"Yellen" up the wrong tree

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen urged lawmakers to tread lightly when it comes to overhauling the central bank, warning that proposed changes could undermine its ability to support the economy.
Yellen discouraged lawmakers from pushing their own proposals to bring the Fed under stricter oversight.

Yellen’s testimony before the House Financial Services Committee comes one day after a hearing in which Republicans blasted the Fed as being unaccountable. 

The relationship between the Fed and Republicans has been touchy ever since the Fed embarked on an unprecedented run of monetary stimulus following the recession. 

The Financial Services panel went so far as to issue subpoenas for some documents, at which point the Fed refused to provide them, citing an ongoing criminal probe into the matter by the Department of Justice.

Yellen said the U.S. economy appears to be positioned to improve further in the months ahead, after a disappointing first quarter that saw no economic growth. 

Some of the Republican members blamed the unemployment and problems in the economy on Obama Care.    Shutting down the Government, lack of action for job creations by the Republicans and oppose any from the presidents wasn't mentioned at all. But It was nice to blame someone else.

Just a thought.

New Era, Nuclear Deal.

Iran and a group of six nations led by the United States reached a historic accord on Tuesday to significantly limit Tehran’s nuclear ability for more than a decade in return for lifting international oil and financial sanctions.

Mr. Obama, in an early morning appearance at the White House that was broadcast live in Iran, began what promised to be an arduous effort to sell the deal to Congress and the American public, saying the agreement is “not built on trust it is built on verification.”   

 Almost as soon as the agreement was announced, to cheers in Vienna and on the streets of Tehran, its harshest critics said it would ultimately empower Iran rather than limit its capability. 

 

The United States preserved and in some cases extended the nuclear restrictions it sketched out with Iran in early April in Lausanne, Switzerland.

 

American officials said the core of the agreement, secured in 18 consecutive days of talks here, lies in the restrictions on the amount of nuclear fuel that Iran can keep for the next 15 years. The current stockpile of low enriched uranium will be reduced by 98 percent, most likely by shipping much of it to Russia.

 

Israel, Saudis, Republicans, among others are not happy that Obama's Administration didn't use the military to bomb Iran...... and choose difficult and successful negotiation to achieve a better outcome with No death of Americans, Iranians and others.

 

It is a new era. Deal with it.   Just a thought.

Get Rich or..

Image is not related

In court papers filed in the US Bankruptcy Court in Hartford, Conn., Mr. Jackson reported assets and debts each in the range of $10 to $50 million," The Wall Street Journal reports.

The filing comes just three days after the "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" rapper was ordered to pay $5 million to his rival Rick Ross' ex-girlfriend, Lastonia Leviston, who sued him for posting a sex tape online to millions of viewers in an attempt to embarrass Ross.

He is one of the world's wealthiest rappers, largely thanks to his minority stake in Vitamin Water. In 2007.  he continued to act as a spokesman.

Additionally, the rapper's studio albums alone have sold more than 21 million units, and he has starred in a long list of film and TV projects, including Starz's new hit "Power."
In May, Forbes estimated 50 Cent's net worth at $155 million, ranking him No. 4 on the list of the wealthiest hip-hop artists.

The bankruptcy claim comes just days after The New York Times published a glowing profile of the rapper, praising his "exceptional business instincts." Go Figure.

Just a thought.

Flakka

A cheap new designer drug called flakka is causing havoc in cities across America.
It can cause bizarre and violent reactions which include psychotic breakdowns, hallucinations and indiscriminate violence.

Mike Haney, who lives near Chicago, said he doesn't remember what he did for two days after taking flakka. "I was completely out of my mind.  I could have killed myself," Haney said.

Flakka, also known as gravel, is a synthetic stimulant, a cousin of the drug found in baths salts. It's an ever-changing mixture of various substances and can come in a capsule or powder. Users can smoke, or swallow.

 

Stanfill said flakka is often imported from China. It's up to 10-times cheaper than the synthetic drug cocktail "Molly"; just three to five dollars per hit, and easier to get.
It's described as more powerful than heroin or cocaine and users are often numb to pain.

Those who make flakka are constantly changing its makeup, so as to fool common tests.   Patients on this drug are taking several weeks longer to recover than those on other drugs, or even crystal meth.

The DEA's Miami division told CBS News it has already seized over three times the amount of alpha-PVP in the first six months of this year than it seized in all of last year.

Need a scientific replacement that helps the patients and the healthcare professionals. 
Just a thought.

Talking Body..

In a nursing home in Iowa, an elderly couple with dementia had sex, and management took severe measures as a result.

“Very few nursing homes around the country acknowledged the sexual behavior or intimacy of their residents,” Daniel Reingold, president and CEO of the Hebrew Home “
“Our position is very strongly that consenting adults who have capacity, this is a civil right of theirs,” he said. “They do not give up a civil right simply because they are in need of nursing care in a facility. And that our obligation as a nursing facility is to encourage their civil rights, as we would do with respect to voting.”

The Hebrew Home has had several residents who have become romantically involved, and those relationship have generally been good for the residents and acceptable to the families, Reingold said.

Growing old is a process of loss: losing your friends, losing your spouse, losing your mobility, losing your memory. But the sense of touch is the last to go.
“Some research shows that the sense of touch never goes, even if a person is in a coma,”    Listen to the beautiful song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzRyxGBGiAE

Just a thought.

Intact.....

A resident of a nearby apartment building who was concerned that there was a security breach snapped the pictures of "sexual activities" and sent them to WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, which alerted authorities.

The U.S. Marshals Service says one of its employees was photographed having sex on the roof of a federal courthouse in Pennsylvania. 

U.S. Marshal Martin J. Pane issued a statement Thursday confirming the employee's involvement. He said the matter is under investigation.

The photos depict a couple engaged in sex acts on the roof of the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Harrisburg.

Pane said the Marshals Service is confident that the security integrity of the courthouse is intact. The question is what wasn't intact?

Just a thought.

Kids and Guns

A 12-year-old suspect was arrested in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in connection with a deadly shooting in Omaha, Nebraska, officials told ABC News today.

Jarrell Milton will be charged with first-degree murder alongside 15-year-old and his 17-year-old brother. All three are being charged as adults, the Douglas County Attorney’s office confirmed.

The three suspects allegedly got Jamymell Ray, 31, to meet them at the Miller Park in North Omaha for a marijuana deal, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine told ABC affiliate KETV.

 

"All three suspects had guns. There were shell casings from two different types of guns at the scene," Kleine told KETV.
 

The three juveniles allegedly attempted a robbery during the drug deal and shot Ray at close range, police said.  Authorities are still investigating how the 12-year-old got from Omaha to Minneapolis, and authorities know he did not get there himself.

Where were the parents of these kids and where  did they get the guns?

Just a thought.

Unpaid..?

Search for “unpaid internship” on job listing aggregation site Indeed.com and you will find a staggering 2,300 listings. Among them: “analyst intern” at an outfit in Cambridge, MA called Cloud Spectator, which advises cloud companies on marketing and helps companies choose cloud providers.

Michael Harper, a Boston University labor law professor who has written casebooks on employment law, and he says it’s clearly illegal, given courts’ interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). 

In the ruling last week, the court wiped out that standard and applied a totally new test, a requirement that the “Primary beneficiary” of the internship must be the intern rather than the employer.  The ruling seems to open the floodgates to internships that deliver school credit, a factor that was irrelevant before the ruling.

Ross Perlin, author of a book on internships, argued eloquently in the New York Times that “these very same institutions have been complicit in the internship boom by ignoring abuses, requiring internships for graduation and charging students for academic credit when they go off campus to do unpaid work.”

The ruling sends the Black Swan case back to the district court for a decision, where it’s likely that plaintiffs Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman, who aren’t seeking class status, will prevail, since it’s clear that the primary beneficiary of their work was the production, not them as interns. It’s tough to argue that emptying the garbage and fetching a pillow is educational.

The ruling paves the way for employers to make deals with educational institutions for school credit, perpetuating a system that exploits student labor, takes jobs from would-be entry-level workers, favors the privileged who can afford to make no money and flouts the basic tenet of the FLSA, that people who work deserve to get paid at least a minimum wage.

Just a thought.

Heroin instead?

The maker of OxyContin released an abuse-resistant formulation of the drug to deter addicts from crushing it and inhaling or injecting it.  As abuse of OxyContin fell, other opioids moved in to fill the gap: drug users choosing high-potency fentanyl and hydromorphone rose.  A new abuse-resistant version of Opana hit the U.S. 

[A]n abuse-deterrent formulation successfully reduced abuse of a specific drug but also generated an unanticipated outcome: replacement of the abuse-deterrent formulation with alternative opioid medications and heroin, a drug that may pose a much greater overall risk to public health than OxyContin. Thus, abuse-deterrent formulations may not be the “magic bullets” that many hoped they would be in solving the growing problem of opioid abuse.

The dirty secret is that prescription drug misuse is safer than heroin use  not because the inherent overdose or addiction risk is any lower with prescription opioids, but because these drugs come in known doses with specific ingredients and often involve contact with a medical doctor.

The most effective known treatment for opioid addiction is maintenance treatment with another opioid, typically methadone or buprenorphine (Suboxone, Subutex). Such treatment reduces the spread of blood-borne disease, cuts crime and saves lives better than any other known method. It may be that the maintenance opioids help treat depression or act as a salve for some other underlying problem, allowing some people to function better on the drugs than off.

Whatever the case, people can and do lead full, productive loving lives of recovery while taking these medications. Add appropriate counseling, job training and psychiatric medication where needed and you can sometimes see even better results.

Rather than driving prescription opioid misusers to the illegal heroin market, then, we should be pushing them in the other direction: trying to get as many opioid addicts as possible into the medical system and using opioids themselves in treatment when necessary. It may seem counterintuitive, but effective strategies often are.

Just a thought.

Zorba, the Dirty Dance

Zorba's Dance is a song by Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis. It is based on two traditional Cretan songs, "Armenohorianos Syrtos" and "Kritiko syrtaki", composed by Giorgis Koutsourelis. The song featured in the 1964 film Zorba the Greek, for which Theodorakis wrote the soundtrack, and became popular around the world. It is now commonly played and danced to in Greek tavernas. The track has been recorded by many different musicians from around the world.

The current dilemma with Greece is the pensions programs among others in the standoff with IMF, EU and the ECB.

The previous government cut pensions, became better at identifying bogus claims and collecting debt, and had passed legislation to reduce supplementary pensions by preventing the state from subsidising such payments.

There has been some progress on pensions under the leftwing government, however. The current administration has pledged to continue to integrate pension funds to phase out some early retirements and progressively reduce higher pensions. It has also promised to halt legal oddities, including those loopholes enabled by job categories. But Greece need more money than before and no one is an idiot.
Greece's dance now is with itself. .  Enjoy the fabulous music.

Just a thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UgndyMfe-8