Cooking with kudzu ?

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(Yep i'm stuck on kudzu. I found out its many uses but not the details on the uses. This post tells me and you how to harvest and cook kudzu leaves. Its important to know the details on how you can eat kudzu. Just knowing you can eat it is not enough.) Story Reports
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Teresa Erwin
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How to Harvest and Cook Kudzu Leaves
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How to Harvest and Cook Kudzu Leaves

If you do not have kudzu growing in your yard, choose a location where pesticides and car fumes are not going to be a big concern. Make a lot of noise when approaching a kudzu patch. Lots of critters like to live under kudzu vines including snakes. I would recommend clipping easily attainable vines and then removing the leaves at home. Don't worry about killing the vine-it's an incredibly sturdy plant. Cut multiple vines, as you will need ten times the number of leaves when you cook them. Kudzu cooks like collards and really shrinks when you boil it. It also is compared to tofu because of its ability to take on the flavor of whatever you cook it with.

After you have harvested multiple vines and removed the leaves, wash in cold water thoroughly. You then have the choice of boiling, sautéing, frying, pickling, mixing in soups or stews or just eating them in your salad. If you plan to eat them in salad make sure you harvest young leaves, as the older, larger ones will be tougher. A lot of people like to par-boil first and then sauté with onion, garlic, and olive oil.

Another popular cooking method is to just boil and eat them like spinach. You can also can kudzu leaves for future use by processing in a pressure cooker. Deep fried kudzu leaves are another favorite. Just coat the leaves in your favorite batter and fry. Whether you are frying or boiling, just cook until tender.

Kudzu leaves are highly nutritious. Kudzu leaves contain protein, calcium, phosphorous, iron, fiber, and is low in fat. Kudzu also has the ability to lower blood sugar. Although not a native plant to the US, this edible plant has other health benefits such as aiding in hangovers, indigestion, headaches, and sinus trouble.
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The Amazing Story of Kudzu
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Note to moochelle obama about survival
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What is Kudzu?

How long can you go without food and water?

How long can you go without food and water?
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How long can you go without food and water?
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The body stores energy needed to live in the form of fat, carbohydrates and proteins. The carbs are the first thing to be used up without more food coming in. The fat goes next, which explains why people with more of it can survive longer.
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Charles W. Bryant
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Living Without Food

The question of how long you can go without food depends on a lot of factors. Will and determination definitely play a part. Political prisoners on hunger strikes and fasting religious leaders have been known to go for weeks at a time without any food. Gandhi fasted for 21 days while in his 70s. People lost in the wild have also survived for long periods of time without eating.

Medically speaking, most doctors agree that healthy humans can go up to eight weeks without food as long as they have water. People have gone longer and been fine, and people have starved to death in less time. Being strong and in good physical shape can help you survive longer, but so does having extra body fat. The body stores energy needed to live in the form of fat, carbohydrates and proteins. The carbs are the first thing to be used up without more food coming in. The fat goes next, which explains why people with more of it can survive longer. Then the proteins go. If you get to the point that your body is using up proteins, basically the body itself, then you're in bad shape.

Your metabolism also plays a role. Metabolism is what converts food into energy. If you have a slow metabolism, you'll burn your food intake slower and be able to go longer without replacing the food energy. If you go without food, your metabolism will adjust accordingly and slow down on its own -- basically doing what it can to pitch in for survival's sake.

Climate is a major factor too. The bad news is that both cold and hot weather are no good if you have no food. The good news is that extreme heat and cold will kill you in other ways before you have a chance at starvation. But in terms of living without food, heat means faster dehydration -- cold means more energy is burned to keep the body's temperature at a cozy 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). If you're lucky enough to be in mild temperatures, you'll be able to live a little longer without food.
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Green Deane
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If kudzu grows near you, you won’t starve.
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If kudzu grows near you, you won’t starve.
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That said, kudzu, Pueraria montana var. lobata, (pew-er-RAY-ree-u MON-tah-nuh var. low-BAH-tuh) is an extremely versatile plant. We just don’t use it enough. But know this, if kudzu grows near you, you won’t starve. Indeed, economic times may make kudzu valuable again. It’s not on menu’s yet but you may wish it were. There’s even a kudzu methanol car-fuel plant opening. The only thing about kudzu I don’t like is the smell of the flowers in bloom: It smells exactly like the very cheap, very intense grape-flavored chemical gum kids chew. You can detect it from hundreds of feet away. Very strong, but good for identifying. If you like that aroma let your nose guide you. (I like the smell of grape, it’s that cheap artificial grape smell I can’t stand. That’s what kudzu smells like. Kudzu has no choice, so I don’t blame it. But the gum makers do have a choice and they make the wrong one. )

Kudzu was introduced into the United State in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The exposition was to celebrate 100 years of the United States being an independent country. Japan built a garden using Kudzu. Then it was at an exposition in New Orleans in 1883. American gardeners fell in love. By 1908 Kudzu was being promoted as a forage crop in Florida then it was widely distributed in the 1920s by a Florida nursery. (At one time they proudly displayed a ground zero kudzu plaque.)

It was planted by the conservation core during the Great Depression of the 1930s and in the 1940s the government was paying farmers $8 an acre to let it grow for soil conservation. (In 2008 dollars that is $256 and acre.) It was called “the miracle vine” and cotton was no longer king of the south.

But, by 1953 even federal employees suspected something was wrong. The government stopped paying to plant it. Kudzu can grow a foot a day and when escaped from cultivation, it can smother and kill an entire forest. By 1970 the government called it a weed and it’s been a “pest” ever since finally getting on the Federal Noxious Weed List in 1997, some 44 years after the alarm was raise.

A half a billion dollars is spent annually trying to contain it. Granted Kudzu is a problem, but “pest” or “resource” is a matter of attitude and policy. It covers more than 7 million acres and claims 120,000 more acres a year. That a huge amount of food not being consumed, a resource not being used. What would a country in famine do with those 7 million acres of food? I doubt they would call it a noxious weed. Perhaps instead of sending dollars to the starving we should send them nutritious kudzu.

Kudzu can be eaten many ways.

The young leaves can be consumed as a green, or juiced. They can be dried and made into a tea. Shoots can be eaten like asparagus. The blossom can be used to make pickles or a jelly — a taste between apple and peach — and the root is full of edible starch. Older leaves can be fried like potato chips, or used to wrap food for storage or cooking.

With kudzu you can make a salad, stew the roots, batter-fry the flowers or pickled them or make a make syrup. Raw roots can be cooked in a fire, roots stripped of their outer bark can be roasted in an oven like any root vegetable; or grated and ground into a flour to make a thickener, a cream or tofu. Kudzu is used to make soaps, lotions, rope, twine, baskets, wall paper, paper, fuel and compost. It can also be baled like hay with most grazing animals liking it, especially goats. Only the seeds are not edible.

Kudzu, to someone not familiar with it, does have a couple of look-alikes, such as the Desmodium rotundifolium, or the Ticktrefoil. Kudzu has very hairy young stems, the D. rotundifolium does not… that and that kudzu goes wild and outgrows it. The hog peanut, Amphicarpaea bracteata, may be mistaken for young kudzu vines, but it does not have hairy stems or climbs into trees. The key is to look for hairy stems on the young kudzu, and when it blossoms follow the grape aroma.

Kudzu is not a famine food but prime fare. We call it a weed because we are not hungry enough… yet.
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Kudzu Blossom Jelly

Spoon over cream cheese, or melt and serve over waffles and ice cream. The blossom liquid is gray until lemon juice is added.

4 cups Kudzu blossoms

4 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 (1 3/4-ounce) package powered pectin

5 cups sugar

Wash Kudzu blossoms with cold water, and place them in a large bowl. Pour 4 cups boiling water over blossoms, and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight. Pour blossoms and liquid through a colander into a Dutch oven, discarding blossoms. Add lemon juice and pectin; bring to a full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly.

Stir in sugar; return to a full rolling boil, and boil, stirring constantly, 1 minute. Remove from heat; skim off foam with a spoon. Quickly pour jelly into hot, sterilized jars, filling to 1/4 inch from top. Wipe jar rims. Cover at once with metal lids, and screw on bands.

Process in boiling water bath 5 minutes. Cool on wire racks. YIELD: 6 half pints.

Rolled Kudzu Leaves

Kudzu Leaves

1 can diced tomatoes

2 teaspoons salt

3 cloves garlic, cut in half

Juice of 3 lemons

Bacon Grease (optional)

Stuffing ingredients: 1 cup rice, rinsed in water

1 pound ground lamb or lean beef

1 cup canned diced tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon of allspice

Salt and Pepper to taste

Gather about 30 medium-sized young kudzu leaves. Make sure area has not been sprayed with chemicals.

Wash leaves. Drop into salted boiling water. Boil a 2-3 minutes, separating leaves. Remove to a plate to cool. Remove heavy center stems from the leaves by using a knife and cutting down each side of the stem to about the middle of the leaf. Combine all stuffing ingredients and mix well.

Push cut sides together and fill with 1 teaspoon stuffing and roll in the shape of a cigar. Place something in bottom of a large pan so that rolled leaves will not sit directly on the bottom of the pan. Bacon grease is great for seasoning.

Arrange Kudzu rolls alternately in opposite directions. When all are in the pot, pour in a can diced tomatoes, 2 teaspoons of salt, and 3 cloves of garlic, cut in half. Press down with an inverted dish and add water to reach dish. Cover pot and cook on medium for 30 minutes. Add lemon juice and cook 10 minutes more.

Kudzu Quiche

Makes 4-6 servings.

1 cup heavy cream

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup chopped, young, tender Kudzu leaves and stems

1/2 teaspoon salt

Ground pepper to taste

1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1 nine-inch unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix cream, eggs, kudzu, salt, pepper, and cheese. Place in pie shell. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes until center is set.

Kudzu Tea

Kudzu leaves

Mint

Honey

Simmer 1 cup of finely chopped Kudzu leaves in a quart of water for 30 minutes. Drain and serve with honey and a sprig of mint. If you prefer a sweeter taste use honey to sweeten the tea.

Deep Fried Kudzu Leaves

Pick light green leaves, 2-inch size.

Thin batter made with iced water and flour

Oil

Heat oil. Rinse and dry kudzu leaves, then dip in batter (chilled). Fry oil quickly on both sides until brown. Drain on paper toweling. Eat while warm.

kudzu powder

Kudzu powder can be prepared on a small scale from wild kudzu with little equipment. Roots no smaller than 1 1/2” in diameter should be harvested during the winter months, December through March. Kudzu root should be washed, cut into approximate one-inch thick slices and pureed in a blender with enough cold water to blend the root well. The puree should be strained and the solid fibers squeezed to extract all the liquid to be used for further processing. The remaining fibers should then be saturated with water, stirred, and strained again, collecting the liquid into the container with the other extract.

The brown kudzu liquid should be filtered through muslin or lower grade cotton fabric and left undisturbed in a cool or cold location for 24 hours. The fibers can be composted and the brown liquid should then be discarded as grey water. The clay like substance remaining in the container should be broken up and mixed well, until thoroughly dissolved with clean water once again, and allowed to rest for 24 hours in a cool environment. The liquid should again be discarded and the starch redissolved into a second batch of clean water, this time leaving the mixture for 48 hours in a cool place.

The liquid should then be discarded and the layer of gray impurities removed from the starch. The starch is then ready to be used immediately or can be dried to preserve it indefinitely. To dry the kudzu starch, place kudzu chunks on a tray or on layers of paper and set it in a cool, well ventilated place for 10 to 40 days until thoroughly dry. Store dry chunks of kudzu in a sealed container. The dry chunks of kudzu, when pulverized, become kudzu powder.

Police officer R.C. Nelson talks about how jack ruby got into the parking garage

JFK Assassination Witness Speaks For 1st Time
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Police officer R.C. Nelson, retired from the Dallas Police, talks about whar really happened in Dallas.
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Jilda Unruh
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What hasn’t been shared before is what Nelson said happened just before the shooting and then in the immediate aftermath.

When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was cut down by an assassin, a chain of events began that included the murder of a police officer, the capture of the alleged presidential assassin, and the murder of the assassin.

In the 50 years since the Kennedy assassination, one Dallas Police officer who was in the middle of the chaos that enveloped the city in the hours and days that followed the murder has never shared his story about what he saw, heard and did. Until now.

Two days after the assassination of Kennedy and with an entire nation in mourning, Nelson was assigned to the basement’s main door entrance from city hall. Oswald was scheduled to be moved from city hall to the county jail and he was being moved through the basement.

Nelson said all of the television cameras, which broadcast the transfer and what happened in the basement, entered through the door where he was standing guard.

As Oswald was moving through the basement, Nelson was approximately 20 feet away when he heard a shot ring out and then chaos. Chicago businessman Jack Ruby had gotten into the basement and shot Oswald with a .38 revolver.

What hasn’t been shared before is what Nelson said happened just before the shooting and then in the immediate aftermath.

According to Nelson, right before Oswald was brought to the basement, a Dallas Police decoy car was brought to the basement and plain clothes cops were put inside the car to distract the media from the real transfer vehicle.

The decoy car drove up the north ramp, which Nelson said was actually the entry ramp to the basement.

“They drove up the north ramp which was actually the entry ramp into the basement and drove around the block,” Nelson said.

(Nelson is telling America that the decoy car picked up jack ruby as it drove around the block. This means the Dallas "plain clothes cops" drove ruby into the basement, because Lieutenant Pierce told Nelson that "it would not be held against him". Lt pierce and the Dallas police did one of two things. (1) Aided ruby in killing oswald on purpose or (2) Picked up ruby just to get him inside the basement because he had police buddies. Either way according to Dallas police officer Nelson, the Dallas police dept was responsible for oswalds death.) Story Reports

Nelson said the lieutenant driving the decoy car came walking back through his area after parking in the basement again. Nelson said he was positive that Ruby had not passed him to get into the basement.

According to Nelson, Lieutenant Sam Pierce said Ruby walked right by the decoy car and walked down the north ramp into the basement. Shortly after the shooting, however, Nelson was told Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry wanted to see him.

When Nelson got to Chief Curry’s office, he saw Lieutenant Pierce was already in the office. The chief told Nelson, “R.C., this isn’t going to be held against you with all the TV cameras that were coming into the basement.”

Nelson thought Chief Curry was implying that Ruby had gotten past him. Nelson said he told the chief that, “You can tell them anything you want, but Ruby didn’t come by me!”

Obamacare website insures man's dog by mistake

Obamacare website is safe to signup for a dog.
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Colo. man signs up for his insurance, his dog gets covered instead
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Kent Erdahl
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The Colorado healthcare exchange has processed applications for thousands of people … and one dog.

Shane Smith, of Fort Collins, says his dog Baxter received a letter informing him that a health insurance account had been opened in his name through Connect for Health Colorado.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this is so awesome,’” Smith said with a laugh. “They have gone out of their way to insure my 14-year-old Yorkie.”

Smith had called Connect for Health Colorado to sign himself up for insurance because his old plan was cancelled due to Obamacare.

He’s not sure exactly how the confirmation letter went to his dog, but he says he thinks it’s because of a series of security questions a representative asked him over the phone.

“There was some kind of code or something, so I gave them my dog’s name,” Smith said. “They must have just put it in the wrong slot or something.”
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Healthcare.gov ‘may already have been compromised,’ security expert says
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Healthcare.gov ‘may already have been compromised,’ security expert says
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FoxNews.com
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Not only is healthcare.gov at risk, it may already have been compromised, a security expert testified before the Senate.

“Hackers are definitely after it,” said David Kennedy, CEO of information security firm TrustedSEC before a House Science, Space, and Technology committee hearing on security concerns surrounding the problematic Healthcare.gov website.

“And if I had to guess, based on what I can see … I would say the website is either hacked already or will be soon.”

"Based on the exposures that I identified, and many that I haven’t published due to the criticality of exposures – if a hacker wanted access to the site or sensitive information – they could get it".

One key problem facing Healthcare.gov is that security wasn’t built into the site from the very beginning.

All four cyber security experts unanimously concurred that, given the security issues, Americans should not use the site at present.
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(The average obama voter/supporter/low info idiot will continue to try to sign up for obamacare despite experts telling them not to do so. These low info obamaphone idiots will also see that they have signed up their dog instead of themselves or they will get their identity stolen and start getting bills in the mail or they will see their bank account wiped out by their dog etc. Obamacare is a sick mangy dog trying to infect others.) Story Reports
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Implanting platinum jewelry in eye
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Implanting platinum jewelry in eye
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KERRY DREW
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It's an eye-opening new procedure being done in New York for the first time: a woman is getting a piece of platinum jewelry placed in her eye.

"It's going to be a conversation maker," says Lucy Luckayanko. "I will be able to tell people. It will be unique. It will be sort of my unique factor.

Luckayanko already has a twinkle in her eye, but now she is adding some real bling.

"I'm excited about it," she says. "I liked the idea from the beginning. I was like 'Yeah, why not?'"

Lucy is getting a new procedure at Park Avenue Laser Vision to implant a small platinum heart into her eye. It's called Safesight jewelry.

"The bottom of heart down so pointing diagonal like that," she says. "It's really small, really tiny, really cute."

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(Lucy in the eye with diamonds is the another example of an idiot that lives in the U.S. She thinks putting jewelry in her eye is "cute". She is brain dead as are obamacare voters/supporters that blindly allow their health to be a matter of bling bling via obamacare.) Story Reports

Dodder Vine Sniffs Out Its Prey

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Plant Sniffs Out Prey
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Plant Sniffs Out Prey
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Psalm 104:14
“He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth....”

The dodder is a very unusual plant and is known as one of the ten worst weeds found in the United States. A newly sprouted dodder seed does not bother to grow roots. Rather, it sprouts a tendril that grows out, looking for other plants. It has, at most, a week to find a plant from which to steal water and nutrients.

Cuscuta europaea (dodder) in flowerThe dodder is a parasite and while it does not kill its victims, it will take enough water and nutrition to stunt their growth. The dodder actually costs California tomato growers $4,000,000 a year in losses. Researchers found that the species of dodder that causes most trouble to tomato plants actually “sniffs out” its victims. Scientists knew that plants emit pheromones or scents unique to each species. The researchers gave a sprouting dodder seed a choice of targets to grow toward, including a tomato plant. When the dodder seed sprouted, it immediately sent a tendril out to the tomato. In a more rigorous test, researchers connected possible targets in separate enclosures to the sprouting dodder with curved tubes. The dodder still found the tomato plant.

The dodder has no nervous system, and scientists marvel at what it can do. Rather, they should be marveling at what our Creator can do in providing for the needs of all living things.

Prayer: Father, I thank You for supplying our daily bread as well as our eternal salvation. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

They wanted me to train him and teach him how to act like an educated south side African-American

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Lennix sounds like obama. Just listen without watching the video. You can't tell it anybody but obama!
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Actor Harry Lennix acts like obama. He says he trained obama to talk and act like him. Its obvious they talk the same.
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Mancow: Actor Harry Lennix told me he trained Obama to act presidential
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Eric Muller
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Actor Harry Lennix trained Obama to act presidential
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"He mimicked me, he followed me for years, and they wanted me to train him and teach him how to act like an educated south side African-American."

Chicago radio host Eric 'Mancow' Muller claimed during an appearance on the Alex Jones Show Friday that actor Harry Lennix told him he was hired to train Barack Obama how to look and act presidential more than a decade before Obama was elected president.

Muller, who knew Obama in Chicago years before he was elected president, said on Alex Jones radio show that Lennix told him that, "He was the actor hired to teach Obama to be Harry Lennix, watch The Blacklist and you can see Obama, this is an actor that we hired to be our president."

Barack Obama is me, you’ve seen me on TV, you’ve seen me on movies, he is me."

Lennix said, "He mimicked me, he followed me for years, and they wanted me to train him and teach him how to act like an educated south side African-American."

Lennix said he thought Obama was "very stupid" and had "been taught to act like this."

If true, these startling claims would lend credence to the theory that Barack Obama was groomed and trained to become president for years.
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(Lennix sounds like obama. Lennix said obama was very stupid which is also true. It has always been obvious to me "obama" was and is an EMPTY SUIT. Obama has been seen acting like an idiot when his teleprompter malfunctioned. I believe lennix traied obama to act/talk like a man knowing he was traing a man/child. His voice inflections match obama exactly. He also is a race card playing black.) Story Reports

Lennix said there is a race to the bottom. How true for him and his views.

I don't respect blacks just because they are black as oprah requires.

Oprah Winfrey

“There’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.”
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Oprah: Many Americans hate Obama because he’s black
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Bruce McQuain
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No one could be basing their conclusion about him on the apparent fact that he’s an incompetent who happens to be black. No one could be thinking that his political agenda defines him and they oppose it. No one could possibly be opposed to him because his actions have directly effected their lives in a negative way (see ObamaCare), could they?

No all “everybody” ever thinks about is how black he is and how badly they hate him for that (never mind the cognitive dissonance that must exist in order to ignore his election and re-election and reach this conclusion).

This is what normally happens when one personally invests in a politician and has to find a way to excuse their miserable failure. Winfrey put a lot of personal capital on the line for Obama and essentially understands he’s failing but refuses to see the real reasons for why that’s happening. Instead she turns to the old and dependable habit of crying “race”.
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(I do not respect failures, liars, frauds etc. Obama is all of these. I also don't respect blacks that play the race card just because they are black! If a person deserves respect they should be respected. Obama doesn't deserve respect just because he is a mixed race or "black". I guess oprash also thinks a white person should be automatically respected just because they are white.Story Reports

Hookworm medicine?

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Will hookworms relieve my asthma?
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Cecil Adams
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Will hookworms relieve my asthma?

I recently heard that dust allergy woes could be helped by the noble but misunderstood hookworm. Apparently the parasite has been shown to calm the immune system when certain allergens make it overenthusiastic.

Long afflicted with severe asthma and allergies, Lawrence heard hookworms offered relief and promptly decided to get some, for which purpose he journeyed in 2006 to the tropical African country of Cameroon, where hookworm is endemic. Because (a) infected humans excrete worm eggs in their feces and (b) the resulting larvae typically burrow in through their host’s skin, Lawrence spent two weeks walking barefoot around village latrines and hoped for the best.

On returning to the U.S., Lawrence noticed no change till the spring day he rolled down his car window. Normally he would have been overwhelmed with allergy symptoms; instead, nothing. Petting a cat, previously perilous, likewise had no effect. Concluding he was cured, Lawrence decided he needed to bring the gift of hookworms to his fellow sufferers and began selling hookworm treatment kits online at four grand a pop, using worms he'd cultivated internally. (He says they're sanitized before they're shipped.) When the Food and Drug Administration went after him, Lawrence took it on the lam, although he can still be reached through his site. Meanwhile, he's gotten coverage from ABC News, Discover, Observer, and of course NPR.

In case you're tempted, I need to emphasize that Lawrence isn't a doctor and has no research to prove his worms work. However, and here we get back to David Pritchard, it's not out of the question that hookworms and their parasitic kin, collectively known as helminths, might offer some protection again asthma, allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, and other immune disorders. While working in the tropics in the 1980s, Pritchard observed that hookworm sufferers rarely had such problems. He became a believer in the hygiene hypothesis, which holds that we in the developed world receive much less exposure to infectious agents than our ancestors did, so our immune systems don't develop properly. As a result they overreact to harmless stimuli, giving rise among other things to what's been described as an asthma epidemic. Epidemiological studies purport to show that allergies and asthma are less prevalent in rural societies than in cities, that children with intestinal parasites have less severe allergic reactions, and so on. Pritchard became particularly interested in hookworms and at one point deliberately infected himself with them.

All very interesting, if a bit gross, but two points need to be made. First, no one has demonstrated that filling somebody with worms is going to cure his asthma or anything else. Although helminths and the hygiene hypothesis have been debated for decades, clinical research has barely begun. I could find only a few studies, each involving a few dozen participants. In one, porcine whipworms supposedly relieved ulcerative colitis; in another, hookworms failed to significantly improve asthma compared to a placebo. Second, even if worms conferred some clinical benefits, they're still, let's face it, worms — ones that can cause anemia, stunted development, and sometimes death, making this a suboptimal therapeutic method.

That’s not to say using one affliction to cure or prevent another is inherently nuts, just that there may be an intervening step or two before we arrive at a practical technique. Consider the famous example of Edward Jenner, who infected people with cowpox to prevent smallpox. What’s little remembered now is that cowpox vaccination replaced variolation, in which people were purposely inoculated with smallpox scabs in hopes they'd get a mild form of the disease to prevent a later fatal case. The technique worked — 98 percent of those variolated became immune. The drawback was that one to two percent died.
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Why doctors are treating allergies with parasitic worms
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Researchers found that Papau villagers with more fertile parasites had lower levels of allergy-related antibodies in their blood, suggesting the hookworms had found a way to nerf their hosts' immune responses. Since allergic response is tied to the body's immune system, it stood to reason that the absence of autoimmune disorders like asthma and hay fever could be attributed to the hookworms; the parasite's survival response was actually benefitting its host, in one of the most roundabout ways imaginable.

"The allergic response evolved to help expel parasites, and we think the worms have found a way of switching off the immune system in order to survive," hypothesizes Pritchard in an interview with the New York Times. "That's why infected people have fewer allergic symptoms."

And Pritchard's hypothesis has been holding water, both in his own experiments as well as others. Symptoms from autoimmune disorders ranging from asthma to Crohn's disease have been shown to be noticeably reduced in study volunteers administered "safe doses" of hookworm therapy. Clinical trials that use hookworms to treat Multiple Sclerosis are slated to begin later this year.

"The challenge for those of us using necessarily lower levels of worm infection in humans is to mimic the positive effects seen in animal models using alternative and inherently safe strategies," writes Pritchard in a recent perspective on the potential benefits of hookworm infection, "such as boosting with low-level ‘trickle infection', as is likely to occur in the tropics [where hookworm infection is especially common]."

"This will be an interesting immunological journey, and early indications suggest that therapeutic dosing regimes can be developed."

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(I know it does sound like obama witch doctor medicine but it seems to be a possible therapy
for people in the future if they can find out how to control the hook worm shutdown of the immune system. Its better than nothing, like obamacare.) Story Reports