Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 51 – NYTimes.com

Sad tragedy developing right now in Oklahoma as Tornado rips through communities and causes death and destruction.

“A giant tornado, a mile wide or more, killed at least 51 people as it tore across parts of …”

via Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 51 – NYTimes.com.

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Suicide Rate Rises Sharply in U.S. – NYTimes.com

Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm.

via Suicide Rate Rises Sharply in U.S. – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Culture Think, Death and Dying, Health Literacy, Health Policy, Aging; old age; seniors; baby boomers; health;, Baby boomer, Suicide

The American Dream Hangs in the Balance as Our Sense of Security and Peace is Shattered: Most Expect ‘Occasional Acts of Terrorism’ in the Future | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

A national study released this week tracks American public opinion, documenting our feelings and fears about violence and terrorism.  We do not feel safe and we are trusting one another less.  Symbolically and physically we want to close the borders.  We can choose to believe that we must all feel this way or we can redefine who we are in a way that makes us stronger.  It depends who “we” are.

“Last week’s bombings at the Boston Marathon attracted broad public interest: 63% of Americans say they followed the story very closely, among the highest interest in any news story in the past decade.” The Pew Foundation study reflects the sad truth that our collective American perception of civil society is changing.  Perhaps this time we are not only changing but morphing.   If we learn to accept and assimilate what is different then we can become a new America.  But who is doing the learning and who is becoming remains to be seen in an America that seems to be digressing to Michael’s Harrington’t bifurcated America.  Without a positive vision  of the future there cannot be a collective “we” to embrace it nor a collective image of an America we can all love and want to preserve.

If we are going to survive as a nation some of us will have to loosen our grip on the past so that we can all collectively embrace the future.  But today’s media events and philanthropic facts are not hopeful.

The study sounds an eerie warning that we are fundamentally changing. We seem to be resigned to constant fear and violence.  ”We” seem  to be unable to take refuge in “our” symbolic “community psychological blanket” because we have become afraid of one another.  But who is this “we” and who is “the other”? There are so many of us “perceiving” from so many directions and backgrounds that a vision of a common America now seems more distant than ever.  Public opinion seems to be increasingly shaped not by what we see but what we believe.

Who are we?  Who are we becoming?  Who have we been?   What have we become?

How do we take stock of all that is happening around us and start a sensible conversation about what is wrong and how to fix it?  Social media has made a global conversation more possible but, perhaps ironically, local communion now seems more difficult and a sense of “we” or community seems increasingly vapid, vacuous and devoid of anima–tasteless, unintelligible and dispirited.  The roaring 20s, rocking 50s and the tumultuous 60s seem distant now …  We seem to be drifting into this millennium without  a compass.

American identity is changing and the center or the “typical” or “average” America seems to have disappeared.  Not only is our political discourse moved to the extremes, but our American identity seems to have morphed into fragments–dispersed among a cacophony of interests, groups and pervasive xenophobia which feed public reaction and drown out reason.  Immigration, good health and guns strangle our ability to form a consensus and find our way into this new millennium.

America is drifting but no one seems to know the direction which we are moving towards.  The collective and cumulative acts of public violence and the thousands of young Americans coming back from violent, and confusing, foreign wars does not bode well for our present or future…

The baby boom babies are now trading in their infancy diapers and lack of patience for yet another bout of rebelliousness that depends on their increasingly irrelevant 60s ideology undergirded by optimism that is now increasingly undermined by myopia and their incontinent mortality.  The ultimate victory for this now passing generation may be the imminent legalization of marijuana as a palliative reward to sustain their now eminent twilight.  Event in their collective final curtain call they can find solace in their seemingly Pyrrhic victory to medicate once again when confronted with the oncoming abyss we have for generations now called modernity and social change.

The Great Generation of past “moral” wars has left us and the Baby Boomers are now in the drivers seat.  But where are they taking us? They were the flower children and the great protesting worriers who tore down all the sacred cows and left us in a pragmatic and hedonistic middle without manners, caution or respect … Our cultural fabric seems incapable of tying together the many immigrant currents that now makeup the American mosaic.  We are the world  and the newcomers seem as desperate and dislocated as the rural kids who seemingly grow up in happy, stable, homogenous America only to turn against it in our theaters, our elementary schools and our federal buildings.

The middle is gone and shows little evidence of returning…  The 1% seem to have somehow held on to a greater percent of the nation’s wealth, while an increasing number of American families struggle with uncertainty and economic stagnation or, worse, slip back.   This recession, the ongoing local and internationally motivated terrorist and gun violence is also shaking our very foundations.

Civil liberties, political movements, and the American sense of who we are, how well we are doing and where we are going all seem increasingly clouded by an ongoing malaise.   We get nervous by what we see and need to look closer and more often to calm our nerves.  We are afraid at home and seem to need to go oversees to die in wars that have a quiet beginning and seemingly no end.  We cannot get the public spectacle out of our mind’s eye. A malaise that seems to be the product of public violence and media competition.   We live under a perpetual tempest in a proverbial psychological tea pot of public attention cannibalism in an ever hurried frenzy over delivering pictures and impressions.  The relatively few hold onto control of the public megaphone and preach to an increasingly disappearing no longer hegemonic nor numerous “majority”.  With moral certitude and  economic hubris they wield a shiny and expensive, now digital and omnipresent, printing press that constantly showers us with a practical if simply public truth.  They create, perpetuate and feed the seemingly insatiable public consumption we all have for news we need to calm our curiosity and nerves…  The world has become so complex that we need to  be numbed but the glare of the media industry will not let us rest.  The price we pay seems to be pessimism. America is ceasing to be optimistic and welcoming… It is unsettled, perhaps worried and content to close the door on our no longer widely shared dreams of exceptionalism, manifest destiny and international policeman.  Are we trading in our moral courage for a veneer of contentment?

At last we may look to the facts and find refuge in Pew’s enlightenment through facts and figures that may light the way…  What else can we do?  That depends on who we really are …  and who we are is up to all of us to define…  We must confront the ugly facts but we can confront them while grasping a larger and more unifying truth.  What that truth is remains to be seen.  In the meantime, let’s keep on working on it together.

Keep learning and thinking together here at the Policy ThinkShop ….

The Pew article and a link follow:

“Last week’s bombings at the Boston Marathon attracted broad public interest: 63% of Americans say they followed the story very closely, among the highest interest in any news story in the past decade. And the bombings drew far more public attention than any terrorist event since Sept. 11, 2001, which 78% reported following very closely in mid-October of that year.”

“While the Boston bombings riveted most Americans, the incident appeared to confirm the public’s long-held belief that occasional terrorist acts are to be expected. Over the past decade, majorities have consistently said that “occasional acts of terrorism in the U.S. will be part of life in the future.” This sentiment has spiked to 75% in the wake of the Boston bombings from 64% a year ago and now matches the previous high of 74% in 2003.”

via Most Expect ‘Occasional Acts of Terrorism’ in the Future | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

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Equating Islam with terrorism – chicagotribune.com

When the media feeds xenophobia, sensationalism, ethnocentrism and religious bigotry, the crazies and the extremists win.  The crazies and the extremists are such a minute minority but their acts are so big and their intentions are to cloud our judgement and make us crazy.  The media’s handling of these acts magnifies them and makes these pitiful bigots super heroes, if evil ones.  They become larger than life and feed our need to catch and conquer the proverbial boogyman.  Read the following article by a Chicago journalist for some clarity and what is happening to us every time we over state the role of religion in violent acts that are perpetrated by people who in the end are not very religious at all…

“Before we knew anything about the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, we knew that he “recently became a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day.” This piece of information was placed in the lead of an Associated Press article published as the police were still on the hunt for Tsarnaev’s younger brother and alleged accomplice, Dzhokhar.

As the day went on with increasing panic and an intensifying sense of terror emanating from television and computer screens across America, and news outlets scrambled to release sound bites and tweetable articles with any information they could scrounge up on …”

More via Equating Islam with terrorism – chicagotribune.com.

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Explosives Detonated in Massachusetts Standoff – NYTimes.com

Shootout in Boston town near Marathon Bombings between policy and two men who through bombs and shot at policy…. Could be related to marathon fugitives on run…

“Two young men, armed with guns and explosives in what appeared to be backpacks, engaged in a violent standoff with dozens of police on a street in Watertown, Mass., late …”

More via Explosives Detonated in Massachusetts Standoff – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Blogosphere, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Death and Dying, News, Boston bombing and possibly related violence going on now, More bombs and shooting in Boston

2010 > FDA Approves New Formulation for OxyContin

Oxycontin is still a drug abuse problem in our society… The FDA approved a new version of the drug back in 2010 and the company is supposed to do a followup study to tell us how safe the new FDA approved version is…. Have you seen the study?  Five years have gone by and God knows how many addictions and lives?

“The reformulated OxyContin is intended to prevent the opioid medication from being cut, broken, chewed, crushed or dissolved to release more medication. The new formulation may be an improvement that may result in less risk of overdose due to tampering, and will likely result in less abuse by snorting or injection; but it still can be abused or misused by simply ingesting larger doses than are recommended.

“Although this new formulation of OxyContin may provide only an incremental advantage over the current version of the drug, it is still a step in the right direction,” said Bob Rappaport, M.D., director of the Division of Anesthesia and Analgesia Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

“As with all opioids, safety is an important consideration,” he said. “Prescribers and patients need to know that its tamper-resistant properties are limited and need to carefully weigh the benefits and risks of using this medication to treat pain.”

According to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately half a million people used OxyContin non-medically for the first time in 2008.

The manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma L.P., will be required to conduct a postmarket study to collect data on the extent to which the new formulation reduces abuse and misuse of this opioid. The FDA is also requiring a REMS (Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy) that will include the issuance of a Medication Guide to patients and a requirement for prescriber education regarding the appropriate use of opioid analgesics in the treatment of pain.”

See:

http://healththinkshop.com/2013/04/06/there-is-a-reason-why-we-have-a-war-on-drugs-and-why-we-cannot-win-it/

 

Aslo see more via 2010 > FDA Approves New Formulation for OxyContin.

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There is a reason why we have a war on drugs and why we cannot win it… « HealthThinkShop

So the issue is twofold:

First, there is the problem of a powerful drug being re-marketed as Oxycontin and promoted in ways that lead to abuse.

Secondly, there is the demand for this drug that is created that in turn creates a tremendous market that seduces the greedy and the stupid (the marketers and the profiteers because thinking you can sale this stuff and not get caught is not brilliant) and the users who are often victims who innocently become dependent and spend the rest of their lives needing more of the drug to prevent from “getting sick” when they violently experience withdrawal from this highly addictive and dangerous drug–people get so sedated under this drug that they stop breathing and die…).

This is not most importantly a debate about weed or about politics, or even about criminality… It is a calculated business move by investors to promote a substance that is now running wild in our society and killing innocent people…

via There is a reason why we have a war on drugs and why we cannot win it… « HealthThinkShop.

Filed under: Behavioral Health Outcomes, Blogosphere, Community Tragedy, consumers, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Culture Think, Death and Dying, ethics, Health Literacy, Health Policy, Healthcare Reform, News, Parenting, Policy ThinkShop Comments on other media platforms, political corruption, Political Economy, Political Facts and Fiction, Public Health, Public Policy, regulations, waging war, WeSeeReason, drug war, Oxycodone, Oxycontin, War on Drugs

Suddenly, They’re All Gone – NYTimes.com

As the baby boom generation we have had all the benefits that come from the exercise craze and the health food awareness diet bonanza.  We have learned to drink skim milk, munch wholewheat bread, and eat our veggies…  Others have taken it further and have gone stock, lock and barrel into the Whole Foods, or “whole paycheck” abyss.

But it is not so much healthy living that is our biggest challenge… Perhaps it is facing mortality while seeing the previous generation die right before us… Since they were so much more likely to abuse salt, sugar and tobacco, their gerontological downfall is not pretty…  But the idea that life ends so absolutely, and that their life, perhaps, ends with relatively little meaning or impact, that kills us…  We are the baby-boomers and we learned to question everything, and we are perhaps the most spoiled generation….  If you think about black and white TV, how many toys kids got for the holidays prior to the 1960s and beyond,  you see a picture of how colorful our lives have been…. The end, however, may not have changed much for us … and when we see our loved ones leaving we have to face their mortality in a post modern world that is perhaps more complex, less spiritual and simply busy.

The Policy ThinkShop recommends the following read in the NYTs for those of us who are being forced to see and feel the inevitable end though our eyes and our nostrils…

“Caring for the old is just like parenting an infant, only on really bad acid. It’s all there: the head-spinning exhaustion, the fractured brain, the demands and smells. Only this time with the knowledge that it won’t …”

via Suddenly, They’re All Gone – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: Aging, Blogosphere, Culture Think, Death and Dying, faith-based, Health and Exercise, Health Literacy, Parenting, Religion, WeSeeReason, AARP, Aging; old age; seniors; baby boomers; health;, gerontology, mortality, parents, psychology and personal growth; evolving politically and facing existence; facing mortality and loving it; Dr. Mortis and Dr. Love; Love and Fear; "How you living? ", seniors

The NRA vs. America | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone rocks the gun debate like nobody else can…. Enjoy…

“Eleven days after the massacre, Wayne LaPierre – a lifelong political operative who had steadied the National Rifle Association through many crises – stood before an American flag and soberly addressed the nation about firearms and student safety: “We believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America’s schools, period,” LaPierre said, carving out a “rare exception” for professional law enforcement. LaPierre even proposed making the mere mention of the word …”

More via The NRA vs. America | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

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John Brennan: The debate over drones | The Economist

To kill or not to kill?  Seems to be the question for a post cold war America that struggles to find a useful venue and vehicle for its newly found monolithic world power status and the ways in which that lonely status make it an irresistible target for any group looking to be taken seriously and seeking a megaphone for its cause.

No one is raising the important issue of how simple and relatively inexpensive it might be to deploy this drone technology against the US and its allies.  It seems logical that drone technology would be simpler and cheaper to create and deploy than a nuclear weapon, or a so called “dirty bomb.”  So, what is really at stake here might be who is angry at the US and why?  How can the US justify unilaterally searching out its defined enemies and taking them out gangster style no matter national sovereignty or international law.

The London Economist tackles this issue in a straightforward way yet with a focus and a lens that seems a bit ideologically myopic and perhaps a bit nostalgic for the cowboy days of George W.  

You be the judge:

“T WAS so much simpler when George W. Bush was president. Outlining America’s plans for Osama bin Laden a few days after the September 11th attacks in 2001, Mr Bush declared: “there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.” For all those at home and abroad made uncomfortable by sweeping assertions of American power it was a moment of predictable provocation. Without surprise, they heard a swaggering Republican president vowing to make his country’s attackers pay, and seeming to pay no more heed to legal niceties than a cowboy bent on a lynching.

Yet 12 and a half years later, the cautious, lawyerly Barack Obama—a Democratic president with nothing of the…”

MORE via John Brennan: The debate over drones | The Economist.

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John Brennan and the Truth About Drones : The New Yorker

There may be no more important breakthrough in warfare than the stealth, quiet and precise murder and mayhem America can deliver through its drone program.

Of course, as the drone system becomes more popular in use and infamous in its impact, regarding those whom are targeted and whose social peace is disrupted when neighbors are crushed by a drone visit, it is now getting and will continue to get increasing popular attention.

At last, the American media and the popular imagination are being challenged as the role of these gadgets becomes more and more visible in American efforts to get and crush the bad guys.  The New Yorker magazine, takes a go at the issue in its most recent issue:

“When I read the news that John Brennan was set to appear before the Senate in hopes of becoming of the C.I.A. director, I thought of the group of villagers I met at a seaside hotel in Yemen two years ago. They had driven many miles to see me, coming from the Yemen countryside in a pair of battered taxis, and they were waiting in the hotel parking lot. There were about a dozen of them in all. It was a …”

via John Brennan and the Truth About Drones : The New Yorker.

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Scholars Say Bones Belonged to Richard III – NYTimes.com

Jeepers creepers,  the underbelly of a parking lot befitting a king!?

“Until it was discovered beneath a city parking lot last fall, the skeleton had lain unmarked, and unmourned, for more than 500 years. Friars fearful of the men who slew him in battle buried the man in haste, naked and anonymous, without a …”

MORE via Scholars Say Bones Belonged to Richard III – NYTimes.com.

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