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 coach handbags outletYes, we’re back here again already, with at least one Republican claiming this week that Democratic health reform will kill seniors. Sigh. The target of the GOP attack is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a controversial group to be appointed by the president and charged with slowing the growth of Medicare spending, likely by cutting reimbursement rates to providers. IPAB, which will begin its work in 2014, was created by the Affordable Care Act and has consistently drawn criticism for shifting power away from Congress and to the executive branch. (Congress currently oversees Medicare payment rates, and therefore spending.) Republicans also say the board will inevitably end up “rationing” care for Medicare beneficiaries. As if daring Republicans to take their attacks further, in April President Obama proposed strengthening the board, allowing its recommendations to kick in sooner. I wrote at the time that Obama was asking for a fight and would likely get one. Well, it’s here. On Wednesday, reports Politico, Rep. Phil Gingrey, Republican of Georgia, said: Under this IPAB we described that the Democrats put in Obamacare, where a bunch of bureaucrats decide whether you get care, such as continuing on dialysis or cancer chemotherapy, I guarantee you when you withdraw that the patient is going to die. This is hyperbole at its worst.Air Max Shoes Outlet Online For starters, IPAB bureaucrats are not the final word on Medicare payments. Congress can overrule their recommendations, and IPAB board members must be approved by the Senate; they are not unilaterally installed by the President. In addition, the government already decides what procedures Medicare covers. The political fallout of an IPAB recommendation that yanks reimbursement for proven life-saving treatments like dialysis or chemotherapy would likely be so immense as to prevent this from happening. Far more likely are small reductions in reimbursements, concentrated in procedures and treatments whose health benefits have not been proven conclusively. It’s not hard to figure out why Gingrey resorted to hyperbole. Republicans have been under fire ever since House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan introduced a plan, which Republicans in Congress voted for, to turn Medicare into a private health-insurance system in which seniors would end up paying far more of their health care costs out of pocket. The plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” Democrats and commentators have said, harsh words on an issue known to determine elections. (In fairness, there’s been plenty of hyperbole from liberals too, like this ad from a left-leaning non-profit that features an old woman careening off a cliff thanks to Paul Ryan.) So it’s no surprise that some Republicans are trying to shift the conversation back to the dangers of Obamacare. Still, it’s sad to see the political conversation return to the fear-mongering and dishonesty that marked much of the health-reform debate. Coach BackpacksIf you don’t think Gingrey’s contention that health reform aims to cause the deaths of seniors is dishonest fear mongering, check out what Don Taylor at the Incidental Economist blog revealed today: Paul Ryan himself proposed something similar to the IPAB in 2009. (UPDATE: A spokesman for Ryan e-mails to protest my characterization of the congressman’s plan as “similar” to the IPAB. Ryan’s 2009 bill called for a 15-member board, coincidentally the same size board as the IPAB, to establish standards for care and ensure medical providers adhered to them. The point, according to Ryan’s spokesman: “encouraging transparency and proper metrics with respect to health care services, which will allow consumers to compare on the basis of cost and quality.” The IPAB will similarly base its recommendations on metrics and effectiveness, but would also make recommendations about Medicare reimbursement levels. Nike Air Max 90-BootsRyan’s bill would have given his 15-member board “no authority to influence Medicare spending,” according to the spokesman. This is a critical distinction.) The IPAB, while favored by many economists as one of the only surefire ways to curb health-care spending growth, is a point of contention outside GOP circles. By and large, doctors don’t like it. They plausibly argue that cutting reimbursement rates could cause doctors to reconsider or stop caring for Medicare patients altogether. At the heart of the matter, there are real philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats over how to rein in health-care spending. The former holds that the free market and consumer choice will lower prices.Nike Air Max 97 The latter believes in a top-down, government-centric approach. But whenever either side introduces a caricature of a feeble, helpless senior citizen dying because of politics, the conversation that should take place stops, which is a shame.

 

coach factory outletI was driving up the Massachusetts Turnpike one evening last February when I knocked

over a bottle of water. I grabbed for it, swerved inadvertently--and a few seconds later found myself blinking into the flashlight beam of a state trooper.

"How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?" he demanded. Before I could help myself, I blurted out an answer that was surely a new one to him. "I haven't

had a drink," I said indignantly, "since 1981."

It was both perfectly true and very pertinent to the trip I was making. By the time I reached my late 20s, I'd poured down as much alcohol as normal people

consume in a lifetime and plenty of drugs--mostly pot--as well. I was, by any reasonable measure, an active alcoholic. Fortunately, with a lot of help, I was

able to stop. And now I was on my way to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., to have my brain scanned in a functional magnetic-resonance imager (fMRI). The

idea was to see what the inside of my head looked like after more than a quarter-century on the wagon.

Back when I stopped drinking, such an experiment would have been unimaginable. Air Max OnlineAt the

time, the medical establishment had come to accept the idea that alcoholism was a disease rather than a moral failing; the American Medical Association (AMA)

had said so in 1950. But while it had all the hallmarks of other diseases, including specific symptoms and a predictable course, leading to disability or

even death, alcoholism was different. Its physical basis was a complete mystery--and since nobody forced alcoholics to drink, it was still seen, no matter

what the AMA said, as somehow voluntary. Treatment consisted mostly of talk therapy, maybe some vitamins and usually a strong recommendation to join

Alcoholics Anonymous. Although it's a totally nonprofessional organization, founded in 1935 by an ex-drunk and an active drinker, AA has managed to get

millions of people off the bottle, using group support and a program of accumulated folk wisdom.

While AA is astonishingly effective for some people, it doesn't work for everyone; studies suggest it succeeds about 20% of the time, and other forms of

treatment, including various types of behavioral therapy, do no better. The rate is much the same with drug addiction, which experts see as the same disorder

triggered by a different chemical. Coach Sneakers"The sad part is that if you look at

where addiction treatment was 10 years ago, it hasn't gotten much better," says Dr. Martin Paulus, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California

at San Diego. "You have a better chance to do well after many types of cancer than you have of recovering from methamphetamine dependence."

That could all be about to change. During those same 10 years, researchers have made extraordinary progress in understanding the physical basis of addiction.

They know now, for example, that the 20% success rate can shoot up to 40% if treatment is ongoing (very much the AA model, which is most effective when

members continue to attend meetings long after their last drink). Armed with an array of increasingly sophisticated technology, including fMRIs and PET

scans, investigators have begun to figure out exactly what goes wrong in the brain of an addict--which neurotransmitting chemicals are out of balance and

what regions of the brain are affected. Nike Air Max 360They are developing a

more detailed understanding of how deeply and completely addiction can affect the brain, by hijacking memory-making processes and by exploiting emotions.

Using that knowledge, they've begun to design new drugs that are showing promise in cutting off the craving that drives an addict irresistibly toward

relapse--the greatest risk facing even the most dedicated abstainer.

"Addictions," says Joseph Frascella, director of the division of clinical neuroscience at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), "are repetitive

behaviors in the face of negative consequences, the desire to continue something you know is bad for you."

Addiction is such a harmful behavior, in fact, that evolution should have long ago weeded it out of the population: if it's hard to drive safely under the

influence, imagine trying to run from a saber-toothed tiger or catch a squirrel for lunch.
Nike Air Max 2010 And yet, says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIDA and a pioneer

in the use of imaging to understand addiction, "the use of drugs has been recorded since the beginning of civilization. Humans in my view will always want to

experiment with things to make them feel good."

 

Coach SunglassesWhat if people could use the Internet to create a new kind of money, one that didn’t involve governments and central banks and could be used anonymously, like cash? That is the idea behind Bitcoin, a virtual currency that has caught the attention of computer geeks, financial speculators, and drug dealers. For the first time, you can buy anything online without giving your credit-card number or bank-account information—leaving no trace at all.

Hundreds of merchants accept Bitcoins for things like books, computers, and professional services. The currency trades on a handful of Bitcoin exchanges, where the price of a Bitcoin fluctuates based on demand. Not long ago a single Bitcoin sold for less than a dollar, but in recent months the price climbed to $8, then to $20, then above $30, before falling back to $18, the current level.

What exactly are you buying? A Bitcoin is basically just a little bit of encrypted code that can be zipped over the Internet and stored in a digital wallet. Air MaxThe concept was proposed by a mysterious hacker named Satoshi Nakamoto (no one knows who he is, and the name is believed to be a pseudonym), who published a white paper describing a way in which computers connected over the Internet could be used to create an unregulated “cryptocurrency.”

New York Sen. Charles Schumer recently called Bitcoin “an online form of money laundering,” after learning about an online warehouse called Silk Road where sellers advertise an astounding array of illegal wares—marijuana, hashish, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, heroin—and where the only currency accepted is the Bitcoin. (Silk Road is currently shut down, though its anonymous manager claims he intends to start back up soon.)

Right now there are about 6.5 million Bitcoins in circulation. Air Max Online The money supply is controlled by software algorithms and the total supply will max out at 21 million coins. You can crank out Bitcoins on a PC, but it’s an incredibly computer-intensive task, and it will keep getting harder as the number of Bitcoins in existence increases. Some people have pooled together hundreds of machines to “mine” Bitcoins. Most folks, however, just buy them on an exchange.

Some already are hoarding Bitcoins, expecting a Bitcoin bubble will drive the value up to hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars per coin. The biggest holder, whose identity is not known, is sitting on about 300,000 coins, currently worth about $6 million, says Donald Norman, who runs the London-based Bitcoin Consultancy, which advises companies that want to get in on the action.

Coach- Poppy CollectionsNorman says the power of Bitcoins is that they can free people from the tyranny of middlemen: banks; credit-card companies; and money shippers like Western Union, which charge exorbitant fees for performing a rather simple task.

But for a lot of people the appeal lies in the chance to get rich quick by getting in early on the next Internet craze. Still, investing in Bitcoins is extremely risky. You don’t know who’s running the exchanges, and you can’t be sure these guys won’t just take your money and run.

Adding to the risk, authorities might take action. Nike Air Max WrightBut even if Bitcoin goes away, others like it will spring up. “Now that we have the technology to create decentralized currencies,” Norman says, “they are definitely here to stay.”

 

Discount Coach HandbagsCharlotte Sheffield’s baby-blue bathing suit was on display in an upstairs hallway of

the Planet Hollywood Casino in Las Vegas. Sheffield herself, 74-years-old and a grandmother of 52 from Salt Lake City, wasn’t actually in the wool suit, but

she was sitting nearby, signing autographs. Sheffield, who was crowned the fifth-ever Miss USA in 1957, joined nearly three dozen other former Miss USAs on

June 18 to celebrate the contest’s 60th anniversary.

To capture the event, TIME asked Los Angeles-based fine art photographer Susan Anderson, whose work is currently on display in the Annenberg Space for

Photography’s Beauty Culture exhibit, to create these exclusive portraits of 30 of the contest’s winners.

The pageant, now owned by Donald Trump and known for far racier swimsuits than Sheffield’s modest get up, has kept the focus firmly on the beauty part of

pageantry since its inception in Long Beach, California in 1952. Air Max Shoes Outlet OnlineThe Miss

America contest, on the other hand, prides itself on its talent competition—an element missing from the Miss USA.

This year, the effervescent Sheffield was a big draw for a bevy of Miss Teen USA contestants who lined up for photos and advice.
nike sb shoes“You’ll have a baby someday and you won’t remember how glamorous you were,” she told one set of

teens while she scrawled her name across their program. Then she added: “Hot shoes, baby.”

Meanwhile, the other “formers,” as they’re called, who range in age from their 70’s to their 20’s, talked about old pageant scandals and discussed the

unique pressures of being considered outrageously beautiful–and then having to live up to the title decades later. “My friends want me to get a facelift so

that I’ll stay looking the same,” said Sylvia (Hitchcock) Carson, Miss USA 1967. Others feel they still have to prove that they have brains too, while some

wonder whether they’ve been courted for themselves or because men want the bragging rights that come with dating a former Miss USA.
Coach Shoulder Bags And then there’s the other thing these women have in common

besides their exceptional looks: each of them survived a year of wearing the glittering, metal crown which was heavy enough to press grooves into its wearer

’s head even through a bouffant.

The next night, June 19, the formers gathered again to watch another gorgeous young woman, Miss California’s Alyssa Campanella, win the 2011 title and

prepare to carry the weight of that crown.

—Text and interviews by Claire Martin

Nike Air Max 90-BootsSusan Anderson is a Los Angeles-based commercial,

editorial and fine art photographer specializing in fashion, portraiture and conceptual/narrative work. She currently has a book entitled High Glitz, The

Surreal World of Child Beauty Pageants and is in a group exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography.

 

replica coach handbagsFirefighters across the southwestern United States on Sunday have faced some of the

worst weather conditions of the season for battling blazes currently raging across the region.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for most of Arizona, all of New Mexico, much of north Texas and portions of Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas

and Utah for Sunday. A red flag warning means weather conditions -- mainly high heat, low humidity and strong winds -- pose an extreme fire risk.

"The winds certainly will be very gusty and strong," said Ken Daniel, weather service meteorologist in Flagstaff, Arizona. "Any new fire starts would have

the potential to have explosive growth."

The forecast calls for winds of 30 mph or more in some areas, with gusts of up to 50 mph, Daniel said.

There are currently dozens of active wildfires burning in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, according to InciWeb, an online interagency database that tracks

fires, floods and other disasters.

Air MaxNationwide, wildfires have burned almost as many acres in the first half of 2011 as were

recorded by the National Interagency Fire Center for all of 2010. The agency reports on its website that 3.1 million acres in the United States had been

ignited by wildfires as of May 31, compared to 3.2 million burned acres cited in the organization's year-end report in November 2010.

One Arizona blaze that started May 29 has mushroomed into a historically large wildfire. Known as the Wallow fire, it has burned 511,118 acres and was 44%

contained as of Sunday.

Residents of Luna, New Mexico, were ordered to evacuate Saturday afternoon after the blaze jumped containment lines along U.S. 180, according to InciWeb.

cheap nike shoes storeBut fire public information officer Rich Szlauko had some good news, telling CNN that in

terms of bringing the Wallow fire under control, "everything is starting to look pretty good."

Some 3,600 people continue to battle the blaze, in the face of winds Sunday measuring 20-30 mph, he said.

Meanwhile, a smaller but fast-moving wildfire is raging in the southeastern corner of Arizona.

That blaze, the so-called Monument fire, has emerged as "the number one priority" for firefighters nationwide, according to the chief of the U.S. Forest

Service.

"The conditions that we're dealing with here are as bad as we can get," said Tom Tidwell, head of the U.S. Forest Service, of the combination of high

temperatures, low humidity, ample fuel and strong winds. "It just can't get any worse."

Gordon Van Vleet, a spokesman for the Joint Information Center, said no cause has been determined for the Monument fire, which has spread across the Huachuca

Mountains and burned 20,956 acres as of Sunday afternoon. He said authorities likely won't state a cause until the blaze is more under control.

"We know where it started and when it started, but (the specific cause) is under investigation," Tidwell said.
Coach Wallets "When we do have that information, we will share it."

U.S. Sen. John McCain blamed illegal immigrants for starting unspecified fires in the area at a press conference Saturday. However, the Arizona Republican

did not provide evidence to back up the accusation, which prompted rebukes from Latino civil rights leaders.

While a fire at the U.S. Army's Fort Huachuca is 100% contained, according to Van Vleet, the Monument fire was 27% contained as of Saturday afternoon -- an

improvement over the 15% figure in the morning, but certainly dangerous given the inordinately dry and windy conditions.

"This has been the number one priority in the country for a couple of days," Tidwell said. "That means this will receive resources before anyone else."

The Monument fire, just south of Sierra Vista, Arizona, has destroyed 44 homes, fire officials say.

People living in Sierra Vista were ordered to leave Sunday while firefighters conducted burn-out operations in an attempt to stop the fire moving that way,

CNN's Thelma Gutierrez reported from the area.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has issued emergency declarations for the Monument fire and another blaze, Horseshoe II, making Cochise County eligible for $100,000

toward response and recovery expenses.

Meanwhile, residents of the eastern Arizona community of Alpine were able to return home, according to fire spokesman John Helmich.
Nike Air Max 97 The community has a population of about 300, but many more

seasonal visitors were forced to leave earlier this month because of the Wallow fire.

Tidwell said earlier Saturday that he was "very optimistic" that damage from future wildfires could be minimized by thinning forests and clearing out biomass

-- which did occur, to some extent, in parts of eastern Arizona. He noted that 3.2 million acres were "treated" nationwide last year.

Coach OutletA few days before the 2010 midterm elections, Mitt Romney opened with this joke at a GOP event in New Hampshire: “It’s nice to be so warmly recognized. I’m not always recognized where I go by the way. The other day I made a phone call. I was trying to dial for dollars, trying to help some of our friends around the country. I called a big executive’s office. His assistant answered the phone. I said, ‘I’m Mitt Romney, can I talk to’ what-his-name-was. And she said, ‘What’s the name of your company?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m currently unemployed.’ “ There was laughter all around. Today, in Florida, Romney repeated the joke, while introducing himself to a group of unemployed workers. “I should tell my story,” he said. “I’m also unemployed.” Again, people laughed.Air Max Shoes Outlet Online But under the pressure cooker of a presidential campaign, the reaction since then has been different. The New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny posted the comment at 11:55 a.m. By 12:55, the Democratic National Committee had already sent out an indignant press release. “Being unemployed, Mr. Romney, is not a joke – not to my constituents in Florida or to millions of Americans across the country,” pounced DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, who hails from Florida. hermes birkin“Folks in my home state and across the country, who are struggling every day to make ends meet, do not need someone making light of their situation. Equating his run for the presidency with the difficulties of these honest hard-working Americans is shocking and is a reflection of his inability to comprehend the struggles of the American people. ” Oh, the outrage. The outrage. The phony, phony outrage. As Zeleny’s report makes clear, the unemployed workers who heard Romney’s joke were not offended. They got it. Romney, a rich guy, was making fun of himself, not people out of work. But he wasn’t speaking in a comedy club. He was speaking in a high stakes campaign. And as the campaign progresses, I would bet that Romney’s sense of humor becomes an issue. In private, Romney’s aides say he is a very funny guy, who loves to tell jokes. In public, Romney tends to be a very hokey guy, who loves telling jokes. Coach New ArrivalsDana Milbank, the Washington press corps’ resident funny man, recently wrote an entire story about Romney telling jokes in New Hampshire. He called the story, “A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney.” Among the zingers: 1. “I saw the young man over there with eggs Benedict, with hollandaise sauce. And I was going to suggest to you that you serve your eggs with hollandaise sauce in hubcaps. Because there’s no plates like chrome for the hollandaise.” 2. “Oh, this is the Hooters equivalent.” (When he noticed no guy waitresses at a diner.) 3. “Okay, so what do you do about mosquito control? . . . This has been a mosquito-infested year with all the moisture. They flew away with my dog.” He also pretended to have his butt pinched by someone who was taking a picture with him. Then he said, “Oh my goodness gracious!. . . . Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. ” These sort of jokes are cute, in their way, the sort of earnest, simple, joyful humor that you would expect from Ward Cleaver. But the modern media culture is far more Richard Pryor than Henny Youngman, more Stephen Colbert than Bob Hope. Sometimes the discordance between Romney’s good-natured, earnest delivery and his environment is so striking that one can’t help but cringe. To wit: In the end, all of this will make for a great Saturday Night Live sketch. Nike Air Max 2011 Romney can be played by Michael Scott from The Office. But how does it play out in the campaign? Well one way is that his humor can be misconstrued by his foes to mean something that it doesn’t. Another way is that Romney might appear to be trying too hard on the trail, which can feed the narrative that he is a phony. But the bad jokes are not all downside. There is a clear advantage to not holding back with the humor. This corny guy who tells bad jokes is, after all, who Romney actually is. He tried to pretend to be otherwise in 2008 and it didn’t work. Over time, the American people are sure to get used to his bad jokes, and they will come to understand that this he is someone who thinks its funny to make egg-inspired puns with “home” and “chrome.” Maybe it’s awkward, but at least it helps to dismiss the notion that their is no core to the Romney political enterprise.