FOOTBALL BATTERING CHILDREN

It's obvious from the numbers that Americans are so addicted to football they are willing to put their children in harms way for the sake of the sport.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 173,000 recreation-related traumatic brain injuries to children and adolescents are treated in U.S. emergency departments every year. Boys between 10 and 19 who play football are far more likely to suffer such injuries.

Concussions turn 15-year-old football player's dreams into 'nightmare'

"He's been playing tackle football since he was 5. He has always seen himself as a football player named Rick, not Rick, who plays football."

At 13, in a parent-organized league called the Junior All-American Football Conference, Rick had a concussion that put him out for three games. In his second game back, he was hit from behind on a tackle, fumbled and appeared to go limp for a moment. When parents and coaches started out on the field to come to his aid, Rick popped up and waved them off. Shortly after the game, the concussion symptoms were back.


Under the headline "Football cannot be made safe — not for our kids, not for our souls": Research at Boston University found that the typical high school football player takes 1,000 blows to the head each season, with the average force of 20G. That's more than college football players.

—Dave D'Alessandro, Newark Star Ledger, Oct. 17, 2014


Tom Cutinella played guard and linebacker for a Long Island, N.Y., high school, Shoreham-Wading River. He was 16. He had a collision with another player in a game Oct. 1 and died shortly afterward, "becoming the third high school football player nationally to die in a week." His team had started the season 3-0, and after one of those victories, Cutinella tweeted: "Best moment of my life."

—New York Times, Oct. 2, 2014

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Real Animals, Fake Paws Footage

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Real Animals, Fake Paws Footage

EXCESSIVE WEALTH DISORDER

EXCESSIVE WEALTH DISORDER It's not listed in the DSM and no one is offering to treat the condition. But none the less it is something to be concerned about.



Anyone with common sense and average intelligence knows that too much of anything is not good for you. Aristotle pointed out that "moderation in all things" is the key to healthy living.



So it is with wealth, though there are many (usually the wealthy) who will tell you different.



What seems to not be taken into account is that "excessive" wealth  directly correlates with "excessive" poverty given that we do live on a planet with limited resources. There's only so much of anything to go around; including wealth.



There are those (usually the wealthy) who would tell you that being wealthy is a good thing because wealth is the engine that drives growth that results in creating more wealth for more people;be it at a "trickle." We are reassured that "there are no have-nots, but only haves and soon to haves." Who can argue with that when it's put that way?



When someone does make a fuss by pointing out that poverty is a result of too much wealth going to too few people the retort is usually quoting Jesus who said  "the poor will always be with us" and they leave out the part about, "but love them as you would your self."  They also fail to mention that Jesus gave fair warning to those that ignored their brothers; telling them that they had a worse chance of getting into heaven than a camel passing through the eye of a needle.



It's reasonable to surmise that Jesus was sending a message, acknowledging that even though poverty wasn't going to go away the wealthy had a responsibility to care for those afflicted by it so that neither condition would grow to be excessive.



Granted; wealth and poverty will always be with us. There's no doubt that societies are constructed on a continuum that allows for both. It's only when they are in excess that both wealth and poverty destroy the foundation that a civil society is built on.



Being excessively wealthy is much like being morbidly obese.  It's not healthy. Like weight it can be measured in terms of volume whereas a morbidly obese person eats just for the sake of eating, an excessively wealthy person consumes, wastes or hoards just for the sake of consuming, wasting and hoarding. There is no rational reason other than they can.



For example, a large number of excessively wealthy people behave irrationally when it comes to owning simple things used in everyday living. Take owning a wristwatch, for example. Even the most advanced (the iWatch) costs around $500.00; something that not everyone can afford but ready made for a wealthy consumer.



So, how does one explain why someone would spend as much as a $100,000.00 (or more) on a wristwatch that does nothing more than tell time?  Or $5.00 on an "purified"ice cube? Or $150 million on a home with a 100 car garage, 20 bathrooms, an a bowling alley.



Neither obesity or excessive wealth is rational. In the case of weight it is easily defined as a disorder, dysfunctional, and unhealthy. Yet, when it comes to wealth it is praised, glorified, and touted as a sign of success.



Simply put, it's excessive, irrational and bordering on crazy. It is a psychological disorder that left untreated seriously damages the society as witnessed by conditions now being described as "income inequality."

Yellen warns on growing inequality

Fed Chair Janet Yellen said in a speech on the subject on Friday, that she is“greatly concerned by the extent, and continuing increase, of wealth inequality in the United States.”, noting the “significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top, and stagnant living standards for the majority.”

She is echoing economists’ growing concerns of recent years.

The statistics are shocking. A 2012 academic study by NYU economist Edward N. Wolff, ‘The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class’,revealed that the richest 5% of Americans hold 88.9% of the nation’s wealth. A study by European Central Bank economists estimates that just the richest 1% of Americans control 35% of the wealth.

She suggested in a detailed speech on the politically charged issue that Americans should ask whether it was compatible with U.S. values.

With global financial markets coming off a few days of frenzied selling, Yellen did not comment on the volatility or on monetary policy. Instead she focused on the gulf between rich and poor that has only grown wider over the last several decades and, she said, through the U.S. economic recovery.

"The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me," Yellen told a conference on inequality at the Boston branch of the central bank.

"It is no secret that the past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority," she said in prepared remarks.

"I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity."

TEXAS + PERRY + EBOLA = THE PERFECT DISASTER

When it comes to healthcare the worse possible scenario is having an incident involving the state of Texas, it's governor, Rick Perry, and a serious outbreak of a contagious disease.



For starters;


Rick Perry upholds the right of Texans to have the worst health care in the country

First, he told the interviewer that our state won’t participate in health care expansion because the real issue is freedom: “We’re just not going to be a part of socializing health care in the state of Texas.’’

Add to this; 

Texas was“Rated "weak" or "very weak" in nine of 12 health delivery categories, Texas dropped from 47th place in 2010 to 51st in 2011, behind all other states and Washington, D.C.,’’according to the Houston Chronicle.

The lead author of the federal study told the Chronicle that one factor in the ranking was the high proportion of residents who lack any form of health insurance.

In fact, Texas has the nation’s highest rate of uninsured people; more than 25 percent of Texans lack medical coverage.

You end up with; 

Dallas Hospital That Treated First US Ebola Patient: 'We Made Mistakes'

Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas, the hospital that treated the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US, has for the first time apologized for mishandling the case.

Early reports indicated that the hospital sent Thomas Eric Duncan home with antibiotics the first time he sought care, even though he mentioned that he was recently in Liberia, one of the countries at the epicenter of the worst Ebola outbreak in history. By the time Duncan returned to the emergency room, his symptoms had worsened considerably and many more people had been exposed to the virus.Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-presbyterian-hospital-apologizes-2014-10#ixzz3GST33dUh

 

DUMBING DOWN AMERICANS

The previous generation learned a lesson that is now being "unlearned" in the present generation. The goal is obvious.  The Military Industrial Complex is determined to convince Americans that waging senseless - endless wars is the way to keep America strong; protect ourselves from the unseen enemy if you will. 

US Government Sanitizes Vietnam War History

For many years after the Vietnam War, we enjoyed the "Vietnam syndrome," in which US presidents hesitated to launch substantial military attacks on other countries. They feared intense opposition akin to the powerful movement that helped bring an end to the war in Vietnam. But in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush declared, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"

With George W. Bush's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and Barack Obama's drone wars in seven Muslim-majority countries and his escalating wars in Iraq and Syria, we have apparently moved beyond the Vietnam syndrome. By planting disinformation in the public realm, the government has built support for its recent wars, as it did with Vietnam.

Now the Pentagon is planning to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War by launching a $30 million program to rewrite and sanitize its history. Replete with a fancy interactive website, the effort is aimed at teaching schoolchildren a revisionist history of the war. The program is focused on honoring our service members who fought in Vietnam. But conspicuously absent from the website is a description of the antiwar movement, at the heart of which was the GI movement.

DEATH PANELS IN AMERICA

To see how death panels work you just need the right combination;



A person with a deadly and expensive to treat illness.



A person of "color" (not white).



A hospital in a state (Texas) with the worse healthcare in the nation.

Liberian’s Last Days in Dallas With Ebola Come Into Focus

DALLAS—On the night of Sept. 25, a Liberian immigrant walked into the emergency room at a modern metropolitan hospital here, whose polished terrazzo floors and sleek tropical-fish tank were a world removed from the rundown clinics of his home country.

Barely a week before, Thomas Eric Duncan had excitedly arrived in Texas from Liberia’s Ebola-ravaged capital of Monrovia, with plans to reunite with his fiancée, Louise Troh, and their college-age son, Karsiah. Now his abdomen was hurting, and so was his head. He felt feverish, he told relatives.

So Ms. Troh took him to the ER at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, and asked for assistance. Eventually, a nurse asked Mr. Duncan what ailed him. When questioned if he had been around anyone who was ill, Mr. Duncan replied that he hadn’t, according to the hospital. (More: Texas Health-Care Worker Tests Positive for Ebola, Says Health Department)

Medical staff requested Mr. Duncan provide proof of health insurance, a Social Security number and a driver’s license, and Ms. Troh responded in her thickly accented English that he had none of those things, that he was from Africa, according to a relative who spoke with her afterward. He was sent home that evening with a prescription for $40 in antibiotics, she said.
Thirteen days later, Mr. Duncan was dead, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., and the first known casualty from the disease in this country, a case that has triggered tough questions about whether America is fully prepared for the potential spread of a West African outbreak that has killed more than 4,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.