They include:
Slippery Elm
The inner bark of the Slippery Elm, when mixed with water, it becomes a slick gel. This gel is rich with antioxidants and coats your throat, stomach lining and intestines.
Herbal Tea
Making a tea from the herb echinacea may help fight the common cold. Goldenseal tea helps treat respiratory tract infections, eye infections and even yeast infections. Hot ginger or elderberry tea can help soothe a sore throat.
Honey
If you have a sore throat, try gargling with a honey mixture.
Nasal Saline Rinse
A natural nasal saline irrigates your nose and helps clear thick mucus and relieve pressure from your sinuses.
Steam
Steam can moisturize your nasal passages and will help the pressure from your sinuses.
White and Cider Vinegar
Wearing a pair of cotton socks soaked in white vinegar is an old, natural remedy that is still used today to reduce a fever.
White Willow
White willow is a natural anti-inflammatory and fever reducing remedy.
Chicken Noodle Soup
Chicken noodle soup has been medically proven to help cure a cold or fever. It is most effective if the soup is made with actual chicken bones in the broth.
Garlic
Here's one folk remedy to cure a cough or chest cold -- chop raw pieces of garlic and mix it with olive oil. Let the mixture sit for a half hour, and then rub the mixture on the bottoms of your feet and cover with socks. The garlic will be absorbed by your skin.
Ginseng
Ginseng can help cure a cold or the flu, as well as prevent future colds if taken as a daily supplement.
Friday, December 24, 2010
The Humbug Express By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times
Hey, has anyone noticed that “A Christmas Carol” is a dangerous leftist tract?
I mean, consider the scene, early in the book, where Ebenezer Scrooge rightly refuses to contribute to a poverty relief fund. “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing,” he declares. Oh, wait. That wasn’t Scrooge. That was Newt Gingrich — last week. What Scrooge actually says is, “Are there no prisons?” But it’s pretty much the same thing.
Anyway, instead of praising Scrooge for his principled stand against the welfare state, Charles Dickens makes him out to be some kind of bad guy. How leftist is that?
As you can see, the fundamental issues of public policy haven’t changed since Victorian times. Still, some things are different. In particular, the production of humbug — which was still a somewhat amateurish craft when Dickens wrote — has now become a systematic, even industrial, process.
Let me walk you through a case in point, one that I’ve been following lately.
If you listen to the recent speeches of Republican presidential hopefuls, you’ll find several of them talking at length about the harm done by unionized government workers, who have, they say, multiplied under the Obama administration. A recent example was an op-ed article by the outgoing Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who declared that “thanks to President Obama,” government is the only booming sector in our economy: “Since January 2008” — silly me, I thought Mr. Obama wasn’t inaugurated until 2009 — “the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs, while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.”
Horrors! Except that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, government employment has fallen, not risen, since January 2008. And since January 2009, when Mr. Obama actually did take office, government employment has fallen by more than 300,000 as hard-pressed state and local governments have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters and other workers.
So how did the notion of a surge in government payrolls under Mr. Obama take hold?
It turns out that last spring there was, in fact, a bulge in government employment. And both politicians and researchers at humbug factories — I mean, conservative think tanks — quickly seized on this bulge as evidence of an exploding public sector. Over the summer, articles and speeches began to appear highlighting the rise in government employment and issuing dire warnings about what it portended for America’s future.
But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.
Is it really possible that the authors of those articles and speeches about soaring public employment didn’t know what was going on? Well, I guess we should never assume malice when ignorance remains a possibility.
There has not, however, been any visible effort to retract those erroneous claims. And this isn’t the only case of a claimed huge expansion in government that turns out to be nothing of the kind. Have you heard the one about how there’s been an explosion in the number of federal regulators? Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute looked into the numbers behind that claim, and it turns out that almost all of those additional “regulators” work for the Department of Homeland Security, protecting us against terrorists.
Still, why does it matter what some politicians and think tanks say? The answer is that there’s a well-developed right-wing media infrastructure in place to catapult the propaganda, as former President George W. Bush put it, to rapidly disseminate bogus analysis to a wide audience where it becomes part of what “everyone knows.” (There’s nothing comparable on the left, which has fallen far behind in the humbug race.)
And it’s a very effective process. When discussing the alleged huge expansion of government under Mr. Obama, I’ve repeatedly found that people just won’t believe me when I try to point out that it never happened. They assume that I’m lying, or somehow cherry-picking the data. After all, they’ve heard over and over again about that surge in government spending and employment, and they don’t realize that everything they’ve heard was a special delivery from the Humbug Express.
So in this holiday season, let’s remember the wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge. Not the bit about denying food and medical care to those who need them: America’s failure to take care of its own less-fortunate citizens is a national disgrace. But Scrooge was right about the prevalence of humbug. And we’d be much better off as a nation if more people had the courage to say “Bah!”
I mean, consider the scene, early in the book, where Ebenezer Scrooge rightly refuses to contribute to a poverty relief fund. “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing,” he declares. Oh, wait. That wasn’t Scrooge. That was Newt Gingrich — last week. What Scrooge actually says is, “Are there no prisons?” But it’s pretty much the same thing.
Anyway, instead of praising Scrooge for his principled stand against the welfare state, Charles Dickens makes him out to be some kind of bad guy. How leftist is that?
As you can see, the fundamental issues of public policy haven’t changed since Victorian times. Still, some things are different. In particular, the production of humbug — which was still a somewhat amateurish craft when Dickens wrote — has now become a systematic, even industrial, process.
Let me walk you through a case in point, one that I’ve been following lately.
If you listen to the recent speeches of Republican presidential hopefuls, you’ll find several of them talking at length about the harm done by unionized government workers, who have, they say, multiplied under the Obama administration. A recent example was an op-ed article by the outgoing Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who declared that “thanks to President Obama,” government is the only booming sector in our economy: “Since January 2008” — silly me, I thought Mr. Obama wasn’t inaugurated until 2009 — “the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs, while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.”
Horrors! Except that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, government employment has fallen, not risen, since January 2008. And since January 2009, when Mr. Obama actually did take office, government employment has fallen by more than 300,000 as hard-pressed state and local governments have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters and other workers.
So how did the notion of a surge in government payrolls under Mr. Obama take hold?
It turns out that last spring there was, in fact, a bulge in government employment. And both politicians and researchers at humbug factories — I mean, conservative think tanks — quickly seized on this bulge as evidence of an exploding public sector. Over the summer, articles and speeches began to appear highlighting the rise in government employment and issuing dire warnings about what it portended for America’s future.
But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.
Is it really possible that the authors of those articles and speeches about soaring public employment didn’t know what was going on? Well, I guess we should never assume malice when ignorance remains a possibility.
There has not, however, been any visible effort to retract those erroneous claims. And this isn’t the only case of a claimed huge expansion in government that turns out to be nothing of the kind. Have you heard the one about how there’s been an explosion in the number of federal regulators? Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute looked into the numbers behind that claim, and it turns out that almost all of those additional “regulators” work for the Department of Homeland Security, protecting us against terrorists.
Still, why does it matter what some politicians and think tanks say? The answer is that there’s a well-developed right-wing media infrastructure in place to catapult the propaganda, as former President George W. Bush put it, to rapidly disseminate bogus analysis to a wide audience where it becomes part of what “everyone knows.” (There’s nothing comparable on the left, which has fallen far behind in the humbug race.)
And it’s a very effective process. When discussing the alleged huge expansion of government under Mr. Obama, I’ve repeatedly found that people just won’t believe me when I try to point out that it never happened. They assume that I’m lying, or somehow cherry-picking the data. After all, they’ve heard over and over again about that surge in government spending and employment, and they don’t realize that everything they’ve heard was a special delivery from the Humbug Express.
So in this holiday season, let’s remember the wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge. Not the bit about denying food and medical care to those who need them: America’s failure to take care of its own less-fortunate citizens is a national disgrace. But Scrooge was right about the prevalence of humbug. And we’d be much better off as a nation if more people had the courage to say “Bah!”
According to family members, the body found yesterday near Lake Mead is not that of missing dancer Debbie Flores-Narvaez. The Clark County Coroner's Office has not confirmed the identity of the body. Hikers found a female's burned body near Kingman Wash road yesterday morning. Metro homicide detectives are investigating.
Woman found dead at home of August Busch IV (Hmm maybe a mystery to watch?)
HUNTLEIGH, Mo (AP) — Authorities were investigating the death of a 27-year-old woman whose body was found earlier this week at the suburban St. Louis home of former Anheuser-Busch CEO August Busch IV.
Police and the St. Louis County medical examiner's office on Thursday identified the victim as Adrienne N. Martin of St. Charles. An autopsy has been conducted but results could take four to six weeks.
Police were called Sunday afternoon to the home in the St. Louis suburb of Huntleigh and found Martin's body. St. Louis County forensic administrator Suzanne McCune said there were no signs of trauma or illness.
Art Margulis, an attorney for Busch, said Martin was a friend of Busch who was visiting the home. He said there was "absolutely nothing suspicious" about Martin's death.
"It was a tragic death of a young woman," he said.
STLtoday.com, the website for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, quoted unnamed friends as saying Martin and Busch were dating. The newspaper said Martin was the mother of an 8-year-old child.
Frontenac police, whose area of coverage includes Huntleigh, provided information in a faxed news release that did not say if the death was considered suspicious. Phone messages seeking an interview were not returned. The release did not say why news of the death was not announced until four days later.
The statement from police said the department received a 911 call at 1:15 p.m. Sunday about an "unresponsive person" at the home. Martin was deceased when paramedics and officers arrived, the release said.
McCune declined to speculate on the investigation or the cause of death. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying the case was being investigated as a possible overdose. McCune would only say that an overdose was among the possible causes.
A woman identified as Adrienne Nicole Martin, from the St. Louis area and the same age as the victim, posted on the website iStudio.com that she was studying to be an art therapist and was hoping to become a model. "I really would like to do beer advertising," the woman wrote in the posting.
Busch, 46, was chief executive at Anheuser-Busch from 2006 until the maker of Budweiser, Bud Light and other beers was purchased by InBev in 2008. The $52 billion merger created the world's largest brewery. Busch remains a member of the board of directors for InBev.
The Post-Dispatch reported that Busch and his wife of 2 years divorced in 2009.
In 1983, Busch, then a 20-year-old University of Arizona student, left a bar with a 22-year-old woman. His black Corvette crashed and the woman, Michele Frederick, was killed. Busch was found hours later at his home. He suffered a fractured skull and claimed he had amnesia. After a seven-month investigation, authorities declined to press criminal charges, citing a lack of evidence.
Police and the St. Louis County medical examiner's office on Thursday identified the victim as Adrienne N. Martin of St. Charles. An autopsy has been conducted but results could take four to six weeks.
Police were called Sunday afternoon to the home in the St. Louis suburb of Huntleigh and found Martin's body. St. Louis County forensic administrator Suzanne McCune said there were no signs of trauma or illness.
Art Margulis, an attorney for Busch, said Martin was a friend of Busch who was visiting the home. He said there was "absolutely nothing suspicious" about Martin's death.
"It was a tragic death of a young woman," he said.
STLtoday.com, the website for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, quoted unnamed friends as saying Martin and Busch were dating. The newspaper said Martin was the mother of an 8-year-old child.
Frontenac police, whose area of coverage includes Huntleigh, provided information in a faxed news release that did not say if the death was considered suspicious. Phone messages seeking an interview were not returned. The release did not say why news of the death was not announced until four days later.
The statement from police said the department received a 911 call at 1:15 p.m. Sunday about an "unresponsive person" at the home. Martin was deceased when paramedics and officers arrived, the release said.
McCune declined to speculate on the investigation or the cause of death. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying the case was being investigated as a possible overdose. McCune would only say that an overdose was among the possible causes.
A woman identified as Adrienne Nicole Martin, from the St. Louis area and the same age as the victim, posted on the website iStudio.com that she was studying to be an art therapist and was hoping to become a model. "I really would like to do beer advertising," the woman wrote in the posting.
Busch, 46, was chief executive at Anheuser-Busch from 2006 until the maker of Budweiser, Bud Light and other beers was purchased by InBev in 2008. The $52 billion merger created the world's largest brewery. Busch remains a member of the board of directors for InBev.
The Post-Dispatch reported that Busch and his wife of 2 years divorced in 2009.
In 1983, Busch, then a 20-year-old University of Arizona student, left a bar with a 22-year-old woman. His black Corvette crashed and the woman, Michele Frederick, was killed. Busch was found hours later at his home. He suffered a fractured skull and claimed he had amnesia. After a seven-month investigation, authorities declined to press criminal charges, citing a lack of evidence.
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