patrick.net

APOCALYPSEFUCK_is_ADORABLE says

If CNN cared about journalism, they’d hire Rosie O’Donnell to show up at White House briefings naked, smeared in transmission fluid to bark these questions two inches from the nose of Melissa McCarthy imitator Sean Spicer.

AF, America and CNN are in crying need of your leadership. With you at the helm, CNN would soar to #1 network. Meanwhile, we have to make do with old movies:

www.youtube.com/embed/Fj5k6toS7i8

Dan8267 says

He no longer exists.

Even early Christians disagreed whether Jesus lived as an actual person, and Paul seems to have believed he didn't, and some of the epistles officially attributed to Paul do not appear to have been written by Paul. There is no proof other than some of the other Gospels that contradicted Paul. Christianity as received results from Constantine imposing the religion upon Rome, and requiring therefore a uniform doctrine. Implying Jesus walked as a person is therefore endorsing a religious view with neither scientific basis nor theological unanimity.

YesYNot says

just any guy says

Let me also add that the uninsured tend to use the ER because they have to be admitted. The ER, on average, costs 5x that of a normal doctor visit.

That was a big driver that was expected to lost costs when the aca lowered the number of uninsured. Common sense tells you that the benefit is long term, while the cost is front loaded. That's too much nuance for a national debate though.

@YesYNot, if Democrats got you to believe that, then they fooled you with a lie. Romneycare was enacted years before Obamneycare, and the numbers from Romneycare disproved the Democrats' claims on that point among others. Emergency hospitizations and spending (AKA revenue to the patronage networks that wrote the legislation) went up, not down. At the national level, when Obamneycare hit with full force in 2014, spending (patronage revenue) increased while life expectancy flatlined. The following year, spending/revenue increased again, while life expectancy fell. It isn't about nuance, it's about lies. Calling lies "nuance" is the sort of organizationspeak that can grease the wheels in some circuits, but it doesn't change what they are.

I'm replying here because I'm not interested in the ad hominem thunderdome stuff, and I'm making an effort to adjust SIWOTI management by addressing specific comments individually rather than the people who wrote them.

curious2 says

the numbers from Romneycare disproved the Democrats' claims on that point among others.

I'm open to real proof on this topic, but your post didn't discuss the time issue. Frankly, I don't have the time or inclination to research it myself. Here's what I would consider a nuanced discussion:

1) When discussing the total US yearly money spent on health care after passage of the ACA, I'd like to see it plotted on a curve that showed the trajectory of yearly expenses before the ACA. It was growing unsustainably beforehand, so the real interesting question is how that was changed.
2) The ACA extended both preventive care and acute care to people who didn't get it previously. The preventive care should add cost in the first X number of years. After a long enough time, one would expect that the preventive care should reduce the number of emergency visits. How many years should this take? I haven't seen any analysis of it.
3) There should also be an increase in costs due to people with newfound insurance getting treated for things that they had been letting go (call it deferred maintenance). This should go down over time. How long should that take?
4) There are a lot of excess charge expenses due to people not understanding that they should avoid the emergency room. If it was favorable to avoid this, it could be addressed through education. On the other hand, these excessive charges are just the emergency rooms spreading the costs of keeping the doors open from the true emergencies to the people who should get treated elsewhere (who shouldn't go to the ER from a microeconomics perspective). So, if people did learn to avoid the ER unless it is absolutely necessary, then the prices for true emergencies would probably go up as ERs try to stay afloat.

These are not things that I've been told to think. It's just what I can think of offhand while thinking about this topic. I've not seen any evidence in your post or elsewhere that really gets to the bottom of these questions.

Where you and I may agree on more is that a lot of tests probably do more bad than good. Many tests tend to show problems that end up causing unnecessary procedures, when these problems would have been fine if left untreated. More people having too many procedures is not a good thing. That's a problem that ideally would be addressed soon, but isn't central to the issue of who pays what and how for health care, IMO.

YesYNot says

Frankly, I don't have the time or inclination to research it myself... I'd like to see it plotted on a curve...

The federal actuaries at CMS.gov published a 10-year projection table showing that Obamneycare would increase total national expenditure faster and higher than prior law. I've linked it at least twice on PatNet. It was a table though, not a curve, and since you seem immune to data, I don't feel any inclination to plot the numbers on a curve for you. As for the hospitalization numbers in Massachusetts, those were widely published at the time and subsequently, they're easy to find.

Predictably, you don't even bother asking the right question: why do hospitals charge so much more for the same services; the answer is because they can, due to lobbying and influencing government at all levels. There is no reason for stitches at an American hospital to cost more than anywhere else in the world: it's the same thread, the same technique.

YesYNot says

These are not things that I've been told to think. It's just what I can think of offhand while thinking about this topic.

Of course. That is essential to how the conditioning and hypnosis game works, though I do suspect some petrodollar influence along with your Muslim grad student(s). As with Podesta's brother being a highly paid agent of a foreign power, it is essential that you maintain the illusion of having thought of your opinions on your own.

Yes, excessive diagnostic testing leads to unnecessary procedures. So-called "preventive care" does not save money, and most of it doesn't even extend life expectancy (except a narrow subset of mammograms, age 50-70 IIRC). The rest of it is about maximizing revenue, and it operates as designed. Expecting it to reduce costs in the long run is like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in Viet Nam: it's an oncoming train.

curious2 says

It was a table though, not a curve, and since you seem immune to data

curious2 says

Predictably, you don't even bother asking the right question:

curious2 says

Of course. That is essential to how the conditioning and hypnosis game works,... it is essential that you maintain the illusion of having thought of your opinions on your own.

Gee. That was fun. We should do that again sometime.

YesYNot says

Gee. That was fun. We should do that again sometime.

You're right, I drifted from the comment to perceived patterns about the person. I continue to have difficulty with SIWOTI, and must continue working on that. I've made some progress but have also stumbled. I am sorry about that.

YesYNot says

@marcus,

I suggest that when curious goes after you, just point out his ad hom focus, and do not respond. Don't respond with overt insults. Curious definitely has a hard on for you. One of his more creative insults of me was to say that 'you're not as dumb as marcus'. I have no doubt he has a bookmark folder for you with all of the posts he thinks he can use to show us how dumb you are.

@YesYNot, I decided to reply to your vulgar and false comment here rather than continue to detract from the terrorism thread. I am uninterested in marcus, as is almost everyone else apparently. He insists that I hate him, but that's not even true. He trolls people all the time, trying to make them hate him, and he becomes emotionally overwrought when they simply prove him wrong using evidence and reason.

Also, you are either really bad at paraphrasing and search engines, or you are lying yet again. Here is the comment you distorted above. I did not call either of you dumb, but you do both lack integrity.

Lastly, I replied to your parachute question in a different thread. I will paste that reply here too, because you should consider more carefully what you are inviting upon yourself and others when you support spreading Islam.

sagacious1 says

Is Islam incompatible with other forms of government?

Ultimately, you cannot long combine Islam and democracy without sliding into Sharia, which crushes all other religions and western notions of liberty. In most countries that have Muslim majorities, most Muslims demand Sharia. Read about Asia Bibi on death row in Pakistan, and the assassination of Governor Taseer, and the incarceration of the former governor of Jakarta, Basuki Purnama (Ahok), now in prison sentenced for blasphemy, and see some of the consequences. As Islam metastasizes through a society, it takes over and kills everything else: most countries that have more than 20% Muslims, have more than 90% Muslims. As Nassim Taleb wrote, the west is "committing suicide" by importing Islam.

To respond to YesYNot's parachuting question, the invade&import westerners are throwing their neighbors' kids out of otherwise safe planes, and feeling good about it, because parachutes usually work. The problem with using past statistics regarding terror is they do not guarantee future results. One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day. An egomaniacal person, or a group of believers in a megalomaniacal doctrine, can tend to explode when facts hurt their feelings. Islam maximizes the resulting carnage. More than 20 Muslim countries have already agreed a world plan against blasphemy, and the Islamic State has published online kill lists including Americans living in America. It reminds me of a poem:

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

Atheists are disbelievers, blasphemers, and now by definition terrorists according to Saudi law. I hope they won't find you, @YesYNot, but they do have a plan. I suggest you should speak out while you still can, and not throw kids out of planes without their consent, even if you enjoy parachuting in your spare time. There is nothing virtuous about spreading Islam. If MSM photos of hapless Muslims (notice they don't show hapless Hindus or Buddhists) require you to do something for Muslims, send them some Richard Dawkins books (which they will probably burn).

I decided to move the comment below from a terrorism thread where it didn't belong:

FP says

marcus says

It's not addressing or even reflecting an attempt to comprehend anything

Here you are wrong, marcus. George is trying hard but damn *** brain...

Actually, when you collapse into calling me names because you cannot respond with evidence and reason, you have conceded that you are wrong and lost the argument.

FP says

George is typing again. Someday should make a documentary about him.

@FP, if you want to call me a monkey, at least you could refrain from littering other threads with your ad hominem irrelevance. Use this reply thread.

I look forward to the documentary, btw. Patient person tries to educate a snarky troll who keeps calling him a monkey. If you're anything like marcus, you'll start exploding when you see that you can't make me hate you. I persist in giving you additional chances to redeem yourself. Someday, you might get it right.

marcus says

You might refrain from lying so much, or from being such a pathetic and hateful little prick.

***

But you're a low integrity dirtbag....

@marcus, rather than encourage you to hijack yet another thread with your egomania, I'm replying in this reply thread. You seem to be trying yet again to make me hate you, and it doesn't work. I remain patient with you, even though your behavior does raise real concerns if you have any exposure to children. Especially when proven obviously wrong, you explode emotionally into the most abusive and baseless attacks and profanity that you can hurl. You struggle even with ordinal numbers, and lack the reasoning ability that teaching math would require. If you did actually care about integrity, you would link to objective evidence and then reason based on that, rather than obsessing and exploding over your own subjective feelings of butthurt.

Here are at least 10 of the many different Users whom you have called "dimbulbs":

marcus says

Dimbulb....

marcus says

dimbulb....

marcus says

this dimbulb....

marcus says

Another dimbulb....

marcus says

dimbulbs....

marcus says

dimbulb....

marcus says

dimbulb.

marcus says

Fucking dimbulb.

marcus says

sociopath...dimbulb.

marcus says

you dimbulb liars.

marcus says

dimbulb

marcus says

dimbulb.

marcus says

FUCK YOU DIMBULB !!

marcus says

you pathetic dimbulb.

I could add more, but that would be a waste of time.

curious2 says

Here are at least 10 of the many different Users whom you have called "dimbulbs":

It's like O'Reilly calling everyone pinheads. Truly, the left and the right are the same.

@FP, you fail even at ignoring me, in addition to failing at logic. What motivates your snarky trolling, anyway? What do you gain from it? Is it like when you hire Muslims so their careers depend on you and then you can make fun of their religion? Do you get off on bullying people and making fun of them? I'm really curious, I don't see what you gain by trolling people and saying obviously illogical things. It looks like a complete waste of time, yet you persist.

FP says

non-monkey

curious2 says

FP says

But by your logic....

Patrick has never suggested killing random people.

anonymous says

@zzyzzx - Thanks for the replies per Baltimore. Forgot about Fort McHenry - probably could deal with one day or so in the ultra touristy harbor but I had a nice time in Salisbury on a work assignment some time back. The crab cakes etc. were really great so I could definitely get into that again.

If you are in Salisbury, the Zoo there is nice and does not charge admission. If in Baltimore Guinness is building a brewery that will be complete with tours.
http://www.cntraveler.com/story/guinness-brewery-opening-in-baltimore-county

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-guiness-county-20170131-story.html
What's not clear is whether visitors will want to go to an industrial area in Baltimore to taste an Irish brand, said Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association. But, he added, Baltimore is easier to get to than Dublin.

"They're clearly betting that they think they can make this succeed," he said.

"Why sarcasm is such a problem in artificial intelligence"

curious2 says

"Why sarcasm is such a problem in artificial intelligence"

The solution is simple. For this and all other hard A.I. problems, simply represent the problem as a captcha. Then the spammers will figure out how to solve the problem. Trace back their IPs to their servers and steal their code and make it public domain. Science advances.

Hmmm, the one down side is that, based on PatNet users, it might be impossible for the general public to detect sarcasm.

Thank you! Great info! I love Portugal. And it's still an option for me. Great surfing too!

Thank you Bay area observer. I'm getting tired of Bay Area.

Are you thinking Portugal too?

Thank you. Yes please pass it along.

anonymous says

Can you receive social security and live OCONUS.

This should be disallowed or subject to additional taxes, btw. One of Long's main pillars for his social security program was that retirees would spend the money locally.

anonymous says

will be taking a hiatus from here for awhile

Yes, there is a god.

WookieMan says

@curious2, I've actually wanted to ask this for a while and I'm sure it may have been asked of you already. Why do you make entire paragraphs and like in the case above, the entire comment a link? I'm not sure I've ever really seen someone do it and just wondering if you have a reason for doing it.

Note: This is why I hate text/written words. I'm not trying to be an ass here if it seems like it. No pun intended, but I'm genuinely curious.

@WookieMan, if you want to ask questions that are off topic, or make comments that are off topic, I encourage you to use this reply thread.

Nobody else has asked me that question. I don't even really understand the purpose of the question.

I link to enable readers to click or tap on the excerpt read the whole story. When I make a whole paragraph or comment a link, the purpose is to show clearly that the words come from an external source, and to encourage reading the whole story.

If you hate written words, then some people might wonder why you spend time in a forum that consists mostly of text, which you hate. Patrick is always trying to grow the site, so if you can bring some other way of communicating online that might draw people who hate words, go ahead. One caveat: I like written words, and I dislike videos that launch by themselves, so if you post random videos auto-playing, I might have to ignore you in order to keep my screen stable.

Rew says

the Russian government isn't looking to form.... Putin seeks....

@Rew, you might really like PBS Frontline's latest report on that topic, but contrast it with Oliver Stone's interviews if you have time.

Rew says

You think suddenly the Navy forgot how to steer the boats?

Since you have asked me a direct question, here is what I think:

"USS FITZGERALD

The collision between Fitzgerald and Crystal was avoidable and resulted from an accumulation of smaller errors over time, ultimately resulting in a lack of adherence to sound navigational practices. Specifically, Fitzgerald's watch teams disregarded established norms of basic contact management and, more importantly, leadership failed to adhere to well-established protocols put in place to prevent collisions. In addition, the ship's triad was absent during an evolution where their experience, guidance and example would have greatly benefited the ship.

USS JOHN S. MCCAIN

The collision between John S. McCain and Alnic MC was also avoidable and resulted primarily from complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance. A major contributing factor to the collision was sub-standard level of knowledge regarding the operation of the ship control console. In particular, McCain's commanding officer disregarded recommendations from his executive officer, navigator and senior watch officer to set sea and anchor watch teams in a timely fashion to ensure the safe and effective operation of the ship. With regard to procedures, no one on the Bridge watch team, to include the commanding officer and executive officer, were properly trained on how to correctly operate the ship control console during a steering casualty."

In addition, I think it would be prudent to avoid asking direct questions when you might not like the answers.

anon_d327c says

I link to enable readers to click or tap on the excerpt read the whole story. When I make a whole paragraph or comment a link, the purpose is to show clearly that the words come from an external source, and to encourage reading the whole story.

I had no intention of coming across as a jerk. So please don't take it that way. Linking all the text in a paragraph doesn't accomplish that though in my opinion. If I'm using words from an article in my post or comment I'll just do a quote from another user and then copy and paste the content I'm copying from another site, of course deleting the original quote material, and placing the content in between the

tags. That way the content has the typical quote (indented) format that you'd see on most sites. And then just link the source at the beginning or end.

Again, for me this was just a stylistic question. Not saying you're doing it wrong by any means. Your explanation make sense, I'll just be honest that I wouldn't do it that way, but now that you've explained it, I will understand your posts better. Thanks.

Ha! LOL.

Forgot about that.

HEYYOU says

Confirming one's bias is a virtue.
DIE! Democrats & Republicans! DIE NOW!

You really do need a dog. You are losing it. At 69 you will almost certainly outlive even a puppy. Happy Birthday.

I don't know, lol! I don't use Windows myself so it's hard to even test on it.

Hi @anonymous I did remove that thread. Insulting the site is insulting me, therefore out of bounds.

If you have constructive comments, I'd love to see them, but simply hating on the site is not doing anyone any good.

Maybe you could try to reach people and figure out why they feel the way they do. Joe Simitian did this brilliantly in his interviews with people who voted for Obama and then for Trump. The answer was that they really didn't want Hillary, especially after she knifed Bernie, and all other considerations were secondary. Simitian was kind of surprised, but it seems pretty obvious to me now.

Feux Follets says

If debt is slavery, we are all slaves given the national and ever expanding debt

Yes, we are all slaves to the national debt.

Even if you won't borrow money yourself, they borrow it in your name and tax you to pay the interest.

France defaulted multiple times in the 18th and 19th Century and contested the top 3 spots until WW1, and still is a G8 country today.

It'll hurt the Chinese pretty bad though, all those Treasuries they hold.

Feux Follets says

Steve Jobs was a Republican

Actually, all of his political donations were to Democrats, and Apple employees tend to favor Democrats by a huge margin.

It's all about forcing people to labor for the benefit of the top 0.001%.

The British were having a hard time getting East African pastoralists to be obedient servants in the 1800's until they imposed a tax on all of them, payable in British silver coins only. Where were cow herders going to get British silver coins? Only by working for their British masters.

We basically have the same thing today. Everyone needs Federal Reserve Notes to pay taxes of various kinds. The only source of these Notes is the Fed. Therefore, everyone indirectly works for the Fed, which is a private corporation, not the government.

marcus says

online ugliness promoted by Russian trolls some of which possibly occur as comments here on Patrick.net by people (I ignore) posing as programmers.

Here is a partial list of examples of online ugliness promoted on PatNet by a person posing as a math teacher. Is that a Russian troll?

joshuatrio says

7-2, and Yahoo called it a "narrow" ruling"... LOL. Great agenda MSM.

The term "narrow" applies to the opinion itself, not the vote count:

"The case seemed to set up a direct clash between Phillips's religious and free-speech rights, and the enforcement of Colorado's law. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court majority on Monday, threaded the needle far more narrowly. Kennedy said it is "unexceptional" that Colorado law "can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions that are offered to other members of the public," but at the same time, "the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion."

In this case, Kennedy concluded, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's consideration of Phillips's case was "compromised" by the comments of one of seven commissioners at a public hearing — comments that Kennedy said disparaged Phillips's faith as "despicable," and comparable to comments made by those who sought to justify slavery on religious grounds. Moreover, the state law at the time afforded storekeepers some latitude to decline creating specific messages they considered offensive, and the Colorado commission had previously allowed three different bakers to refuse to put an anti-gay message on a cake."

Huh, that should never happen.

It does set a new password when you get that link set and display a message like this:

Your password is ${ password } and you are now logged in

Did you use the new password?

Which thread do you mean? You should be able to edit the title of any thread you created.

Patrick says

My politics have already been hijacked by reality. I used to be a leftist true believer who just could not understand how the right was so easily manipulated. Then I started understanding the fundamental self-interest and fears which drive the surface rationalizations on both sides

#MeToo. I remember even signaling virtue by approving of Red Ken's Muslim schools in London, mainly because Margaret Thatcher opposed them. I see now she was right about them.

Many years ago, there was a saying that the further a person is from events, the more likely he is to believe the press coverage; conversely, the nearer to events, the more likely he is to see the errors in the press coverage. I tried to find the exact quotation, but it is buried now under a haystack of recent articles about fake news. BTW, Scott Adams had a really good comment on fake news, balancing outright falsehoods that fool small audiences vs mainstream presentations that are cherry-picked and spun to mislead mass audiences.

In the USA, major parties function similarly to TV networks, aggregating audiences and selling them to corporate sponsors. If you watch the evening "news," you can see a series of misleading stories promoted by public relations firms, interspersed with advertisements for products that would probably make you worse off.

An interesting documentary on the global arms industry included an interview with an arms dealer who said politicians are mostly mid-level sales executives for arms manufacturers. During the Obama administration, a commerce department official proclaimed himself proud that America had 60% of the global arms export market.

Personally, I am either blessed or cursed with a sharp memory. I remember candidate Obama campaigning against "Hillary's Plan," now called Obamacare. I remember Democrats voting against that plan, and voting for him instead. Then, I remember seeing Democrats spin 180 degrees to embrace "Hillary's Plan," now called Obamacare, or Obamneycare, since even President Obama admitted it was the same thing as Romneycare. The Romneycare data disproved all the Democrats' promises about what Obamacare would do: Democrats promised insurance premiums would go down due to fewer emergency hospitalizations, but Romneycare showed both premiums and emergency hospitalizations went up. (Medicare data show most of Medicare's emergency hospitalizations result from Rx drugs, and a PatNet user recounted his own experience going to a hospital emergency room due to a prescribed SSRI.) As I saw Democrats spin 180 degrees, saying the opposite of what they had said just a year before, I saw partisan identity persuaded people much more than obective reality, no matter how thoroughly proved.

Scott Adams wrote about that too, predicting President Trump would change people's perceptions of reality itself. He wrote that people are not evolved to perceive objective reality; people are evolved to believe whatever illusions enable them to survive and reproduce, and those tend to involve agreeing with the tribe.

After seeing through the Democrats' suddenly changed position on health care, I started to see other problems too, e.g. Democrats' support for Islam. Hillary Clinton started the "tradition" of White House iftar dinners, around the same time the Clinton administration bombed America's Serbian allies on behalf of KSA and other Petrodollar states. Russians tried to point out that the Serbians had been allies of the USA during WWII, while the Bozniaks had joined the Nazi SS, but Petrodollars talk louder than history. The Serbs got bombed and prosecuted as war criminals, Islam retained its European territory, and the Clintons and their foundation received tens of million$ of Petrodollars from KSA. Spreading Islam is 180 degrees opposite to everything "liberal" Democrats claim to believe in, and yet it is the policy of the Democratic party.

But now even President Trump, possibly the first President to speak candidly about Islam since John Quincy Adams, celebrated an iftar dinner.

In 1968, at the height of the illegal war in Viet Nam, Gore Vidal said there was no difference between the two major parties because they both get their money from the same sources. At this point, Democrats are more likely to identify as "liberal", and Republicans are more likely to identify as "conservative", but both parties seem neither liberal nor conservative. Two Presidents in a row have doubled the national debt, and the current incumbent seems likely to do the same if he can. Republicans increased federal power with the "Patriot Act", and Democrats went even further with Obamacare. Both parties agree on what matters most to them: consolidate their own power, including especially in the form of revenue/spending.

@marcus, I wondered whether even to reply to your comment below, but I will reply here rather than push your dishonest thread that you admit was another example of you trolling:

marcus says

Actually, I have to admit that curius2 is right about one thing, that it was a troll. I thought I would try your technique (what you constantly with the word liberals) with Trump supporters. If I understand your response, is it to defend that the protesters aren't neo nazis ?

But yeah the connection to Trump supporters was a total troll. I don't remember the last time I posted a total troll post, it was probably years ago.. Hell, even my regular comments aren't that frequent anymore.

curious2 says

show an emotional obsession with attention/ignorance

I see you can't miss a chance after all these years to spew your hate and inability to forgive me for the couple times I politely corrected intellectual mistakes you made. Sad. But thank you for at least not constantly stalking me like you used to. At least you've learned to control those impulses a little.

I would really appreciate seeing even one example where you "politely corrected intellectual mistakes" that I supposedly made. To the contrary, your comments on PatNet including in this very thread show that you have repeatedly exploded emotionally with baseless insults, profanity, and lies, and demonstrated a failure to comprehend math and logic for example the rules governing ordinal numbers and significant figures. Nobody would bother stalking you, and I have not, but you have repeated that lie for years, even as you used a separate browser to follow my comments while pretending to ignore me. If you can find an example of what you claim, please re-post it.

curious2 says

people are not evolved to perceive objective reality; people are evolved to believe whatever illusions enable them to survive and reproduce, and those tend to involve agreeing with the tribe.

Great quote. Had not seen that one before, but it gets to the center of politics.

curious2 says

In the USA, major parties function similarly to TV networks, aggregating audiences and selling them to corporate sponsors. If you watch the evening "news," you can see a series of misleading stories promoted by public relations firms, interspersed with advertisements for products that would probably make you worse off.

Another great insight. To a large degree, public opinion is created by PR firms, which themselves are very careful to hide in the background. Since there is so little independent journalism these days, it's pretty easy for them to hide.

And it's not just the evening news. Sadly, the NY Times, WaPo, and NPR are also full of stories that our owners want made into "truth", like the deliberately fabricated Russia story. And there is almost complete silence on stories that our owners don't want us to see, like Saudi and Qatari sponsorship of worldwide Islamic terrorism.