November 16, 2009 archive

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.  61 Story Final.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Afghanistan launches unit to tackle corruption

by Thibauld Malterre, AFP

1 hr 5 mins ago

KABUL (AFP) – The Afghan government said Monday it had formed a major crime unit to tackle corruption, following escalating Western pressure on President Hamid Karzai to fight graft.

“A giant step is being taken today in announcing the opening of the major crime task force,” Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar told a news conference with the British and US ambassadors.

The government denied that the creation of the new entity was in response to huge Western pressure for concrete action to wipe out corruption.

Can God Travel Through Time?

On Divine Intervention and Prideful Ignorance.

I gave up my short career in physics decades ago, after becoming seriously disenchanted with one of its most dangerous applications. Though of course general interest has led me to keep up with developments in the fields over the intervening years. With some amusement at the absurdity of it all, I might add.

Then as the millennium turned, I was prompted to get involved again by way of new theoretics about the nature of consciousness, having witnessed what became the first legally adjudicated ‘Miracle’ of human consciousness ever. Science and medicine had no explanations for what my family and a good number of other people witnessed, so I went looking for possible answers out there on the fringes. There are quite a few of those, including combo theories of cosmology and consciousness so mind-bogglingly complex that they could melt the brains of most people. Including me.

One such theory that caught my attention was developed over a quarter of a century by a Norwegian mathematical physicist named Matti Pitkaanen, who calls it Topological Geometrodynamics, or TGD. It’s definitely a mind-melter, though when I contacted Matti directly I found him pleasantly willing to review the evidence and descriptions of what we’d witnessed, and attempt to explain how this could have been accomplished within the confines of his physical theoretics and application to consciousness. It was the only fringe theory out there that could even have conceivably applied, and once I began to wrap my head around it (once your mind is sufficiently melted it becomes pliable enough to stretch and wrap…) it did begin to make a modicum of sense.

What I liked best about TGD was its reliance upon p-adic primes in its descriptive mathematics. These are infinite numbers, and get around those pesky singularities that crop up at every corner in standard physics, which have been ‘renormalized’ away so conveniently by cheats built into the math. I’ve always considered the infinite (or, if you prefer, eternity) to be all around us all the time – that which provides the counterfactual milieu of our existence inside of and bounded by time. It struck me that approaching the mysteries with a method that embraced the infinite instead of flat denied it might give us a more useful picture of the totality of the reality we inhabit. But that’s just me, of course.

Assessing Obama

Since every writer has to write to his audience, lol, let me start by saying that it is a given that any American president’s first task is to preserve the American military and (failing) financial Empire. Obama will do so, there is no doubt of that.

And of course, that is in at least most ways despicable, considering what the American Empire has done both in foreign affairs and domestically for the past eight years. But we all know you can’t get elected president in America if you don’t have an “understanding” with the financial sector. And you can’t be the American president unless you are in a certain amount of thrall to both the MIC and the CIA. Electing a new president, any president, means electing someone who has to some extent been co-opted by these three branches of The Ruling Class.

So….a given.

We also know that any president has to ‘assess the mood of the country.’ Which in essence means that they will spin whatever they do to be acceptable to the media and the most powerful of the punditocracy, the so called opinion makers. They DO have the power to take down a president, and Obama knows that.

Obama also has to…at least in his mind, cater to the Republicans that he has to work with, he cannot call an all out war on them, as much as we…and presumably he….lusts in his heart to do so. Overall, whether it has been by design, by opportunity, or by the sheer lemminglike suicidal urges of the Republicans and their base, so far the biggest impact that Obama has had in my opinion is the extent that the Republicans have been destroyed/marginalized on his watch. Observing their descent into the batshit crazy Circle of Hell under a Black president has certainly been satisfying…and amusing.

In other words, the American president is far, FAR less powerful than people seem to think. There are pressures from all sides that must be dealt with just for a president…especially a Democratic president….just to survive.

Now given the restrictions on an American president that have become apparent since the election especially, one might easily denigrate the campaign theme of “change” that Obama ran on. It is apparent that there is very little he or anyone can actually change from the oval office. And any change will seem gradual, coming out of the last eight years of blitzkreig.

The lack of real immediate change has certainly seemed like a betrayal to some extent at least, for those who bought the okeydoke of Hope and Change expecting….real change.

But it must be said, he is neither Bush nor McCain. The relatively cosmetic changes he has made, and the thrust of the rhetoric of what changes he would like to make….if he had power to make them…is a change, if not the Change we were all Hoping for.

Assuming that he can get some jobs rolling out to the People of America, who unbeknownst to the Powers That Be apparently, are in a somewhat shocking Depression and sincerely hurting, will he get reelected? If so, what will America look like after eight years of Obama? If not, lol, what will it look like after four years of Obama?

And given the limitations spelled out above, how do YOU think he is doing? Go ahead, don’t be shy, let it out! What is your assessment of Obama at this point?

Open Market

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In an interview with The Daily Telegraph during a London gold conference, Barrick President Aaron Regent said that one could argue that Earth has reached “peak gold,” as new supplies of the ore are increasingly difficult to find.

“The supply crunch has helped push gold to an all-time high, reaching $1,118 an ounce at one stage yesterday,” the paper noted. “The key driver over recent days has been the move by India’s central bank to soak up half of the gold being sold by the International Monetary Fund. It is the latest sign that the rising powers of Asia and the commodity bloc are growing wary of Western paper money and debt.”

Will George Will’s next column highlight this?

Earlier this year, columnist George Will sparked controversy with claims that global ice levels were the same as (if not greater than) 30 years earlier. This was part of George Will’s retread truthiness and deception in his widely syndicated columns falsely asserting that global warming is not happening.

Recent news from the Arctic makes me wonder whether George will revisit the topic from a somewhat different angle.

Building a Name-Brand Health Care System, Not a Low-Cost Generic Alternative

Much as credit card companies have charged exorbitant interest rates in the period leading up to the passage and enactment of reform, so too have prescription drug companies added more cost to their already prohibitively expensive products.  Afraid that health care regulatory legislation will cut too heavily into their soaring profits, the industry feels no shame, nor any compulsion to give heavily burdened consumers much of a break.  This is a side of the debate that has not gotten the same attention as other areas and one that I have tried to bring to light quite frequently, being that I myself stand to lose quite a bit if out-of-control price increases are not sharply curtailed.  I do not deceive myself into thinking that I am the only one who stands to lose.  Though I do not mind invoking personal experience if it facilitates greater understanding and urgency, I wish it didn’t take the anecdotes of the chronically ill to impress upon a skeptical public the importance of health care reform.          

On the subject of psychotropic medication, something of which I am an amateur expert, I have closely monitored new classes, types, and formulations of prescription drugs in a desire to find the best way possible to treat my condition.  For every new medication that breaks new ground, wins approval by the FDA, and is then prescribed by GPs and psychiatrists across the country, it is a never-ending source of frustration for me to observe the three new offerings which are merely slightly different formulations of existing medications.  This is a covetous process undertaken mainly to reap maximum profit when older scripts are on the verge of losing patent status and thus being offered as generics.  For example, the anti-depressant which is the most recent addition to a family of medications known as SSNRIs has been marketed under the name Pristiq.  Pristiq has a very similar chemical structure and as a result works only slightly differently from an existing drug in the same school, Effexor, that has been around for over ten years.  Sometimes, however, even generics occasionally have limitations.  Though a lower-cost equivalent to Effexor exists, the less-expensive form has been reported to work not nearly as effectively as the name brand formulation.

An article in today’s New York Times reports on Big Pharma’s side of the story.

But drug companies say they are having to raise prices to maintain the profits necessary to invest in research and development of new drugs as the patents on many of their most popular drugs are set to expire over the next few years.

That may be, but before one gets misty-eyed listening to the woe-is-us violin, rest assured that the pharmaceutical industry isn’t exactly hurting for business.  Conveniently they don’t mention the larger picture.  Another example of this kind of infuriating slight-of-hand is the sleep aid Ambien, which has had a sufficient generic alternative for a while.  A relatively new formulation dubbed Ambien CR produces an only a slightly different reaction, mainly by time-releasing the absorption of the drug into the blood stream.  The drug is the same, but the gimmick is different.  Returning to psychiatry, it is either a testament to how little we know about the function of the brain or how unwilling we are to risk radical change that the medications used to treat depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia have broken only relatively limited ground in decades.  The best treatment for depression are still a class of powerful anti-depressant known as a MAOI inhibitors, which are close to fifty years old.  They are rarely prescribed, however, because taking them requires strict dietary restrictions that, if not adhered to, can result in serious damage to the body and, in extreme cases, even death.  In treating bipolar disorder, some patients still respond best to Lithium, which has been used in treatment for over a century, but extensively since the Fifties.    

Newer medication often cut down side effects and make the period of adjustment less painful, but do little to increasing the stated objectives of the drug, namely to drag people out of depressive episodes and set them on a course towards health and functionality.  Experimental trials are often plodding affairs proceeding at the pace of a snail, targeting a relatively limited area of the brain, and unwilling to take any unnecessary chances.  Despite this, some medications do pass muster and do end up being taken by who are suffering in the hopes of providing relief.  Even so, the drug makers and those who formulate them sometimes fail to take into account such crucial details as major side effects in a rush to get out the next big thing.  SSNRIs like Effexor, for example, are infamous for producing absolutely awful issues when someone stops taking it.  Though not strictly classified as such, one might even say that such drugs are addictive because the brain acts violently when the medication is discontinued.  These serious matters somehow never find their way onto the commercials on television or the ads inside glossy magazines.  

The difference in cost between name brand and generic drugs is quite vast.  Often it is a matter of several hundred dollars for a one month supply, though it can be as high as a thousand dollars or more.  As one might expect, those with employer-based or individual plans paid for out of pocket have to pay substantially higher co-pays for name brand drugs.  When I had private insurance, the co-pay for generic medications was $10 and for name-brand drugs, it was $60.  Sometimes I had no choice but to take a name-brand medication, which are often treated by insurance companies as something bordering on cosmetic and not essential, when the fact of the matter is that they are highly necessary and highly unavoidable at times.  

Those who don’t have the luxury of private insurance, of course, have it rougher.  Those who have to rely on Medicaid find that they have no choice but to settle for generic medications when a name-brand drug would be a much better fit and work much more effectively.  Medicaid programs vary, but in the state of Alabama, the most expensive medications are only covered if a doctor or specialist one can provide proof that at least two lower-cost alternatives have failed or been insufficient to treat the condition.  Not only must they have failed, one must also work within the confines of a 90 day coverage window.  If a claim to cover a more expensive medication is not filed within 90 days of failing the requisite two medications, then coverage is not granted.  This is ridiculous in lots of ways, mainly that few medications used to treat mental illness work quickly, and many take weeks upon weeks before any psychiatrist or doctor can make a judgment either way.  It’s also ridiculous because it uses a broad brush of convenience, painting all illnesses as basically the same and all treatment regimens as similar.  Some name-brand medications, regardless of the need are not covered at all, since whomever set up the system decided that covering it would unnecessarily drain the General Fund and that it was an unnecessary prescription in the first place.      

Returning to the Times column,

But the drug makers have been proudly citing the agreement they reached with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee chairman to trim $8 billion a year – $80 billion over 10 years – from the nation’s drug bill by giving rebates to older Americans and the government. That provision is likely to be part of the legislation that will reach the Senate floor in coming weeks.

But this year’s price increases would effectively cancel out the savings from at least the first year of the Senate Finance agreement. And some critics say the surge in drug prices could change the dynamics of the entire 10-year deal.

Those who trust Big Pharma do so at their own peril.  

Additionally, The news broke today that, quite unsurprisingly, much misinformation exists surrounding the Public Option™.  As Politico points out,


The debate has placed disproportionate emphasis on the creation of a government insurance plan, raising the expectation that everyone could ditch their employer-provided coverage and enroll in the public option.

But that won’t happen, at least not at the start. The reality is that only about 30 million Americans – 10 percent of the population – would even be eligible.

It could be accessed only through a new insurance marketplace known as an exchange, where consumers would shop for plans. Only certain categories of people could use the exchange: the self-employed, small businesses, lower-income people who qualify for tax credits to purchase insurance and those who are otherwise unable to find affordable private coverage.

This might deflate the hopes of supporters and pacify opponents, but since so much of this debate has been a three-ring-circus based on raw emotion and faulty logic, I sincerely doubt it.  However, as proposed, it is interesting to note that the Public Option™ would be more like Medicaid than anything else.  My hope is that we do not make the same mistakes with the current bill as we do with existing systems it seeks to augment or replace, particularly those in red states who likely would opt-out altogether if provided the opportunity to do so.  Though at least red state residents would presumably have the fall-back of Medicaid, provided they could qualify, the framework is based on ignorance and tunnel-vision of an almost incomprehensible degree.  One cannot simplify the complexities of humanity, nor its diseases, which are as multifarious as its people.  

Returning to the treatment of mental illness, what is often not cited is the disconcerting fact that often African-Americans and Latinos respond much less favorably to medications used to treat the condition.  This is a contentious topic with lots of disagreement, but the argument some advance is that cultural stigma factors in to a very large degree.  If minorities feel shamed or guilty about seeking help for psychiatric needs, they are much less likely to engage in medical research.  Furthermore, many believe that therapy is a more viable option than medication.  Often it is difficult to make any kind of pronouncement when the truth is obscured by so many different interrelated factors.  And though one can easily make a case for mental illness, one could also make a case that minority and low-income residents might be less inclined to visit a doctor for a more run-of-the-mill ailments as well.    

The lifetime prevalence of major depression in the United States is estimated to be 16.2 percent, with considerable social and role impairment evident in the majority of patients. Previous studies found only minor differences in depression rates among African Americans, Latinos and whites. But various studies have found patients from lower social economic groups often have less access to mental health care, are less likely to be prescribed and to fill prescriptions for new antidepressants and are less likely to receive care beyond medications when compared to whites.  

 

This fear and anxiety so many have that resembles to these eyes a case of St. Vitus Dance may not have any basis in reality.  Doesn’t matter how good the system is if no one uses it.  God forbid everyone in this country have a high standard of living and good health.  As the article points out, minorities and low-income citizens often have the highest need for quality care and are apt to put off seeking help until the pain becomes intolerable.  That these are the people most likely to be eligible for enrollment in the government-run (gasp) option, those now building it from the ground up would do well to consider its target audience.  We speak out of our own privilege when we assume that somehow the Public Option™ will directly affect us for better or for worse, when the poor and less fortunate will be the ones who either reap its rewards or suffer from its limitations.  While it is true that middle class individuals and the reasonably affluent have struggled under the yoke of skyrocketing health care costs, I recall going in that I assumed the changes needed and intended were meant to appeal to our tired, our poor, our huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  Somewhere along the way this became all about us.        

Palin denies evolution? You betcha! Also . . . .

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    Someone needs to explain to Sarah why she has a tailbone.

New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani writes:

    Elsewhere in this volume, she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”

ThinkProgress.org

    Wow. Just, wow.

    More below the fold.

Docudharma Times Monday November 16




Monday’s Headlines:

Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform

Copenhagen climate talks: No deal, we’re out of time, Obama warns

GM to start repaying debt to U.S. government next month

Catholic bishops’ influence on healthcare bill

EU lets its members fudge statistics

John Lichfield: What a relief to be driving in disguise

Barack Obama meets Shanghai students in China

Japan’s economy continues growing

Palestinian push for an independent state causes Israeli alarm

Russia warns Tehran it is ‘running out of time’ in uranium deal stand-off

Mozambique police ‘kill freely’

Guinea-Bissau: Cocaine’s traffic hub

The Terrorists are Coming! The Terrorists are Coming!

It has been a bountiful week for those who still vehemently back the PNAC doctrine and the phony war on terror is back with a vengeance. Friday’s surprise announcement by the Obama administration Justice Department that the big bad planner of the 9/11 attacks is going to be tried in New York City and a GASP civilian court sent shockwaves through the fascist right and set off a flurry of puckering assholes that loudly rang out from Washington to Tel Aviv. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reputed mastermind behind the false flag black op that took place over eight years past and rebooted American history much to the glee of the war freaks will be leaving Guantanamo Bay and coming to the Big Apple in what will likely be the biggest rally of Deathers, Birthers and teabagger terrorists in history. They won’t have to doctor any crowd photos for this one, you can bet that marching orders are already being cut, Christian Zionist phone trees are ablaze and the imbecile polemicists like Krauthammer, Kristol and Goldberg will be shrieking with manufactured outrage worth every damned penny to the Military Industrial Complex and the Israeli right-wingers who subsidize the drivel that is grist for the genocide machine.

Late Night Karaoke

Open Thread

You know what I’m missing?

Late Night Karaoke

Missing the Point

Perhaps it will grow on me, but at the moment I’m underimpressed with the new Prisoner.

That link is to the Wikipedia entry for the original and what you don’t get from it, or it’s pale, tepid remake, is the urgency and energy of the paranoia.

This is a Prisoner on Quaaludes and Thorazine, vaguely aware of all the rampant wrongness around him, but unsure of what it is.

The real Prisoner is black and white, Patrick knows precisely where he is- an exact replica of his London flat, but not the same place at all.

Where am I?

In the village.

What do you want?

Information.

Whose side are you on?

That would be telling.

We want information…Information…INFORMATION!

You won’t get it!

By hook or by crook, we will.

Who are you?

The new Number Two.

Who is Number One?

You are Number Six.

I am not a number.

I am a free man!

The Prisoner is born in rebellion- “Why did you resign?”  This Prisoner is born in confusion- “Why are you torturing me?”

The Prisoner has hope and confidence, panache.  He looks at the world and knows what it is.

This Prisoner?

He has no principles, just confusion and unease.

Perhaps that is a truer statement of the human condition, but I can’t relate to it.  I’ve never had any doubt.  I may die, but I’ll never surrender.

Pique the Geek 20091115. The Things we Eat. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is often used as a flavor enhancer in many savory dishes.  What most people know is that it often added to foods.  What most people do not know is that is present in many foods naturally, either in free form or as glutamic acid in proteins, since glutamic acid is a very common naturally occurring amino acid.

There is considerable controversy surrounding MSG, mostly due to the so-called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome (CRS).  Symptoms commonly reported include numbness and tingling of the extremities, facial flushing, and several others.  Tonight we shall take a fairly in-depth view of MSG.

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