The Big Bladder Healthcare Summit has arrived... ALL SIX HOURS OF IT!

FIRST THOUGHTS.

*** Show Time: You might have forgotten this, but President Obama hosted another bipartisan summit on health care nearly a year ago, on March 5, 2009. And since that time, we've seen endless partisan bickering over the issue, millions of dollars in TV ads, countless committee and floor votes, the summer town halls, the joint address to Congress ("You lie"), initial passage in November and December, and finally Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts. Now it has come to this -- a televised summit on health care at the Blair House beginning at 10:00 am ET. Will today's summit convince any Republicans? Not a chance. Will it be any different than what we've heard over the past year? Unlikely. Will it be full of health policy arcana? You betcha. But if anything, the summit -- and the build-up to it -- has achieved this goal: It has focused everyone's attention on health care. And if the White House is going to convince Democrats to vote for the legislation, it needs their attention.

*** What To Expect: The White House has two audiences. The first is the viewing public, whom it hopes to persuade that it has reached out to Republicans -- and even adopted their ideas -- as it begins laying the groundwork to use reconciliation to pass the fixes in the Senate. The second (and perhaps more crucial) audience are rank-and-filed congressional Democrats. As we explained yesterday, the big game is getting the 217 House Democrats to pass the Senate bill. The votes are there, potentially, but getting them won't be easy. As for Republicans, their hope is to stand firm as they point to public polls showing that the overall Obama health-reform effort is unpopular. Yet in perhaps a sign of how nervous Republicans believe they might fare against the president inside the summit, they've set up a so-called "truth squad" outside the proceedings. Let the games begin!

*** How It Will Work: The six-hour summit is broken down into five parts. First are the opening remarks -- by the president and the Democratic and GOP congressional leaders. Then comes a discussion on controlling costs, which will be introduced by the president. Next, is a talk on insurance reforms, which will be led by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Then there's discussion of reducing the deficit, which Vice President Biden will start. And finally, there will be a conversation on expanding coverage, and Obama will once again lead that discussion.

*** Who Will Attend: The Democratic congressional attendees: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, Max Baucus, Chris Dodd, Tom, Harkin, Jay Rockefeller, Kent Conrad, Ron Wyden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Charlie Rangel, George Miller, Henry Waxman, John Dingell, Xavier Becerra, Louise Slaughter, Rob Andrews, and Jim Cooper. On the GOP side: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, Lamar Alexander, Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi, John McCain, Tom Coburn, John Barrasso, House Minority Leader John Boehner, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, Joe Barton, Dave Camp, John Kline, Marsha Blackburn, Charles Boustany, Peter Roskam, and Paul Ryan.

*** Absence Of Snowe: By the way, one member of Congress who won't be attending is Sen. Olympia Snowe (R). The White House tried to invite her at the last minute, but she declined, saying it wasn't appropriate to go around the Senate leadership. Snowe's office released this statement yesterday: "The Republican leadership had long since selected their team and therefore, it would have been inappropriate for Senator Snowe, under those circumstances, to accept the invitation. Throughout this process, Senator Snowe has been sharing her views with the White House and she assured the White House today that she will continue to play a leadership role on this vital issue in the days and weeks after tomorrow's event."

*** Change You Can Believe In? If Republicans fail to make significant gains in the Senate this November, it probably meant 1) that the economy got better, 2) that national Republicans made key blunders, and 3) that some of the candidates they recruited were flawed, especially in this political environment. Indeed, a few of the top-tier GOP candidates are hardly new faces. For instance, the Republican candidate in Missouri is Rep. Roy Blunt, who served under Denny Hastert and Tom DeLay as House whip. In Ohio, the preferred GOP candidate is former Rep./Bush administration official Rob Portman. And in Indiana, the preferred nominee is former GOP Sen./lobbyist Dan Coats. "These are not agents of change," DSCC Chair Bob Menendez told reporters yesterday. And if Republicans are unable to defeat Harry Reid, it will be because they couldn't lure a candidate better than either Sue Lowden or Danny Tarkanian.

*** Same Old, Same Old: But if Blunt, Coats, and Portman aren't agents of change, then that's also true of Democratic incumbents like Reid, Blanche Lincoln, and Arlen Specter. And then there are the Dem candidates in Florida, Louisiana, and New Hampshire. As NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh emailed First Read yesterday, "We look forward to highlighting [Menendez's] statements . in states like New Hampshire, Louisiana and Florida, among others, because I can't imagine Paul Hodes, Charlie Melancon and Kendrick Meek will be happy to learn that they've been deemed 'Washington insiders.'"

*** American Express -- Can't Leave Home Without It: The Crist and Rubio camps are sparring over reports that Rubio "charged grocery bills, repairs to the family minivan and purchases from a wine store less than a mile from his West Miami home to the Republican Party of Florida while he was speaker of the Florida House. Rubio said Wednesday that he paid for all personal expenses billed to an American Express card given to him by the party to use from 2005 to 2008, when he left public office. The rest of the charges, he said, were legitimate party expenses." The Rubio camp is accusing Crist and his allies of leaking Rubio's credit card statement. "It is clear these internal documents were taken from the [state party] by former chairman Jim Greer or someone working for him and were leaked to the media by the Crist campaign," Rubio said in a letter to the FL GOP. http://bit.ly/9WOk05

*** Incoming! This battle over Rubio's credit card expenses, as well as the news that he plans to travel to South Carolina next month, mark the first time that the conservative rock star has taken direct hits since becoming the front-runner in his race against Crist. And don't miss this statement from Rubio defending purchasing airplane tickets for his wife on the state party's credit card. "'My wife was the first lady of the Florida House of Representatives, and it is absolutely appropriate for her to accompany me to official events and party functions,' Rubio said." First lady of the Florida House of Representatives? Have you heard Harry Reid, Denny Hastert, etc. refer to their wives that way?

Countdown to NC filing deadline: 1 day
Countdown to TX primary: 5 days
Countdown to AR filing deadline: 11 days
Countdown to OR, PA filing deadlines: 12 days
Countdown to CA, NV filing deadlines: 15 days
Countdown to IA, UT filing deadlines: 22 days
Countdown to Election Day 2010: 250 days

Click here to sign up for First Read emails. http://bit.ly/7Tlmj0
Text FIRST to 622639, to sign up for First Read alerts to your mobile phone.
Check us out on Facebook and also on Twitter. http://bit.ly/6d0aMx and http://bit.ly/72xV6G
First Read with NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, every weekday on MSNBC-TV at 9 a.m. ET. For more: The latest edition of First Read is available now at
http://www.firstread.msnbc.com/ !

As a retired High School Science Teacher, I could not resist posting this one for you...

Obesity? Big Feet? Blame Darwin
Evolution Helped Humans Have Children and Survive,
But It Also Led to Modern-Day Maladies, Scientists Say

By MELINDA BECK

Evolution, the theory goes, guarantees survival to the fittest. But we can blame evolution for some of today's most pressing health problems, such as cancer, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

A 2009 Gallup poll found that 44% of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form within the past 10,000 years. Many of them also think the human body is perfectly designed.

But most scientists—including biologists, anthropologists, paleontologists and geneticists—see the 21st century human body as a collection of compromises, jury-rigged by evolution as our ancestors adapted to changing conditions.

"In many ways, we are maladapted for modernity," says Stephen Stearns, a Yale evolutionary biologist. He and others in the field are urging medical schools to include more evolutionary thinking when teaching doctors about modern diseases.

The Body EclecticView Interactive
See how human body parts are still changing today.
..For example, the immune system was honed to fight off epidemics like malaria and cholera, which proliferated along with urbanization. According to the "hygiene hypothesis," asthma and auto-immune diseases are increasing because the human immune system doesn't face enough challenges in today's cleaner environments and is picking fights with the body's own systems instead.

The current epidemic of obesity also has prehistoric roots. Our hunter-gatherer forbearers were tall, lean long-distance runners who subsisted on plants and protein. When populations shifted to agriculture about 10,000 years ago, a carbohydrate-rich diet became the norm. Early farmers had more calories but less nutrition, and average heights dropped from 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-3 for men, and from 5-foot-5 to 5-feet for women. Metabolisms adjusted over the millennia—but populations that shifted to agriculture more recently, like Polynesians and American Indians, have the highest rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes today.

Evolution even plays a role in yo-yo dieting, according to Rudolph Leibel, an obesity expert at Columbia University Medical Center and one of the discoverers of leptin, the hormone that usually signals the body to stop eating. Leptin levels fall rapidly when people lose weight, setting off a cascade of physiological changes that burn fewer calories and act to pile weight back on. "That was great during times of famine, but these days, it's counterproductive," says Dr. Leibel.

With fewer predators and more resistance to disease, humans are now living long enough that cells have more chance to go haywire. Reproductive cancers may be a function of longer lives and changing cultures. For long stretches of history, the average woman had only about 100 menstrual cycles in her lifetime, because frequent pregnancies and breastfeeding kept her from menstruating. A typical woman today has 400 cycles, creating more stress on her ovaries and subjecting her breasts to more hormonal swings.

Outrunning Mastodons
One of the best known holdovers is the "fight-or-flight" mechanism that pumps out adrenaline, cortisol and other hormones when the brain senses danger, making muscles tense up, blood vessels constrict, the digestive tract slow and the heart beat faster. That was useful for outrunning mastodons—but counterproductive for sitting at the computer.

Even anxiety dreams—where you're unprepared for a test or falling off a cliff—may be a leftover from ancient times when people had to be constantly on guard for predators in the night, says Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard psychologist and editor of the journal Dreams.

"Some of this stuff we're carrying around is from the Pleistocene era," says Dr. Stearns of the period roughly 2 million to 10,000 years ago. He warns that the gap between human anatomy and modern culture may get wider in the years ahead. "My students keep asking me, 'Are we adapting to the computer age?' But technology and culture are changing so fast that our genes can't keep up with it."

Scientists studying genetic variations around the world say that about 1,800 genes—some 7% of the human genome—have been evolving rapidly in the past 10,000 to 40,000 years. The precise function of many isn't known, but researchers have identified several that provided a key advantage for survival and got passed along.

For example, dark skin that protected humans from the sun's ultraviolet rays in Africa was less needed as they migrated north beginning about 50,000 years ago. Gene variations for light skin identified in European and Asian populations would have allowed them to absorb more vitamin D, needed for strong bones and other body functions and been passed along.

A gene variation that enabled people to digest lactose—a sugar found in milk products—provided a big advantage for survival when they began herding and milking cattle. It cropped up in Europe about 7,000 years ago. Today 90% of people of Northern European descent are able to digest dairy products.

Many recent mutations developed in response to infectious diseases, particularly as people started living in large communities. In Africa, some 25 new gene variations and an entire blood type have emerged to help people resist malaria in the past 10,000 years. About 10% of people in Europe today have a gene variation that makes them resistant to HIV/AIDS.

But many evolutionary advantages came with trade-offs. It has long been known, for example, that gene variations that protect some Africans from malaria make them vulnerable to sickle-cell anemia. Genes that helped early Africans retain salt guarded against dehydration in tropical climates now put some African-Americans at risk for high blood pressure today.

And some body parts that provided a benefit at some time in human history pose challenges today—a phenomenon Texas Tech University geneticist Lewis I. Held Jr. calls "bislagiatt," an acronym for "but it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Among the body's bislagiatt parts Dr. Held catalogs in his book, "Quirks of Human Anatomy," are men's testicles that hang outside the body because sperm develop best at slightly cooler temperatures—but that makes them vulnerable to injury.

In women, the mismatch between mother's narrow pelvis (which facilitates walking upright) and a newborn's large head (which facilitates cognitive development) makes childbirth a painful and sometimes dangerous process.

The appendix, which scientists think served as a fermentation chamber for helpful intestinal bacteria in primates, is less needed now that people have varied diets and cook food.

The human mouth has also evolved unevenly. Teeth shrank considerably as agriculture changed our ancestors' diets from mostly meat and plants to mostly carbohydrates. The human jaw shrank even faster, making wisdom teeth largely useless and creating the overcrowding that people face today.

Why haven't years of evolution corrected these quirks? "Many features of our anatomy operate 'under the radar' of natural selection," says Dr. Held. That is, they generally aren't problematic enough to affect people's survival before they reach reproductive age, so they keep getting passed on. Some experts think that wisdom teeth and the appendix may be slowly on their way out—some people are already born without them—since they do sometimes cause life-threatening infections.

These days, the key driver of evolutionary change isn't who survives long enough to have children, but who has the most children and how soon they start. It's those who procreate early and often who have the most genetic impact on future generations.

In an effort to see contemporary evolution at work, Dr. Stearns and colleagues tracked the health habits and fertility patterns of 2,238 women involved in the Framingham Heart Study, which has studied the medical histories of 14,000 residents of the Massachusetts town since 1948. The women who had the most children were slightly shorter and plumper than average. They also had lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure. If those trends continue, the researchers predicted that by 2409, the typical Framingham woman would be 0.8 inches shorter, 2.2 pounds heavier and have a healthier heart.

Small Brains, Big Feet
Other changes are happening, but the reasons aren't completely clear. Brains have shrunk by about 10% in the past 5,000 years. Average shoe sizes have grown four sizes for men and women since 1900, and heights are all over the map. Americans, who were among the world's tallest people in 1900, have leveled off in the past 25 years (averaging 5-foot-10 for men and 5-foot-4 for women). Europeans have continued growing—particularly in Holland, where men now average over 6-feet tall. The Japanese, among the world's shortest people in 1950, have grown nearly 5 inches, on average, since then, to 5-foot-7 for men. "They could equal American height standards in the next generation," says Richard Steckel, an Ohio State University economist and anthropologist.

Where the species is going from here is anyone's guess. Problems that affect fertility could become moot in future generations. "Diabetes and metabolic syndrome does cause a lot of infertility, male impotence and premature death," says Henry Harpending, a University of Utah anthropologist and co-author of "The 10,000 Year Explosion," on recent evolutionary changes. "I expect we will all be slimmer and trimmer in 1,000 years."

Some demographers are concerned that these days, in contrast to most of human history, the most educated and affluent people are having the fewest children. Fertility rates have dropped significantly in almost every industrialized country.

Futurologists have even predicted that the human race could diverge into two parts—tall, fit elites and a larger pool of shorter, less educated laborers. "But who knows—having big families could become fashionable again," says Gregory Cochran, co-author of "The 10,000 Year Explosion." "Stranger things have happened—just look at pointy shoes."

In the meantime, some anthropologists say the world's populations are becoming more diverse and that the growing global population will mean many more gene variations in the years ahead. Others say just the opposite—that evolution moved quickly when people lived in small, isolated communities competing with each other for survival. Now, travel, trade and intermarriage are making us more homogenous.

"We are one big reproductive pool," says paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "The bigger the population is, the less likely it is to change in any one direction. I don't see anything that will stop that from happening—unless we get hit by an asteroid."

This one came in today's email... fully animated with blinking eyes, wagging tail and a sniffing nose... I have four REAL dogs that do this every day.

I was feeling a little nosey, so I thought I
would look in on you and see if you're sitting
at your computer and if you're OK.

Yup!!...there you are and you look and smell great!

Well, Folks, I hope we have a good outcome... maybe VP Bidden got his goat last week.

WASHINGTON -- Former vice president Dick Cheney was hospitalized after experiencing chest pains Monday, an aide said.

Cheney assistant Peter Long issued a statement that the 69-year-old Cheney was resting comfortably at George Washington University Hospital and his doctors were evaluating the situation.

Cheney has a history of heart problems, including four heart attacks starting at age 37.

When doctors rule out an immediate heart attack, the next step in evaluating chest pain usually is an X-ray exam called an angiogram to help uncover the cause. Doctors inject a dye that will highlight narrowed arteries leading to the heart.

Blockages aren't the only explanation for chest pain. But Cheney had bypass surgery in 1988, as well as two later angioplasties to clear narrowed coronary arteries, and bypasses tend to last about a decade before the rerouted blood vessels start to clog.

In 2001, he had a special pacemaker implanted in his chest. In addition, doctors in 2008 restored a normal rhythm to his heart with an electric shock. It was the second time in less than a year that Cheney had experienced and been treated for an atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm involving the upper chambers of the heart.

The former vice president has kept a high profile since leaving the White House. He has sparred with the Obama administration over plans to close the U.S. detention facility for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and hold the trials of several high-profile detainees in civilian courts rather than military tribunals.

He made a surprise appearance last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he accompanied his daughter Liz. He was greeted with chants of "Run, Dick, Run," but said "I am not going to do it."

Among his extensive government service, Cheney served as defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

50 things you need to know about the candidates for Texas governor | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texas Politics | The Dallas Morning News

50 things you need to know about the candidates for Texas governor | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texas Politics | The Dallas Morning News: "Politicians are people, too. The five leading candidates for Texas governor come from different places and have led rich but distinct lives. Few voters get to meet the candidates in person, so we compiled 50 things you need to know about each as you decide who gets your vote.
50 things you need to know about:
• Kay Bailey Hutchison | Photos
• Debra Medina | Photos
• Rick Perry | Photos
• Farouk Shami | Photos
• Bill White | Photos"

There is too much irony in this Tit for Tat BX that is going on in Congress these days...

President Barack Obama used his weekly radio address to call on Congress to move forward on legislation to overhaul U.S. health care and to urge both political parties to work together on what has been a divisive and controversial issue.

The president's remarks precede a White House summit this coming Thursday on revamping health care. In his address, Obama said he hopes participants at the event act in good faith and put politics on the back burner.

"I don't want to see this meeting turn into political theater, with each side simply reciting talking points and trying to score political points. Instead, I ask members of both parties to seek common ground in an effort to solve a problem that's been with us for generations," Obama said in his address.

Obama said congressional Republicans have offered some good ideas, including allowing Americans to buy health insurance across state lines and permitting small businesses to pool together and offer health insurance to employees at lower prices. He said he would support such changes provided they are done in way that protects patients.

"To members of Congress, I would simply say this. We know the American people want us to reform our health insurance system. We know where the broad areas of agreement are. And we know where the sources of disagreement lie. After debating this issue exhaustively for a year, let's move forward together," the president added.

Recent double-digit increases in health care premiums show that the status quo is good for the insurance industry, whose largest members made record profits last year, the president asserted. He cited "jaw-dropping" price hikes by Anthem Blue Cross in California, and by Michigan Blue Cross and Blue Shield, among others, and said such increases have made it hard for many small business owners to offer health insurance to employees and prompted more individuals and families to drop health insurance coverage.

"And as bad as things are today, they'll only get worse if we fail to act," Obama warned.

Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.), who delivered the Republican response, urged Democrats to start over on a health-care overhaul and focus on making health care affordable, scrapping what he called a "misguided plan of a government takeover of health care."

"In fact, right now, Democrats are continuing to work behind closed doors, putting the finishing touches on yet another massive health care bill Americans can't afford and don't want," Camp said. "If the starting point for this summit is more of the same backroom deals and partisan bills, then this meeting will likely be a charade."

Camp, the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, endorsed legislation proposed last fall by House Republicans that would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of a pre-existing medical condition. The bill also would allow states to adopt their own health-care reforms and would curb medical malpractice lawsuits that Camp said drive up the cost of health insurance for all Americans.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Republican bill would lower health insurance premiums across the board by up to 10%, or about $2,000 per year, without cutting Medicare, raising taxes or increasing the federal deficit, Camp said. He urged Americans to examine details of the GOP approach online, at http://healthcare.gop.gov.

-By Judith Burns, Dow Jones Newswires, 202-862-6692; judith.burns@dowjones.com

Write to Judith Burns at judith.burns@dowjones.com

The Ballard of Joe Stack... Best Commentary I could find on the event and the man.

Before the flames from Joseph Stack's suicide run at an Austin, Texas, building had been extinguished, fires broke out on the Internet over whether his attack could or should be linked to the Tea Party movement.

A mere two hours after the plane struck, the liberal site Daily Kos weighed in, saying that Tea Party "anti-government forces ... have struck with their first 9/11-inspired terrorist attack."

Over at the Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart wrote in a blog post that, after reading Stack's manifesto, "I am struck by how his alienation is similar to what we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement."

And Chris Rovzar posted on the New York magazine site that "a lot of his rhetoric could have been taken directly from a handwritten sign at a Tea Party rally."

Time magazine made a subtler hint in that direction, with a link to a story about "the making of the Tea Party movement" right after a quote from Stack's apparent suicide note.

- The Pilot's Manifesto: http://www.scribd.com/doc/27070093/Joe-Stack

All of which prompted conservative bloggers to denounce attempts by the "mainstream press" to make such a connection.

"The mainstream liberal media is already having a field [day] with the plane crash," says Habledash. "Their obvious attempts to connect the suicide pilot ... to the Tea Party movement completely unveils their political agenda."

Prison Planet added that "Even before many of the details were confirmed surrounding yesterday's tragic events in Austin, political operatives were callously exploiting the incident to advance their agenda in demonizing opponents of big government."

And RightPundits.com declared itself "stunned and outraged by the coverage of the Joseph Stack attack in the liberal blogosphere and then the mainstream media." It went on to quote Tea Party leaders in the Austin area saying that Stack was not a member.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, meanwhile, David Freddoso argues that the press are ignoring Stack's "left-wing discontent," pointing to language in Stack's posting that "could have appeared in some form on any of several left-wing message boards."

Truth is, precious little is known about Stack at this point, except that he was deranged and suicidal nutjob.

And there's certainly no way to glean any coherent political message -- liberal, conservative or any other bent -- from his post.

After all, the centerpiece of his complaint is about a section of the 1986 tax reform act, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. The only politicians Stack specifically names are George W. Bush (whom he calls a "presidential puppet") and former centrist New York Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who according to Stack was "sleazy"). The Catholic Church comes in for a Stack attack (it's "vulgar, corrupt"), as does organized religion generally ("monsters"), the FAA, GM, capitalism and the entire American public.

Right-leaning PoliPundit summed it up this way: "Mad as Hell, at Everyone!"

But Richard Benjamin, writing for the liberal Huffington Post, perhaps put it best:
"The tortured manifesto cannot be properly labeled as 'left-' or 'right-wing'. Rather, it's a non-partisan screed against problems roiling the Republic -- and Stack's head -- for years."

Commentary by John Merline for AOL
http://www.aolnews.com/team/john-merline