On
a monthly basis, 5 lasers are brought into the office where we treat a
variety of clinical conditions including acne, acne scarring, port wine
stains, tattoo removal, facials, spider veins and more.
Ranting & Ravings
This
section of my site is dedicated to me and my opinions. I have, over the
past few years of practicing medicine seen many changes both in
medicine and our society as a whole. A lot of it I don't like and I
intend to comment on what I see. Most of what I post here will be my
opinions. Some will be links to sites that support my contentions. Some
info will be the statements of others. When this happens, I will always
try to give credit to the person who made the statements. If I fail to
do so, it will be an error, but I'll try to do my best to always credit
those responsible. Any one wishing to comment on my opinions are
welcome to do so. I will not always respond, but I will read them 6/22/2008: Who was our first president of the United States?
I'm sure that George Washington was your best guess. After all, no one else comes to mind.
But
think back to your history books - The United States declared its
independence in 1776, yet Washington did not take Office until April
30, 1789.
So who was running the country during these initial years of this young country?
It was the first eight U. S. Presidents.
In fact, the first President of the United States was one John Hanson. I can hear you now - John who?
John Hanson, the first President of the United States .
Don't go checking the encyclopedia for this guy's name - he is one of those great men that are lost to history. If you're extremely lucky, you may actually find a brief mention of his name.
The new country was actually formed on March 1, 1781 with the adoption of The Articles of Confederation.
This document was actually proposed on June 11, 1776, but not agreed upon by Congress until November 15, 1777.
Maryland
refused to sign this document until Virginia and New York ceded their
western lands ( Maryland was afraid that these states would gain too
much power in the new government from such large amounts of land).
Once the signing took place in 1781, a President was needed to run the country.
John Hanson was chosen unanimously by Congress (which included George Washington).
In fact, all the other potential candidates refused to run against him,
as he was a major player in the revolution and an extremely influential
member of Congress.
As the first President, Hanson had quite the shoes to fill. No one had ever been President and the role was poorly defined. His actions in office would set precedent for all future Presidents.
He
took office just as the Revolutionary War ended. Almost immediately,
the troops demanded to be paid. As would be expected after any long
war, there were no funds to meet the salaries. As a result, the
soldiers threatened to overthrow the new government and put Washington
on the throne as a monarch.
All the members of Congress ran for
their lives, leaving Hanson as the only guy left running the
government. He somehow managed to calm the troops down and hold the
country together. If he had ailed, the government would have fallen
almost immediately and everyone would have been bowing to King
Washington.
Hanson, as President, ordered all foreign troops off
American soil, as well as the removal of all foreign flags. This was
quite the feat, considering the fact that so many European countries
had a stake in the United States since the days following Columbus
Hanson established the Great Seal of the United States , which all Presidents have since been required to use on all official documents.
President
Hanson also established the first Treasury Department, the first
Secretary of War, and the first Foreign Affairs Department.
Lastly, he declared that the fourth Thursday of every November was to be Thanksgiving Day, which is still true today.
The
Articles of Confederation only allowed a President to serve a one year
term during any three year period, so Hanson actually accomplished
quite a bit in such little time.
Seven other presidents were elected after him -
1. Elias Boudinot (1782-83), 2. Thomas Mifflin (1783-84), 3. Richard Henry Lee (1784-85), 4. John Hancock (1785-86), 5. Nathan Gorman (1786-87), 6. Arthur St. Clair (1787-88), and 7. Cyrus Griffin (1788-89) -
.....all prior to Washington taking office.
So what happened?
Why don't we hear about the first eight presidents?
It's
quite simple - The Articles of Confederation didn't work well. The
individual states had too much power an d nothing could be agreed upon.
A new doctrine needed to be written - something we know as the
Constitution.
And that leads us to the end of our story.
George
Washington was definitely not the first President of the United States
. He was the first President of the United States under the
Constitution we follow today. And the first eight Presidents are
forgotten in history.
YOU HAVE TO BE A LOVER OF HISTORY TO APPRECIATE THIS!!
(It
took 8 years for us to establish a successful government. You might
just remember this when you hear that so little progress has been made
during these last 5 years in establishing a Government in Iraq.)
7/9/2007: God Bless America and Don't Push Me!
I
don't know how everybody else feels about it, but to me I think
Hispanic people in this country, legally or illegally, made a huge
public relations mistake with their recent demonstrations.
I
don't blame anybody in the world for wanting to come to the United
States of America, as it is a truly wonderful place. But when the first
thing you do when you set foot on American soil is illegal it is flat
out wrong and I don't care how many lala land left heads come out of
the woodwork and start trying to give me sensitivity lessons.
I
don't need sensitivity lessons, in fact I don't have any-thing against
Mexicans! I just have something against criminals and anybody who comes
into this country illegally is a criminal and if you don't believe
it try coming into America from a foreign country without a passport
and see how far you get. What disturbs me about the demonstrations
is that it's tanta-mount to saying, "I am going to come into your
country even if it means breaking your laws and there's nothing you can do about it."
It's
an "in your face" action and speaking just for me, I don't like it one
little bit and if there were a half dozen pairs of gonads in Washington
bigger than English peas it wouldn't be happening.
Where are
you, you bunch of lily livered, pantywaist, forked tongued, sorry
excuses for defenders of The Constitution? Have you been drinking the water
out of the Potomac again? And even if you pass a bill on immigration it
will probably be so pork laden and watered down that it won't mean anything anyway. Besides, what good is another law going to do when you won't enforce the ones on the books now?
And
whatever happened to the polls, guys? I thought you folks were the
quintessential finger wetters. Well you sure ain't paying any attention
to the polls this time because somewhere around eighty percent of
Americans want some thing done about this mess, and mess it is and
getting bigger everyday.
This is no longer a problem, it is
a dilemma and headed for being a tragedy. Do you honestly think that
what happened in Francewith the Muslims can't happen here when the
businesses who hire these people finally run out of jobs and a few
million disillusioned Hispanics take to the streets?
If
you, Mr. President, Congressmen, and Senators, knuckle under on this
and refuse to do something meaningful, it means that you care nothing
for the kind of country your children and grandchildren will
inherit. But I guess that doesn't matter as long as you get re-elected.
Shame on you.
One of the big problems in America today is that
if you have the nerve to say anything derogatory about any group of
people (except Christians) you are going to be screamed at by the media and called a racist, a bigot, and anything else they can think of to call you.
Well
I've seen pounding by the media before and I'm still rockin' and
rollin' and when it comes to speaking the truth I fear not. And the
truth is that the gutless, gonadless, milksop politicians are just
about to sell out the United States of America because they don't have
the intestinal fortitude to stand up to face reality.
And
reality is that we would never allow any other group of people to have
12 million illegals in this country and turn around and say, "Oh it's
ok, ya'll can stay here if you'll just allow us to slap your wrist."
And
I know that some of you who read this column are saying, "Well what's
wrong with that?" I'll tell you what's wrong with it. These people
could be from Mars as far as we know. We don't know who they are,
where they are or what they're up to and the way the Congress is going
we're not going to.
Does this make sense? Labor force you say?
We already subsidize corporate agriculture as it is, must we subsidize
their labor as well? If these people were from Haiti would we be so
fast to turn a blind eye to them or if they were from Somalia or
Afghanistan? I think not
All the media shows us are pictures
of hard working Hispanics who have crossed the border just to try to
better their life. They don't show you pictures of the Feds
rounding up members of MS 13, the violent gang who came across the same
way the decent folks did. They don't tell you about the living conditions of the Mexican illegals some fat cat hired to pick his crop.
I want to make two predictions:
No.
1: This situation is going to grow and fester until it erupts in
violence on our streets while the wimps in Washington drag their toes
in the dirt and try to figure how many tons of political hay they can make to the acre.
No
2: Somebody is going to cross that border with some kind of weapon of
mass destruction and set it off in a major American city after which
there will be a backlash such as this country has never
experienced and the Capitol building in Washington will probably tilt
as Congressmen and Senators rush to the other side of the issue.
I
don't know about you but I would love to see just one major politician
stand up and say, "I don't care who I make mad and I don't care how
many votes I lose, this is a desperate situation and I'm going to lead the fight to get it straightened out."
I
don't blame anybody for wanting to come to America, but if you don't
respect our immigration laws why should you respect any others?
And by the way, this is America and our flag has stars and stripes. Please get that other one out of my face.
God Bless America
4/19/2007: What is happening in America? I don't get it!
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, and from time-to-time since then, it has been said that the day was akin to the one about which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke: December 7, 1941. The comparison is apt-but not completely. Despite the similarities, the differences in what followed each of those days are profound and the aftermath of September 11, 2001, may well portend far worse consequences than did World War II for the United States of America.
The esteemed historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, in his "The Oxford History of the American People", has written of December 7, 1941: "At the end of this sad and bloody day, 7 December 1941, the 'day that shall live in infamy,' as President Roosevelt said of it, 2403 American sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians had been killed, and 1178 more wounded."
In Hawaii, nearly 150 planes had been destroyed on the ground, at least six battleships had been sunk or rendered non-operational.
Soon, American air assets in Manila would be destroyed. The Japanese would roll over the Malay Peninsula and take Singapore. Guam and other islands in the Pacific would fall. Hong Kong would be taken. The fate of Bataan and Corregidor would be told by the Death March and hellish prison camps. And more. Much more. Morrison, again, about December 8, 1941: "To millions of Americans, whether at breakfast in Hawaii, or reading the Sunday paper in the West, or sitting down to dinner in the East, this news of disaster after disaster, seemed fantastic, incredible. As the awful details poured in, hour after hour, incredulity turned to anger and an implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks.
On 8 December, Congress with but one dissenting vote declared a state of war with Japan . . President Roosevelt, in his war message . . . declared, 'Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization'." Yes, on December 7th and September 11th there were sneak attacks. Yes, each day was one of infamy. Yes, there were considerable losses of American (and other) lives. Yes, substantial symbols of American power-the Pacific Fleet, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon-were destroyed. Yes, Americans fought back at Pearl Harbor and on United 93. Yes, the news on those days was "fantastic, incredible."
And yes, then, as now, "Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization."
And yes, on December 8th and September 12th there was among our people "an implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks."
But with these comparisons, the picture changes.
In 1941, and for nearly four years after, we saw full mobilization of our great nation's resources: military, economic, social, spiritual, political. Every sector of our society was engaged.
Men and women volunteered for the armed services.
Women went into factories.
Rationing was imposed.
Religious leaders prayed, and went into combat with their flocks.
Politicians joined hands, giving FDR what he needed to fight ruthless enemies. Civilians willingly endured shortages and blackouts.
Kids (like me) collected newspapers, tin cans, used fat and grease-all for the war effort.
The radio, newspapers, and magazines supported the war effort, and exercised disciplined self-restraint about what they published.
Celebrities, who hadn't enlisted, sold War Bonds and entertained the troops.
Images kept patriotic spirits high: Joe Rosenthal's photo of the Iwo Jima flag raising; MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines; repatriation of emaciated POWs from Japanese prison camps; Patton, with his pearl-handle revolvers; the London blitz; the liberation of Paris. VE-Day. Then, VJ-Day. Times Square overflowing with joy.
And the man-in-the-street, and his wife, and his children, and all other Americans, knew that we were fighting Germany and Japan (and Italy) because, as FDR said, they posed a grave threat to "life, liberty and civilization."
As do the radical Islamists who on 9/11 showed us a preview of their nihilism-drive and corrupt religion's vision for mankind, and who, before and since, have maimed and murdered thousands of innocent men, women, and children throughout the world.
But after President Bush's rousing post - 9/11 speech to Congress and the American people, after flags flew everywhere for a few months, after passage of some useful but inadequate legislation, do we see within our country Morrison's "implacable determination to avenge these unprovoked and dastardly attacks"? Sadly, we do not.
Indeed, we see the opposite.
We see a narrow Supreme Court majority, infatuated with the romance of international law at the expense of American sovereignty, giving due process rights to terrorists, ignoring established precedent to nullify military tribunals, and treating irregular enemy combatants as if they were mere burglars to be dealt with by our domestic criminal law system.
We see international busybody organizations inspecting our detainee facility at Guantanamo, and solemnly pronouncing a verdict on our treatment of Islamic murderers who would make American citizens their next victims.
We see those murderers coddled-uninterrupted sleep, prayer time, outside recreation, nutritious food, health care-by a soft administration bent on mollifying these international busybodies and their domestic crybaby cousins.
We see America-hating organizations such as the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Center for Constitutional Rights enlisting thousands of lawyers whose task is to monkey-wrench the terrorist adjudicatory system, as if they were representing O.J. Simpson in a Los Angeles courtroom.
We see leading newspapers disclosing top secret defense information-surveillance, money tracing, secret interrogation facilities-not only with impunity, but to the cheers of America's left and those in the world who would destroy us.
We see a mostly partisan Democrat Party-in Congress and at the National Committee-playing politics with laws essential to our national security.
We see a weakened Republican president proffering legislation for military tribunals that provides for terrorists process at once unnecessary and dangerous, only to be trumped by the likes of grandstanding Republican Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham, who, not content to provide Islamic murderers with all the due process enjoyed by domestic criminal defendants, want to provide them, as well, with classified information about "sources and methods." We see this senatorial quartet also determined to prohibit the time-tested "good cop/bad cop" technique of interrogation, sleep deprivation, loud music, dietary manipulations- apparently believing that our military and CIA are dealing with some Chicago street gang, not savages out to destroy us and our way of life.
We see public officials acquiescing to the demands of homegrown Muslim organizations, in an effort not to offend-blinding themselves to that religion's core belief in jihad, martyrdom, and its ultimate triumph.
We see in America, according to a nationwide Scripps Survey Research poll, that more than one -third of our countrymen suspect the government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East." Worse, if that be possible, is that sixteen percent of those polled attribute collapse of the World Trade Center towers not to the jet planes hijacked by Islamic terrorists, but to agents of George W. Bush who somehow, clandestinely, blew up the buildings.
We see in our colleges and universities an inbred corps of fanatic intellectuals whose life's purpose is to brainwash the young minds entrusted to their care into believing that the enlightenment, Western values, and the political philosophy that created and sustained our nation are all malevolent, and that Islam, the religion of nihilism and murder, is mankind's true aspiration.
We, who at the Battle of the Bulge shot captured German troops wearing American uniforms and on Guadalcanal incinerated Japanese defenders with flame throwers, we who firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, we who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, now send Senators to Washington who fight the president over "harsh" interrogation of terrorists who often have information that can save American lives.
We see the recruitment of radical Islamists in our prisons, aided and abetted by radical Islamic clergy- paid for by the American taxpayer..
We see politicians willing to turn over America's national security, and perhaps the ultimate survival of our civilization, to unelected judges, responsible to no one, many of whom have been cloistered for so long that they lack an adequate understanding of the real world..
We see the much heralded publication of the Army Field Manual, providing Geneva Conventions protection barring "outrages against personal dignity" like "hooding," forced nudity, and duct-taping eyes, to Islamic terrorists who behead, dismember, and disembowel captured Americans.
We see, in short, an utter, indeed a frightening, lack of understanding of the principles that animated our creation as the freest most successful nation ever to exist on this earth, principles that carried us through revolution, civil war, world wars, and a cold war.
We see that too many Americans have become ignorant and complacent, and thus broken the faith with those who fought at Yorktown, died at Gettysburg, survived the trenches, landed at Normandy, froze at Chosin, and were imprisoned in Hanoi.
We see our country in thrall to pernicious ideas that have sucked from us the understanding of what we face and the will to face it.
And time is running out.
Unless America wakes up fast-parents, clergy, intellectuals, workers, educators, veterans, celebrities, students-one day, perhaps sooner than later, we will look up and no longer see Ronald Reagan 's "shining city on a hill."
We will see a Mosque.
3/18/2002:
"IMMIGRANTS, NOT AMERICANS, MUST ADAPT!!"
I
am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some
individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11,
we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Americans.
However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the
"politically correct" crowd began complaining about the possibility
that our patriotism was offending others.
I am not against
immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a
better life by coming to America. Our population is almost entirely
comprised of descendants of immigrants. However, there are a few things
that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some
born here, need to understand. This idea of America being a multi
cultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our
national identity. As Americans, we have our own culture, our own
society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture has been
developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by
millions of men and women who have sought freedom.
We speak
ENGLISH, not Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other
language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, learn
the language!
"In God We Trust" is our national motto. This is
not some Christian, right wing, political slogan. We adopted this motto
because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this
nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to
display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I
suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home,
because God is part of our culture. If Stars and Stripes offend you, or
you don't like Uncle Sam, then you should seriously consider a move to
another part of this planet.
We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from.
This
is OUR COUNTRY, our land, and our lifestyle. Our First Amendment gives
every citizen the right to express his opinion and we will allow you
every opportunity to do so. But, once you are done complaining,
whining, and griping about our flag, our pledge, our national motto, or
our way of life, I highly encourage you to take advantage of one other
great American freedom, THE RIGHT TO LEAVE. Good-bye, you ARE the
weakest link.
