The Best News of the Week of 7/13-7/17 | 07/17/2009 11:00 am
wOw Reports: The Best News of the Week – From YOU
Thank you for sharing your compelling stories and feedback. Here are just some of the comments that caught our attention …
Dear YOU,
We launched wOw Reports with the hopes of it growing into a new kind of area for what’s happening in your neck of the woods.
We are thrilled with the overwhelming comments. Please keep the
storytelling and the reportage going … Meanwhile, below are just a few
of the many comments that sparked thoughtful conversation among the
wowOwow community and the staff. As this section continues to grow, we will continue to find ways to
highlight your wOw-worthy work, and please know that your suggestions
(and even your criticisms) are helping us develop new content on the
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Thank you,
The wowOwow Staff
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By James Gemmell on 07/14/2009 11:15 am
Here’s a story I found interesting this week, in Michigan, about the scam of an 80-year-old being thwarted: http://www.detnews.com/article/20090714/METRO/907140355/Suspicious-banker-in-Midland-thwarts-$25-000-scam-of-80-year-old/?imw=Y
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By Andrea Brandon on 07/13/2009 4:13 pm
I haven’t had a chance to go through wowowow and see if anyone else posted it, but check this out:
BUDGET DEFICIT TOPS 1 TRILLION DOLLARS FOR THE FIRST TIME
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090713/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_economy_deficit
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By Maggie W on 07/14/2009 10:12 am
I just read Sen.(R) Kay Bailey’s Hutchison’s take on health care reform. She focuses on making health care a buyers’ market that would also give small businesses affordable options to offer their employees. She also makes the point that Medicare is so over run by fraud that billions have been wasted. It currently pays out more than it takes in. According to Kay, 40% of physicians turn away Medicare patients because the system is so poorly administered. Well, heck. I knew it was bad but didn’t know it was that bad. Her prediction is Medicare will be completely broke by 2017. She has a big concern because her state ( also mine) has the largest number of uninsured people… around six million. You can just imagine what that costs Texas. Okay, Medicare is circling the drain. I simply do not understand why we don’t take what we already have and reform that…."that" being Medicare. Wouldn’t that be easier than inventing the entire wheel?
Deber, Krugman’s column today on the economy is also interesting. "US Sitting While Water gets Hotter". And now for some humor… AIG is asking regulators if it is okay to give pay bonuses.
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Dear Margo: When Dad/Gramps Just Ain't Interested
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Recently 18 big wheelers and 3 cargo planes rolled into Dallas and unloaded their cargoes into huge warehouses. Now hundreds of people will pour through it, categorize it, and prepare thousands of items for display.
This is all from President GW Bush’s White House years. His library will be in Dallas and will open in 2012. I will be there! It matters not what your political affiliation, but if you ever get a chance to visit any Presidential library, you are in for a real treat you will not forget.
I was fascinated by this story in my hometown Annapolis, Maryland paper. It shows vividly that grown up people really do make stuff up out of their imaginations and claim it is true! Staggers MY imagination!
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/nbh/2009/06/26-23/Sources-Say-Obama-bans-mids-swords-at-graduation-not.html
Congrats C Hardy!!!
I know that Wow will do a wonderful tribute to Walter Cronkite but I have to say this while I can. It may sound funny that I grew up in rural Manitoba and not only did we get limited television reception (old black and white with the rabbit ears back then) there was hardly any news reporting I ever heard in Canada at the time because my dad only listened to CBS. Lived in the middle of nowhere but CBS news came through clear as a bell! We listened to the words of ‘Uncle Walter" every single night and we cried when JFK was killed - cried again when Martin Luther King and Bobbie Kennedy were killed …. but we celebrated with Americans when man first walked on the moon and laughed at Americans when we saw ‘flower children’ (I mean really - grew up bare foot walking dirt roads so what the heck was so great about American ‘flower power’ only pot I knew was the one in the flower shed?) …. I guess what I want to say is he was my first experience with a real American and I thought he was wonderful. He made you feel like he really cared that you knew he was telling you the truth and he made me feel that America was a great place …. So when my life brought me here - I was sad to leave my family but was not afraid to move to America - After all Uncle Walter was here right?
I wonder what has happened to the news in America today? It is all so slanted left and right - there is no center anymore and it has all become more like reruns of the National Enquirer ….. What has happened to the fairness in reporting? Why has it become this way? I trust Lou Dobbs …. 20/20 but not much else ….
I know that Walter Cronkite was a Democrat but until he retired he kept his personal political opinions to himself …. It was more important to him to report the facts and let people decide for themselves than it was to push his personal agenda on anyone ….. now all of the big news channels do just that and I am sad for the death of real reporting in America …. He did become more outspoken after he retired but this is a free country and he had a right to do it then ….
A true American icon passed away but his kind of news reporting died long before he did and it is really missed by this American. Good nite ‘Uncle Walter" and may God Bless ….
CC,
This man was a part of my life, if only for half an hour each night, for so many years. His impartial and unopinionated broadcasts inspired all of us to evaluate the facts and form our own opinions. We were knowledgeable, thanks to him, because we could trust that he had the facts.
I truly miss this man. And you’re right - this kind of reporting has long been gone. Too long. But how lucky we were to have experienced it.
Five years ago I discovered a mass growing in my left breast. Months later I was diagnosed with breast cancer and soon after had a mastectomy. At that time I had started a relationship with someone who moved out two days before my surgery. Later that fence was mended and we basically went from there and a few years later were preparing to marry when too many red flags popped up.
In the interim I had gotten a job working for an organization from a home office and it paid well considering. When the first attempt to reconstruction failed I decided later to attempt reconstruction another way if I could find a way to get insurance. Up until that time I had no insurance or any other coverage or assistance for health care.
The job I had allowed me to purchase my own insurance and I was able to have the surgery done earlier this year. It required some recovery time and I attempted to notice my supervisor as soon as I could. The doctor had scheduled the operation for a week later and two days after consulting with the doctor my employer called me and fired me.
Losing my job meant that I had no pay to uncovered medical expenses or prescriptions. It also meant that I could not continue the insurance.
During my stay in the hospital I also had a little stroke which I have recovered from nicely and I’m doing very well after the surgery, too. It made a big difference in my image of myself and I’ve become very healthy and will keep that way as long as i can.
My last policy just expired and I will be without insurance until my next birthday at which time I will end up on Medicare.
To add to all this because my relationship had soured I decided to stay where I am about two hundred miles away from my significant other until we could work things out. I had made a trip to the house we owned together to pick up some of my things. I was very sad about leaving but I wanted to stick to my guns and insist that this man treat me better than he had recently.
He contacted me shortly after and wanted me to come back but I couldn’t return so soon. I had just made the trip back to where I started. I said I’d be back in a month or two and we could talk about it then.
Just a few days after I left this time I was informed about his massive heart attack and his passing. Now I’m very overwhelmed with my feelings and missing showing my love to him and being married to him. I wasn’t there when he felt the pain of the heart attack and took too much time to get to the hospital that day. Funeral is Monday.
Thank goodness the news is that I am so healthy and I am living with family and close to more. I get heaps of support from them and love as well. Even the dogs will take care of me. That alone will affect stress in a positive way. Still, I think about the man I lost over and over. Switching back to the positive things is all I can do now. Sleep? Who me? Maybe.
Mary, as someone who dwells too much on the past and often tries to rewrite it in my mind, I say, please don’t berate yourself. You had much to cope with, and this man was insensitive and uncaring during your crises. Let it go. He was responsible for his actions, as you were, but you were not remiss. You were "taking care of business."
A personal note: For 30 years I was married to someone who paid no hospital visits, and had to be coaxed to take responsibility (impossible) when I had our 2 children alone, and years later when I faced a D &C, with much history of cancer in my family. By the time I faced an hystectomy, and I had 2 adolescent children and a mother who had nursed my father when he was ding of pancreatic cancer, and my mother had had breast cancer. I had to scream for a week for our hero to be in the hospital when my tests came through in the event I had cancer. I knew that the doctor might not tell me, but would tell my husband—-if he appeared—and I wanted to protect my 70+ mother and my children. Frankly, I felt like an hysterical beggar; he did appear, but shortly after, did not visit because hospitals made him uncomfortable. Ho hum! I divorced him several years later when my childen were on their own.
Though I consider myself his widow and do mourn him, I know, truly, that I had no positive impact on his behavior toward me.. Now, that I advise you, I hope I can follow my own advice. Take care of yourslf, and let’s hope that we have better medical insurance for everyone, especially you.
ALF strikes again!
The home and personal property of a UC-Irvine pathologist who works in the campus vivisection lab were attacked by the Animal Liberation Front.
http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2009/07/15/animal-rights-activist-vandalize-property-of-uci-scientist/42231/
Libra Lady sent the following link to me because she knows I’m in southern CA and love the ocean.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99FNF0O0&show_article=1
I immediately contacted by long-time friend and Professor Emeritus at UCLA who is a world expert in deep sea diving and asked Dr. Egstrom if these critters are for real. His response:
He’s a braver soul than me!