It has been news, for as long as the media resists looking at the real threat to a candidate (and they pointedly do ignore the threats, believe me — have you seen neo-nazis protesting candidates and intimidating event attendees, for example? which candidates?).

I don’t think that fears of violence are the overriding reason that Hillary persists, but I think your point here is important.

I didn’t see “Recount” last night (a friend TiVo’d; I’ll see it later in the week), but the Florida vote in Nov 00 is only one instance in which young thugs have been sent in to create chaos. And chaos is dangerous; that’s how thugs take power away from civil society (even if they’re clean cut, white, college educated thugs).

The press really needs to start including any instances of intimidation or ‘out of bounds’ behavior that occurs related to ANY campaign event — whether it’s for Obama, or McCain, or Hillary. This bullshit needs to stop.

The MSM has their priorities and the American people seem to follow in mass.

They purportedly needed to pass to go on to high school, but it turns out the state is so stupid that they don’t keep track of what the local school boards do, who pass them on anyway no matter what scores they made raising the question about the value of the testing.

This should have been the link about work being done at places like Joslin Clinic @ Harvard offering a major and rather surprising pathway for diabetic treatment in the not too distant future that no one had talked about until recently.

HIllary Clinton’s Colossal Blunder Is Simply the Last Straw

John McCain has squamous cell carcinoma Marcy says. I remember enough from microanatomy and staring down a few thousand microscopes to know that the squamous cell layer is the most superficial layer of the skin. Those tumors are far more common than the considerably worse prognosis malignant melanoma or the basal cell carcinomas because they are considerably more deep to begin with and in the layers where lymph nodes and capillaries live, hence closer to the freight trains that help them become mets much earlier.

I noticed Dr. Kirk Morgan had a post jumping up and down over at the lake demanding access to McCain’s path reports, and that perhaps we should have more opinions than McCain’s $100-200 million sugar mommie and his uber slick health plan as a Senator could buy. AFIP is a fine institution but hardly the paragon or creme de la creme of dermatopathology excellence that it once was, and Cindy’s money can buy far better as to clinical correlation if he had a recurrence of melanoma or a basal cell which requires more planning and can require more skill than a squamous cell Ca.

One thing media wise since this was a post on the media that is regrettable is that in that junket out to Arizona–a little place somewhere near Scotssdale I guess, there were real doctors on that trip who are members of the media like Larry Altman, M.D. of the NY Times who is an internist who did a year in epidemiology at the C.D.C. after his residency, and we should get better from him than to agree to just summarize vaguely which is exactly what Larry did.

Dr. Murphy Kirk wanted the biopsy material submitted to experts, and there are much better clinical dermatopathologists that do this every day than AFIP, and talked of tissue sections and hinted at the criteria that are used to give prognostic indications on malignant melanoma cases. There are a number of other criteria like SEER data,

thickness, ulceration, location of tumors (head and neck have a worse prognosis), regional node involvement, how many mets hit nodes, age of diagnosis (older is worse, the status of sentinal node biopsy, the actual histological type of melanoma, and spread pattern (nodular and acral lentiginous spreading indicates a poorer prognosis than lentigo maligna and superficial spreading), interval between melanoma diagnosis, and that the more years for an individual who has had one melanoma, the higher the probability they will have a second, etc.

To imply that we have this kind of data that is reliable for neuropsychological and cognitive testing is simply wrong of Dr. Murphy. It doesn’t exist yet; and no medical literature reflects this.

He does not accurately portray the level of reliability sophistication, and clinical accuracy that the neuropsychological tests like brain mapping, or cognitive tests, (and there are many that neuropsychologists who often consult for psychiatrists, neurologists and other physicans deploy) have or the reputation that they enjoy with other physicians or in the medical literature that reviews them including neurology literature, internal medicine literature and the psychiatry literature.

Anyone who has read it and keeps up with it knows that there is a ton of disagreement as to the reliability of each and every neuropsychological test among experts in the field, and it is reflected in that literature. While there may be a lot of speculation in any traditional medical area, like say the cutting edge interplay of Diabetes and brain hormones and bone hormones.

In Diabetes, a Complex of Causes

I also don’t know where Kirk gets his information and states as fact that McCain has ever had alcoholism, or has ever “been violent” at work. Dr. Murphy doesn’t qualify that, and if McCain weren’t such a public figure, stating that about an individual, particularly when you are a psychiatrist could make Kirk the easy target of a libel suit.

I have never voted Republican, and while I respect McCain’s militaryservice record, and know we all do, especially on a day like today, his comments about Obama have already been ludicrous.

They were in bad taste before, but if they reflect the reason she continues to drag out the primary, they are clearly news now. We cannot move on to the general because of something — what is that thing? Is it that which is reflected in her words, her deeds?

It also became news because the media rolled over the first times these kinds of comments were made. (Why did HRC bring this up earlier, when she should be inured to the threats after all these years?)

It has been news, for as long as the media resists looking at the real threat to a candidate (and they pointedly do ignore the threats, believe me — have you seen neo-nazis protesting candidates and intimidating event attendees, for example? which candidates?).

These are not just components of the horse race that our nomination process has become, but they go to the heart of the media’s purpose as well as the ethics and morals of the candidates at hand.

I thought she was intimating that since the media may not be present for the actual event, then we the yoyos on the street are at the mercy of how it’s spun and how much pig fucking the talking head punditocracy does afterward.

But I think Hillary’s coment was an accurate psychological biopsy of Billiary’s mindset.

At any rate there’s one thing I’m certain of. Today is Memorial Day and we’re all sad at a clusterfuck (now there’s an acceptable and respectable word and it doesn’t conjure up something that only pigs might get pleasantly excited about) that is wrecking 5 percent of families at best while the other 95% bitches about how expensive it is to buy their Manolo Blahniks and fill up their gas hog SUVs made more gas hoggy thanks to Michigan’s finest Karl Levin, Debbie Dingell and John Dingell and many of their lobbyists on K Street and the firms of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull the Sequel to K Street which reminds me of the movie to see tonight. Sex with Blahniks on can wait until it hits the TV.

There’s another thing I’m certain of. In my country it’s Monday 5/26/08. That means that it’s June 4 in 8 (eight) more days. And Super Delegates have told me on or about June 4 and some on the night of June 3, there is going to be two rushes. There’s going to be 1) The mad rush and 2) The bum’s rush. I’m sure you can figure out what those mean. And that will make things easier on my eyes when I turn on the TV which these blogs spell the tee vee (one more cultural nuance I was never apprised on growing up ’cause TV works fine for me–maybe it gets mistaken by others as an incomplete TVA or something.

I ran accross this and even a real FDL puppie favorite MODO plugged it on Timmuhhhhhhh.

What Went Wrong by Michelle Cottle The New Republic

Of course for me, the title of that piece is “What Went Right.”

The Emily Magazine portion of that article is a little like what Maryscott O’Connor got from blogging in the days of her greatest fame and what John Cole may get from blogging. It was getting mixed up with 24/7 gossip that really sank her and separated her from what the pixel-stained political blogging crew aspires to do.