This will be my last post for awhile. I’m not sure when I’ll be blogging again, or visiting all your wonderful sites again. I will try to keep this blog in place, but right now nothing is certain other than the alligators are snapping here at the hive, and my quiet, drama-free life isn’t so quiet and drama-free right now. The gators in the hive leave me…well, to be completely honest, completely focused on the survival of my little family, and I just don’t have room for much else in my line of sight right now. I will say this: I don’t know how people freaking survived before anti-anxiety meds were invented.
I hope to be back one day (rough estimate – weeks to months) – so don’t give up on me. This isn’t the last you’ve heard from the Bee.
The weather is beautiful, winter is finally over and time for these potluck postings will be short again. So let’s get to the table and find out what we missed while focus was on OBL’s takedown, eh?
WTF?? 1. Don’t get sick anytime soon. News of the takedown of Osama bin Laden overshadowed this story by the Washington Post regarding a severe shortage of long-used and effective drugs for heart attacks, cancer and everyone else.
A record 211 medications became scarce in 2010 — triple the number in 2006 — and at least 89 new shortages have been recorded through the end of March, putting the nation on track for far more scarcities.
Why the shortages?
Greed. Seriously, it’s greed. The pharmaceutical companies stand to lose billions in 2011 alone as drug patents expire, so they’re coming up with excuses not have to sink anymore money into generics where the patents expired long ago. According to the Washington Post,
The paucities are forcing some medical centers to ration drugs — including one urgently needed by leukemia patients — postpone surgeries and other care, and scramble for substitutes, often resorting to alternatives that may be less effective, have more side effects and boost the risk for overdoses and other sometimes-fatal errors.
Those alternatives are newer, patented drugs that conveniently cost a heck of a lot more.
And here is where we see the backpedaling to keep from calling a spade a spade and saying outright that Big Pharma is holding us literally hostage with their desires to change the patents laws to suit their own purposes:
The causes vary from drug to drug, but experts cite a confluence of factors: Consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry has left only a few manufacturers for many older, less profitable products, meaning that when raw material runs short, equipment breaks down or government regulators crack down, the snags can quickly spiral into shortages.
i.e., it’s the fault of the big bad government and patent laws that allow patents to expire so there can be multiple manufacturers, which evidently doesn’t really work anyway, given that only one or two drug companies will make a generic – so much for free market competition ideology. Drug companies have been trying to change the patent laws in order to allow them patents in perpetuity (and thereby high prices for the patient in perpetuity), and I touched on both that and how the FDA tends to give a free pass in my Potluck from March 13, 2011 in WTF?? 3, 4 and 5.
The moral of the story? Big Pharma isn’t done with us yet, so don’t get cancer, don’t have a heart attack and don’t be in an accident, or you’ll find yourself faced with a manufactured drug shortage because poor little Big Pharma thinks it isn’t making enough money off your life…or death.
WTF?? 2. Bin Laden. Too bad we couldn’t have taken him alive, because at least then he could be perp-walked and there would be no mistaking that he was captured. As it stands, we’ll be seeing a lot of this over the next 20 years:
Frankly, all the celebrating bothered me. I found it to be mis-placed, at best. After WWII, when all of Europe was ready to summarily execute any nazi they could get their hands on, the United States pushed hard for the Nuremburg Trials. You see, those crimes were so horrific, that it was believed that to not get them documented and in the official records could be far more dangerous than the possibility that a few nazis might go free. It was believed that no one would believe stories about the ovens, the gas chambers, the mass killings on outskirts of eastern european towns where pits were filled with the charred remnants of humanity.
Thanks to the Nuremburg Trials, nazi crimes were documented. We learned that these weren’t monsters or devils, they were ordinary men. We learned that evil is often banal, and that you can’t look at a person and see the evil within. There are no horns or pitchforks – only men who committed horrendous acts and believed that they were justified and right in doing so.
A trial of Bin Laden would have, at the very least, shown the world that he wasn’t a devil, he wasn’t a monster, he was only a man, and it might have documented his crimes against not just the United States but against humanity beyond the shadow of a doubt.
We lost that opportunity with one well placed head shot. Ah, well. The world keeps turning.
Time for a Strikes My Fancy moment:
SMF 1. Don’t tell me Obama hasn’t kept a single campaign promise. Perhaps taking Bin Laden alive was never the plan at all.
The promise made on October 7, 2008 (cited by PolitiFact):
We will kill bin Laden.
There ya go. I have to give the Prez kudos on the balls it took to make the decision to raid the Pakistan compound: it could very easily have turned into a Jimmy Carter Iran Hostage Rescue debacle. I still would rather have seen a perp-walk than hear of a burial at sea. And the Prez is going to end up releasing those photos, after all.
Tags: Big Pharma, buried at sea, drug patents, drugs, Nuremburg, Nuremburg Trials, Osama Bin Laden, patents
Despite all the talk and counter-talk regarding cutting the deficit, that isn’t really the problem right now – let’s not forget the real problem is JOBS, stupid, and all the accoutrements such as the price of gas to get to and from said job if one were to find one, the price of food to keep one’s body fueled throughout the day to preserve life and the ability to do that job and the price of a decent pair of slacks and shirt to wear to that job with the price of cotton going through the freaking roof.
Standards and Poor, with their talk of cutting the United States’ credit rating, can suck it – and where are the treason charges for trying to tank US credit on the international market during a financial crisis?
Trump can suck it (although I really hope he runs, because wouldn’t that just be like going to the circus every day?). The Birthers can suck it. The GOP, with its talk about doing away with “revamping” Medicaid and Medicare to solve the nation’s fiscal problem, which is actually not the deficit at the moment, can suck it. Those democrats who at least partially jumped on the deficit bandwagon enough to mention anything other than “No, Medicare and Medicaid won’t be touched unless it is to finally learn to wield the iron negotiation fist when it comes to the cost of services and providers,” can suck it. Yes, Mr. President, I’m looking at you, too, on that count. That big spending bill speech you gave was mighty nice, but you didn’t actually come right out and say, point blank and with zero misunderstandings, “You’re not touching Medicare or Medicaid, period, so don’t even try.” I suppose at least you did say “no voucher” bull, I will give you credit for that.
Let the bigot Ron Paul run for President for the umpteenth time – he can suck it too. Sure he was against the war – but only because he’s a strict isolationist, not because he has some philosophical disagreement with war itself. I suppose even a stopped watch can be right twice a day, but not always for the right reasons.
But do you want to know who can really suck it this week?
WTF?? 1. Maybe some of our gigantic, overly-large and too-powerful US corporations should be charged with treason. U.S. corporations that make a hell of a lot of money and hide it offshore really do want to bring that money home to american shores where it belongs! At least that’s what the website for “Rape & Plunder America” “Win America,” a website put up by the lobbying arms of such poor little wayward american corporations like Microsoft, Google and Apple – and don’t forget the Chamber of Commerce, says. They want to bring their profits home…but that big bad federal government who says it really can’t afford to give them a FREE RIDE TAX HOLIDAY won’t let them! They want to create jobs in America again, rather than India and China and Taiwan and Indonesia and Malaysia, but that big bad federal government won’t let them!! Oh, woe is us, what is a poor American chartered corporation to do? Seriously, here is a portion of their mission statement, straight from their website:
Congress should pass legislation to offer an immediate reduction of taxation on income earned overseas by innovative American businesses to allow that money to be brought home and invested in the United States.
How about we start with this. You bring your money back, bearing a tax rate of 40%, which would be the European Union tax rate of 23% plus a surcharge for time, trouble and irritation. The penalty for not bringing every single penny of AMERICAN profit in excess of $15 billion (15 should be plenty for reinvestment towards their overseas operations, since they’re obviously not paying squat for those to begin with) with those profits to be invested NOT in stock buybacks, but in creating actual jobs here in America with zero layoffs for the next 4 years, or you face charges of treason.
Wow, Bee, you might say, that’s rather draconian. No, dears, draconian is to say “You don’t get to sink one single penny into the US Congress through lobbying efforts ever again or you have your charter to exist in this country summarily yanked. You don’t get to advertise for any politician’s campaign benefit, or your charter will be summarily yanked. You don’t get to move any of your operations offshore ever again, or you will summarily have your charter yanked. Every operation you moved offshore in the last 30 years will be brought back to american shores before midnight on January 1, 2021, or you will have your charter summarily yanked. You can move, but you better be prepared to stay there, and no product of yours, or belonging to any of your many subsidiaries, will ever be sold on american shores again.”
See? A 40% tax rate or charges of treason are perfectly fair.
But Bee, you say, how can we charge a paper entity with treason? Easy. The Supreme Court said a hundred years ago that a corporation is a person. Our current supreme court said a corporation has free speech status when it comes to campaign donations, so if a corporation is a “person”, then they must be “american citizens.” And if they are american citizens, and they commit extortion against the United States government, which impacts the ability of the US Government to fulfill its obligations to the citizenry, then they have committed treason. They will get their trial, and if they lose, execution consists of summarily nullifying their charter to exist as an american corporation in every state where they are filed to do business. If they want to have their manufacturing and/or service operations in Thailand, let every single one of their executives move to Thailand. Every bigwig at Microsoft, for example, has a wife, and those wives won’t be too crazy about moving to Thailand. Or Indonesia. Or China. China executes those who just embarrass them. Could you imagine what they would do with a bunch of gigantic embezzlers and extortionists?
I believe it’s a worthwhile risk. I believe that if faced with those choices, they will play ball. In Bee’s world, our leaders would walk softly and carry big sticks.
Now, to round out this Sunday, please enjoy some of the best political cartoons of the past 2 weeks. I hope everyone has a nice Sunday ahead of them!
And finally – this is one I’m feeling right now:
Tags: corporation extortion, extortion, WIN America Campaign
I’ve gone fishin’, might be back next Sunday, not sure. I hope everyone has a nice easter sunday. If you’ve never heard of european bunny-jumping, then you’re in for an easter treat at der Spiegel.
I was going to talk more about the budget passed last weekend, but decided what’s the point? Let’s talk about the Veterans, instead.
This is Sunday; welcome to Potluck.
WTF?? 1. Unemployment Rates Among Veterans. Way To Support Those Troops, America. One quarter of new Federal hires in 2010 were veterans. I’ll say that again, because it is highly important to what we are about to see in a moment: One quarter of new Federal hires in 2010 were veterans.
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
However, unemployment rates for veterans in their early 20’s is 27%, and if that number doesn’t make your blood boil, it should. Unemployment rates among veterans overall is at 9%.
Just think: Republicans like to claim they want smaller government (which we all know depends on your gender, sexual orientation, etc). However, if one quarter of who the Federal Government hires are veterans and unemployment across the board for them is still 9% overall, 27% for the twenty-somethings, and Republicans still want to see the Federal Government cut in half, then Republicans do not support the troops.
I personally think new Federal a law should be passed by that oh-so-bloated government that if you are a “small government” Republican or Libertarian, a yellow “support the troops!” ribbon on the back of your car would be a misdemeanor carrying a mininum penalty of 500 hours community service at a homeless shelter where, coincidentally, they will actually meet in person some of those troops they support so much, particularly since one of the more heinous spending cuts passed was a cut to programs that provide housing for….you got it, homeless veterans.
WTF?? 2. Ok, let’s talk about one part of the Budget – Ryan’s 2012 budget, that is. One part of Ryan’s 2012 budget deals with Medicaid, and providing block grants to the states to handle Medicaid however they see fit (which, let’s face reality here – in the poorer, and not-surprisingly red states, those block grants will be conveniently needed for other programs). Evidently, the free market will provide. Thhpppphhhhthhtfffft.
I heard recently that many doctors are getting rid of their Medicaid patients altogether, because they don’t think they get paid enough to treat the poor or indigent. Medicaid patients are having a hard time even finding doctors to treat them.
Every legal Bar Association in this country strongly encourages lawyers to provide pro bono service. It isn’t required, they don’t get in trouble if they are greedy bastards and they don’t provide pro bono service, but it is considered an important part of being a lawyer. You have a very specialized skill, it is your duty…repeat, duty, to provide those services to the poor and indigent.
The American Medical Association has a similar ethic, so maybe it is time to start telling Mr. “I made $4 mil last year providing tummy tucks and breast implants” that it is also his or her duty, as a physician, to respect the oath he took when he finished medical school and provide pro bono service to the poor. It won’t take the place of Medicaid, but so long as doctors are allowed to entirely opt out of providing care to Medicaid patients at all, then pro bono service might take up a least a little of the slack.
I have no beef with “fixing” Medicaid, because obviously it has some serious problems. Costs are going up and those costs aren’t being negotiated. It seems to me that the problem is more spinal than monetary. All the Federal Government needs to do is say “We’re not paying $2,000 for an MRI. We’ll pay $500, because that machine you are using is 3 years old, and you’ve already re-couped the purchase price.” It’s that simple, folks.
I do have a problem with handing money over to the states willy-nilly without telling them how to use those block grants.
And I have a problem with a heck of a lot of doctors running around town in Mercedes and not fulfilling a part of their medical oath.
Finally, I have a Strikes My Fancy this week, and it is that the English are just as tacky as we Americans. Yes, I do find that comforting 
Tags: Medicaid, pro bono legal service, pro bono medical service, royal wedding condoms, Ryan's 2012 budget, unemployment rates among veterans, veterans
I treated myself recently to 4 volumes of Bloom County, the Complete Library (the 5th is yet to be released), the best comic strip of all time, hands down. So far I am through approximately March 1983. One thing from Berke Breathed’s brilliant bromides that struck me is that politics has only changed in that it is really only a little more whack now than it was then. Who remembers James Watt??
This is Sunday; wecome to Potluck.
WTF?? I do not believe that there was ever going to be a government shutdown. Let me explain: the whole thing smells like a put-up job, doesn’t it? They drag us all out for weeks, to the point that the Washington Post puts together a special email alert system dedicated to the looming apocalypse government shutdown, and reminding us daily that it would be the. worst. thing. ever. I believe that politics, which has gained a momentum of its own, has become accustomed to using manipulative advertising, like those ads that used to be shown before the movie started in theaters back in the 80’s. Subliminal ads that made us hungry, therefore increasing revenues at the snackbar by selling us snacks far more salt-laden than their traditional counterparts, thereby increasing drink sales, and on and on. I personally feel a bit manipulated.
Republicans run by the teaparty want X Y & Z. X being “get rid of medicaid”, Y being “get rid of Medicare” and Z being “get rid of abortion if the Supreme Court won’t do it”, but do not, under any circumstances, touch big business or the wealthy. The Republicans even trotted out a “budget” by Paul Ryan, touting it as an obscenely premature bludgeon that they might wield in 2012 to get rid of X, Y & Z for all time, before even coming to a stalemate agreement on the 2011 budget. They seem to think this will negate the importance of not having even the shadow of a viable presidential candidate for 2012. Just wait until Grandma and Grandpa see that it calls for the privatization of their Medicare.
The Demcrats responded with not much more than a “oh, no you di’int!” The two sides go back and forth for weeks. Planned Parenthood is in the sights because abortion is the holy grail for the right, until it’s not. NPR was on the chopping block…until it wasn’t. Day after day we are subjected to hysterical headlines on incredibly boring articles telling us that the End is Nigh Fed might shut down! Right on cue, Obama steps in with a few choice “grow the hell up” words for Boehner and Reid. Finally, with a “High Noon at the OK Corral” showdown at the dead of midnight, the apocalypse government shutdown is averted until September 30. The timing of the aversion of the End of Days government shutdown was worthy of a blockbuster action movie.
It looks to me like both sides did indeed work together…to orchestrate this gigantic show, because they knew that neither side was going to come out smelling good if they didn’t reach that miraculous 11th hour compromise, but they had to put on the pretense of round the clock marathon sessions of negotiations, thinking both sides would save face while doing what every single congress has done since a national budget was first dreamt of – argue over it. Nothing new here, but it’s the apocalypse!!
Once the asteroid was diverted from collision course with earth the budget was passed, the President had this to day:
“Americans of different beliefs came together … Both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them. And I certainly did that. Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful.”
Funny how he doesn’t mention who the cuts will be painful for. I can tell you who they won’t be painful for: Him personally, Boehner personally, Reid personally. It won’t be painful for anyone’s rich campaign contributors personally. You and me, the underdogs out here slogging away with middle class wages and an increasingly upper-class-priced gas pump and grocery checkout line – we will be hurting…some. Mostly, the poor will be hurting, because as usual, they are the easy targets. What I saw these last few weeks with all the talk of the impending doom that would be known as government shutdown, I saw the OJ glove being trotted out again and again.
The cuts will be painful for homeless veterans because one of the cuts was to the VA Housing Voucher program and a federal promise to help the American Legion in Connecticut with their attempts to provide housing for the nation’s terribly damaged and tragically homeless veterans. We can send them off to be chewed up in the machinery of war, but when they come home damaged by mental and physical wounds, well, there’s just not enough money. We have to think of the deficit, you know, and $75 million, while when talking about a 3+ trillion dollar budget is the equivalent of twenty bucks it’s, well, you know. It’s the deficit (whispered like the cancer) .
NASCAR, fortunately, will not be hurting. We can’t have a washed up “sport” that suffers more from a terrible economy and the fact that many of its die-hard fans are out of work and unable to afford the $150 it would cost for a 2 day ticket, general admission seating (you’ll be lucky to even see the track) to the April Bubba Burger 250 at Richmond International Raceway suffer even more. By the way, that $150 doesn’t cover parking, which people who live across the street from the racetrack will be happy to provide you in their front yard at approximately $100 per day. No, we can’t have an over-priced and over-hyped sport that some say died with Dale Earnhardt (I’m not one of them – I thought the guy was a buffoon and a jackass) suffer in need of that $7.4 million guaranteed commitment to fund the US Army NASCAR sponsorship. This benefits a dying sport and the Army, which has had trouble in recent years with recruitment. You will find the Toby Keith inspired nationalists at a NASCAR event, and they all have wayward teenaged sons with no prospects at the local manufacturing center that was outsourced to China, so you can see why the Army would want to sponsor NASCAR and that the two would be kissing cousins should be no surprise. But it might be more suitable, in an era where the deficit holds more importance than any other national problem, at least in the eyes of all of our politicians and the media, that handouts to NASCAR be suspended while there is a national deficit that requires the cutting of benefits for homeless veterans.
I haven’t even mentioned the $20 million in guaranteed commitments to the National Guard for recruiting junkets at NASCAR events.
Is your blood boiling yet? It should be. Because if either side were really worried about the deficit, you would hear someone say “hey, maybe we need to have some more tax revenue coming in. You know, I hear that GE didn’t really pay any taxes in 2010, that they sheltered it all off-shore with cooked balance sheets where they took the losses hit for their crap-assed credit arm that got itself smacked out by subprimes.” Or you would hear someone say “You know, maybe we can’t really afford a 2 front war anymore.” Or if social security really needs to be “fixed” and by “fixed” republicans and their teaparty handlers mean “do away with” or “funnel into Wall Street because we saw what a great job they did with 401Ks,” rather we would hear someone say “hey, maybe we should end the wage cap of $120K. Lots of people making $250K or more a year – must be, even the President keeps mentioning it, so why not do away with the cap entirely?”
But we don’t hear anyone actually saying that in government, because they’re not serious about reducing the deficit. The republicans are serious about cutting programs that make this country better by far than a third world country that, like ours, will have 98% of its wealth concentrated in the hands of 1% of its citizens. Why? Because the Randian pseudo-philosophy that wormed its way into the ideology of the GOP says we’re all supposed to be rich or we’re not worthy. It’s called social darwinism. The right likes to accuse the left of it, depending on the intelligence quotient of its audience at any given moment, but up is not down, and social darwinism is owned by the right.
WTF?? 2. The 2012 Budget was an OJ glove. The republicans, who cannot support their budget cuts easily in 2011, proffered as their OJ Glove the 2012 Budget spewed forth by House Rep. Paul Ryan. Its a real stinker, make no mistake. It proposes that Medicare be privatized (don’t we think that’s a wonderful idea??) and Medicaid…well, let’s just say…deficit. It also promises to paydown the current deficit – in 30 years or so. It makes a group of assumptions that are ridiculous on the face of it: That nothing adverse will happen to, or within this country, in the next 30 years, that the price of a barrel of oil will not change in the next 30 years, that we won’t have any new wars in the next 30 years, that the population will remain at current levels for the next 30 years, that nothing – NOTHING will change. Nothing will happen. The economy won’t tank again, and everyone will be singing kumbaya…for 30 years. That was their OJ glove, and rather than forcing the GOP ADD boys to FOCUS, the democrats let it be an OJ glove, and the President came in too little, too late, a leadership “style” that really became a bad habit for him back during the healthcare reform frakas.
But hey, at least the stupid budget got passed, right? And in such an exciting manner – even if it was a put-up job.
Let’s have one Strikes My Fancy this week, to counteract the Bee’s growing cynicism (could be the lack of nicotine, I’m still on the wagon, or it could be the sinus infection I came down with Friday for the 5th time this year already). This one is a cute one, guaranteed to make you at least crack a grin, if not chuckle outright.
SMF: A Girl and Her….Cow?? Regina Mayer, from Bavaria, really, really really wanted a horse, just like most young girls do. She wanted to jump and ride and have that special breed of animal that makes most people go all warm and fuzzy.
Her parents said no. Repeatedly. Finally, Regina had had enough, and started to train Luna. Luna is a cow. Luna now is broken to ride, and jumps. I call that thinking outside the box.
You can read about, and see more pictures of Regina and her cow Luna here at Der Spiegel.
Tags: 2012 budget, Berke Breathed, Bloom County, Budget showdown, cow broken to ride, jumping cow, Paul Ryan
WTF is WTF and this entire past week and a half has been WTF of mega-proportions.
First, let me thank everyone for their kind comments regarding my quitting smoking dramas. I definitely have the best group of readers and friends on the blogosphere, and you were all a great, great help to me. On a funny note, I have a total loony of a co-worker who decided to quit smoking when I did. Good for her, I say, but she’s always trying to compete with me, and couldn’t let me have my mini-nervous breakdown without honing in on it. There is one in every office, I tell you. This will be a short table, but I’m on my way back to my usual snarky self. I think. Maybe it’s the xanax talking.
This is Sunday; Welcome to Potluck.
WTF?? 1. Someone tell me again, when do we get tired of paying corporate welfare? Stunning, astounding, mesmerizing and confounding! Shocking! GE paid $0.00 in corporate taxes in 2010. How? Offshore havens. Shocking!
Even though offshore havens have been around for decades, we’ve all heard of them and it is a well known fact that they are out there, and that american companies have been using them for years to hide profits. Maybe it’s only SHOCKING because GE is the first one to get caught hiding ALL of their billions in profits offshore. In 2010. Oh, and in 2009, too. Meanwhile, the republicans and democrats in congress can’t agree on a budget, because they can’t get their broken record brains off of abortion and gay marriage and gays in the military and all the other boring, tired, dead horses long enough to face facts that It’s About Jobs Stupid and now that they are so distracted with all the OJ gloves, and we in turn are all distracted by OJ gloves, Congress cannot seem to make a decision that entails more than where to eat lunch, much less how to get a budget passed before they have their pissing match and shut down government. Not only is the left hand not watching the right, both were amputated about 45 years ago and buried on opposites ends of the earth.
I paid income taxes. You paid income taxes. GE paid no income taxes thanks to offshore havens, so all the benefits of american society and law that GE enjoys, we paid for. They get the free ride. Exxon didn’t pay any in 2009 either. In fact, according to a 2008 GAO report, 2 out of every 3 american companies paid no income taxes between 1995 and 2005. SHOCKING! Until you remember that the IRS has this neat little rule for these companies that if they pay taxes to a foreign government, they don’t have to pay taxes here at home. And oh, my how very easy that would be to manipulate. Probably easier than fudging an AIG balance sheet.
GE claims that they didn’t have any tax liability because their credit arm, GE Financial, nearly tanked during the Wall Street Meltdown (remember that? Because our elected officials don’t seem to) and caused them significant losses. Poor, Poor GE – they got themselves involved in subprimes and poor credit risks all bundled up into nicely bowed little packages fit for the Christmas Tree at FAO Schwartz, so that exempts the parent company from paying taxes on the parent company’s billions in profits. Another loophole for parent companies when one of their wayward “offspring” comes home with stories of poverty due to excess and “gee, Daddy GE, I promise I’ll do better next time. I swear that hooker was just me exercising silly adolescent curiosities!!”
Meanwhile, while jobs are being added, they’re not being added fast enough and the 99′ers are still finding discrimination against them in the workplaces. You see, they have too much experience, cost too much and are too old and icky to hire back now that there are thousands of pretty young college grad go-getters just waiting to spitshine the bosses’ shoes. For a discount and cut-rate benefits packages.
WTF?? 2. Subprimes are back. According to the Wall Street Journal (cited here via Bloomberg), those subprimes that destroyed an entire housing and mortgage industry (and don’t let anyone fool you folks, that debacle isn’t over yet – not by a long shot) are back in style with investors. Ok, we know that the average attention span amongst nearly everyone in this country has gone down, but I am quickly becoming convinced that there is something being added to our water supplies. That or the movie Groundhog Day was actually a documentary, and we are all trapped in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, living the same day over and over again while we try to get it right.
WTF?? 3. Wake me up in time for Christmas 2012. Because honestly, I don’t know if I can take the upcoming presidential campaign season. Really, I don’t.
On the flip side, at least when this loony runs, Saturday Night Live will be funny again:
On that note, I’ll leave you with a recurring thought that I’ve been having. The workers who stayed at the Fukushima plant to try to bring it under control are truly the cream of the homosapiens crop. One would have to be incredibly brave, or incredibly resigned, to stay there when they know that their personal endings will not go well. I admire the fact that they stayed. I admire whatever spark it is in them that made them stay.
Tags: foreign tax credit, Fukushima 50, GE pays no taxes, Judge Clark Brown, Michelle Bachmanns presidential bid
Consider this a Tuesday Evening Special post, and I will keep it short.
As you all know, I switched from Pall Malls to the eCig about 3 weeks ago. I haven’t had a real cigarette since then, and I haven’t had an inhale from the eCig since Friday morning. I just haven’t seemed to have any interest in smoking anymore, which is a good thing.
Then Saturday morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I’m normally up with Lil’Bee around 7:30, 8:00 on weekend mornings, so that was entirely out of the ordinary. When I finally did get up around 11:00, I found I didn’t really want to do…anything.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had zero energy, and zero motivation.
And that bled into Sunday morning, which is why I posted the sorry excuse for a potluck. Thank the magnetic force that keeps this universe from flying apart, and thank by friend Lee for the political cartoons, or there would have been absolutely nothing but a big fat F-Off, because that’s how I was feeling.
Then yesterday the crying jags started, and wouldn’t stop. No matter what, I could not get myself under control. That, my friends, is not me. The Bee doesn’t cry, on principal, unless someone has died, or she is mad enough to murder, and even then, sometimes the Bee still doesn’t cry. At either occasion.
I saw a new doctor at my usual practice (new to the practice, the receptionist was eager to point out, not new to doctoring), who said “I have no idea why this severe of a depression would come on so quickly.” Nice.
It could be anything from symptoms of impending MS to an abscess on my brain. So she gave me Xanax. It’s a lovely drug, I will admit, and it reminded me somewhat of Vicodin. It definitely calmed me down to the point where I felt I could melt right into the sofa and never arise again, and be perfectly happy to do so. And that was a .25 mg dose – according to the “new” doctor, the lowest dose they give.
After telling her everything going on in my life recently (home is fine, no, no problems at work, no my husband isn’t cheating on me, no a loved one did not die or get diagnosed with anything that will cause them to die…well, you get the picture), she said “let’s run some bloodwork, but I think it’s nicotine withdrawal.”
Really? Seriously? Nicotine withdrawal?? I’ve heard of heroine, crack, alcohol causing severe depressive instances, but never nicotine. Turns out, she might be right. You see, I did a little research, and sudden, uncontrollable and severe depression is indeed a sign, albeit not a common one, but an effect of quitting smoking. This raises several questions, not the least of which is this:
The FDA knows full good and well that the number of chemicals in a typical cigarette exceeds 4,000. They know those chemicals include such lovelies as formaldehyde, benzene, ammonia, acetone, arsenic and hydrogen cyanide. The FDA knows this, and insists not that Big Tobacco remove these chemicals, but rather requires Big Tobacco to just put more graphic warning labels on the packages, if it requires that at all. I’m yet to see it. Why doesn’t the FDA put the reins on Big Tobacco? Several reasons: lack of power being one, but Money being the biggest. Big Tobacco, like Big Guns, sinks a lot of money into lobbyists each year, which translates to congressional and executive branches just…well, looking the other way.
However, the FDA has tried to have the eCig outlawed here in the US. Yes, the eCigs and their cartridges come from China, but really – how much more dangerous could they possibly be than a regular Pall Mall? So why suddenly does the FDA position become “well, we don’t know what’s in that liquid!!” Well, the FDA didn’t know what was in a regular cigarette either, until it was brought to their attention, and by then it was too damned late, and entire state industries centered around tobacco. Let’s just say: I don’t hold a lot of stock in what the FDA does and does not like, given its track record of drug approval in the past couple of decades.
I’m still in the grip of this depression, and I can honestly say it is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been sad, sure – everyone gets sad, but I’ve always been able to snap out of it. This time, though, is different. It was sudden, and severe, and if it has to do with quitting smoking, then I have to say this:
I truly, truly feel for those trying to kick crack, heroine, coke and all the other hard drugs. If just nicotine-withdrawal can cause what is happening to me these last few days, then I have nothing but the strongest admiration for those who have kicked what the government considers the “real drugs.”
I also truly feel for those diagnosed with clinical depression and prescribed meds to control it, because I have to tell you – I’m not sure which is worse, at least in my case. I know I cannot speak for the clinically depressed – but I admire you for being able to take the prescribed “cures” and still function.
As someone who smoked for 25 years, I can say this: Damn, it is nearly impossible to get that monkey off your back. Yes, all the non-smokers can preach and harangue and nag and blame us for skyrocketing insurance rates all they want and claim that if they walk around outside and we’re smoking 500 feet form them it might kill their future unborn babies, but the fact is: This is an incredibly addictive drug, and just like with other incredibly addictive drugs, kicking the habit is a feat of willpower that I doubted I had. In fact, I didn’t, until the eCig, which helped immensely. You can be ready to quit, want to quit, and still not be able to quit. Yes, it is that simple, and no, it’s not that simple.
I wish I could tell all my friends who smoke that the craving, the NEED for nicotine just went away. It didn’t. I suspect that will be with me a long time. Right now, I want a hit off that eCig, because I really want that nicotine. I’m trying to mitigate that desire with reminding myself of what I’ve been feeling the past few days, with how raw my nose is from blowing and how my eyes are in a perpetual state of puff and with the certainty that if I go back now, I may never be able to quit again for fear of losing control of my emotions again. I can only hope that this depression is indeed Nicotine D.T.’s, and that they’ll be over tomorrow, or the next day. And I can only remind myself that given the timing and lack of other causative factors, nicotine D.T.’s is the best choice of culprit, and that if I go back to smoking, I’ll have to go through this shit again someday.
So I can tell you this: Yes, the eCig does indeed work. It is easier on your system than a real cigarette. It is just as satisfying. It is like having your cake and eating it too. And if your ultimate goal is to quit altogether, then yes, the eCig will help you reach that goal faster and easier than any other “smoking cessation” being marketed – and I can tell you that because I’ve tried them all. Except Chantix. I’ve heard too many horror stories about that drug already – and it’s FDA approved.
But I can also tell you this: Sometimes, quitting can really mess up your system – but I figure a temporary depression, no matter how severe, has to be preferable to an oxygen tank when I’m 50. Hopefully, by the weekend, I’ll have happier tales to tell.
Tags: eCigs, quitting smoking, severe depression as symptom of nicotine withdrawal
The Bee is worn out and totally unmotivated, so I’m putting the potluck on half-hiatus this week. I’ll let the week’s political cartoons say about everything I have to say. Speaking of political cartoons, I have a friend named Lee who, every Saturday, puts together and email that contains the week’s best political cartoons. Lee, you’re a good friend, and I thank you for the ways you make my life a bit easier every week
WTF: Libya.
WTF 2. 2012.
WTF 3. They keep prattling on about abortion, but it’s really about jobs, stupid!
WTF 4. Elizabeth Taylor, RIP.
Tags: Elizabeth Taylor, GOP 2012, Libya, No Fly Zone, Saudi Arabia
My Pomeranian Is Smarter Than Your Honor Student.
I saw that on a bumper sticker affixed proudly to the back of a Mercedes SUV today. I suppose it is fitting, given the state of this country today. This is Sunday; Welcome to Potluck where we have but one WTF this week, and it is the sorry state of the nation.
We have self-proclaimed “comedians” like Gilbert Gottfried who was fired by AFLAC from his easy-money stint as the Duck because he made callous jokes about the devastation in Japan. Good. He needed to be fired. You can stay stupid things all day long, but no one said that your employer can’t fire you for it. He really thought someone wanted to hear that garbage. Maybe someone did. I don’t care. What I know right now is that we all need to exercise a little of that hunkering-under-the-desk-good-god-this-could-happen-to-us humility that we Americans are so gleefully lacking in.
We have a House Energy Committee lorded over by Republicans, not a single one of which, when asked to vote on even a meaningless statement last week would admit that global climate change is indeed quite real, quite eminent in its severity and quite a potential national security crisis. They want us to think that drilling for oil in 10 years when the rigs have been built, IF the oil is found, will make us energy independent. They want us to think that our aging nuclear facilities are just hunky dory and we need more, even though a new nuke facility will take at least 10 years to build, and that’s after you find a place to put the stupid thing. They want us to think that scraping the topsoil off the state of North Dakota to get at possible shale oil is a good idea even if the science for getting at that oil in a cost effective way is just is not there, but they don’t want to admit that global climate change is very real when the science IS there.
We have a House lorded over by the nuevo-powerful teaparty Marie Antoinettes that actually believe that cutting all funding for NPR, a drop in the deficit sea, is a good idea. You see, they don’t like NPR on ideological grounds. NPR news doesn’t always prop up their fragile ideology, and they hate NPR because of it. NPR doesn’t always tell them what they want to hear. Sometimes it does. Usually it does not, because usually what they want to hear is so far from reality that they may as well be living in a parallel dimension. One was quoted as saying something along the lines of NPR being able to survive on its own. They even had to hustle up a fake Breitbart video to kill NPR funding, and force the resignation of the CEO of one of the most viciously and wrongfully maligned organizations, next to Planned Parenthood and ACORN, in this nation. The problem is this: With advertising, certainly NPR would survive – but it would immediately and irrevocably suffer a change in form so severe that one would not be able to distinguish it from any of the network “news” shows that are more hysterical hyperbole than news reporting. NPR would be subject to advertising dollars, and advertisers can and do tell a news organization, along with the board that runs its affairs, what to air and what not to air once NPR were fully privatized, which would have to happen. It is one of the very, very few outlets in this country that can report rather than regurgitate and pointlessly bifurcate with false degrees of “fairness.” The only good news here, right now, this instant, is that this bill will most assuredly fail to pass the Senate and the President’s desk. Or at least, I hope. However, that does nothing to secure NPR’s status in the future, should the country again collectively lose its mind and put the republicans and their teaparty handlers in the big seats next year.
We have the NRA. They lobby against research into just how much gun-crime there is in this country. It really is not a surprise that when our President finally decides that maybe, given the rash of mass murders in this country the last few years, it is finally high time we discussed how to make it slightly more difficult for every Tom, Dick and Wacko out there to get their hands on all the firepower they could possibly ever want and the President goes so far as to ask the NRA RightWingFuhrers to sit down with him to discuss the matter, they immediately say “NO!”
We have our President, who cannot or will not show the leadership initiative to say “Then screw you, I’m pushing some regulations and restrictions through, and bring it if you don’t like it.” Yes, we’re all aware of the powerful and massive lobbying arm of the NRA…but just once, wouldn’t you like to hear someone tell them to Bring. It.
Meanwhile, we do have a President who gives Libya’s Quaddafi an ultimatum. Stop bombing your citizens or else. Comply with the UN resolution or else. I don’t have a problem with ultimatums so long as they are not wastes of air. This one was a waste of air. Does anyone really think we can handle another front in our seemingly endless wars? I don’t believe we have the resources left to wage another war, or even to join in a UN resolved sky-blockade. Fortunately, the jet that fired on a Libyan jet yesterday was French. Unfortunately, last night we learned that American and European forces launched airstrikes on Libya, threatening to pull us into that 3rd front when we simply do not have the means to bear another front. I’m not even taking into account the utterly profound lack of scruples involved here. The industrial world will beat its breasts over Quaddafi murdering his own people, but the world said next to nothing while the Sudanese were being tortured and murdered by the hundreds of thousands just a couple of countries down. We know good and well the reason why Libya suddenly is a spot to be “handled” by the world’s elite nations is because Libya. Has. Oil. At least, I know it, so why doesn’t every other single person in this country, both IRL and in elected and appointed positions of power, know it?
We have a slew of so-called “conservatives” across this country in positions of power that that really seem to truly believe that telling a bunch of billionaires that they need to pay some fair shares in taxes is a mortal sin, but cutting funding of anything that has to do with poor children is a wonderful way to cut the deficit. Even though it will do anything but cut the deficit. Every cut in human services has a price, in dollars because that seems to be the only freaking thing in this entire planet that they understand. If you have a poor child in pre-K today, you have a better learner in 5 years, and a better worker and a better voter in 15 years – the alternative is far more expensive in real dollars – from prison room and board to welfare. If you cut pre-K to the bone or get rid of it altogether, you miss that early-childhood educational opportunity. That’s an opportunity you may not get back. Yes, you will be able to more easily control the masses if they are woefully ignorant of who they, and you, are, but we’ll all pay a price later on in very real dollars.
I took Lil’Bee to the mall yesterday evening for a cheap dinner in the food court and a nice wander through Barnes and Noble. In the food court, we walked by a young man, maybe 20 years old, bearing a military crew cut, a cane and the saddest eyes I think I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness. I’m not certain if I had ever actually seen the thousand yard stare before, but I saw it today and I can tell you this: it is disturbing. We send our young to war, because it’s a young person’s job to get shot up so us old farts, on both sides, can armchair quarterback. They come back damaged, in body and mind, and we can’t even give them a crappy job as a consolation prize. Obama signed in 2009 the newest set of reforms to the GI Bill, with many of the provisions going into effect this August, so at least we can give them some education. Unfortunately, we cannot promise them jobs after they graduate. Ask this year’s college senior classes. They can tell you all about having to move back home with family because they can’t find a job, and they have incredibly high loan balances to payoff as another kick in the teeth. Our House representatives who got themselves elected with the constant mantra “Jobs Jobs Jobs” have suddenly developed a case of job-description amnesia that threatens to land them on the Ripley’s roster. Have they even mentioned the word in the past two months?
We have private school vouchers are pushed as as “Throw the baby out with the bathwater” incentive to allow public schools to further erode under the guise of “school choice,” fulfilling a libertarian/randian dystopic nightmare of a daydream of a country with no public education. We live in a country where no one seems to think beyond lunch anymore, because we, as a country, don’t seem to give a damn about what kind of political/societal/economic/ecological mess our children are going to grow up in. If we did, we would demand more forward thinking from our elected leaders, and if those leaders couldn’t deliver on those demands (not everyone is capable of thinking past lunch, that is a well-known fact of the human species) would be replaced with someone who shows more potential in that area.
These are but a handful of examples of the direction in which we are going. We hear daily that this country was founded on christian principles, when it most assuredly was not. It was founded on principals of enlightenment by men who believed that if reason were applied, then any problem could be solved by humans. God was present, but was more an afterthought, a very hands-off type of deity that really didn’t come into play that much in the affairs of mortal men. It is a luxury and a self-indulgence that the brand of christians today who think that if we just put scripture into public school classrooms and on courthouse walls and on elevator doors and in every song or poem or book that hundreds of thousands of years of human instinct would be erased magically to be replaced by a utopia that has never, and never can, exist. I speak, of course, of the evangelicalistic far right that has forced its fractured will upon the nation over the past several decades, to the detriment of us all. We no longer are leaders in science and technology. We no longer lead in mathematics. It is doubtful that we even lead in the knowledge of, much less the understanding of our own country’s history. We lead in fast food restaurants. Small consolation, and a damned shame. We hold so much potential as a people to do better, to be better, but we squander it in short-sighted self-interests.
The wrong questions are asked, which of course elicits the wrong answer. The question is not “Why should teachers make so much” but rather “why don’t teachers make what doctors make? They don’t save a single life, but they might save the entire nation.” The question is not “How do we reduce the deficit without raising taxes?” The question is: “Why don’t we raise taxes on those who can most bear it and who garner the most enjoyment out of this fine country of ours?” The question is not “How do we compete again?” At least not when the will to compete is totally absent, because to compete, one much think beyond lunch, and most are not willing or able to go that extra step. I fear that the decline of America will have to get much, much worse in this country before the correct questions are asked.
Someone thought it a funny joke to put a bumper sticker on the back of their $60,000 SUV that says “My Pomeranian Is Smarter Than Your Honor Student.”
I rest my case.
Tags: American decline, gilbert gottfried, Head Start, japanese nuclear reactor, Libya no fly zone, NPR, NRA, school vouchers
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