What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Nixon would be so jealous. And unlike Nixon, they’ll get away with it.
From TheNYPost “The personal e-mail account of a State Department whistleblower was hacked, and four years worth of messages — some detailing alleged wrongdoing at the agency — were deleted, The Post has learned.
The computer attack targeted the Gmail account of Diplomatic Security Service criminal investigator Richard Higbie, his lawyer, Cary Schulman, confirmed.
“They took all of his e-mails and then they deleted them all,” said Schulman. He said that he could not prove who was responsible for the hack job, but said the attack was “sophisticated” and called the targeting of Higbie “alarming.”
“The e-mails included evidence about misconduct by top officials at the department, communications with other potential whistleblowers there, and correspondence with members of Congress who are investigating the allegations, Schulman said.”
_______________________________________
2. Congressman Trey Gowdy is blasting the NY Times for their latest effort to provide cover for Hillary in the upcoming 2016 election. The NYT wrote an extensive piece on Benghazi, 15 months late I might add, yet not once was Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s name mentioned. Odd since all this happened on her watch.
_______________________________________
3. The folks over at The Week have finally seen the obvious, that ObamaCare is sucker punching the middle class. This is exactly what it was intended to do.
From TheWeek “ObamaCare has delivered another sucker punch to the middle class. This time it’s sticker shock.
Now that most people can get past the tech problems of HealthCare.gov and actually see the real cost of insurance plans available, they are finding that Affordable Care is a big hit to the family budget. And when the family budget gets hit in the solar plexus, guess what happens to consumer spending and the economy?
In California, policies for about 900,000 Californians are being canceled because of ObamaCare’s mandates, and about two-thirds of these do not qualify for subsidies, according to The Chicago Tribune. The result: These folks will be paying higher premiums.
In Alabama, premiums have doubled for some middle-class families, like that of Courtney Long, a stay-at-home mother of four. She told WHNT News, “It’s devastating. I started crying.”
_______________________________________
4. I found this interesting. By now you’ve probably heard of the young California girl who underwent a tonsillectomy and ended up in a coma. The hospital wants to pull the plug, while the family got an injunction to stop it while they seek a private facility to take her. The family now has an ally assisting them, and it’s a name you’ll recognize.
From LifeNews “The family of Terri Schiavo, who made international headlines when her husband starved and dehydrated her to death over the course of two weeks, has been quietly helping the family of Jahi McMath find a new hospital or medical facility that will provide her care.
News that Terri Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler, also a LifeNews guest blogger, is assisting the McMath family, follows on a judge’s decision allowing the McMath family more time to secure transfer for Jahi to a facility. Schindler told LifeNews that, under the direction of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, he and other patient advocates have been working on behalf of Jahi McMath and her family in relative silence for the sake of the sensitivity of her case.
It also follows on a prominent pediatrician saying he believes Jahi is not brain dead and can recover with proper care and treatment.
Schindler said Terri’s Network, Life Legal Defense, Angela Clemente & Associates, The Wrongful Death & Injury Institute, New Beginnings and others defending Jahi’s life are now stepping forward publicly to represent the many supporters who have been working tirelessly to obtain Jahi’s release from Children’s Hospital Oakland and transfer her to a safe place.”
_______________________________________
5. A new study is out on the effects of “spirituality” on the brain.
From YahooNews “For people at high risk of depression because of a family history, spirituality may offer some protection for the brain, a new study hints. Parts of the brain’s outer layer, the cortex, were thicker in high-risk study participants who said religion or spirituality was “important” to them versus those who cared less about religion.
“Our beliefs and our moods are reflected in our brain and with new imaging techniques we can begin to see this,” Myrna Weissman told Reuters Health. “The brain is an extraordinary organ. It not only controls, but is controlled by our moods.”
“While the new study suggests a link between brain thickness and religiosity or spirituality, it cannot say that thicker brain regions cause people to be religious or spiritual, Weissman and her colleagues note in JAMA Psychiatry.
It might hint, however, that religiosity can enhance the brain’s resilience against depression in a very physical way, they write.”
_______________________________________
Wandering Views 
Perplexed by #2. Tragedy, yes, but why are the parents not letting their child go?
LikeLike
michelle (did you mean #4?), my only thought is that they’ve having to go through an internal process to come to grips with this. It was such a horrifying, unexpected, completely out-of-the-blue occurrence that I can only imagine how they’re trying to wrestle through it all. Very sad.
LikeLike
That, and, of course, there are rare cases in which people do come out of these states. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s happened enough to make these conditions still something of a deep mystery to us, even with all our advanced medical technology.
And when it comes to a child, I can imagine that hope of a turn-around, though seemingly irrational, would be especially strong and hard to abandon.
LikeLike
Many years ago ex-husband worked with a guy whose young daughter (4 or5) went in for elective surgery to remove a growth on the bone in her shoulder. She never made it out of recover. Two things that really made it sad was the grandmother was a surgical nurse and if the child had been given oxygen in the beginning of the crisis she would have survived and the mother was the marketing director for the hospital where it happened.
We tend to forget how serious even the most minor surgery can be. My heart breaks for this family. From the outside we see that they are grasping at straws. From the inside they are dealing with guilt, anger, grief, and everything other imaginable emotion.
LikeLike
#1 — hard to believe there’ s no backup files and/or CC of the email.
#2 — there’s nothing there
#3 — From what I understand there is a minimum amount of coverage that people must purchase. Those facing premium increases have been forced to upgrade their coverage.
#4 — I always cringe in cases like this where the line between life and death has been slowed and made fuzzy. I’d like to err on the side of life but at the same time an inability to function without technological assistance is a fair assessment of death. Take your child home and allow her to die in peace.
# 5 — The correlation between brain structure and spirituality is fairly well documented as is the correlation brain structure and mental health.
LikeLike
Another Obamacare Horror Story
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/12/105176-alabama-mom-shares-devastating-experience-obamacare-open-letter-american-people/
LikeLike
That story you posted Kim will be more prevalent as the full effect of the ACA takes effect. My son was ADD and he had to take Meds to stay on his game. As an adult, he has since learned to cope with his learning disability.
LikeLike
hwesseli (#4), true, there are so many gray areas now and none of that makes it easy for us. But I also understand it’s the parents’ call, they can do only what they can do at the moment as they try to process this tragedy. (I’ve had a similar reaction in a much less serious situation that pet owners are waiting “too long” to put their animals down; from experience, it’s a process that owners need to work through and it often takes days or sometimes even weeks to get there. Only the people charged with making that life-and-death decision can finally make the call and they can’t do it before they’re ready. It’s easy to look in from the outside, as Kim points out, and say parents should pull the plug. Can’t even imagine … )
Meanwhile, here’s an interesting piece on how nations come to ruin:
http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/changepoint/20980-how-to-ruin-a-country-
Short answer from the article:
” … If our nation is on a course toward ruin, then let us not lay the blame at the feet of our secular neighbors or our political leaders. They have merely charged through the door to folly which we (the church) hold open to them every day.
“The way to ruin a nation is for Christians to deny their true identity, compromise their calling, and do their best to fit in with however the winds of the age choose to blow. … “
LikeLike
HRW,
2. There’s plenty there. Like the fact that the CIA was running guns from an embassy. Gross negligence from the State Dept, Clinton, and Obama. Intimidation of witnesses, lies by the admin (it’s all because of a video right?) and numerous other things. But the Times and liberals refuse to look.
3. Yeah, upgrades. 🙄
Like birth control, maternity, and abortion coverage for men and elderly women. What an upgrade.
Or do you mean the upgraded co-pays and deductibles which are doubling and tripling folks out of pocket expenses?
But I guess it is an upgrade if you didn’t have it before but get it now for free, paid for by those that had their cost double and triple. But from the people paying for it side of the fence, it’s a big time downgrade.
LikeLike
Donna
Without speaking too personal I’m not looking in from the outside, I’ve been there. Hence, I know the difficulty of accepting a loss of a child and difficulty demarcating the human life and death. Yes, we need to process loss but to stay stuck in the process mode for to long is/will lead to dysfunction among the parents and the extended family. And the best time to process is often after a death not during.
In the modern western world we have somehow thought it impossible or not natural to have a child die before the parent but that is the norm and our experience is the exception. I once lived across from a cemetery which the neighboring high rise occupants used as a park to walk their dogs etc. Walking through there one day, I came across a series of child graves from the 1950s and 60s some from the same family. Through this I realized the experience is not one has alone but has been shared throughout time and is in fact part of the human condition.
The link:
The rise and fall of great powers has long been the theme of countless books and the moral or spiritual cause is frequently cited. Other causes include environmental degradation, resource depletion, imperial overreach, war, inequality, corruption, plutocracy, or some type of combination. One can be spiritual strong yet still face collapse from one of the other factors. And one can be spiritually weak or ignorant and still prosper as a country because the other factors are looked after. If enough ducks are in a row, the country will be fine.
LikeLike
AJ
Of course the CIA was running guns; they’re always running guns. But does the Republicans want to expose the CIA for political gain at home? Other than that there was really nothing which differentiates this attack from any other embassy attack occurring during other admins.
Insurance works as mutual means to avoid risk. Everyone puts money in a pot and its given out according to who needs it at a particular time. Here the young and old pay into a fund and people are given funds according to need — depending on how its structured this may mean the old pay for maternity cost and the young pay for prostate exams and other age specific treatments.
And I can’t see how anyone can object to paying into a pot in which some of the money is given to a women to give birth. The only objectionable part of the scheme is the profit motive of the third party insurance companies. Eliminate the need for profit and cost will go down which is why a public option and/or single payer is a far better scheme.
I live in a single payer country (in fact the strictest single payer system out there), and I know full well that my tax money pays for someone to give birth which is a cost I will never incur (again). I have no problem with that for two reasons. First is the moral imperative to take care of your neighbor and second, the mutual assurance that the system will also pay for my routine physical, my dad’s skin cancer treatment, my brother’s recent cyst removal etc all treatment that the mom giving birth will probably help pay for.
LikeLike
More good thoughts as we go into yet another election year:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2014/01/nonserviam/
“…Our eyes are fixed on a different goal, and we should never be too much at home here in our exile. We will always be slaves, but to whom will we be enslaved? Power? Money? Sin? …
I will not serve them. They are not my masters. The beauty of our faith is that we may choose our ultimate master, and like Paul, I choose to be a slave to Christ Jesus, and any other master who would try to rule me can get in line. … “
LikeLike
HRW,
Another upgrade?
More money wasted on no-bid contracts. Like the website it works with, Healthcare.gov, it’s a disaster, and it’s gonna adversely effect the ability of hospitals to pay the bills. They were completely unprepared to launch this entire fiasco, and it shows.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-contractor-blamed-slow-medicare-payments-hospitals_773207.html#
“The contractor building the financial management system for Healthcare.gov is being blamed by a Houston hospital for delayed Medicare reimbursements that have caused the hospital to miss payrolls for weeks. Novitas Solutions is the federal government’s new Medicare payment processor for the south-central region of the country hired by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.) ABC-KTRK in Houston reports:
According to the CEO Jason Leday, more than 150 employees haven’t been paid in nearly a month. Leday says he’s owed nearly $3 million in payments from Medicare and can’t make payroll…”
“Novitas also runs the south-central region’s Medicare website which was launched just two days before the October 1 launch of Healthcare.gov. As THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported on December 19, that site has experienced problems reminiscent of Healthcare.gov’s troubles, and the site will not be fully operational until well into 2014.
Novitas’s direct connection to Healthcare.gov stems from an emergency, no-bid contract for “financial management services” awarded in August and first reported by THE WEEKLY STANDARD in September. The services required included accounting, tracking of accounts receivable and accounts payable, documenting funds collected by CMS, and data validation, among other things. CMS justified the no-bid award because the “prospect of a delay in implementing the Marketplace by the operational date of January 1, 2014, even for a few days, would result in severe consequences, financial and other” and that the services required were “beyond what was initially anticipated and beyond CMS’ currently available resources.”
Nothin’ like govt efficiency eh?
But as usual, they’ll just throw more money away rather than admit their errors, which are legion.
LikeLike
Your tale reminded me of Haliburtion, KBR and other no-bid contracts offered during the Iraqi war. Subcontracting is not a cheaper way for gov’t to get something done and has been part of the privatization ideology that has reeked havoc with gov’t services. Since the type of work provided by most contractor are on-going and long term they should be done in house. It would be far more efficient and cheaper then going with third party contractors. Hmm an other reason to go to single payer …..
LikeLike
hwesseli, I am sorry that you do know the sorrow of losing a child from the inside. There are many ways to suffer that loss, from the two women who delivered a stillborn, the woman who was induced to give birth to a child with no brain stem and only lasted a short amount of time to my grandmother who lost her first child at age 54 (my aunt was 54 when she died).
Each person has to accept that loss as they are capable. My grandmother asked each of her grandchildren if we knew where to buy pot to ease my aunt’s suffering.
LikeLike
You’re right, it was #4; phone was too smart for me . . .
It seems to me if there are no brain waves–and there haven’t been in any for several weeks–you need to let the child go. I know it was a shock to send her in for something routine and then not have her come out, but what is gained here?
(Other than the assaugement of parental guilt–if only I hadn’t signed that form, surely she didn’t need her tonsils out?)
My mother teed off on the first tee–hit her usual nice line drive at the Rolling Hills Country Club– then dropped the club complaining of the worst headache she’d ever had.
Those were her last words. She was brain dead by the time she got to the hospital in an ambulance called immediately. A 64 year-old golfer who had played tennis the day before and whose parents had died at 92 and 103. We kept her on life support for two days–for me and my aunt to get there and see her while the hospital rounded up the seven organ recipients, just in time for Christmas.
I walked in to her room straight from the plane from Hawai’i. I could see the mechanical way her chest was being inflated and deflated. Her hands were warm, her eyes shut.
But the top of her head was cold–that was the eeriest thing.
I didn’t have to stand there long to know she was gone. The body was being kept alive but the person–my mother– was no longer there.
My father couldn’t bear it. I signed the paperwork turning off life support.
It was the saddest thing I ever did, but not the hardest. She was gone.
LikeLike
HRW, the need for profit will be a drop in the bucket compared to government waste.
LikeLike
So sorry, Michelle, A friend had to do that for his brother. Even though he was the youngest sibling and not the official next of kin, it had to be him because he was the one the brother had told of his desire not to kept on life support.
LikeLike
Hard to make the call on #4 without all the facts and being ‘in’ the situation.
Great call, kBells. The need for profit and govt waste both affect cost, but I’d prefer the former. And right now we have them both combined.
LikeLike
solar/kbells — you’re correct,right now you have both, essentially because both American political parties somehow bought the idea that subcontracting is always better and private enterprise is always better. However, comparing health care costs, the American private insurance model is far more expensive than any other country If other countries and their gov’ts can run an efficient health care system, I’m sure America can too..
And within the US, gov’t run medicare has far lower administrative costs than private insurance companies. With the private model, you have the profit motive plus higher administrative costs (including marketing).
kim — for me — losing a child in their youth is far worse than a stillbirth/miscarriage or an adult child. To see the potential of a child and then lose it before it can be realized is something that can’t be replicated. (this is not to minimized other tragedies I just don’t think its comparable) However, Michelle is right — there’s nothing to be gained from extending the life either to process or to assuage guilt. By taking too long we sometimes stall the normal speed we should take and this has ill effects.
LikeLike
Here’s how you build energy independence — not drill baby drill but innovation
http://iacknowledge.net/ford-to-unveil-solar-hybrid-concept-car/
maybe Carter had the right idea ….
LikeLike