**** HEALTH NEWS ****

Anger could be deadly for some  

CHICAGO, -- A study presented at a Chicago conference has  
suggested that intense anger could cause death in some  
heart patients. The study, presented at the American Heart  
Association's Scientific Sessions in Chicago, analyzed data  
from heart patients who had been implanted with cardioverter  
defibrillators, which deliver jolts of electricity to  
patients' hearts when they go off-rhythm, ABC News reported  
Monday. The study's authors said the rhythm disturbances  
could be life threatening if not treated with a shock. The  
researchers said 199 of the subjects reported receiving  
shocks from the implants, and of those, 7.5 percent of the  
shocks were preceded by at least a moderate level of anger.  
"We found that it was 3.2 times more likely for (ventricular  
fibrillation) or (ventricular tachycardia) to develop  
(prompting a shock from the ICD) after the participant be-  
came at least moderately angry, as compared to periods of  
no anger," said Dr. Christine Albert, lead author of the  
study and director of the Center for Arrhythmia Prevention  
at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "If they were  
very angry, or furious, there was about a 16.7-fold in-  
creased risk of having the ICD shock for these life-  
threatening rhythm disturbances."   
  
Test could help prevent arthritis  

NEW YORK, -- A New York doctor said a test developed by  
Dutch researchers could help prevent rheumatoid arthritis.  
Dr. Steven Abramson said the test could detect whether  
patients with temporary inflammatory arthritis will even-  
tually develop rheumatoid arthritis, which is characteriz-  
ed by the body's immune system attacking itself, causing  
damage to joints, cartilage and bone, CBS News reported  
Monday. The test seeks out the presence of a specific  
antibody tied to the condition and allows doctors to pre-  
vent the condition before it develops using arthritis drug  
methotrexate. "The blood test can be positive in some people  
before they even develop classical rheumatoid arthritis,"  
Abramson said. Six million people in the United States suffer  
from inflammatory arthritis and half of that number will  
develop the rheumatoid version of the ailment as a result.  
Abramson said doctors are often reluctant to treat patients  
before rheumatoid symptoms appear because of the drug's side  
effects. However, he said, the test could allow doctors to  
know which patients should receive treatment before develop-  
ing the illness.   
   
Study of men, women with heart failure  

DURHAM, N.C., -- Women tend to live longer with heart fail-  
ure than men and tend to have a less severe form of the  
disease, a Duke University study in North Carolina finds.  
The study of 11,642 patients, to be presented at the annual  
scientific sessions of the American Heart Association in  
Chicago, also found women with heart failure tended to be  
older and more ethnically diverse than men. They also had  
greater incidences of diabetes and high blood pressure, and  
tended to report more symptoms and to be hospitalized more  
often than men, The Herald-Sun of Durham, N.C., reported.  
"Knowing more about the gender differences will help us  
make decisions about treatment, such as how aggressively to  
follow patients or which medication would be the most effec-  
tive," said Pam Douglas, Duke's chief of cardiovascular  
medicine and senior member of the study team. She said women  
and heart disease had not been well studied previously and  
heart failure had been even more poorly studied.  


**** Reader's Submissions ****
From Anne in NY:
More political stuff that you are probably tired reading about. But,
this is a sobering look at today's situation and a reminder of the past.
From here on is forwarded material:
THIS IS HISTORY THAT HAS BEEN LEFT OUT OF OUR TEXTBOOKS. MOST OF YOU ARE
NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS
GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WWII. MOST OF YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF
MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A
SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD. NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW
AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN
OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2007.

This is an EXCELLENT essay. Well thought out and presented.

Historical Significance

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and
hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk
more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England
and America for food and war materials.

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most
Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage
Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on
Germany, which had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few
allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly
aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an
ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in
Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and
controlling all of Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range
plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the
United States over our northern and southern borders, after they
finished gaining control of Asia and Europe. America's only allies then
were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was
about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the
East, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically
downgraded most of its military forces after W.W.I and throughout the
depression, so that at the outbreak of WW2, army units were training
with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank"
painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks. And a huge
chunk of our navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600
million in gold bullion in the Bank of England, that was actually the
property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to carry on the war
when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact). Actually,
Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was unable to oppose the
German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next
day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for
two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of
its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun
by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits
were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later, and first
turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge
of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.

Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight
for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at
Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad
and Moscow alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly
civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire
war effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis could possibly
have won the war.

All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often
dicey things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key
moments in history.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants
and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or
chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs --
they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam,
should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the
world. And that all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be
killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust,
destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part
not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and
its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win -- the
Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control
the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian
economies. The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC
-- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but
an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. You want gas in your car? You want
heating oil next winter? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You
better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic
Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who
believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in
peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into
the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade
away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the
Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the
Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. And we can't do
it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a
time and place of our choosing........in Iraq. Not in New York, not in
London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two
important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly
involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively
supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.

Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for
the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic
terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad
people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We also
have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be
a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an
outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East
for as long as it is needed.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began
with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began
with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years
before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war
-- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and
Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own
again . a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a
full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion
dollars. W.W.II cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and
nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion,which is
roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 2,200 American
lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on
9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning W.W.II would have been
unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

This is not 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies in which everything
comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes
bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism
until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we
have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work
to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world
is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization,
and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely
another battle in this ancient and never ending war. And now, for the
first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless
somebody prevents them.

We have four options:
1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons
(which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear
weapons is what Iran claims it is)

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle
East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in
America.

4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad
is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has
dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It
will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or
grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the
Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes,
cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and
civilization should be like, and the most determined always win. Those
who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always
lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

Remember, perspective is every thing, and America's schools teach too
little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young
American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came
down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th
century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation,
and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted
in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million
people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken more than 2,000 killed in action in Iraq. The US took
more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the
first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In
W.W.II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the
individual battles o f W.W.II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq
war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high ... A world dominated by
representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal
freedoms or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by
the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

It's difficult to understand why the American left does not grasp this.
They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but
evidently not for Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it's
safe. Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria,
Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism
the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights,
democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins,
wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights,
democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the
liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern California. Please
consider passing along copies of this article to students in high
school, college and universities as it contains information about the
American past that is very meaningful today -- history about America
that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their instructors,
too). By being denied the facts of our history, they are at a decided
disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the issues
of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed at
enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda
driven.

**** ON THIS DAY ****

ROAST TURKEY WITH GARLIC & ROSEMARY  

1 whole turkey (10 to 12 pounds)  
6 to 8 garlic cloves  
2 large lemons, halved  
2 teaspoons dried rosemary, crushed  
1 teaspoon rubbed sage  
1/2 stick melted butter  

DIRECTIONS:  
Cut six to eight small slits in turkey skin insert garlic  
between the skin and meat. Squeeze two lemon halves inside  
the turkey and leave them inside. Brush melted butter over  
outside turkey and inside slits. Squeeze remaining lemon  
over outside of turkey. Sprinkle with rosemary and sage.  
Place on a rack in a roasting pan. Bake, uncovered, at 325  
degrees for 1 hour. Baste with pan juices. Cover and bake  
for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours longer until a meat thermometer  
reads 185 degrees -- basting every half hour with pan juices.  

Yield: 8-10 servings.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

2 cans (14 oz. each) Chicken Broth (3 1/2 cups)
4 large sweet potatoes or yams, cut into 1" pieces (about 7 1/2 cups)
Generous dash ground black pepper
2 tbsp. packed brown sugar



Place broth and potatoes in saucepan. Heat to a boil. Cover and cook over medium heat 10 min. or until tender. Drain, reserving broth.

Mash potatoes with 1 1/4 cups broth and pepper. Add additional broth, if needed, until desired consistency. Add brown sugar

**** TODAY'S USELESS FACT ****

Why do scuba divers spit into their masks?

Many divers believe a little saliva on the ol' scuba mask keeps your vision fog-free. How well does it work? Like a lot of life's mysteries, it depends on who you ask. The experts at ScubaGuide.com believe it does. "Saliva works very well as a mask defogger, for reasons that have never been adequately explained." This site on snorkeling notes, "You can purchase a product at the scuba shop to prevent mask fogging. But this 'industrial spit' will work no better than your own." Interesting, though maybe not entirely accurate. ScubaDiving.com tested the various products and concluded that most (but not all) worked better than spit.

But a ranked assessment of artificial saliva is probably more information than the average person needs. The real question is why does spit work at all? FreeDiver.net explains, "Spit keeps the air on the inside of the mask from condensing on the glass." Masks fog up because the inside is often dirty or dusty. Spit cleans off the dirt, making it much harder for condensation and fog to form. It may not be sanitary, but for most divers it works just fine.




****A PARTING THOUGHT ****
Wedding ring: The world's smallest handcuffs.

LAST CALL Y'ALL


HEY, DON'T BE A STRANGER NOW,YA HEAR!
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
Hey, Let's be careful out there
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
PLEASE
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