A Different Kind Of Drug Scandal in the NFL

Now there is a new kind of drug usage scandal in the NFL.  It seems that team owners or managers are giving players massive amounts of pain drugs to disguise the fact that various players have sustained serious injuries that weren’t entirely diagnosed, as of they don’t want the players to know just how seriously they were injured in a particular play.  So they give them drugs they get addicted to and other unnecessary steroids and things.  The team owners are just that anxious to save a buck and increase their bottom line.   The funny thing is – with all the bad press professional football has gotten lately from the national media, Rush Limbaugh may be right.  They just might end up destroying football as we have known it, in fewer years than any of us think.

Now ABC news is concerned about E coli in ground beef and recommend that every hamburger you either grill or eat out, be “well done” so that it’s 160 degrees in the center.  Melinda Lee would have a fit over that one.  The high end of optimal meat temperature for her for beef is 140 degrees.  The nanny state seems in taking the fun out of all of our favorite foods.  Of course around here is one of the med guys accidently drops a pill, they just pick it up off the floor and hand it back to you.  And the thing is there doesn’t seem to be any real problem with this, with people (like me?) who have normal immune systems.  Now I hear that they are recommending hook worms as a cure for some modern ailment like Parkensin’s disease or something.  Larry Elder has Lupis, which is an auto immune disease.   It seems that some people have a natural immunity to Middle East Respritory Sidrone or MERS, and show no symptums.

SMALL BUSINESSES ARE THE KEY TO FULL EMPLOYMENT

It would seem that the reasons for major lack of full employment in this country are a whole lot more complex, and less instantaniously curable than Newt Gingrich and the Republicans would have you believe, as follows:

 An economy where most people work for the state or a global corporation is an economy that has lost its knowledge of the key entrepreneurial building blocks.

The decline of small business has numerous long-term consequences. One is the decline of the middle class, as entrepreneurial enterprise is a key pathway to generational wealth-building and prosperity.

Another is the loss of employment opportunities. As U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created, there are fewer sources of employment.

 Correspondent Kevin K. identified a third long-term consequence: the erosion of opportunities to learn basic skills with economic value. As low-skill work is increasingly replaced by software and robotics, work with a future requires not just higher-level skills but a spectrum of building-block skills and values–what I call the eight essential skills of professionalism in my book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

Many of these skills are fundamental life-skills that are not taught in classrooms; they are learned on the job. If the kind of jobs that enable the learning of these basic building blocks of economic value go away, so do the opportunities to gain these skills.

Dr Levy's Class got started at twenty after five and it was warm in there.  Lisha is moving upstairs, but I’m not sure how close to me she’ll be.  Owen and Gary will be rooming together.   Strangely there seems to be an almost unwritten rule that you don’t dine at the table of someone who’s a roommate.   But Lisha and Loretta Hill clearly don’t get along, and I have no interest in taking sides because I’ve known Loretta a long time.  I mentioned the “Cosmos” episode and Dr Levy began talking about that colony of twenty that wants to go into space and live on Mars- - for the rest of their lives, and they even have worked out the layout of the pods they will be living in.  Ethical considerations would be raised about spawning kids in such an environment and not even giving the kids the choice.  But then kids have that problem with gay parents too and somehow they manage to adjust.   I played up the poor boy angle something fierce about my gloomy finances, but Dr Levy didn’t pick up on the hint.  Then Joe came in just as class was breaking up and got into a conversation and it really seemed gosh to interrupt the conversation.    But then Marsha lent me two dollars.  Most people seem not to have any air conditioning in their rooms at all and here I am cool as a cucumber in here.  We got a peanut butter sandwich from Donnie with our medication.  I went to Glen’s room and secured some instant coffee for three John Black grape cigarettes.  That’s another room without AC.

It was about five years ago that comentator Thom Hartman spoke of this economic cyclic theory called "The Fourth Turning" where are these four cycles in the economy over eighty years or so, and the fourth cycle involves a major economic Crash of stock markets, financial institutions, and everything.  I'm not buying this for a minute.  Not any more.  Five years have passed and the economy is getting stronger and will Continue to get stronger as subsequent years pass, as this Fourth Turning theory appears increasingly more preposterous.  But here is the comentary for George Washington's Blog, presented for your amusement as follows:  A string of scandals involving the federal government is further demonstrating the illegitimacy and hypocrisy of the power structure. Historical cycles point to massive upheaval. Ordinary Americans are being targeted while known terrorists are escorted through security. Kidnappers, rapists, and murderers are being released from prison; an action sanctioned by the President of the United States. The BATF allows guns to find their way to Mexican drug lords, while the federal government is fighting to disarm American citizens. Mega-banks launder billions of dollars worth of drug money. No, this isn’t a dystopic nightmare; This is our present day reality that we all must face.  The establishment is behaving like a crazed psychopath that knows he is about to be brought to justice. Nearly every agency of government has acquired some form of armaments in the past several years. Police departments across the country are getting mine resistant vehicles. Homeland Security is acquiring billions of rounds of ammunition. The Department of Agriculture recently requested body armor as well as sub machine guns. Many other instruments of war have been stored and deployed.  To an outside observer watching these trends, a grim picture is being painted. Each case in and of itself may not add up to much, but when all of the data points are pulled together we can begin to see a pattern of deliberate action.