http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ted-cruz-dont-intervene-in-syria

Count Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as a dove on Syria.

The Lone Star State conservative said Monday that America shouldn’t intervene in Syria in the wake of a deadly chemical weapons attack in the country last week.

“The United States Armed Forces doesn’t exist to be a policeman for the world and I certainly hope the reaction isn’t lobbing some cruise missiles in to disagree with Assad’s murderous actions,” Cruz said on Fox News.

“The focus should be the only justifiable reason for U.S. military forces to be engaged is to protect our national security and sadly, that has been the missing variable from this administration’s approach from the beginning as they allowed Assad to slaughter over 100,000 of his people,” he added.

See, if we intervene, he won’t be able to blame Obama for not intervening, so he’s saying we shouldn’t intervene, so he can blame Obama more for not doing so.

#republicanlogic

OxyContin and other prescription painkillers have fueled a surge in drug overdoses, which in 2009 claimed 39,147 lives, surpassing for the first time traffic accidents as a leading cause of preventable deaths. Two years later, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared prescription drug overdoses an epidemic.

Last year, a Times analysis showed that drugs prescribed by doctors played a role in nearly half the prescription overdose deaths in Southern California from 2006 through 2011. Seventy-one doctors prescribed drugs to three or more patients who fatally overdosed. Oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin, was one of the most often cited drugs in the deaths.

Concerned by the mounting death toll, a congressional oversight committee in June called three top federal officials to testify about the government’s response to the prescription drug crisis. Louisiana Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy asked why the government wasn’t mining prescribing data to target rogue doctors.

“I’m expecting it’s going to be a small percent writing a lot of the inappropriate prescriptions,” said Cassidy, himself a physician. “What’s the challenge in figuring out which doctors are the bad actors?”

President Obama’s drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, testified that the federal government didn’t have access to such information.

via OxyContin maker closely guards its list of suspect doctors – latimes.com.

And the drug makers know exactly who is passing out the pills.  I’m sure they’ll get right on that, and try to cut down use of their patent protected (and expensive) medicine.

According to Purdue, when the company introduced a tamper-resistant formulation in August 2010, the doctors’ prescriptions for maximum-strength OxyContin — the one favored by addicts — plummeted by 80%. Prescriptions for Opana, a narcotic painkiller made by a rival that could still be crushed and snorted, shot up about 400%, the internal study found. When crush-resistant Opana came out two years later, the same doctors’ prescriptions for that drug also plunged.

In 2013 alone, NIH, the primary federal spigot for projects impacting human health, will be forced to cut $1.7 billion from its budget. Government agencies across the board are making similar reductions in their research budgets as well. The length of some grants have been shortened, while others have decreased in size and still others have been eliminated altogether. Though they aren’t supposed to do so, university officials have begun siphoning money from funded projects to those feeling the pinch, in hopes that if they hang on long enough, help will eventually come.

 

At the University of Virginia, hopes are wearing thin. After our first phone interview in July, Dutta ended the conversation with thanks. “I appreciate you doing this story because we need your help, buddy,” he said. “We are in deep shit.”

via Sequestration Ushers In A Dark Age For Science In America.

And while the Republicans cheer blind “spending cuts”, they also lament any slippage in the U.S.’s technical and scientific rate of achievement….never putting two and two together.

http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-77135915/

“Despite the anger that a lot of people brought, I think it’s good to talk about these issues,” said Thomas Maguire, associate director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. “I raised some of those issues myself because I wanted to be able to have those discussions.”

As one of the three panelists, Maguire was joined by Amir Toft, a doctoral student in Near Eastern languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, and Iman Sedique, a doctoral student in sociology at Northwestern University.

Together they repeatedly asked the audience to maintain an open mind about Islam. In return, they were peppered with questions about Muslim extremists and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Can’t wait for time to do its thing to these folks.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/20/20106920-a-nail-in-the-coffin-of-the-irs-scandal?lite

What was annoying has since become tiresome. Republicans were so heavily invested in this controversy that they feel the need to keep up appearances, but it seems they’re just going through the motions — no one could honestly take the story seriously anymore.

To reiterate a point from July, this would be a great time for at least some accountability. There were countless Republicans and mainstream pundits — left, right, and center, from Limbaugh to Jon Stewart — who were absolutely convinced that this story was legitimate and President Obama bore responsibility for the wrongdoing we now know didn’t exist.

And yet, the scandal that evaporated into nothing has led to precious little introspection among those who demanded the public take it seriously. The political world flubbed this one, and instead of acknowledging that, it’s simply moved on as if it hadn’t made a mistake.

It’s a real shame.

Anyone who references this issue from here on out is a useful idiot, a fool, or a liar.

http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=20014020

Prosecutors filed charges today against three Oklahoma teens accused of killing an Australian baseball player because they were “bored” and “wantedto see someone die.”

—-

Obviously the solution to this is more guns.  #nralogic.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3785206?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email+Notifications

Republicans, who control the governor’s office as well as both houses of the Florida legislature, were confident the U.S. Supreme Court would declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Not only did they vote to prohibit the state from spending money to implement a law they just knew would be overturned by the high court, they refused to accept money from the federal government that would have enabled the state’s department of insurance to do a better job of regulating health insurers and enforcing new consumer protections in the law.

When the Supreme Court shocked Obamacare opponents last year by upholding the law, Florida lawmakers were in a pickle.

Their response? They passed a bill that prohibits the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation from protecting consumers from unreasonable rate increases for two years.

If you haven’t figured out the problem is Republicans, you probably haven’t figured much else out either, and blame who the Republicans order you to.

Texas on voting rights: It’s not about race, just politics — MSNBC.

Texas didn’t discriminate against minority voters. It was only because they were Democrats. And even if it did, the racial discrimination Texas engaged in is nowhere near as bad as the stuff that happened in the 1960s.

These are some of the arguments the state of Texas is making in an attempt to stave off federal supervision of its election laws. In late July, citing the state’s recent history of discrimination, the Justice Departmentasked a federal courtto place the entire state back under “preclearance.” That means the state would have to submit its election law changes in advance to the Justice Department, which would ensure Texas wasn’t disenfranchising voters on the basis of race.

The sad thing is the number of people who defend this stuff as if it’s not horrid.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/14/20020933-im-sorry-that-i-hurt-the-united-states-bradley-manning-apologizes-in-court?lite

“I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I ‘m sorry that they hurt the United States,” he said. “I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people. The last few years have been a learning experience.”

Manning says he understood what he was doing and the decisions he made. However, he says he did not believe at the time that leaking the information would cause harm.

The 25-year-old former Army intelligence analyst faces up to 90 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy site. He was convicted in July of espionage, releasing classified information, disobeying orders and leaking intelligence knowing that it would be accessible to the enemy.

I hope he gets a lenient sentence.   The whole episode has been full of losers with no winners but douchebags like Assange.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97D10B20130814?irpc=932

Jackson, a former Democratic representative and the son of civil rights leader the Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., apologized before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him on Wednesday.

Jackson, 48, had pleaded guilty in February to misusing about $750,000 in campaign funds on luxuries such as fur capes, celebrity memorabilia, mounted elk heads and a Rolex watch.

“I misled the American people,” Jackson said at the hearing. “I also want to apologize to my dad and my mother,” Jackson said, wiping away tears. “I take responsibility for my actions and I’m very sorry for what I have done,” he said.

And we see, once again, why democracy and genetic legacy are a dangerous combination.

Ballew claimed that the move was in the best interest of the child living in a heavily Christian county: “It could put him at odds with a lot of people and at this point he has had no choice in what his name is.” Asked about her thoughts about the many children named “Jesus,” Ballew responded, “I thought about that, and that’s not relevant to this case.”

 

Jaleesa Martin, Messiah’s mother, is appealing the ruling. “I never intended on naming my son Messiah because it means God,” she told the TV station, “and I didn’t think a judge could make me change my baby’s name because of her religious beliefs.”

via Judge Declares Babys Name Unchristian; Orders Parents To Change It | ThinkProgress.

It’s simply unfair that Christian judges don’t get to decide what other children’s names should be if she finds their legal names offensive.     So much oppression for Christians, not being able to do everything they want, all the time.