Montebello E-News

 November 20, 2008

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.
William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers, 1879 - 1935,
was a Cherokee-American cowboy, comedian, humorist,
social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor.

[Humor?  Heresy?  History?  Methinks the last one.  Disquieting observation from over seventy years ago.  If true, then electing Obama has not fundamentally changed democracy for the better.]

  1. Spill the Pills, Part 1

2.  Are We Going to Lose This One?, Part 3

3. Announcements

4. Unusual Fact about Quitting Smoking

5. The Flashback Quarterback:  Li’l Thugs?    

6. Be Aware and Share:  Vampire America

7. About Montebello E-News and “My Montebello”

Spill the Pills, Part 1

As our parents get older, their ailments increase.  Is there something which we could be doing other than feeding their drug addiction?

From an e-mail which my sister in Georgia shared with me:

Only 2% to 5% of people (2-5 out of every 100) who get Alzheimer's inherit it from their parents.  That means that 95-97% of all Alzheimer's has nothing to do with genetics or family traits. ...

Over 5 million people in the US have Alzheimer's, and it's now the sixth-leading cause of death.

All the medical professionals in the documentary were talking about was the tremendous hope they had in new drugs for Alzheimer's. Typical. All they can think about is drugs. Money, money, money.

What all of these PhDs and medical doctors DIDN'T mention is that Alzheimer's is linked to acidity in the body (acidosis).

I was waiting for any one of them to mention it, but they never did! I could not believe it.

Yes--Alzheimer's is a classic example of acid waste collecting in areas (in this case the brain), that can lead to this horrendous disease, and eventual total acid saturation of the brain. When you eat mainly foods that are acid forming and don't eat enough alkalizing foods to counteract the acids, you invite acid waste buildup—and all the diseases (including Alzheimer's) that can thrive in an acidic environment. ...

When your body has an alkaline pH, everything works better—and your organs and systems. And you can stop and prevent acid buildup. ...

Rule number one:  corroborate the information above.  If persuaded that it is true, act on it.

If you answer the multiple-choice questions below and e-mail to lessonanswers@mymontebello.com with “Lesson answers” in the subject field, you will be credited toward a “certificate of recognition in community affairs” to be awarded in 2008 by a local nonprofit organization.

1. What are the statistics on Alzheimer’s?

(a) Up to five percent of people inherit it from their parents.

(b) Up to ninety-eight percent of people get Alzheimer’s from what they do or do not do.

2. What does this author maintain?

(a) Acidosis plays a role in Alzheimer’s.

(b) Having an alkaline pH reduces the likelihood of Alzheimer’s.

Libertarian ideologues and moneygrubbers stand aside. Make room for the people.
Statement of August 19, 2008, by Don McCanne,
retired physician and an advocate on behalf of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of fourteen thousand American physicians advocating for single-payer national health insurance.

The author below says that we Americans look to Obama as a redeemer, as we do not admit to our limitations.  In other words, we can build a utopia and Obama can be the architect or general contractor.  Putting much faith in one person does not bode well for democracy.

Michael Knox Beran
Obama, Shaman
City Journal, Summer, 2008

...What both Aristotle and Weber made too little of is the mentality of the charismatic leader’s followers, the disciples who discover in him, or delusively endow him with, superhuman qualities. “Charisma” was originally a religious term signifying a gift of God: it often denotes (according to the seventeenth-century scholar-physician John Bulwer) a “miraculous gift of healing.” James G. Frazer, in The Golden Bough, demonstrated that the connection between charismatic leadership and the melioration of suffering was historically a close one: many primitive peoples believed that the magical virtues of a priest-king could guarantee the soil’s fertility and that such a leader could therefore alleviate one of the most elementary forms of suffering, hunger. The identification of leadership with the mitigation of pain persists in folklore and myth. In the Arthurian legends, Percival possesses an extraordinary magic that enables him to heal the fisher king and redeem the waste land; in England, the touch of the monarch’s hand was believed to cure scrofula.

It is a sign of growing maturity in a people when, laying aside these beliefs, it acknowledges that suffering is an element of life that sympathetic magic cannot eradicate, and recognizes a residue of pain in existence that even the application of technical knowledge cannot assuage. Advances in knowledge may end particular kinds of suffering, but these give way to new forms of hurt—milder, perhaps (one would rather be depressed than famished), yet not without their sting. We do not draw closer to a painless world.

One of the objects of a mature political philosophy is to reconcile people to the painful limitations of their condition. The American Founders recognized this, as did the English statesmen who presided at the Revolution of 1688: they rejected utopianism. And yet, precisely because they knew that human beings are by nature far from perfect, they allowed a degree of scope, in their constitutional settlements, for the mysterious, quasi-magical qualities that Weber associated with charisma—rather as an architect, as a concession to human frailty, might omit the number 13 when labeling the floors of a building. The “magic” of the post-1688 English constitution, Walter Bagehot observed, lay in the pageantry of the monarchy, a relic of the mysterious grace of the healer-redeemer chiefs of old. The American Founders, after experimenting with weaker forms of executive power, created the presidency, an office spacious enough for a charismatic leader to work his wizardry but narrow enough to prevent delusory overreaching.

Unlike the English Whigs and the American Founders, the modern liberal regards suffering not as an unavoidable element of life but as an aberration to be corrected by up-to-date political, economic, and hygienic arrangements. Rather than acknowledge the limitations of our condition, the liberal continually contrives panaceas that will enable us to transcend it.  

Obama has revived a cruel mirage, but the good news is that the country has defenses against his brand of redemptive politics. Some of these defenses are constitutional, others cultural. The very strength of America's religious ideal of redemption has restrained, though it has not entirely forestalled, the development of alternative secular ideals of redemption. A religiously inspired belief in original sin has made Americans wary of succumbing to the Pelagian notion that a mere mortal, however charismatic, can build the New Jerusalem out of purely secular materials. The country’s constitutional system, itself founded on the theory of original sin, has created a perpetual conflict of factions and interests that so far has prevented any single party from imposing a monolithic unity from above, such as Europe’s collectivists were able to do. … http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_obama.html

FOR RETIREES, ADULTS.  Plug the drain in the brain.  …“It’s probably one of the most frightening aspects of the changes we undergo as we age,” said Nancy Ceridwyn, director of educational initiatives at the American Society on Aging. “Our memories are who we are. And if we lose our memories we lose that groundedness of who we are.”

At the same time, boomers are seizing on a mounting body of evidence that suggests that brains contain more plasticity than previously thought, and many people are taking matters into their own hands, doing brain fitness exercises with the same intensity with which they attack a treadmill. … http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/technology/
03brain.html?ex=1210737600&en=ad10a9a0eb60b66b&ei=5070&emc=eta1

FOR EVERYONE.  “Dumb and Dumber:  Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?”  …Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture. ...

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books/
14dumb.html?ex=1203829200&en=a1ef0bd99366a9be&ei=5070&emc=eta1

FOR EVERYONE.  Holiday message from First Family-elect.  See http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid353515028/bctid1349141721

Quit smoking without a patch. Committed Action to Reduce and End Smoking is a savings program offered by the Green Bank of Caraga in Mindanao, Philippines. A would-be nonsmoker opens an account with a minimum balance of one dollar. For six months, the client deposits the amount of money she would otherwise spend on cigarettes into the account. After six months, the client takes a urine test to confirm that she has not smoked recently. If she passes the test, she gets her money back. If she fails the test, the account is closed and the money is donated to a charity. MIT’s Poverty Action Lab found that opening up an account makes those who want to quit 53 percent more likely to achieve their goal. No other antismoking tactic, not even the nicotine patch, appears to be so successful. http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Provocations/
tricking_people_into_doing_the_right_thing

The following is relevant to the E-News essays talking about thinking outside the box, having a social-impact report, and the limits to diversity.  Should a conservative community have the right to enforce conservative values?  Should a liberal community have the right to enforce liberal values?

Dress code 'prisoners'
Violators in school district to wear jail-style jumpsuits
Elizabeth White, Washington Times, August 4, 2008

GONZALES, Texas (AP) — Violating Gonzales High School's dress code is not a crime, but some of the offenders are about to start looking a lot like convicts.  

Soon after classes begin Aug. 25, violators of the district's beefed-up dress code must don navy blue coveralls unless they get another set of clothes from home - or serve in-school suspension. The outfits aren't just styled like prison jumpsuits - they're actually made by Texas inmates.  

"We're a conservative community, and we're just trying to make our students more reflective of that," said Larry Wehde, Gonzales Independent School District deputy superintendent.

The new policy in Gonzales, about 70 miles east of San Antonio, has drawn plenty of criticism - along with some speculation that all the district will accomplish is to set off a new fashion trend.

Students wearing spaghetti-strap tank tops, extra baggy pants, cargo pants or T-shirts may find themselves finishing the school day in the drab one-piece outfits. Boys with earrings or facial hair, girls in miniskirts and anyone in clothes that show underwear face the same fate. Gonzales High School's dress code also prohibits gang symbols, hats and sunglasses.

Some parents and students are crying foul.

America needs fresh blood continuously in order to stay healthy economically, so we need immigrants.  Leaving their homes for America, they are modern-day pioneers.  Here is an example, translated from the Spanish.

Last Tuesday, a young Mexican immigrant, recently graduated from Roosevelt High School, was honored with a $10,000 scholarship from the law firm of Lewis and Bockius LLP, for his academic efforts and successes.  José Cervantes, 19, and his family moved to the United States three years ago from the Mexican state of Michoacán.  And in this short times Cervantes succeeded not only in learning English, but, also, in graduating with the fourth highest grades in the entire school. As if this were not enough, this young Mexican also succeeded as the only one in his class and only one of three at the school to pass the Advanced Placement English examination.  Passing the examination not only proved his language skills, but, also, gave him university credit to use toward his college degree. ...

Castillo, Gloria Angelina, “Estudiante de Roosevelt Recibe Beca de $10 mil”, Montebello Comet, July 31, 2008

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