HELP !!! ANYONE, PLEASE !!

My friend is dying. Her cancer has spread. She has ADENO CARCINOMA. She has done 5 courses of the chemo drug CISPLATIN, but it spread into her lower intestines. I cannot believe this is happening. She is 36 and her son just turned 4.
Please, anyone, drugs, pain killers, therapies, medical trials, alternative medicines...please pick your brains. Also, any ideas about good books on bereavement for children? Do you know of anyone else with this type of cancer...or online resources, groups, things to do? All I have been doing for the last thirty-two hours since she told me is fighting back tears and I am not doing such a great job. Actually I am probably the worst friend to have in a situation like this. But I am working on it. Please help, if you can.

You've gotta love him...

If you have a brain and a heart and if you like to make good use of them, then you should subscribe to Micheal Moore's mail list at:
maillist@michaelmoore.com.

I just love his last letter to his fellow Republican citizens about the health care reform bill which was finally past last Sunday.

And I just want to hug him (if I could...) for statements like this: "If statistics show that countries (such as France and Germany) with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn't the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?!! Because it isn't about 'universal health care.' It's about controlling women, period"

As it stands now, in exchange for passing health care, the Right has made sure that women in the USA cannot get a medically-insured abortion.

Sicko!!

Block it Out!

I often think about how nowadays freedom from violence and persecution is taken for granted in the Western World.  And yet, it does not take much to lose these rights.  

When Bush Jr. came to power, I saw these rights erode over the duration of a few months following 9/11.  Patriot Act I and II and subsequent Executive Orders that bypassed Congress seriously put democratic values at risk.  The public was kept in constant fear of an impending terrorist attack so that many thought, the draconian measures were necessary.  Lies and misinformation were spread about Irak's nuclear potential to justify the war.  It was awful.  

While that was a huge onslaught on our liberties, there are many areas that are less obvious where once gained progress is slowly eroding as well.  I am thinking of labor rights in Germany.  Unlike two decades ago, workers today can be laid off from one day to the next and replaced by temps. Pay can be frozen seemingly at any time (unless you earn six figure salaries), and often benefits are minimal while working hours, demands on mobility and flexibility have increased.  At the bottom of it all I see the tendency to objectify others and to treat them with less respect and empathy than they deserve.  

What is often referred to as 'evil' is nothing but the potential to dehumanize others.  There is a field in genetics which focuses on how genes can be turned on and off by environmental triggers.  Could it be that the the gene for emotional intelligence can be blocked under certain circumstances? Is competition such a trigger?

Just wondering.  

What Michael is Telling Obama

Excerpt from a Letter

(...)It worked. The Darkness ended. The vast majority of nation wept with joy on the night of the election (those who weren't weeping went out and bought a record number of guns and ammo). Unlike the last president, you didn't "win" by 537 votes in Florida (although Gore won the popular vote by a half-million), you beat McCain nationally by 9,522,083 votes! The House Democrats got a walloping 79-vote margin. The Senate Dems would caucus with a supermajority of 60 votes unheard of in over 30 years. The wars would now end. America would have universal health care. Wall Street and the banks would, at the very least, be reined in. Hardworking citizens would not be thrown out of their homes. It was supposed to be the dawning of a new age.
But the Republicans were not going to go quietly into the night. You see, instead of having just one Rahm Emanuel, they are ALL Rahm Emanuels. That's why they usually win. Unlike most Democrats, they are relentless and unstoppable. When they believe in something (which is usually themselves and the K Street job they hope to be rewarded with someday), they'll fight for it till the death. They are loyal to a fault to each other (they were never able to denounce Bush, even though they knew he was destroying the party). They dig their heels in deep no matter what. If you exiled them to a lone chunk of melting polar ice cap, they would keep insisting that it was just a normal "January thaw," even as the frigid Arctic waters rose above their God-fearing necks ("See what I mean -- this water is COLD! What 'global *warming*'?! (...)
We thought we were all done with this craziness, but we were mistaken. Like a beast that you just can't cage, the Republicans convinced not only the media, but YOU and your fellow Dems, that 59 votes was a *minority*! Precious time was lost trying to reach a "consensus" and trying to be "bipartisan."
Well, you and the Democrats have been in charge now for over a year and not one banking regulation has been reinstated. We don't have universal health care. The war in Afghanistan has escalated. And tens of thousands of Americans continue to lose their jobs and be thrown out of their homes. For most of us, it's just simply no longer good enough that Bush is gone. Woo hoo. Bush is gone. Yippee. That hasn't created one new friggin' job.
You're such a good guy, Mr. President. You came to Washington with your hand extended to the Republicans and they just chopped it off. You wanted to be respectful and they decided that they were going to say "no" to everything you suggested. Yet, you kept on saying you still believed in bipartisanship.
Well, if you really want bipartisanship, just go ahead and let the Republicans win in November. Then you'll get all the bipartisanship you want.
Let me be clear about one thing: The Democrats on Election Day 2010 are going to get an ass-whoopin' of biblical proportions if things don't change right now. And after the new Republican majority takes over, they, along with a few conservative Democrats in Congress, will get to bipartisanly impeach you for being a socialist and a citizen of Kenya. How nice to see both sides of the aisle working together again!
And the brief window we had to fix this country will be gone.
Gone.
Gone, baby, gone.

(...)

Hooked

A slow reader by nature, I put books down quickly. I love authors who chisel and scrape to make every sentence fit the sequence of thoughts. And I admire it if they can do it with seeming effortlessness. A verbacious babbler like Murakami doesn’t stand a chance with me. Recently, The Hours (Michael Cunningham) has gotten me hooked. Smart, slow flowing, melodious but bold in its insights, it has taken me on a journey into the question of identity and the ever-nagging question of normalcy that is worth every comma. But mind you...I have only gotten to page 87 so far.