Tom Harkin is up to his usual tricks: he wants to expand the role of ‘alternative therapies’ by allowing them to be covered by insurance. The quacks are cheering him on, too — every naturopath, homeopath, acupuncturist, crystal healer, shaman, meditator, and iridologist wants their slice of that great big health insurance pie. It’s a disgrace. Strangely, the insurance companies aren’t complaining. This comment explains that, though.

Harvey Kaltsas, president emeritus of the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, said the country could save billions of dollars by shifting care for a number of conditions away from pharmaceutical treatment and toward acupuncture. Kaltsas said the number of licensed practitioners has grown to 20,000 from just 300 in 1971, indicating that many people are sold on the practice’s effectiveness.

I think that last word should be stricken out and replaced with the more appropriate term, “profitability”.

The country could also save billions of dollars if, instead of treating cancer with chemotherapy and surgery and all those expensive Big Medicine remedies, they instead used my personal tickle therapy cure — the only expenses are the cost of feathers and my personal time, at $500 an hour. It is so much cheaper than those overpriced medicines! And instead of putting the patient in a state that requires months or years of sustained expense, and years and years of regular doctor’s visits and diagnostic examinations, my therapy is fast — depending on how far the cancer had progressed, I only need to be employed for weeks or months…and then no more medical expenses at all. Ever. I can guarantee it.

The insurance companies should love me.

A young man with muscular dystrophy, who by all accounts is of good character and even exceptional attitude, is in a contest to win a beach vacation. All you have to do is go to this site and click to improve his odds of winning a well-deserved break.

(via Ctrl-Alt-Del)

Man, I get some strange email. This one is just weird…maybe one of you can help this person out.

[Read more…]

I’m really not being mean and trying to banish a fellow science blogger to some barren, frigid desolation — hey, that’s where I live! — but she’s volunteering to leave New York for a month to live in Antarctica. All you have to do is vote for her essay, and presto, maybe they’ll ship her off to somewhere near the south pole. Cool.

This is big news, a first in the history of that institution! The student who led the LU College Democrats, the student club that was shut down by the administration because apparently, anything other than Republican Wingnuttia is the antithesis of the conservative Christian ideals they hope to promote, has written a letter describing the important lessons he learned at Liberty.

That lesson, of course, is to get the hell out and go to a different university.

Give them time, and with a little hard work, maybe the rest of the student body there can master that important skill, too.

He’s going to be lecturing in Phoenix at the end of August on “Why Ben Stein is wrong about science and history“, which really should win some sort of prize for one of the one of the most obvious titles ever. He’s going to have to talk for days to cover the topic adequately, so pack a lunch.

Wish I could go. It should be entertaining, in a Mike-Tyson-battles-PeeWee-Herman sort of way!

A reader wrote in to say his mother was being victimized by a putative religious organization called Elite Activity Resurrected. It has to be seen to be believed. It’s all dressed up in egalitarian pieties about ending world poverty, but when you look at the actual operation, it’s a remarkably blatant con game.

The World’s first Interdenominational Belief System on the Internet!

Poverty is our Adversary!

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty.” — Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967.

“Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” — Isaiah 1:17.

Aww, that sounds so noble. But here’s how it works:

Our models of abundance are designed specifically to anchor the belief that giving opens the way to receiving. Once you choose to participate in any Elite Activity model, you enter the cycle of abundance from the outer circle and give unconditionally without consideration to the participant in the inner circle. When you do this with the proper intent, and follow the guidelines, you will eventually reach ‘the inner circle’. This is where other participants give their unconditional gifts to you, and you experience the power of ‘Many giving to one’.

And here’s a kind of ‘review’, if by that we mean ‘uncritical endorsement of fraud’.

You are first “invited” to join the Elite Resurrected gifting program by a current member and then on the out-most ring in which place your “gift” (starting at $100), a monetary amount to the person that has made it to the center. You then “invite” at least two people that want to share in the giving during the second phase (the person that originally invited you will help you in this.). During the “Empowering” phase you help the people that you invited and once you successfully fulfill that part you move into the inner circle where you receive your gifts. There, it says, you will be able to receive 4 “gifts” (a total of $400) before being “invited” to join a new cycle at $250. You can still receive 2 more “gifts” at the center of the $100, after which time you will be recycled back to another $100 circle to make your way to the center once again.

Can you say “PYRAMID SCHEME!”, boys and girls? Sure, I knew you could. This is criminal activity; the only people whose poverty is going to be diminished are the members of the inner circle, and they’re going to make out like bandits. They are bandits!

Alert the police. They have a list of upcoming gatherings in places like Little River SC, Litchfield Park AZ, Houston TX, and lots of events in Mexico. I think having the local bunco squad paying a call on these thieves would add a welcome bit of festivity to their gatherings. They are vermin preying on fears of the economically disadvantaged.

Horrified mole from WND traumatized! That dancin’…it’s Satan’s work!

It’s nothing personal, but we’re getting a little worried about the economic competition you’ve been delivering lately, so we need to even the playing field a little. A couple of Christian evangelical real estate billionaires have created a Noah’s Ark tourist attraction in Hong Kong. Pretty soon you’ll be as stupid as we are.

Oh, wait! “Tourist attraction”? It’s supposed to poison the minds of the locals, not traveling Westerners! Dang. Maybe we can ship a few container ships full of Bibles and Chick tracts over there instead.

In an awesome development, I have been chatting with Mr. Deity (which, by the way, makes me officially a prophet. I’m working on letting my beard grow long now), and he has offered to answer almost any questions you might have. What would you ask an omniscient, omnipotent being? Leave your questions in the comments, I’ll pass them on, and then I’ll stroll down from the mountain with the answers chiseled on digital stone tablets.

I don’t want to catch any of you frolicking with golden calves while I’m getting the words of the Lord now, you hear?

And keep in mind that I’ll only pass along the interesting questions. Asking for lottery numbers…not interesting. And you know I’d keep those answers for myself, anyway.