n2doc

n2doc's Journal

December 8, 2017

Joe Scarborough - Trumps mental meltdown

Donald Trump spent much of 2016 questioning his opponent’s stamina to be president of the United States. But it is now Trump’s own fitness that is being scrutinized by friends and foes alike. After Trump spent recent weeks creating a level of chaos unseen around the White House since Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Capitol Hill politicians and media outlets are quietly questioning whether Trump is fit for the highest office in the land. That the commander in chief slurred his way through the end of a speech on Jerusalem Wednesday was just the latest in a string of unsettling incidents.

Many who move through his orbit believe Trump is not well. That is a verdict that was reached long ago by many of the president’s own staff. More than a few politicians and reporters across Washington have shared similar fears.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) openly questioned Trump’s competence and suggested that administration officials are doing little more than running “an adult day care center.” The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also expressed fear that the president’s erratic behavior is putting the United States “on the path to World War III.”

The secretary of state reportedly called the president a “moron.”

more republican infighting -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-mental-meltdown/2017/12/07/a010dbcc-d605-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html

December 8, 2017

Is it time to retire cholesterol tests?

The next time you go in for a medical checkup, your doctor will probably make a mistake that could endanger your life, contends cardiologist Allan Sniderman of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Most physicians order what he considers the wrong test to gauge heart disease risk: a standard cholesterol readout, which may indicate levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or non-high density lipoprotein (non-HDL) cholesterol. What they should request instead, Sniderman argues, is an inexpensive assay for a blood protein known as apolipoprotein B (apoB).

ApoB indicates the number of cholesterol-laden particles circulating in the blood—a truer indicator of the threat to our arteries than absolute cholesterol levels, some researchers believe. Sniderman asserts that routine apoB tests, which he says cost as little as $20, would identify millions more patients who could benefit from cholesterol-cutting therapies and would spare many others from unnecessary treatment. “If I can diagnose [heart disease] more accurately using apoB, and if I can treat more effectively using apoB, it’s worth 20 bucks,” he says.

Sniderman and a cadre of other scientists have been stumping for apoB for years, but recent reanalyses of clinical data, together with genetic studies, have boosted their confidence. At last month’s American Heart Association (AHA) meeting in Anaheim, California, for example, Sniderman presented a new take on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a famous census of the U.S. population’s health. The reexamination, which compared people with different apoB levels but the same non-HDL cholesterol readings, crystallizes the importance of measuring the protein, he says. Across the United States, patients who have the highest apoB readings will suffer nearly 3 million more heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular events in the next 15 years than will people with the lowest levels, Sniderman reported. As lipidologist Daniel Rader of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine puts it, the question of whether LDL cholesterol is the best measure of cardiovascular risk now has a clear answer: “No.”

more

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/it-time-retire-cholesterol-tests

December 8, 2017

Trump to make medical exam public after slurring words, White House says

Source: NBC

President Donald Trump will have a physical exam early next year and will make the results public, the White House said Thursday, a day after the president appeared to slur his words in a public address.

Near the end of his policy remarks Wednesday on Israel, Trump, 71, began having difficulty with words that included the letter "s," voicing some of them as "sh." He ended by saying what sounded like "and God bless the United Shtesh."

Scores of people asked on social media whether the president had had a stroke or was struggling with dentures, which he isn't known to use.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-make-medical-exam-public-after-slurring-words-white-house-n827601

December 7, 2017

Two twits in a twitter war

LaVar Ball posts gif of himself dunking on Trump

?

LaVar Ball escalated his feud with President Trump on Thursday, posting a gif showing a cartoon version of himself dunking on Trump.

Ball posted the gif Thursday, tagging the president’s account and adding the hashtags, “The Trump Drunk” and “Stay in yo lane."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/363855-lavar-ball-posts-gif-of-himself-dunking-on-trump

December 7, 2017

Texas Prisons Ban 10,000 Books. No Charlie Brown Christmas for Inmates. But Mein Kampf just fine.

The nearly 150,000 inmates in Texas prisons are barred from using Facebook, possessing cellphones and receiving snacks in the mail. They are also prohibited from reading the pop-up edition of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “The Color Purple” and the 1908 Sears, Roebuck catalog.

The publications are among the 10,000 titles banned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a list that includes best sellers like “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “A Time to Kill” and even obscure works, such as the “MapQuest Road Atlas.” Not banned: “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler and books by white nationalists, including David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

Security at the roughly 50 state prisons across Texas extends beyond barbed-wire fences and cell-by-cell searches to include the careful reading of every book and magazine sent to inmates. The reviews are conducted not by guards but rather by mailroom staff members who skim the pages looking for graphic sexual content and material that could help inmates make a weapon, plot an escape or stir disorder.

“If the book does not violate the uniform offender correspondence policy, then offenders are allowed to have it,” Jason Clark, a spokesman at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said. “Offenders have access to thousands of publications.”

more

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/us/banned-books-texas-prisons.html

December 7, 2017

It really is impressive

In one fell swoop the R ratf'ers have managed to take the pressure off of Moore,take the spotlight off of their tax scam AND their stated intentions to gut medicare and other safety net programs, pit Democratic men vs. women, make several otherwise strong Presidential candidates toxic to a significant portion of the populace, and probably take a previously strong D senate seat and put it in the tossup category.

And no, none of this will solve the problem of sexual harassment. If anything, we are going backward as anonymous allegations are treated as gospel and magnified. But it is impressive, in a sick way.