A confluence of topics dealing with mental health, substance abuse, health, public health, Social Work, education, politics, the humanities, and spirituality at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. In short, this blog is devoted to the improvment of the quality of life of human beings in the universe.
It was on this day, August 6th, �in 1945 that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The United States is the only nation in the world that has ever used an atomic bomb in combat against an enemy. It is debatable whether the use of the Atomic bomb saved lives and accelerated the end of World War II. It certainly brought a new level of awareness of what human beings are capable of.
As a young person in the 50s we went through the exercise of "duck and cover" hiding under our desks in drills as if this would save us from death by an atomic bomb. Looking back now, the fact that adults instilled such fear in young people for no good reason almost seems abusive. We have a long way as a species to mature into the creatures that God created us to be.
Here is a video which lasts 3:56 about the naivete of the times. I wonder if "duck and cover" would have saved our fellow human beings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
According to a study published in the August, 2008 issue of the American Journal Of Public Health in the ten years since the implementation of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program in 1993, the smoking prevalence rate dropped 29% and the coronary heart disease mortality rates dropped 31 % with 425 fewer deaths which resulted in 3,365 extra life-years.
As a public health intervention, controlling tobacco use in populations has big health dividends. However, they raise interesting moral issues such as should people be able to engage in life damaging behaviors such as smoking? Should this be an individual choice or should governmental intervention make such choices difficult?
Here is the abstract from the AJPH.
We used the previously validated IMPACT coronary heart disease(CHD) mortality model to estimate the CHD deaths attributableto reductions in smoking prevalence following the introductionof the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program (MTCP) in 1993.A 29% and 31% decline in smoking prevalence and CHD mortalityrates occurred, respectively (from 1993 to 2003). A total of425 fewer CHD deaths, which generated approximately 3365 extralife-years, were attributable to decreased smoking prevalence.With these results in mind, a comprehensive tobacco controlprogram should be sustained and supported.
While the corporate evening news broadcasts about the latest antics of Brittany, and Angelina and Brad's new twins, our country is going down the tube. It is interesting that you have to go to YouTube to have some of the dots connected. The Sludge Report lasts 4:42 and worth watching.
FOX News told reporter: "We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is."
Reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre were first asked by FOX News and later bribed, to downplay a story they had on a cancer-causing growth hormone called Posilac which is growth hormone for dairy cows which is absorbed by humans through milk. The reporters decided to blow the whistle on FOX News and filed a law suit. After the ordeal was over, it was discovered in the appeals court that it's actually not against the law to falsify the "News."
Video takes 10 minutes and is well worth watching.
“If the Left succeeds in gaining and retaining more power, the well-being of future generations will be at greater peril. I fear (our children) will inherit a nation that is less free and less secure than the nation we inherited from the last generation. It is therefore our job to stop them. Not just debate them, but defeat them.” — Sean Hannity
Dear Sean:
I found these words on page 11 of your book Let Freedom Ring. This book, and similar ones from your conservative colleagues Bill O’Reilly and Michael Savage, was found in the home of a man who read those words, internalized those words, and then loaded his shotgun. He took 76 rounds of ammunition with him to a place of worship—a place where he knew he could do his job to stop and defeat some liberals. At the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, Jim Adkisson, a fan of yours, killed two people, wounded five others, and left an entire congregation and country shaken by his actions. Actions prompted, as he testified in his own written notes, by the ideas contained in your words.
58,000 of my peers were killed in Viet Nam. Hundreds of thousands were injured and came home with PTSD. Millions of Viet Namese were killed, for what? Ostensibly, a domino theory that communism had to be stopped in Asia or it would come to the US. Americans were convinced by the politicians during the cold war that the bogey man was at large and threatened American security.
Bottom line it was good for business selling billions of dollars of weapons and drafting hundreds of thousands of poor baby boomers so they couldn't raise too much hell at home getting high, listening to seditious music like rock and roll, and marching for civil rights.
Viet Nam was another pre-emptive and immoral war which the US lost and should have lost because it was wrong. The plutocrats manipulated the public most of whom were too stupid to see through them and they elected Richard Nixon, of all people, to end the war which he had no intention of doing and it took him 6 years to finally get around to it amidst his paranoid criminal activities which lead to his resignation to avoid impeachment.
Whether it's the Red Menace or Terrorists it is interesting how easily the public is manipulated by politicians and corporations into perpetrating evil policies for economic reasons. Once again, when people tell you it's not the money, it's the principle of the thing, you can bet your last buck, its the money.
Mammon once again reigns as the American God. Greed rules and when in bed with the politicians human suffering and death ascend to horrific proportions. Another example of capitalism out of control.
I take my simvastatin every night before I go to bed and my mind is like a steel trap and I'm 62. Is it the simvastatin or am I just a sharp guy? I have a little CRS (can't remember shit) though. My colleague and friend, Garry, says its "nominal aphasia". While I can't remember the person's name I always remember what my problem is called.
The study appeared in the July 28,2008 issue of the journal, Neurology, and the summary appears on Physician First Watch on July 28, 2008. Here is what the Physician Watch article says:
Elderly people on statins showed a lower rate of cognitive decline than those not taking them, according to a prospective observational study in Neurology.
Researchers followed a population-based cohort over 5 years, examining the participants' medicine cabinets for prescription drug use and measuring their cognitive status annually. The cohort comprised nearly 1700 Mexican American subjects, all over age 60, roughly a quarter of whom took statins at some time during the study.
By the end of the study, those who'd taken statins were about half as likely to have developed either dementia or cognitive impairment without dementia as others in the cohort.
The authors point out that there have been no primary prevention trials of statins for dementia. Writing in Journal Watch Cardiology, Joel M. Gore says that such studies are needed "before statins are routinely deployed
I wonder if John McCain takes Statins? Watching him speak has left me with the impression that he has come cognitive difficulties.
Most Americans are ignorant about foreign affairs. They believe in the myth that their country is pure, holy, always right and never wrong, advocates for freedom and democracy around the world. This, of course, is not true, is far from the truth, and is contradicted by the facts.
The United States is greedy, materialistic, and has advocated for and operated on its economic interests in foreign affairs since the second world war. The United States is run by a bunch of plutocrats who are in bed with the corporations, and the politicians do the corporations bidding for the corporations support in elections, and then the politicians are expected to support the corporate interests and not the welfare of the people the politicians were elected to serve.
The quote of the day today gives a brief history of the U.S. activities in fucking with Iran. It goes on to this day and is about oil.
Perhaps, even if Americans were knowledgeable and not ignorant, still the American public would support its government's colonial manipulations in the service of capitalism trampling on the rights of others around the world. Americans are a pretty greedy bunch who serve Mammon diligently with Black Friday being one of the highest holy days of the year. When terror and anxiety fill the public after 9/11, the President of the United States does not tell his subjects to turn to God, but rather he tells them to go shopping.
Greed and materialism fuel the American psyche and the daily report of the stock market performance has taken the place of daily prayer.
Considering capitalism out of control and the required trampling of human rights and human dignity in the process, it pains me to witness the deterioration of the American soul dissipating while worshiping at the altar of the golden calf.
"1953 - At the behest of the British government, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower approves a covert operation to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, Iran's democratically elected leader. Mosaddeq had been a driving force behind the nationalization of British oil holdings in Iran. With the help of British and American funds, along with direct CIA assistance, his government was replaced by the dictatorship of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlav, whose rule would last until the Islamic revolution of 1979."
Andrew Boyd in his book, Daily Afflictions, defines "The Collective Unconscious" this way: "An unspoken, consensual hallucination of social order that permits the individual to mask any responsibility he or she might feel for government wrongdoing or social ills in a web of numbed-out apathy and mass denial." p.91
Having read Rick Shenkman's book, Just How Stupid Are We?, I have thought a great deal about what is wrong with "We, The People". I am coming to the conclusion that we are not stupid in the intellectual sense although there is plenty of evidence that we are, but rather than we are unaware as a people and that, in this age, is causing great problems.
The problem that The People face is not an intellectual one but rather a psychological and spiritual one.
In a sense, Americans have been brainwashed and we are in denial because of the soporific effect of our materialism and greed. Because of materialism and greed we are willing to allow Wal Mart to come into our communities and destroy our local economies, we are willing to destroy the planet driving gas gussling vehicles, we are willing to discard tons of plastics and garbage that pollute our lands and seas, we are willing to let our children become obese and narcissistic in ways that would leave their grandparents and great grandparents horrified, we are willing to elect leaders who promise us the moon and then wreak havoc on the world for spurious reasons while forcing us and future generations to pay for their exploitive policies.
The collective unconscious allows us to continue to live in a delusional world that becomes increasingly dysfunctional because of the collusion of political and corporate power used to keep Americans anesthetized on cheap material goods, fast food, and entertainment.
There are pockets of awareness but no social institutions which nurture it except perhaps blogs on the Internet. Net neutrality is a huge issue upon which the future of the soul of America is based. Without the Internet, the information, encouragement, and inspiration for we The People to become conscious is severely constrained.
One of the most important campaign issues for 2008 is net neutrality. Let's bring this issue to the fore for once and for all. The soul of America depends on the net staying free. It is the hope of awakening the slumbering masses who have been sedated by shopping.