His bones never really grew properly in this area, so at age eight he underwent his first corrective operation. This latest was the ninth procedure on this foot.

This go round, his surgeon removed most of the assorted metal implanted in my brother's ankle (pins, staples, screws, broken screw bits, etc.). The surgeon then broke the foot and ankle in three places, inserted pins to hold everything together, stapled together the incisions, and sealed the whole thing in place with a cast.

Hopefully this will be the last surgery the kid will ever need on his ankle.

I've since taken him to get the visible metal removed, and he's asked me to document the process. He has all of the photos and while he hasn't shared many yet I've included a pic of hispre-staple-removal foot below the jump. (Not for the faint of heart). If he sends me more pics, I'll also add them here -- I know I took a great shot of his doctors yanking out the pins with a pair of pliers. Good times.

He's now staple and pin-free and has upgraded to a walking cast. A few more weeks and he'll even be off of crutches entirely. Happy holidays, indeed.

33 staples + 3 six-inch pins = No joke

Now to keep the villagers from stabbing him with pitchforks, and him from using the pins as jewelry for piercings. Yikes.

A centrist Democrat after extensive poll research and discussion with lobbyists.

Paul Krugman vents via today's op-ed in The New York Times:

When I first began writing for The Times, I was naïve about many things. But my biggest misconception was this: I actually believed that influential people could be moved by evidence, that they would change their views if events completely refuted their beliefs.

And to be fair, it does happen now and then. I’ve been highly critical of Alan Greenspan over the years (since long before it was fashionable), but give the former Fed chairman credit: he has admitted that he was wrong about the ability of financial markets to police themselves.

But he’s a rare case. Just how rare was demonstrated by what happened last Friday in the House of Representatives, when — with the meltdown caused by a runaway financial system still fresh in our minds, and the mass unemployment that meltdown caused still very much in evidence — every single Republican and 27 Democrats voted against a quite modest effort to rein in Wall Street excesses.

Krugman then goes on to tell a short, rational, fact-based story of U.S. financial history and the events leading up to last year's market crash. Well worth the full read.

Bottom line? In all arenas -- health care and financial reform, national security, education, whatever -- Republican's continue to spout their trademark brand of crazy rhetoric. It's the so-called centrist Democrats that I can't stand. The Republicans will say anything to tear down the Dems and get their party back into power. Simple power play. I get it. They believe in themselves and, collectively, in their party. The centrist Dems, on the other hand, claim to stand by values in line with the Democrats yet believe in nothing but getting themselves reelected, by any means necessary. At best they're mercenaries, at worst nihilists. And while that must be exhausting for them, they're ruining the future for the rest of us.

Americans support the notion of a government administered health insurance plan by a margin of 65% to 26%. According to the same poll, people who identify themselves as Democrats favor the public option by a margin of 81% to 12%. That’s nearly 7 to 1 in favor of, yet the representatives of the Democrat party in the Senate Finance Committee only voted for the public option at a ratio of 8 to 5. Perhaps the most interesting number revealed by this poll is that Republican voters favor the public option 47% to 42%.

So why can’t the people’s representatives in Washington get behind the public option? Specifically, why can’t these five Democrats get behind it when 81% of people in their party want the option?

Look at the amount of money the health industry has pumped into these five Democrat’s coffers:

- Max Baucus got $7,734,102,

- Blanche Lincoln received $4,190,592,

- Ken Conrad took in $3,287,891,

- Bill Nelson was given $2,414,895

- Tom Carper accepted $1,592,380 from health industry interests.

If money is the reason these five Democrats rejected the public option, then it only took a little over 19 million dollars over 20 years to buy the five votes the health insurance industry needed to kill any meaningful reform to their industry.

intershame.com