Picaro
Picaro's JournalThus Spake Zarathustra
Might want to take a pill.
This is a stream of consciousness riff of unsupported assertions.
I am left secure in the knowledge that you are FOR Hillary and AGAINST Bernie.
Opiate crisis?
This is just another facet of the war on drugs.
Are there people that over prescribe? Are there people that become addicted? Yes to both.
Is it a crisis? No.
We are now going through one of these cycles where due to an increase in overdose deaths and an overall failure in identifying problem patients and helping them get help there is a now a strong impetus to throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Pain is a something that is subjective, not always obvious to a 3rd party observer--and can completely eliminate all quality of life. Access to opiates when you have chronic, constant pain is essential. The truth of the matter is that over 95% of those prescribed opiate pain medication will not become addicted regardless of how liberal the doctor prescribing is. Between 2-5% of this population will misuse, abuse, and end up habituated.
This post seems to favor draconian restriction in pain medication prescription.
I think that is an extreme and absurd position.
There already has been significant restriction is pain medication prescription reported anecdotally and there has been reported a corresponding increase is heroin overdose deaths as these patients (addicts) seek their fix any way they can find it.
What is not being reported is that all those patients who are in pain not deemed sufficient for opiate prescription are simply not getting the pain relief they need.
Pain should be relieved with opiates when it is present.
I've had back problems off and on since I injured my back when I was 29. I've found that opiates often allow the healing to begin. In other words, they're not just masking the pain but they enable my body to enter into a state of healing relaxation. Once this happens my problem quickly resolves itself--usually. I've had one bout of prolonged pain that was only ultimately resolved with spinal steroid injections.
I'd been taking larger and larger doses of opiates over a 6 month period. Once I received the injection and the pain went away I stopped taking the opiates and within a few days found that I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms. I looked it up online and found that the symptoms would abate in about 72 hours. I never once had the urge to call my doctor and try to get more. I was heartily sick of taking hydrocodone and oxycodone by that time. I would argue that I'm more the norm rather than some sort of strange exception.
Today I would have probably been cut off and would have just had to suffer. That might have led to an inability to work and led to full disability eventually. As it was, I missed only a couple of days of work during this period and never had to leave a job.
Pain when it exists needs to be relieved. To force doctors and patients to worry about potential addiction rather than addressing the problem of pain immediately at hand is a warping of the doctor patient relationship--especially when it is well documented that only a small minority of patients are actually at risk of developing addiction.
I think there is little compelling evidence that there is an opiate problem in this country. I believe there is very compelling evidence that opiate addiction hot spots in this country are being caused by a lack of economic hope and opportunity.
Indeed there is emerging research that is showing that addiction (all drugs) seems to emerge in populations that live in hopeless stressful environments. Remove the stress and addiction often self corrects except in the most intractable individuals. For example, the local hot spot for opiate abuse and addiction in my area is in south Dallas--an area known for rampant high unemployment, grinding poverty, failing schools, and low quality dilapidated housing.
The sick and elderly in this particular neighborhood show a high rate of opiate addiction and this is where you'll also find a concentration of shady "pain management" centers--some of which keep getting busted.
So which came first? The chicken or the egg? Was it the poverty, unemployment, lousy schools, and dismal outlook for the future? Or was it the opiates?
Opiate addiction, where it actually exists, is the symptom of a systemic societal problem. It is not the problem itself.
O'Malley should look at how to relieve the endemic poverty that drives the addiction rather than targeting just the addiction.
Anyone who supports the current DEA campaign to limit opiate prescription advocates an extreme solution to a problem that really doesn't fully exist.
Anyone that says this is a fool
Trump proves yet again that he is an idiot. This is just the latest in a long series of spouting idiocies. Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya! Build a wall between the U.S and Mexico! Deport the 11 million illegal aliens with a deportation force!
And now this. The death toll in Paris would have been much lower if all of the French were armed.
Let’s look at some recent history.
After the Charlie Hebdo massacre a gun rights organization staged a simulation of the attack to prove their contention that the attack could have been foiled if the writers and editors of Charlie Hebdo had been armed. The January 15th edition of Texas Monthly published a story (by Dan Hoffman) entitled: A Gun Rights Organization Staged a Re-Enactment of the “Charlie Hebdo” Shooting (link: http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/a-gun-rights-organization-staged-a-re-enactment-of-the-charlie-hebdo-shooting/)
The organization is called The Truth About Guns. The article points out that the simulation was done a dozen times and a key variable was missing—the element of surprise. The participants were not only armed by knew the attack was coming.
The simulation proved one thing and one thing only.
That being armed had little impact on the ultimate outcome. In the absolute best result one attacker (out of two) was killed, but all of the “writers” and “editors” except one died (and that one ran).
This was a simulation put on by an organization that wanted to prove that being armed when attacked by armed attackers would prevent a massacre. They eliminated the element of surprise. Yet they still couldn’t prove the point they set out to prove.
Wrap your head around that one. It was a rigged test created by a group that had a dog in the hunt and they couldn’t make it work.
Trump and everyone that advances this argument every time there is a massacre is simply wrong. There is no objective evidence that turning the world into an armed camp will result in anything than more violence. More weapons mean only one thing--more gun deaths from accident, confrontations that escalate, deliberate shootings, and, yes, criminal acts.
Watched this horrible episode of SNL
The whole show was awful.
Start out with Miley Cyrus wearing? What was that? Repurposed flowered shower caps?
Then this bit which was awkward at best. What it wasn't was funny.
Then Hillary introducing Miley as the musical guest wearing a bikini and some sort of Rapunzel thing that mainly covered her and distracted from her utter vocal mediocrity.
Then Weekend Update which was boring, not funny, and indulged in some shots against Bernie Sanders. At one point, he was called a "Human Lorax" and the contention was made that Hillary had already won so all of these pesky candidates should just go home and stop bothering the heir apparent.
I seem to remember that Lorne Michaels is a major friend of the Clinton's. He should be ashamed.
While some of the political stuff SNL does is spot on this felt manufactured, forced, and was pretty cringe worthy.
I turned it off and went to bed after Weekend Update and went back to slogging through "The Martian" (which so far I'm finding to be amateurishly written and pretty boring).
Shock, revulsion, disgust
For jaywalking? For anything short of murder and imminent armed violence this was grotesquely disproportionate response.
These jack booted thugs will be told they did a great job because they refrained from shooting the kid.
What the fuck is wrong with our country?
Hard to get in a fatal accident when you're only going 15 mph
The above is written with tongue firmly in cheek. However, it is really hard to drive all that fast when you're high.
There's something about marijuana that makes you very very cautious. I guess because it doesn't give you that feeling that you are better than you are. Alcohol on the other hand gives you the feeling that you can do anything and by God you can do probably do it better then you can when you're sober.
Biden won't run
Biden has already said he doesn't think he has the emotional stamina to run.
I've seen no compelling evidence that he intends to run.
Then what is the point of their attendance?
If these supposed news organizations are going to allow something as crucial as the identities of the people at the conference to be held "off the record" then what kind of stories are they going to be filing?
Indeed, what's the point of going at all? Is it just to suck up to rich people?
It seems that these days most prominent news organizations exist only to be stenographers to the wealthy. They live forever in fear that they are going to lose access and so don't report the things that they should be reporting on.
Money has become the poison that flows through the veins of the body politic and is slowly choking the life out of it.
So many reporters have become slavish sycophants that do nothing but curry favor from their masters.
Profile Information
Name: Ernie FergusonGender: Do not display
Hometown: Plano, TX
Home country: USA
Current location: Plano, TX
Member since: Thu Apr 30, 2009, 11:22 AM
Number of posts: 1,517
