In the absence of any decent presidential candidate, I am going to revert to my Vermonter roots.  I say Bernie Sanders should run for president.  His focus is not on Iraq or a stupid declaration that since Iran has the knowledge to build nuclear weapons, we should wage war with them.  Instead, everyone knows where this Independant senator from Vermont stands on the issues.  His values have not wavered. 

According to a 2006 quote on the http://www.guardian.co.uk website (article is linked):

[Bernie] says his consistent electoral success reflects the widespread discontent with rising inequality, deepening poverty and dwindling access to affordable healthcare in the US. “People realise there is a lot to be learned from the democratic socialist models in northern Europe,” Mr Sanders said. “The untold story here is the degree to which the middle class is shrinking and the gap between rich and poor is widening. It is a disgrace that the US has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any industrialised country on earth. Iraq is important, but it’s not the only issue.”

At a time when Huckabee is being lambasted for pushing to free a convicted rapist, Romney is being accused of being Mormon (since when is this a crime?!?), Clinton and Obama are tearing each other’s throats out, Edwards is pushing mandatory mammograms (You know they’ve been shown to cause cancer, right, Mr. Edwards?).  I say we should throw all of the candidates out and start endorsing what matters to us. 

 So I say it again, Bernie Sanders for President.

Since Christmas time is coming, I thought I’d share something that is on our bulletin board at work.  Whether or not you support the war in Iraq, we need to support our troops.   They and others like them are the reason we are able to speak freely.   But more on that in a minute.

Since this is such a large list, I have created a .pdf version here.

Food additives linked to hyperactivity in children

I have a 2 year old daughter.  I’ll admit that most of the time it’s easier to give in and give her whatever she wants.  Being a “normal, picky” 2 year old, most of the time what she wants to eat is cereal and chocolate milk.

 That’s at 2.  If I keep giving her what she wants, then she’ll get used to eating like my neice does.  As my neice lives with her great-grandparents, she has learned that she can throw a fit and get what she wants.  They always have candy, sugar cereals (no better than candy) and juice around.  She has been diagnosed with ADD and takes medication for it. 

At 8:30 on Halloween, I told my neice and my daughter that they had had enough candy.  My sneaky 2 year old had a sucker in her jacket pocket, but it was my neice that I had to watch.  She got mad, especially when I confiscated the candy necklace and wouldn’t let her have the candy bracelet she had gotten. 

When we went to drop her off, I insisted on carrying the candy inside and handing it to her grandfather myself.  We went inside for a few minutes and she started trying to get into her candy.  My husband and I both ended up enforcing the no more candy rule.  The grandparents were saying no more, but my neice wasn’t listening.

 Compare that to this weekend.  It being Thanksgiving, I had sweets around — notably Rice Krispie treats and a cookie bar that I haven’t had in years.  She did not have her ADD medication, but her behaviour was less like a hyperactive child and more like a child who needed consistancy in her discipline (she got 3 warnings then got a time out — I didn’t start the timer until she stopped the screaming).  Well and more like a child that needed to learn to play with others, she kept hogging the toys.  Then again, so did my 2 year old.

 All this not from cutting out the sugar, but from cutting out the artificial colors and flavors and keeping her away from soda.  To the end of the weekend, she was even asking me for Rice Krispies for breakfast even though I had 2 kinds of Captain Crunch. 

It may be a small experiment, but that definitely shows me that they may actually be figuring out the cause of this sudden influx of ADD and ADHD. 

 Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that some kids actually do have a problem with concentration.  From what I’ve seen though, some of it is either they have home problems on their mind (which my neice obviously does when she doesn’t see her mom very much) or too much artificial color and caffeine/soda (which my neice also has).  Yet her mom is determined that she wants to keep her on the ADD medication indefinitely, instead of stopping at 2 years like the doctor suggests.

Things that make you go hmmm… It’s so much easier to let the medication parent for us, isn’t it?

I had planned on just leaving the below post tonight, but I was thinking about this while I was watching teevee the other day. 

 Have you ever noticed that most of the people in the shows are of a “normal” BMI?  I mean yea, there’s always the obligatory fat guy (or gal), but most of the main characters are thin.  We have an obesity epidemic here in the good ol’ US, yet our popular culture does not reflect this fact (almost said fat there). 

 Then there’s the occasions like the VMA’s this year (2007) where Britney Spears shows up in an outfit that is slightly too small and everyone jumps on it!  I mean come on.  Go out in the public in the Midwest or any other town in the US (and many other countries) and you’ll see people wearing clothes that are so small they look like they’re going to burst the seams any minute. 

 Muffin tops aside, I think it’s time that SOMEONE actually dealt with the problems we are going to face. 

 Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I do NOT mean Big Pharma, or the complimentary industry Big Food.

Well, it looks like I’m going to have to design a WordPress theme after all.  I found a theme I think I can deal with for a couple of days, which is a good thing since none of the themes I saw match what I’m looking for.  Figures, I now need to sort out the PHP.  Guess I’ve gotten lazy in my old age.