Author: Lance Garrison
“What a sick … My God.”President Biden offered many eloquent turns of phrase on the importance and the fragility of democracy in his well-crafted campaign kickoff speech on Friday near Valley Forge, Pa. But it was this brief, unfinished aside — off-script, sandwiched around an extended silence during which the president clenched his fists in an effort to resist uttering the curse behind his teeth — that best captured the exasperating reality he, along with a majority of the country, struggles to cope with as we enter an election year unlike any in American history.The sick [expletive] in question is,…
Claudia Morhibi, 51, has lived with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) for over 30 years. She is in stage IV kidney disease, and her doctor has recently begun to talk to her about preparing for dialysis.“My mom went through dialysis for 5 years while she was on the wait list for a kidney transplant,” says Morhibi. “It was not a good experience — it left her often feeling nauseous and fatigued. But when it gets to that point, you have no choice.”For many people, it’s a temporary option until a kidney transplant becomes available, “but they may have to…
I’m near-term slightly more optimistic but long-term pessimistic about the ability of the United States to deal with its budget problems. My uptick in optimism comes from a deal in Washington, while the pessimism comes from what I heard at an economics conference in San Antonio that I attended last weekend.First, the good news: Facing the prospect of a partial government shutdown, House and Senate leaders announced on Sunday that they had agreed on a plan for the rest of this fiscal year that would put discretionary spending around the level that President Biden and then-speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to…
To the Editor:Re “In Blistering Speech, President Condemns Trump as Dire Threat” (news article, Jan. 6):President Biden’s speech near Valley Forge on Friday, in which he took direct aim at Donald Trump with rhetoric that was hard-hitting and convincing in tone and substance, was his best enumeration yet of the misdeeds that clearly disqualify Mr. Trump from being president.Finally breaking his reticence, Mr. Biden gave Americans many compelling reasons why a restoration of the deeply flawed and authoritarian Mr. Trump to the presidency would be disastrous and perhaps fatal for the cause of democracy. Clearly, the president and his team…
Jan. 8, 2024 – They’re not regulated by the federal government, at least not yet, but a substantial number of Americans reportedly use hemp-derived alternative cannabinoid products. Some take them to manage pain, others to help improve their sleep. Known more commonly as CBD, delta-8, CBG, and CBN, these products have flooded the marketplace.Users interviewed for this story recommend caution and encouraged others to find a reputable source or brand and sticking with it. So how many American adults are using these products? “We were surprised that over a quarter of Americans used these emerging cannabinoid products in the past year,” said Kevin…
If you have polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and you’ve reached end-stage renal disease (ESRD), you may need a kidney transplant.Here’s what you can expect and how to navigate the process.How do I get a new kidney?There are two ways to get a new kidney. You can get a donation from a deceased donor or a living donor.With a deceased donor, you go on a waiting list to receive a kidney from someone who has died. With a living donor, you arrange to use a kidney from someone who’s living.How long does it take?If you wait for a deceased donor, it…
Since Claudine Gay’s resignation as president of Harvard University on Tuesday, it has become an article of faith among some of her supporters and other observers that she was targeted, criticized and essentially driven from the job largely because of her race. The idea is that the people who questioned her abilities and academic integrity — be they Harvard donors who found fault with her leadership after Oct. 7 or conservative activists who led an inquiry into plagiarism in her scholarly work — were marked and even motivated by animus toward a Black woman attaining such a degree of power…
With presidential primaries, it ain’t over till it’s over. Still, given the Republicans’ enduring devotion to their MAGA king, it’s best to mentally prepare oneself for the likelihood that the guy who has long been the prohibitive front-runner will, in fact, win the nomination. And a particularly juicy part of that preparation is obsessing over who Donald Trump will pick as his new pain sponge — erm, running mate — and what that choice could tell us about his strategy and state of mind this time around.Will Mr. Trump go with a white man who has displayed MAGA fealty? That…
Just before 2023 gave way to 2024, my husband and I drove down a mountain, talking about how to manage election-year anxiety. Specifically, my election-year anxiety. We had just spent a few days in a cottage in the woods, and we were jazzed on silence and stillness and the obligation to do nothing but walk together among the trees. To listen to the wind in the trees.We weren’t making New Year’s resolutions, exactly. We were feeling for ways to carry those days of calm into a troubling new year. I was proposing things like eating by candlelight every night or…
There is a famous story by the French writer Jean Giono about a man who plants trees in a barren valley. “For three years he had been planting trees in this wilderness. He had planted one hundred thousand. Of the hundred thousand, twenty thousand had sprouted. Of the twenty thousand he still expected to lose about half, to rodents or to the unpredictable designs of Providence. There remained ten thousand oak trees to grow where nothing had grown before.”President Biden has planted a lot of trees during his first three years in office, pushing through Congress bills that direct the…