Trump

[wufan]

Actually lying about pain is not what happened at all, also the over prescription wasn't just "up until the early 80s" that's when it actually started and became a flurry in the 90's with OxyContin. The reason that opioids became such an issue is that some studies that said they were not habit forming primarily in controlled settings(ie a hospital) were misused by pharma companies to say they were non-habit forming full stop. Then they made a push 90's to get these drugs to be the go to for pain management.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/americas-opioid-epidemic.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-epidemic.html

I don’t come to the same conclusion that you do when I read those articles. It is a complicated problem, and certainly people made mistakes, but the addiction issue was known to be a problem long prior to 2000 when i was studying medicine, and no doctor was prescribing 3 months worth of OxyContin. Additionally, there was no financial benefit for a doctor to prescribe it. Instead, what you see is doctor shopping by the patients. Certainly doctors, pharmacists, Big pharma, and the gov have a role to play in order to stop this activity, but grabbing a couple of sentences from those articles and claiming that’s your issue is a sure way not to solve it.

[1979Shocker]

John Dowd resigns as Trump's lawyer in Russia probe

[Play Angry]

Trade wars are starting to heat up.

[SB Shock]

John Dowd resigns as Trump's lawyer in Russia probe

Trump cannot get out of the way of himself.

[ShockTalk]

Did you expect anything different?

[SB Shock]

Not really I guess, but one can hope.

[jdshock]

McMaster resigned.

New guy is John Bolton. I think it's become incredibly likely we strike North Korea.

[SB Shock]

McMaster resigned.

New guy is John Bolton. I think it's become incredibly likely we strike North Korea.

Do you even watch the news? We were never going to strike NK first (because Seoul would be gone in 30 minutes from artillery fire). Regardless of that, NK got the message and have been on a charm offensive and there have been private, non-official meetings in Sweden between the U.S. in NK in preparation for the summit.

John Bolton hard-on is for the Iranian nuclear deal.

[jdshock]

Do you even watch the news? We were never going to strike NK first (because Seoul would be gone in 30 minutes from artillery fire). Regardless of that, NK got the message and have been on a charm offensive and there have been private, non-official meetings in Sweden between the U.S. in NK in preparation for the summit.

John Bolton hard-on is for the Iranian nuclear deal.

First of all... No, I absolutely do not "watch the news."

Second of all, Bolton is all around much more hawkish than McMaster and Pompeo seems to be more hawkish than Tillerson.

Iran is also Pompeo's thing. I think we could definitely see threats being thrown their way too. Either way, if you're a fan of avoiding conflicts, it has been a bad week.

[SB Shock]

John Dowd resigns as Trump's lawyer in Russia probe

Judge Napolitano has had this to say about Trump want to testify with Mueller and the firing

"It's very, very easy to trip somebody up when you have all the documents, you have all the testimony, you have all the prior witnesses and you're asking somebody questions that you know the answers to and that they don't," Napolitano said on "America's Newsroom" in late February.


"This is the most important member of the [legal] team who viewed every document that was surrendered to Bob Mueller."

[Kung Wu]

Judge Napolitano has had this to say about Trump want to testify with Mueller and the firing

So we're only an interview away from Pence?

[WuDrWu]

First of all... No, I absolutely do not "watch the news."

Second of all, Bolton is all around much more hawkish than McMaster and Pompeo seems to be more hawkish than Tillerson.

Iran is also Pompeo's thing. I think we could definitely see threats being thrown their way too. Either way, if you're a fan of sticking your head in the sand, it has been a bad week.

FIFY

[jdshock]

FIFY

Do you think Pompeo and Bolton are better than McMaster and Tillerson? I didn't like McMaster and especially hated Tillerson, but it seems to me that Pompeo and Bolton are definitely worse: they seem more prone to starting wars, they seem like they're probably more willing to do whatever Trump wants, and they seem less qualified.

But I'm definitely open to the idea that they're equally bad or even an improvement. I mean, from my perspective, it's a pretty low bar, so I could be easily swayed.

[Play Angry]

Pompeo is less qualified after 6 years in Congress, a year as director of the CIA, graduating first in his class at West Point and a successful career in private business and law practice?

Disagreed. Reasonable folks can dispute his views, but this is a step up as far as qualifications go.

[jdshock]

Play Angry - You're right. Pompeo is without a doubt more qualified than Tillerson was on day one. Tillerson never should've been nominated. Really, a truly awful choice.

But I guess I think one year of being the director of the CIA < one year of being secretary of state when you're talking about who is more "qualified" to be SoS. With Pompeo's Congressional experience, I could see that he could be more qualified. Fair enough.

[Play Angry]

Got it, that makes sense.

[SB Shock]

So we're only an interview away from Pence?

after tarrifs, the budget bill today and his dalliances with playboy bunnies (bill is extremely jealous) - we need to speed up this interview. The sooner the better. If the democrats ever figure out Trump is really on their side on most things the. We will really be in trouble.

[jdshock]

Caveat: I don't know much. I'd probably set the odds that @SB Shock: is right about Trump being a democratic plant at like 50/50.

Kung Wu's post in the basketball forum got me to read a couple of pages from the early part of this thread. Boy was I wrong about Trump's odds in the election.

The idea that he was a democratic plant being 50/50 was also a little high. I think it's probably only like 20/80.

[Kung Wu]

40/60

[SB Shock]

I bet reading the early part of this thread is pretty comical in retrospect. None of us will be mistaken for Nostradamus.

[Play Angry]

I was a 520 horsepower, lean, mean engine of completely fuggin wrong for sure.

[WstateU]

35/65 or 45/55

[wufan]

Trump has no ideology/direction. He has some conservative and some democratic ideals. There’s nothing wrong with that, but Trump appears to have no cohesiveness in his philosophy, neither in logic nor over a timeline.