McConnell’s Latest Health Care Bill Is Even Worse, Gutting Coverage and Raising Costs for Tens of Millions

Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet | Report

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41273-mcconnell-s-latest-health-care-bill-is-even-worse-gutting-coverage-and-raising-costs-for-tens-of-millions

The latest Trumpcare bill released by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a political dealmaker’s version of putting lipstick on a pig — taking a colossally destructive bill hurting tens of millions and dressing it up so it can win enough votes to pass.

A side-by-side comparison of the text reveals that the GOP hasn’t budged an inch in its intention to cut federal subsidies of state-run Medicaid by one-third, which will severely hit the poor, single mothers with children and seniors in nursing homes.

For those buying private insurance, in addition to ending federal Obamacare subsidies, by incorporating more deregulation from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, anyone who is not youthful and naturally healthy will see premiums rise while what is covered in those plans will shrink. That translates into a double hit, on employers buying coverage for employees and on families and individuals facing higher out-of-pocket costs in emergencies.

McConnell’s new bill still ends Obamacare’s provisions that stopped insurers from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions, which is almost everybody over age 50. It reinstitutes lifetime coverage caps for insurers, which will leave people exposed to medical bankruptcy. And it eliminates Obamacare’s requirement that commercial insurance policies cover essential benefits, like maternity care.

“I knew this bill was unfixable. What I didn’t count on was that it would get worse,” tweeted Andy Slavitt, who ran Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act for President Obama. “There is an even bigger endorsement of higher deductibles with new catastrophic plan provision.”

Digging deeper into McConnell’s bill, one finds apparent giveaways to try to wrest votes from Republicans who are on the fence for completely different reasons. On the furthest right, the inclusion of Cruz’s amendment will create two risk pools — one for regular policyholders and another for the very sick. People who want wide protection against chronic, catastrophic and life-threatening illnesses will be priced out of the market under the far right’s fictitious banner of giving people more “freedom.”

Also pandering to the tax-cutting and make-the-rich-even-richer wing of the party is the fact that McConnell’s latest bill preserves 80 percent of the taxes that earlier versions were going to repeal. That’s being portrayed in some mainstream media accounts as an improvement and something less than an outright giveaway, which is ludicrous. The hundreds of billions that will be taken away from Medicaid will offset these taxes.

The bill also seeks to win the support of senators from Ohio and West Virginia by putting in more money for opioid addiction treatment, and boosting state subsidies for Florida, Louisiana and other red states. It also creates a $100 billion tax break for people who open health care savings accounts, enlarging the role for those fee-skimming middlemen with an option that only people with high enough incomes can afford to establish and use. And the McConnell bill also creates another industry giveaway, a $70 billion account to shore up insurers against the economic turbulence the rest of this bill will create.

The national trade association for insurance companies is not impressed by any of this, realizing that the GOP’s “fixes” are going to turn them into the most hated industry in America — as if multitudes from coast to coast hadn’t already lost their patience with rising premiums, co-pays and deductibles before 2016’s “repeal and replace” charade. Their lobby group, AHIP, or America’s Health Insurance Plans, railed against Cruz’s proposals in lobbyist-speak earlier this week, in a press release with the sub-heading, “Policies that increase uncertainty or threaten instability should be avoided.”

AHIP concluded, “The individual market faces well-documented challenges to stability, including higher premiums, lower-than-expected enrollment, fewer plan choices, and risk pool problems in certain states and markets. Policy solutions exist to create more stability in the market by reducing premiums and attracting enrollment of younger and healthier individuals. In this context, it is important that policymakers avoid policies that threaten to further increase uncertainty or threaten stability. Such policies include opening up non-compliant plans to new enrollees, bifurcating the risk pool, or allowing plans covered by different rules to compete in the same market.”

This isn’t Bernie Sanders; this is the insurance lobby. As for Sanders, he posted a video on his Twitter page saying this GOP-created frenzy is making the strongest possible case for a national singer-payer, Medicare-for-all system. “The UK can do it, Canada can do it, France can do it, Scandinavia can do it,” he said.

Meanwhile, other Washington-based health consumer lobbyists said the time has come to trash the GOP and start bipartisan talks about creating a system that meets people’s needs. How that will happen, when the GOP wrote this bill in secret and ducked meetings with their constituents is anybody’s guess. But that is the line being offered on Thursday.

“Today’s release of the updated Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) confirms what we already knew: this broken bill can’t be fixed,” said Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center. “This tweaked BCRA still ends Medicaid as we know it, and it still yanks health coverage out from under millions of Americans, including older adults, people with disabilities and those with pre-existing conditions.”

“Most Americans oppose the BCRA’s untenable cuts to Medicaid and its disregard for the families who need guaranteed, affordable health coverage,” Baker continued. “In drafting the BCRA, Senate leaders have avoided public debate, hearings and even their own constituents… The American people have asked for, and deserve, an open, bipartisan approach to making health care more affordable for everyone.”

What comes next in this process? The Congressional Budget Office will score the bill, meaning it will say how many people will be hurt by the cuts in government subsidies and coverage cuts, and how many will benefit from tax cuts and other giveaways. Then McConnell will try to bring the bill to the floor, where if necessary, he will introduce more vote-getting amendments that will not be reviewed by the CBO.

Tyler Higbee pleads guilty to felony assault, avoids jail time

By DEBORAH HIGHLAND

http://www.bgdailynews.com/news/nfler-tyler-higbee-pleads-guilty-to-felony-assault-avoids-jail/article_90315511-3cac-571a-a6e3-c45f1f2ce81d.html

Former Western Kentucky University football standout and current Los Angeles Rams tight end Tyler Higbee pleaded guilty in Warren Circuit Court Friday to assault under extreme emotional disturbance.

Higbee said little during the hearing beyond “yes sir” to questions asked by Warren Circuit Court Judge Steve Wilson.

Bowling Green Police arrested Higbee, 24, in 2016 on charges of second-degree assault, second-degree fleeing or evading police and alcohol intoxication in a public place following an April 10 incident in which he punched a Saudi national, Nawaf Alsaleh, in the face. The assault resulted in Alsaleh sustaining a concussion and brain bleed, according to city police records.

Under the plea agreement, Higbee avoids jail time if he successfully completes a minimum of five years pretrial diversion. During the diversion period he must pay undisclosed restitution to the victim. He must not violate the penal code or the Controlled Substances Act, must remain drug and alcohol free, be subject to random testing, not own or possess any firearms and perform 250 hours of community service work. The charges of public intoxication and fleeing police were dismissed as part of the plea.

Assault under extreme emotional disturbance is “many times referred to as a heat of the moment assault,” Warren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Cohron said.

If Higbee fails to successfully complete the diversion, he could serve two years in prison. At the end of the diversion period, once successfully completed, the case can be dismissed and expunged from Higbee’s record.

“The main thing we want to convey is Mr. Higbee as well as the victim are happy to put this behind them both. Mr. Higbee wishes him continued good health, and we believe it’s a fair outcome given the circumstances,” Higbee’s attorney Brian Lowder said adding that Alsaleh has since returned to Saudi Arabia.

At the time of the April 2016 incident Higbee told police he and his girlfriend had been to Dublin’s Irish Pub on State Street where they encountered Alsaleh, who Higbee said bothered his girlfriend, police records show. Higbee said Alsaleh rubbed his head against his and his girlfriend’s faces and was told to stop multiple times.

Higbee and his girlfriend then left and went to the parking lot of Tidballs on Morris Alley to buy food at the Shogun food truck when Alsaleh approached the couple again, records show. Higbee said Alsaleh got into his personal space and he hit Alsaleh one time, knocking him out, records show.

Alsaleh was treated at The Medical Center and then flown to TriStar Skyline Medical Center in Nashville after tests showed that he had suffered a concussion as well as a brain bleed.

Witnesses at the scene told BGPD officers that Alsaleh’s hands were down and that two white males were arguing with him before the punch, with one of them yelling ethnic slurs at him.

Lowder said Higbee and Alsaleh have since shaken hands and Higbee has apologized to Alsaleh for the assault.

“The racial slurs were not made by Mr. Higbee,” Lowder said. “The person who made the comments has acknowledged responsibility for having said the things he said.”

Cohron said the state worked with the victim’s attorney, Steve Downey, to ensure that a restitution plan was in place before resolution of the criminal case.

“It is not unusual in cases where there is significant injury for us to allow the resolution of restitution to be addressed up front so as it would be in the best interest of the victim,” Cohron said.

Downey was not immediately available for comment.

A ‘Nothing’ Season for Rams Turns Into Compelling TV
What’s interesting about an NFL team losing 75 percent of its games and firing its head coach before the end of the season? Plenty, as the NFL Films creators behind the Amazon Original series ‘All or Nothing’ learned

by Kalyn Kahler

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/07/14/los-angeles-rams-all-or-nothing-amazon-nfl-films-series

On Dec. 12, in a team meeting room, Los Angeles Rams punter Johnny Hekker fights back tears as he stands to address his teammates.
“That man is gone because of us,” Hekker says.

He’s talking about head coach Jeff Fisher, who has just left the room for the last time. Some of his former players openly sob, others sit in stunned silence, processing the fact that their leader was fired that morning.

The aftermath of Jeff Fisher’s post-Week 14 dismissal is one of the most compelling scenes from NFL Films Amazon Original series, All or Nothing: A Season with the Los Angeles Rams. In its first season, the series followed the 2015 Arizona Cardinals, a 13-3 team that was one win away from reaching the Super Bowl. This season in L.A. went an entirely different direction—a franchise on the move, a losing season, and organizational dysfunction. The MMQB talked to NFL Films coordinating producer and All or Nothing show runner Keith Cossrow and the director of the series, Shannon Furman, about the challenges of making the 4-12 Rams season into a compelling series of binge TV.

KAHLER: NFL Films also produces the show Hard Knocks, which focuses only on the training camp period and coincidentally also featured the Rams last August. What are the biggest challenges in following a team for an entire season as opposed to just a few weeks?

FURMAN: I think for us, one of the biggest things is that guys don’t see the product until the end. On Hard Knocks, we film for 17 days before the first show airs. Even that is a lot at the time, everybody is waiting to see what this is going to look like. For All or Nothing, since this is such a new series, there are some guys who don’t even know what the series is. So they see you around and they are wearing wires, and you are going home with them and they’re like, What are we doing? Where does this end up? So for me in the field, that is one of the biggest challenges, that they don’t actually get to see what is going on. I remember when [Rams linebacker] Mark Barron had the interception against his former team, the Bucs, I was telling him, Oh the shot is great, wait until you see it! And he was like, Okay when do I see it? And I’m like, well, next July.

COSSROW: On the back end here at Films, it is such a different process because Hard Knocks is happening in real time, we are trying to make a movie in real time. The turnaround on Hard Knocks is insane and there is nothing really like it in TV. It’s great, it’s amazing, it is a high wire act. And this show is obviously not airing until several months after the season ends. So we’re collecting about 1,200 hours of footage without shaping it right away. We are logging it all and figuring out stories and storylines, obviously tracking the season very closely, but we’re not editing until November or December, and at that point you get a chance to edit it all at once. So even though it is eight episodes, it’s a binge show that is going to drop all at once. So you do get that experience as a storyteller of thinking of it as one big movie or a novel that is told in eight chapters. That sort of storytelling that has become so popular and is so enjoyable. It is a totally different process for us as filmmakers and storytellers on both ends.

KAHLER: Have you heard any feedback from the players or coaches featured in the series?

FURMAN: Yeah actually we have, and it has been really positive, which has been great for us because it was a difficult year. I’ve heard from Aaron Donald and the Keenums. I’ve heard from probably almost all of the coaches. Everybody seems to really think that we have portrayed them very fairly and showed their hard work through a very difficult situation.

KAHLER: Have you heard anything from Jeff Fisher? The scenes from the moments after he was fired were so powerful, I’m interested to know what he thinks of it.

FURMAN: Coach Fisher has watched the whole series. He likes it. He’s been around for such a long time that he understands what life in the NFL is like and I think he saw the value in having us being able to show how close they were in some of those early games and how quickly things can go wrong even though they are all working extremely hard. At no point was he ever reluctant throughout the season. We knew it was going to be tough going into it, they moved the whole franchise. So we knew we probably weren’t going to be in the NFC Championship like the Cardinals the year before, but we still thought it was valuable. It was still a historic year for the NFL and L.A., which is one of the big reasons why we went forward with this. It didn’t go the way Coach Fisher wanted it to go, but I think he really saw the value in us being able to show a group of people working hard and things just didn’t go the way they had planned.

COSSROW: That response from the players and the coaches and Coach Fisher, I think it speaks to what is unique about this season of All or Nothing and why I think it is worth checking out. We’ve never had a chance to tell a story like this before, in 55 years of making football movies at NFL Films. Like Shannon said, I think they all recognized the value of what we are trying to do here, in showing a side of life in the NFL that people don’t ever get to see. This is what happens when a season goes bad. When you watch the show, you’ll see it’s not because they aren’t working hard and it’s not because they aren’t trying their best, and it’s not because they aren’t talented players and brilliant coaches. It’s a razor’s edge, the NFL, and a lot of those games early in the season could have gone either way, and are decided on the last drive of the game. That team could have been 5-2 or 6-1 very easily, and to see it not go their way, and then that snowball starts to roll downhill on them and get away from them.
This happens to seven or eight teams every year in the NFL.That’s a lot of lives that get upended and a lot of coaches and families that have to start over again. It’s a really tough life. I think the players and coaches had a feeling of what we were going to do in the story, but after seeing it, it confirmed to them that we were going to tell the true story of what it’s like to have this happen. It’s not an indictment of anyone, so much as it is, here’s the reality of it. It’s hard and it can happen to anybody in the NFL.

KAHLER: Unlike Hard Knocks, there is no camera in the coach’s office when shooting All or Nothing. Because of this, you guys weren’t able to capture the moment where Jeff Fisher finds out he is fired. Will you try to negotiate for cameras inside the coach’s office for next season? Or is that something a team would never agree to?

COSSROW: We have a meeting here next week before people leave for Hard Knocks, a final post mortem to talk about what we did well and what we can do better, and how we can improve the show, should we be fortunate enough to have a season three, and I’m sure we will talk about that. I think there are things we do in Hard Knocks, it is a limited six weeks, it’s during training camp, that it just might not be practical to do over four or five months. To have a camera in a head coach’s office running 12 hours a day, seven days a week for four months is a lot. It’s a lot of resources to expend, it’s a lot to ask of anyone to allow that. It’s something we will consider, it just might not be something that is practical for this show, or necessary. We get so much from just constantly wiring everyone on the field at practice, from being in all the meeting rooms. Yes, of course there are moments that you don’t get, but even if we have a camera in a coach’s office, what’s to say he is not going to go outside and make a phone call on his cell phone? You can shoot 24/7 with 10 cameras and you’re still going to miss a lot of things. There is no way to prevent that.

KAHLER: You caught some pretty incredible scenes of the aftermath of Fisher’s firing, like when Hekker cries and tell his teammates, “That man is gone because of us.” Were you surprised by the raw emotion there that you were able to capture?

FURMAN: Probably not, just after being around the team for that long. Coach Fisher is a player’s coach. Those guys love him. By that time of the year, I had been around since the start of Hard Knocks and even before the start of Hard Knocks. I got a feel for that everyday how much these guys liked him. He is loyal to a lot of his players. He brought some guys with him from Tennessee, [wide receiver] Kenny Britt and [defensive end] Will Hayes. Those guys love him. I’ve been around a lot of teams in my 13 years with NFL Films and I’ve really never seen anything like it. I would even see star players from other teams come up to him pregame and tell him that they would love to play for him some day. It did not surprise me, the emotion that those guys had that day. Everyone had this feeling that Fisher was safe, himself included. A lot of the players thought this was going to be a free year because they moved and they had a lot of other stuff to go through, so everyone was pretty shocked and I think that emotion was really real that day.

KAHLER: What is the best scene that was cut from the final series?

COSSROW: People always love asking that questions, but I always watch these deleted scenes from movies or shows and they are usually deleted because they aren’t that good.

FURMAN: I’ll answer for Keith. I went to Paris for a day with the wives and that was cut out. It’s in the bonus scenes, but that was not easy to organize. I was French travel agent for the day, and I had never been to France in my life. I thought it was a fun scene, but we got a lot of great access in London that week, so at the end of the day, we went with the stuff that had the guys in it because we did a bunch of trips all around London with different players, so when it came time to cut something out, that went. But I thought that was a cool scene [because] that was something we’ve never done before.

COSSROW: It was expensive too. Our project manager was not happy. You make those decisions because you can only tell so many stories. There are only so many characters that an audience can be asked to really be invested.

KAHLER: Was there one guy on the team, either coach or player, who you felt most invested?

FURMAN: That’s easy for me. That was [quarterback] Case Keenum. Case is awesome, his wife is awesome. I had the chance to work with him in Houston also, back in 2013. Nobody works harder than Case. He’s a great leader. He has become a good friend. We were all rooting for him here, and he gave us a ton of access into what he was going through that year, especially as the quarterback of a team that just moved to L.A. I’ll continue to root for him. He’s in Minnesota now, so there’s a chance he might be playing again this year.

COSSROW: I think the other guy who emerges in the series and someone who you really root for is [special teams coordinator] John Fassel. He is a fascinating case. His dad is Jim Fassel, who coached the Giants, and we knew that he is a terrific special teams coach, with an interesting and fun personality. Shannon and the directors knew that from Hard Knocks, but we were very skeptical out here as to whether we would find a way to get him into the show. Shannon would call me and say, Keith, we’re going to shoot Coach Fassel on the beach with his wife and kids tomorrow night. And I would say, Shannon that’s great, I have no idea what we are going to do with that, but go for it! Maybe special teams will have a great game and we will find a way to weave him into the story somehow. And then lo and behold, everything happens and John Fassel becomes the interim head coach and in a lot of ways he was as shocked as anyone. You see this guy get thrust behind the wheel of a sinking ship. All of a sudden he is the head coach of an NFL team with three weeks left in the season. It is just a really emotional scene to watch unfold. He becomes a little bit of our proxy. He comes off as a very regular guy, someone we can relate. It was interesting to us to track his story.

KAHLER: I was impressed that you somehow made the Rams home opener, where neither L.A. or Seattle scored a touchdown, look like a compelling game. The Rams went 4-12 and has a pretty miserable season. How challenging was it to make bad football look good?

COSSROW: So challenging. We’ve been editing football games for a long time here, so we’ve had a lot of practice. I think a lot of the techniques we’ve learned over the years—wiring players, bringing a lot of cameras, and looking for different ways to tell a story—make it less dependent on how many touchdowns are scored. In this series, the games function as another scene where you can get to know the players better and see the characters in action. Heading into a game, you will have been introduced to guys like [defensive tackle] Aaron Donald and [running back] Todd Gurley and then the games serve as payoffs or high points in action, even when there isn’t a lot of scoring or traditionally exciting action. You are still seeing your characters in a way that you want to know what happens to them. Aaron Donald is wired against the Seahawks and wreaking havoc against their offensive line and destroying Russell Wilson. That is compelling. It might not be that exciting when you are watching the Fox broadcast in Week 2 and you’re looking for fantasy stats, but in this context, there is a lot we can do to make it interesting.

KAHLER: I love the scenes where the players are hanging out together away from the facility, like the one where a group of guys are grilling out together at Robert Quinn’s house. How do those moments come together?

FURMAN: I spend many hours in the parking lot, stalking everyone. Rob was actually the only player on the team I really knew, going into Hard Knocks. That was Rob and Will Hayes and Aaron Donald, and their wives and fiancees. [The grill scene] actually came about through Rob’s wife, Christina. She had told us that they were going to be doing that and invited us by if we wanted to come and film for a little bit. A lot of it is through forming relationships with wives and mothers, because women are usually more dependable. We try to figure out what our storylines are and sometimes it doesn’t end up paying off in the games. We knew that moving was a storyline, so we started talking with [tight end] Lance Kendricks and his wife Danielle about their house, because they were doing a home renovation project. You’re just always looking for things to do, whether it is through the PR staff or forming relationships on your own. I don’t know that we will ever try to do a Hard Knocks team for All or Nothing ever again but it was nice having those relationships.

COSSROW: The scene Shannon mentioned with Lance and Danielle Kendricks—there is a scene with the two of them that is a great example with what we are trying to accomplish with off-the-field shoots in this series. He drops a crucial pass that would have been a touchdown against Carolina. It’s a devastating moment. It’s one of these games that they probably should have won. The defense played great but the offense just could not score. And then the next scene, you’re at their house and they are cooking dinner and they are talking about what happened and how difficult that is. Did you bring that home? How do you move on? It’s not something you ever think about as fans when we watch a game and scream at our TV when a guy dropped a pass. You don’t think about, Oh, that guy is going to go home and have dinner tonight with his wife and sit and talk about that, or not talk about that. What we try to do is capture the mundane. When we ask players if we can shoot something with them off the field, we are not trying to do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Can we just come home with you while you are cooking dinner or whatever it is you are going to do tonight?

FURMAN: When I shot with Rodger Saffold one night, we come over and they were filming with E! before we got there. It was a huge set with lights and Rodger and his wife said, Shannon, what do you want us to do? And I was like, I want you to do whatever you were going to do. I want you to feed your kids and put your kids to bed, I don’t want you to do anything that is fabricated. So that’s the scene where you see Rodger pulling the kids around in the cardboard boxes. It’s just natural. I usually say, Can we just come over tonight? Just eat dinner and I’ll throw some questions at you, we just want it to be real.

COSSROW: That’s the idea of the show. We want to give fans a chance to see what this life really is about and that means, do what you’re doing and let us come capture a little piece of it. I know a lot of people have asked, Why did you do the Rams? Why should we watch a series about a team that didn’t go anywhere? I think this season it is just as compelling as the last season, where we saw a team that almost went to the Super Bowl. Now we see the other side of that coin.

KAHLER: Which team will be featured next year?

COSSROW: We are in conversations with several teams and we certainly hope and expect to do a third season, so we will see what happens.

from Post-Hype All-Stars: Nine guys set for (late) breakout

Gregg Rosenthal

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000818613/article/posthype-allstars-nine-guys-set-for-late-breakout

Alec Ogletree, LB, Los Angeles Rams: Anyone who watched the new season of Amazon’s “All of Nothing” should gain an appreciation for Ogletree’s leadership skills. It feels like he’s been in the league forever, but the 25-year-old should be just hitting his prime. His heady understanding of the game is a great match for new defensive coordinator Wade Phillips, who should bring out the best in a lot of Rams defenders. (Robert Quinn, who’s had trouble staying on the field since nearly winning Defensive Player of the Year in 2013, is another candidate to tick up under Phillips.)

12. Los Angeles Rams, $2.9 billion, 100% (NFL)

PFT preseason power rankings No. 27: Los Angeles Rams

Curtis Crabtree

PFT preseason power rankings No. 27: Los Angeles Rams

The Los Angeles Rams have not made the postseason since 2004. We don’t expect that to change in 2017.

But that doesn’t mean the Rams are completely devoid of talent. Aaron Donald, Robert Quinn, Michael Brockers, Todd Gurley, Alec Ogletree and Trumaine Johnson are all legitimate pieces to build a team around. If Jared Goff can make a sizable jump in his second season – despite having to learn a completely new offense – the Rams could make some strides faster than expected.

A year removed from the move from St. Louis to Los Angeles, the franchise is more settled in their routines and environments in Southern California. For a team that could never find consistency under Jeff Fisher, the change to Sean McVay gives the Rams a fresh start for the first time in five years.

Biggest positive change: Mr. 7-9 is no longer coaching the team. The St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams perennially fell short during the Jeff Fisher era. While he certainly inherited a long-term mess to clean up when he came to the team, the Rams were still an enigma under Fisher. They’d get up for games against division rivals like San Francisco and Seattle and then fall flat against teams they had no business losing to. They also always played with an aggressive style that bordered on cheap and dirty too often. And despite having several stars on defense, they never could put together an offense capable of leading the team into the postseason.

Biggest negative change: Kenny Britt was arguably the best player on offense for the Rams last season and now he’s in Cleveland. He was one of Jared Goff’s most reliable targets and was the first Rams’ receiver since 2007 to eclipse the 1,000-yard receiving mark in a season. Britt finished the year with 68 catches for 1,002 yards and five touchdowns. While Robert Woods, Cooper Kupp and Nelson Spruce might be able to fill the void, it again leaves Tavon Austin – who the Rams gave a ridiculously over-valued contract extension to last year – as a focal point of the offense despite being a somewhat awkward receiving/scat back hybrid.

Coaching thermometer: While Sean McVay should get some time to turn the Rams’ fortunes around, his hot seat clocks in at a tepid 55 degrees. This is Los Angeles after all. The pressure to build a winner quickly will be substantial as the franchise tries to build a new footing in L.A. And while Jeff Fisher was shown the door, Les Snead remains as general manager. If Stan Kroenke’s finds reason to oust Snead after (or during) this season, a new G.M. could be given authority to bring in his own head coach for the future.

We’d like to crack a beer with . . . Johnny Hekker. The Rams’ All-Pro punter has been the best in the league for several seasons and brings a great sense of humor along with him. We’d also like to ask exactly what the hell he was thinking when he decided it was a good idea to blindside Michael Bennett in Seattle two seasons ago.

How they can prove us wrong: Sean McVay manages to tailor an offense to suit Jared Goff and Todd Gurley and get a significant spike in production. Wade Phillips manages to seamlessly convert a former 4-3 defense into a 3-4 front and not lose any productivity in the change. Aaron Donald and Robert Quinn continue to terrorize opposing offensive lines. Trumaine Johnson uses his franchise tag year to build an argument for the All-Pro team. If the Rams can find a way to be in the Wild Card discussion as the calendar hits December, they will have surpassed expectations.

from Ranking all 32 team’s front seven units headed into the 2017 season

https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/pro-ranking-all-32-teams-front-seven-units-headed-into-the-2017-season

5. Los Angeles Rams

Aaron Donald, alone is good enough to rank this unit higher than some other front sevens. Donald not only led all interior defenders with 82 QB pressures, that mark was good enough for fourth among all defensive linemen, edge rushers included. A healthy Robert Quinn would be a big boost if he can return to form, as well as solid players such as Michael Brockers and Mark Barron lands this unit in the top five. Dominique Easley is another solid young player who has flashed some potential to disrupt plays as an interior defender as well.

Onion Fact Checks: Trump Administration’s Claims About Russian Collusion

VID LINK:
http://www.theonion.com/video/onion-fact-checks-trump-administrations-claims-abo-56382

from Rams, Colts, Panthers undergoing offseason identity change

Gregg Rosenthal

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000819191/article/rams-colts-panthers-undergoing-offseason-identity-change

“That’s horse—- what we just put out there!”

The lowest moment in a Rams season stuffed with disappointment resulted in former offensive coordinator Rob Boras raging at halftime of a blowout loss to the Falcons, for NFL Films to capture in “All or Nothing” for posterity.

“Now let’s find out what we’re about these next 30 minutes!” Boras seethed. “Are we going to respond or we going to put our heads down and pout? Who’s f—— pissed?”

Running back Todd Gurley was the only man to answer, issuing a stream of invectives to no one in particular that he was tired of the “sorry-ass offense week after week.” After the game, Gurley told reporters the Rams looked like a “middle school offense” and players were “going through the motions.” Head coach Jeff Fisher was fired the next day.

Changing identity in the NFL can happen that fast. The Rams sought a transformation when they moved to Los Angeles, but the dreary offense was all too familiar. Fisher’s teams didn’t finish in the top 20 in points, yards or efficiency (according to Football Outsiders) once during his five seasons at the helm.

Enter Sean McVay, the precocious choice to take over as Rams coach and construct a professional offense for Gurley to thrive in. McVay may as well have “Opposite of Jeff Fisher” tattooed on his forehead. From McVay’s motormouth press conferences to his versatile offensive approach, the young coach provides a facelift for an organization that desperately needs it.

And the Rams aren’t alone in undergoing an extreme makeover this offseason — the Panthers and Colts are making major renovations of their own. For these three teams, it’s the season for natural selection: Adapt or die.

Let’s take a closer look at the changing identities of three NFL franchises:

Los Angeles Rams: Sean McVay is the anti-Jeff Fisher

The Rams are seeking stability while installing their fourth different offense in as many seasons. As Gurley recently put it, they can’t get any worse.

Sean McVay’s approach in Washington was deceptively simple: Flood the field with capable pass catchers and allow Kirk Cousins to distribute the ball like a point guard to the best mismatch. The Redskins’ scheme was loaded with short, high-percentage throws, along with creative ways to get receivers open deep. Their vertical passing game was among the league’s best despite Cousins not having a huge arm.

Last year’s No. 1 overall pick, Jared Goff, has superior physical attributes to Cousins, but there’s no telling whether Goff has the mental makeup to thrive as an NFL quarterback. McVay’s hire was about giving Goff a fighting chance. Passing the football under Fisher was a reactive enterprise. The quarterback’s job was to avoid losing, to be as aggressive as the score dictated, to wait for the overrated defense and running game to save the day. Fisher coached like he was running the 1985 Bears team he once played for.

These Rams don’t have the personnel yet to dominate, but McVay allows them to modernize and be respectable. I witnessed Gurley being moved all around the formation during the team’s June minicamp in an effort to unleash his receiving skills. Gurley joked recently to Sirius XM NFL Radio that he hoped the Rams offense would be more “Todd-friendly.” Ironically, the key to that might be for the Rams to avoid being so Todd-centric. McVay won’t send Gurley running into a brick wall on second-and-8.

Gurley’s effusive praise of the team’s new coaching staff could be interpreted through the lens of what last year’s staff lacked, depending on your level of cynicism. Gurley has mentioned the staff’s attention to detail, creating advantageous one-on-one matchups and evolving into situational masters.

McVay understands that the best offensive identity is to never stop evolving.

“We want to do a good job as coaches figuring out our players and then we’ll adjust the system accordingly,” McVay said in June. “We’ve got a lot of different things that we can do, but it’s about figuring out what these guys do best. Having an identity and making sure that you have some complements off that identity.”

CraigMatson wrote:

There was a lot I got from watching all the episodes.

Those injuries to Hayes Quinn and Tru Johnson killed them in the Buff and Detroit games.

Case played better when the gameplan was up tempo and Gurly was used as a receiver.
He absolutely had a great game against Detroit,

Brian Quick should have had a great year but flubbed some plays against The Giants at the end and in Seattle that made both Keenum and Goff look bad.

Goff looks like he just doesn’t have the fire in his heart to get his troops up. Sorry I believe he’s going to have to be exceptional in other important areas of preparation recognition and execution because personality wise he comes across as a more of a nice guy softie follower type rather than a captain that is going to push anyone hard.

I also think defences will continue to attempt chopping the ball out so he is going to need to build up awareness and hand strength.

Tree is athlete at MLB and if the Rams get up On teams enough to force more passing plays they will play to his strength.

Neither he or Barron are great in run support in a 4-3 set and could be even worse as inside backers in a 3-4 so its a bit scary.

Brockers role in run defence this year will be colossal along with Barwins.

The injury to Bennie Cunningham and failure to have a productive 3rd back or consistent running game from Gurly was a huge part of the sub 500 season.

There were however flashes of heart and burst from Gurley on the wet turf in the Dolphin game. ..?? Maybe they should wet the field down for him more.

I really wanted to get the inside dope on the foible on the Detroit goaline. ..They skipped it like it never happend . There must have been loads of over the top language or specific blame that had to be cut to avoid embarrassment.

Fassels personality is very unique and he does connect with his troops well, and just seems to be one of the guys.He instructs well, is somewhat light in his meetings brings some fun with the focus DOJO Fridays: ) for example with headbands and power quotes and film study.
He has the ability to keep his charges attention and precision up.

Plus he had lovely footage with his wife and kids. A lot of the show was family orientated and that was great.

Groh, Wienke and Boras personalities or methods all seemed a stitch off what was needed .
I thought much more of Groh going into training camp but of the three he seemed the least invested and between he and Boras first of them to become enraged in the pressbox when something went wrong.Position meetings shown with him underwhelmed and that surprised.

I think some may come away believing a bit more in Weinkes competency.

More I could say but I’ll finish with episode 8 leaving me with good feeling for future.

Donald Trump Jr. may have crossed the legal line on collusion

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/11/donald-trump-jr-may-have-just-crossed-the-legal-line-on-collusion/?utm_term=.1aee27f12158

The New York Times reported — and Donald Trump Jr. appeared to confirm — that he agreed to a meeting with a Russian lawyer who had damaging information on Hillary Clinton after getting an email that the Russian government was trying to help his father win the election.

“It’s as close as you can get to a smoking gun” of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a white-collar lawyer who represented officials in the Clinton White House and now is with Arnall Golden Gregory. And it could mean Trump Jr. crossed the legal line on collusion with Russia.

First, a reframing of the way we think of collusion. Collusion actually is a political term; there’s no line in the criminal code that says you go to jail for colluding with a foreign adversary.

But you can go to jail for conspiring with a foreign adversary to influence or undermine an election, and Jacobovitz thinks what Trump Jr. did, as documented by emails he himself shared on Twitter, could rise to that level.

“Absolutely,” Jacobovitz replied when asked if these emails firm up evidence that Trump Jr. had intent to commit a crime by conspiring with the Russians. “You may have crossed the line on conspiracy to commit election fraud or conspiracy to obtain information from a foreign adversary,” he said. “You cannot benefit from a foreign adversary in this kind of scenario.”

Other legal minds agree. “It’s a shocking admission of a criminal conspiracy,” said Jens David Ohlin, associate dean of Cornell Law School, in a statement shared with The Post. “The conversation will now turn to whether President Trump was personally involved or not. But the question of the campaign’s involvement appears settled now. The answer is yes.”

In the emails, Trump Jr. associate Rob Goldstone tells Trump Jr. that Russian officials “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

What special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team of a dozen or so practiced investigators are probably looking for is evidence that the Trump campaign intended to illegally conspire with Russia to help its campaign or hurt Clinton’s. (Russia is also known for tricking people into doing its bidding.)

The fact that Trump Jr. took this meeting while being told what the Russians were up to is as clear as intent can get, legal experts say.

“If he received an email in advance saying, ‘This is coming from the Russian government,’ he’s certainly knowledgeable about where the information is coming from,” Jacobovitz said. “And he attempts to attend a meeting with the hope and intent to obtain inside dirt on Hillary Clinton. That would go a long way in trying to determine whether it’s conspiracy. … It’s not as if he walks into the meeting and he’s surprised by what he’s hearing.”

Another piece of evidence to stack up in the “intent” column: Why were two of Trump’s top campaign aides also invited to the meeting? Trump Jr. says Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would also be there to meet with the Russian lawyer. It suggests that the Trump campaign put a very high premium on the meeting.

And it raises the question, as asked by The Fix’s Aaron Blake, of what President Trump himself knew about the meeting. (The White House says the president wasn’t aware of this meeting and denies any collusion by anyone in his campaign.)

More legal questions: Was anything agreed to in this meeting by either side? We know from both sides that in addition to sitting down to talk dirt on Clinton, there was a discussion about American adoptions of Russian children and sanctions the Russian government opposes against suspects of human rights abuses.

A month after the June 2016 meeting, thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee were leaked on the eve of Democrats’ convention, leading the DNC’s chair to resign. Members of Congress with access to intelligence said Russians had already hacked into those emails by the time Trump Jr. met with the Russian lawyer.

Jacobovitz said Mueller and his team will certainly be investigating whether there was some kind of quid pro quo between the Trump campaign and Russia on sanctions vs. damaging emails to Clinton.

The emails also appear to confirm the version of events as told by the Russian lawyer in the meeting, who has ties to the Russian government, and is referred by Trump’s associate as a Russian government attorney. In an interview with NBC’s “Today” concerning why Trump Jr. wanted to take the meeting, the lawyer said he was “longing” for information on Clinton.

NBC News ✔ @NBCNews
Natalia Veselnitskaya says it’s possible Trump Jr. was “longing” for info on the DNC. “They wanted it so badly.”

Trump Jr. originally told the Times this was about adoptions. But in the emails, he says in response to an offer to meet with a Russian with dirt on Clinton: “If it’s what you say I love it,”

Also worth noting: Trump himself has drawn a line in the sand of what collusion means to him, a definition he may come to regret. Essentially, the president has said, collusion is knowing about something going on illegally and not doing anything about it.

Under that definition, it appears the Trump campaign rocketed past its own definition. It’s not normal, and it may not even be legal, to meet with a foreign adversary expecting dirt on your opponent.

Jacobovitz said conspiracy to commit election fraud is the big legal fish Mueller and his team may be trying to fry. But they’re probably also looking at a whole host of laws that could have been broken under this scenario: quid pro quo with the Russians, bribery, potential perjury related to what members of the Trump campaign said under oath to Congress and failing to disclose these contacts in official security forms.

“This goes further than collusion,” he said. Especially now that Trump Jr. appeared to provide proof to all of this.

Get ready for our first image of a black hole
The Event Horizon Telescope will peer into the space immediately surrounding our galaxy’s supermassive black hole.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/04/first-image-of-a-black-hole

Previous observatories have captured images of the region around our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, but they’re not exactly high-resolution pictures. The Event Horizon Telescope aims to outstrip the quality of all previous images by far.

Astronomers have brought a telescope online that’s (virtually) the size of Earth. Dubbed the Event Horizon Telescope, it’s aiming to achieve something that’s never been done before: imaging the space around a black hole all the way down to its event horizon.

One of its targets is Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short. Sgr A* is the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, with a mass of approximately 4 million Suns. Because it’s so massive and so (relatively) close at a distance of 25,600 light-years, it’s the largest black hole visible in our sky. But large is a relative term as well — current estimates place the size of the black hole at 100 Astronomical Units (AU) or less. One AU is the average distance between Earth and the Sun, 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). Some estimates even indicate that the black hole could be as small as the distance between Mercury and the Sun, just 28 million miles (46 million km).

When astronomers “see” black holes, they are actually seeing light from a disk of material around the black hole, which is sitting beyond the event horizon. Anything within the event horizon itself is truly invisible, as that marks the point at which even light cannot travel fast enough to break free of the black hole’s gravity and escape. But currently, astronomical instruments don’t have the resolution to really see the disk closely or image its structure.

This is why every “image” ever shown of a black hole in a news article or textbook is an artist’s rendering, rather than an actual picture. But that’s all about to change.

The Event Horizon Telescope makes use of a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) that requires several telescopes observing the same object from different locations to create highly detailed images of very, very small sections of the sky. The farther apart the telescopes are located, the greater the detail they can achieve. The Event Horizon Telescope will link eight radio telescopes around the world, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano in Mexico, the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica, and other facilities in France and Spain to utilize the longest baselines possible. By creating a truly Earth-sized telescope, the project should be capable of imaging the space around a black hole in exquisite detail.

This will allow astronomers to study not only the structure of the disk around the black hole, but also to test general relativity, get a better look at how the black hole actually feeds on material, and maybe even determine how the outflows and jets that are so common among black holes are actually created.

The giant telescope came online April 5 and will observe for about a week and a half, gathering data until April 14. In addition to imaging our relatively quiescent Sgr A*, it will also look at the more active supermassive black hole residing in Messier 87, a huge elliptical galaxy in the nearby Virgo Cluster. The amount of information obtained will be so immense that it’s too large to transfer digitally — it will be stored physically and taken to the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and the Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts for processing.

That will take time. But in a few months, we may finally have our first picture of the region immediately around a supermassive black hole.