March 31, 2015

FL's pill mill crackdown leaves legit chronic pain prescriptions hard to fill.

Florida’s pill mill crackdown makes getting meds difficult for ‘legitimate pain' patients


Charles Knighton, in his Palm Coast home, says the medicines that allow him to manage his pain are becoming more difficult to get.
News-Journal/LOLA GOMEZ

The Orange City pharmacist has a limited supply of powerful pain medication to dispense and is under immense pressure from federal and state authorities to ensure those drugs don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Florida needed to do something about prescription painkiller abuse, but the crackdown on pill mills has produced unintended consequences, said Accardi, owner of Accardi Clinical Pharmacy.

“There has been collateral damage and those are patients who have legitimate pain,” he said. “In this climate, there are going to be patients who are going to be turned away. Some are going to be legitimate, and that is terribly unfortunate.”

.....Since Florida implemented new regulations to stamp out abuse, pharmacists have refused to fill some of Knighton’s pain prescriptions. As a result, he says he can’t get all of the medication he needs to manage his pain.

“I’ve been made to feel like a drug addict — like I am on trial,” said Knighton, 54, who has a rare spinal condition called syringomyelia. “The war on drugs has become the war on the disabled.”

We experienced this problem before my husband's death. Doctors were terrified to prescribe pain medication. As my brother once said..when a person is dying so what if they become a little addicted.

Once hospice comes in, that problem with lack of pain medication ends....thank goodness.

March 30, 2015

If you saw HBO's outstanding "Going Clear" on Scientology, you should read Twitter about it.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/goingclear?f=realtime&src=hash

In my mind the best so far is from Leah Remini.

Leah Remini ‏@LeahRemini 1h1 hour ago

Thank you to the brave who did something about it. And to those who didn't have a voice, you do now. #GoingClear

More:

rhonda talbot ‏@devilstrifecta 55m55 minutes ago

Thank you @Paul_Haggis I actually feel sick having just watched #GoingClear Your bravery & journey made this great doc even more real. xo

Skylar Mundy ‏@Skybearlove 1h1 hour ago

Thank you @HBODocs for making #GoingClear and helping former Scientologists like me not feel so alone. Thank you for exposing the truth.

Mario Lopez ‏@MarioLopezExtra 2h2 hours ago

Between Miscavige & Durst, @HBO is really killin it on the crazy rich white dude front...

Kristen Bell ‏@IMKristenBell 2h2 hours ago

#goingclear is a terrifying look at the fallibility of the human mind. "To find yourself, think for yourself."- Socrates

Jocelyn ‏@jocemiller 3h3 hours ago

What's become evident is #GoingClear is a horror film, and people who've left the abusive "church" of Scientology are incredibly brave.

There are more added constantly.

In my mind Jason Beghe and Paul Haggis were the most memorably outspoken. I recognized some of the others from Jenna Miscavige Hill's book...they were her minders and auditors.

AND...L Ron Hubbard had the grimiest teeth I have ever seen!

Kudos to HBO for this documentary for which they hired 160 lawyers.

March 29, 2015

Cartoon. "Hateful" Hoosiers’ store window running out of space.

Hateful Hoosiers’ Window Space

Finally, I drew a cartoon about Indiana. No, I haven’t really been waiting for a reason to pick on Indiana though I wonder how this will fly since I do have a little sister, a little brother and quite a few nieces and nephews up there. I doubt they’ll see it.

But yeah, I got to hit Indiana. It seems there’s always something stupid coming out of Texas, Florida and Arizona giving me an opportunity. Earlier today I drew a custom cartoon for a publication in Utah which you’ll see Sunday. But now Indiana has decided to doing something Neanderthaleriffic. You really gotta hate somebody to refuse to take their money.

March 28, 2015

Angie's List halts expansion over Indiana law seen targeting gays.

Angie's List halts expansion over Indiana law seen targeting gays

(Reuters) - The company behind the Angie's List business-rating website on Saturday put on hold a planned expansion of its Indianapolis headquarters over a new Indiana law that opponents say could allow companies to deny services to gay people.

The decision by Angie's List Inc comes amid criticism of the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was passed overwhelmingly by both champers of the Republican led-state legislature and signed into law on Thursday by Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Supporters say the legislation will keep the government from forcing business owners to act against strongly held religious beliefs. Opponents say it is discriminatory against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and broader than other states' religious freedom laws.

"We are putting the 'Ford Building Project' on hold until we fully understand the implications of the Freedom Restoration Act on our employees, both current and future," Angie's List Chief Executive Bill Oesterle said in a statement.

"Angie's List is open to all and discriminates against none and we are hugely disappointed in what this bill represents," Oesterle said.

Good for them.

March 27, 2015

An important post by greatlaurel which puts things in perspective about Steel Valley teachers.

While the post blaming teachers keeps getting more and more hits, the one explaining and defusing is getting little attention.

Thanks, greatlaurel.

Steel Valley SD School Board try to deflect blame to teachers after the removal of SpecEd restroom

I hope some take time to read it and see just how easily teachers are blamed for things out of their control.

And give it a kick for presenting both sides of a serious story about special education.

March 27, 2015

Peter King rips into "vulgar Cruz fans" for harassing his office staff.

Republican rips ‘vulgar’ Cruz fans

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Friday said his staff have been abused by vulgar fans of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who have made “adolescent” calls to his office. King said “women and young interns” in his office have had to deal with unspeakable words from callers suffering “from severe cases of arrested development.”

“The puerile language used is what most kids outgrow and move beyond when they reach sophomore year in high school,” King told The Washington Post.

“The fact that women and young interns in my office have to listen to these perverse rantings is particularly shameful,” King said.

King acknowledged that Cruz “cannot be held responsible for all his supporters.” Still, he said it was telling that boorish individuals were drawn to the Texas lawmaker.

“Clearly, Cruz has many decent and honorable supporters,” King argued. “At the same time, though, we must ask why he has such an unusual appeal to this low denominator in American politics.”

March 27, 2015

Jim Hightower says we have already been found guilty of "imported meat discrimination" ....

by a WTO compliance panel.

New trade pacts create secret, pro-corporate tribunals that use their powers to eviscerate our democratic laws

He says his momma warned him not to eat anything unless he knew where it came from.

In 2002, responding to public demand, lawmakers decided that you and I have a need and a right to know where the meat sold in supermarkets comes from. Thus, Congress enacted a simple and straightforward law called COOL (Country Of Origin Labeling), requiring meat marketers to tell us right on their packages whether the enclosed steak, pork chops, lamb shanks, chicken wings, etc., are products of the USA, Mexico, China, or Whereintheworldistan.

This is useful information that empowers us consumers. Whether you have health concerns about imported meat or just prefer to have your food dollars go to American farmers and ranchers, COOL lets each of us know the source so we can decide such matters for ourselves. And that is precisely why global agribusiness giants hate it. Foreign meat producers (especially the US food conglomerates that have moved their meat production and slaughtering operations to nations that pay low wages and/or aren't fussy about health inspections) don't want you knowing or deciding. They've been all over Washington officials, saying they want the #@$&! labeling law repealed.

But who cares what they want? COOL is America's law, and American courts upheld it when the agribusiness powers tried to strike it down. It's also solidly supported by our people--a 2013 Consumer's Union poll found that a whopping 90 percent of Americans favor the right-to-know label! That's such an overwhelming majority that even the anti-consumer Republicans now in charge of Congress are not about to mess with it. So that's that.

.....WARNING: Mind-exploding Outrage Ahead. Unfortunately, that's not that. Unbeknownst to most people, a cabal of corporate and political elites (including Presidents Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) has stealthfully negotiated international trade deals during the past two-plus decades that have fabricated, piece by piece, what now amounts to a privatized world government. It's a secretive, autocratic, plutocratic, bureaucratic government of, by, and for multinational corporations. Most astonishingly, it has been empowered [Second warning: Take a deep breath before reading on] to eviscerate laws and policies enacted by our own elected officials.

And what if a country does not like our country of Origin labeling? Will they sue?

A so-called trade agreement includes a process called ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement). This is a devilish bit of legalistic hocus-pocus that elevates mere corporations to the status of "corporate states," putting them on par with our nation states. It allows them to go to foreign tribunals staffed by corporate lawyers and sue governments to demand taxpayer compensation for a particular national, state, or local law--the offending law could be anything from an environmental regulation to a community's "Buy Local" ordinance. (Under WTO rules, the complaining corporation gets its home nation's government to sue on its behalf, while NAFTA and CAFTA rules allow corporations to challenge sovereign nations directly.)

And from the section called Keeping Our Cool...the ridiculous meat discrimination.

In response, our government adjusted the wording of the labeling requirement in 2013, but a WTO compliance panel recently ruled that the change was not enough, declaring that we are still guilty of (get this) "imported meat discrimination."

March 26, 2015

Obama’s Trade Deals Could Overturn New York’s Fracking Ban and Accelerate Climate Change

Obama’s Trade Deals Could Overturn New York’s Fracking Ban and Accelerate Climate Change

Thanks to a recent Wikileaks’ leak, certain truly onerous provisions of President Obama’s secret trade deals are no longer secret. As reported this week in the New York Times, the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) would “grant broad powers to multinational companies operating in North America, South America and Asia. Under the accord, still under negotiation but nearing completion, companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings—federal, state or local—before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United Nations.”

As terrible as this sounds for the rule of law, and democracy, it’s even worse. Long-time consumer advocate, Ralph Nader describes how the Investor State Tribunals would work:

...Suppose that Brazil sues the U.S. and says “your food labeling laws are too restrictive and they are keeping out our exports to your country.” Then we send our Attorney General to Geneva before the Tribunal. There can be no press, no public disclosure of what happens behind closed doors. If we lose, as we almost certainly will, there is no independent appeal. It circumvents our courts, legislative and regulations. Foreign corporations can take our food, health and safety protections and bring us before these tribunals and if they lose, we pay millions of dollars in compensation.


...The cases are argued, tried and judged by a small, revolving group of elite corporate attorneys, taking turns playing the role of judge and prosecutor. The potential for conflicts of interest and secret handshakes exceeds even the current regulatory revolving door, in which industry lawyers, officials and consultants move into key positions in public agencies, alter governmental regulations in industry’s favor and then return to their bespoke industry.

Under the terms of the agreement, corporations would have the right to sue U.S. federal, state and local governments if regulations, laws or bans, for example, those protecting health or the environment, cause a reduction in the company’s future profits. Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, told a group gathered in Queens, New York last month, that New York’s fracking ban would be a likely candidate for a Tribunal suit, should these agreements be signed by the President.

...“Once passed, the TPP will unleash a gigantic explosion of trade in fossil fuels. Some of the biggest promoters of these deals are Chevron, Exxon, and BP,” predicts William Waren, senior trade analyst for Friends of the Earth. Waren delineates the plans which companies and their elected officials are expectantly putting into place, awaiting the imminent Fast Tracking of the TPP:

A list of the harms by this uncontrolled explosion of trade follows in the article.

Hard to believe both parties and our president are pushing a trade deal that might cause so much harm to us as a nation.

March 25, 2015

Hate waking up to read about your jerk freshman year roommate running for President.

From Ted's roommate Craig Mazin's Twitter page this week:

Craig Mazin, Twitter

Craig MazinVerified account ‏@clmazin

Don't you hate it when you wake up and read about your jerk freshman year roommate running for President? We've all been there, right?


Craig Mazin @clmazin · Mar 22

Since it's already begun, to journalists who want to talk to me about Ted Cruz-- respectfully, I've already said everything I had to say.

From the Daily Beast 2013:

Ted Cruz at Princeton: Creepy, Sometimes Well Liked, and Exactly the Same

"More than anyone I knew, Ted seemed to have arrived in college with a fully formed worldview,” Butler College colleague Erik Leitch said. “And what strikes me now, looking at him as an adult and hearing the things he's saying, it seems like nothing has changed. Four years of an Ivy League education, Harvard Law, and years of life experience have altered nothing."

While Cruz’s friends from the debate team foresaw a successful career in politics for Cruz, many of the Princeton alums offered that they were deeply troubled by the possibility of Cruz running for president, a notion that one, who did not want to be quoted speaking against a former classmate who is now a senator, called notion “horrifying.”

Craig Mazin said he knew some people might be afraid to speak in the press about a senator, but added of Cruz, “We should be afraid that someone like that has power.”

And the idea that his freshman roommate could someday be the leader of the free world? “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone,” Mazin said. “I would rather pick somebody from the phone book."

More from Craig Mazin in the New York Magazine 2013

Ted Cruz Was a Smelly, Terrible Roommate

Proud, pretentious American destroyer Ted Cruz has always been a bit difficult. Since elbowing his way into the national consciousness, the Texas Republican has been outed as a hater of "minor Ivies" like Penn and Brown, and is said to have come to Princeton as a 17-year-old with a book titled Was Karl Marx a Satanist? "I would end up fielding the [girls'] complaints: 'Could you please keep your roommate out of our hallway?'" his undergrad roommate at Princeton Craig Mazin told the Daily Beast over the summer. ("I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone," Mazin added. "I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.&quot

Today, Mazin — who just so happens to be the screenwriter behind Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, and The Hangover III — took to Twitter to share more stories about his fateful time in a crappy room with Cruz. It's about what you'd expect, but funnier.

March 23, 2015

Dominionist Christians say Ted Cruz will win, bring endtime transfer of wealth to righteous.

This video is from a Texas Megachurch and a Iowa anointing of Ted. It needs to be in general discussion, not the religion forum, because it is a perfect example of what may be an overwhelming influence the next two years.

This is a repost from 2013 from the Video forum. Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, is speaking all through the video. There is an anointing ceremony for Ted in which they say God will condemn every tongue that speaks up against him.

I will be thinking of this when he announces tomorrow. And a shiver will run down my spine.

This is truly creepy to me, this whole concept of dominionism. This is part of an article by Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action. Wilson indicated in an earlier article linked below that Ted Cruz "brings to the table his own formidable, even astonishing, elite connections that, in 1999, helped enable candidate George W. Bush's lock on the 2000 election Republican presidential nomination."

Cruz' Father Suggests Ted Cruz "Anointed" to "Bring The Spoils Of War To The Priests"

In a sermon last year at an Irving, Texas, megachurch that helped elect Ted Cruz to the United States Senate, Cruz' father Rafael Cruz indicated that his son was among the evangelical Christians who are anointed as "kings" to take control of all sectors of society, an agenda commonly referred to as the "Seven Mountains" mandate, and "bring the spoils of war to the priests", thus helping to bring about a prophesied "great transfer of wealth", from the "wicked" to righteous gentile believers.

....Discussion of the now-notorious speech by Rafael Cruz has missed the fact that Ted Cruz was subsequently blessed and anointed by prominent dominionist pastors, in effect as a "king" in the political/governmental sphere, at a special blessing ceremony at the Marriott Hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, at a July 19th-20th 2013 rally designed to draw pastors into politics.

From Wilson's earlier article on Cruz:

Ted Cruz Worked With Religious Right Founder Paul Weyrich, To Elect George W. Bush

"We are talking about Christianizing America. We are talking about simply spreading the gospel in a political context." -- U.S. Senator Ted Cruz' late friend Paul Weyrich, in a 1980 Dallas speech to fundamentalist ministers. Weyrich is widely credited as one of the top architects of the new right and the religious right.

.... In other words, per Goeglein's account, Ted Cruz helped create the Bush Presidency. It's astonishing for an almost endless range of reasons, not the least of which is that it doubly true as well - Cruz also served on the Bush campaign's elite legal team that fought the legal battles over the vote recount in Florida which in turn led to the wildly controversial Bush v. Gore Supreme Court ruling that installed George W. Bush in the presidency.

But Cruz' ties to Paul Weyrich are nonetheless even more jaw-dropping than that considering who Weyrich was. How did Cruz earn the friendship of the man who helped create the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC ?

Here is more about Paul Weyrich and his goals toward "liberals".

Right wing leader said they must be willing to be obnoxious.

If you read what Heubeck and Weyrich wrote about their new plans... you see ruthlessness.

Our movement must be highly provocative. The thing we have most to fear is that we will be ignored.

Cultural conservatives must understand the predicament we are in. We must be willing to take measures that perhaps we would be unwilling to take under different, more ideal circumstances. We will have standards--we will never try to justify dishonesty, destruction of the personal reputation of our opponents, cheating, assault, etc., in the service of victory for our movement. However, we will not consider ourselves above appearing "unseemly" or surrendering some our personal dignity. We must be willing to shake people out of their complacency--which means being obnoxious if the situation requires it--because given the fact that the dominant leftist culture is safely ensconced, complacency only serves the interests of our opponents.

It is not enough to say that conservative philosophy is more sensible than that of the Left. If we leave it at that, we will only attract "sensible" people to our movement. But "sensible" people do not go to the barricades, they do not make great sacrifices for a movement. And the experience of the conservative movement has shown this to be the case. We need more people with fire in the belly, and we need a message that attracts those kinds of people. As Plato said, "madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human."

We have now seen their attacks on the left play out in real time. All we have to do is look back at their words years ago. All planned.

We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left. We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left. We will not give them a moment's rest.

We will use guerrilla tactics to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime. We will take advantage of every available opportunity to spread the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the existing state of affairs. For example, we could have every member of the movement put a bumper sticker on his car that says something to the effect of "Public Education is Rotten; Homeschool Your Kids." This will change nobody's mind immediately; no one will choose to stop sending his children to public schools immediately after seeing such a bumper sticker; but it will raise awareness and consciousness that there is a problem. Most of all, it will contribute to a vague sense of uneasiness and dissatisfaction with existing society. We need this if we hope to start picking people off and bringing them over to our side. We need to break down before we can build up. We must first clear away the flotsam of a decayed culture.

Seeing Ted Cruz in action recently brought back all these words of the founders of this movement for religious people to take over every aspect of the government.

In case you are unfamiliar with the 7 Mountains, here is a link to enlighten.

David Barton Advocates Seven Mountains Dominionism