A little upfront disclosure first. I’m generally inclined more to transparency and treatment than prohibition. I’ve taken drugs, lots of different ones, and some were good for my head and others not so much.

There are also drugs that are ridiculously dangerous, Fentanyl for example. Despite being overhyped prohibitionist propaganda, those stories you read about people overdosing simply by handling it unless they have an active Opioid tolerance are true. This is also a good reason to stay away from Street Opioids generally (in addition to all the other major health risks) because you reallly have to trust your dealer a lot not to use it as an active ingredient extender since it’s as cheap as it is powerful.

Which brings us to Staten Island Chicklets or Oxy as it is usually called. I can’t understand the attraction (I’ve taked about my medically supervised use before) but it’s very popular and very available and pushed by Big Pharma in the same way the CIA pushed Crack only with less plausible deniability.

And they make big bucks off it too- Billions.

I never thought any of the Kingpins would have a view with stripes and a Government issued jumpsuit but I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

Department of Justice Indicts Two Drug Company Executives Over Opioid Sales; More to Come?
by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism
April 24, 2019

On Tuesday, the Southern District of New York and the Drug Enforcement Administration announced a series of indictments against one of the ten largest drug distributors in the US, Rochester Drug Co-Operative, and two former executives, the CEO and the chief compliance officer, and the latter has pled guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. The company has agreed to pay fines and has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement which includes a $20 million penalty. So the fish remaining to be fried is 74 year old former CEO Laurence Doud III, who could spend the rest of his life in prison.

As we’ll explain, it’s a welcome development to see the Department of Justice embrace the idea that executives should be held accountable, which can and should include criminal prosecution. However, the jury is out as to whether this action against Rochester Drug and Doud is a training-wheels case for the DoJ to get practice and refine its arguments before going after bigger targets, or whether this prosecution came about due to particularly bad conduct at a relatively small player.
…
Rochester Drug Co-Operative is privately held, with most shares in the hands of its customers. Even though it is a regional player with only about $1 billion in sales, RDC is one of the ten largest drug distributors in the US. Even though RDC and its executives are charged with particularly egregious behavior, the indictments have rattled industry executives.

In short form, the DEA has a strict compliance regime for Schedule II drugs like oxycodone and the implementation at RDC was a joke. The suit alleges RDC should have reported over 2000 suspicious cases to the DEA and actually sent in only four. The Doud filing describes, for instance, how “Pharmacy-1” showed implausibly rapid growth in oxycodone scrips and also became one of the biggest customers in the US for a fentanyl nasal spray. Pharmacy-1 was also ordering only controlled substances, another red flag.
…
Other alleged abuses include the failure to do required due diligence on new customers and continuing to supply pharmacies that were filling scrips to doctors under DEA investigation.

The result of this “see no evil” attitude toward opioid orders was a four-fold increase in sales from 2012 to 2016, which generated “millions of dollars” of CEO pay.

But why were RDC and its executives singled out for criminal charges when the three largest distributors, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson, simply paid fines? A big difference was that RDC was a recidivist. It had been fined before and had to pay for a compliance monitor, yet flouted the requirement that it comply with the monitor’s recommendations. Doud complained about the agreement and refused to staff up the compliance department as outside counsel requested. RDC also kept selling drugs to pharmacies that other distributors had blacklisted.
…
But one nevertheless has to note that the SDNY is taking on a comparatively small actor. On the one hand, it makes sense to start out with a comparatively easy case in making a new type of prosecution. Even when a Federal agency appears to have a rock solid case, it’s difficult to prevail against a major corporation because they can afford to throw large amounts of legal ammo at the government. So it remains to be seen whether this prosecution is a one off, or whether the government prosecutes more opioid industry perps, including much more powerful targets.

Nevertheless, these indictments are a step in the right direction, even if a small one.

You can have your Superfly Lucas, Dudus Coke, El Loco Barrera, Godmother Griselda Blanco, Freeway Ross, Patrón de Patrones Arturo Beltrán Leyva, Cat Mitchell, Opium King Khun Sa, Lord of the Skies Fuentes, Pablo Escobar, and El Chapo Guzmán.

The biggest Drug Dealers of all wear suits and sit in Corporate Boardrooms.

The Theater Experience

We’ve come a long way since popcorn littered lecture hall chairs and sticky concrete floors, my local Bijou is carpeted throughout and boasts one screening room with swiveling tilting Barcaloungers (yes they recline and have footrests) as well as passable Cafe Tables for your $4 Soda and $6 Hot Dog (pricier options available at the Food Court).

And, it’s not 3-D which makes me sick.

When a Blockbuster comes to town I can seldom be persuaded to see it at all on the first weekend. My preferred strategy is a mid-week Matinee, in the second week of release even, where I can have a nearly empty Theater and no annoying kids fiddling with their phones and anticipating the dialog so that I can’t hear.

Other than that I’m not picky.

I am given to understand that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is having some kind of opening this week and to be helpful I found these videos to share-

The Inestimable Roy Wood Jr.

Essential Background You Might Have Missed

Looper is a hard core Movie site and generally pretty reliable.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

An aborted mission to free American hostages in Iran ends in disaster; Ireland’s ‘Easter Rising’ begins; Armenians face mass deportation during World War I; Singer Barbra Streisand born.

You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous.

Richard Holbrooke

Continue reading

Sri Lanka attacks: Bomber ‘studied in UK and Australia’

One of the attackers behind the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka studied in the UK, officials say, as further details on the bombers begin to emerge.

The country’s deputy defence minister said the bomber studied in the UK before doing a course in Australia.

The announcement comes after the death toll rose again to 359 on Wednesday with more than 500 people wounded.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the Islamic State (IS) group may be linked to the blasts.

IS has said it was responsible for the attacks, although it has not provided direct evidence of its involvement.

‘No right to livestream murder’: Ardern leads push against online terror content

New Zealand PM launches ‘Christchurch Call’ to build support to eliminate extremist material on social media

Eleanor Ainge Roy in Dunedin

Wed 24 Apr 2019 01.46 BST

New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is to spearhead a push to combat violent extremism and terrorism on social media in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, saying the gunman did not have “a right to livestream the murder of 50 people”.

Ardern and French president Emmanuel Macron will host a summit in Paris on 15 May, rallying tech companies and other concerned countries to commit to a pledge known as the “Christchurch Call” – a vow to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.

Ardern said online platforms had been used in a “unique” way to disseminate and publicise video of the Christchurch attack, and there had been rallying cries for New Zealand to take on a leadership role, but the remote island country of fewer than 5 million people could not do it alone.

Saudi Arabia carries out ‘chilling’ mass execution of 37 people for ‘terrorism offences’

Most of those convicted were members of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority

Richard HallMiddle East correspondent @_richardhall

Saudi Arabia executed 37 people for terror offences on Tuesday, the country’s interior minister said, in one of the largest mass executions in recent years.

Human Rights Watch described the punishment as “grotesque,” and said the news represented a “day we have feared.”

The country’s state news agency said the Saudi nationals were guilty of “adopting extremist terrorist ideologies and forming terrorist cells to corrupt and disrupt security as well as spread chaos and provoke sectarian strife.”

‘Vengeful’: Hong Kong protest leaders jailed four years later

People talk as if Unindicted Co-Conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio represents some kind of nadir for the Republican Party, that he is an abberration and eventually normalcy (whatever that is) will prevail and our situation will revert to the mean which for Versailles Villagers is a D.C. where big Daddy Republicans are keeping our taxes safe from those Democratic Proles who want good things for everyone except those of us who are pharisaical (it’s Easter, look it up) enough, rich enough, and White enough to rise “meritoriously” through the rough and tumble life of boring Yacht Club lunches, insufficiently obedient staff, 90 minute Board of Directors Meetings (quarterly mind you), and Golf partners who cheat.

At least Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio doesn’t cheat at Golf.

Well, “people” are wrong. Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is the perfect expression of the Republican Party today- a conglomeration of the most cynical Greedheads on the Planet with the Racist, Misogynous, Bigoted, Ignorant 35% on the Left side of the Bell Curve in the United States.

A Coastal Liberal sneering at you? Telling you you’re stupid?

Yup. Because you are.

ek, can’t you at least pretend that they’re valuable individuals with worthwhile opinions that should be at least heard and taken into consideration?

Nope. Pretty much Human Scum the lot of them.

There is no compromise with evil, no “Centrist” position between those who break the Law because of perceived privilege and Justice.

Democrats! Do not delude yourself Republicans will be merciful. Ceterum autem censeo Republican esse delendam.

No bottom: Republicans show they’ll defend just about anything Trump does
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
April 22, 2019

On Sunday, Rudolph W. Giuliani went on television and insisted: “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians.” This was in a context where that “information” was the result of an organized attack allegedly by Russian intelligence agents that included hacking into Democratic email systems.

That’s right: The president’s lawyer just issued an invitation to any foreign adversary — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the Islamic State, anyone — that if they decide that one American presidential candidate would be more favorable to their interests, they should go ahead and hack, spy or use whatever other kind of means they want to employ to sway the election, and their efforts will be welcomed.

That alone is shocking and despicable. But it’s just one part of a larger Republican argument, one that says not that Trump did some unfortunate things but nothing that would justify prosecution or impeachment, but instead that he is completely blameless because there is no such thing as unethical conduct if committed by Trump.

As we grapple with the fallout from the Mueller report, this is not only the position Trump and his aides are taking. It’s the position of the entire Republican Party, not just for the specific misconduct detailed in the report but for the whole of the Trump presidency. The GOP has embraced utter and complete moral nihilism.
…
They could say that of course it was inappropriate for Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign chairman to eagerly welcome someone who they thought would offer up dirt on Clinton courtesy of the Kremlin. Of course Trump shouldn’t have pressured his underlings over and over to lie to the public. Of course he shouldn’t have pressured intelligence officials to help him undermine the FBI investigation into Russia. But in the end, they could argue, all that didn’t add up to much, and now we should just move on.

But with just a couple of exceptions, Republicans aren’t saying anything like that. They aren’t arguing that Trump’s behavior was reprehensible but doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment. Instead, their position is that Trump didn’t do a single thing wrong.

Inviting a hostile foreign power to hack his opponent’s emails? He was kidding around! Accepting the help of that hostile power for his campaign? What any candidate would do! Seeking a multimillion-dollar deal in a hostile foreign country while running for president and lying about it to the public? Just a shrewd businessman! Firing the FBI director to shut down an investigation into his campaign, and admitting it on TV? His absolute right as president! Trying in multiple different ways to obstruct justice? He was just fighting back against a deep-state conspiracy!

Try, if you can, to recall all the unease among Republicans that greeted Trump’s capture of their party’s presidential nomination in 2016. Could they tolerate being led by such a noxious character, someone who ran scams conning struggling people out of their life savings, who abuses small businesspeople, who bragged about his ability to sexually assault women with impunity, who is an obvious bigot, who lies so often that you wouldn’t trust him to tell you that Thursday follows Wednesday? What price will we pay for being led by such a man, they asked themselves.

But they quickly got over it. Perhaps nowhere was the rapid transformation more evident than among white conservative evangelicals, who at one time persuaded everyone to refer to them as “values voters,” as though they were the only ones in possession of “values” while everyone else just has opinions. Their enthusiastic embrace of the most amoral president in modern history has proved how laughable that appellation always was, which is why no one uses it anymore. Three years after rushing to his side, they have shown that if you can convince yourself that God’s will is being worked through Trump, no sin is too repulsive to excuse and no abuse of power too blatant to justify.

But it’s not just the evangelicals; it applies to the entire Republican Party. There are no more statements about how “troubled” they are by his behavior, no more attempts to distance themselves from his repugnant character, no more effort to prove that they retain something resembling integrity. They will defend anything, because that is what Trump demands.

This is the logical and perhaps inevitable endpoint of the decision they made in 2016. Republicans chose as their leader the single most loathsome figure in American public life, a man possessed of not a single human virtue. He would inevitably call them to descend to the moral void where he resides. And when they did — enthusiastically — they showed us not just who he is, but who they are as well.

Basically nothing. People are stupid.

Well, we’ve learned that the wireless router in North Lake is busted (or maybe not)-

I’ve just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It’s going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.

…

Well HAL, I’m damned if I can find anything wrong with it.

Yes, it’s puzzling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before. I would recommend that we put the unit back in operation and let it fail. It should then be a simple matter to track down the cause. We can certainly afford to be out of communication for the short time it will take to replace it.

Since we are performing a Failure Mode Analysis I’ll warn you in advance it could happen any time.

Lest we forget, Zack Morris is Trash

Struck by Lightning- Season 4 Episode 1

Zack Morris, International Kidnapper- Season 4 Episode 2

Plague- Season 4 Episode 3

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

William Shakespeare born, dies 52 years later on same day; MLK Jr. assassinator James Earl Ray dies at age 70; Cesar Chavez dies at age 66; Hank Aaron begins climb to throne home run king.