Chronic pain and depression perpetuate one another, good article from Harvard Mental Health Letter

(This article was first printed in the September 2004 issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter. For more information or to order, please go to http://www.health.harvard.edu/mental.)The following is an excerpt that sounds very much like my own chronic pain and resulting depression/inability to focus on anything but constant physical pain in my ears mouth and jaw: (Read whole article by clicking  here.)

“…Brain pathways

The convergence of depression and pain is reflected in the circuitry of the nervous system. In the experience of pain, communication between body and brain goes both ways. Normally, the brain diverts signals of physical discomfort so that we can concentrate on the external world. When this shutoff mechanism is impaired, physical sensations, including pain, are more likely to become the center of attention. Brain pathways that handle the reception of pain signals, including the seat of emotions in the limbic region, use some of the same neurotransmitters involved in the regulation of mood, especially serotonin and norepinephrine. When regulation fails, pain is intensified along with sadness, hopelessness, and anxiety. And chronic pain, like chronic depression, can alter the functioning of the nervous system and perpetuate itself.

“If at first you don’t succeed,” a poem on failure by Unknown….

Failure doesn’t mean – “You are a failure,”
It means – You have not succeeded.

Failure doesn’t mean – “You accomplished nothing,”
It means – You have learned something.

Failure doesn’t mean – “You have been a fool,”
It means – You had a lot of faith.

Failure doesn’t mean – “You don’t have it,”
It means – You were willing to try.

Failure doesn’t mean – “You are inferior,”
It means – You are not perfect.

Failure doesn’t mean – “You’ve wasted your life,”
It means – You have a reason to start afresh.

Failure doesn’t mean – “You should give up,”
It means – “You must try harder.

Failure doesn’t mean – “You’ll never make it,”
It means – It will take a little longer.

Failure doesn’t mean – “God has abandoned you,”
It means – God has a better way for you.

Ecclesiastes

Quote of the Day: “Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief, or ignorance.” –Lilly Calandrello

“Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief, or ignorance.”

–Lilly Calandrello

Donnell Century Farm in Spring Creek, Madison County, Tennessee has local, hormone-free beef in West Tennessee

If you live in West Tennessee and would like to try locally raised, hormone-free angus beef, I suggest you contact the Donnell Century Farm, located in the Spring Creek Community of Madison County, near Jackson, Tennessee by clicking or calling the numbers below, or visit their booth at the Jackson, TN West Tennessee Farmers Market:

Donnell Century Farm All-Natural Angus Beef Email: email us here
Andrew & Jessica Donnell
3764 Hwy 70E
Jackson, TN 38305
(731) 427-3059 h
(731) 693-1676 c

Register to Vote by October 6!!! You Can Register to vote here! It’s easy, try it, you’ll be glad you did.

PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK TO GET REGISTERED TO VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION :

http://www.vote411.org/bystate.php

click here for Tennessee-specific voter registration and election info.

FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE, click here!!!!!!!!!

OCTOBER 6 is the TN Deadline for registering to vote in the upcoming Presidential Election!!!!!!

THANK YOU FOR CARING ABOUT YOUR COUNTRY.

At the poll, voters can show any ID with signature or voter registration card to vote. However, if you are a first time voter that registered by mail you are required to show your voter registration cards, drivers’ license, or photo id with your name and signature.

If you have none of these IDs then you must show two of the following forms of ID. One from each group.

Group A

valid photo ID government or private

current utility bill

bank statement

government check

pay check

government documents with your name and address

.Group B

Any document with voters’ name and signature (credit card)

Or sign an affadavit of ID form provide by the pollworkers.

Federal Reserve and Treasury ask Congress for permission to buy $700 BILLION in bad loans to “avoid recession…”

Great idea, increase the American taxpayer’s already daunting burden with the purchase of $700 BILLION in bad debt….I gues that will somehow save some companies, but I don’t see how it can possibly help joe public keep his house form being foreclosed on or get a raise.  Scary.  Read Washington Post article about this here.

Read world-renowned Harvard economist, Greg Mankiw’s take on the AIG bailout, here.

World-renowned Harvard Economist, Greg Mankiw, had the following to say about US Taxpayers bailing out international banks and insurance companies on Monday: (see his post in its original format by clicking here.)

”

More Capital for the Financial System

Doug Elmendorf and Paul Krugman seem to agree that the government should be putting capital into banks and other financial institutions, in exchange for a share of bank equity, rather than using taxpayer dollars to buy bank assets that no one else wants at prices no one else will pay.

See also Sebastian Mallaby, who conveys this proposal:

Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago suggest ways to force the banks to raise capital without tapping the taxpayers. First, the government should tell banks to cancel all dividend payments. Banks don’t do that on their own because it would signal weakness; if everyone knows the dividend has been canceled because of a government rule, the signaling issue would be removed. Second, the government should tell all healthy banks to issue new equity. Again, banks resist doing this because they don’t want to signal weakness and they don’t want to dilute existing shareholders. A government order could cut through these obstacles.”

Securities and Exchange Commission list of Non-short-sellable stocks grew to nearly 900 Friday, including Ford and Chevrolet…the crisis is already worse than anyone is admitting.

The following is from the 23 September New York Times, written by Michael J. De La Merced:

“….The list of companies that regulators are protecting from short-sellers keeps growing, as do the questions surrounding it.

By Monday evening, the number of companies on the list rose to nearly 900, from 799 on Friday, when the Securities and Exchange Commission sought to restrict bearish bets against financial companies to help stabilize the markets.

Nearly every major bank is now included, along with large insurance companies and others. Trading in bank stocks withered on Monday amid uncertainty over the rules and the sweeping bailout that the Bush administration has proposed for financial companies.

But many questions remain. Some analysts — and a few firms initially left off the list — complained that the initial S.E.C. roster was incomplete.

By the weekend, the S.E.C. delegated the task of adding more companies to the initial 799 to financial exchanges like NYSE Euronext and the Nasdaq. On Sunday afternoon, NYSE Euronext, which operates the New York Stock Exchange, sent out an e-mail message to all of its listed members, asking them to submit reasons why they should be given short-selling protection. Companies had to fit one of seven categories of financial firms listed by the S.E.C. Applications were reviewed by NYSE Euronext’s listings division.

Many financial firms that might seem like natural members of the list — banks like Credit Suisse, the money managers AllianceBernstein and Legg Mason and American Express — did not make the cut until Monday. BlackRock, the big investment firm that has done work for the government during several crises this year, was not added until Monday evening.

A few additions seemed a bit more puzzling. Both General Electric and General Motors were added Monday morning, prompting a few jokes from pundits. But the companies argue that they fall under the guidelines set out by the S.E.C.

General Motors, for example, notified the regulator on Friday that it owned the National Motor Bank, a savings and loan that qualifies it for inclusion on the list, according to Julie M. Gibson, a G.M. spokeswoman. The S.E.C. responded and, after a series of talks between the two, added the carmaker to the list by Monday.

By Monday evening, the Ford Motor Company, which also owns a bank, was added to the list.

Yet as others sought to be added, one company chose to remove itself from the list.

The Diamond Hill Investment Group, a small investment manager that is listed on the Nasdaq, said Monday that it opted out of the protection program. When the firm learned on Friday that it was a part of the no-short list, it asked to be removed, according to Rob Dillon, the firm’s chief executive.”

Re-reading the Gettysburg Address with today’s world in mind…

The Gettysburg Address, by Abraham Lincoln
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

U.S. Central Bank commits US taxpayers to foot 100% of $85 billion AIG bailout, despite the company’s INTERNATIONAL existance and importance (read-bailed out at behest of foreign central banks with only US tax payer money!!??)

Click here to read a Great Opinion Piece  (‘The fleecing of America’) concerning America’s new, diminished role as a pauper nation amongst the world’s new “wealth centers” in China, India, Brazil and the Persian Gulf States and about the lack of foreign investment support in helping to save the international conglomerate AIG (billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars spent to save international company????) Written by Roger Cohen, Published in the New York Times on Sunday, the following is an excerpt:

“…But toxic mortgage-backed securities were pedaled by plenty of foreign banks. And the decision to pour $85 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money into the rescue of American International Group (A.I.G.), the insurance giant, followed appeals from foreign finance ministers to Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, to save a global company.

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told me: “Paulson said he was getting calls from finance ministers all around the world saying, you have to save A.I.G. Well, they should have been asked to contribute to the pot.”

Frank has a point. (He should coach Barack Obama on how to put economics in plain language.) As Frank said on “The Charlie Rose Show,” “I don’t think the European Central Bank should be free to spend the Federal Reserve’s money and not put any in.”

I know, you reap what you sow. Nobody’s itching to help the Bush administration. World central banks did inject billions in concerted action to help stabilize money markets. But the U.S. has essentially been on its own. Now foreign banks with U.S. affiliates will want a slice of the $700 billion bailout. That doesn’t make sense until the burden of this rescue starts reflecting a globalized world.

I asked Frank why Paulson and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, did not get more foreign support. “I think it’s a perverse pride thing,” he said. “We don’t ask for help. We’re the big, strong father figure. But let’s be realistic: we’re no longer the dominant world power.”

It’s time for a responsibility shift. Call it the Hirst reality check. If he can sell a formaldehyde-pickled sheep with gold horns for millions while Lehman goes under, perhaps it’s time for everyone to help a little when Americans get fleeced.”  😦