Suffering caused by DEA

 https://archive.ph/JKA5L#selection-609.0-617.628

Even when her pancreatic cancer began to invade her spine in the summer of 2021, my mother-in-law maintained an image of grace, never letting her pain stop her from prioritizing the needs of others. Her appointment for a nerve block was a month away, but her pain medications enabled her to continue serving her community through her church. Until they didn’t.

Her medical condition quickly deteriorated, and her pain rapidly progressed. No one questioned that she needed opioid medications to live with dignity. But hydrocodone and then oxycodone became short at her usual pharmacy and then at two other pharmacies. My mother-in-law’s 30-day prescriptions were filled with only enough medication to last a few days, and her care team required in-person visits for new scripts. Despite being riddled with painful tumors, she endured a tortuous cycle of uncertainty and travel, stressing her already immunocompromised body to secure her medications.

My mother-in-law’s anguish before she died in July 2022 mirrors the broader struggle of countless individuals grappling with pain. I’m still haunted by the fact that my husband and I, both anesthesiologists and pain physicians who have made it our life’s work to alleviate the suffering of those in pain, could not help her. It is no wonder that our patients are frustrated. They do not understand why we, doctors whom they trust, send them on wild goose chases. They do not understand how pharmacies fail to provide the medications they need to function. They do not understand why the system makes them feel like drug seekers.

Losing Legitimacy

 Labrador Skeptic

@SaysSimulation

The Dynamics Of Losing Legitimacy

The ruling coalition is making a series of very bad mistakes. What they are messing up is the tradeoffs between Legitimacy, naked display of hierarchy, and force.

Traditionally, the US government has had a great deal of Legitimacy for most of the population. This Legitimacy was based on the Constitution, laws being equally enforced, and free & fair elections.

The Legitimacy produced two enormous benefits. Very few people would rebel. If those people did, other people in the Heartland and mainstream would stop the rebels on the basis of the law, the Legitimacy of government, and maintaining. So, the "elites" themselves didn't actually have to use any force.

There was an understood price. While things were never actually as presented, there had be a convincing appearance that the government was governing legally under the Constitution, that the laws were fair and evenly applied, and that elections were fair so the citizens ran the country through their freely elected leaders.

The ruling coalition is losing Legitimacy in the eyes of what I would argue is a majority of the American people, on a very rapid basis. Half or more of the country accurately saw & believes in the illegitimate election.

We're watching the ruling coalition make an absolute mockery of the rule of law. We're all seeing this together This creates two huge problems at the same time. One is the percentage of the population that is angry and resentful is soaring.

The other is that the other portion of the mainstream population is far less likely to work on behalf of the regime when it comes to forcefully putting down their fellow Americans.

This means the force has to come from somewhere - and I don't think the "elites" have it. Oh yes, they have a limited number of federal law enforcement. But not compared to the size of the nation, they are few.

If the ruling coalition were masterminds, or even good, or even not just active idiots, they would be doing everything possible to maintain the perception of Legitimacy in the eyes of as many Americans as possible.

Instead, they are doing the direct opposite.

They could have coasted for decades, by just tamping down the degree of election rigging, or kangaroo courts and lawfare. But, they're making major mistakes instead.

There is an acceleration of outrageous actions that is producing an acceleration of the de-Legitimization process.

Unforced errors. I do not look forward to what may be coming next, but our side is not the one forcing events (not yet, anyway).

American aggression

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

Martin's Beach

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/martins-beach-access-road-private-property-14863810.php

The Friends of Martin's Beach sought to prove the public has a right to use the road because of "public dedication." In property law, this dedication can either be explicit (a land grant by the owner, for example) or implied. The Martins Beach case was one of implied public dedication; the Friends argued because previous owners allowed beach-goers to use the single road down to Martins Beach, that constituted public dedication of the road.

The court ruled this was not the case, as the owners were charging a parking fee.

“Payment of a fee to access or use property implies that such use is not a matter of right but instead is a permitted use,” the appeals court wrote in their ruling. “A party who pays for a privilege and is granted the privilege in exchange for the payment is not acting as though he or she had an unfettered right to exercise the privilege.”

"Because the public’s use of the road and beach was thus permissive, it did not ripen into a public dedication that would give the public a permanent right to use the property," the ruling continued.

https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/A154022.PDF

https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Public-agency-overreached-on-Martins-Beach-5668020.php

https://www.hmbreview.com/news/judge-rules-against-public-access-for-martins-beach/article_ffdc327e-3d05-11e3-9292-001a4bcf887a.html

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2013/10/01/setback-for-martins-beach-access-movement/

https://medium.com/@vkhosla/martins-beach-a-matter-of-principle-property-rights-b32f4de1c97

http://titleinsurancecenter.com/Title%20Insurance%20Pages/Cases/Opinions/FriendsOfMartinsBeach_v_MartinsBeach1.pdf

astronomical levels of raptor mortality

They killed (and continue to kill) astronomical levels of rare and endangered species protected by both Federal and state law but they get a pass.

Truly, some animals are more equal than others.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/protecting_birds_of_prey_at_altamont_pass/pdfs/factsheet.pdf

These astronomical levels of raptor mortality continue unabated, due in part to the failure of federal and state wildlife protection agencies to take any regulatory action. Bird kills at Altamont Pass occur in violation of federal and state wildlife protection laws, including the Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and numerous California Fish and Game Codes. 

The wind power industry has been aware of the magnitude of the impacts to birds of prey at Altamont Pass since at least 1988, when the first of numerous studies of raptor mortality was published. To date, the industry has not implemented a single meaningful mitigation measure to reduce raptor kills or to compensate for removing significant numbers of birds from populations of imperiled species. 

In fact some efforts, such as the rodent control program at Altamont, have actually increased the risk to raptors while threatening endangered species such as the San Joaquin kit fox, California red-legged frog and California tiger salamander. 

Recent research by the California Energy Commission has shown the mortality risk to raptors at Altamont Pass has significantly increased over the past 15 years. 

Trump is a symbol

 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1747416041670549727.html

1.  People in normal political circles fail to grasp Trump repeatedly. They see his lack of discipline and how ineffective he was or his moral failings and assume it must be because Trump is a charismatic figure and people vote for him are in a cult of personality. This is wrong.

2.  Far more important is the FACT of Trump and his relationship to his voters. The people who vote for him see him as a symbol. Your hatred of Trump is seen as your hatred of the American people who vote for Trump. If the system thwarts Trump it is a rejection of them.

3.  You reject their will when you reject Trump. When you prevent Trump from building the wall, you are saying to the people, “we love immigrants more than you.” When you prosecute Trump, you are prosecuting them.

4.  When you “fortify” the elections you are telling these people that their vote, their will does not matter. Every rejection of Trump, every time you fight against him, you are heightening the tensions and contradictions within the system, pushing it to a breaking point.

5.  I get that you hate Trump.
You find him gauche, immoral and see him as a buffoon. But every time you oppose him you are expressing your opposition to the participation of those who vote for him in the system.

6.  What has become abundantly clear is you want their vote, their donations, but then they are supposed to shut up and go home and let their “betters” run the show. On issue after issue you have ignored them and looked out for yourselves.

7.  They are fed up. They want their factory jobs back. They want to know that if their sons do well in school they can get into Harvard. They want the border closed and probably 5 million migrants deported.

8.  They want an end to abortion. If not an outright ban, a willingness to restrict it to only incest, rape and an actual life threat to the mother. That’s it. No elective abortions. They don’t want their kids trans in the schools.

9.  They don’t want their kids to die in stupid wars. They don’t want 40+ billion of borrowed/printed money to go to protect the Ukraine. Etc, etc, etc, etc…

But again and again they have been told they can’t have any of this because it threatens tax cuts. What a joke.

10.  You go ahead and try to convince yourself that it’s a cult of personality.

What the people want is for you to work with Trump to get him elected and make the people’s agenda a success. They want you to go to bat for Trump, for them.

11.  You have to see Trump as a distilled symbol of the people’s discontent with your position of privilege and influence. Every time you oppose Trump, you justly their attachment to him as a symbol. You must embrace the people’s opposition to the regime. All of it.

USS McCain incident

 https://features.propublica.org/navy-uss-mccain-crash/navy-installed-touch-screen-steering-ten-sailors-paid-with-their-lives/

To guide the McCain, Bordeaux relied upon a navigation system the Navy considered a triumph of technology and thrift. It featured slick black touch screens to operate the ship’s wheel and propellers. It knit together information from radars and digital maps. It would save money by requiring fewer sailors to safely steer the ship.

Bordeaux felt confident using the system to control the speed and heading of the ship. But there were many things he did not understand about the array of dials, arrows and data that filled the touch screen.

“There was actually a lot of functions on there that I had no clue what on earth they did,” Bordeaux said of the system.

Bordeaux, one of the newest sailors on the ship, was joined in uncertainty by one of the most seasoned, Cmdr. Alfredo Sanchez, captain of the McCain.

A 19-year Navy veteran, Sanchez had watched as technicians replaced the ship’s traditional steering controls a year earlier with the new navigation system. Almost from the start, it caused him headaches. The system constantly indicated problems with steering. They were mostly false alarms, quickly fixed, but by March 2017, Sanchez’s engineers were calling the system “unstable,” with “multiple and cascading failures regularly.”

Sanchez grew to distrust the navigation system, especially for use in delicate operations. He often ordered it to run in backup manual mode, which eliminated some of the automated functions but also created new risks.

...

In the end, though, the Navy punished its own sailors for failing to master a flawed system that they had been inadequately trained on and that the Navy itself came to admit it did not fully understand.

...

In 2014, Navy officials discovered a flaw in the IBNS. One component could not keep track of more than 150 ships at a time without malfunctioning, according to Navy investigators. The Navy’s solution? Sailors were told to delete tracked ships before the total hit the magic number.

The navigation system could also become overloaded if too much information streamed in from a ship tracking database used worldwide to prevent maritime collisions. The Navy’s second solution was similar to the first: Drop the feed when it became too much.

They were patches on top of patches that left the Navy’s destroyers without a full picture of the seas around them. But none of the problems was serious enough to attract high-level attention. A Navy system designed to track problems in major ship systems did not contain any reports that mentioned the IBNS until last year, according to a Navy official.