Turning the Tide

or "How to Turn a Profitable Health Care Crisis into Family Theme Park Fun"

For over forty years, We the People have been hard sold many innovative ideas, progressive solutions, economist's pipe dreams, recollections of historical revisionists, statistician's comparative studies, folk wisdom simple solutions, and revolutionary panaceas to make health care affordable and accessible for all Americans. Some of these visions attempted to treat the symptoms, while others targeted a cure for rapidly rising, across the board health care costs​. The results have been an attempt​ at holding back a rising tide, our human efforts amount to vanity. Useless, all useless.


Of our own accord or a lack of options, We the People have turned to our most dangerous servant, government, to formulate the chill pills for our red hot medical bill ills. Government has provided a four decade long political theater of very expensive rhetoric with low budget performance. To date​ government has performed on par with the aforementioned aspiring remedy providers. It's been a situational comedy with an all too common plot: "Talk much, Do nothing." We didn't elect consultants, we elected leaders, supposedly. So, I'm not laughing anymore. Neither should you.


For over forty years, we have witnessed Congress after Congress pass law after law, initiate or abrogate some program or regulation, and revised or rescinded all manners of administrative authorities in the hope of reigning in runaway medical costs. Republican solutions, Democratic solutions, Populist solutions, Left wing, Right wing, every kind of thing solutions, all their efforts have proven futile… every single one.


The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act (AKA - Obamacare) was the government's latest, and most sweeping permutation of a one size fits all, command and control health care system for the masses. You just have to vote for it and hope it passes before you can see what’s in the Bill. Oh, look, it’s a bill of the burgeoning, budget busting variety. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

So much for “free” health care.

After so many years and so many leaders with so many ideologies, philosophies, and let’s not forget, so many "Grandma had to sell her house for the surgery” atrocities, I must question the veracity of those honorable ladies and gentlemen of the late payment State from which they hail (not a typo). I question their sincerity and posit those who bear the responsibility to make life and death choices for the People, are either misdiagnosing the problem in ineptitude or performing malpractice by intent. In spite of all their assurances and claims of concern for the health of average Americans, regardless of all their long speeches detailing the deleterious effect of health care costs on the financial well-being of Mr. and Mrs. Main Street America, I have my doubts about their sincerity. So, should you.


I have to raise an eyebrow at both the sources and the tsunami of campaign contributions slamming and damning our alleged Constitutional Republic which may sway those who fill the seats under our capitol dome to represent the interests of those back home. With millions upon millions of dollars being laundered clean to anonymize their origin through Super PACs, foreign donors, and dark/ shadow back trails, these "Oh, so concerned" policymakers are looking sleazier than the most notable organized crime bosses of the 1970’s. At least, the Mafia had a Code by which they lived and were executed gangland style. Sure, it was brutal, childishly club-like and violently club-like, but it was a Code, a genuine loyalty to the Boss. Unless you could do better on your own. Say an offer you couldn’t refuse. It was a loyalty set in stone until they made your shoes from concrete, but even then you knew you weren’t coming back. You were headed for a bullet induced heart attack over a generous helping of ziti and Italian sausage. A kind of prelude to your next incarnation, post mortem.

This one contains only pork. I hope.

Politicians have no such ethos. They are ethically free and unencumbered by the drudgery of accountability. Their sole responsibility for their terms majority is maintaining and improving their re-electability. Unfortunately, re-electability has damn little to do with the People in the Land of the Fee, health care affordability, or anything else that happens on Main Street. Politicians tend to be more money grubbing, clannish, and self-interested than those old Mafia goons that they put out of business to take up the room in the finest hotels, restaurants, and bars making shady deals and rubbing elbows with the rich and nameless, near, and far. The gangsters loved their mothers and kissed them for luck. The politicians would sell their own mothers for a couple thousand dollars and not…

rely on luck.

Therefore, knowing the nature of the political beast, my eyebrow remains elevated.

Your eyebrow should not remain seated, either.

These very same "I feel your pain" legislators who set National Health Care Policy (which is just a colloquial way of saying “printing checks”) in Washington DC are helplessly addicted to and heavily under the influence of big dollar donor dope. There are relationships between campaign contributions and votes cast in both chambers of Congress. It is as our Fathers would say, “self-evident”. There are also relationships between those who donate and those who vote. These highly valued and equally suspects​ relationships between regulators and the regulated, the big donors and the constituent owners of representation in the Condo of the Free. I see this “to the highest bidder goes my vote” as sapping or undercutting the Principles we claim to honor in our American legends and lore, our history, and our heroes not to mention a few old documents called The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America, and The Bill of Rights. This is our biggest national security threat, today. What good is winning a War on Terror, if in the struggle we have already returned to the Reign of Terror. Off with their OUR heads

Health insurance is covered under insurance, not health.

According to the nonpartisan research group The Center for Responsive Politics, the biggest contributors to political campaigns are from the “Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate” sectors, which makes perfect sense when you consider these are by far the biggest beneficiaries of our peculiar national policies. Many within this sector have benefited in ways which in any  EDUCATED and CIVILIZED nation would result in large mobs of citizens storming the capitol to drag their respective representatives into the city streets and unceremoniously shooting them in the back of their heads. Mercifully and regrettably, we don't live in such a nation.

A Farewell to Kings... and lesser tyrants.

I don't advocate such mob action, but I wouldn't necessarily object too strenuously either, as the Right of Revolution is the true final check on government corruption. However, I would prefer we allow the Angels of our Better Nature prevail. Rather than choosing destruction, let us build a wonderful theme park. A modern Great Wonder of epic proportion where we can bring our entire family and teach our children American​ values. Values like Freedom of Choice, Self-Sufficiency, An Honest Day's Labor, and lest we forget, Accountability. Yes, accountability for one's actions and inactions. "This is what we do with those who try to reduce a free people into unwitting mercenaries for merchants”, we would instruct the kids as we pass the cozy accommodations for the current convicts whom we formerly entrusted to do what is in the People's best interest, not their own.


Such an awesome tourist attraction and patriotic venue would surely draw an international crowd. The idea might spread, imagine this! A rollback to Republic v1.0, without slavery and sporting universal suffrage from the git-go. That would make me so proud to be an American again.

Another Revolutionary American Innovation!

(Long sigh...)

But... in lieu of this beautiful national treasure, and potential World Heritage Site, we have the politicians blaming pharmaceuticals, defrauders of the system, insurance companies, those nasty HMO's which the politicians created, (LOL!), and finger pointing at each other. The pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and health care providers in turn blame the politicians, the inefficiencies of bureaucracy, and the demographics of an aging population linked with the costs of high-tech treatments.


It's all very complex, very confusing, and it's all been so heartbreaking for so long that we've grown numb from the horror... the horror. Grandma having to sell her house to afford the surgery doesn’t seem so bad anymore. It’s the norm, and that’s pitiful because somewhere in this carnival of hope, fear, worry, and loss we've forgotten the simple, effective tool of Supply and Demand. Do you remember this key economic principle from high school?

Supply and Demand

the amount of a commodity, product, or service available and the desire of buyers for it, considered as major factors regulating its price.

"By the law of supply and demand the cost of health care will plummet."

Yes, it is that simple.

What brings costs down is competition, regardless of whether we’re talking about widgets, vacuum cleaners, cell phone providers, oil change franchises, cheese burgers, blog writers, heart bypasses, medicines, scalpels, beagle puppies, or Beanie Babies, prices are primarily determined by Supply and Demand. 

Author's Note: Please, keep this in mind as you read the rest of this post and EVERY SINGLE TIME you hear about the high price of health care in the future.

Those who push for the “Single Payer” system, which is to socialized medicine what ”Climate Change” is to global warming, are advocating the free market system of Supply and Demand. They won't admit to it, but what they are doing is limiting demand by grouping everyone into one giant consumer. Then, removing choices they consider overly burdensome on public monies and adding mandates they consider essential for the benefit of their own personal agendas, which most likely has nothing in common with your own. That's a backwards solution, although they won't admit that either. Instead, they will employ one well known American value called "the Fifth."


While we could all use at least a fifth, what we need are more providers. Lots more. I want to see as many health care providers, insurers, and equipment manufacturers as there are porn sites on the web, coffee kiosk in Seattle, and hair weave shops in ethnic neighborhoods. I want to see doctors chasing patients like telemarketers hawking magazine subscriptions and Girl Scouts hustling cookies, because it's the Supply side of the Supply and Demand equation that has been over-specialized, rationed, and regulated into rarity.

Doctors are disappearing from private practice into huge “Single Provider” regional medical centers… one stop shopping like Mega Walmarts of health care with the Sotheby's price tags.


Many politicians, research analysts, and advocacy groups have taken "Big Pharma" to task for their predatory pricing, but nobody says a word about the massive medical center down the street. However, the Medical Center's popularity plays a central role in health care's lack of affordability.

Meanwhile, health care insurance companies are gobbling up competitors in a feeding frenzy to be the one and only… you guessed it… “Single Payer” for the whole health care cartel.

I know, it looks like they're working towards a monopoly! Yes, I do understand that monopolies are bad for consumers and lead to price gouging. Of, course, I know that a monopoly is like an aggressive cancer which should be surgically removed, but who is going to hold the scalpel when all our surgeons are working for the cancer?


We need a lot less of these…

and a lot more of these…

Working in private practice.

We also need a lot less of these…

and these...

Lawyers can't do health care, but they can destroy it, just like everything else.

And we definitely need at least one of these…

We have the supply all we need is your demand... and maybe a concessions stand.

Oh, look the tide is turning.

Between the Red and the Blue

I hope you brought lunch because we've got a lot of ground to cover today...

Here between the red and blue, the passion and the patriotism, between the hype and the horror, there are some very good people who are getting slaughtered as collateral damage by all the
partisanry.


The salt of the fruited plain, blue collar grease stained, working nights under supermarket lights, white collar office temp guy, stay at home mom changing diapers all night, the U-N-I types. That’s you and I, if I spelled it right.

Meanwhile, at the Cheney's Wyoming ranch...

Dick laughs at the force and fury of angry pundits bickering on TV, and familiar swanky lobbyists looking down from the gallery, pharmaceutical reps have something with your monogram for free. Just set aside ten minutes in private, Senator, for me. I'll make you King of Greece after they pay off the lien.







Dick thinks, "Ah, the good old days are just ahead of me thanks to a little Genie in a bottle company."


So, now you know why were fighting on Syrian soil. We're​ liberating oil from the people who own it, exclusively. International law refers to this ownership as sovereignty.

"Fuck that law, it doesn't apply me. I'm Dick fucking Cheney! Don't fuck with me. I'll go 9/11 on you. I am conscience free."

It's just that sick. We're all mercenaries for merchants collectively. Truth, justice, whatever! Don't be a Dick. Stop lying to me!


Now, back to us...

We're standing in line for a Metro bus trying to live a decent life, a job, a home, and maybe a loving wife. Out in a world between terrorist plots and the lay-off knife, your hard work only costs you your sacrifice, middle management is about to be downsized, and you're a little lamb among the other sheep who advise, "Little lamb don't make a peep." The wolves are stacked up about six deep. Through the pasture they creep while the shepherds sleep dreaming of a decent life, a job, a home, and maybe a loving wife. Sleep tight, Here come the wolves...

From the ivory tower in the distance, the banker offers his assistance, we have to capitalize on our socialist persistence. Celebrate diversity, that's the difference between what you pay for and I get for free. I just have to finance electability, everything else is public property. That's you, not me. Public debt is my prosperity. Eventually, when the bill goes unpaid your kids will curse your name. You did the crime, they will take the blame.


What did you say? "That doesn't seem lawful to me"? I have friends in Washington D.C., who scribble words incomprehensibly, and that's the law, you see. The law's for you, not me.


Look into my eyes, you're feeling very sleepy. Keep watching MSNBC. The anchor says, "Remember to celebrate diversity". Which seems odd to me, if we're all celebrating diversity, isn’t that uniformity? Maybe, it's just me.


The Senator smiles and whispers, "Off the record, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Just a bumper sticker slogan to keep you occupied while I’m chopping down the Liberty Tree. Two eighty a cord with free delivery, and a discount because it came from your property."



You and me are praying “Deliver me!” We’re in an overgrown field looking at abandoned factories spread out as far as the eye can see. But the stock market is flying high on the recovery of the new jobs we’ll never see, except for fast food or the retail industry at minimum wage the new median for people trying to raise a family.


The inner city kid walking the street explains, "Who cares about jobs that pay nothing? I’m wasting my time filling out applications or calling. A man on the corner showed me I can make ten year's salary if I’m big ballin'."






Two weeks later the task force put my career to an end and I got a new vocation sleeping, eating slop in the DOC swine pen for eighteen to twenty-four months minus good time. There is no good time when you're​ warehoused with the dead and dying.


After the system destroys what's left of his humanity the Prodigal Son returns to the same neighborhood street. No jobs, no home, no loving wife, his only work record is prison industries, modern slavery. Here on this street the biggest industry is baby mamas pushing out the next generation of me at $10,000 a shot. Take a number, wait in line, another victim of the welfare plot.






You were born middle class and me poor, but that isn’t a problem because now we're all poor as the stock market hits a new high score. To war, to war watch those jet fighters soar, Twenty-two million and no peace, if you buy a dozen or more. Without bombs exploding television news is a bore. Don't you feel that rush of adrenaline when you see the explosion from the vantage of a predator, that God's subtle way of telling you that you're a murderer.






I heard a songwriter cry, "Tax the rich, feed the poor, until there ain’t no poor, no more.” sounds great in words, sucks in practice. Let me show you what happens. The rich take their money and fly away leaving just the middle and poor to pay. Middle is exhausted bit by bit, trying to support the rest of it, until they drop a rung, Hey, we’re all equal. Well Hallelu! But the poor can’t support the poor, and the rich they all moved. The songwriter is mystified. We’re all screwed!



A caddy hears a muffled voice on the 16th fairway where the senator just spent a billion three of our money in pursuit of security, safety, miscellany, and to buy Halliburton everything they need for the quarter's profitability.


It’s a free country, nominally. Unless you're accounting for the debt or the prison population that's higher than anywhere else in humanity. But we're free, we're free. That’s what they keep saying to me on the billboards, magazines, radio, and prime time T.V., but we keep trading real liberty for the illusion of safety and crafty financial securities. Sub-prime time from sea to shinning sea.

What did “Old Ben” say, someone please remind me?






“We must all hang together, or ... we shall surely all hang separately.”






Separate but equal, equally dead as can be. The rich, they are just arriving in Maui for the week. The songwriter is rich too, but his Economics are weak as can be.



The Bilderberg's keynote speaks, “We don’t kill the sheep, we just sheer them vigorously until they bleed. Don’t fret the medical expenses are on your Uncle Scam and me. Add it up that’s really free, free of medical care, but it will care for me thanks to your taxes and my posse of cronies. I work for them, and you people all work for me. Here come the wolves! I suggest you keep quiet, please. No need to frighten the other sheep.


Hey did you hear that? O say, can you see? Jose goes to jail, but look above all you see is insulated, consecrated criminality. Not to mention any names, dear Hillary was purged from suspicion after a triple perjury. We came, we saw, and she walked free in good company.


Hey Barrack, the Commerce Clause wasn’t meant be backdoor to everything. You're supposed to use a general clause sparingly so we can all choose, some you win, some you lose, and that President O, equals free. Not free to be your Tinkertoy economy built on thin air, broken promises, and pipe dreams.


Pump a little, then a little more quantitatively, and a shit load of stimulus money to your best friends and their families. Smells like old money to me. You're their latest product and you sold out immediately. Now, you’re all living in that green economy. They say figures don't lie, but that doesn’t mean they speak the truth exclusively.


Senator, please. We’ve listened to all the shady characters C-Span could televise consecutively. I don’t need a hearing, fact finding, or even an inquiry. Now, give me back my Liberty or there will be hell to pay eventually.

The Senator quickly adjourned himself for the rest of the week. His personal assistant announces, “We’ll be landing in Riyadh around three. Just in time for tea, leave your Bible on-board for your safety, not that you ever read that thing.” The King would like you to enjoy some falconry. It's like the bowling of royalty. It’s for the birds, with no booze or women in this country to see.


In the palace of a repressive monarchy held up by the arms of a failing democracy and petro-dollars turned into fanatics gunning the People down in our streets. The Minister of Defense (Peace be upon him and the other Saudis) yawns and asks the Senator, “ Did you bring me the best deal on the weaponry. We've both made a lot of enemies, you and me, but the King’s will take priority.

Shopping at grocery outlet, buy one get one free is the best deal we can see. Stretching to payday while living Monopoly. Watching our wealth blow up in Basrah, Helmet, and Tripoli. Our sweat becomes the fireworks in night vision green. Whoopie! We're deep in the red and far out of the ivy, and chasing boogeymen through the tall weeds.









The paper said it was the fricken’ KGB, so why is everyone looking at me? Constitutionality, the first casualty of a failed democracy, then comes us, that's you and me. I suspect we're suspects by the mob surrounding us wearing red and blue. That's what we were all told to do. Now, our back is up against the wall. United we stood, divided we (firing squad, scream, fades to silence).


They said it couldn't happen here, but it's happening all around me. Put your palms together and start praying fervently, "Lord, deliver me, for into the Valley between Red and Blue we walk silently like little sheep...


With a lot of ground to cover."

Disbelief

Have you ever pulled the cushions off the couch and thrown a blanket over the top to build a fort, a post office, ticket counter, or the general store? For a little while, as long as you could suspend disbelief, those cushions and a blanket were anything you pretended them to be. You invited your brother or sister, maybe your friends to play along, and they did. It was fun for everyone, until someone decided to play the bully who had to have it all. The fort, the post office, ticket counter, and the general store all belonged to the bully. Everyone playing was the bully's property, as well. You weren’t having that, so a fight broke out.

A broken lamp later, your Mom yelled down the stairs, “That’s enough of those silly games! The President is giving the State of the Union address. I can’t think straight with all the bickering going on and I’m trying to suspend disbelief!” 

Prophecy of the Great Seal Fulfilled

Behold! America has come to fulfill the prophecy foretold within the symbolism of her Great Seal.

Our national idol a bird of prey, the bald eagle, grips a fertile olive branch in its dexter talon; the symbol of peace, prosperity, diplomacy, agriculture, and abundance.

The alternate sinister talon of the eagle wields thirteen arrows a symbol of her capacity to strike at great distances, her unparalleled military might, and as a stark but silent  warning, “Beware all you who dare oppose me, death I will reign down upon your people and leave your places desolate.”

America's conscience will not allow her to acknowledge her dependence upon the latter for the former. Our prosperity depends on war.  

In her beak she hold a scroll which reads,  "E Pluribus Unum" which means in the Latin "From many One".  It is our Nation's motto. At the time it was selected,  it was a reference to the  colonies which joined together to forge a nation. 

However,  at the beginning of the Twentieth century,  those same words came to represent the throngs of immigrants who sold all they had and risked it all in the hope of making the American Dream their family's reality. They came from many cultures, spoke many languages,  but within a generation they became America's best and brightest.  

Today, "From Many One" still  represents the soul of America,  it means "We Serve Monopolies". 

Our mother eagle files off to terra incognita and there she rules the land from the skies, picking off the weak and the weary before returning home with fresh carrion to feed her young.

Sustainability is... 

Eating everything you kill.

Big Machine Politics

(or How You Became a Child Abuser)







The problem with a big machine is when they fail the damage can be horrendous. If the operators are not constantly vigilant, they may lose control and seriously injure or kill someone.

Big is the bugger because human beings can't maintain focus on big things indefinitely. That's just the way we are. It's our human nature. We will eventually lose control of the big beast and the damage will be proportional to its size. In the off hand chance we are lucky enough to keep the behemoth from killing people, eventually all machines break down. Someone's going to have to pay the bill. This is where the real luck pays off, because that someone isn't you. It's someone down the line of your descendants who never had a voice in the matter. Once built, mortgaged, and broke, the cost of either repairing or scrapping the damn un-lumbering hulk is commensurate to proportion.

No matter what you were told by experts or assured by accountants at inception, the price tag will be much, much more than anyone imagined. Far outside the bell curve of probability, high and to the right, you'll find some number in need of expression by scientific notation. That's your bill. Please remit. Thank you.





The above is an info-graphic which illustrates the relative costs of some of our bigger government programs on an annual basis or a total estimated expenditure. Pretty huge numbers, huh

Well, that ain't solid human waste. It's practically pocket change to us because we don't pay anywhere near enough for the stuff we get right now. We pay 60%, and the rest is on the heads of our precious children and their children's children. What a bargain! It's all for the children, the bill that is. It's like an inter-generational heroin addiction except we're the only generation to experience the euphoria. The rest withdrawal.





They can't vote anyway. Can they? Hell, most aren't even born, yet! But we're taxing the hell out of them without any representation. Taxation without representation, that's what America is 40% about... now.

But wait, there's more...Here's the real bowel blaster...





See that little box in the lower left corner, that is all those expenses of which we are only picking up a little more than half. The BIG box is the money our precious little ones will have to carry 100% on, plus interest of course.

Oh, and then there are all the deficits we accumulate in the future before we escape this world leaving our tiny tots to the carnage of the...





So, let's grab all the "Free" stuff from the government, while we can. Liberals and Socialists are so compassionate and concerned, aren't they?

Enjoy!

Following the Murderers: Part One

The Means

On the morning after Americans voted [1]  to elect Donald Trump President, I scanned several television and Internet news outlets to get a sense of the nation's reaction. I was a bit surprised myself by the Trump victory, but I realized it didn't matter who won. I was not prepared for the images of chanting protesters, marching demonstrators, and violent rioters [2] in the city streets and university student unions across America.

From New York to Cleveland, Chicago to Seattle, and from Portland all the way down the Pacific coast to San Diego, people were marching, looting, chanting, vandalizing, weeping, shouting, assaulting,  and petting emotional support dogs with a frenzied sense of urgency. At first, I thought the dogs were brought in to protect people from the mentally unhinged mobs. It took me a little while to realize the dogs were there to keep mourners from hydroplaning on tears down sanity's over-lubricated slope. Without the additional emotional traction provided by the dogs, the marching, chanting, weeping mourners would join the looting, vandalizing, assaulting mob.

I felt my grip slipping too. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't watching The Purge or a bizarre synthesis of reality TV show and shaky camera zombie apocalypse film. This was live television news.

Partially disoriented myself, I spoke the question aloud, “Did these people take the things Trump and Clinton said seriously?”

As I Regained my composure I had to reassure myself, “No, it wasn't possible for an educated, free people living in a modern, western democracy to be that stupid. No, it wasn't possible. They would have to be completely ignorant of the last century of American history. Hell, they would have to be completely ignorant of the lessons of history.”

Yet, there they were in all their marching, looting, chanting, vandalizing, weeping, shouting, and frantic emotional support dog petting glory filling the streets of major American metropolises.

My God, they really believed the diatribes, the caustic campaign bravado They honestly bought the barrels of corrosive buffalo dung wantonly distributed by both candidates over the last eighteen months... then chewed and swallowed! Do you know what is wrong with this type of people?

I do.

They are the true believers in an incontrovertibly failed faith. They are the same type who raised their right arms in unison and screamed, ”Heil Hitler!” at the Nuremberg rally in 1938.

They are the same type of people who brought Benny Mussolini to power.

That's right. They believe that government is there to solve their problems for them. Self-centered rage and self-indulgent despair was the human kindling provided by these kind of people. Then, all an aspiring mass murder need do is add a steady blast of hot air to begin the conflagration.

Words of discord lead to acts of discord. As words of war lead to acts of war, and the battle lines are being drawn by partisan politics. Those who divide us by every demographic they can devise [3] benefit from our destruction.

Divide and Conquer!

United we stand?

Divided we are all.

Don't worry, there will be a future, but there is no guarantee it will become a history you will be proud of making.

...the others do something else.

FOOTNOTES and SIDERANTS:

1 - Granted, by the Electoral College vote, rather than the popular vote. The very same Electoral College we've been using for over 200 years. The very same Electoral College which nearly all voters couldn't give a shit about even though it inherently violates the one person, one vote principle which democracy depends upon. Unless, their particular candidate wins the popular vote but still loses the election due to this systemically flawed system, they care! Oh, they care! They deeply and viscerally care for the full length of their attention span, which is roughly fifteen minutes. Then, they immediately revert to not giving a shit, with the exception of a few wacky political blog writers who still care about things like principles.

2 - It looked like a riot, sounded like a riot, and destroyed property like a riot, therefore, I will call it a riot.

3 -  Race, gender, age, income, generation, occupation, geographical location, religious affiliation, pro or con, left or right, republicrat or demopublican, whatever.

Something Wrong

Something has gone terribly wrong with America 

Edward Snowden has been called many things; a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, and a patriot by those who are being illegally spied upon. He has been labeled a criminal, a fugitive, and a traitor by those doing the illegal spying. His disclosures have raised debates, doubts, and public soul searching over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy. The question asked is “Which side of this argument between national security versus personal privacy is right?”

This may come across as Revolutionary, but the People I side with say, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident when one understands who possess Rights and Who Created both Rights and those Endowed with them." I know this sounds like fairly radical ideas I am peddling here, but it's this Principle which separates us from the chaos of...

Jim Sensenbrenner, the co-author of the USA Patriot Act. Along with Assistant Attorney General of the United States Đinh Đồng Phụng Việt, the Honorable(?) Jim Sensenbrenner backdoored the Fourth Amendment with one of the most draconian, sweeping, and far reaching pieces of (s#it) legislation ever signed into U.S. law. The USA Patriot Act has been the (s#it) fertilizer used to grow a bumper crop of legal vagaries which subvert the Fourth Amendment. Thank God we have "patriots" (pronounced: assholes) like “little Jimmy” and “Ding Dong” destroying our Bill of Rights to protect our freedom. Thanks guys, keep up the (s#it) work.

We're not Nuts, We're Screwed!

Have you ever lived through a near death experience. A “gripping the steering wheel, your car is on two wheels, and a semi truck is peeling the paint off the other side of your car” type situation?

After the adrenaline runs its course along with some freshly externalized bodily fluid, you are suddenly overcome with laughter, uncontrollable laughter. Have you ever been there? 

I have.

In that blessed moment, It's good to be alive. No, it's absolutely joyous to be among the living! You would be elated at the thought of a migraine headache because it's so awesome to be alive!

A mere eight minutes to the next rest stop on the road, and we've already forgotten just how wonderful it is to be a sentient being. Yes, no longer is a respiring, masticating, ovulating, or (whatever the male equivalent is) -ing human of the pre-expiration persuasion all things good in the world.

Now, you just need to change your pants. It's cold outside the car, your warm increasingly odoriferous car.  The restrooms looks menacingly dark and adult bookstore dirty, and there's a line. Not just any line, a Soviet era waiting for toilet paper sort of line. You have to stand at the end of this cue as each newcomer asks the same predictable question,”What's with the pants, dude?”

You muddled through some pathetic lie about your daughter's birthday. You don't care if they believe you, and that's for the best because they don't.

A measly eight miles earlier, you were dancing with the angels in the Presence of The Almighty while looking at the world and asking, ”What shall we do with this ball?”

Now, you're reduced to this considerably marginalized position of ignoring hushed rude comments and the obligatory snickers which follow happening right behind your back.

For one brief moment, simply having the next moment of life brought you sudden and profound Enlightenment. Satori!

But now, here, you're best hand at the poker table, your all in moment at the casino, and some freshly-fallen angel holds sway over the turn of the next card. Despair!

I had just such a situation after the results of the 2016 Presidential election were announced.

Thank God Hillary is not our Chief Executive for the next four years. Yes, praise Him for His Hand of Protection over America! Thank you for being this beings God! I am delighted with laughter. I verge on dancing naked before the Lord. I felt like Solomon in all his Wisdom. Satori!

But now, here I realize… Trump! 

Soiled pants. 

Dirty, dark restroom.
Long line.
Snickers.
This sucks!
God help us.
What is that smell

An afterthought:

After sharing such celestial and humiliating experiences with you, I feel there should be some Aesop's Fables moral to this story, and fortunately my feelings haven't led me astray...

America has spoken through her election process: 

"When given only two options, we will prefer the inept over the malevolent."

Hopefully, this will be counted to us as Righteousness. 

A *Wink* to the DPRK

That's not a wink, he's just squinting.

If there was ever a nation on the modern globe which begged for régime change it's the Democratic (👈hilarious!) People's Republic of North Korea (AKA: DPRK). Washington's demagogues obsess over the DPRK's nuclear program because it might hurt people, but the "Home of the Free" (👈hilarious, too!) takes no concrete action1 to protect the millions of people who were and continue to be exterminated under the cloven hoof of the Kim dynasty since 1948. Instead, the business end  of the Arsenal of Democracy (👈chuckle!) has focused on the likes of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and a cast of comparative “Vienna Boy's Choir” voices in the authoritarian régime chorus. This strikes me as disingenuous since we proclaim, promote, and propagate the premise that U.S.military intervention in any given country is prompted to secure the freedom of a repressed people because that's just how magnanimous we are.

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A sense of relative value

Maybe my cynicism waxes melodramatic. There exists the possibility that the people of the DPRK actually love the prospects of living under a draconian state of surveillance, forced isolation, fictional virtues, fabricated history, excessive military spending at a cost of widespread famine, extermination, murder, enslavement, ad hoc justice, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and sexual violence (I used the short list) make up a typical day in this Southeast Asian neighborhood. There is the possibility that this barbarity is how human beings should treat one another and allow one another to be treated by others. Yes, maybe the “Dear Leader, who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have” (👈swallows own tongue laughing) lived up to his onerous title and I am but a wrong thinking enemy of the people. Maybe.

We have Disneyland and they operate secretive prison camps where perceived opponents of the government are sent to face torture and abuse, starvation rations, and forced labor (the quaint little institution we used to call "slavery").
 

Click to Zoom
Amazing dude, huh?

To each their own, I suppose. It's not like we in the “Condo of the Free” (👈giggle) would operate some secretive prison camp on an island ninety miles south of Florida where prisoners are detained without recourse to the law and deprived of their Creator endowed certain unalienable Rights, right? (👈Smirk) That would be intolerable to our American sensibilities because we are totally different from the despotic North Koreans. Different like when the Mafia runs a rigged numbers racket it's a criminal social blight called "Gambling", but when the state runs the same racket it's fun for the entire family called "Gaming" (👈 Damn funny). 

Yup, we're totally different. 
God bless America. 
Amen! 

No matter, if the people of North Korea ever want real hope and change, all they need do is exercise their Second Amendment Rights and overthrow their Beloved Leader just like we advised the Iraqi people do with Saddam. If they were to somehow be bamboozled out of that precious God given Right of self defense (👈Ridiculous!) then all the happy go lucky folks in the DPRK need do is give Pyongyang’s Juche Tower a little makeover...

BEFORE

AFTER

We'll be there directly.
Guaranteed! 
That's just how magnanimous we are.
*Wink*

Footnote:

1 - Concrete Action as opposed to Paper Action, such as:

• Paper writing
• Paper shuffling
•  Paper towel drying your hands after washing them clean of the massacre
•  Paper filing
•  Paper reciting
•  Paper deal making
•  Paper reading 
• Paper tiger origami
• Paper wiping your ass with the Constitution

That's what we do when it comes to freedom, it's window dressing, just rhetoric and feel good resolutions because we don't really believe in the principles and ideals this nation was founded upon.

Grim Facts...

...every American should know.

Syria: Rise of the Warons

Long term effects of Warons

What a difference a war can make!

Has anyone noticed what's happening in Syria?

 It seems that U.S. backed “rebels” are actually terrorist, Jabhat al Nusra and Islamic State are both fighting to topple Bashar Hafez al-Assad whilst fighting each other in their free time. Trying to delineate the opposing forces is like nothing that happens in nature or outside of it, as well. These Syrian intermural scrimmage match teams are more incestuously related than most Appalachians. I can't imagine how a situation like this came to be except for playing Twister on family night and everyone deciding to go Game of Thrones on each other. These guys are related by blood, marriage, mosque, flavor of Islam, and favorite plastic explosive compound. Oh, and they just happen to be from the same neighborhood, Syria. I'm having a hard time finding a reason for most of them them to be fighting, let alone fighting each other. Maybe they were just bored and some very irresponsible people left a lot of munitions laying around. Very irresponsible people whose reckless actions kill innocent people should be brought to justice, shouldn't they?

Whilst you ponder my rhetorical question, try to figure this out as well...



The Obama administration's top priority is bringing down Assad and somewhere (over the rainbow) down the priority list in a virtual tie with providing salad fork subsidies to transplanted Bikini Islanders, is fighting terrorism by the extraordinary strategy of attacking terrorists.

I know this is a hard one to swallow, but if you look at how we have toyed with ISIS for over a year, it becomes apparent that we're not putting our best foot forward and into Islamic State's ass. The topography ISIS inhabits is pretty easily bombed to kingdom come, at least by the appearance of their propaganda videos. Which, might I add, are of remarkable quality for Middle Eastern media. Jeddah and Riyadh viewers appreciate the unifying message to humiliate Rabbis between “I Love Lucy” reruns.

Speaking of a change we can believe in, Obama seems to have pulled a page from the Arabic Problem Solving Handbook…

1. Identify the problem.
2. Kick the shit out of the Kurds.
3. Think about how to solve the problem.

Obama rewrote the procedure…

1. Identify the problem.
2. Change the regime of your choice.
3. Watch the Kurds (who happen to be U.S. allies) get the shit kicked our of them.
4. Think about how to solve exacerbate the problem.
5. Sell guns to everyone including EXTREMIST TERRORISTS GROUPS, except Bashar Hafez al-Assad because he's a bad man. 

Please, try to maintain your composure. This is not a laughing matter. It's our ridiculous foreign policy. So, try to have some respect for Mrs. Hilarious Clinton and her hand picked State Department idiots who originally hashed the Syrian fecal fest together. Please.

Yes, it's true, Assad is no Ghandi that's for sure, but he's no Chairman Mao, either. This behooves Assad because we know what happened to Ghandi. Peace makers in the Middle East don't fare any better if you recall a man named Anwar Sadat, but I don't think Obama takes any of this kind of rational, fact based thought into account when he's obsessing. 

Barack may be suffering OCD with the “Assad must go” mantra because there are a hell of a lot more inhospitable heads of state out there on our tiny blue ball, and there are more on the way. One will be ascending to power this coming January 20th in a nation much closer to home. I could pummel Obama, Clinton, and Trump all day long and I probably will, but that's a hobby and I have to earn a living. 

Here's the money shot. The people who need to be shaken with one of those shakes that kill newborns is the American people. Oh, don't be outraged at me. No. No. You should be enraged by the behavior of our “leaders” who only retain that job title for “leading people on”. Those people being led by the nose are us, the US. The ones hypnotized by the mud slinging, the sleaziness, and the fully automatic ad hominem attacks or acquiring erectile dysfunction from exposure to another episode of the Kardashians. That's what good government/ entertainment is all about, isn't it? 

Journalism has been referred to as infotainment so why should the public sector be left unmutated? Govotainment, it is! Remember, you read it here first.

Now, continue drinking that and all other memories into oblivion because that's the final destination on the current route. While the muse is with us, we should concoct a new disorder called ”Waron”. Symptoms include, but are not limited to,

• Inability to focus on cause and effect relationships
• Easily distracted by bickering
• Confuses issues with dog and pony shows
• Repeats cliché  quotes like, “Make America great again” or “We are stronger together” incessantly.
• Innumerate (e.g. Budgeting) worth a fuck.
• Propensity to lie perpetually but not consistently.
• Maintains a delusional worldview in which Republican and Democratic policies provide different outcomes.
• Clannish as can be, and readily accepts any manufactured oppressed minority subgroup as their own clan. (e.g. - You're a Lesbian, Jewish, Folk, Artist, Male who identifies as a  disembodied spirit of a dolphin named "Harold". Sorry, a bum named "Harold". You must have checked the wrong box.)

• [Add your own] It's a fun distraction while you try to forget what you just read and resuspened your disbelief. 

If you haven't rejoined the Matrix yet, there is hope. The treatment for Waron is called “diligence”, and the only negative side effect/ benefit is awareness. It has some antisocial symptoms, such as:

• Inability to ignore hypocrisy
• Reduced capacity to suspend disbelief
• Increased skepticism
• Always results in terminal sarcasm

While all the major powers involved in this Murder on the Mediterranean game claim that a cessation of hostilities is their goal, not a single one of them has proposed an arms embargo. Not one. Nobody. 

*Sound of crickets chirping*

War On!

Laugh! While we still can...

From the Michael P. Remirez Gallery*

Truth, Justice, and the American Clinton Way

Home of the Free Entitled
Land of the Brave Safe.

* - No NEA grant money required, huh? Weird.