Headlines below the fold

the russia Russia RUSSIA collusion story seems to be imploding, and now a big shot from the FBI admitted they tried to oust Trumpie boy for firing an FBI director who should have been fired years before for the Anthrax kerfuffle, let alone stopping investigation why Hillary's emails were on Weiner's computer  but never mind.

you mean all those conspiracy theories about the deep state trying to destroy Trumpieboy that were discussed on late night radio shows were true? Who wudda thot.

I'm so old I remember when people used to trust the FBI. Sigh. Lots of good people there (they worked crime on the "res" for example).

As for the wall: Instapundit quotes Brian York's tweet that there are 31 other states of emergency out there, mostly by previous presidents so what's the big deal?

hmmm...what are these other "states of emergency"? Anyone? anyone? don't ask me: I've been too busy to keep up on the news.

Dilbert comments:

• We watched congress fail right in front of us on wall committee
• Proposed bill has at least 2 problems per Conservatives
  • 1. Loophole allowing kids to grant adult open door
  • 2. Local cities could block barriers in their vicinity
• Cartels are buying local officials…and they’ll have a voice on wall?
  • Brandon Darby (border security expert) says it’s happening
• The cartels will decide if there should be local U.S. wall impeding them
• Could congress possibly be THAT stupid?
• \

why, yes.

But has the MSM noticed this? or noticed the cartels paid off the politicians in Mexico? Or noted the tens of thousands of murders there by drug cartels? Or noticed there are more dead of drug overdoses than shooting? Or noticed that the drug overdoses are of street drugs originating in China and smuggled in by the drug cartels in Mexico, not from physicians prescriptions?

ha. Mafia/professional criminals who pay off politicians/policemen is a routine plot in Hollywood films. Is Hollywood only making such things up, or am I missing something?

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Speaking of medicine: The FDA will okay ketamine for depression.

I've used a lot of it for anesthesia, both in the USA before the problems of nightmare were realized (usually for short procedures like setting broken arms) and later in Africa (it doesn't depress respiration when used for anesthesia so if you use the floor scrubber to give your anesthesia under your direction, it is safe... true story).

but it went out of favor in the US because it induced terrible nightmares in some people.

Ironically, one very good treatment for depression, electroshock therapy, was overused so is now not used although life saving, so I suspect a similar problem will develop here.

And then you have those who hate Prozac etc. which also works.

again, it is over used. and I have seen some of the "resistant" cases of depression are because the issues behind the depression are not being discussed, often anger or unforgiveness. Sigh.

And by the way: Even before anti depressants were available, it was well known that patients suicide risk was higher as they came out of the depression: which is why the risk of suicide or acting out violently usually happens as prozac starts to bring them out of depression.

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JAMA says hello rationing.

Figures. Their "ethical" and health care planners are all for efficiency above caring for patients.

For example, will we ration based on age, say, by disallowing heart surgery coverage for 80-year-old patients regardless of the individual’s ability to benefit from such care?

sounds like my mother: when I asked the Cardiac surgeon why he recommended a bypass for her, he was surprised she was 80, and noted that physiologically she was younger. Indeed, she lived ten more year after the surgery, driving her own car until she was 85.

(Remember President Obama telling a woman, whose 100-year-old mother was successfully treated with a pace maker, that sometimes we just have to tell the elderly they are better off “taking the pain killer”?)

that is the equivalent of the Governor of Virginia saying they wouldn't revive or treat babies if the parents didn't want them treated.

There is a difference between rejecting treatment that won't help or that is unwanted (e.g. chemotherapy or feeding tube) and not treating someone with the aim to kill of the useless person because it costs too much.

Or, will we decide that rationing will be based on “quality of life,” as is done in the “quality adjusted life year” (QALY) system — pushed notably by the New England Journal of Medicine — which medically discriminates against the elderly and people with disabilities?

remember how they ridiculed Sarah Palin for saying they would be having death panels? She was right.

Will health-care rationing increase the pressure to legalize assisted suicide? I believe that many in the medical intelligentsia and bioethics would be fine with that.

yes, which explains why my patients (mainly minorities) in the US were so sceptical when doctors advised signing a DNR order or stopping treatment. They often refused extraordinary treatment to die at home, but were suspicious if you pushed it on them.

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what is going on with Brexit?
nobody knows.

 latest BBC story.

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war against the press in the Philippines: Rappler reporter is under fire for both tax evasion and libel.




I read Rappler all the time, and it has excellent articles. Like all newspapers here it has a known bias.

However, one does have to note that this article notes that Rappler is "foreign funded".

Two of the biggest broadsheets, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Philippine Star, the two TV networks ABS-CBN and GMA7, and the foreign-funded Rappler website have been especially relentless in portraying Metro Manila as having been turned into a killing field of the innocents. 

Rappler took money from this group, link2

place CIA conspiracy theory here.