Sunday, January 13, 2013

NYC stops the pain-pill train, Connecticut still loves its guns and an uprising in Paris


- So maybe everyone in the Nutmeg State wasn’t badly rattled by the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting and turned against the very weapons that made the heinous attack on children and teachers possible. Not far from Newtown, Conn. both in name and geography, Newington was the site of an ugly scene Saturday as hundreds of people caused a traffic jam and stood in line outside Hoffman's Gun Shop in the hopes of getting heir hands on a semi-automatic rifle value bundle. Hoffman’s, located near the Berlin Turnpike, was offering only 100 of the Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport value packs. Yes, semi-automatic weapons can be sold in value packs. Value packs of death are always fresh and cool and Hoffman's Gun Center & Indoor Shooting Range had but a limited quantity of them. The gun at the heart of the scene has been the target of a lot of controversy and with lawmakers considering some sort of ban on such weapons, perhaps many of those who began lining up well before 9 a.m. to buy a Smith & Wesson M&P15 were wary of this being one of their last chances to get that kind of value on a killing machine before The Man tried to take their guns away. Just what was in this wonderful bundle of pain, priced smartly at $839? For that price, one would receive the Smith & Wesson model M&P15 Sport, 10-round semi-automatic rifle, two 20-round boxes of .223 ammunition and a MagPul 30-shot magazine. In an ironic twist, Newington police had to be called in to direct traffic for the gun-loving kooks causing a traffic mess in their haste to get a new shooting star for their arsenal. Maybe the would-be buyers realized that Adam Lanza used a similar weapon when he shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last month and killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life and maybe they didn’t, but the underlying sadness of Saturday’s scene was tough to escape. It’s just good that we can be assured none of those killing value packs sold on the day will ever be used to commit a crime……….


- The sh*t just got real in Paris, where thousands of angry demonstrators gathered Saturday to demand answers over the deaths of three Kurdish women activists found shot dead Thursday in mysterious circumstances. While many of the demonstrators were Kurdish, plenty of people from other ethnic groups also gathered and the atmosphere was tense at the protest, which some 15,000 people attended. Sadly, the tension did not translate into a sufficient amount of rage as the worst crimes committed revolved around protestors throwing objects at police and getting arrested for it. For now, police will say only that their investigation into the slayings of the three Kurdish women -- named by Turkish officials as Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Dogan and Leyla Soylemez -- is ongoing. All three women were murdered in the Paris offices of the Information Center for Kurdistan and Cansiz was famous for being a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Both the United States and the European Union label the PKK a terrorist organization, but there is little evidence speaking to the reason for the apparent assassinations. Back in Turkey, many have expressed fears that the killings could destabilize the relationship between the government and the PKK, which launched a guerrilla war against the Turkish state nearly 30 years ago. Kurdish activists haven't helped matters by pointing the finger at possible Turkish involvement in the killings. Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the French authorities Saturday to find the killers. Erdogan also questioned why French President Francois Hollande had said the women were involved in talks with French officials. "How can France hold talks with these people who are members of PKK that was also declared terrorist organization by the EU?" Erdogan asked. An autopsy by French police found that two of the women were killed by three gunshot wounds to the head and the third by four shots to the head. Saturday’s protest came on the heels of a peaceful, rain-soaked protest in front of the French Consulate in Istanbul on Friday. Here’s hoping the rage ramps up soon……….


- The fictional depiction of the killing of the most-wanted terrorist in the world must be a lot of fun to watch because that experience drove “Zero Dark Thirty” to the top of the weekend box office earnings list in its first weekend of wide release. After appearing in 60 theaters or less for each of its first three weekends, the film expanded to nearly 3,000 screens and banked $24 million in the process to up its cumulative domestic total to $29.4 million. “A Haunted House” scared its way to second place with $18.8 million in its debut, just ahead of fellow newcomer “Gangster Squad,” which had $16.7 million to its credit in its opening frame. “Django Unchained,” the predecessor for “Zero Dark Thirty” in the field of controversial films at the local multiplex, slid to fourth place with $11 million and has amassed $125.4 million through three weeks. “Les Miserables” snagged fifth place with $10.1 million and has rolled up $119.2 million in domestic earnings through three weeks. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” ranked sixth for the weekend with $9 million and has raked in $278.1 million in its first five weeks of release. Perhaps the most impressive film of the weekend was “Lincoln,” which not only remained in the top 10 a full 10 weeks into its run, but rose one spot to seventh and added $6.3 million to its coffers for a running domestic total of $152.6 million. “Parental Guidance” was next on the list and filled the eighth spot with $6.1 million for a three-week tally of $60.6 million. “Texas Chainsaw” was the biggest bomb of the weekend, plummeting eight spots after winning the earnings race last weekend and ranking ninth with a mere $5.1 million after seeing its earnings decrease more than 76 percent. After two weeks, it has banked $30.7 million. The final spot in the top 10 went to “Silver Linings Playbook” with $5 million, and has made $41.3 million thus far, while “Jack Reacher” (No. 11) and “This Is 40” (No. 12) both dropped out of the top 10……..


- Call it the great Cheerios controversy of 2013 or the latest bizarre chapter in one of the NBA’s longest-running rivalries. Whatever you label the story, it’s clear that no one is willing to admit what actually happened in the bizarre confrontation between Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett and New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony at Madison Square Garden on Monday. After the Celtics defeated the Knicks 102-96, Anthony chased Garnett down the tunnel to the visitors’ locker room and tried to find him before he got on the team bus, all over an offense that to this day remains unclear. Late in the week, the rumor emerged that Garnett reportedly told Anthony that his wife, reality TV attention whore Lala Vasquez, “tastes like Honey Nut Cheerios.” A cereal-themed insult seems odd and the question about what Garnett did or did not say was posed to Celtics coach Doc Rivers during a radio appearance in Boston. "Well, No. 1, I know what's been reported did not happen," Rivers said. "I know that as a fact." When asked a second question about Garnett's rumored remarks, Rivers said: "That did not happen." Both players were called for technicals in Monday's game for jawing at each other on the court and Anthony was suspended Wednesday for one game for confronting Garnett after the game. Rivers suggested that the rumored remarks were Anthony’s way of attempting to deflect blame for his actions and focus attention back on Garnett. However, Garnett has long been known as one of the league’s biggest trash talkers and his years of F-bombs and other miscellaneous profanities suggest these allegations just may be true…….


- The free ride on the pill-poppin’ express is over, Manhattan pain medication junkies. According to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, many of the most common and most powerful prescription painkillers on the market will be restricted sharply in the emergency rooms at New York City’s 11 public hospitals, effecitve immediately. At a news conference, the mayor touted an effort to crack down on what he called a citywide and national epidemic of prescription drug abuse. The new policy will restrict most patients at public hospitals to no more than three days’ worth of narcotic painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet. Furthermore, long-acting painkillers, including OxyContin, a familiar remedy for chronic backache and arthritis, as well as Fentanyl patches and methadone, will not be dispensed at all. Lost stolen or destroyed prescriptions will not be refilled and city officials claimed the policy was aimed at reducing the growing dependency on painkillers and preventing excess amounts of drugs from being taken out of medicine chests and sold on the street or abused. Hey city officials, people will just go directly to the streets or to that discount online Canadian pharmacy to get their Vicodin fix. “Abuse of prescription painkillers in our city has increased alarmingly,” Bloomberg said during a news conference at Elmhurst Hospital Center, a public hospital in Queens. Sure, but abuse of all drugs is at a high level – because it’s the most populated city in America. Bloomberg angrily labeled Medicare fraud by doctors who write false prescriptions and violent crime as “holdups at neighborhood pharmacies.” Critics of the new policy – the non-addicted ones – argued that poor and uninsured patients sometimes used the emergency room as their primary source of medical care and this new policy would deprive doctors in the public hospital system of the flexibility that they need to respond to patients. In other words, a poor patient with a shoulder injury may need more than three days worth of Vicodin and can't afford to take time off work to go back to the doctor two or three times a week for more pills. The lone major exception to the new policy is patients who need prescriptions for cancer pain or palliative care. “There will be no chance that the patients who need pain relief will not get pain relief,” said Dr. Ross Wilson, senior vice president and chief medical officer of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city’s public hospitals. Whatever you say, doc……..

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