Month: October 2017

More Bad News for White Athletes and Would-Be-Athletes

Too much exercise takes a toll on male cardiac arteries (whites only)!!

We all know that white men (still) can’t jump,*  but now we find that a new study reveals, “White men who exercise at high levels are 86% more likely than people who exercise at low levels to experience a buildup of plaque in the heart arteries by middle age. . . .”

See: uh-oh

Yes!  Another occasion for white males to feel like a victimized minority. . .

This research hits home with me especially because last year I discovered I had cardiac disease that required the installation of two stents in my Left Anterior Descending artery, the so-called “widow maker.” Now I find that a white male age 71 who runs and cycles maybe too much is increasing his risk of heart disease.

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Supreme Court Disappoints Coal Mining Baron Don Blankenship

At last someone at the top of a corporate hierarchy gets his comeuppance. The Supreme Court declined to take the case when top mining worm Don Blankenship appealed his mine safety conviction.

The Trump DOJ actually recommended to the Court not to take the case. It was a continuance of measures under the Obama administration.  We can surmise that the prosecutors on the case have for now flown under the gut-the-government radar. There are just so much staff you can axe without breaking down.  So, who knows what the Trump DOJ will do in similar circumstances going forward?

Blankenship turned down by Supreme Court

The Other Addiction: Is Democracy Sunk?

Chemical Addiction: Unsolved although Obvious

Addiction to painkillers has been killing a lot of people. For years.  Just why it has been getting so much media attention recently may have to do with (1) criticality, analogous to the point at which a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining, has been reached; (2) liberal alarm over the surge in “Trump voters,” many of whom, rural and white, are now suffering from addictions on a par with that of urban blacks whose votes have long been taken (and are still taken) for granted by Democrats.   PBS recently ran a series on the subject. It appears that bright spotlights being trained on the opiate epidemic are giving rise to promising local and state programs to save addicts’ lives and then turn them around.  The former is easier than the latter; instances abound of addicts having their lives saved one day only to overdose the next (and the next and the next), and the burden that puts on emergency services has led to a debate of whether there should be quotas, as in Three Strikes and You’re Out (for eternity).

Noises are being made at the national administrative and legislative levels to address the countrywide epidemic, but there’s little real movement, despite candidate Trump’s promise to do something. That was to be expected, since he was unclear from the start as to what, and seems to have forgotten his pledge while chaos erupts on every issue that he touches.  In the legislature, there is much public hand-wringing but not much legislating. Even if laws are passed to mitigate the opioid epidemic, who in a government drifting toward self-destruction will carry them out?

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McCain and Corker: Poster Boys for Term Limits

After Senator Bob Corker uncorked his imperishable quip, “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center,” it became abundantly clear that he and John McCain have, by example, made a most persuasive case for term limits.  McCain stood up against the Republican legislative steamroller on health care, and Corker has stood up to the dysfunctional and dangerous White House with ever sharper criticism during the last several weeks.

What the two senators have in common—besides being moderate members of an increasingly immoderate political party—is the extreme unlikelihood that either of them will run for office again.  In Corker’s case, he has already declared he is retiring, and in McCain’s case, sadly, the glioblastoma ravaging his brain will almost certainly kill him before is he up for reelection seven years hence.

They also have in common the fact that both supported the Donald Trump presidential campaign. McCain, whose personal detestation of Trump was obvious, did so largely out of party loyalty, whereas Corker was an early Trump booster.

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The Nuclear War Threat: Way Beyond North Korea

If you think you’re worried about nuclear conflict now . . .

THINK SOME MORE. 

Sure we’re deeply troubled by the prospect of a nuclear war between an American Narcissist Who Would Be King and a North Korean Dictator Who Would Be a God.  But—trying not to diminish the horrific losses such a conflict would entail—at least it would not lead to global Armageddon.  The leaders of Russia and China would keep cooler heads than either of these madmen, and avoid a widespread holocaust, although the damage to North Korea and perhaps the U.S. would be immense and long-lasting.  I trust those other leaders to be rational: however cruel, repressive, and callous they may be, they are not suicidal, neither are they unpatriotic enough to risk the destruction of their nations over North Korea.

So that you can worry about the potential for  a nuclear exchange far more consequential than Korea’s, I call attention to a piece in the September 23-29 New Scientist by Debora MacKenzie, entitled “Accidental Armageddon” —that’s the title within the pages; on the cover the headline reads “End Game: You’re right to worry about nuclear war – but not for the reason you think.” If these headlines make your blood run cold, you may find it run colder once you read MacKenzie’s article. Unfortunately, at this moment I can’t give you a link to the story, but you can find the magazine in material form at most libraries.

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Gun Culture, Liberty, and the Appeal to Agency

Mass Shootings: The Price to Pay for Liberty?

What has once again been largely left out of the public debate on gun control prompted by the Las Vegas massacre, is how tightly gun rights are bound to right-wing ideology, at the core of which is the fear of a tyrannical government.  The shadows of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War fall over the darkest corners of the gun culture: Should tyranny come, our freedoms can only be defended by taking up arms—so goes the narrative. That these guns will inevitably be misused by sociopaths to slaughter innocents is the price we have to pay for the capability to defend ourselves against a totalitarian government.

They have a point. The revelations by Edward Snowden of the scope of national security agencies spying on U.S. citizens were chilling.  Whatever nominal limitations were put on mass surveillance in the Obama administration may well be mere window dressing, as far as the NSA and CIA are concerned. Those operators are secretive by nature, and the only way we can feel safe from surveillance is by trusting the people whose mission is to monitor, capture and kill enemies of the state—trusting them to be motivated by true democratic principles.  For now, their focus is on terrorism and hostile foreign governments, but if the government were to be taken over by a strongman (such as Donald Trump would like to be but is too scatterbrained and undisciplined to emulate),* the tools of these agencies could readily be turned on American civilians—in particular on what we like to think of as the free press (the irony of right-wingers’ beliefs that “the media” are dominated by socialists is particularly rich; do they really believe that these news organizations are arms of the “Deep State?”).

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