“Giving out Ambien or Provigil sleep aids ‘like candy’ as alleged is still dangerous and irresponsible because these drugs have notorious side effects,” said Art Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine. “You really don’t want to be cavalier about it. These drugs are prescription for a reason — not the same as an over-the-counter drug.”
quoted from a Microsoft news feed and CNN about the bungled nomination of Dr. Ronny Jackson, the president’s personal physician and head of the White House medical unit; extremely loose prescribing practices with, in particular, Ambien (a hypnotic or sleeping pill) and Provigil (a stimulant with effects somewhat similar to amphetamine and Ritalin); also, the dispensing of so-called “Z packs” of an antibiotic (azithromycin) for upper respiratory infections (a popular placebo for cold and sore throat) on request without an examination, much less a physician’s signature. Worst of all were allegations that pills were missing and pill counts were impossible due to poor documentation– a sure sign of drug pilfering and possibly, someone on the staff having a problem with addiction.
It is clear that Ronny (!) is out of his league when it comes to administering a clinic full of entitled, ambitious politicians, much less the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and RonnyK)
“[the ]uplifting words of Winston Churchill to the British nation in June 1940, under the shadow of the Nazi conquest of France: ‘In casting up this dread balance sheet and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye,’ Churchill declared, ‘I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair.’ ”
thanks to this article in the New York Times.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Donald J. Trump may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which — according to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice — makes it a crime for a United States company to act with willful blindness toward the corrupt activities of a foreign business partner. His many development projects, most of which failed, in which he partnered with known criminals and sold apartments to organized crime figures, many of them Russian, make him vulnerable to charges that he wilfully ignored open money laundering by his associates.
(thanks to a New York Times article discussing this very subject.)
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Alabama
Democrat 22 hours ago
I will never forget that night as long as I live. I hoped and expected that Mrs. Clinton would win and that we would have our first women in the White House at the helm of government.
I had donated my hard-earned money to her campaign, $100. at a time. That is a lot for me since I am 73-years old, still working part time and dependent upon SS to make ends meet.
I had read everything there was in the public domain about Trump and KNEW that he was not fit to hold any public office, much less that of president.
I took comfort in the fact that Mrs. Clinton would win on the basis of her superior experience and qualifications along, not to mention her superb intelligence and demeanor as a leader of the free world.
I thought we had nothing to fear and that Trump would walk away with another reality show and many more fans than he had before the campaign. I never dreamed he would win the election.
When he won I was in a state of physical and mental SHOCK. No other way to describe it. I remain sick over it. And the more we learn about the campaign the more I realize that they were never going to let Mrs. Clinton be president. I have posted that exact same statement several times in my comments on this web site and others. It was a coup similar to any other government take over. They were going to win at all costs, no matter what it took.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and johnhain)
“Ten states with lowest probability of premature death: Minnesota, California, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Hawaii
Ten states with highest probability of premature death: West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arkansas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina.”
from an online article in Doximity.com which quotes “the most extensive study ever conducted” comparing death rates state-by-state, coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. Prime causes of premature death include alcohol and drug use, tobacco use, diabetes, and suicide (Utah appears to have the highest rate of suicide, despite very low rates of alcohol- and drug-associated premature death. West Virginia had premature death rates from drug use that matched Utah’s rates from suicide.)
Bottom line: states suffering the worst are also poor and most significantly, lack adequate medical care facilities and providers, especially psychiatric providers. The lack of good jobs appears to contribute most significantly to premature death from preventable causes so these deaths could be laid to the ravages of capitalism without pity. That Southern states should suffer the most has some obscure relationship to the late effects of slavery and Reconstruction– but the relics of the Confederacy are evident everywhere in these states.
(photo of a 150 year old gravestone at the cemetery near the Kings River in Sanger CA by Conrad Seitz)
Reeves Sanday has spent decades in the field with some of the world’s least sexually aggressive societies, such as the Minangkabau of West Sumatra. Her work convinces her that if we want to reduce sexual violence, we must emulate matriarchies. “A matriarchal society isn’t the inverse of patriarchy, it’s egalitarian,” she says. “Where women and men cooperate in aspects of everyday life you do not have sexual abuse.” Similarly, the WHO report concludes that gender inequality is at the heart of sexual violence against women. “Sexual harassment is always about power,” says Cynthia Enloe, who studies gender and war at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. “The only way to eliminate it is to tackle inequality.” In her book The Big Push she argues that we continue to modernise patriarchal ideas rather than overthrowing them.
This quote comes from an online article in New Scientist dated 18 April 2018. The article points out that there are high levels of sexual violence in societies where women are treated as property and men are caught up in competition for dominance over one another (think machismo)– and there are low levels of male parenting and high levels of violence in general.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and FlashBuddy)
A week after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Tenney told a radio host in Albany that “so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats, but the media doesn’t talk about that.”
From a realistic point of view, most mass murderers have gone beyond politics in their delusional quests and don’t give a damn whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Claudia Tenney’s comments reveal that she is far gone into the Fox News promulgated delusion that “Democrats” somehow represent disorder and violence, committed especially against white people with something to lose, while “Republicans” represent order and protection against the brown hordes. That’s not how it works. “Democrats” at the moment, represent progressivism; “Republicans” right now represent greed and fraudulent wealth inequalities, and especially Donald J. Trump personally. At the moment. Once upon a time, in 1860, “Republican” meant “abolition”– the end of slavery. In 1860, the Republicans were the good guys and the Democrats represented the Southern slaveholders in their attempt to keep slavery legal and control the United States government. An odd inversion in the 1950s and 1960s turned Democrats from populist (think Franklin Delano Roosevelt) segregationists into pro-civil rights and African-American progressivists. There are still conservative, “corrupt” Democrats, but what counts right now is that the Republicans have sold their party out. But neither party was the party of mass-murderer psychos. At least not yet.
“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” Giuliani said in an interview.
By this Giulani means he thinks he can shut Mueller down… we’d like to see just how he proposes to do that.
(Sleazy guy with nasty grin thanks to pixabay.com)
“In a report by the House Committee on Government Reform, which looked into the F.B.I.’s use of secret informants, the only reference to Mr. Mueller was a favorable one. He offered, as F.B.I. director, to work with the committee to reform the agency’s informant practices.” (quoted via the Microsoft newsfeed, which credits NANCY GERTNER of – The New York Times – on Thursday, April 19, 2018)
In other words, all the negative “right wing opinion” on Fox News is so much falsehoods and Mueller had no involvement in the disastrous FBI decisions to back serial killers Whitey Bulger and his pals. All this happened in the 1980’s. The right wing propaganda machine is pushing this theme of past corruption, which is true especially in the Bulger case, and trying to make Mueller responsible, which is absurd when he was promoted as being completely neutral and a good administrator who was well liked by his staff. The whole right wing theme is an embarrassment to the older FBI establishment because they know well that there have been past misdeeds. Mr. Mueller is the most obsessively neutral FBI special agent who ever lived, and he is being slut-shamed by the most corrupt administration in living memory. It would be to laugh if it were not so serious. The very constitutionality of the Federal Government is at issue.
(Lego Slug by aitoff thanks to pixabay.com– I just love this slug and I want to make it famous…)
Dr. James C. Munch.– testified before Congress in 1937 that pot was bad, then got a job as pot-watcher for the government for 25 years (per a commenter on LA Times web site.)
A July 2017 report to Congress by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA): “Marijuana-Impaired Driving: A Report to Congress”
“An interesting finding from this research is that after smoking marijuana, subjects in most of the simulator and instrumented vehicle studies on marijuana and driving typically drive slower, follow other
cars at greater distances, and take fewer risks than when sober (Stein, et al., 1983; Smiley, et al., 1981; Smiley, et al., 1986; Casswell, 1977; Robbe and O’Hanlon, 1993). These effects appear to suggest that
the drivers are attempting to compensate for the subjective effects of using marijuana. In contrast, subjects dosed with alcohol typically drive faster, follow at closer distances, and take greater risks.”
…
“The existing epidemiological research (both culpability and case-control studies) have produced contradictory estimates of risk for marijuana use.
Some of these studies have suggested that marijuana use has minimal or no effect on the likelihood of crash involvement, while others have estimated a small increase in the risk of crash involvement.”
“NHTSA’s “Crash Risk” Study
This case control crash risk study is the first large-scale study in the United States to include drugs other
than alcohol. It was designed to estimate the risk associated with alcohol- and drug-positive driving.
Virginia Beach, Virginia” was the site used and 3,000 crashes were studied. A case-control method was used, and crash drivers were compared with non-crash drivers on the same roadway, at the same time of day and week. The results were disappointing: after controlling for every variable, including age and sex, and especially alcohol use, no relation between THC-positivity and crash risk was found. Unfortunately, there is no good test available to determine when the last time someone had smoked marijuana had occurred; only THC in the blood or saliva could be easily measured, and these don’t directly correspond to time of consumption. THC remains in the blood for days after consumption.
“The drug most frequently detected in the oral fluid and blood of drivers was THC, detected in 7.6 percent (n = 234) of the crash-involved drivers and 6.1 percent (n = 379) of the control drivers. ”
“When the odds ratios were adjusted for demographic variable of age, gender, and race/ethnicity the
significant increased risk of crash involvement associated with THC disappeared. The adjusted odds
ratio for THC positive drivers was 1.05 (95% Confidence Limit of 0.86 – 1.27). This adjusted odds ratio
was not statistically significant.
A final adjustment was made for the presence of alcohol. When both demographic variables and the
presence of alcohol were taken into account, the odds ratio for THC declined further to 1.00
(95% Confidence Limit of 0.83 – 1.22). This means there was no increased risk of crash involvement
found over alcohol or drug free drivers.
As was described above, there was no difference in crash risk for marijuana-positive drivers who were
also positive for alcohol than for marijuana-positive drivers with no alcohol, beyond the risk attributable
to alcohol. Further analyses examined the potential interaction between drug use and breath alcohol
concentration. No statistically significant interaction effect on crash risk was found between for
THC positive drivers and BrAC level.
More information on the methodology of this study is available in a Research Note (Compton and
Berning, 2015 which can be downloaded at: http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nti/pdf/812117-
Drug_and_Alcohol_Crash_Risk.pdf”
The defect in this study and all others is that there is no known reliable method (other than self-report, which is of questionable reliability) for determining when the last time the pot was consumed. This makes all the difference, as the studies in the laboratory all show at least mild impairment of driving-related skills for two to three hours after consumption. Whether increased caution compensates for these impairments is not known but should be considered. Therefore, the only conclusion that we can reach is that people who smoke pot at least occasionally show no greater risk for crashing while driving than completely sober individuals. This is comparable to what is known of drinking: people who drink occasionally are no worse drivers than people who don’t drink at all. However, we know from these studies that people who are impaired by drinking are terrible drivers. No such information is available in relation to the acute consumption of cannabis within three hours before or even while driving.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 