Sunday Morning Commentary
What is going on lately in the nation. Maybe you do not read it, but these authors/cartoonists can depict each of today’s issues in one image.
Immigration, CEO Pay, Guns, and Retirement
Click on each image to enlarge.
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
Science Backed Home Healthcare Remedies
From treehuggers, “Home Remedies,” Melissa Breyer, August 12, 2019
treehugger publication was also a part of Slate’s “Green Challenge” which Slate started publishing in conjunction with treehugger.org. a decade plus few years or so ago.
Chicken Soup for a Cold?
Toronto-based dietitian and Director of Food and Nutrition at Medcan, Leslie Beck:
“There is no evidence to prove that eating chicken soup is effective at treating the common cold. However, it’s not a total bust.” She continues;
“A 2000 University of Nebraska study found homemade chicken soup containing chicken, lots of vegetables, parsley, salt and pepper inhibits the activity of inflammation-causing white blood cells in blood samples taken from volunteers. It was thought this could reduce the flow of mucus and ease a stuffy nose. An earlier 1978 study found sipping hot chicken soup increased the velocity of nasal secretions in 15 healthy volunteers, an outcome possibly helping clear a stuffed-up nose. It was also found the effect lasted only 30 minutes and drinking hot water had the same effect.”
Another conclusion found in the same 1978 study was “Hot chicken soup, either through the aroma sensed at the posterior nares or through a mechanism related to taste, appears to possess an additional substance for increasing nasal mucus velocity.”
A 1998 UCLA report Coping with Allergies and Asthma notes, “chicken soup may improve the ability of the tiny hairline projections in the nose (called cilia) to prevent infectious particles from afflicting the body.”
It does lessen the sniffles . . .
Honey for Coughs
In “What works best for kids’ colds? Not medicine,” the author Melissa Breyer writes about a study showing honey outperforms the popular cough suppressant dextromethorphan (DM) in treating cough symptoms in children.
Dr. Shonna Yin from the N.Y.U. School of Medicine says that comfort for sick kids can come in the form of “plenty of fluids to keep children well hydrated, and honey for a cough in children over a year old.”
Prunes?
Science backs up the efficacy of prunes in helping improve regularity and better than psyllium. A half a cup of prunes has around 6 grams of fiber for around 200 calories. They also have the natural sugar, sorbitol, which can act as a laxative for some people.
Ginger for Nausea
Ginger is commonly used for medicinal purposes in Asian, Indian, and Arabic herbal traditions. In China, ginger has been used to aid all types of digestion disorders for more than 2,000 years. Health care professionals recommend ginger to help prevent or treat nausea and vomiting and as a digestive aid for mild stomach upset. Germany’s Commission E has approved ginger as a treatment for indigestion and motion sickness.
Hot or cold ginger tea can be made by grating or slicing fresh ginger and letting it steep in boiled water for 10 minutes or longer if you like it spicy. Hot, spicy, ginger tea with lemon and honey also does wonders for a stuffy nose as well.
How to Make Ginger Ale using Ginger.
Lavender to induce Sleep
Sleep expert Richard Shane, PhD ; “Research shows that smelling lavender decreases heart rate and blood pressure the key elements of relaxation (Reader’s Digest). The two main chemicals in lavender have been shown to have sedative and pain-relieving effects.”
2005 study found an exposure to lavender essential oil increased the percentage of deep or slow-wave sleep (SWS) in men and women. The study’s subjects reported “increased vigor the morning after exposure to lavender exposure corroborating the restorative SWS increase. Lavender serves as a mild sedative and has practical applications as a novel, nonphotic method for promoting deep sleep in young men and women and for producing gender-dependent sleep effects.”
Some truth in what mom and grandmother thought for their children and grand children. Maybe they did know best?
Traffic Jam in Shenzhen, China
” The long line of trucks is a traffic jam of military trucks. Shenzhen (China), to state the obvious, is across the border and located just north of Hong Kong (see map). This show of force could still be a well poised threat to Hong Kong warning them to discontinue their protests or else. Shenzhen is an approximate 20 miles from Hong Kong and can be traveled by rail, bus, or limo.
Click on the images to enlarge.
In an update, it appears the Chinese military have started military exercises in Shenzhen as well as hundreds of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) in preparation of an invasion. Another saber rattling action intent on intimidating Hong Kong protesters. This is an scalation from previous efforts when Traffic Police were the ones used to make a similar point. It remains to be seen if China is willing to break the “one – country, two governing systems model” allowed Hong Kong and at the heart of China’s delay in deploying. Hong Kong is a global economic hub. Any intrusion would be noticed, lead to a destabilization, and potential sanctions on China.
On a forced (German VP boss) business trip, I was scheduled to visit a PCB manufacturer in Shenzhen. The travel agency routed me through Shanghai instead of Hong Kong which added hours to my trip (1 hour sitting in Shanghai) as compared to an ~ hour coming out of Hong Kong. A train would have stopped near the Westin where I was staying.
It was obvious the company travel agency did not know the route or bother to look at a map. I arrived after midnight. I informed my Chinese associate, we would be meeting later in the morning so I could be rested enough to negotiate the return of the excess air freight costs charged and my own agenda of negotiating the freezing of gold prices for two years. I was successful in both cases. My boss saved face, I became a star, and my American Planning associates did mot suffer a boot in the pants for their deliberate laziness.
As you can see on the map going back and forth between Shenzhen and Hong Kong is easy to do for travelers and the military too.
Recycling is Broken
Lloyd Alter at treehuggers: The only thing that really works for recycling is full producer responsibility. If a producer sells a product, the container is theirs and the contents belong to the customer. This is how it used to work with beer, pop, milk, water for the water cooler. It is what consumers and producers have to get back to achieve zero waste and a circular economy.
California has a long history of calling for deposits on both PET plastic, aluminum, and bottles under the California Redemption Value (CRV). At one time the recycler ePlanet had 600 facilities collecting drop off recyclables throughout California where people could get their deposits back.
On August 5, ePlanet closed down the remaining 284 recycling plants laying off 700 workers. In a statement:
With the continued reduction in state fees, decreased pricing of recycled aluminum and PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic, and the rise in operating costs from minimum wage requirements, required health and workers compensation insurance; ePlanet has concluded the operation of these recycling centers and supporting operations is no longer sustainable.”
A three-month investigation by Consumer Watchdog found the reason for the failing California recycling system which left consumers fewer options each year on where to redeem their empties. It also found special interests such as grocery chains, beverage distributors, and trash haulers could get rich at the consumer’s expense.
Besides the closures limiting where to take recyclables, grocery and big box stores are not taking back empties either in spite of a law requiring them to do so. Accounting scams by retailers such as Walmart and also beverage distributors are prevalent. They undercount the paid deposits for each item they sell and by under reporting they keep the difference.
Over the last five years CalRecycle (state agency) which oversees California’s beverage container recycling program has not publicly imposed a fine on distributors scamming the system or retailers not taking recyclables back. CalRecycle has purposely accumulated an ~$300 million reserve as of 2018 rather than disburse the funds to recycle centers to help them survive.
The commercial fraud and state agency issues need to be resolved.
Also troubling the industry today is the availability of less costly virgin material. Virgin PET is cheaper than cost of cleaning and processing of recycled material which is due to the abundance of natural gas. There is also an abundance of recyclable aluminum in the market today which has driven prices down. Prices have dropped from “75 cents per pound last year to 55 cents, the lowest it has been since 2009.” Since the golden-haired child in the White House has imposed tariffs on China, the Chinese have imposed tariffs on US scrap imports which is part of the reason for the low prices created by a growing US glut. Lower price results in increased recycling costs for consumers today and especially in rural areas. Then too with the price drop I would think US manufacturers could use recyclable material more readily than virgin material. It is just a matter of making them do so.
The results of a failed recycling system scream for a solution and one which product and package manufacturers will not like. If product manufacturers want to use aluminum and plastic for packaging their products such as soda, water, etc. than they have to take it back and work with the packaging manufacturers to recycle it into more packaging or other uses. Today, the packaging does not go back to the user of the packaging, the product manufacturers, and is recycled outside of their responsibility. This enables them to side step the responsibility.
We have to go beyond a circular economy and get rid of single-use plastics entirely. It is clearer every day that passes the US never had a real recycling system. It was just a very long linear onegoing from the producer through our homes to China.
treehugger’s Lloyd Alter “Today’s recycling is BS.”
Another Nail in the Coffin of Democracy and Journalism
Commom Dreams, Jake Johnson, August 6th, GateHouse Media announced it will purchase Gannett (USA Today, Detroit Free Press, Indianapolis Star, and other major American newspapers). GateHouse Media publishes 144 daily newspapers, 684 community publications, and over 569 local-market websites in 38 states.
If approved the result will be a $1.4 billion news conglomerate. Common Cause stated a “combined GateHouse-Gannett entity would own one in every six newspapers in the nation and control over 100 local news operations.” While the media giants touted their commitment to “journalistic excellence” in a press release, the merger announcement comes with plans for $300 million in annual budget cuts.
A study by the University of North Carolina confirmed the U.S. has lost almost 1,800 local newspapers since 2004. Newsroom employment fell by a quarter from 2008 to 2018 (Pew Research) and layoffs have continued this year.
“4 out of 5 mass Shooters Were Not Diagnosed with Mental Iillness,
half showed no signs of a prior, undiagnosed illness.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), and plainly speaking, they were not mentally ill.
Yesterday on Monday morning;
President Trump: “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun. We must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment and if necessary, involuntary confinement.” This is coming from a narcistic man who behaves irradicably and irrationally.
In response to President Trump’s remarks, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).
“Nineteen of 20 murderers had no diagnosis of a mental illness. Four out of 5 mass shooters had no mental illness diagnosis, and half showed no signs of a prior, undiagnosed illness. Framing mass shootings as just a mental illness problem is a gun industry trope. Period. Stop.”
In any case, the courts make little allowance for mental illness or for those who plead insanity. Those who are mentally ill and convicted of felony are locked away at level 4 prisons with the general population and the treatment is minimal. Trump’s “lock them up” comment of involuntary confinement just takes it one step further than the courts and without their interference.
Back to Senator Murphy and social media comments: some commenters agreed with Senator Murphy’s point about the validity of linking such events to mental illness as these comments only serve to stigmatize anyone with a mental illness. Other commenters questioned whether it is possible for a person to kill multiple strangers, at random, and not be mentally ill. One Twitter commenter; “So a healthy person does this?”
Yes, it can be a healthy normal person more often than not.
A much-cited 2016 review by forensic psychiatrists James L. Knoll IV MD and George D. Annas MD, SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse New York may have been what Senator Murphy was referencing to in his comments.
Both doctors Knoll and Annas acknowledged the public and the media find the question of “mental illness” hard to resist.
“After all, who but a madman would execute innocent people in broad daylight, while planning to commit suicide or waiting to be killed by police?”
Adding to Knoll and Annas’s findings as well as other research; only a “minority” of mass shootings (however defined) have been perpetrated by individuals having recognized mental disorders.
“Few perpetrators of mass shootings have had verified histories of being in psychiatric treatment for serious mental illness.”
Again Knoll and Annas: Such individuals can function (perhaps marginally) in society and do not typically seek out mental health treatment. In most cases, it cannot fairly be said that a perpetrator ‘fell through the cracks’ of the mental health system. Rather, these individuals typically plan their actions well outside the awareness of mental health professionals.”
Mass shooters may not meet the criteria of a disorder as stated in DSM-5 – “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” They may have an ill-defined trouble of the mind, harboring anger or revenge and for which the field of mental health field has no immediate, quick-acting ‘treatment. “Psychiatrists and in particular forensic psychiatrists understand that dark and depraved acts are frequently committed for other reasons besides mental illness and more often committed for those other reasons.”
Can the matter of a hidden anger or other undefined trouble be resolved by labeling it ‘mental illness’ and calling for greater scrutiny of ‘troubled’ individuals? Knoll believes we would solve nothing by doing so and even risk making matters worse. This mindset makes us vulnerable to creating new and misguided laws. Such attempts further the medieval notion of equating mental illness with ‘evil’ or criminal behavior.
Mental health treatment has its limits is not designed to detect and uncover potential violent extremists. Formal psychiatric screening is not likely to identify those who may commit massacres.
Noting the wave of mass shootings beginning in the late 1990s; there was another propellant besides guns and mental illness both of which existed for a long time, and to which Knoll added the media as another. “It seems difficult to deny that the media coverage since the late 90s” has made it certain that those who commit heinous crimes become celebrities through the development of an online “Columbiner culture” glorifying the Columbine High School shooters and the others following in their footsteps.
We must eliminate the media attention gained from mass shooting.
“Conundrum: Why Isn’t Killing 22 People ‘Mental Illness’?” — Psychiatrists say the question is beside the point, MedPage Today, John Gever, Managing Editor, August 5, 2019
“Mass Shootings and Mental Illness,” Gun Violence and Mental Illness. James L. Knoll M.D. and George D. Annas M.D.
“The Health 202: Trump blamed mental illness for mass shootings. The reality is more complicated” The Washington Post, Paige Winfield Cunningham
Gloria Steinem on Bullet – Spewing – Weapons
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H/T Holly Nelson
Enforcing the Constitution
I have met this man on several occasions. He is one of the most unimposing and quiet people I have ever run across. You would never know he is one of the most knowledgeable and capable constitutional attorneys in the nation having testified to Congress on SCOTUS appointments.
Erwin Chemerinsky: In Marbury vs. Madison, in 1803, the Supreme Court declared that it is “the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”Quoting Chief Justice John Marshall from Marbury vs. Madison (1803) footnote 742, the Court declared:
“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.”
Justice Elena Kagan in minority dissent:
Justice Elena Kagan wrote: “For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities. And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives. In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.”
The Supreme Court just abdicated its most important role: enforcing the Constitution
Making Political Fun of the President
Donald Trump addressed a rightwing crowd (Turning Point USA) in Washington on Tuesday. The audience roared in support of the president standing in front of the Presidential Seal. Now take a close look at the seal. It had been doctored to include a two-headed eagle – the same as the Russian seal and in place of arrows in one of the eagle’ talons – there was golf clubs.
Click on the image for better detail.
Tomorrow
Everyone is waiting for tomorrow to see what Mueller will tell the House. I am going to say it will be nothing other than what has already been said verbally. No one is going to read the text version and see what was really said by Mueller. Only a few of us will and I have yet to find a place to place it in my bathroom.
In Michigan in May, Congressional Representative Justin Amash had a townhall in his district to explain why he called for the impeachment of DTrump. He did not call it to first explain why he supported Trump or to say I was mistaken in giving him my support since he took office. He absolved himself of the responsibility of doing so and he marched to the same tune as the rest of the House Republicans. Instead Justin arrived at his support of the impeachment of Trump after reading the 448 page Mueller report.
Setting politics aside many of us already knew Trump was not fit for office based upon his past, his actions, and his lies. We saw through Trump and recognized what he was. After reading Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the president, Congressman Justin Amash finally saw the light.
As the Atlantic explains, one person in the crowd just found out.
“As far as she was aware, Trump had been totally exonerated.
Cathy Garnaat, ‘I was surprised to hear there was anything negative in the Mueller report at all about President Trump. I hadn’t heard that before. (A Republican who supported Amash and Trump, told NBC that night.) ‘I’ve mainly listened to conservative news and I hadn’t heard anything negative about that report, and President Trump has been exonerated.'”
I am not sure what Congressman Justin Amash’s excuse was for not knowing Trump was not fit (being kind here) for office. He could not see it himself and he marched right along with the rest of them until he was told by someone else Trump was unfit.
Tomorrow morning when Mueller is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, Ms. Garnaat’s words will be worth considering as they represent a purposeful perception gap by the public. A tidy summary of how Americans may have navigated the time gap successfully between the 4-page Barr commentary on the Mueller report and the report itself. Her short statement underscores how successful Attorney General William Barr exploited the space of time between his release of the 448 page report as compared to his 4-page short brief of what the Mueller report said, harnessing the power of television to set his version of the narrative of the report, and knowing most people were unlikely to read it themselves and have that “aah huh” moment. Why read the book when one can read the cliff-notes? There is no test of citizenry knowledge of current events to be passed here.
The challenge faced by Democrats tomorrow’s attempt is to make Mueller’s words resonate more forcefully then Barr’s 4-page summary in an era defined by the brevity of the laws of entertainment. Mueller’s testimony if it does call out Trump may have missed the moment. Of course many of us claim, the moon landing was done in a Hollywood studio. Perhaps, I will be mistaken and much more will come out of this?
As far as Amash, he is saving his ass and he should have known better well before Mueller’s report.
Bill Barr Already Won The Atlantic, Elaina Plott, July 23, 2019