JANUARY 2015 BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH

1. Tom Cotton (R-Ark). Cotton heavily played the fear-of-foreigners card in his recent election to the US Senate. Cotton warned of a murderous mass invasion by Islamic bogeymen often cited by the far right:

“Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.”

Here you have it. Mid-eastern jihadists are drooling about taking over Hot Springs. The sad thing is many of his fellow right-wing senators actually hope to respond to this phony danger by enacting anti-immigrant, anti-Latino legislation. They believe the 2014 election gave them a mandate to do so. And these people are senators?  

WILL PENN STATE RECOVER FROM THE MESS IT'S IN?

By Charles Snow


I received my PhD in Business Administration from the University of California. In early 1974, I received an offer for a faculty position in the business school at Penn State University. Because my wife and I would not be moving to State College, Pennsylvania until August of that year, the Chairman of the Management Department offered to send us a two-week subscription to the local newspaper so that we could start getting a feel for the State College community and perhaps find an apartment to lease. When the first copy of the paper arrived, the headline article, accompanied by a large picture, was about a mirror that had been recently installed at a semi-blind intersection on a country road. I began to wonder what I was getting myself into by accepting this job.

ANOTHER INSULT: WALL STREET FINES ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE

 

By Ronald Fox

 

 

It a number of previous posts I bemoaned the failure of Federal prosecutors to subject big Wall Street banks to criminal prosecution for their assortment of misdeeds. (One notable exception was the criminal prosecution of Credit Suisse. See Credit Suisse Pleads Guilty To A Felony, But Gets Off Easy). Without criminal prosecution, I concluded that the heavy fines imposed on JPMorgan Chase and other Wall Street behemoths would not deter the various criminal wrongdoings that got them in legal hot water.  At the same time, I welcomed the seemingly huge fines, which federal prosecutors assured us were extremely stiff, the highest ever paid by banks.  They did seem impressive.  I said "seem," because now we know the big banks will pay nowhere near the full cost of the settlements.  A big chunk of the billions of dollars in fines they have to pay to various federal agencies and regulators is tax deductible.  

 

HEAD INJURIES IN FOOTBALL: THE NFL FINALLY RESPONDS

(This is Part II of my series on head injuries in football)  

After more than a decade of denials and evasions of the problem, the NFL was finally forced to admit that concussions could have long-term effects. It didn’t concede easily. It took increased scientific confirmation of the presence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), wider public awareness, and political pressure brought to Capitol Hill by Dr. Ann McKee, director of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (Jane Leavy has authored a book about her titled The Woman Who Saved Football) and an organization of wives and widows of former players to get the NFL to respond. Commissioner Roger Goodell was hauled before a congressional hearing where he was asked point blank if concussions caused long-term damage. This time his familiar “don’t-ask-me-I’m-not-a-scientist-ask-them” refrain satisfied no one. One committee member equated his evasion to Big Tobacco.

 

Two new discoveries by Dr. McKee’s research team posed an even more ominous threat to the NFL and the game of football in general.  CTE deposits were found in the brains of a 21-year old college football player, Owen Thomas, who had committed suicide, and an 18-year old high school player who died after a fourth concussion. Finding the presence of CTE in players so young raised several questions that cut to the very heart of the game of football. Could asymptomatic, sub-concussive hits have long-term effects? Is playing the game too dangerous? How safe is it for children to play? At what age? What precautions can be taken to protect players from head injuries? Questions like these substantially raised the stakes for the NFL.

 

I WAS WRONG: DICK CHENEY IS A SOCIOPATH

By Ronald Fox 

Sociopath: a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.  

 

 

Prompted by former Vice-President Dick Chaney’s ludicrous claim that President Obama was responsible for the rise of ISIS and the general chaos in the Middle East, among other things, I previously posted an essay on the Veep in which I attempted to set the record straight. In trying to understand Cheney’s unfounded claims, I considered whether he had amnesia, was a hypocrite, ideological delusionalist, or just a shameless liar. After much thought, I concluded he was a dangerous delusional ideologue. (See Dick Cheney is a Dangerous Delusional Ideologue). Cheney’s response to the multitude of horrors spelled out in the Senate Report on Torture leads me to amend my conclusion: Dick Cheney is a sociopath. 

 

A LITTLE CHRISTMAS POLITICAL CHEER: FOND MEMORIES OF OLD-STYLE POLITICS

By Ronald T. Fox  

(NOTE:  An earlier version of this essay was sent in error, so I'm re-submitting)

Ok, I admit it. I’ve become a political cynic. It’s easy to get jaded when your governing system is completely dysfunctional and the political party you’ve believed in has strayed from its core principles. The partisan divide has become obscenely wide and rigid. Partisanship has always characterized American politics, but perhaps never so much as in our present era. Political opponents rarely talk to each other, let alone collaborate to move legislation. I didn’t think I’d ever say it, but I long for a return to that old style politics when politicians fought it out on principle in the day, but got together after hours to make political deals. This is how law-making got done. It required mutual respect, trust and willingness to compromise. Above all, it required a commitment to the general good.  Sadly,  these days are long gone. 

DECEMBER 2014 BONEHEAD ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH

1. Anyone still maintaining that the NRA is a mainstream organization devoted to gun hobbyists, gun education, and other phony claims should take a gander at the NRA magazine's special election issue and then kindly shut the hell up.  A paranoid column from NRA leader Wayne Pierre appearing in the gun group’s magazine, America’s 1^st Freedom, warns about terrorist attacks and “angry mobs” rioting “just for the hell of it” and calls on members to “vote our guns” on Election Day.

The issue cover depicted a flag and gun-toting ISIS fighter along with the headline, “Chaos at Our Door.” The Vote Your Guns issue's primary editorial seems to list every far-right militia theory, every ammo-hoarding survivalist mantra, every xenophobic conspiracy theory, and so on. Among the things LaPierre told readers to be afraid of:

• An electromagnetic pulse attack (EMP) that could kill "as much as 90 percent of the population of the U.S." by bringing about the reemergence of "Third World" diseases like "amoebic dysentery, typhoid, [and] cholera -- killing our youngest and frailest family members."

• A cyber attack that would put "our economy into a tailspin" and possibly become "deadly" if hackers took over a dam or oil processing facility.

• An attack "along the lines of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, where terrorists launched a dozen coordinated attacks, gunning down innocent victims at hotels, a bar, a train station, a hospital and a movie theater," killing 164 people.

• An incident similar to a 2013 terrorist attack on a mall in Kenya where "[f]our armed terrorists linked to al Qaeda were able -- thanks to Kenya's strict anti-gun laws -- to spend four days torturing, mutilating and gunning down shoppers.