Signs? of the times

There is inherent danger in taking a microcosm and applying it to the universe.

From my vantage on the precipice, it seems characteristic of the manner in which we seem to want to proceed in our culture.

Think about it.

How often do you hear someone use the word “typical” in reference to someone’s actions, or “typically” when one is referring to some process in which they indulge from day-to-day?

Another example would be “well, you really could have seen that one coming.  I mean, come on (he, she, it) after all is a (man, woman, “it”).

I know from economics course I had in business school that the professors would caution us to make certain distinctions between macro- and micro- economics.

Placing all that aside (as I so often do in this column), I was shopping at a large, retail chain the other day (actually quite a while back) and I wanted some muriatic acid.

We used to use the stuff when I was a life-guard back in college to clean the bottom of the swimming pool.  Work great on concrete and really nasty stuff that has mold or green slime growing out of it…kill is all dead and makes the final product look as fresh as a daisy.

When I ask the attendant in the pool department where to find a gallon of it, his reply was “oh no, we don’t sell that stuff here,” and he acted as if I was a middle-easterner asking for a gallon of atomic boom.

It’s a cleaning agent, for heaven sakes, and he acted as if I’d asked for the power to destroy all of mankind.

Which got me to thinking.

If I wanted to control what my neighbor was doing, right down to the nth degree, what better way than to corner the market on everything (groceries, oil filters, fishing supplies, pool cleaning acids) and then (when my government regulations do not work) simply not stock the materials people need to accomplish the tasks necessary in daily living.

In other words, run everybody else out of business, and then corner what products the populace can actually lay hands on.

Now this is a juicy conspiracy, (especially given the fact that the same, unmentioned, giant retailer is the same giant retailer who had an un-named former upity-up from government sitting on their board of directors – a tree-hugging liberal, mind you, and one who probably detests swimming pools since said someone can no longer fit in said-someone’s bathing attire).

At any rate, the bottom line is, how in the hell do I get my side-walks clean when no one will sell me that beautiful, germ-killing, concrete whitening muriatic acid?

Guess I could make my own, but that defeats the purpose.

I’m a careful individual, after all.  Once the stuff has etched the concrete, I would always use bicarbinate of soda to neutralize it before spraying off the residue with my pressure washer.

But again, the point it, when they can not legislate their (tree-hugging) brand of morality, they then will enter the market place, compete for the front-running position, and then mandate through corporate sponsorship their agenda?

Not-so-conspiratorial when you consider the plight of General Motors, now is it.

Next thing you know, they will cut into my supply of sardines (the only thing keeping me alive in this sick economy the morons have devised).

If there is anything in this world that you like, you’d better begin stockpiling it now…their brand of morality is sure soon to take it away from you.

###

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When Winning is Not the Only Thing

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I am a fan of Vince Lombardi.

I don’t know that many passages from the bible have been quoted, debated and misused as much as Brother Lombardi’s famous quote.

After tossing and turning and dreaming horrid dream last night (something becoming more and more frequent – gonna have to watch my diet or see a shrink or something), it was one of those mornings where you wake up unable to breathe, ribs feeling like they’ve been punched in a boxing match all night, and pretty much mad at the world.

But thinking about the big “V”.

Victory.

Yes, it is a motorcycle Alice (and a damned fine one), but it is also a state of being.

Unlike the mood I woke up in, THAT mood feels pretty good.

So Lombardi was right, in one vein, it can be the “only” thing.

But I asked myself – are there times that it is not “the only thing” ?

I have to say, resoundingly, “yes”.

Think about it.

Is it worth the winning if in the process somebody has to die (say, your Grandmother, or your favorite dog, “Harvey”) ?

Is it worth winning if in the winning your soul is compromised ?

Is it worth winning, if everybody else (and I do mean “every-body”) loses (1)?

“Succeeding with great difficulty”, one definition of winning, yet the question begs to be asked “what measure, success” ?

When you have an agenda that benefits a few, or perhaps even only one, is that winning?

Was Nero a hero (1, 2, 3, 4) ?

There have been countless stories related in the past of men, who for a time, led a people using a mix of brutality, fanfare and cunning to convince them that through this superior force and regal display that they were both protected, and well-served.

There is NO need to recount the cast of usual suspects here, not in this forum.

We have all heard the comparisons, ad nauseum and I’ll spare any further detailing here, out of respect for your sense of “oh brother, here we go again” and to cut down on the wear and tear on my “philangeal” joints (eh, eh).

The truth be told, I never liked it, not one iota, when conservatives were compared to certain of these “types” of suspects, and so I’ll refrain.

Having said this, of no doubt, and I mean absolutely no doubt, we, as a free people, must NEVER forget (again, remember, this is NOT a comparison).

We must never forget the Alamo, and what Santa Anna did there.

We must never forget Aushwitz…

…or the Gulag…

…or the incarceration of Japanese-AMERICANS during WWII.

We must also recognize, in no uncertain terms, that there is a PROFOUND difference between those incarcerated AMERICANS, and, say, Adolph Hitler.

Can you imagine how different a world we would currently live in were there to have been a GITMO in ‘35, and were HE to have been water-boarded in it?

You think there would have been a Göring ?  a Mengele, or even the ancillaries Il Duce,  Chiang Kai-shek, or even-over, I would argue, Idi Amin? (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

So, why should Jimmy Carter get so much attention?

There is no comparison (honestly), to the above-mentioned “evil” men, and I do not mean, even through inference, to imply otherwise.

What is more interesting here is not so much the essence of these callous dictators, but more, what effect does our current culture have on the psychologically “negative” reinforcement (truly a positive thing, when it works) of the “images” of these men?

What I mean to say, we live in a culture that practically crams “erase the hate” down our throats, yet we also love our football and boxing (again, no comparisons, but tacking it back to the concept of “winning”).

I would counter that there is nothing evil, or bad, even, in hating evil.

In persecuting it.

In ferreting it out, and in starving it to death.

What those men mentioned above did lacked any humanity or anything that even approached a human treatment of one’s fellow man.

But at one time, they were perceived as winners.

They won the people’s hearts.

I can find no love in my heart for this, and no admiration for this brand of winning.

Again, what price, success?

I refuse to erase that hate.

I will not.

So, laying wreaths on the graves of those who would hurt us, I do not believe, is a fair interpretation of the biblical admonition to “love one’s enemy”.

Loving one’s enemy can be found in the re-building of Japan and Europe after WWII.

It is loving the people who Nero led to infamy.  It is forgiving them for putting such a man in power, and destroying such men of glory.

It is helping them to understand the way of the Christian, and I would argue, the way of the free man.

Christianity itself flourishes in a free society (and this borne out the world over).

God Himself grants each of us the freedom to “choose” to follow Him.

Why then must policies be forced down our throats?

Why?

I’ll tell you why.

It is the egomania of one man, and the seeming inability of an entire nation to stand up to him.

Never ask again how it is such men come to power.  They come to power by our senseless indifference, our unforgivable apathy and our relentless proclivity toward envy and a multitude of other such sin.

In short, it is not the man who should be excoriated, but rather, the sinners who put him there.

Now is the utmost, crucial time to remember the admonition “Love thine enemy as thy self”.

It is, truly, the ultimate in victory.

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On Bias, creation (and machines)

I got to thinking about bias last night.

And Charles Babbage.

At work yesterday we talking about computers…Access Databases, specifically.

I got to thinking about arrays, which always makes me think of Babbage’s “machine”.

When I was a kid, I enjoyed magic.

Every chance I got, with every spare dime, I’d buy tricks at a magic shop.

I got to be pretty good.

It got it’s start in parlors.

Thus the phrase “parlor trick”.

Did you know that Babbage’s machine started out as a parlor “trick”, or gimmick?

It basically resembled something like one of those games from the Orient – you know the ones where colored stones tumble down a rack of pegs and wind up stacking up in a series of slots at the bottom.

Babbage’s machine was a bit more complex, as it would actually perform certain calculations based on the “gates” through which the tiles, or stones or beads passed (and calculate Bernoulli numbers – 1, 2, 3, 4).

I’m not sure of its exact configuration, but the stones would stack at the bottom with some relevance to whatever was the desired calculation – say, one stone in the first rack and one stone in the second rack with yields (equals) two stones in the “equals” rack.

You get the picture.

At the time, it wasn’t thought of as particularly useful or significant (pretty much the same way I feel about computers today – a glorified combination of calculator, typewriter and library card catalog).

Well, maybe somewhat useful.

But still, it has that nuance of parlor trickery.  Much of science, back-in-the-day, was of this ilk – fanciful (like Mr. Wizard).

Just a passing fancy, or a peculiar sort of game.

The funny thing is, we place such significance on it, when it should be maintained in this “curiosity” state.

I suppose it goes with the whole “peacock preening its feathers” concept, although.

It is our creation, and thus a reflection of our intelligence, and therefore, brilliant (like us).

In fact, it’s really no better now than it was in Babbage’s time.

It is a parlor trick.

We, as fallible humans, build our fallibility into the computer.

It is a knock off of us, and therefore, like us, it is biased and a paltry reflection.

Most systems contrived by men (if not all) are likewise biased.

It is our nature, and the one arena where we are nothing like God.

His bias is in no way built into our make-up (what else could explain how some of us reject Him).

It is unfortunate that we are not capable of building a machine, or software, based on God’s model for us…one with free will.

I seriously doubt we ever will.

We can build them that make decisions, and even heal themselves and teach themselves…but I doubt that we will ever build one that can make wise choices.

Look at us.

Hell, most of us (if you believe the computer-generated polls) voted for Obama and believe he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

So much for an unbiased machine, political or otherwise.

Statistics lie, computers generate statistics, and liars program computers and quote said statistics.

It is a mad and vicious circle…a python consuming itself.

Truthful, real men – their actions speak the volumes and set the example for the perfect machine – created based on the model developed by team-God (and not some moron who get’s sustenance from that tree of knowledge).

A man, capable of making his own choice, and making it based on free, untethered, (and unencumbered by socialist, or group-think, or monomaniacal dictates) and even making so without any interference by the all-knowning, all-seeing creator – a free mind is truly the perfect piece of software, and the only one that will ever have an inkling of a chance at true randomness, or valid and unbiased decision loops.

I am glad that a programmer of God’s caliber is behind the thoughts meandering from the casaba that sits atop my shoulders.

How ’bout you, genius?

On the Eve of Destruction & Re-birth

³⁹ And he went forth a little, and felled down [fell down] on his face, praying, and saying, My Father, if it is possible, pass this cup from me [praying, and saying, My Father, if it is possible, this cup pass from me]; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

- Jesus Christ from Matthew 26 (Wycliffe New Testament)

⁵⁹Now the chief priests, and elders, and all the council, sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death;⁶⁰But found none: yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found they none. At the last came two false witnesses, ⁶¹And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.

Matthew 26 (King James)

One could make the assertion that with destruction always comes rebuilding.

On the eve of battle, many men have reflected, planned and sought council, even of their deity.

It is not at all uncommon and to be expected.

Tomorrow, I believe, we embark on one of the greatest struggles our Nation has ever faced.  We go into this certain hellfire of uncertain outcome with great trepidation if, that is, we are of any good sense at all.

There will be, it is sure, immense struggles associated with our future.

When held at ransom by a tyrant, there is but one response by those accustomed to freedom.

Freedom will find its voice in the determination of those who resist the shackle.

The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.
Sun Tzu

There can be no doubt that those who seek to limit the freedoms of others can only be construed as the vicious oppressor.

They live, only, for such suppression; for it is the only way of success for the tyrrant.

“So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants”

Publius Cornelius Tacitus

The democrats have ransomed our future.  They have placed a shackle, and a burden our our very descendants that can not be denied.

They have sold us into a slavery of the state.  The “company store” is the Congress of the United States, and given present conditions, we will never be able to pay our way out of this indentured and servile state into which they have sold each and every one of us.

At the very least, we may always hope that there will be a complete and total reversal of this mad yoke that our Congress has so kindly placed upon our shoulders.

It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.
Thomas Paine

Perhaps there will be a time, and a day, when this will be the case.

For now, we will trudge along through this quagmire, but in time, we will again prevail and, that, through our freedom.

26 When the centurion heard [that], he went and told the chief captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman. 27 Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a Roman? He said, Yea. 28 And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was [free] born. 29 Then straightway they departed from him which should have examined him: and the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew that he was a Roman, and because he had bound him.

Acts 22

Who Pays the Piper?

You know the old saying.

So what will be the tune, and who will dance the jig?

The party is, most assuredly, OVER.

The Dems have won.  GAME, SET, MATCH(?).

They now have their “dream scheme”.

Who will pay for it?

Seems a trite and silly question, does it not?

Who voted for the sorry sloths?  Do you think they are going to pay for it?

What is the one positive you can see in all this?

Who pays the piper?

What will the tune be, and who will dance the jig?

For the time being, it appears that we will.  All of us who have faithfully payed our taxes, supported our Nation and done our civic duty.

What happens when that loyal base decides to “cash in” ?

What happens when they decide to stop doing their civic duty?

Who pays the piper then?  And what will the tune be?

Can you imagine?  Paying for a system on borrowed moneys.  Are they going to tax the welfare recipients?  Those mortgage-owners who were “bailed out” ?  How ’bout the automotive industry?  Bill Gates?

Where will the wealth be?  Who will create it?  Certainly not those loyal, tax-paying citizens.

This is, of course, a dooms-day scenario (and one that I feel certain makes Al Quaeda look like flies over the sugar bowl).

Anarchy and upheaval are EXACTLY what the enemy wishes upon our society.  They want to drive economic stratification.  They want class envy.  It is through it that they can achieve the financial meltdown that they’d hoped the twin towers would elicit.

Now we have a political party playing into their very hands…and guess what?  The deciding factor was made based on what our system could do for the good Senator’s home state.

The Mohammedans may just have it right.  It will be sin that could be our downfall.

Greed…

Fighting others for what others have.  Taking it away and giving it to someone “less” deserving (although, in the end, we will ALL get what we deserve).

Murder…

There are those who will also see the blood of abortion on our “communal” hands.  Corporal guilt.

We will be guilty of telling our brother’s and sister’s how to live (isn’t there something about removing the splinter from the neighbor’s eye when we have a tree in our own?).

Just stack up the “sins” associated with this health-care system, and you will see that it is much, much greater than meets the eye.

The Slothful…

Big screen Television?  Forget it, lard ass.  You need to get up and find a job.

A dose of WII any one?  anyone?

Looks like your game-playing days are over, dead-head.  Get off your duff and find something productive to do.  Like live.

So slothfullness will be out.

Extravagance…

Looks like Nancy Pelosi can kiss her big, old airplane good-bye, right?  (fat chance, Madam lard-butt).

So what sin is that again?  Do as I say, not as I do.

Some leadership, huh?

So the pundits say “we will kick the bums out”.

I’m afraid it is too late for that boys.   The genie is out of the bottle.

I was talking to my Mother this morning, and this is just like being some hard-working man, who comes home one day to find that his wife has sold the kids off to an orphanage (or adoption agency), run up horrendous credit card debt, took out a second mortgage and run off to Mexico with some drug lord named Julio (my apologies to everyone South of the border – it just seemed befitting, somehow).

Infidelity…

The United States Congress is that cheating wife.

You know, another thing about sin and virtue.  The bible says there is but one good reason for divorce.  Infidelity.

I submit to you today that our Nation’s government has been unfaithful to us.

They are a cheating, no-count, whore-of-a-wife (and they need to be treated as such).

Shunning…

Now there is another good, biblical principle.

Let’s show these scumbags (and their female counterparts) what shunning looks like.

And let’s not stop there.

Let’s shun all the “constituents” who put their sorry asses in office (and you know who “they” are).

When we (the loyal, law-abiding taxpayers) decide  to no longer “call the tune”, it means simply, that we are no longer paying the piper either.

Let’s try, one last and final, valiant time, to make these totalitarians dance to the tune called for by those paying the piper.

If the last-ditch effort does not work, let’s take our “party” elsewhere.

The iron fist and velvet glove (1′, 1”, 1”’,  1, 2, 3) brought down (finally) the walls of the totalitarian elsewhere in the world – let’s all hope it does not take quite so long to set free once again the unshackled heart of conservatism and the unrestrained and invisible hand of the free market of capitalism, all against this totalitarian political machine borne of Chicago-land (1).

The Goodly, Little Ones: I (we) Know Who YOU Are (and are not)

Unkle Samson, Santy Kloss is a makin’ a list.

He (and his gestapo), they are checking it twice (2 x’s a teraflop, using their super-duper, super-computing checklist machine).

Through His state-sponsored, health-care system, He’s (they’re) gonna find out who has been naughty, and for whom the “niceties” are gonna roll.

Of course, cigarettes and those who partake of them will not be on the “good” (geeks call them “white”) lists.

But why stop there, prey-tell (and yes, I know that is more apt for a “preying” mantis…definitely not called that because their little front feet make them look like they are in a perpetual state of prayer – they are hunter-killers, like Santy’s health-CARE gestapo)?

Picture Unkle Samson, Santy with claws as a blood-sucking vampire with fangs.  Instead of sucking blood, they suck the green out of your wallet (which leads to a lack of platelets from a lack of proper nutrition).  Don’t worry, the money will go to help someone more deserving (and the state-sponsored health-care will define who those classes of people are too – probably the dumb-asses who vote for them, don’t you think?).

He’ll see you (with his big Bro Cam on ever street corner and red light you see), when you’ve been naughty, and when you’ve been nice.

He’ll see you when you eat that big piece of cake that is oh, so, NOT good for you!

He’ll see you when you wear those sporty sweaters made of radon-sucking, man-made (eek-ghads) fibers, spun in a factory that belches (again, eek-ghads and ho, ho, hum) Carbon DEBITS (the boon of ALL the known, little naughty ones).

You see, my pretties, the naughty little ones wear man-made materials (and consume them, like…genetically-engineered corn) and everyone knows it is bad, and that it is so (for Unkle Samson, Santy Klause produced a report from his BI-cameral house of BI-furcated pseudo-scientific politico hob-nobbins);  therefore, anything having to do with man or the man-made by definition belches carbon DEBITS, ergo, IT must be STOPPED !

Sorry Ghandi.

Even though you and the blessed yours weave earth-produced, earth-friendly COTTON (not man-made) fibers, your ass spins them on a spinning wheel.  Carbon Credits you say?

Think again.

What produces the energy for that spinning wheel?

Ghandi.

What is Ghandi?

A carbon-based life-form.

What do carbon-based, bean-eating, lifeform energy factories produce?

Carbon Dioxide, methane, GREENHOUSE gasses.

Sorry Ghandi.

You ARE a carbon DEBIT.

OOPS.

So much for producing earth-friendly diapers from earth-friendly plant life.

Oh yeah.  Wait a minute.  The plant that produces the cotton balls.

Carbon-based life form.

Damn.  What does it produce when it dies and it decays?

Carbon bi-products.

Damn Ghandi, for a little narry-assed fella, you and yours produce one HELL of a Carbon Debit.

What about the hippies.

Hell, their asses live on communes and do this stuff.

Hundreds of them.

They produce all kins of carbon debits, what with their tofu-eating ways and all.

Let’s tax the SOB’s, Santy Klause.

Yeah.

Welcome to the club.

Carbon-based, Coal chunks for breakfast anyone?  anyone?  anyone?*

*(special thanks to Ben Stein, and Jeff Spicoli – beer-drinking, carbon-producing a-hole Carbon DEBIT).

***********************************IRONY OF THE DAY*******************************8

Obama accepts Nobel peace prize while committing his soldiers to an uncertain and tenuous (at best future) while the Russian test fire (and foul up) inter-continental missiles over, you guessed it NORWAY (the Nobel Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway).

Now how peaceful is that?

Weird (or is it ?).

By Jobe, I think he “got”, “it”

Read this from my good friend, MB Shepherd…

The land of “in-between”

Mongolia.

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

The 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.

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-

” Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government’s mandates”.

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)

Regulation.

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).