That 800lb. Gorilla

Violence begets violence, and peaceful protests will accomplish nothing at all. Votes at the ballot box are irrelevant in the world of business. To really effect change, we must speak with our money.

As long as we continue to be consumerist pigs that snap up anything they have to offer then the jobs, the tax base, the higher standard of living, and all of the benefits of our consumerism will go abroad to places like China and India.

We will be left with our obsolete electronics, and an economy that is beholden to the real 800lb. gorilla in the room; corporate America and the board room puppet masters.

You can't blame any president. The presidency is a temporary job, and any president will remain powerless against the dark side of shortsighted profit seeking multinational corporations.

We elect congressmen to represent us only to be manipulated by corporate lobbyist; professionals who make their fortunes by whispering in the ears of our congressmen to subvert and/or manipulate national policies.

Hell yes, the politics are difficult! A Vaudevillian dog and pony show that distracts us from what is really trashing our economy. We cannot all be Wall Street bankers. And when we can't feed our families for lack of work, or because wages and the cost of living do not intersect at any reasonable level, we won't give a crap about the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Wake up people; start with refusing to buy goods made in China. That will send a loud message that the 800lb. gorilla understands!

The Healthcare Gorilla

There is no doubt that the cost of health care has become a very large gorilla in the room. The fiscally responsible among us have expressed the need to curtail the use of government funds to care for the citizens who cannot afford health insurance. The more liberal and fiscally irresponsible among us want every one to have access to health care, those idiots! But without the help and cooperation of all of us its just not possible.

No matter where you are on this issue, the question remains the same; who is going to pay for that health care; employers, insurance companies, the tax payers, all or none of the above? How come no one asks why it has to cost as much as it does in the first place?

Why haven’t we invested as much effort into eradicating fraud in the health care industry as we did into the debate over who’s going to pay for it? Why haven’t we banned the importation and manufacture of tobacco products? How many billions must a pharmaceutical company make on a drug before enough is enough?  How many more obese children will we tolerate before we end up having to supply insulin to half the nation? How many more illegal aliens are we going to allow to use our emergency rooms as health care clinics? 

These are all questions about preventable circumstances that would save the nation countless billions of dollars each and every year! More than enough to cover the cost of health care for those who don’t have insurance.

The real pig on the farm is the profit motive in the healthcare industry. Not only must the doctors profit, the hospitals must profit, the pharmaceutical companies must profit, the medical equipment suppliers must profit, and as if that isn’t enough, the companies we trust to help us pay for the health care costs, the insurance companies, must profit as well.

Many will argue that the profit motive is why we have state of the art health care in the United States. That may be true enough, but what good is it if we make our selves sick trying to pay for it? 

What good is a medical procedure if it ends up bankrupting the patient? Rather than improving the lives of the sick, the health care industry often times ends up ruining the lives of the entire patient’s family.

Some of the hard questions that no one wants to ask are germane to the high costs of health care. Should we keep terminally ill patients alive indefinitely at the will of selfish and foolish family members who don’t have the intestinal fortitude to let go? Should we prevent people with terminal illness who want to be euthanized from ending their lives? Will we really have a shortage of qualified doctors in the U.S. if they don’t become the upper crust of middle class America? Should tobacco continue to be legal in the U.S.? Should healthcare be driven by a profit motive?

When it comes to humanity, when it comes to the health caring of our fellow citizens, should fiduciary responsibilities lie with the shareholders or with the patients? If you answer that question morally and not legally, then the truth will be self evident.  We don't need to figure out how to pay for healthcare? The cost of healthcare will continue to rise indefinitely, and unfortunately, our ability to pay for it will not. We need to lower the cost of services rendered, we need to educate parents on the proper dietary habits, we need to eradicate tobacco from our society, and we need to put a stop to foods that we all love but are killing us slowly.

These three industries are keeping each other alive at our expense, Tobacco, Food and Healthcare.

Now go forth and have your Big Mac and a Coke, smoke a cigarette, don't forget to take your Lipitor and your inhaler with you, you're going to need them. Not to long after your arteries are clogged and you can't breathe, I have some Cymbalta for your depression. Not depressed yet, don't worry, you will be.

     

If You Smoke Cigarettes...

...you must not think too highly of yourself. 


Prior to quitting, I smoked 30 - 40 cigarettes a day for 17 years. So, as you read this, I don't want to hear about how I don't know what I'm talking about.


I was fifteen years old when the first few cigarettes got me dizzy from oxygen deprivation. For those of you who've never smoked, take twenty short breathes, in and out as quick as you can. That is the big attraction. If you continue to smoke beyond that initial dizziness then life as you knew it is over!! 

You are addicted to a drug called NICOTINE.


You can lie to yourself, but not to me. Do not tell anyone in public that you smoke because you like it. You sound like an idiot. You smell like shit. You're addiction has you standing in front of buildings in zero degree weather, smoking cigarettes. You most likely cough up phlegm balls in the morning. Who do you kiss that doesn't think your breath smells like an ash tray? Tried walking up a flight of stairs lately?


If you smoke a pack a day at $7.75/pk, it's costing you $2,828.75 a year! Most young teenagers who start smoking, don't earn that money in a year's time.   
It's costing the rest of us, billions of dollars in wasted health care costs to keep you alive. You will succumb to emphysema, or black lung, or COPD, or cancer. There are poor retired people living on a $900 social security check and  spending $235 of it on cigarettes. Mentally ill people living on a small stipend from their state and spending $235 of it on cigarettes. There are people who do not have health care at all, and spend $235 every month on cigarettes. 
  


Did I say Cancer?


Take your pick, it could be throat cancer, lung cancer, cancer of the larynx, some of you who chew tobacco will end up with lip cancer, tongue cancer, or cancer of the jaw bone. Here is what that might look like. 


Don't you look away! I've gone out of my way to go easy on you.
These are images of people who never thought this would happen to them.
  

   

As you can see, these types of cancers don't usually kill you, but you will wish you were dead. 


 Cigarettes have no positive purpose in the human experience. Nada, not a thing. And what I can't understand, is this...


While the Democrats are busy trying to provide health care for everyone, and the Republicans are try to avoid paying for health care, no one has ever mentioned banning the manufacture and import of tobacco products into the United States. 


Most states in America have been increasing cigarette taxes as a deterrent to smoking. Really? Cigarette smoking is a malaise, a disease that needs to be eradicated from society. Raising taxes on cigarettes only ends up paying for the health care of the smokers who can't afford to care for themselves? What kind of policy is that? 


It seems that, as a nation, we'll do anything to avoid upsetting the tobacco industry, and as I far as I'm concerned, that whole industry should be sent straight to hell. 


English slang refers to cigarettes as "fagots". In my book, if you can't quit smoking, you're the fagot. Fagot!

A Jihad on Intolerance? Really?

American citizens are among the most tolerant in the world. We will tolerate almost anything as long as you leave our cars and televsions out of it. In the United States, Muslim Americans can live and worship freely as any other of our American citizens. Muslim American Imams have been meeting and acting towards greater tolerance for Muslims in the United States, and although  their cause is commendable, I dare say somewhat misguided.

It is within their right to launch a “jihad” against intolerance, but such a struggle would be more fruitful in places where intolerance is most prevalent. Take that struggle to Waziristan where the Taliban don't tolerate anyone. 

Take that struggle to the Sunnis and the Shias who kill each other over religious differences. They set a very poor example for their own children.

Take that struggle to the Gaza Strip where Hamas prefers to kill Jews and Israelis rather than live in peace with it's neighbors.

Americans don’t need lessons in tolerance. We will tolerate anyone who wishes to live and let live. Sometimes that means having to concede to a compromise. 


Most often preserving the peace takes effort and is the ultimate symbol of tolerance. But, we don’t see such concessions coming from the Taliban, or from the Palestinians, or from Sunni/Shia conflagrants, or from any people who consider  their own beliefs are somehow more significant than the beliefs of any other. A misguided Jihad will produce only losers, not winners.


A Deluded Democracy

So, here we are about two years after the presidential elections, and the conservative pundits are still talk'n smack about the Obama administration. The word out is that Obama promised us change, and what we got was more of the same. How deluded are we really?  There hasn't been a politician at any time in memorable history that hasn't run on a ticket of change.

That's why they run for office; they all want to change things.

I'm one of the neutered, I have had all of the democracy sucked right out of me. As a neutered person, and an objective realist, I might add; I'm not afraid to mention that I'm also a cynic.

For those of you who sing the song, but don't know what it means; Randon House defines a cynic as a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view. 

So, if for nothing more than the entertainment value of my writing, if an honest politician were going to run for President of the United States, he/she wouldn't stand an ice cubes chance in hell of getting elected. The very pre-requisite for winning an election is making the most popular promises so as to attract the most votes.

Once elected, it doesn't matter what happens afterwards, four years later, the pension is out of this world, not to mention the millions of dollars even the most despicable president makes on speaking engagments.

If you stop to consider the whole objective truth, this country only functions for half of the people at a time, while the other half can't wait to undo what the current administration is doing. We are an evolved people, the problems we have here pale in comparison to what goes on elsewhere in the world. Ah but I digress.    

Getting back to our deluded Democracy.  When was the last time you heard a candidate for president tell you the honest truth? If we had a candidate that told the truth, I would vote for that person, and I may well be the only one. 

if you heard the truth it would probably go like this... ready?  here we go...

"The business of running this country is no different from any other country in the world. In the national arena, as in the states, and in the cities and the smallest of towns, on every level across the nation, governments are manipulated by those people who make large sums of money by playing with the system.

"Pay-to-Play" permeates every level of our government. What goes on entails taking advantage of loopholes in the law, which is perfectly legal but inherently immoral, and at other times it entails corrupting elected and non-elected officials to subvert the system for personal gain. That gain always comes from the treasury of our tax dollars. You, the neutered masses, the voiceless citizens, the heavily taxed will bitch and complain, but no one will hear you.   

This is how things have always been and I, as your elected [fill-in-the-blank], will never be in any position to change that. If I ever lead you to believe otherwise, call me liar. There is too much money and too much influence involved, and those powerful folks will never allow a temporarily elected fool like myself to pull the plug on the sources of their gains. There is nothing that I can do to change the fundamental underlying moral fiber of American politics. So, vote for me! Because it won't make any bit of difference whether I or my opponent spends the next four years in office."

The controversies between Republicans and Democrats are as ludicrous as the night is dark. They are only driven by the next election, playing in a sandbox with limits set for them by corporate America and the few moguls that have more money than most small nations.

Republicans and Democrats alike, both equally dysfunctional, each with the gall to think they know better about what's good for all of us when they don't even know what's good for themselves. If we cannot lead this nation with a single united goal of eliminating the corrupting influences of the rich and famous, and if the only choices we allow ourselves is left or right, Dems or Reps, anal retentive or anal expulsive, then we're stuck in this see-saw existence of never ending stagnation.

The only road to real change is to boycott the next election, not a single vote cast anywhere. Imagine what would happen if on election night, the two actors running for president are eagerly waiting for the outcome, the talking heads on television are talking; and no one showed up to vote.


 The American people deserve a lot better that to have to choose from between liar number one and liar number two. I suspect that for as long as we can text each other, lease a new car every three years, footballs are snapped on Sundays, and there is plenty of cold beer on hand, we'll put up with anything. Pass back the vaseline, will ya!

neutered:

: the sterilization of our individuality 


In politics, in religion, in corporate America, in communities, and in all aspects of the human existence, people with individuality of thought, people who question the commonly accepted, the non-conformists (if you will), are squashed like a bug, excommunicated, fired, outcast, or categorized and ignored. 


Like the testicles of my best friend, they get neutered.

Allow me to introduce myself, I'm your chauffeur with an attitude. Like the bar tender, your hairstylist, and the bathroom mirror, you can talk to me. I'll listen to you, and then I'll say what no one else will. 


The politically correct, thin skinned sufferers of indignation live in fear of being disagreed with. These frail minded folks most often stand behind and support those people who manage to succeed in neutering the rest of us. 


I've seen enough in my life to warrant questioning all of what goes on around me. I'm not paranoid, and I'm not deluded, I know for a fact that we don't have a voice. 


How else can you explain what goes on around us and we the people, we the employees, we the neighbors, we who don't want to be like you, are powerless to make rational change in our society. 


They're Republican or Democrat, maybe they drink tea. They believe in a higher authority or pretend to, lest they be excommunicated. They tow the corporate credo, for middle managers it's their only job, their bread and butter. In communities, these high moral, high fiber folks only pay homage to those who think alike, watch football, and drink beer. 


I'm neither of these stereotypical products of American society , and all of them make me sick. 


Hopefully, this blog will be a small place where I can voice my disgust over being relegated to the irrelevant; neutered.