Read this from my good friend, MB Shepherd…

The land of “in-between”
November 23, 2009Mongolia.
To some, it is known as the back country. The “no-man’s” land – “outer” Mongolia.
For me, and my exposure to history, it is forever ingrained in my heart as the “land in-between”.
Rich in history and a place of vast resources, I once heard that it would be what would prove in contention to be the makings of the next, “great” war.
It is the land of Ghingus Khan (and the great Khan, Kubla). It is the land in-between.
It is between China and Russia.
And both, I feel certain have said “never again”.
It was a ruthless tirade that took that poor and much-maligned Mr. Khan on such a tear throughout China, Russia and Europe.
And so now they are pushed into that small area between to the two titans, Russia and China.
So, this is how the world handles the problem-oh children. Shove them in a corner.
Well, I don’t think it works so well with adults.
Take a battered wife, for example (and thanks to my office mate for pointing out this brilliant analogy)..
Have you heard of the “Stockholm” syndrome? It is usually described in terms of a bank robbery gone bad that winds up in a hostage situation. Those taken hostage begin to indentify with the terrorists, begin to make excuses for them, and even come to have some sort of “bro-mance” with them.
Well, I submit to you today that this is exactly what is happening with health care in America.
We are trapped by an abusive spouse (the Federal Government) and we refuse to fight them, so we surrender to them (even our allegiance and our souls).
We are oppressed by them just like a Khan or a hostage-taker and so we seek to make excuses for them.
What would be right would be to turn the frying pan up-side of their heads.
Or, to out-cast them to outer Mongolia.
That would be the right thing.
But, instead, we suffer interminably in that land “in-between”.
Instead of fighting to regain our freedom, we submit to the nonsense.
We become each, wards of the state.

A Paranoid Planet
November 8, 2009The following is a piece of fiction. Again, I iterate, FICTION. I write it from the standpoint of some, weird, mixed-up futurist who is all wet in what is about to transpire in the next couple of days, and weeks, and months, and years, and … (sometimes, I just can’t let go of something).
It is set in the post-Obamageddon, one-half century away.
A Paranoid Planet
Sid had been living in the new age now for some (almost) 48 years.
He barely remembered a man who someone had told him was his grandfather once telling him tales of some fantasy land where everyone had something called “freedom”.
It was a concept foreign to Sid, and most all those living in the new age.
You see, in the new age, everyone serves the state. No one is capable of independent thought (for Amerika-forbid that any should think for themselves).
Choice is something that was now long-forgotten.
Why get mixed up in worrying with making choices anyhow — Uncle Sam was now so adept at doing it for everybody, and human beings should not have to worry with such trifling matters.
After all, Uncle Sam has a super-computer, for Amerika’s sakes – and it is capable of making all sorts of decisions. Why, it is programmed with decision loops! Imagine. Loops!
On Sundays, Sid and his neighbors all get together down at the warehouse for their “communing” sessions. Some (who have been there since the night before, Saturday, or as some call it “Sexy Saturday”) were still busy either rolling up their amoré-cushions, or, they were still busy putting them to good* use.
In the new age, things were patterned after points in history that many in charge found most-appealing. Ancient Greece and Rome, Native American Culture, and even African motifs were often sported in the “communing houses” where everyone would congregate on Sunday mornings to yawn, and perform other bodily functions, and to worship the state (Amerika, that is).
Sid would get tingles up his legs and spine when everyone would begin shouting “hail, hail Amerika.
Hail, hail, the new age. Hail, hail Amerika, this new world”.
Where education was concerned, they hardly used books at all any more. Plato (1, 2, 3) and Pliny (1,2), To Kill a Mockingbird(1), The Last of the Mohicans(2), essentially everything that had been pored-over in the previous century, now was reduced to cliff notes found on the internet.
It was all consistent with that ruling, some fifty years ago-
Everything, everything, everything in the new age was about mandates.
There were no more choices for anyone, anywhere.
The Madame Fuhrer ensured that for us all, for all perpetuity.
It was she who set the agenda; she who laid the groundwork. She, who set the wheels in motion for this brave, new age of statism.
All the great works of the past that had warned against falling under the oppressive rule of a state-society gone mad, were forgotten.
They were forgotten in the internet pornography that passed as good knowledge. Lost in a sea of carnal influence that corrupted all that was good, all that was logical, and all that was sensible. It was sold for carnal appetites.
It was sold for base, human instinct (animal, really).
And now, the price that is paid is that all suffer at the hands of a cruel master who would put all in dog collars and treat them as slaves.
Under the surface, somehow, Sid sensed that there was trouble peculating at the bottom depths of the witch’s cauldron, and soon, very soon, the lid to the cauldron was going to be thrust skyward in an explosion of pent-up frustration at it’s foolishly restrictive constraint.
No one, Sid thought, was going to keep this lid on this pressure pot for very long.
No strength manifest by Boaz, Hercules, or even Heaven-above would keep this lid held down.
Freedom, even when repressed, finds a way to liberate the enslaved.
Free people will not live in chains, or be fed on state-sponsored porn.
Free people will be free, and think free.
It is the way of the free…to in all ways, always, fight to the death and beyond even the grave those who live and yearn to enslave others with restraints, restrictions and ridiculous regulation.
Such was the time, and such was the place that our Mr. Sid was about to encounter !
Catch more in the next installment of this exciting serial “The Amoral Amerikans“.
* Good (and evil) were relative in the new age.
(1) Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Popular Library, 1962. Print. (2) Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757. Albany New York: Bibliolife, 2008. Print. Books, 1960.

Breaking Rules (and Regulation)
October 31, 2009Regulation.
Sounds like something that an old person would wish upon their own bowel.
I run to the gutter today, as I believe that is where the nation (as a whole) is headed.
Actually, to the sewer.
Well, I realized that I had said that I would try and keep this column from getting too personal.
As a (former) student of journalism (I’ve now crossed over to a full embrace of Public Relations), but as a former student I remember all-too-well the journalism professor’s admonition to “never get in the way of the story”.
I also remember them telling us that such stories (articles, which EVERYONE always referred to as “stories” – a concept that warrants a future diatribe in another column) – telling us that such stories belong on the OP ED page (opposite the editorial; the editorial page is the page upon which seasoned journalists get to “opine” and / or “vent” (you make the call) — “OP ED” is the page where you (read “kooks” as in “anyone who would take the time to write in to the newspaper), but it is the place where you and I can “vent” and “opine” just across from those professional “kooks” who get paid to be kookie.
Well, what is a blog if not an OP ED page (and thank God, I don’t get paid).
Health Care, revisited
So what rules is ol’ Precipii going to break today?
How ’bout all of them (at least where ObamaNation is concerned).
I try and not make a huge deal out of this, but I suffer from a malady known as Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA, for short).
It (RA) affects my body in such a way that my immune system (which I have learned is much, much more complex than what they teach us in health class; it is more than just white blood cells (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
Now the reason I’m spending so much time on this is that I am “stretching” my rules about getting personal as I think my experience here speaks volumes about the coming health care system.
Yesterday … wait, back up.
Six weeks ago, I began thinking I need to get a flu shot. I started researching what is going on, and I learned that the greatest success rates on the swine flu indicates that the hospital workers who took the mist (the one containing the live virus) were having fewer incidences of catching the flu than those who took the injections (containing “dead” virus).
So, I have to stop taking my arthtritis meds, which lower my immune system. By going off the meds, my immune system re-bolsters itself in about four weeks (I think two weeks, actually, as my arthritis started back again after about two weeks) – but anyhow, my immune system is “cooking with gas” four weeks into it.
So, yesterday I go to the health clinic in my nearest, large, metropolitan city and I fill out the paperwork (being careful not to lie, which in hindsight, I should’ve done anyway), but they ask me if my immune system is compromised.
Now I have a note from my doctor telling them that I’ve been off my immune system-inh8ibiting drugs for well over four weeks and that he’s instructed me not to take my arthritis meds for another two weeks, but the nurse has to go talk to her supervisor anyway.
Her supervisor (of course, being smarter than all the other doctors in the world, combined, and for God sakes being from the GOVERNMENT and all – (probably just promoted from the DMV) TRUMPS my doctor and says I only qualify for the dead virus).
I endure four weeks of arthritis pain, not being able to sleep, just so some nit-wit in a public office can over-ride the prescription set out by doctors who have earned degrees and somehow have careers that lead them into actual practice, rather than playing god in some public health care facility!
WELCOME, america, to the new health care system!
The bottom line, I ask the nurse “does the injection work equally well against the swine flu as does the mist” to which she replied “yes”.
Now, her answer is not consistent with the research I’ve been reading on the subject (1, 2, 3) (note how public officials, health care workers and police and firemen are getting the MIST !!!).
The bottom line is that here we have yet another public official playing god.
I am told, by a health department (and contrary to my regular doctor’s orders) that I am not “qualified” to take the mist (I wonder if the health care system is “qualified” to give me a vacation or something to make up for the agony I’ve been through while off my RA meds?).
Well, I know I’m whining over these sour grapes, but you know what – you will be too, one day.
This is what the future of YOUR health care looks like.
On top of this, I get home from the health department visit only to read that there are new “studies” out that indicated that cheaper (and much more dangerous to my over-all health) drugs are available that work equally well to the more expensive drugs I know take (those that actually work and cause much fewer side effects).
Welcome, once again to your future.
Now a panel of medical scientists (equally adept, I would bet, to the all-knowing, all-seeing supervisor down at the public health clinic – oh, which I had to go to because it was the ONLY place in an expansive vicinity that had the flu mist) – but this panel of scientists (public-funded, no doubt) now says that I can do equally well on the other drugs.
Let me tell you about the one they recommend.
It’s called Methotrexate, and it “used” to be used to treat pediatric leukemia…and it really, really makes one ill.
I really did not pay much attention to how much better my arthritis was when I was taking it, because I was constantly dealing with have zero energy, feeling clammy (you know that feeling you get when you have a high fever, like say for instance when related to, oh, I don’t know, say the swine flu?)…and then there was the nausea, the sore muscles, the over-riding feeling that this “treatment” must be doing more harm than good.
Then there is the baseline liver biopsy that they have to do.
They take that device they use on pregnant women (ultrasound) and some technician scans your liver. Then you lie in that room for what seems like an eternity.
Then they wheel you into this next, big room where they take all your clothes off (not that a gown constitutes clothes) and you lay on a cold, steel table waiting on the doctor and nurses. He comes in with this big gun and places it on your iodine-covered side…get’s it into position and then gets cold feet.
“How long before he had the ultra-sound?”, he asks (a real confidence builder)…”too long…too long (and he cusses, under his breath).
He looks at the nurses, then decides to go ahead with it anyhow (just before telling me he is worried because organs like the liver can “float” within your body and he uses the ultrasound to be certain he is hitting my liver).
The big, spring-loaded “gut” that he places on my side has a very long, very heavy gauge needle that he pushes through my side to pierce my liver (thank God for local anesthetic) and once inserted, he pulls the trigger which drives another needle down the first to essentially take a “core” (like coring a pineapple) sample of my liver.
I’m supposed to get this procedure done on a periodic basis with the Methotrexate-treatment option (the one favored by public health clinics, and publicly-funded “pseudo-scientists” who come up with such studies – same guys who predict how much vaccine we will need to prevent the coming pandemic – probably also predicted by publicly -funded “scientists”.
Again, welcome to your new health care system.
Are you cozy yet?
Under capitalism, and free choice, I am still able to take my biologics, which, by the way, actually treat the disease (and not the symptoms) and I don’t get all sick on them, and I don’t have to have my liver ruptured on a periodic basis.
But God knows the public option has to be the best for THIS patient.
To quote ol’ Lynard Skynard in “Freebird” – “Now I’m as free, as a bird now ‘how ’bout you, Atlanta?’
I just wonder how long we (how ’bout you, America?) will stay free in the coming Obama health-care system with all its egomaniacs, sham science and people with Napolean complexes down at the local clinic playing god with the health of OUR bodies, human.
By the way. I wouldn’t even bother with the flu vaccine, but the biologics I take (and the same goes for Methotrexate) lower my immune system making me more vulnerable for contracting the swine flu.
Since I’m a guinnea pig in all this, just had to share my experience. I think it offers great insight into what awaits us all in the coming years.
I’m so appreciative to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and Obama for all this “love” they so kindly share. Now, why don’t you bug off and leave us be. We’d like to get on with taking care of our own bodies (as the doctors all tell me – the decisions for my treatments all rest with me).

A Time for Reflection
October 13, 2009Ahhh, reflection.
Ain’t it grand?
Narcissus thought so.
You remember that cat, don’t you? You know, the one from Bullfinches?
Bullfinch, you ask?
Yes, Bullfinches, you see, was (and probably is, for any who still read) the pentultimate collection of Greek Mythology.
And so, what of this Narcissus? Well, you’ve heard of Narcissim, surely?
If not, let me give you an example, (ahem…well, let my friend’s at “Real Clear Politics” give you an example from our recent history…back before all the hullaballo that goes on in the moment).
Perhaps next week we can talk of that cat who flew too close to the sun…now what was his name? Oh, yes, that Icarus fellow.
Now, there is some REAL globular warming!
Tooooaaaasty!
(Say Albert…maybe when you and B.O. get finished polishing your Nobel Paprazzi Peace Prizes, and looking at your reflection in them, maybe the two of you will want to hop aboard Icarus Air and take a quick jaunt to see how well his wings of wax are holding up. While you are at it, you can give us all a status report on the solar flare activities and perhaps a ski report or two looking down from on high at one of the earliest ski resort record snows in history. Looks like it’s gonna be an icey one, fellas! Maybe you guys will want to re-think that whole “re-writing” history thing as well…huh, guys?).

A “wrap-up” on the week’s wrap-ups that is “all wrapped-up” (just, not too tight, please!)
September 19, 2009Ever felt a bit “constrained” ?
I know that I do.
I know I said I’d not get personal in this column, but the fact is, this is an opinion-based blog. Its mission as a rag is to be driven to (vainly) be humorous, at times, but always to be driven to try and be published in a manner that displays at least “something” about the most significant news story(or stories) of the past week.
Now, this is NOT my day job, and in no way pays my bills. Now that I’m working long, long hours, I basically only have the weekends to “opine”.
So, the column is taking a new “flave” for a bit…”wrap-ups” (and what a week to begin them, huh? ref the pic above, hee, hee).
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Enough already about “wrap-ups” (beginning to make me feel like some people are wrapped just a little too tight).
But, what an irony, huh?
Our Commander-in-Thief is constraining us with health care, robbing us of our inherited wealth (and then re-distributing it to people who should inherit only the, let’s see, how does it go? “inherit the wind, but reap the whirlwind” ??? – remember “God moves in a wind storm”, and this is how both Noah and Moses remembered the “harkening” of His divine presence…but, that’s another story, ENTIRELY), and generally “mucking things up”.
And now we have to be jap-slapped with this hoo-ha about “America (sic, WOMEN) being constrained”.
YAWN.
Let’s see, what about these people where “constraints” are concerned?
What is it, that quote, you know the one…concerns “doom” (and who is doomed when they forget (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ψ)).
So, “what of it“, you might ask?
Well, “let me tell ya” (it is, as I’ve so many times stated, an opinion column, after-all) -
when people forget what happens when humans begin yielding to their nasty, human nature, baaaaaad thangs start to happen, that’s what!
Real bad.
Real, real bad.
For the first time, I think, Madame Pelosi’s sense and sensibility is beginning to serve her (it remains to be seen whether she will demonstrate some personal responsibility).
But the point is, she is beginning to sense that the world is becoming an extremely “constrained” place (as IF, EVERYONE…did not already perceive that tid-bit – the internet is, after all, making it a smaller and smaller place (let’s all get “small”, eh, Steve-a-reeno“?).
Well, I guess I should say, everyone, who remembers history (and histoi in the making).
The most disturbing thing, for me, about the vid of the Madame, is not her tears (of/for fear? yuck, yuck), but rather, that one, singularly-”prickly”, statement … “the ears that it is falling on…are not as balanced“as those making the statements”.
Now who, on earth, could she be referring to? Not as balanced?
Well, I guess balanced is, as balanced do.

OK…Politicians Lie – enough, already
September 12, 2009Whoop-et-tee.
Here’s a news-breaking story for you.
Politician’s lie.
subhead:
For once, team Obama tells the truth.
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Only thing is, he gets it tea-totally wrong about George Bush.
But this is the way of the unqualified lie, told by extremely qualified liars.
Barrack Obama comes from Chicago-land.
It is the place where corrupt and scoundrelous, unmitigated liars are born. It is their breeding ground; a maggot’s nest of smarmy politicians.
Let’s see, I simply can not remember the Greek or Athenian or other “of that ilk”, but his famous quote was “All [Athenians, let's say] are liars (and then he, it is related, was an Athenian).
So, if all were liars, and he was one of them and made that statement, it would then mean he was lying, which means they all tell the truth (Athenians)…yikes…which in turn would mean, he was lying.
I tell ya, you can’t win with those Greek philosophers.
Or with politicians.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
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Ah, the truth…how revolutionary indeed.
For a politician to tell it, especially a braying donkey, now that would be revolutionary indeed.
It seems a universal truth to me, once you cut through the bull, that a Democrat is a liar by his very nature.
He can’t help it.
He lies to himself with such beliefs as “There is no God”, or “We can win the war on poverty” (the bible, old-as-it-is, still prevails “we will always have the poor”).
Cut through the mumbo-jumbo, and you’ll find truths, slapping you in the face.
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“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, “The Beryl Coronet” |
…and all this time, I thought this was “Spock” who said this one (eh, eh).
For example, one could make the statement (circular again) that ALL politicians are liars.
George Bush would have been lying then, when he made the “mis-statement” aboard that aircraft carrier that “the war was won” (in truth, one phase of it was won that day – but the media spun the story so, that it became yet another brick in the wall for a case that all politicians are liars).
If you stick to that maxim, then Obama is a liar. That said, he lies when he calls us liars.
So what is the real truth?
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie–diliberate, contrived, and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
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The real truth is, we have a President who has been defined as Superman, and the savior of man (I think he is neither).
He is just a man.
Talk about your myths.
So are we to believe such as this ?
Why would we ?
The fact is, the two sides here can continue to act like school children (really more the donkeys right now than the pachyderms), or they can stand on the truth, on tried and true methods, and they can listen to their constituents who are tired of all the crap.
Let’s see some responsibility come out of Washington.
Now is the time for the Republicans to “seize the day”…they are literally poised for it.
Over, and over, and over we have been hearing the mantra “Bush lied, people died” – well, think about this quote, comrades…
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“A lie told often enough becomes truth.”
-Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov), attributed, probably proverbial |
Perhaps the real revolution that is going on in America today has nothing what-so-ever to do with this so-called “mandate” of Obama’s, but rather, the very real opportunity that sits in the laps of Republicans to step up to the plate and “do the right thing” ; your people are screaming for it.
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During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
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Don’t spend any more of our hard-earned money.
You’ve got pimp-daddies in Acorn who are screwing the country and everybody else around them.
It’s like a feeding frenzy of sharks, and I don’t want them to take down the ship.
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
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Sure, sure.
Universal health care will help us all, universally.
Just like AIDS has been cured in France, or Norway, or Britain.
Just like they are beating Cancer in Germany.
Let’s see now – what was the last, great medical breakthrough of grand scientific nature that came out of a socialist nation?
Madame Curie’s radium, perhaps? Or Pasteur’s germ-killing heat? Maybe it was a cure for syphilis in Amsterdam?
Let’s see now, what do we, here in America, have to our own, capitalist, credit?
PET scans, CT Scans, MRI’s, biologics, artificial hearts, stem cells that are NOT derived from aborted human beings (thank you, President Bush) – what else? I’m sure the list goes on, and on, and on.
To hell with “power to the people” – power to the people who invest.
Who invest their time in hard work.
Who invest their moneys in innovation.
Who invest their lives in improving the lot of everyone in this great nation.
And you know what else?
To hell with lying politicians who create myths about themselves and try and get us to swallow some universal lie like “free health care to everyone” – ain’t nuthin’ in this life free, ‘cept for the lies told by a lazy, thievin’ mule.

“Big, Fat Zero”…Hero
September 8, 2009(or why I gave up socialist ‘bombs’ and learned to love a realistic account of history)
OK.
So you heard it here first.
Superman is really one of the “President’s of the United States“.
But, understand something PLEASE !
The first article was not about Obama, really. It was about team Obama.
It was about the love-fest that led (and leads) to mega-maniacal, ego-bloated, ego-mania.
It is zeitgeist on cocaine.
But here is the problem with this “form” of zeitgeist – it is NOT representative of the national “mood”, but rather, it only represents the mood of his Kook-aide drinking minions.
So they say it (this foray into America’s classroom) is nothing more than hero worship by a bunch of “Lord of the Flies” zeros.
Well even zeros can cause a great deal of damage.
Look at Columbine.
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Michael Moore.
What are you gonna do with him?
Here he comes, out of the woodwork again, to lead a pep rally for his blue-collar buds.
“Capitalism is baaaad”, they shout.
You ever heard of the dog that bights the hand that feeds it?
It was the “Summer of Love“, 1968.
A bunch of dumb-assed kids, fat and bloated on their momma’s and daddy’s seeming endless supply of monies, got together for a “love feast” now infamously known only as “Woodstock”.
It defined (and defied) a generation, really.
They were hopped up on their weed, and their cocaine, and they defied conventional wisdom, their parents, their Nation, and I would argue, even their God.
They thumbed their noses at responsibility, at tradition, at their own homes – they basically made it so that home was no longer a hospitable place at all.
Like their love feast, it was a muddy, disease-infested mess of muck, mixed with excessive sin and of course, the mire that results.
And now ladies and gentlemen we have Michael Moore, entering, stage left and trying his damnedest (with a bunch of other hard-luck hippies who wish to re-kindle a past best left Manson dead) waltzing on the scene and resurrecting what was really a hate-fest in disguise and all aimed at the heart of America, of God and of capitalism.
Thank you Michael Moore.
Here’s hoping (literally) that you trip on your bong, fall face-first in the mire and are forever choked beyond speech by the very mess you and yours so happily created.
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On Propaganda (yet again)
I re-visited some of my prior articles and noted Hitler’s views on “big lies and little truths” from Mein Kempf.
It causes me to earnestly re-think this in light of this propaganda move by the President and by the White House.
I know they’ve been endlessly compared to the little Furor, but…common guys, this bit with the school children is truly below the belt, even for a bunch of Nazi’s.
And the propaganda wheel turns ’round, and ’round.


