Day: December 8, 2021

Closing Thought–08Dec21

‘Tis the season to be jolly”….and that means the consumption of  booze……

Ever wondered which country has the most drunkedest on this small planet?

Well if you have then look no further than IST for we have the answers for you.

The US made the top 5 list…..

Australians are either the drunkest people in the world or the people most likely to be honest about how often they get drunk, according to the latest Global Drug Survey. The survey of 32,000 people in 22 countries found that while Australians drank alcohol around twice a week on average, they became drunk 27 times a year, more than people in any other country surveyed, Guardian reports. The survey defined drunk as “having drunk so much that your physical and mental faculties are impaired to the point where your balance/speech was affected” and “your conversation and behaviors were very obviously different to people who know you.” The US is the fourth-drunkest country in the world, according to the survey, behind Denmark and Finland but just ahead of the UK.

Caterina Giorgi at the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, an Australian nonprofit, said the findings suggest people are “drinking at fairly risky levels.” She noted that Australia also came first in the number of times people reported seeking emergency medical treatment after alcohol use. The survey found that respondents from Ireland got drunk an average of 14.6 times a year, but were the most likely to regret getting drunk, the Journal reports. They regretted getting drunk 28.4% of the time, while those from Denmark and Finland had the least regrets, at 17% each.

Data for the latest report was collected between December 2020 and March 2021. The previous year’s survey was carried out before COVID lockdowns began, and researchers said use of alcohol and almost every other drug in the survey declined year-over-year, Stuff.co.nz reports. Some of the steepest declines were in cigarette smoking and cocaine use. The researchers also found that the pandemic had caused changes in behavior, with a 42% drop in the proportion of cannabis users who shared joints or bongs.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Thoughts On ‘Roe…’

As we await the decision from SCOTUS on Roe v Wade….and I am not optimistic that the court will do the right thing and preserve a right of women to choose……

But the Dems are fighting hard to save the right…..but that has NOT always been the case……

WE need to step into the “way back’ machine to the 1980s…..

For most poor Americans, the constitutional right to an abortion was effectively abolished in 1977 with the passage of the Hyde Amendment. By the late 80s, many states in the Midwest and South had fewer than five clinics statewide and they were so far away and the services so costly that the incidences of self-managed abortions began to rise, often with fatal results.

In order to grasp just how much culpability the Democrats deserve for the steady erosion of reproductive rights, perhaps it will be instructive to revisit Al Gore’s reactionary positions on “choice.” As a “New Democrat” Congressman in the 80s, Gore spoke reverentially of the “fetus’s right to life.” He was a relentless supporter of the Hyde Amendment, banning federal funding for abortions for poor women. In one early version of the Hyde Amendment there was language allowing for exceptions in cases of rape and incest. Gore voted against that.

The most far-reaching measure dreamed up by conservative right of that era to undermine Roe v. Wade was an amendment put forward in 1984 by Michigan Republican Mark Siljander. It carried a one-two punch. First, it defined the fetus as a “person” from the moment of conception. Second, it denied federal funding to any hospital or clinic that performed abortions. Gearing up for a senate run that year, Gore was one of 74 Democrats in the House who voted for Siljander’s ultimately unsuccessful measure.

Those votes returned to haunt Gore as his political ambitions went national. By 1988, he was brazenly trying to rewrite his political biography. He and his staff were well aware that his votes against choice would be brought up against him. “Since there’s a record of that vote,” an aide told US News & World Report in 1988, “in effect what we have to do is deny, deny, deny.”

The problem came to a head in 2000 during a debate at the Apollo Theater in Harlem with Bill Bradley, who used the occasion to flourish and read out a letter Gore had written to a Tennessee constituent in 1984: “It is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong. I hope that someday we will see the outrageously high number of abortions drop steeply. Let me assure you that I share your belief that innocent human life must be protected and I have an open mind on how to further this goal.”

(Jeffrey St. Clair)

I am one of the few that did not worship at the feet of the so-called ‘new Democrats’….the only ‘new’ about them is their propensity to screw the average American.

We now wait the announcement of the loss of another right…..

If this right is abolished which will be the next to go?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”