March 29, 2014

Tornado watch in central Florida

http://www.wunderground.com/severe.asp?region=se&setprefs.0.key=SVRMAP&setprefs.0.val=se#gotoMap

March 29, 2014

Some on DU are willfully ignorant, politically naive, obtuse and/or trolls

Would I have loved single payer ? Yes. However, we don't live in Sweden. We live in the USA, where you have people who deny evolution and think the ACA is TEH COMMUNISM ! It's great to be idealistic, but it needs to be tempered with realism and pragmatism.

March 28, 2014

Alcoholics Anonymous has a terrible success rate, addiction expert finds

http://www.thestar.com/life/2014/03/28/alcoholics_anonymous_has_a_terrible_success_rate_addiction_expert_finds.html

A new book concludes that the success rate for Alcoholics Anonymous is between 5 and 10 per cent, one of the worst in all of medicine.

For alcoholics seeking a safe passage to sobriety, there’s a need for something to quiet the siren’s song of booze, and for generations two simple letters — “AA” — have been a beacon of hope.

Alcoholics Anonymous is synonymous with getting help, the church-basement, default remedy for problem drinkers in real life and in the suds-soaked world of TV and movies.

But for years addiction experts have debated the role and scientific effectiveness of AA, a fellowship founded in 1935 that relies on 12-steps aimed at a spiritual awakening. Some viewed AA as old-school, even cultlike. Others hailed it as a bedrock of recovery. Numerous studies have tried to pin down how well AA and the many 12-step groups it spawned, actually work.

March 28, 2014

Ukraine’s ethnic minorities living in fear, Russian foreign ministry says

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/03/28/ukraines_ethnic_minorities_living_in_fear_russian_foreign_ministry_says.html



MOSCOW—Russia’s foreign ministry on Friday alleged that ethnic minorities in Ukraine are living in fear after the ouster of the country’s president and the coming to power of interim authorities that include right-wing nationalists.

The statement by the ministry was in line with Russia’s frequent contention that Ukraine’s large ethnic Russian community faces repression under the new government that Moscow characterizes as fascist.

The ministry statement raises the stakes on the issue, saying that ethnic Germans, Hungarians and Czechs in Ukraine also feel themselves in peril.

“They are unsettled by the unstable political situation in the country and are seriously afraid for their lives,” the statement said, without citing specific incidents.

March 28, 2014

TOMORROW morning: Orlando protest against Rick Scott's Medicaid refusal, details

Where: Florida Hospital East, 7727 Lake Underhill Rd, Orlando, FL (not sure precisely where)
When: Starts at 930 AM
Why: Scott refused Medicaid money
I don't know how many are coming, but my brother and I will be there. I don't know who organized this. Sorry I don't know more details !

Steve


Map:

https://maps.google.com/maps?client=opera&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Florida+Hospital+East+Orlando&fb=1&gl=us&hq=florida+hospital+east&cid=13696333761562888403&sa=X&ei=afw1U-DdOZbesASwp4C4BQ&ved=0CJ0BEPwSMA0

March 28, 2014

White House email: "I am a staunch Republican...Obamacare works. I'm living proof."

Good afternoon,

I am a staunch Republican, a self-proclaimed Fox News addict, and I didn't vote for the President. And I'm here to tell you that Obamacare works. I'm living proof.

I'm a chemotherapy patient, and was previously paying $428 a month for my health coverage. I was not thrilled when it was cancelled.

Then I submitted an application at Healthcare.gov. I looked at my options. And I signed up for a plan for $62 a month.

It's the best health care I have ever had.

So right now, here's what I want to tell anyone who still needs health insurance, or knows someone who does:

Sign up. Follow the instructions on the website. Apply, and look at your options. You still have time, and take it from me: This is something you want to do.

I wrote a letter to President Obama this past February to tell him about my experience with the Health Insurance Marketplace. I hoped he'd read it, and he did.

I may not be a supporter of the President. But now, I get mad when I see Obamacare dragged through the mud on television.

And even though I regularly tune in to conservative pundits, I'd like to tell them they're getting it wrong. Obamacare works.

So one more time: If you still need health insurance, you have just three days to get it. Do what I did. Go to HealthCare.gov, submit an application, and pick a plan that works for you.

It just might change your life.

Mark D. Bearden, Ph.D.
Monroe, North Carolina

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/03/28/im-republican-and-you-should-get-covered

eta: added White House blog link for email

March 28, 2014

Warrant: Suspects say girl went on hunger strikes (case of girl chained up in CA)

http://www.postbulletin.com/news/nation/warrant-suspects-say-girl-went-on-hunger-strikes/article_4210cd45-3e09-5bf5-a745-c16023f42bfb.html

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Sheriff's officials in California say two women accused of chaining up their 8-year-old daughter to prevent her from getting food have claimed the girl weighed only 40 pounds because she went on hunger strikes.

Monterey County authorities included the statements in a search warrant filed in the case against Eraca Dawn Craig and Christian Jessica Deanda.

The Salinas Californian (http://bit.ly/1dAA5J0) reported Friday that Craig told a deputy the girl would also eat until she threw up.

Craig and Deanda are charged with felony false imprisonment and felony child endangerment.

March 28, 2014

Senate panel vote on releasing CIA study delayed

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/03/27/6274253/senate-panel-vote-on-releasing.html

WASHINGTON -- Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats, locked in an unprecedented power struggle with the CIA, have added substantially to the material they want made public from their study of the agency’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists, committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Thursday.

“It has been expanded,” she told McClatchy.

Feinstein didn't say what had been added, but others said the expansion added 100 pages to the study’s 300-page executive summary. That will delay a vote that Feinstein had promised by the end of March to send the document to an executive branch declassification review.

That would be the final step in the process of releasing the executive summary of the four-year investigation into the detention and interrogation program. The full report, which cost $40 million and runs in excess of 6,300 pages, likely won’t ever be released.

March 28, 2014

Just how popular was Michelle Obama’s visit to China ?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/03/27/just-how-popular-was-michelle-obamas-visit-to-china/


U.S. first lady Michelle Obama shares a light moment with her daughters Malia, front, and Sasha as they visit the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China in Beijing Sunday, March 23, 2014. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)



According to a tally by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, photos, videos and stories about Michelle Obama's visit to China garnered more than 1 billion page views.

Yes, that's billion with a B.

It's probably not too far-fetched of a notion, according to Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.

March 28, 2014

Most states see more jobs, lower unemployment

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/28/february-states-unemployment-rates/7007599/

Employment increased in 33 states last month and jobless rates fell in 29, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.

California, Texas and Florida led the nation with the largest monthly increases in employment, gaining a total of 129,000 jobs among them. The same three also rank highest in job gains over the past 12 months -- California is up by 336,600; Texas, 314,200; Florida, 211,500.

Over the year, nonfarm payroll jobs are higher in 46 states and the District of Columbia and lower in four.

snip

Rhode Island had the highest unemployment rate at 9% and North Dakota, where an energy boom is in progress, is still the state with the lowest rate at 2.6%.


Yay North Dakota ! You can get a job but you have to sleep in your car.