Donald’s Russian Connections: A Rundown
Apparently Donald, our new president, has numerous connections to Russian and Russian-American kleptocrats and gangsters, and has depended upon them for a huge quantity of loans to finance his capital projects (buildings, mostly hotels). The details are too complex and entangled to even begin to list here, but there are obvious motivations for his work with Putin in stealing our most recent presidential election. A long article has just been published in The American Interest, and is available for your free perusal at this address (it’s your only free article this month in this magazine, so read it carefully before closing the page.) It was written by a lawyer who specializes in investigating crooked banking interests named James S. Henry. If you have time (at least two hours to read this article through), it will benefit you to discover just how heavily entangled Donald is with the Russian-American mob and Russia’s gangster-in-chief, Vladimir Putin.
Beautiful Earth Views
Check out the views of Earth by this astronaut who spent over 500 days in space:
Here’s a quote from a New York Times (NYT) article (an op-ed) about the Republican attempt to abolish “Obamacare”:
Americans spend two or three times as much on health care as a share of G.D.P. as other industrialized countries but get worse outcomes. American children are 75 percent more likely to die in the first five years of life than British or German children, according to World Bank data, and American women are twice as likely to die in pregnancy as Canadian women. The reasons have to do partly with American poverty, and partly with the high number of uninsured.
Drug Overdose Deaths Nearly Tripled in the last fifteen years- Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
An early release on December 16, 2016, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that “drug overdose deaths have nearly tripled in the last fifteen years” [paraphrase]–almost 61% (three-fifths) of the 47,000 drug overdose deaths in 2014 “involved an opioid” (were at least partially due to consumption of an opiate-like drug.) In 2015, of 52,404 drug overdose deaths, 63.1% involved an opioid, an increase of 5,000 deaths from drug overdoses in one year. The age-adjusted opioid-related death rate increased by 15.6% from 2014-2015. The death rate from synthetic opioids other than methadone increased by 72.2%, while death rates from methadone decreased by 9.1%.
From the MMWR/CDC report:
The largest absolute rate change in deaths from synthetic opioids other than methadone occurred in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island and West Virginia. The largest percentage increases in rates occurred in New York (135.7%), Connecticut (125.9%) and Illinois (120%) … Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, and West Virginia experienced the largest absolute rate changes in heroin deaths, while the largest percentage increases in rates occurred in South Carolina (57.1%), North Carolina (46.4%), and Tennessee (43.5%.)
[The large increases in these states reflect the spread of distribution of fentanyl-enhanced heroin.]
Researchers attribute the increased death rates from opioids to the recent introduction of illicitly manufactured fentanyl, which is used to enhance the potency of heroin sold on the street (fentanyl is approximately fifty times as potent as heroin.) Heroin is so cheap on the street (despite the best efforts of the Drug Enforcement Agency or DEA) that even pure heroin is “a drug on the market.” Thus, fentanyl-enhanced heroin is a popular value-added product. Drug users who are unaware that the heroin that they purchase contains fentanyl frequently overdose because they do not expect an enhanced-potency product (especially because the product they purchase is not labelled as to potency or actual drug content.) Such overdose deaths have become increasingly common, first in New York and with time across the United States.
Thus we see that drug overdose deaths are often due to the illicit nature of the product used– the accidental overdose is related to the fact that it is not labelled as to potency, and the lack of labelling is related to the fact that there are no regulations controlling the way the drug is sold since it is illegal in the first place. What is even more deadly is that there are no ready treatments available for individuals who have overdosed, even if the cause of an apneic collapse (a person who stops breathing and appears unresponsive) is known.
In fact, there is a specific and reliable antidote to opioid overdoses, in the form of the opioid antagonist naloxone (Narcan)– when injected intravenously or even simply subcutaneously, naloxone rapidly reverses the stupor and apnea characteristic of overdose. Naloxone frequently doesn’t last long enough to prevent relapse but at least the dose can be repeated and provides a clear diagnosis when it is effective.
Autoinjectors containing naloxone are a lifesaving treatment for opioid overdoses that can be successfully administered by untrained persons, and have been distributed to many big-city paramedic ambulances as well as to fire department personnel. There is little reason not to distribute autoinjectors to people who may be at risk of accidental overdoses other than closed-minded conservative attitudes that have simultaneously prevented clean needle distributions and street medics who offer AIDS tests and additional medical assistance. The failure of the DEA to prevent cheap heroin from being sold on the street is already plain; other methods to reduce deaths from drug overdose are needed urgently.
Reince Priebus released a Christmas message yesterday for dissemination to the press and public, which said, in part:
Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King.
Please consider the second sentence as released, above. What does it mean, exactly? Is it just a generalized religious message, or does it refer to “a new King” specifically, Donald?
Woman Survives 33,000 Ft Fall From Airplane Explosion in 1972; Dies of Natural Causes at 68
A woman, Vesna Vulovic, who was a stewardess on a flight from Copenhagen in 1972, was the only survivor out of 27 passengers and crew when the plane broke up at cruising altitude. She was trapped in the tail section by a food cart when the fragment of the plane landed in a wooded, snow-covered area on a mountain in Czechoslovakia. It was thought that the plane was brought down by a terrorist bomb but no suspects were ever arrested. She was in a coma for ten days afterwards and suffered a fractured skull, pelvis, two vertebrae, several ribs, and both legs. She was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down but eventually made a near-full recovery. She never regained memory of the crash or her rescue. She returned to work at the airline in a desk job. She continued to fly as a passenger.
Vesna Vulovic made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest fall without a parachute. She died yesterday at home in Belgrade; the cause was not immediately determined, but she was 68 years old.
From the Washington Post:
In a nationally representative online survey of 1,011 Americans conducted by Qualtrics between Dec. 6 and 12, we asked respondents, “In last month’s election, Donald Trump won the majority of votes in the electoral college. Who do you think won the most popular votes?”
Twenty-nine percent said Donald Trump won the popular vote. This is a slightly larger proportion than in a recent Pew survey in which 19 percent said Trump won the popular vote.
Respondents’ correct understanding of the popular vote depended a great deal on partisanship. A large fraction of Republicans — 52 percent — said Trump won the popular vote, compared with only 7 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of independents. Among Republicans without any college education, the share was even larger: 60 percent, compared with 37 percent of Republicans with a college degree.
In fact, Hillary won the popular vote by at least 2.8 million votes (and they’re still counting.)
China Willing to go to War with Trump
On July 4, 2015, the US and Australia held joint military exercises on Fog Bay, in Australia’s Northern Territories. The exercises, called Talisman Saber, and involving 33,000 troops, was designed to simulate an invasion of the Malacca Straits and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas, and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa. That was merely a “routine exercise” but it made the point to China that the US would not tolerate changes in the status quo in the South China Sea.
China reacted negatively to Trump’s suggestion that he might use the independence of Taiwan as a bargaining chip to “get a better deal” with China on trade or other issues, that is, to change the status quo in the South China Sea in the favor of the US.
Here’s a quote from Newsweek, which shows what the Chinese government thinks of Trump and how it will slap him down:
“The calculating businessman might feel shrewd about seizing China’s fate by the throat through the Taiwan question,” responded China’s state-run Global Times newspaper, a mouthpiece for hard-right nationalists. “However, the truth is this inexperienced president-elect probably has no knowledge of what he’s talking about.” If Trump tries to change Taiwan’s status, China, might well “offer support, even military assistance to U.S. foes,” it said.
Gordo the Kitten
A Few Words From President Obama
Here is a small portion of a speech given by President Barack Obama at McDill Air Force Base on December 6, 2016:
We’re a nation that believes freedom can never be taken for granted and that each of us has a responsibility to sustain it. The universal right to speak your mind and to protest against authority, to live in a society that’s open and free, that can criticize a President without retribution — (applause) — a country where you’re judged by the content of your character rather than what you look like, or how you worship, or what your last name is, or where your family came from — that’s what separates us from tyrants and terrorists.
(thanks to Snopes.com)
(the photo is of Albert Einstein at age three.)
