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The Local Wire

Philadelphia Daily News Staff Report:

ASPCA condemns Vick's signing with Eagles

New Eagles quarterback Michael Vick's handlers approached the American Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty months ago about doing educational work against dogfighting, but the organization immediately turned them down because of "his indescribable and barbaric acts of animal cruelty" while running an illegal dogfighting operation, the group revealed on its Web site yesterday. The remarks, the first public comments from the group, were written by ASPCA president Ed Sayres.

"[T]his organization and I personally have seen the acts of cruelty committed by Mr. Vick first hand - acts so heinous that the public has never laid witness to them," Sayres wrote, noting that the ASPCA helped process evidence that led to Vick's 18-month imprisonment.

Sayres condemned Vick's return to the NFL and signing with the Eagles: "Today, it is difficult to see him in the uniform of a Philadelphia Eagle because of the startling lack of judgment and moral character he has demonstrated over the past several years. It is questionable whether he will have any credibility as an educator on the dog fighting issue."

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said he is convinced that Vick is remorseful and deserves a second chance.


More:

Philadelphia Embarrassments by Clark DeLeon

Closed On Monday

The Fishtown Branch of the
Free Library of Philadelphia
will be closed Monday,
August 24th, 2009 to cover
Staff Shortages at other
branches.

(Signage posted at said location)

Receipt

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3200 Richmond Street
Philadelphia, Pa 19134

08/19/09 09:10:09

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CRACK N SNK..................0.99
LV MILK WHOL..............1.79
TURKEYHILL T...............2.39

Subtotal..................$6.66
Sales Tax..................0.00
Total.....................$6.66
Cash (USD$)..........$6.66

Change..................$0.00

Transaction Id#96318


Thank you for
Shopping Sunoco

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Squandered Opportunity - Health Care Deformed

When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, there was talk that former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean might be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. That would have made Dean the administration’s point-person in the fight for health care reform. It also would have increased the likelihood that reform would be real.

But Dean was rejected. And, now, the prospect of real reform is fading fast. Dean said last week that the only thing that made health-reform legislation proposed by House committees worth doing was the public option. In that legislation, the physician and former Vermont governor argued that “the last shred of reform is the public option.” In fact, without the public option, the Obama approach — and that of compromise-prone Democrats in Congress — looks increasingly like a step in the wrong direction.

That’s because the “reforms” currently under consideration threaten to undermine Medicare and Medicaid — with radical cost-cutting schemes — while steering hundreds of billions in federal dollars into the accounts of for-profit insurers and the pharmaceutical industry.

This is not “change we can believe in.” This is change that serious reformers will find “very difficult” to support, as Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, said Sunday on CNN. Johnson explained that progressives would have a tough time backing legislation that did not include a public option.

“The only way we can be sure that very low-income people and persons who work for companies that don’t offer insurance have access to it, is through an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition,” explained Johnson, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Congresswoman Johnson is exactly right. Without a robust public option, what the Obama administration and compromised Democrats in the House and Senate are talking about is not “health care reform.”

It is “health care deform” that does not begin to address the crisis created by insurance industry profiteering — and that could well make the “cure” worse than the disease.


John Nichols is a Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine.

published Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Metro Newspaper - Philadelphia


More:

This Is Reform?

It’s never a contest when the interests of big business are pitted against the public interest. So if we manage to get health care “reform” this time around it will be the kind of reform that benefits the very people who have given us a failed system, and thus made reform so necessary.

Forget about a crackdown on price-gouging drug companies and predatory insurance firms. That’s not happening. With the public pretty well confused about what is going on, we’re headed — at best — toward changes that will result in a lot more people getting covered, but that will not control exploding health care costs and will leave industry leaders feeling like they’ve hit the jackpot.


Click here for complete Op-Ed by Bob Herbert, published August 17, 2009, The New York Times


Healthcare Cont:



After his brilliant beginning, the president suddenly looks weak and unreliable. That will be the common interpretation around Washington of the president's abrupt retreat on substantive heathcare reform. Give Barack Obama a hard shove, they will say, rough him up a bit and he folds. A few weeks back, the president was touting a "public option" health plan as an essential element in reform. Now he says, take it or leave it. Whatever Congress does, he's okay with that...


Click here for complete editorial By William Greider published in The Nation

Closed On Tuesday

FYI - The Port Richmond Library Branch (Free Library System of Philadelphia) will be closed Tuesday, August 18th. No reason was given for said closure.

Cookie Fortune

Compromise is always wrong if it means sacrificing a principle.

Learn Chinese:

Bean Sprout - dou ya

Lucky Numbers:

46, 22, 24, 15, 30, 9


Bonus Round:



courtesy of All Over Coffee by Paul Madonna

Keeping Score

Throwing An Adage A Curveball - Studies Show That the Curveball Isn’t Too Stressful for Young Arms

For almost as long as children have been throwing baseballs, adults have been telling them about the worst thing they could do to their still-developing arms: throw curves.

The warnings go back to the earliest days of sports medicine, orthopedic surgeons say, at least to the 1950s. In the 1970s, Robert Kerlan, the eminent surgeon who cared for Sandy Koufax, condemned curveballs as murderous on the elbows of professional pitchers, “to say nothing of the young athletes whose bones and joints are still growing.”

That remains the mantra of many sports medicine experts. The orthopedic surgeon James Andrews, who performs more than 100 Tommy John ligament-transplant operations most years, cautions that children should not even think about throwing curves until they are 14.

Are those doctors all alarmists?

Maybe so, according to two studies in which scientists and surgeons evaluated more closely than before the effects of curves on young arms. The studies were done independently by research teams in Connecticut and in Alabama. Each compared the forces across the elbows of pitchers as they fired fastballs and curves. (The Alabama study also included changeups). Each study concluded that curves are less stressful than fastballs and, based on the data collected, contributed little, if at all, to throwing injuries in youth players.


click here for complete NY Times article by MARK HYMAN


Baseball Continued:

When pitch counts reach the century mark, the end is near ... but why?

Baseball's magic number: 100


Subject Update:

Arms-Control Breakdown

More and more youth pitchers are having operations on their elbows and shoulders. So why aren’t the grown-ups doing something about it?

click here for NY Times article by Ron Berler

Selling Short

Creekside Cabaret 5th Anniversary Celebration featuring Bridget The Midget



Wed July 29th thru Sat Aug 1st

Pictures, signings, and couch dances will be available

3225 Advance Lane
Hatfield, Pa 18915

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