today.

This legislation is one of the key provisions in the NKF End the Wait! campaign. The bill will help transplant recipients maintain their kidney function, and will allow others to consider a transplant because they know the expensive drugs they need will be available without a time limitation.

Organ transplant recipients must take immunosuppressive drugs for the life of the transplant to help prevent the body from rejecting the organ. Currently, Medicare pays for most kidney transplants but covers drugs for only 36 months post-transplant as part of the Medicare ESRD benefit. After that, kidney recipients must pay for immunosuppressive drugs through private insurance, public or pharmaceutical programs or pay out-of-pocket. (Medicare covers drugs without a time limit if the patient qualifies because of age or disability status.)

Immunosuppressive drugs are expensive, but the alternative is even more costly.

A kidney transplant recipient costs Medicare $17,000 annually. If the kidney transplant fails, the person returns to dialysis at which point, Medicare spends an average of $71,000 per year on a dialysis patient. And quality of life often suffers too.

Please take a moment to write your Representative today and ask him or her to co-sponsor HR 1458. Share your story, or the story of a loved one, about the experience with immunosuppressive drug coverage.

More info can be found at Kidney Foundation's End the Wait! http://www.kidney.org/news/end_the_wait/recommendations.cfm

News is dying 'cuz reporters & editors are crap mongers

"American journalism is in trouble, and the problem is not just financial. My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances. -- By Walter Pincus in the Columbia Journalism Review.

read it all here.
http://www.cjr.org/essay/newspaper_narcissism_1.php?page=all

War 'tween boys & girls -- femme it!

This is even better if you double click it to make two videos play at once! Very tasty echo effect.

Books are dead, long live Books!

Books are dead, long live Books! Publishing-wise, I believe we're going forwards (four-words?) into the future by heading rapidly into the past. It's going to be Small Press Realities vs MegaCorp McCrap Books Unlimited, and who gives a shit about 'Beach Books' anyways? Like locavores, we'll be reading esoteric art press books by folks we love, from our own little personal worlds from all over the real world.
In the future, like in the past, a 'library', full of excellent, well-handled tomes, will be cherished, special and small, not walls of books we'll never read that fill so many rooms today.
Whether it's the Expresso/Barista Publishing Gizmo,
or Electro-On-Line-Kinda-Kindlie,
or Set-It-Yourself Type in the Basement Bookies,
Books aren't dead.
Books live forever!



News, too.