When Nap came back
June 27, 2017The Indians… the Rangers: A list of under the radar Indians position player prospects worth tracking
June 28, 2017
Sports are a fantastic distraction from the problems of the world. Watching Lonnie Chisenhall develop slowly over his career into a legitimate star is fun and entertaining even if it is not going to directly affect many of the things that matter. Distractions are important too. They build community and camaraderie, which people need to have to help soften the divide once we get to the stickier important stuff in life.
One of the issues though is that people in general might too easily be distracted even on these topics. It is easier to run with a couple one-liners from someone who you generally agree rather than dive into a 49 page CBO report to figure out what is in the current AHCA plan- let alone formulate individual opinions on it. It is far easier to become distracted with a possible fake TIME magazine cover of Trump hanging at a golf course than it is to worry about potential Syrian chemical attacks or discuss expanding the nuclear energy capabilities of the country.
The biggest distraction of 2017 has been Russia. Well, there are a bunch of potential scary items about Russia that could well matter not only in the relations with the United States, but also how we conduct elections, and more. We need to be patient and wait for the detailed investigations to find that information. In the meantime, most in the media like to just glom onto the TMZ-style headlines though as they generate ratings- aka money. CNN producer’s have even admitted as much, and have been embroiled in a bunch of scandals due to it.
On the other side, the Washington Post had a three-person byline with dozens of sources on a long-form article that detailed the Obama White House handling of the Russia scandal more in depth than had been reported thus far. The article- with main sources being ex-staffers of that White House- was critical of President Obama, Republican leaders, and many other parties from August through December of 2016.1
Rather than focus on the partisan politics though, my mind keeps wandering to another distraction with potential real implications for the future. That being the cyber attacks that have continually appeared in nearly every phase of our lives over the past few years. ISIS has been able to hack into government websites in Ohio and Maryland to put threatening messages on their pages. Y!Mail has reported over a billion accounts compromised, British hospitals and FedEx (among others) were exploited with malware attacks. We even had the St. Louis Cardinals hacking the Houston Astros database to steal information ahead of MLB drafts, trade deadlines, and free agency periods.
A wise man once said “Evil will always triumph over good because good is dumb.” Whether or not that is true, the fact that our election machines were hooked up to the internet suggests we are not the brightest when it is well known how prevalent attacks have been. It would be simple enough to hook up the units one of many central intranet stations to load the information onto them, then return them for counting once the vote is completed. Instead, the machines were allowed direct connect access to the internet. What could go wrong? According to the Washington Post story, nothing went wrong on Election Day, but there were hacks and attacks in the months and weeks leading up to it (again, none is expected to have had any effect on actual votes tallied or have suppressed any voters).
Not that anyone should be surprised. We live in a world where Facebook admitted to running experiments on altering the emotional state of their users. It was recently uncovered that they also hold a patent that would allow them to secretly monitor users through their webcam (and again, the stated purpose would be to monitor and change your mood for their amusement- err, profit). Umm, about Mark Zuckerberg potentially running for POTUS and having access to the NSA…
Oh, right, the NSA is the organization that might be overstepping their bounds of protecting the country from terrorism by monitoring citizens without a warrant and developing high tech viruses. Not that the agency would let 50TB of data walk out the door. Oh? Yeah, that happened too. The latest wave of cyber attacks this week are thought to have originated from those files, which is why businesses are calling for the NSA to help fight them. Good thing that automated cars hooked up to the cloud is not a thing currently being developed.
Nevermind. I don’t want to think about everything wrong with a world. I need a distraction. Have you seen my baseball?
- If you are going to read anything political, this piece is the best by far for the level of reporting and the important details divulged. [↩]
389 Comments
~300 comments and maybe ~25 about sports
I’m here all week, try the veal.
Yessir, no worries. Reading back I see how you jumped where you did.
I have watched this so many times, it is fantastic. If it was a panda… the internet would break.
Politics isn’t a sport anymore?
he can’t get an “F” … he stood in front of many world leaders & let them know they have to start pulling their own weight & pay what they agreed to pay. he laid it out there.
and besides , if we refuse to come to the rescue of the oppressed , who’s going to do it ??
hi PAT … good point. imo , governors make the best Presidents , mostly because they know how to deal with a budget.
He laid it out there … while unilaterally bombing a sovereign nation.
Who? I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a place for us to help (de oppresso liber, after all), but the point stands that we only do it when convenient, and far too often at the cost of wasted American blood.
But bombing an air base actually does nothing to help any oppressed person.
I mean, they’re already kind of like presidents… they preside over their states in a similar way. Sure, they aren’t also Commander in Chief of their state, but nobody’s perfect.
Which one? Putin, I’d think.
I miss Sarah Palin.
I’ve learned today that Breitbart volleying may very well be a sporting activity. As a spectator, it is even strenuous to observe.
I’m a political moderate and vacillate between Republican and Democrat based on my mood that day (probably fit best as a Libertarian, but I rarely like the politicians who identify as such), but I will admit as a noted Trump-hater (noted by myself at least) that I did really enjoy the story about his fake TIME magazine cover being put up at his golf courses. In a way, I’m going to miss having him as president. The circus is fun, everyone likes going to the circus. There’s clowns and monkeys and elephants and trapeze artists and calliopes and holy crap did that guy just get shot out of a cannon??? Every morning has some fun, new adventure and so long as the circus tent doesn’t burn down with me inside, it’s entertaining as all get out.
Now about the AHCA… I haven’t had time to read it, so I don’t really know what it says other than what I see on the Twitter. Here’s a newsflash for everybody though… insurance is just that, it’s not meant to be universal healthcare. If you want universal healthcare (and I do), then do that. Making insurance companies cover more people is not the answer. Here’s the cycle for everyone: Step 1) We all want to live longer and so we always want the best care possible. 2) This results in doctors/hospitals needing to buy the latest equipment and prescribe the newest medicine and learn the newest procedures, etc. It’s massively expensive to increase the average lifespan, but we all want that so we push our government for it and it forces doctors/hospitals to charge astronomical fees for services. 3) We complain to the government because we can’t afford the fees (usually passed on to those of us who have insurance as insurance premiums) and the government enacts laws to force the premiums down. 4) The final step is either that insurance companies bail because they aren’t making a profit or doctors/hospitals stop buying the best equipment and start cutting staff because they need to stay in the black.
People want to talk about healthcare like there’s some real fixes that can be put in place, but really there are only band-aids so long as we keep the same kind of insurance-based healthcare plans. I think all of us can better understand it by comparing it to LeBron James’ game. He is the best basketball player in the world, but he has areas that need improvement. So he spends a summer working on his jump shot, and his post game suffers. He spends a summer working on his post game and suddenly he can’t hit threes. He spends the next summer working on his three point shot and his free throw percentage goes to crap. That’s healthcare. When you pay attention to one thing, something else is going to have to get worse to accommodate because healthcare is a for-profit business and nobody is leaving the table without their money.
Harv. Pleasure.
Way too many words here. I’m just going to vote ‘yes’ on it so that we can see what is really in there.
point-by-point:
Today’s circus is Dan Gilbert at the WH (worse though, he was seen with the Cubs)
AHCA: highly suggest the 49pg summary of CBO rather than bill itself. Also, insurance companies pay for many campaigns, so good luck ridding them from the market.
Do we want to live longer? Europe & Canada are enacting measures to allow people to kill themselves.
Anyway, careful on the last points. Healthcare is 1/6 our economy. You destroy profitability, you lose doctors coming here, you lose research for future medicines, you lose that sector of jobs. I agree what we have right now is problematic but also see it is much more nuanced than just blowing it up.
Breitbart volleying? Just that first word makes me scroll away quickly.
Not behind a paywall:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/06/19/is-russiagate-really-hillarygate/#7a4eb7915cf6
Not sure what your point is. I don’t doubt the Russian government puts out a lot of disinformation online. We do it too.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
I’m sure Russia, along with most other major powers, also try to influence public opinion here in the states. But, again, that stuff is fairly benign in the grand scheme of thing.
“Europe & Canada are enacting measures to allow people to kill themselves.”
111 dead by prescription in 6 months under California’s new law.
Extend his extended contract please……
https://twitter.com/MrLapara/status/880147917763248128
you are trying to goad me into an unseemly joke about Californians and it is not going to work.
To be fair, those are terminally ill people. Not sure what Bode is referring to, but in the Netherlands you can be approved for legal euthanasia because you’re an alcoholic.
most of Northern Europe is that way now (Denmark, Sweden, etc). they started w/ terminally ill and continued to expand.
given how prevalent we have seen depression be (Cornell latest example), making it more socially acceptable and easier to commit suicide is problematic at best.
Hmm, sounds like terminally ill euthanasia is gateway euthanasia.
I’m curious if any studies have been done to see if people just replace traditional suicide with legal euthanasia. Part of me thinks that if you’re determined enough to go through the hassle of filling out all those forms, you probably can convince yourself to kill yourself some other way.
Certainly true, though both morally and ethically, I question whether it’s a distinction without a difference. And I mean that literally: it’s a question.
“I was going to kill myself, but I didn’t want to put up with the paperwork.”
Well, fine.
#TradeJoeThomas
https://media.giphy.com/media/pILPI4yJdbcuQ/giphy.gif
In spite of the long rant, I’m not really passionate about any solution because they’re all imperfect and they all lead to certain groups of people being shafted. From my perspective, I want whatever solution leads to me not being saddled with a $2,300 emergency room visit again. $1,000 of x-rays were ordered that my son didn’t need because we’ve been to that same emergency room for this issue before. And I blame everybody. I blame the doctors for racking up unnecessary fees. I blame my insurance for its stingy coverage. I blame myself for having a child with respiratory issues. In the end, I appealed to the CEO of the hospital and he had pity on me and wiped out the charges, but I shouldn’t have to do that. That experience was enough for me to say, “Screw it, let’s just have universal healthcare. It may not be the best coverage and we may not have the best doctors, but at least I won’t go broke paying medical bills.”
“Fiscal responsibility” = Austerity. And on top of that the dollar fiat currency being the world oil currency there is no reason the USA cannot run deficits. There is no government checkbook where money comes in from taxes, we pay our bills and borrow the rest. That is just not how it works. Taxes take currency out of the system. It really is as simple as that. How it’s done is what creates some level of wealth re-distribution.
The idea that public works / utilities like healthcare, and I would add retail banking, have to be done privately for a profit to be sustainable is just not true. Again, the Fed has created trillions of dollars to bail out everything from junk CDS to the Euro. Insurance and big pharma do not need to create ever increasing profits to justify ever increasing stock and debt prices to justify it all being bought back when it goes pear shaped. And we don’t need them as intermediaries of what gets funded and not, as evidenced by most NFL Sunday TV commercials.
But no one is going to talk about that. Why? Because the people that actually wrote that legislation, that “no one knows” what’s in work for the very organizations that need to be reigned in. And they finance the campaigns of the people that are going to vote it in. The left right fingerpointing keeps the dogs off the scent.
Well, I think there’s a difference between a well understood disease that we know invariably leads to death and something like alcoholism where our understanding is precursory at best. Whether that difference meets a legal, moral, or ethical standard to permit physician-assisted euthanasia is debatable.
Personally, I don’t think the state should have the right to prevent a person from committing suicide. But that’s me.
Overall, we are still opposed to legal euthanasia in this country. Unfortunately, instead we prefer to simply make people die the long and hard way, through poverty and lack of good affordable medical care. In the last few years, progressive states have shown a willingness to dip their toe in the water, but due to recent political changes the past year, God only knows which direction this issue will go.
Come on nj0. #PilingOn
We still have Syria, Healthcare and the Cavs to solve here. 🙂
Are you sure you’re not actually Mark Blyth?
I noticed that someone mentioned being pro-Israel lower down in the comments too.
Interesting set of conundrums. Every person has the “right” to take their own life. Does the state have the “right” to prevent that? It’s certainly not an embodied right. I’d say the state has an arguable “interest” in preventing it, for whatever various reasons. In all of this, though, the question is whether a person has a right to avail themselves of someone else’s skill in helping end their life. One could argue that the state has a stronger interest, and possibly even the “right,” to prevent others from lending their skill in assisting – but again, not an embodied right.
I guess where I have an issue with the stated difference in “terminal illness” vs. other conditions is that we’re now essentially permitting the state to place a lesser value on one set of lives as opposed to another set, or multiple sets, of lives. I think I don’t want the state making those determinations in this context.
Life expectancy in the US seems to be shrinking. Whatever one’s politics, it’s hard to think that things aren’t pretty messed up.
Is that a health care issue or a health consciousness issue? Both? Our health care system might be broken in places, but we are also not a healthy people.
I have a friend back in Ohio whose son has a rare and serious disease that’s very expensive. Without Medicaid, it would be game over. Man, it’s heartbreaking seeing her and their family hanging onto this issue and which way Congress goes with the health care act–because it’s real to them (the realest) and not just a hypothetical talking point. With kids and their care (including health care and financial views), I think all of our perspectives change. And as shitty as insurance can be, thank God we have the care we do and knock on wood for all of our relative good health.
OK, THIS is today’s circus
https://mobile.twitter.com/DisneyParks/status/879803848617058304
on the non-snark. would just need the suicide per capita numbers and the euthanasia per capita numbers to get a rough idea. i’d be more concerned about long-term ramifications though.
also nuclear power- unless we have all agreed to just let Homer Simpson run things there
Wow, am I ever glad that I don’t have Twitter in my life. A short scroll through people’s tweets made me despair. Hard. Is everyone aware of how much unthinking and irrational hatred of each other gets cultivated and spewed? Insanity. We are doomed.
Anyone want to go bowling?
I promise when I am “elected” benevolent dictator that I will replace golf with bowling as the sport of choice for the media to complain about.
This is the part of it that I don’t have the stomach for, and thankfully doctors don’t have the stomach for it either. If you don’t have the proper coverage, doctors won’t just sit there and let a child die if they can provide treatment. But “fudging it” isn’t a real solution to the problem either, even if those people on Medicaid are still being cared for one way or another. Those costs are being passed on someway, somehow.
Yeah, it’s sad. These are upper middle class folks not on gov’t assistance. If not for the subsidizing effect of Medicaid for this expensive treatment, they’d be out of house and home. It’s easy for all of us to think in simplistic terms of people getting aid or coverage–but when you see “no fault” situations….affluent people struck by just bad luck, you’re like damn…that could just as easily have been me. Well, smarter people than us will undoubtedly figure this out and ensure our best interests, right? In Congress we trust! (cries uncontrollably)
It worked for David Blatt. Ok maybe bad example. Want to go grab a drink?
Please. I’ll buy.