SO WHAT HAPPENED?

SUPPOSE IT HAPPENED

Prior to Dec 1991, no one would have imagined the USSR would break up into states, independent from mother Russia.

Given today's right wing political movements -- probably to go on for a few decades -- can you see something similar happening in Western Europe? Think Brexit. How about in the "United States" of America?

With +/- 30% of the people for Bernie (the left) & +/- 30% of the people for Trump (the right), my math sez that 60% of the population is unhappy which could produce another American revolution of some kind.  

Whomever is in power at the Federal level hasn't really represented us for decades. It's a self centered, self-sufficient, self perpetuating body that exists for its own sake. 

Now it's happening at the state level (Think Michigan & Wisconsin). Geremandering, the usual Florida fiasco, North Carolina's sinkhole, distrust of most institutions, etc. leave most citizens feeling pretty raw, wondering where their government has gone.

Where do Republicans go after Trump? Their party is now totally cockeyed &, will for a long time, associated with the excesses of the Trump era.

Consider the Paris riots or Chicago in 1968. What will happen on our streets in our cities when the recession or national bankruptcy is upon us? Will Trump manage to run the whole country into the ground as he did with so many of his own businesses? 

Has anyone considered the possibility of some sort of disolution of the "United States" of America?

Too far fetched you say? Think way ahead. Consider how twisted we've become just in the last two years. Do you think everything will calm down or heat up? I know where my mind is going. I'm curous about yours.

THE zigSTER ON HIS ROCKER

THIS PIECE BROUGHT TEARS TO MY EYES. SUCH A RELIEF TO OUR TRUMPIAN TIMES.

Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around The World from Concord Music on Vimeo.

ON RACE

Over the years, I've thought about this subject but was never able to *understand* it as much as I now do from reading this article. I tried to imagine my own reactions were I *anything* racial & couldn't conceive of how I would handle it. 

Some people say they are "color blind" to which I say "bullshit" -- unless they are actually blind. They miss the point entirely. It's not a matter of ignoring the obvious as it is that the obvious doesn't make any difference. 

Malcolm X, for whom I had a lot of respect, used to preach that "integration" was a feel-good white middle class word that was meaningless. He offered many real life examples to defend his position. Race, he said, will change only with "mongrelization" (his word) otherwise known as intermarriage. 

We are seeing that come true in the United States. The more intermarriage between races, the less race bias there is but a minority don't agree. Who's the minority now? ;-)

One way or another, most of us ARE mutts & we all know how smart & resilient mutts are.

DOG LOVERS

UW researchers test drug to extend dogs’ years

Originally published May 16, 2016 at 4:32 pm Updated May 17, 2016 at 6:28 am 

The drug rapamycin, which lengthened the lives of laboratory mice, is being tested on dogs [at]University of Washington scientists look for alternatives to treating the individual maladies that come with age in humans.

By Amy Harmon

The New York Times

Ever since last summer, when Lynn Gemmell’s dog was inducted into the Seattle trial of a drug that has been shown to significantly lengthen the lives of laboratory mice, she has been the object of intense scrutiny among dog-park regulars.

To those who insist that Bela, 8, has turned back into a puppy — “Look how fast she’s getting that ball!” — Gemmell has tried to turn a deaf ear. Bela, a border collie-Australian shepherd mix, may have been given a placebo, for one thing.

The drug, rapamycin, which improved the heart health and appeared to delay the onset of some diseases in older mice, may not work the same magic in dogs, for another. There is also a chance it could do more harm than good.

“This is just to look for side effects, in dogs,” Gemmell told Bela’s many well-wishers.

Technically that is true. But the trial, which just concluded its pilot run in Seattle, also represents a new frontier in testing a proposition for improving human health: Rather than seeking treatments for the individual maladies that come with age, we might do better to target the biology that underlies aging itself.

While the diseases that now kill most people in developed nations — heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer — have different immediate causes, age is the major risk factor for all of them. That means that even breakthroughs in these areas, no matter how vital to individuals, would yield on average four or five more years of life, epidemiologists say, and some of them likely shadowed by illness.

A drug that slows aging, the logic goes, might instead serve to delay the onset of several major diseases at once. A handful of drugs tested by federally funded laboratories in recent years appear to extend the healthy life span of mice, with rapamycin, approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat organ transplant patients and some types of cancer so far proving the most effective.

In a 2014 study by the drug company Novartis, the drug appeared to bolster the immune system in older patients. And the early results in aging dogs suggest that rapamycin is helping them, too, said Matt Kaeberlein, a biology of aging researcher at the University of Washington who is running the study with a colleague, Daniel Promislow.

But scientists who champion the study of aging’s basic biology — they call it “geroscience” — say their field has received short shrift from the biomedical establishment. And it was not lost on the UW researchers that exposing dog lovers to the idea that aging could be delayed might generate popular support in addition to new data.

“Many of us in the biology of aging field feel like it is underfunded relative to the potential impact on human health this could have,” said Kaeberlein, who helped pay for the study with funds he received from the university for turning down a competing job offer. “If the average pet owner sees there’s a way to significantly delay aging in their pet, maybe it will begin to impact policy decisions.”

The idea that resources might be better spent trying to delay aging rather than cure diseases flies in the face of most disease-related philanthropy, not to mention the Obama administration’s proposal to spend $1 billion on a “cancer moonshot.” And many scientists say it is still too unproven to merit more investment.

Researchers in the field, in turn, say they might have more to show for themselves if they could better explain to Congress and the public why basic research on aging could be useful.

“People understand ‘my relative died of a heart attack, so I’m going to give money to that,’ ” said James L. Kirkland, a Mayo Clinic researcher. “It’s harder to grasp ‘my relative was older, that predisposes them to have a heart attack, so I should give money to research on aging.’ ”

Aging in mouse and dog years

In 2006, Kaeberlein and others demonstrated that rapamycin, the drug now being tested in dogs, suppressed one of the crucial proteins in yeast, resulting in a longer life span without removing a gene. The protein is known to be involved in cell growth. But just how its suppression works to extend life is still unclear, raising questions about potential unknown downsides.

Dogs age faster than humans, and bigger dogs age faster than smaller dogs. The 40 dogs that participated in the rapamycin trial had to be at least 6 years old and weigh at least 40 pounds.

Like Lynn Gemmell’s Bela, whose cholesterol was high, many of them were showing signs of aging: loose skin, graying muzzles, a stiffness in the joints. So were some of their owners.

“How are you going to be sure people are going to be giving this to their dog rather than taking it themselves?” Gemmell, 58, joked with Kaeberlein on her first visit to the veterinary clinic, where Bela was given a checkup and an echocardiogram to measure heart function, a marker that could conceivably register an improvement over the 10 weeks that she would be given the drug.

A research coordinator for human clinical trials at a hospital, Gemmell adopted Bela as a 12-week-old rescue without realizing how much outdoor time she would need with her. Now divorced with two grown daughters, Gemmell dons a headlamp when she returns home in the dark, and takes Bela out with a glow-in-the-dark ball and a collar light. “I wish she could live forever,” she said.

She is not alone. Over 1,500 dog owners applied to participate in the trial of rapamycin, which has its roots in a series of studies in mice, the first of which was published in 2009.

Ethical questions

Made by a type of soil bacteria, rapamycin has extended the life spans of yeast, flies and worms by about 25 percent.

But in what proved a fortuitous accident, the researchers who set out to test it in mice had trouble formulating it for easy consumption. As a result, the mice were 20 months old — the equivalent of about 60 human years — when the trial began. That the longest-lived mice survived about 12 percent longer than the control groups was the first indication that the drug could be given later in life and still be effective.

Kaeberlein said he had since achieved similar benefits by giving 20-month-old mice the drug for only three months. (The National Institute on Aging rejected his request for funding to further test that treatment.) Younger mice, given higher doses, have lived about 25 percent longer than those not given the drug, and mice of varying ages and genetic backgrounds have been slower to develop some cancers, kidney disease, obesity and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. In one study, their hearts functioned better for longer.

“If you do the extrapolation for people, we’re probably talking a couple of decades, with the expectation that those years are going to be spent in relatively good health,” Kaeberlein said.

Still, drugs that work in mice often fail in humans. It is also hard to ask rodents about their quality of life. The side effects, depending on the dose and duration, include mouth sores, cataracts, insulin resistance and, for males, problems with testicular function. No one knows if people, who already live a lot longer than mice, would see a proportional increase in life span.

And some researchers say there would be serious concerns in testing rapamycin, or any drug, in healthy people just to slow aging. What if a drug lengthened life for some and shortened it for others? Could anyone ethically put a healthy person into a test that might actually shorten life span?

“It’s not as simple as cancer, where patients are going to die anyway if they don’t get the drug,” said Andrew Dillin, a biology of aging researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who recently raised the questions in Nature, a scientific journal.

Ethical concerns aside, such a trial would take decades. But dog lovers have long known that pets age about seven times as fast as they do. And Kaeberlein knew that fact would be a boon for a study of rapamycin that would have implications for both species. An owner of two dogs himself, he was determined to scrounge up the money for the pilot phase of what he and Promislow called the Dog Aging Project.

Last month, he reported at a scientific meeting that no significant side effects had been observed in the dogs, even at the highest of three doses. And compared with dogs in the control group, the hearts of those taking the drug pumped blood more efficiently at the end. The researchers would like to enroll 450 dogs for a more comprehensive five-year study, but do not yet have the money to do it.

Even if the study provided positive results on all fronts, a human trial would carry risks.

Kaeberlein, for one, said they would be worth it.

“I would argue we should be willing to tolerate some level of risk if the payoff is 20 to 30 percent increase in healthy longevity,” he said. “If we don’t do anything, we know what the outcome is going to be. You’re going to get sick and you’re going to die.”

For her part, Gemmell is not counting on anything. The other night, when she got home from work, she was ready to read her mail and have a glass of wine. But Bela greeted her as usual, ball in her mouth, ready to play.

For now, she said, this is how they both plan to stay young.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/science/uw-researchers-test-drug-to-extend-dogs-years/?utm_source=The+Seattle+Times&utm_campaign=43f7c02a26-Morning_Brief_5_17_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5beb38b61e-43f7c02a26-120316545 

PLEASE CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING

When Donald Trump had real businesses, i.e. an airline, casinos, etc, he built & ran them with a heavy debt load.  When his luck ran out, he left his lender banks holding the bag. Consequently they forced him to sell some of his properties: the airline, the Plaza Hotel, etc. & put him on a millionaire's allowance until the debt was repaid. And then they stopped lending him money.

So Trump, Inc. morphed into something simpler: selling the Trump name for a fee. Think Trump university, Trump condos, Trump steaks, Trump ties, etc. and he expanded the Trump golf clubs, financed primarily by Russian oligarchs (whatever their motivation). This formula has been a success for the Trump family.

But Trump can't quite duplicate that as POTUS so he's doing what he knows best: running the United States just like he did his businesses, i.e. with a humongous debt load. Plus he no longer has to play with those nasty oligarchs who could blow up Trump, Inc. in a nanosecond by cashing in (ergo, his political stance on Russia).

Now Trump has a compliant congress & taxpayer dollars so guess who will be left holding the bag this time? Taxpayers will be treated just like his former banks. And, as for the stock market that only 50% of us are invested in, watch out.

If you have a 401k, adjustable loans or use credit cards, your income might go down and your interest rates might go up, house prices could fall, become harder to sell (or buy), construction, food, cars, appliances, national debt costs (interest) might become more expensive. All that put together is a formula for disaster.

And Trump's financial acumen? It will have come full circle.

FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS

Let's not lose focus.

Candidate Trump promised to scrap sanctions to protect his billionaire house of cards built & supported by Russian oligarch investment/money laundering.

The Russians succeeded infusing his staff w people representing this single issue. They intruded on our 1st Amendment to manipulate the outcome of the campaign (Hillary helped too) to further their goal.

Personal gain. That's all there is to it.

POLITICAL NAIVETE IS NO EXCUSE

Even our forefathers were naive despite their best efforts to construct checks and balances of power.

In their naivete they considered only normal behavior (norms) based on a moral compass. But today we have an abnormal president with no moral compass & the columns, on which OUR Republic stands, are crumbling before his onslaught.

Many talking heads demonstrate that same naivete, HOPING for a cure, effectively saying, rather plaintively: "Gee, that's never happened before; Congress must stand up to the dictator."

The core of this country is -- as we know -- based on an IDEA called democracy and what we see is what results when the people take their democracy for granted and stop participating.

TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS

YOU WILL KNOW GOP TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS IS WORKING WHEN YOU FEEL THE GOLDEN WARMTH RUNNING DOWN YOUR INNER THIGH.

THE SEVEN PROHIBITED WORDS AT THE CDC UNDER THE TRUMP REGIME

“vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” “science-based”

BREAKING UP WITH A SOCIOPATH

No doubt the presidency engenders some narcissism under normal circumstances even for those who are truly grounded & humble.

I can't imagine how the office of POTUS has scrambled Trump's mind even though he certainly exhibited sociopathy even before his election.

For the health of the nation, it occurs to me that the surgeon general might consider breaking up with such an individual a national health emergency.

READ THIS ARTICLE

GRAB 'EM BY THE PUSSY

DEC 12, 2017

I just heard two women say they worked ”under" a man during a newscast.

Investigate!

Yes, of course I was disgusted by the POTUS tweet directed at Kirsten Gillibrand.

"Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!"

It was a button pusher.

Sometimes letting a statement lie there like a lox speaks greater volumes then dissecting it all day which can actually dilute the real issue(s).

During the Vietnam war we reported the daily casualties. Then we started wondering if that wasn't numbing everyone to the horrors of that useless, politically motivated war.

The person who is temporarily occupying the Oval will get his soon enough. All his slithering won't help @ the end of the day. This shit will haunt him until he slides back into the swamp.

And he will live on in American history as the creature from the black lagoon.

FRANK(EN) OBSERVATION

To me the irony & cynicism of Al Franken's resignation is that it was forced by political calculation, rather than staking out a moral / high ground. It was short term thinking and I'm not convinced -- even for a moment -- that Al Franken's unfortunate departure elevates the Democrats to a higher moral level any more than Bill Clinton brought them to their lowest moral ground. Al Franken's departure only changes the intellectual quotient in the Senate at a seminal time in this country's history.

MAN OF THE PEOPLE

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Reading "PLAYING WITH FIRE" a wonderful book on 1968 politics. No surprise here but there is a parallel to be made between George Wallace & Donald Trump campaigns. But also about LBJ, Rockefeller, McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy, Nixon & Vietnam war. A GREAT read for those interested in this subject.

THE REAL MAGA

Senator John McCain's remarks upon receiving the 2017 Liberty Medal:

[...] Some years ago, I was present at an event where an earlier Liberty Medal recipient spoke about America’s values and the sacrifices made for them. 

It was 1991, and I was attending the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The World War II veteran, estimable patriot and good man, President George H.W. Bush, gave a moving speech at the USS Arizona memorial. 

I remember it very well. His voice was thick with emotion as he neared the end of his address. I imagine he was thinking not only of the brave Americans who lost their lives on December 7, 1941, but of the friends he had served with and lost in the Pacific where he had been the Navy’s youngest aviator.

“Look at the water here, clear and quiet …” he directed, “One day, in what now seems another lifetime, it wrapped its arms around the finest sons any nation could ever have, and it carried them to a better world.”He could barely get out the last line, “May God bless them, and may God bless America, the most wondrous land on earth.”

The most wondrous land on earth, indeed. I’ve had the good fortune to spend sixty years in service to this wondrous land. It has not been perfect service, to be sure, and there were probably times when the country might have benefited from a little less of my help. 

But I’ve tried to deserve the privilege as best I can, and I’ve been repaid a thousand times over with adventures, with good company, and with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a bit player in the extraordinary story of America. And I am so very grateful.

What a privilege it is to serve this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent country. With all our flaws, all our mistakes, with all the frailties of human nature as much on display as our virtues, with all the rancor and anger of our politics, we are blessed.

We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.

We are blessed, and we have been a blessing to humanity in turn. The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world. And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.

I am the luckiest guy on earth. I have served America’s cause?—?the cause of our security and the security of our friends, the cause of freedom and equal justice?—?all my adult life. I haven’t always served it well. I haven’t even always appreciated what I was serving. But among the few compensations of old age is the acuity of hindsight. I see now that I was part of something important that drew me along in its wake even when I was diverted by other interests. I was, knowingly or not, along for the ride as America made the future better than the past.

And I have enjoyed it, every single day of it, the good ones and the not so good ones. I’ve been inspired by the service of better patriots than me. I’ve seen Americans make sacrifices for our country and her causes and for people who were strangers to them but for our common humanity, sacrifices that were much harder than the service asked of me. And I’ve seen the good they have done, the lives they freed from tyranny and injustice, the hope they encouraged, the dreams they made achievable.

May God bless them. May God bless America, and give us the strength and wisdom, the generosity and compassion, to do our duty for this wondrous land, and for the world that counts on us. With all its suffering and dangers, the world still looks to the example and leadership of America to become, another, better place. What greater cause could anyone ever serve. [...]

ASSHOLES

CLICK HERE FOR ACTUAL INFORMATION

POLITICAL ALGORITHMS

I equate Bernie Sanders w [the] Donald Trump [movement]. Both are cries for help in a rotting political system of perpetual self service rather than a political system in service of the people/greater good.

Until someone/something changes that trajectory we will see a slow but steady drumbeat for revolution from both sides.

IMO, this is an extremely dangerous time for America in which we can stumble into a major war, distracting us from what is happening at home. Besides the obvious, a question is whether that would unify us as WWII did or divide us as the Vietnam conflict did, furthering the current climate.

Put it another way: The MLK movement of non violence didn't quite fit the American ethos so along came Malcolm X and The Black Panthers. That really got the conversation going. Do you see some similarities in the ebb & flow of our current politics?

NOT ME