Good December to you all.  Here it is the first.  It seems that I was wishing you all a good November 1st just yesterday.  Oh, well, 'time flies' as they say.

The evening news last night had a follow-up story to one they featured about a month ago which pitted Dr. Oz against Dr. Besser on the safety of fruit juices.  Oz had just tested a limited number of samples of apple and grape juices and found a significant number of samples contained amounts of lead and arsenic that exceeded the limits allowed for tap water.  Besser  took vigorous issue with the results: they were too few, from a single lab, without confirming testing.  And the FDA had told him that the levels found did not exceed FDA limits and that the arsenic testing did not differentiate between a harmless version of arsenic and the harmful type.  Now Consumer Reports has followed up and confirmed Oz's results.  Worse Besser found out that the FDA essentially lied to him--on both counts.  The FDA had no guidelines covering arsenic and lead in juices and now are recommending parents limit the amount of juice kids drink.  I am not really surprised about the heavy metal contamination in the juices.  After all, with wide spread industrial pollution, I imagine that a lot of rural areas are affected and the plants will take up the pollutions along with water and nutrients from the soil.  I have read of several of city areas that wanted to establish community gardens only to find the soil so contaminated they had to either scrape most of the soil out and replace it or use containers.  The fact that concerns me is the lies from the FDA.  That agency is supposed to ensure the safety of the food supply and they lie to a physician/medical reporter when he asks them for crucial information.

I notice two headlines saying Herman Cain is accusing his critics of 'character assassination.'  That is funny because one would have to have character before someone could assassinate it.  I see very little character in most of the Repthuglican candidates--an abundance of personality but no character.

The morning news carried a couple of repeats of the story about the former Colorado sheriff who is now locked up in the jail named for him.  None of the stories gave any details beyond that little bit of irony so when I saw the link on the Political Wire I followed it.  There is a lot more hilarious irony to the story.  The sheriff is a Republican charged with trading drugs for sex--with a man.