We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 6.30 am Eastern (and perhaps sometimes earlier!). Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanently or just once in awhile. With the Auto Publish feature you can set it and forget it. Sometimes the diarist du jour shows up much later: that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Volunteer in the comment threads.
Click on the MOT - Morning Open Thread ♥ if you'd like us to show up in your stream.
I've been working on a video for some time. Unfortunately it still needs a bit of work, and I have recently been reminded of the problems with video. So instead of sharing a video this week, I thought I'd share a few interesting thoughts with you this week.
Please stick with me for a minute or two. You can get back to your video experience in a moment.
I like to make videos, partly because I know people watch video more carefully than what they read. Ironically though, I am a numbers guy. I'm a big believer in the power of numbers to tell you what's really going on. Things have gone so terribly wrong because so many of us are not numbers guys.
In the US, we average about 600,000 deaths from heart disease a year. A massive amount of these could be prevented with a good diet. In fact, a good diet is far better prevention then medication. It's also far less expensive.
We also average about 40,000 deaths by suicide a year. There was a noticable spike in the number of suicides almost all over the world in the last decade as the economy tanked. Some people seemed to think its because people who were out of work became depressed, which sounds reasonable on the face of it. But most of the professionals concluded after several studies that it's more because suicide prevention programs all over the world were canceled, as well as programs for the mentally ill in general.
In the last decade, 5000 people have been killed by police. I don't believe that all these shootings were wrong, or mistakes. But that is a huge increase. Back in the 70s, it was a rare thing for a SWAT team to be called. Now we have 40,000 "no knock" raids a year. Crime has decreased, but those numbers keep rising. This might have something to do with the fact that the police frequently make a profit from these proceedings.
Over the last 20 years, the United States averaged 51 deaths a year from lightning strikes. I've heard some people imply that there is some degree of fault in this, but usually it really isn't anyone's fault. Even if you know a storm is coming, your job or circumstance may require you to be outside. Sometimes there really isn't much warning.
A report in 2011 calculated that an average of 17 Americans die from terrorist attacks a year.
So I would now like to ask you this question.
When a storm approaches, do you tremble in fear? Do you demand that billions be spent on our military to make the nation electric proof? Do you feel that an armed invaion of the heavens must be launched immediately?
No?
Then being frightened of Islamic terrorism is utterly ridiculous. Islamic terrorism does not rank even in the top ten of problems afflicting our country, though I would say the amount we spend on our military nearly tops the list.
The events in France of this week have lead some to think the opposite. We speak gravely of the deaths at the newspaper. I can already tell that the excuse for the next round of bombings is being made.
As we speak, some people I know are slowly dying, and we could help them by spending a few dollars. Spending in that area would almost certainly produce positive results, Instead we choose to spend billions bombing places like Pakistan. Killing people there won't much of anything really. The truth is that its those bombings there which cause some deaths here.
Even though this is supposedly a liberal oasis, I get the sense that most of the community here buys into the prevailling propoganda a lot more then I like. The way we talk about these incidents suggests that even the people on DailyKos will have very little to say the next time we bomb another country that has brown people in it. Its so important to choose the right skin color these days.
I will have a problem with it, so I feel a need to point out just how ridiculous our response to these things is.
I'm now going to say something utterly unamerican. Steel yourselves.
When you are aware that a religious person takes grave offense at the image of his prophet being defaced, and so you print that image and deface it just so you can make him angry, this makes you part of the problem.. We honor free speech in this country so much, that we have gone mad.
I already know that some people here will say that its okay, because they really dislike these people. They might dislike them because they are religious, and they feel religion is the source of all evil. They might dislike them because they presume all people who worship Islam are violent, which seems common. My response to both of these views is simple.
I don't care about any of that. Even if those views were true, I still wouldn't care.
A person who deliberately instigates violence for no reason is not heroic. I find them to be ugly people. Even if they attack someone I dislike, it's still wrong. If you think some trait of those who worship Islam makes this sort of thing okay, then you have much in common with the people throwing bombs. I don't throw bombs, I just try to solve problems.
When a terrorist showed up to kill those people at the newspaper, it was tragic. It was even more tragic because several more people were killed who were merely minding their own business. How sad for them, that they worked near Charlie Hebdo.
I will now close on a postive note.
If you are an American, you are probably afraid of terrorists. Don't be. No matter how many times they repeatedly show the same footage of the same bombing, you have no reason to be afraid. You are more likely to die by tripping over your lawn furniture, then to be killed by a terrorist. If you really want to increase your life expectancy, stop eating red meat.
So have a nice day. Hide inside at the first sign of a passing storm if you must, but don't worry about terrorists.
That would be silly.