THE OTHER SIDE OF THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC: We’re People In Severe Pain. “The prescribing of opioids has dropped every year since 2012 and is at 10 year low — and yet drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, our public policy looks backward in time, intruding on the doctor patient relationship and burdening patient care. . . . Long-term, legitimate pain patients who have relied on opioid analgesics can no longer fill their prescriptions in the many states that set maximum dosage and supply limits, often of three to seven days. Even in states that contain exceptions for long-term pain care, insurance companies and pharmacy policies use such laws as a reason to deny coverage or fills. Pain patients are being denied treatment and involuntarily tapered off of opioid medications, even if they’ve never shown any risks of abuse.”

Flashback: Opiophobia.

Clinicians and researchers have long remarked on the link between opiophobia and undertreatment of pain. In a 1966 pharmacology textbook, the psychiatrist Jerome H. Jaffe, who later became Richard Nixon’s drug czar, noted that patients who take narcotics long enough develop tolerance (a need for larger doses to achieve the same effect) and physical dependence (resulting in withdrawal symptoms). But he cautioned that “such considerations should not in any way prevent the physician from fulfilling his primary obligation to ease the patient’s discomfort. The physician should not wait until the pain becomes agonizing; no patient should ever wish for death because of his physician’s reluctance to use adequate amounts of potent narcotics.”

Jaffe’s admonition suggests that undertreatment of pain was common, an impression confirmed in the early 1970s by two psychiatrists at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in New York. Assigned to handle “difficult” patients, Richard M. Marks and Edward J. Sachar discovered a very good reason why so many continued to complain even after being treated with narcotics: They were still in pain. “To our surprise,” they wrote in the February 1973 Annals of Internal Medicine, “instead of the primary issue being personality problems in the patient, in virtually every case it was found that the patient was not being adequately treated with analgesics and, further, the house staff for various reasons was hesitant to prescribe more.”

We need sensible prescribing, not over- and under-treatment fads.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF SEXUAL ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION? “How common is sexual misconduct in Hollywood? A USA Today survey of 843 women in the entertainment industry found 94% say they’ve experienced harassment or assault.”

In October when the Weinstein story broke, Steve Hayward wrote, “Why is it, Glenn Reynolds likes to ask, that liberal-run cities and institutions all seem to be hotbeds of sexism and racism? To adapt this slightly, maybe there’s a reason the left is so obsessed with sexual harassment and racism, because it is practiced so much in their communities and institutions.”

As a prominent woman in the space exploration industry once said, nuke the site from orbit – it’s the only way to be sure.

AT AMAZON, First Alert CO615 Dual-Power Carbon Monoxide Plug-In Alarm with Battery Backup and Digital Display. Everyone should have a CO detector.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON KILL CHIC: In Art, Progressives Murder Republican Presidents & Other Enemies.

3) Metaphorically assassinating a Bush or Trump has no real-life ramifications. Lowering the bar of what is culturally acceptable has nothing to do with violence such as a Bernie Sanders supporter shooting Representative Steven Scalise and fellow Republican congressmen. But in the case of progressive targets, lowering the bar just might have real consequences, given the Right’s innate propensity for hate and violence.

Translated, that means that the sober and mellifluous Obama can engage his culturally explorative side — and in his usual judicious tones — while not being especially bothered by the killing chic of Kendrick Lamar or Kehinde Wiley whom he patronizes. All that is a welcomed edgy expression of authenticity and presidential versatility.

And perhaps in the same warped manner, so is the art of ritually killing Bush or Trump in film, art, and literature, through knife, bullet, and bomb: artistically pushing the envelope — and all for a noble cause.

Read the whole thing; as Kurt Schlichter writes, “Progressives Must Stop Using Terror To Try And Intimidate Conservatives.”

THE RUSSIAN BOT HYSTERIA: “If only Joe McCarthy had lived to see this moment, when it is suddenly in vogue to attribute large-scale events in American politics to the hand of Russia and to inveigh against domestic subversion,” Rich Lowry writes in his syndicated column. “We aren’t divided because of Russia; we’re divided because we have genuine, deeply held differences. The fault, to the extent there is one, isn’t with the bots, but with ourselves.”

Read the whole thing – particularly if you’re employed by Newsweek.

Related: Oh, the Joy-full irony: MSNBC news host tops the list of Russian trolls’ favorite pundits.

FLASHBACK: Who Goes to Prison Due to Gun Control?

According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, for Fiscal Year 2011, 49.6% of those sentenced to federal incarceration with a primary offense of firearms violations were black, 20.6% were Hispanic, and only 27.5% were white.

This is how gun laws actually work—those caught violating them go to prison. For the mere act of owning an illegal weapon—not necessarily for using it, not for threatening anyone with it, not for being irresponsible with it—people who have harmed no one are locked up in prison for years at a time. As with the rest of the criminal justice system, particularly the war on drugs, these laws disproportionately harm the poor and minorities. That is the inescapable reality of gun control.

Democrats should be made to talk about this.

THEY JUST CAN’T LEAVE MELANIA ALONE: Michelle Obama could do no wrong. Melania Trump, it seems, can do nothing right.

REVIEW: 2018 Volkswagen Passat: The Passat is good, but its competitors are great.

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I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER FAR ENOUGH BACK TO WHEN NBC WAS STILL SANE:

Note the tag line below the photo. Funny, how Tom Brokaw, Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd, Brian Williams or Al Sharpton aren’t quitting their gigs at NBC to fight the patriarchy.

Update: “Deploy the mighty space phallus!”

STATUS-6: What Russia Is Saying About Its 100-Megaton Nuclear Torpedo.

This “megaton-class nuclear weapon”, as described by one Russian source, is delivered by an unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) and has the potential to exterminate a significant portion of the U.S. population in a single doomsday blow if deployed against the East Coast of the United States. This source explains: the Status-6 UUV is “designed to defeat important enemy economic facilities in the region of the coast and to inflict guaranteed unacceptable damage to the country’s territory by creating zones of extensive radioactive contamination unsuitable for carrying out military, economic and other activities in these zones for a long time.” For good measure, it is additionally explained that the weapon can also be used to destroy naval bases or aircraft carrier battle groups. This edition of Bear Cave takes makes a brief examination of what Russian commentators are actually saying about Status-6.

First, however, it should be said that TNI has carried several articles that provide a good analysis of this new weapons system, including in particular, a fine exploratory piece by Dave Majumdar. He quotes CSBA undersea warfare expert Bryan Clark explaining that the system is far from an ideal weapon and may face real technical hurdles since a one-hundred megaton weapon could be exceedingly heavy and thus “difficult to control.” Monterey nuclear weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis is quoted reassuringly as saying: “I think we could build defenses against it … It should be easier than intercepting a missile, for sure.”

Maybe it’s time to beef up the old SOSUS lines.

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists find new antimalarial drug targets.

PERFECT TIMING: Jeff Bezos reveals construction of a massive clock inside a Texas mountain that will chime every day for 10,000 years as a ‘symbol for long-term thinking.’

PRETTY BAD: Just How Bad Is Sugar For Your Heart And Body?

COLIN POWELL: ‘Pretty Shocking’ That So Many American Youths Lack Smarts, Fitness for Military. “They can’t get through the basic exam that we give them. Now, c’mon, it’s not that hard of a test, but even high school kids who graduated high school can’t get through this exam.”

DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: Pelosi: GOP Tax Bill Is ‘Unpatriotic.’

It used to be dissent that was patriotic. Now patriotism is happily accepting whatever crumbs Washington allows you to keep out of your own paycheck.

ANTITRUST: AT&T’s attempt to buy Time Warner suffers a blow in court.

ALEX BEREZOW: CNN thinks that socialism is cool. My grandparents from the USSR would disagree.

SOME FAKE NEWS IN ILLINOIS.

JUST MORE CRUMBS: Manufacturers to American Workers: We’re Hiring.

At the end of 2017, the National Association of Manufacturers surveyed its membership and the results were recording-breaking. Almost 95 percent of respondents felt positive about the outlook of their businesses — an all-time high in the survey’s 20-year history.

Manufacturing is in the spotlight, with elected leaders and the American people cheering for us. Demonstrating where manufacturers sit in today’s America, three of the guests of honor for President Trump’s State of the Union address were manufacturers — Steve Staub, Sandy Keplinger and Corey Adams from Staub Manufacturing Solutions in Dayton, Ohio.

Manufacturers’ newfound confidence didn’t happen by accident. Major developments in Washington, D.C., dramatically improved the business climate in the United States, most notably regulatory relief and, at the end of the year, historic tax reform.

I had been assured, starting in early 2009, that “business climate” was a myth.

SOMETIMES THE OLD WAYS ARE BEST: Merchant Ship Goes Medieval, Throws Boiling Oil To Fight Off Pirates. But honestly, I think a Ma Deuce and some RPGs would be better.

HMM: Massive Overnight Twitter Purge Outrages Conservatives. “Users locked out of accounts, lose thousands of followers.”

Plus: “Gab TV broadcast the reports they are getting by the thousands of people locked out. Twitter seems to be labeling Trump supporters ‘Russian bots’ and banning them until they provide confidential information most people don’t want Twitter to have.”

My account seems unaffected, but I’m good about blocking bots just as soon as they start following me. So I suspect Twitter really is purging fake accounts — but so far they seem to be letting leftwing bots slide.

THE SADDEST HEADLINE EVER WRITTEN: China wages war on funeral strippers.

It’s official: Commies ruin everything.

Via Iowahawk, who tweets, “Oh great, now I have to go and completely update my funeral arrangements.”

HMM: Reps Question DHS’s Decision to Deny Asylum to 100 Iranian Christians, Other Religious Minorities.