Squatch’s Open Thread 30/12/2015

Today started on the rough side with a morning blood sugar low but the day culminated in some fun at the movies — I saw the new Star Wars movie finally.  The theatre was packed, but pleasantly, the seats were new and so very comfortable.  I haven't been to a movie in over a year.  I did manage to nap about 12:30 am as I was trying to finish this post . . . I was cold.  So now I am warm and finishing what I started.

The Guardian — Donald Trump, billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner, has changed his mind about wages: Americans aren’t earning enough. He’s also not keen on Wall Street. The shift has Trump on a collision course with Democrat Bernie Sanders – while oddly agreeing with many of his points.

“Wages in are [sic] country are too low, good jobs are too few, and people have lost faith in our leaders. We need smart and strong leadership now!” Trump tweeted on Monday.

The opinion appeared to reverse what the Republican frontrunner said in November during the fourth Republican debate. Asked if he was sympathetic to the protesters demanding a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Trump said: “I can’t be.”

Flip-flops!  No matter how Trump tries to dress them, patriotic stars and stripes, or oh the horror, a diversity of colours, flip-flops are still just flip-flops.  For someone who says he means what he says, and says what he means, Trump has a great stock of flip-flops!

Huffington Post — “Is this light ever going to turn green, or are we stuck here forever?” he says at one intersection.

While he waits, the Kmart across the street sparks a memory. Fischer used to shoot up heroin in the parking lot. “This is all my old stomping grounds,” he says half in awe, half in anger at his former self. “I used to drive up and down this road a thousand times a night.”  …

Fischer is going to an opioid addiction treatment clinic. In Fort Collins, a doctor will meet with him for a half hour and write him a prescription for a month’s supply of buprenorphine, a medication that blunts his cravings for heroin and other short-acting opioids. Fischer has spent a dozen or so years dealing with his addiction. He’d tried 12-step and abstinence-only programs three times, but each attempt at recovery had ended in relapse.

The public health establishment, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the World Health Organization, has said that medications like buprenorphine (and methadone), when coupled with counseling, give people with opioid addiction the best odds for recovery. Buprenorphine is also more difficult to misuse than heroin. The synthetic opioid is what’s known as a partial agonist — meaning there’s a limit to how much the medication can affect people who use it.  …

Fischer credits the trips to Colorado with saving his life. With the help of his medication, he has been in recovery for 13 months. He stopped hiding from family members and settled down with his girlfriend. The recent birth of his son, Fischer says, has given him a new sense of purpose.  …

There’s a reason why Fischer and his mother must wake up before dawn, share road space with 18-wheelers and mule deer, and waste a day off from work. Addiction medicine is still not mainstream medicine. The federal government has helped to keep it that way.

In Squatch’s Open Thread 29/12/2015, I presented an article about how Portugal had decriminalised drugs and began treating drug addiction as a healthcare issue rather than a punitive issue.  Perhaps this is a step towards seeing addiction in the US for what it is . . . a healthcare issue. But lawmakers and government administration must see addiction for what it is . . . a healthcare issue.

Foreign Policy — Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s last reformist president, and another figure close to Khomeini, is less likely to be seen in public as the elections approach. Exemplifying the tension at the top of the political system, Khatami’s image is banned by the authorities, after being cast aside and dubbed a “seditionist” by the regime ever since the pro-democracy protests of 2009. However, the former president has shown he still has political influence: It was he who urged Mohammad Reza Aref, a reformist, to withdraw in the 2013 presidential election, which allowed Rouhani to win by consolidating the support of moderate voters.

But there are other members of Iran’s political system who want Khomeini to stay out of public life. His potential adversaries know him as a moderate cleric, similar to Rouhani, but much younger and with reformist instincts. Already weakened and angry at Rouhani’s nuclear deal, Iran’s conservative political faction is anxious that the Feb. 26 elections for the Assembly of Experts and the parliament could see their influence reduced further. If things go really badly for the conservatives, they could even be reduced to third place in parliament — lagging behind moderates backed by the president and a quiet but potentially reinvigorated reformist faction.

And we thought American politics were filled with twists and turns.  If the US, including its citizenry, is going to call Iran an enemy, then it pays to know what or who it is standing against.  Interesting too, Iran has a conservative faction, "Republicans" if you like, that want to stand in the way of progress and peace.  Click through for the rest of the article.

My Universe — 

And all he wants to do is order some take-out kibble!