Hello Springfield!
It's Friday, July 18 and I am joining Jason in calling for anyone who reads this blog to email Rex Hansen rhansen@journalbroadcastgroup.com and Vincent Jericho vjericho@journalbroadcastgroup.com to admonish their station's broadcast of Michael Savage's preposterous claim of autism being a "fake" and "fraud" condition.
Please read today's entry at www.lifeofjason.com for details of Savage's ludicrous assertions concerning a condition undeserving of aspersions such as the popular conservative talk show host made in his recent broadcast.
If you are a regular listener of the radio station KSGF I urge you to write to Hansen and Jericho and express your concern over this issue in the strongest terms possible.
Have a nice day
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Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
I love lighthouses. This is one of my favorites.
Sunrise on Outer Banks
I love the ocean. This is a beach near Kitty Hawk.
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The Right Turn for American Energy
About Me
- Stu Solomon
- Springfield, MO, United States
- I am a copy editor and columnist for Community Free Press in Springfield, MO. I have resided here since 2006. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, MI. I also have nearly 100 additional credit hours in Education, Music, and Sociology. I love animals and live with my two dogs Dylan and Toby. I was a professional chef for nearly 20 years and love to cook and entertain. I am also a musician. I currently play piano with Jenny Vinyard, a superlative songstress. I've played in a variety of bands on several instruments.
Q: What's Wrong With This Picture?
NOTHING!
US Coast Guard In Action
This Coast Guard ship buzzed our ferry to let the pilot know that he was getting too close to the channel markers.
Another Lighthouse
For the life of me, I can't remember the name of this lighthouse and it was the first oceanic lighthouse I've ever seen in person. This lighthouse is on the same island of the outer banks that I stayed on. Kitty Hawk is also on this island
Oldest and Smallest
If I'm remembering correctly, this lighthouse is the oldest remaining on the outerbanks
View From the Ferry
A view of the same lighthouse taken from a departing ferry bound for Point Lookout.
Sunset on the Water
The next few pics are of sunset while travelling on a ferry between outer banks islands.
Beautiful
I didn't make my ultimate destination. Not sure if any of you are familiar with the region, but I was heading for Cape Lookout and a lighhouse that sits on what I believe is one of the southernmost out bank islands and some absolutely fantastic shots of the lighthouse have been taken over the years.
More Sunset on the Water
I couldn't stop taking pictures of this sunset. The ferry ride was seemingly interminable. I had miscalculated the distance and time and discovered that it was actually two ferry rides. I would have arrived at Cape Lookout after dark and there was no way of guaranteeing accommodation. Instead I waited for the return ferry and finally made it back to Kitty Hawk around 2 in the morning.
Last Sunset
That ferry ride was very long and thought-provoking. My mom had died a few months before and I was really adrift in the world and hadn't decided to "land" in Springfield, yet. Sitting on the ferry for hours prompted me to do a lot of thinking. Just happened that way. I know it's when I decided to just start looking for a home in Springfield and spend some quality time with my family. Something that was long overdue.
Cape Lookout
This is Cape Lookout. I'm gonna make it there someday.
6 comments:
Not saying I agree with Savage however it is hard not to understand some of his points of contention when you get this from the following website:
http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer
Here are some signs to look for in the children in your life:
* Lack of or delay in spoken language
* Repetitive use of language and/or motor mannerisms (e.g., hand-flapping, twirling objects)
* Little or no eye contact
* Lack of interest in peer relationships
* Lack of spontaneous or make-believe play
* Persistent fixation on parts of objects
My soon to be 20 year old son fit all of these requirements and yet we intervened with him from the earliest stages and became involved parents because we thought something wasn't right in his mannerisms. We hired some people, which required me getting a second job, in order to work through his speech problems and the various issues that related to him being born premature.
Never was he diagnosed as being autistic or having any thing wrong with him but hard work and persistence allowed him to graduate from high school and he is currently enrolled in college.
I believe if everyone would just look at the broad expanse of how these deficiencies become defined it is quite simple to see why Savage proclaimed that 99% (NOT 100%)could involve something not related to autism.
By the way your column on why Libertarians won't ever get elected on any level but the local was RIGHT on the money and mirrored a post of my own a couple months ago on the same topic. Here is the link and it is about the fourth one down.
http://417-political-pundit.blogspot.com/2008_06_08_archive.html
Thanks, Stu.
You know. There are a lot of conditions that are what some believe to be overly diagnosed. The diagnostic skill of 20 years ago compared to today's tendency to diagnose in order to be "on the safe side" or to err for the sake of caution is a testimony to the possibility of overcompensation.
There are a lot of overlapping "symptoms" of various disorders and diagnosing autism is not easy to do. I don't believe it is a disorder doctors gain much satisfaction from.
Savage is wrong in his assessment of the disorder and his motivation for making the statement is driven by an irrational perspective in the first place. There may be people collecting for children with "borderline" cases, but I am reasonably certain parents and families and friends of people with autistic disorders would be more than happy to sacrifice the pittance they receive if they could have something that approached what most of us take for granted as a "normal" lifestyle.
Say what you will about Savage, the one thing that can be said about the man is that he does speak what is on his mind. I don't find fault in this position and I believe it to be an admirable trait, if only more people would do the same.
I would bet there is much over diagnosis in these "mental disorder" fields just as there were in the cases of ADD, ADHD and the lessor known adult ADD. The drug companies do a wonderful job of promoting there product across the airwaves which allows a good percentage of people to develop these symptoms du jour. I'm not saying this is true in all cases but to have 1 out of every 150 child born being diagnosed as autistic leads me to think there are under lying problems in the medical field to create crisis which will then need to be solved by government.
What a great way to promote such an agenda as single payer health care then to have much of the population being diagnosed with some sort of mental illness which will require millions of dollars in treatment.
I can only base my actual knowledge on what I have seen out of my own two kids and what I have researched on various websites relating to these conditions.
It does a person such as Jenny Garth no good to have a child diagnosed with autism in terms of government services, however her plight brings national attention to the issue which in many cases is a good thing, but don't chastise some people because they disagree with the majority educate them on how they might be wrong. We as a society are much to quick to point out faults because someone doesn't agree with the mainstream.
Here in Springfield many believe our local government is doing such a fine job that they attack those that would dare question the under lying motives of the council decisions. When someone uses facts to point out the fallacies of that argument many will go on the offensive an attack the individual writing or speaking what was on their mind.
If I don't believe autism exist that doesn't give anyone the right to force shutting me up or trying to shut me down, but it does give many an opportunity to use my statements in a manner to either change my mindset or to use those statements in any manner to convince others that I might not be a stable individual and as such my credibility in the eyes of many might falter. Don't take it personally if the exact opposite occurs however.
There's nothing personal about it, but when the diagnostic practices of doctors comes under heavy scrutiny, many times government will have a "knee jerk" reaction to it and over-legislate or the AMA may do the same thing and then we end up with people not being diagnosed for the sake of bureacratic efficiency or just aplain old "tightwad" mentality regarding the deserving people who through no fault of their own find themselves dependent on the government for subsidies just to try to make ends meet under the financial strain of having to provide for a loved one with one or more of these conditions.
"If I don't believe autism exist that doesn't give anyone the right to force shutting me up or trying to shut me down, but it does give many an opportunity to use my statements in a manner to either change my mindset or to use those statements in any manner to convince others that I might not be a stable individual and as such my credibility in the eyes of many might falter. Don't take it personally if the exact opposite occurs however."
Considering it won't, there's nothing to take personally. :)
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