No, tomreedtoon, psychiatry and rehab are not frauds. They do plenty of good when they are done in a professional manner for the purpose of therapy. This isn't part of the mental health field. It's part of the PR biz, so any medical effects are purely accidental.

...erithtotl. It's every bit as good as you want it to be. I've read everything that Mieville has published even though my heart broke towards the end of "The Iron Council". Un Lun Dun is well worth the cover price.

ADD/ADHD isn't just a "childhood disease" invented by Big Pharma. It's very real and continues throughout life. It's just that many sufferers learn to compensate and get by. For decades I thought that my own issues were simply lack of discipline and willpower. Inability to concentrate or keep my mind going in less than tend directions at once cost me jobs, relationships and a bad grades when a quick mind and excellent memory weren't enough to compensate for an attention span like a Yorkshire terrier.

Then two co-worker/friends said "Dude. Get yourself evaluated. You're in the Club just like us." A couple days testing, and I had a diagnosis - absolutely classic ADD. Proper medication has changed my life dramatically. The ability to keep my thoughts in my head and focus has made incalculable improvements and given me a second chance at what I always knew I could do. The only real regret in life is that it wasn't caught thirty years ago.

The (evil) Pharma companies also make money off of cancer drugs, anti-depressants, blood pressure medication, anesthetics and birth control. It doesn't mean that these medications are useless or that cancer, hypertension, pain during surgery or family planning are myths.

Cosmetic vaginoplasty is on a sharp increase and heavily promoted and advertised.

I don't get it. If a guy (or gal if that's what she's into) has gotten to the point where there's close inspection of the nipples and Girl Parts in question their appearance is not really important any more. There are much more, hmm, pressing matters at hand and their degree of pinkness, perkiness or perfect symmetry really isn't an issue.

So gun owners are "nuts". We're "lepers" and owning guns is "fatal". It's really amazing just how rational, tolerant and accepting of differences of opinions we Progressives are. The respect some here demonstrate for diversity and the facts and the way they avoid stereotyping and bigotry is worthy of the far reaches of the Republican Party or the American Family Association talking about gays and lesbians.

The simple truth is, evil looking guns are no more dangerous than any other. Less, in fact. But there's snobbery and feelings of superiority within the community of gun owners. Zumbo simply represents one extreme - the bolt action snobs who look down on pistol and revolver owners and especially on people who use self-loading rather than bolt-fed rifles. He shot off his mouth with considerably less accuracy than he does his firearms and managed to alienate an huge segment of his audience. So he ticked off the advertisers and sponsors and was dropped. Simple enough, and he was too stupid to realize it until the money really did stop coming in.

Now, as for us "lepers", "nuts" and "terrorists" I would suggest some here brush up against actual facts rather than acting like Klansmen talking about nigras. The evil black plastic guns called "assault weapons" - a completely meaningless term specifically politically invented to confuse cosmetics with function - aren't particularly terrifying or deadly. They are used in such a vanishingly small fraction of armed crimes that the NIJ's response has been "Why are we even bothering to count them?"

And regular legal gun owners, the ones who aren't felons, mentally incompetent or otherwise disqualified, are less likely than the general population to commit violent crimes. There really is no doubt about it. One may argue about exactly what sorts of regulation is appropriate. Given the venom and slander evident in this forum it's not surprising that most of the people in the gun-owning 1/3 of all American households do not believe they will get any kind of fair hearing.

According to former President Clinton and former Speaker Tom Foley the passage of the Assault Weapons Ban was directly responsible for the loss of the the legislature to the Republicans. Gun owners who would otherwise have continued to vote for the Democrats felt that their civil liberties were in jeopardy. So they fell into the clutches of the GOP. It will be another generation before their children have a chance of returning. Those votes will be lost forever if the unreasoning hatred of law-abiding gun owners continues on our side. People like you, personally, are responsible for George W. Bush, Dennis Hastert, Tom De Lay and John Ashcroft. It really is as simple as that. It's the slander, bigotry and unreasoning prejudice from our side that put them in power.

Sharpton has made a career out of hollering "nigger". And in fact, back during the Tawana Brawley fiasco that smarmy hypocrite called himself "The Biggest Nigger in New York." He doesn't go in for deep analyses and semantic nuances when he's trashing someone else. So screw him. Let him get exactly the same treatment when he steps in it. Make him grovel on SLC television and beg forgiveness from the Saints.