I didn't buy the New York Times today because I previewed it online, and it was shit.
"Mental screening for young to begin; Mass. doctors to offer questionnaires for children on Medicaid" by Carey Goldberg Boston Globe | December 27, 2007
As of Monday, annual checkups for the nearly half a million Massachusetts children on Medicaid will carry a new requirement: Doctors must offer simple questionnaires to detect warning signs of possible mental health problems, from autism in toddlers to depression in teens.
The checklists vary by age but ask questions about children's behavior - whether they are spending more time alone, seeming to have less fun, having trouble sleeping - that are designed to trigger discussion between parents and doctors. The conversations may or may not lead to a referral to a specialist.
Over the last several years, such questionnaires have increasingly become the standard of care in pediatric practices, but - spurred by legal action - Massachusetts is jumping ahead of other states by requiring the screens for all its young Medicaid recipients.
Fuck you guys and your mental screenings!
Children could end up on heavy-duty medications that they don't really need.
Dr. John Abramson, a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and author of "Overdosed America.":
"In a more perfect world, screening for mental illness amongst children would clearly be a good idea. But let's look at the realities of the world we live in. What happens is that there's a very quick translation of mental health symptoms into drug treatment."
Others wonder how Massachusetts' overburdened mental health system for children will handle the new patients the screening is expected to identify. Already, children's psychiatrists and psychologists are often overbooked. Children with serious mental illness sometimes end up stuck in psychiatric hospitals for lack of mental health services in the community.
Families may decline the screening if they wish. If a screen turns up signs of potential trouble, it is also up to the family whether to pursue further help and an official diagnosis. The new requirement applies to the 460,000 children and young adults covered by MassHealth, the state Medicaid program, at annual checkups from birth to age 21.
The state's private insurers generally already reimburse children's doctors for such written screens, and Medicaid will now pay $9.73 to cover the testing. The majority of pediatricians still rely on conversational questions such as "How are you doing in school?" or "Does your child have friends?"
But research shows that written questionnaires are more accurate at picking up potential problems. The tests can also home in on children whose problems might otherwise be missed. According to national estimates, about 10 percent of children have some sort of significant psycho-social problem, from hyperactivity to anxiety to stress from living amid domestic violence.
As the routine screening gets underway, the state will be tracking how many children are tested and how many screens indicate a need for follow-up, said Emily Sherwood, the state director of Children's Behavioral Health Interagency Initiatives. The state also plans to expand mental health services for children and make them more family friendly.
Yup, TRACKING the KIDS!
She said parents and clinicians may decide on a variety of responses to worrisome scores: to wait and watch a while. To handle the problems themselves, or to seek a referral to a mental health specialist:
"[The screenings in doctors' offices] help us understand mental health as a part of health. It's really up to parents and primary care clinicians how they want to use this tool."
Medicaid law already requires that children be screened annually for various problems, such as hearing and vision loss, as well as for mental illness. This new requirement specifies the method of screening for mental health problems, asking clinicians to choose from among eight standard tools for the screening.
Each screen is geared toward a target age; some look for specific problems, such as substance abuse and autism. Research suggests that the screens will boost the number of children referred to mental health providers.
Get those "mental health" pros inside the kids head right away!
Keep your kids AWAY from these nuts!
Some families decided not to pursue further help, and of those who did, many did not show up at appointments. Dr. Karen Hacker, executive director of the Institute for Community Health at Cambridge Health Alliance, has not seen a dramatic uptick in the use of psychiatric medications since the screens were added to routine care, she said, though she understands that is a cause for concern."
But go back to shit TV, readers -- the poisoning and brainwashing of YOUR KIDS isn't of concern.
Keep eating that bowl of shit, 'Murkn!
"N.J. to make HIV test routine for pregnant women, newborns" by Tom Hester Jr., Associated Press | December 27, 2007
TRENTON, N.J. - HIV testing will soon become part of routine prenatal care and be required for some newborns in New Jersey under a new law supporters say is putting the state in the forefront of the national fight against HIV transmission to babies.
Seeing as the government created AIDS, I don't trust the bastards!
The bill allows women to opt out of the HIV testing, but critics contend that the screening will deprive women of their right to make medical decisions. Under the new law, HIV testing will be part of routine prenatal care, and doctors will provide pregnant women with information about HIV and AIDS.
It also requires newborns to be tested when the mother has tested positive or her HIV status is unknown. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that all pregnant women be tested for HIV.
The FEDS SAY, huh? Then DO the OPPOSITE, readers!
The American Civil Liberties Union and some women's groups contend that the law will deprive women of the authority to make medical decisions.
Maretta J. Short, president of New Jersey's National Organization for Women:
"Women's privacy rights and choices are as constitutionally valid as any other citizen, regardless of reproductive status."
As long as you women are fine with the assault on your health and rights, I'm fine with it, too!
And with Bhutto being gunned down by "Al-CIA-Duh," do you see ANOTHER FALSE-FLAG INSIDE JOB in AmeriKa, readers?
"Grounding of F-15s strains US defense; Some states rely on others for protection" by Scott Lindlaw, Associated Press | December 27, 2007
FRESNO, Calif. - The grounding of hundreds of F-15s because of dangerous structural defects is straining the nation's air defense network, forcing some states to rely on their neighbors' fighter jets for protection and Alaska to depend on the Canadian military.
The F-15 is the sole fighter at many of the 16 or so "alert" sites around the country, where planes and pilots stand ready to take off at a moment's notice to intercept hijacked airliners, Cessnas that wander into protected airspace, and other threats.
Compounding the problem created by the grounding, another fighter jet used for homeland defense, the F-16, is in high demand for Iraq operations. Military officials say they moved quickly to patch any holes in the homeland air-defense system, and they report an increase in air defense sorties in the past month, using replacement F-16s.
But they acknowledge difficulties.
Mike Strickler, a spokesman with North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which is operated by the United States and Canada:
"When you're filling in, obviously it's going to cause some strain. You're spreading resources a little thinner than we would like. [But air defenses have not been compromised. We can be anywhere at any time."
So NO MORE STAND-DOWNS like on 9/11?!!!!!!!
Just ask Norman Mineta who testified to Dick Cheney's stand-down order of NORAD, readers!
With the F-15s in Massachusetts out of commission, the Vermont Air National Guard is covering the whole Northeast. The Minnesota Air National Guard is manning sites in Hawaii. In Louisiana, the Illinois Air National Guard has been filling in.
So the WARS have made us LESS SAFE?!!!!!!!
And with Oregon's fighters grounded, the California Air National Guard is standing watch for an area of more than 300,000 square miles that is home to more than 46 million people in California, Oregon, Washington, and slices of Arizona and Nevada.
The California Air National Guard said this is the first time in history that a single state's fighter wing is providing coverage for an entire coast.
Colonel Gary Taylor, operations group commander for the Fresno-based 144th Fighter Wing of the California Air National Guard:
"As a unit we're kind of stressed, but everyone's accepting this as a challenge, and all the men and women of the unit are acting as professionally as you could ever hope for."
The unit has had to borrow F-16s from bases in Indiana and Arizona and trim training for certain overseas operations. For three weeks last month, Canadian CF-18s filled in for the F-15s over Alaska.
Major Mike Lagace, a Canadian military spokesman for NORAD:
"[Several times, the Canadian fighters scrambled to] do an identification [of Russian bombers flying exercises outside US airspace near Alaska]. We flew up, met with the long-range patrol, basically let them know, 'Hi, folks, we're here too.' "
Russian warplanes have been flying exercises near Alaska and Canada with increasing frequency in recent months.
WWIII heating up?
What the hey, Bush got his money to plow ahead!
"President signs $555b spending bill; Blasts Democrats over allotment for special projects" by Ben Feller, Associated Press | December 27, 2007
CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush, still voicing concern about special-project spending by Congress, signed a $555 billion bill yesterday that funds the Iraq war well into 2008 and keeps government agencies running through next September.
Bush signed the massive spending bill as he flew on Air Force One to his ranch in Crawford to see in the new year, and said in a statement:
"I am disappointed in the way the Congress compiled this legislation, including abandoning the goal I set early this year to reduce the number and cost of earmarks by half. Instead, the Congress dropped into the bill nearly 9,800 earmarks that total more than $10 billion. These projects are not funded through a merit-based process and provide a vehicle for wasteful government spending.
There is still more to be done to rein in government spending. In February I will submit my budget proposal for fiscal year 2009, which will once again restrain spending, keep taxes low, and continue us on a path towards a balanced budget. I look forward to working with the Congress in the coming year to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely."
Scott Stanzel, a Bush spokesman, had told reporters en route to Texas earlier that the president remained concerned about "Congress' addiction to earmarks." Bush had agreed to sign the spending measure, which includes $70 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, after winning concessions on Iraq and other budget items.
Kind of interesting that Bhutto was assassinated a day after Bush got his war money, huh, readers?
The bill bankrolls 14 Cabinet departments and federal agencies and funds foreign aid for the budget year that began Oct. 1. Bush and his Senate GOP allies forced the Iraq money upon antiwar Democrats as the price for permitting the year-end budget to pass and be signed.
Translation: Bush FUCKED 'EM!!!!!!!!
Stanzel said yesterday that Bush had asked for options the White House might have to abrogate some or a large degree of the special interest spending:
"So no decisions have been made on that front."
Just what a DICTATOR would do! Imagine that?
Meanwhile, in Iraq (according to the Globe):
"Iraq's Cabinet OK's draft amnesty bill for detainees in prisons" by Bradley Brooks, Associated Press | December 27, 2007
BAGHDAD - Both the Iraqi government and the US military each hold more than 20,000 prisoners detained since the US-led invasion of 2003. Separately, a bomb explosion in Nineveh killed three children and wounded another two, the US military said, quoting Iraqi police."
Aaaaaah, the shitstink of Bush's "liberation."
"Turkey extends bombing raids on Kurdish rebels in Iraq" by Ellen Knickmeyer and Joshua Partlow, Washington Post | December 27, 2007
CAIRO - Turkey pressed an intensified offensive against Kurdish guerrillas in neighboring Iraq yesterday, sending warplanes across the border to bomb suspected winter hideouts of the rebels, the Turkish military said. The warplanes hit eight caves or other hideouts in the Zap valley, in northern Iraq, Turkey's military general staff said in a statement on its website.
Turkish forces have crossed the border - in the air or on the ground - in pursuit of Kurdish rebels for four of the last five days. Turkey's military also is battling Kurdish guerrillas within Turkey, killing eight in what the military described as a "clash" yesterday on Mount Kupeli in the southeastern province of Sirnak. Turkish armed forces said they "neutralized" five other guerrillas on the mountain on Tuesday."
Yeah, no sense wasting too much print on the extermination of Kurds!
Not to mention the most oppressed people on Earth:
"Palestinians demand settlement freeze; Project could impede summit" by Aron Heller, Associated Press | December 27, 2007
JERUSALEM - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will demand Israel commit at a peace summit today to a freeze on all settlement construction, and he has appealed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for support, an aide said.
A small Israeli construction project in a part of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians has emerged as a stumbling block to the summit between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, the first since the two sides agreed last month at a US-sponsored conference that they would resume peace talks.
Israel announced last month that it was building 307 apartments in Har Homa, part of a ring of Jewish neighborhoods around east Jerusalem where about 180,000 Israelis live. Israel, which annexed east Jerusalem after capturing it along with the West Bank in 1967, does not accept demands to limit its construction there.
I haven't linked or commented much because I'm tired of MSM lies, especially after the "surprising" post above!
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt criticized the Jerusalem construction plans in a meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik with Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak.
A US senator visiting Israel said yesterday that Egypt was "complicitous" in the smuggling and must crack down on the "intolerable" flow of the weapons into the Gaza Strip.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, a member of the US Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters in Jerusalem:
"And if they don't, I think it would be appropriate to condition aid to them."
Yup, ANOTHER U.S. POLITICIAN "vacationing" in Israel!!!!!
I'll be back to check the blogs later, readers.
I'm going to watch a movie on the pay channel (starts at 10 a.m.) instead of following this MSM "news."
Where are my stories about shark or tiger attacks, or the missing young women form everywhere?
Why all the focus on this particular assassination in the MSM, readers?
