Top 5 Overused Words Within a Single Movie

5.  "The Force" (Star Wars - A New Hope) - used repeatedly by people in the movie who wouldn't even know what The Force was.  They backed off in the later episodes, thankfully

4. "Station" (Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) - meaning, apparently, "cool", or "awesome".  A distraction from an important piece of American culture.  Not excellent. 

3. "Idiot" (101 Dalmations) - Cruella slings the most, Rogers is hit with the most.  I counted.  Really.  

2. "Bangarang" (Hook) - almost wrecks an otherwise good movie

1. "Oo-da-lally" (Disney's Robin Hood) - not even close.  Please make it stop...

Public Health

I think everything that is wrong with our government can be seen by going to the CDC website.  Go have a look.

Notice anything odd?  I did.  Look at their mission statement.

CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.

Now these are are noble things, but to me, there is only one mission for CDC (and NIH) and one type of disease that needs controlling: communicable diseases.

Here are examples of real public health issues:

• Oddball viral infections from the African jungle that have no cure and kill victims before they can develop immunity (trying to think of an example here... oh yeah). We want these kept out of our country and rapidly contained if they get in. 
• Preventing old viral and bacterial illnesses that are still out there in the world from making it back into the US.  Things like polio and Tuberculosis are real and we can catch them.  
• Potentially fatal respiratory viral illnesses flooding into the US from our de-facto open borders policy.  
• Zombies

What we see from our government health agencies is different:

However, the Washington Free Beacon has uncovered $39,643,352 worth of NIH studies within the past several years that have gone to questionable research.

For instance, the agency has spent $2,873,440 trying to figure out why lesbians are obese, and $466,642 on why fat girls have a tough time getting dates. Another $2,075,611 was spent encouraging old people to join choirs.

Millions have gone to “text message interventions,” including a study where researchers sent texts to drunks at the bar to try to get them to stop drinking. The project received an additional grant this year, for a total of $674,590.

The NIH is also texting older African Americans with HIV ($372,460), HIV and drug users in rural areas ($693,000), HIV smokers ($763,519), pregnant smokers ($380,145), teen moms ($243,839), and meth addicts ($360,113). Text message interventions to try to get obese people to lose weight have cost $2,707,067.

The NIH’s research on obesity has led to spending $2,101,064 on wearable insoles and buttons that can track a person’s weight, and $374,670 to put on fruit and vegetable puppet shows for preschoolers.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with trying to get people to stop smoking, drink less or lose weight - but I see these as PRIVATE health issues.  I can choose not to do any of those unhealthy things.  I cannot choose to avoid an infection if someone is walking around in public, shedding, ejecting or excreting pathogens, and my family or I unwittingly come in contact with it.

Then there's this:

in 1996, Congress cut off gun control funding for the CDC—mainly because the NRA demonstrated to legislators the CDC was buying political misinformation rather than science.

Now, 14 years later, your tax dollars are once against being used to fund a campaign against your rights through the federal National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In mid-September, the University of Pennsylvania released a study paid for by the nih with $639,586 of your tax dollars. The study’s “conclusion” claimed people who possessed guns are 4.5 times more likely to be shot than people who do not possess them.

As usual, media all over the country publicized this latest “good” news. Gun-ban groups jumped on the bandwagon.

Gun control is NOT a health issue - it's a political issue.  Our public health agencies have no say in how a constitutional right is handled.

What we've got here is a failure to focus.  The CDC has ONE JOB, in my opinion.  They're not doing it.  Perhaps it's OK if NIH wants to preach to us about the other stuff, provided the CDC has the epidemic problem handled.  I'm doubtful that they do.

Hey, look: if they have an opinion on all of these other things, I'm willing to listen up to a point.  But let's make sure as a first priority that we have the main job covered and we don't get a real-life version of The Stand.

And now I'm retreating back to Twitter where I can't go beyond 140 characters.

Seek me on Twitter, wanderer...

What are you doing here?  I don't post much here anymore, but I keep the site around because I like the name, and may start using it in the future. 

I'm on Twitter @dougcobbokc

Follow, if you dare.  There's a link on the right for your convenience.