Free Republic

Democrats plan "pain" for Republicans who seek to slow or block passage of healthcare legislation, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Wednesday night. Brown said that if Republicans try to offer amendments and use parliamentary maneuvers to grind out the legislative process, Democrats would retaliate with all-night sessions and other methods of fighting back. "I think they're going to try to do amendments, as many as they can get away with," Brown said Wednesday evening during an appearance on MSNBC. "I think we keep them here all night -- tonight, the next night, the next night, the next night." "If they're...

Oprah Winfrey, the daytime television guru who encourages viewers daily by telling them they have the power to achieve any goal they might set for themselves, questioned Bristol Palin’s goal of abstaining from sex until marriage in a recent interview: “In a Jan. 22 interview, Oprah criticized Bristol Palin, the teen daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, for recently telling In Touch Weekly that she was pledging abstinence until marriage. ‘I kind of bristled,’ Oprah began, ‘when I saw this—where you said, ‘I’m not going to have sex until I’m married. I can guarantee it’ ... I’m just...

Just got a call (here at work) from a telemarketer with a private number concerning "our local and long distance telephone provider" - I hung up as I always do. The woman called back 3 minutes later and said the following: "Now your getting your services changed bitch!" and hung up.

A cup of Brazilian mint tea has pain relieving qualities to match those of commercially available analgesics, a study suggests. Hyptis crenata has been prescribed by Brazilian healers for millennia to treat ailments from headaches and stomach pain to fever and flu. Working on mice, a Newcastle University team has proved scientifically that the ancient medicine men were right. The study is published in the journal Acta Horticulturae.

With flu vaccination season in full swing, research from the University of Rochester Medical Center cautions that use of many common pain killers – Advil, Tylenol, aspirin – at the time of injection may blunt the effect of the shot and have a negative effect on the immune system. Richard P. Phipps, Ph.D., professor of Environmental Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and of Pediatrics, has been studying this issue for years and recently presented his latest findings to an international conference on inflammatory diseases. (http://bioactivelipidsconf.wayne.edu/) “What we’ve been saying all along, and continue to stress, is that it’s probably not a...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The man who ran John McCain's presidential campaign warned Friday that Sarah Palin could lead to a 'catastrophic' election result for the GOP in 2012 if the former Alaska governor captures the party's presidential nomination. "I think that she has talents," Steve Schmidt, the former campaign manager of McCain's failed presidential bid, told CNN's John King. "But my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, and in fact, were she the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result." The comments came during The Atlantic Magazine's First...

CLINTON v. OBAMA "Better put some ice on that..." --Bill Clinton to Juanita Broaddrick after he assaulted her in 1978.... ""Maybe you're better off, uh, not having the surgery, but taking, uh, the pain killer..."--Barack Hussein Obama to Jane Sturm on August 9, 2009FREEPERs VOTE...which one of these quotes is more outrageous?

Swearing may actually reduce the pain of, say, slicing your finger with a kitchen knife or accidentally banging your toes or your head. New research from Britain’s Keele University shows that when you let loose with a few four-letter words after these commonplace injuries, you can ease the discomfort. For the study, the investigators asked 64 volunteers to immerse their hands in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating their favorite swear word. Then, they were asked to repeat the experiment but to choose a word that they would use to describe a table. The...

Stacy Porter, 29, can’t remember a time when she didn’t suffer from crippling, relentless migraines before having the surgery that changed her life eight years ago.“I was diagnosed with migraines when I was 2 years old,” the New Philadelphia, Ohio, marketing executive tells WebMD. “I had about 15 days a month of severe migraine pain.” Her symptoms included throbbing pain in her temples, nausea, and sensitivity to light so severe she remembers wearing sunglasses to more than one final exam in high school and college. None of the drugs used to prevent migraines helped, so her only relief came from...

Tears streamed down the little boy's face. He had just emerged from a memorial service for the crew of the space shuttle Challenger a few days after it had exploded in the sky over Florida, January 28, 1986, killing all seven astronauts. "I just don't understand," he told the TV reporter, "why God wanted to take them now." The young boy expresses our tendency to picture God as wanting human beings to suffer and die. But do we really buy this idea? Deep down we believe that God is all good and not to be blamed for space tragedies,...

A friend of mine got a call from the IRS. He is getting audited. He and another friend that worked for the same company, had the boss hanging out over their shoulder, who browbeat them into taking riskier deductions than perhaps they might have. Both are getting audited. My friend is seeking the collective wisdom of the group with regards to audits. 1) total transparency 2) get a lawyer 3) a particular strategery Thank you FRiends.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. John Kerry must have been channeling his inner Letterman yesterday. The Bay State senator was telling a group of business and civic leaders in town at his invitation about the “bizarre’’ tale of how South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had “disappeared for four days’’ and claimed to be hiking along the Appalachian Trail, but no one was really certain of his whereabouts.

... "I felt overall pain to the point that even when my children or husband just touched me it hurt."... ..."I am really, really good," Campbell said. "Having said that, I'm still not 100 percent. I'm still not that person I was before." Campbell was one of 10 women with fibromyalgia to take part in a small pilot study at Stanford over a 14-week period to test the new use of a low dose of a drug called naltrexone for the treatment of chronic pain. ..."Even after the study, it just got better and better and better," Campbell said. "I...

Ever wish you got something really painful on camera, right at the moment of impact? Well these people managed. These have all got to hurt. More pics on site

You know that moment where time seems to slow down, as your body fills with adrenaline, anticipating the imminent pain? Well, I can guarantee these people were experiencing just that, and perhaps some are well passed that:

Prayer request for Brett,older brother to one of my son's baseball team mates. _________________________________________________________ First of all: THANK YOU! We appreciate your calls, texts, food, etc. thru the last few days. We have not been able to get back to everyone and thought we would try this to get many of you. I am home for a few hours and decided to try this option to reach most of you. I’m sure I have missed some, but it wasn’t intentional! Please feel free to forward on to anyone else you know has been interested. Update as of Tuesday Evening: Given...

I served as Deacon at the solemn “Celebration of the Lords Passion”. This frail couple approached. The wife could barely walk without her husband’s loving firm support. As they drew closer, I could see that the husband’s face was filled with deep wrinkles, the kind of love lines etched in the face from suffering borne with grace. His head was covered with unkempt white hair and framed with a coarse white beard. His eyes were filled with pure love for his beloved wife whom he assisted so tenderly as she came forward to venerate the Holy Cross.Her eyes were distant...

Enlarge ImageBrother morphine. Research with rats may explain why opioid painkillers work better for males.Credit: Scott Camazine/Photo Researchers Inc. Men get more relief than women do from painkillers like morphine, according to some studies. New research with rats hints at a possible explanation: Male rats have more receptors for the drug in a brain region involved in pain processing. Although it's not yet clear whether the same is true in humans, researchers say the study underscores the need for more research on the sex-specific effects of pain drugs. The new study used rats in part because they exhibit a...

The California Air Resources Board approval last week of top-down micromanagement of industries and commerce, ostensibly to rid California of global warming, is a broad intrusion into the private sector that not only will be costly, but ultimately a solution for a problem whose dimensions have been defined more by politics than science and probably doesn't even exist. The ARB's "scoping plan" details the regulations and costs to be imposed on nearly every facet of California economic life to implement 2006's presumptuously named "Global Warming Solutions Act." It's the last thing a struggling economy needs, and the last thing a...

Cheryl Weinstein’s left knee bothered her for years, but when it started clicking and hurting when she straightened it, she told her internist that something was definitely wrong. But in many cases it is just not known whether what is seen on a scan is the cause of the pain. The problem is that all too often, no one knows what is normal... --snip-- As a rheumatologist, Dr. Felson saw patient after patient with knee pain, many of whom had already had scans. And he was becoming concerned about their findings. Often, a scan would show that a person with...