[Daily Wire] As The Daily Wire reported, President Trump is currently drafting paperwork to declare the opioid epidemic a "national emergency."
Once upon a time, we considered drug abuse to be an underground issue impacting the dregs of society. "They" have a drug problem, we told ourselves. The "other," that faceless statistic we all heard about but never talked about in polite company, was beyond our help. Today, the opioid crisis is staring us in the face. It's inescapable. This is a full-scale epidemic affecting hardened criminals and unassuming housewives alike.
America’s opioid addiction is costing countless lives every day. But why? How did we get here? The fact is, we're here because we've done very little to address the problem.
Some have linked the uptick in opioid-related addiction to the recession, arguing that unemployment has bred a culture of despair in which drugs are sought as a refuge to blunt the pain of loss. Others place the blame on the astonishing accessibility of painkillers and other prescription drugs.
But the truth is, of course, more complicated than these reductive reasons imply. To understand opioid addiction, we first need to understand what the drug does and the effect it has on the brain.
#1
I have a friend who was addicted to heroin many years ago. With time, effort, and much support from friends she did manage to escape it, but even knowing all she does, it remains tempting to her. The entry seems to be due to peers, boredom and/or depression, and it doesn't take long to set the hook. I am not sure a general solution exists.
[THEGATEWAYPUNDIT] Mohammed Abed, a California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA) tenure-track professor of ethics, social & political philosophy, and classical Islamic philosophy believes that genocide of white racists is “morally required”.
Mohammed Abed claims that sometimes you just have to commit genocide to save the world from the evil people…like white racists.
One can certainly concoct a hypothetical scenario in which the deliberate annihilation of a group’s way of life is a “moral and political imperative.” And there may be a case for classifying as genocide campaigns of social destruction that are widely considered to be not only excusable but morally required. The institution of slavery in the American South was, arguably, a comprehensive way of life and worldview to which many whites were profoundly attached. It would not be wildly implausible to say that their investment in the culture and norms of the slave-owning community rivaled in its social meaning and significance an individual’s affiliation with a national or religious group. But because the kidnapping, enslavement, and lifelong exploitation of innocent human beings was a constitutive and thus ineliminable feature of the life led by many Southern whites, annihilating their way of life was a moral imperative. The right course of action was to strip them of an identity that gave meaning to their lives.
Ya know... in the Muslim world the institution of slavery is also, arguably, a worldview to which many Muslims are attached, despite startlingly recent laws forbidding it. By this argument the genocide of Muslims in those countries/regions where slavery is demonstrably practiced by those in a position to do so is morally required. Professor Abed describes himself as a Palestinian exile from the city of Jaffa, which suggests the possibility that he or his parents at some point lived among slaveowners.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Dr. Abed's career at the U of Wisc included a defense of suicide bombing.
Ironically with respect to his argument, 'abed' in arabic means 'slave'
Posted by: lord garth ||
08/11/2017 0:27 Comments ||
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#2
Mohammed Abed claims that sometimes you just have to commit genocide to save the world from the evil people
Actually, it works very well for them. I remember a scientific article from the seventies which examined distribution of blood groups among Arab Egyptians relative to Copts on one side and Saudis on the other. Now guess to which group Arab Egyptians were closer?
#5
"Only thing that can make us browns successful is killing those more successful than us." Logic.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/11/2017 9:34 Comments ||
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#6
A tenure-track professor at CSULA? Does that mean he doesn't have tenure yet? Hope so. But then California state universities also have Deans of Diversity. No joke. Your tax dollars at work.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/11/2017 11:23 Comments ||
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#7
"Only thing that can make us browns successful is killing those more successful than us."
It works on a relatively-successful way...
Just the place they colonise turns into the shithole they left because it was a shithole. They'll need to find someone else to build civilisation and parasite upon it.
#9
Seems the left throws around the word genocide pretty easily these days. We've come a long way from "Never Again" haven't we. Then again the left was probably crossing their fingers and making mental kill lists when they said "Never Again" in the aftermath of World War 2.
#10
Professor, communism, socialism, and national socialism are on the left side of the spectrum, not the right. It is from this side of the spectrum that most genocide has arisen. It seems, that more often than not, it is a product of statism where the state has too much centralized control.
[THECUT] Blonde hair is at least 11,000 years old. The variety we’re now most familiar with began as a genetic mutation in northern Europe, where the sun is weak: Light hair allows more vitamin D to trickle in through the scalp, the theory goes, which is useful when the sky is cold and dark. It wasn’t the first hair color that people had, so it was rare, and its being rare made it sexually desirable, and its being sexually desirable meant it spread, and then there was a bit more of it.
Fox News and Donald Trump have given blonde hair a new chapter: Now, blonde is the color of the right, for whom whiteness has become a hallmark. Over the past decade or so, as inclusiveness became the hallmark of Obama-era liberals, the left found feminist icons in Rachel Maddow, Samantha Power, and Michelle Obama, who make no apologies for their failure to fit traditional ideals. But #MAGA, Fox News America is a place where all the classic signifiers of privilege and wealth work on overdrive: country-club-issue blue blazers with brass buttons and khaki pants, and above all else, for women, that yellow-blonde, carefully tended hair — a dog whistle of whiteness, an unspoken declaration of values, a wink-wink to the power of racial privilege and to the 1980s vibe that pervades a movement led by a man who still believes in the guilt of the Central Park Five. During that Republican Preppy Handbook era, when Dynasty and Dallas were on TV, the type of conspicuous ostentation that would lead a real-estate developer to sheath his entire apartment in gold leaf was actually in vogue. Look at the movies: Jake’s girlfriend in Sixteen Candles with the lush swoop of thick, blonde locks that ended up stuck in a door (losing the boyfriend to a redhead of all things meant, literally, losing that luscious hair). Johnny, the villain of the Karate Kid films, had a decisive swoosh of blond hair that obscured his headband. We knew, the moment we saw that hair, that small, ethnic Daniel was up against more than another teenager, he was up against privilege itself.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/11/2017 00:00 ||
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[LegalInsurrection] A University of Iowa professor recently argued that appreciation of "white marble" used in classical artwork contributes to "white supremacist ideas today."
Professor Sarah Bond demonstrates in an article published in Hyperallergic that "many of the statues, reliefs, and sarcophagi created in the ancient Western world were in fact painted," meaning the "white marble" often seen in such pieces of art were intended to be colored.
Consequently, Bond argues that "the equation of white marble with beauty is not an inherent truth of the universe," and is thus "a dangerous construct that continues to influence white supremacist ideas today."
Bond goes on to point out that "most museums and art history textbooks contain a predominantly neon white display of skin tone," which "has an impact on the way we view the antique world."
"The assemblage of neon whiteness serves to create a false idea of homogeneity -- everyone was very white! -- across the Mediterranean region," she adds, later stating that misconceptions of the classical era provide "further ammunition for white supremacists today, including groups like Identity Europa, who use classical statuary as a symbol of white male superiority."
"It may have taken just one classical statue to influence the false construction of race, but it will take many of us to tear it down," Bond concludes. "We have the power to return color to the ancient world, but it has to start with us."
#1
Imagine if all these leftards, inventing all of these things that cause microaggressions, hypermasculinity and the like, actually put their efforts towards constructive uses. Than again, they wouldn't be leftists, then, would they?
#5
From Wikipedia - In L. Frank Baum's novel 'Wizard of Oz', everyone in the Emerald City is made to wear green-tinted eyeglasses. This is explained as an effort to protect their eyes from the "brightness and glory" of the city, but in effect makes everything appear green when it is, in fact, "no more green than any other city".
Time for dark 'Black-Tinted Glasses'?
We wouldn't see anything clearly, but neither would anyone else.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
08/11/2017 10:04 Comments ||
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#6
By her logic we need to ban bi-focals because they were invented by a white man who owned slaves.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/11/2017 10:53 Comments ||
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#7
Genius here could have saved herself the trouble. Nassim Taleb has actually done some interesting and telling genetic work on the Classical Mediterranean identity, without this kind of gibberish of course.
#11
Fave junkie socialist EVAH. Contains N-word (not saying it's right... but I understand, and it didn't go unpunished, supposedly costing him a Motown deal), cussing, noise.
Duffelblog
KOREAN DE-MILITARIZED ZONE — The Pentagon has deployed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to the Korean de-militarized zone for a massive show of force against Pyongyang, sources confirmed today.
Flanked by a Navy SEAL Team as B-1B bombers flew overhead, a shirtless Mattis engaged in a rigorous workout as North Korean guards looked on. A number of guards expressed terror as the secretary knocked out 100 consecutive pushups while simultaneously singing Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue,” a senior defense official said.
The rapid deployment of Mattis to the region came after President Donald Trump promised “fire and fury” like the world had never seen in response to North Korean threats. Some speculated Trump’s remark was off-the-cuff bluster, but administration officials insisted that Mattis’ nickname of “Mad Dog” was changed to “Fire and Fury” late last month.
Although Mattis’ display of his 20-inch biceps and huge pecs are considered provocative, yet peaceful displays of power, officials privately warned he could at any moment unleash a knife hand and kill thousands.
Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un has challenged the US to a hot dog-eating contest, demanding that Trump send his best competitor and at least 4,000 hot dogs.
#2
And then he flew to Seattle for an all day meeting with BEZOS. That has me curious as hell.
I could joke about delivery to N Kor via Amazon drones but suspect exploring the possibility of Bezos buy ULA and thereby saving LockMart and Boeing the embarrassment of actually investing real money in rockets.
[Jewish World Review] There are almost as many dividend-stock-picking strategies as there are dividend stocks. You could go for the dividend "achievers," which have boosted dividends for at least 10 consecutive years, or the "aristocrats," which have raised dividends for at least 25 years. You could focus on stocks with the fastest dividend-growth rates, or simply those with today's highest yields.
But to cook up a portfolio full of healthy, sustainable and growing payouts, you need more ingredients. Recent research suggests that mixing a high dividend yield with strong dividend growth and a low "payout ratio" (the percentage of earnings paid out as dividends) is a winning recipe. Pankaj Patel, managing director at investment-research firm Cirrus Research, says a portfolio of stocks combining those three factors has beaten Standard & Poor's 500-stock index by 6 percentage points annually over the long haul.
Generous dividends are a lifeline for seniors drawing income from their portfolios--particularly when the 10-year Treasury yields 2.4% and the S&P 500 yields less than 2%. But dividend growth is slowing and payout ratios are climbing, presenting challenges for investors seeking healthy, sustainable payouts.
h/t Instapundit
There are many actors in the whole Google/diversity drama, but I’d say the one who’s behaved the worst is the C.E.O., Sundar Pichai.
The first actor is James Damore, who wrote the memo. In it, he was trying to explain why 80 percent of Google’s tech employees are male. He agreed that there are large cultural biases but also pointed to a genetic component. Then he described some of the ways the distribution of qualities differs across male and female populations.
Damore was tapping into the long and contentious debate about genes and behavior. On one side are those who believe that humans come out as blank slates and are formed by social structures. On the other are the evolutionary psychologists who argue that genes interact with environment and play a large role in shaping who we are. In general the evolutionary psychologists have been winning this debate.
...Which brings us to Pichai, the supposed grown-up in the room. He could have wrestled with the tension between population-level research and individual experience. He could have stood up for the free flow of information. Instead he joined the mob. He fired Damore and wrote, "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K."
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That is a blatantly dishonest characterization of the memo. Damore wrote nothing like that about his Google colleagues. Either Pichai is unprepared to understand the research (unlikely), is not capable of handling complex data flows (a bad trait in a C.E.O.) or was simply too afraid to stand up to a mob.
Regardless which weakness applies, this episode suggests he should seek a nonleadership position. We are at a moment when mobs on the left and the right ignore evidence and destroy scapegoats. That’s when we need good leaders most.
#1
David Brooks, AKA "Loose Cannon", "Friendly Fire" and "Batshit Crazy" - never can tell what'll pop out of him \. This I think is an example of "Stopped Clock Syndrome".
h/t Instapundit
The firing of James Damore over his "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" memo will empower the tech alt-right.
To understand why, imagine yourself as a Republican working at a big Silicon Valley tech company.
You agree with Damore that some average differences between men and women probably explain some of why such a high proportion of computer programmers are male. You, however, in no way consider yourself sexist.
What Damore’s termination tells you is that many in your field consider people with your beliefs to be unfit to work with. They hold opinions of you similar to those of former senior Google employee Yonatan Zunger, who wrote about Damore, saying:
"Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? I certainly couldn’t assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them." (Emphasis mine.)
If you are on the right, you probably find it hard to imagine that any reasonably person could read Damore’s memo and think that it reveals the author to be sexist, punchable, or a danger to women’s careers. It appears to you that Damore was excommunicated for questioning the progressive diversity narrative in a most respectful manner.
The right calls the kind of people who went after Damore by the derogative term "Social Justice Warriors" (SJWs). SJWs hold progressive views on diversity and identify politics and, supposedly, find virtue in harming those with heretical beliefs.
...Vox Day, a leader of the alt-right, wrote a book called "SJWs Always Lie" with the explicit goal to "show you how SJWs operate, teach you how to see through their words, explain how to correctly anticipate their actions, and give you the weapons you need to successfully thwart their inevitable attempts to disqualify you, discredit you, and destroy your reputation."
Damore’s firing is probably going to cause many Silicon Valley Republicans to prepare themselves by reading this book.
The key difference in tactics between the alt-right and traditional right is that the alt-right doesn’t place much value on playing fair, and they mock conservatives’ seeming desire to lose honorably. On a recent Periscope video Vox said that his supporters in tech companies (which he claims are numerous) should "be the second or third most enthusiastic SJW in your group."
He considers SWJs to be the enemy that’s beyond reason. When a commentator suggested that publically supporting SJW views might give them legitimacy, Vox said "F--- legitimacy. You are thinking like a conservative..."
#1
And the Big Band sound is returning. You could use a review of indulgences of the rich and Luther to know human behavior hasn't changed in over 500 years.
h/t Instapundit (h/t Ursula Le Guin)
As a woman, (according to the State Department) a minority, and an individualist, I feel the need to weigh in on the whole James Damore controversy.
I feel like what’s being discussed isn’t even close to what is actually going on. In fact, as with many things that are cherished by the left, I feel their "diversity" isn’t diversity at all, and their social engineering attempts fail because they’re not doing what they say they’re doing.
First, and before I get into details here, James Damore did not say what most people think he said. He did not say women are unsuited for tech jobs. He did not say women only have tech jobs due to affirmative action. That is all bullshit piled on by those mau-mauing him, in an effort to expel someone whose questioning made them uncomfortable.
Why it made them uncomfortable is the fascinating part of all this.
It makes them uncomfortable because it shatters the brittle shell of their enforced narrative, which can only be kept by keeping everyone from saying anything against it. It is very much a "the king is naked" situation. If James Damore is allowed to say men and women are different, the entire project of feminism shatters.
#1
The whole point of Political Correctness is to humiliate people into publicly accepting ludicrous ideas as facts, the more ludicrous the better. If they can make you accept things you know are wrong, they own your soul.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
08/11/2017 16:15 Comments ||
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#3
Feminists have a problem. They won back in the 70's. Every legitimate grievance they raised had been addressed by then. So, what next? Go home, or make sh*t up? Well, now we know the answer.
[Victory Girls] I was going to title this post "This Is What a Traitorous Swine Looks Like," but I realized I ought to use my words more judiciously than emotionally. I therefore changed the title to reflect what I really want to say about Bradley Chelsea Pile of Petrified Hyena Turds Manning.
For the record, I refuse to call Manning a woman ‐ not because he doesn’t own the required parts, but because he simply doesn’t deserve that courtesy after putting troops, policy, sources, and innocents whose only crime was being nice to coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in harms way. Nope. Just nope.
After seeing this photo and tweet from Manning, I began to hate my breakfast and my eyes (for what has been seen cannot be unseen). "This is what freedom looks like," says the caption.
I’m normally not a person who ridicules people’s appearance, but Manning really does look like a dude ‐ a pasty, white, somewhat flabby, paunchy dude in a red bathing suit and potential 5 o’clock shadow. That’s why his appearance in Vogue magazine ‐ especially their description of him as a "graceful, blue-eyed, trans" is particularly puzzling to me, considering Vogue’s beatification of women such as the stunning Lupita Nyong’o, Margot Robbie, Natalia Vodianova, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (hat tip to the King and I).
But in the case of Manning, the outside is quite as unsightly and repellent as the inside, and the fact that Vogue chose to glorify this perfidious sack of whining entitlement is reprehensible to me as an American and a human being.
I also note with some revulsion that Manning has "Network Security Expert" listed in his Twitter description.
[American Thinker] When in doubt, cry racism. It’s the left’s go-to weapon when the facts are against them. School choice advocates, then, should be heartened: Progressives lately have had to stoop low, get dirty, and hurl mudballs in our direction, because that’s all they’ve got.
This month progressives let fly three separate volleys, hoping the "racist" argument would somehow find its mark. The New York Times, the Center for American Progress, and the American Federation of Teachers all argued that educational choice is "racist," rooted in "slavery," and a cover for "segregation." (One commentator also blames "anti-Catholic sentiment and a particular form of Christian fundamentalism.") Worse, they declare authoritatively, "choice" will spell the end of democracy, as we know it.
First came the Center for American Progress. Their report, "The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers" (July 12, 2017), chains current voucher proposals to segregationist policies of the past, concluding that vouchers are "fundamentally positioned to funnel taxpayers’ dollars into private schools while draining much-needed resources from public schools and ... vulnerable students."
A week later, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Education Secretary Betsy DeVos "a public school denier, denying the good in our public schools and their foundational place in our democracy." Weingarten described "vouchers, for-profit charters and other privatization schemes" as the "polite cousins of segregation," part of a scheme to "protect the economic and political power of the few against the rights of the many." She accuses proponents of educational choice of trying "to starve public schools to the breaking point ... and let the market handle the rest." And that, she declared ominously, is "how a democracy comes apart."
#1
The federal government runs two K-12 school systems. One by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and another by the Department of Defense. Both can hire and fire. The former rates below national average, the latter above. The DoD schools are not known to discriminate, but are known to expect discipline as one might expect of an organization oriented to that concept. Added to the equation is the value placed by the 'consumer' population in education and the expected behavior of its participants in that light.
#2
As an anti-progressive, this is an issue I struggle with. If they are against it, I am usually for it, but I am opposed to using vouchers in favor of public schools. Education is the great equalizer. Public schools foster assimilation and cooperation among diverse students, taking knowledge with them to influence their homes and communities. There are standards to graduate and the teachers Americans, not foreign visa holders teaching segregated classes Shariah law. While charter schools are perceived as superior, many parents find the services mandated for public schools are not provided in private charters. Special needs kids are not accommodated, for example. Vouchers should not be used to subsidize parochial and charter schools if they don't provide for all students as mandated by the Constitution. The good news is attendance estimates this year in Houston may be off this year because students are returning to public schools. Easier to fire tenured teachers than to end another government handout. Parents will demand the hefty private tab be subsidized on Joe Blow's back so as to not discriminate, as "free education" will become another mandated wealth redistribution slush fund for elitest administrators.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
