Live Long and Prosper -- Jack LaLanne

LaLanne proved that eating right and exercising can lead to a long and happy life. Imagine if that idea caught on? What would that do for our national healthcare bills? If we stopped practicing our suicidal behaviors, it is estimated our national heathcare expenses would DROP by One-Third.

No other approach to healthcare can save us as much -- and do it free.


Jan 24 2011

Jack LaLanne, Fitness Pioneer, Dies At 96

Famous for encouraging people to exercise regardless of their age, LaLanne passed away Sunday at his California home.

Before Jazzercise, before spinning, before kettle bells, Pilates, Wii Fit, Zumba or the Shake Weight, there was Jack LaLanne. The seemingly tireless fitness guru who taught the world how to get in shape for nearly 80 years died on Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, California, due to respiratory failure resulting from pneumonia. He was 96.

"He was surrounded by his family and passed very peacefully and in no distress ... and with the football game on Sunday, so everything was normal," daughter Yvonne LaLanne, 66, told Reuters.

LaLanne spent his life encouraging couch potatoes to be fit, helping to jump-start the modern fitness movement while proving that it's never too late to get in shape. Though a modest 5' 6", LaLanne had an oversize personality and the monster heart of a salesman when it came to promoting exercise. From swimming from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman's Wharf while handcuffed and pulling a 1,000-pound boat at age 60 to slapping the cuffs on again and pulling 70 people in 70 boats for more than a mile through Long Beach Harbor a decade later, LaLanne never stopped encouraging Americans to push themselves and their bodies in search of peak fitness.

Born Francois Henri LaLanne in San Francisco on September 26, 1914, to French immigrant parents, The New York Times reported that LaLanne spent his early years on his parents' sheep farm in Bakersfield, California. Pimply and nearsighted at age 15, LaLanne described himself as a junk-food-junky-scarfing high school dropout whose life was changed one day when his mother took him to a women's club for a talk on nutrition and health.

Inspired, LaLanne began hitting the local YMCA to lift weights, ditched the sugary snacks and began studying Gray's Anatomy to learn about the body's muscles. By the time he was 21, he opened his first fitness studio and launched "The Jack LaLanne Show" in 1951 in the San Francisco area, going national eight years later with the workout program in which he used such primitive props as broomsticks, a chair and a stretchy rubber cord.

The show aired in various incarnations through the mid-1980s and LaLanne became a favorite guest on late-night and radio talk shows, where he would eagerly show off his physical prowess, doing fingertip push-ups and other stunts most men half his age could not perform. In addition to the TV show, LaLanne opened a string of fitness studios across the country, invented and sold exercise machines, and in recent years famously marketed the Power Juicer, a mixer that blends raw vegetables and juices into healthy shakes.

LaLanne was such an institution that he was often asked to do cameos in films and TV shows, including "The Addams Family," "Mr. Ed," "Arli$$," "The Simpsons" and the 1990 Leslie Nielsen horror spoof "Repossessed."

As the Post Office goes, so will go ObamaCare

The government runs the mail business in ways similar to the ways it will run more and more of the healthcare business. We can see where the encroaching government management will take us. The future of healthcare is unaffordable if we follow the path set by Obama and his spendthrift idealists. However, the news about the Post Office is good news for those who own stock in Pitney Bowes.

GAO: Postal Service business 'not viable'

Happy Monday! The U.S. Postal Service's current business model "is not viable" and the mail agency should make deeper job and wage cuts, hire more part-time staff and consider outsourcing operations, according to a draft of a government audit acquired by The Federal Eye.

Auditors also urge Congress to remove restrictions on the Postal Service's ability to cut Saturday mail delivery and close post offices, according to the report, which offers recommendations similar to the USPS's own proposed 10-year business plan.

Lawmakers requested the Government Accountability Office report, set for a Monday release, as they prepare to consider the USPS plan, which was introduced last month. The proposals call for an end to six-day delivery and ask Congress to give the mail agency the ability to raise prices beyond the rate of inflation and close post offices if necessary.

The report's conclusions pleased top postal officials who are gathered this week in Nashville for the annual National Postal Forum, a convention for the mail agency's largest customers.

Postmaster General John E. Potter said Sunday he was pleased with the GAO's general conclusions, but concerned with suggestions in the report that further study of the issue is required.

"We've studied this significantly, the time for study is over, now's the time for action," he said.

Potter and his colleagues estimate the Postal Service will lose a record $7 billion in the fiscal year that ends in September and could lose at least $238 billion in the next decade if Congress fails to act.

Auditors appeared to push beyond the USPS proposal. "If no action is taken, risks of larger USPS losses, rate increases and taxpayer subsides will increase," GAO said.

The Postal Service should provide more lucrative incentive packages to potential retirees to try to accelerate attrition, auditors said. They also recommended USPS consider outsourcing more delivery routes and mail services to contractors and seek concessions on wage and benefits from its labor unions during negotiations later this year.

Lawmakers also should consider establishing a panel similar to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to independently recommend changes, the report said. Auditors suggested that more details are needed about potential delivery cuts and post office closures.

Most lawmakers and regulators have reacted tepidly to proposed changes. Potter's meetings in Nashville will be mostly with customers who could suffer from proposed cuts and price increases.

GAO concluded that the recession served as the "tipping point" that accelerated a shift away from traditional snail mail for most of the Postal Service's biggest customers, including insurance and banking companies.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who will lead postal reform efforts in the Senate, said that if GAO's conclusions are correct, "it is imperative that Congress, postal management, postal employees, customers and other stakeholders give up on old fights and biases and work together to cut the Postal Service's costs and adjust its operations to meet a changing environment."

Lulled by Sound of Obama's Voice, Not his Words

In his speech two nights ago, Obama repeated campaign slogans, post election statements and post inaugural statements.. The only new aspect was the tone. Instead of playing Chicken Little/Cassandra and claiming "catastrophe" is at hand, he delivered his latest oratory of utopian slush with a more hopeful fervor. He omitted "catastrophe" from his vocabulary for the evening. But he mentioned "crisis" six times -- a record low. Perhaps someone told him that every time he speaks, financial markets drop.

But if he's mindful of his impact on financial markets, it's odd that he most of his pronouncements of the last few months into a single presentation. However, it was no shock in the morning when the financial markets dropped in response.

Bottom line -- instead of inspiring confidence in the places where it matters, he showed people once again that he is lost in the woods. He's got his Big Three. Energy, Healthcare and Education. In his world of scientific and financial alchemy, the sun, wind and water will supply the energy we will convert into a useful form -- and the conversion will happen in sufficient quantities and at low cost, even though today, oil and gas supply energy at a tiny fraction of the cost of these alternatives. However, he did introduce a contrivance to raise the cost of oil and gas -- for Americans. The carbon cap, which will be ignored by all developing nations and most others as well.

It's a bad sign when oil and gas are cheap but the president says we're going to use other forms of energy anyway. He's determined to increase unnecessary and pointless government spending when we can least afford it. His plan will do little to reduce the aggregate consumption of oil and gas in the US, but it will punish the users -- people who heat their homes with oil and gas, building owners who do the same, and everyone and every business that depends on oil and gas for transportation fuel. That includes airlines, shipping and trucking. Obama wants to force millions of businesses into bankruptcy because they depend on cheap fuel. What a guy.

Healthcare. Yeah. Let the government run it. Sure. The government runs the public school system. Some of it is good and a lot of it is bad. But all of it is expensive. New York City spent over $15,000 per student in the latest fiscal year. But critics say that's not enough. There's a carryover here. New York State spent $45 BILLION on Medicaid in 2006 -- the latest year for which figures are available -- and that works out to about $10,000 per person for the year. But critics say the Medicaid system needs more money. In other words, fraud is out of control and the fraudsters want more because it's so easy to rip off the system. Just imagine the possibilities for fraud in a national system? On top of that, when word gets out that illegal aliens sneaking into the US get free comprehensive healthcare instead of merely free emergency care, the caravans will form at the Mexican border and all sea lanes will be clogged with boats and leaky tubs of every description.

Education. Obama seems to think everyone should go to college. I guess that means the US will depend on unschooled people from other countries to handle all the non-intellectual work that his Stimulus Plan requires. Building all those roads and bridges and all the other stuff he has in mind takes a lot of strong backs and people able to operate tools and equipment, not calculators or word processors. He wants to give tax breaks to parents who send their kids to college. But tax breaks translate immediately into higher tuition. Obama, however, is blind to the obvious.

Meanwhile, Obama wants higher pay for teachers and new school buildings. Okay. But there's zero evidence higher pay or new buildings improve results. Results are mostly a function of the kids themselves. Those who are willing to go through the day and learn a little are the ones who benefit. But those who are disruptive impair the experience for everyone else -- and raise costs a lot. Unfortunately, there are too many of the latter.

Can schools do something about the disruptive kids? Perhaps a little. But not a lot. They bring in all the social pathologies of their lives when they come to school. But no school can reorder the lives of students when they are outside their classrooms.

If Obama had a voice like Dennis Kucinich or Robert Kennedy Jr., voters might have rejected him. Unfortunately he's got a set of pipes that lull listeners into accepting anything he says because it seems like music.