JHK’s Three-Act Play
The ObamaCare website rollout fiasco, joined by the bait-and-switch “You can keep your current insurance (not)” tempest, obscure the fundamental quandary about so-called health-care in America: that it is a gigantic racket structured to allow countless layers of grift and counter-grift. The end product of all that artifice is that medical care costs twice as much in America as any other civilized country, and that it has to be operated by a cruel and despotic matrix of poorly coordinated bureaucracies that commonly leave people more disabled financially than the diseases that brought them into the system.
ObamaCare was designed to work like a giant roll of duct tape that would allow the current cast of characters in charge (Democratic Progressives) to pretend that the system could keep going a few years longer. But it looks like it has already blown out the patch on the manifold and is getting ready to throw a rod — which duct tape will not avail to fix.
I had three major surgeries (hip, open heart, spine) the past year and paid attention to the statements that rolled in from my then-insurer, Blue Shield (the policy was cancelled in October). These documents were always advertised as “this is not a bill” and that was technically true, but it deflected attention from what it really was, a record of negotiated scams between the “providers” (doctors and hospitals) and the insurance company.
There was never any discussion (or offer of discussion) of the cost of care before a procedure. When asked, doctors commonly pretend not to know what their work costs. Why is that? It’s not to spare the patient’s feelings. It’s because sick people are hostages and both the doctors and the hospital management know they will agree to anything that will get them through the crisis of illness. This sets up a situation that allows the “providers” to blindside the patient with charges after the fact.
My hip “revision” operation was necessary because my original implant was a defective (“innovative” circa 2003) metal-on-metal joint that released metal fragments into my system and it had to be removed. The stated charge for replacement part — a simple two piece bearing made of metal and plastic, about the size of tangerine — was $14,000. Blue Shield “negotiated” the price down to about $7,000. If you go to the websites of any of the manufacturers of these things, you will not see any suggested retail or wholesale price. The markup on these things must be out of this world. Cars come with four ball joints that carry roughly the same time warrantee, and they come with a staggering array of “extras”— engines, transmissions, air-conditioning, seats, air-bags, and radios. The pattern was similar for the other surgeries and what they entailed. I ended up paying five-figures out-of-pocket. Lucky for me that I saved some money before this all happened. I don’t have kids so I haven’t been paying extortionate college tuitions during my peak income years.
All the surgeries I had required hospital stays. For the hip op, I was in for a day and a half in a non-special bed (no fancy hookups). The charge was $23,000 per day. For what? They took my blood pressure nine times. I got about six bad meals. The line charge on the Blue Shield statement said “room and board.” It would be a joke if this extortion wasn’t multiplied millions of times a day across the nation. Citizen-hostages obviously don’t know where to begin to unravel this skein of dreadful rackets. If you think it’s possible to have a productive conversation with an insurance company rep at the other end of the phone line, then you’re going to be disappointed. You might as well be talking to a third-sub-deputy under-commissar in the Soviet motor vehicle bureau.
This ghastly matrix of corruption really only has two ways to go. It can completely implode in a fairly short time frame (say, five years, tops), or we can, by some miracle of political will, get our priorities straight and sweep away all the layers of racketeering with a single-payer system. The evidence in other civilized countries is not so encouraging. England’s National Health Service has degenerated into a two layer system of half-assed soviet-style medicine for the proles and concierge service for the rich. France’s system works more democratically, but the nation is going bankrupt and eventually their health care network will fall apart. The Scandinavian countries have relatively tiny populations. I don’t know, frankly, how the Germans are doing.
Here in the USA, you can make arguments for putting a greater share of public money into a single-payer system. For instance, if we redirected the money spent on our stupid military adventures and closed some of the countless redundant bases we run overseas. That would be a biggie. Given the current choke-hold of the military-industrial complex on our politicians, I wouldn’t expect much traction there.
You can argue that nobody complains about government spending on the highway system, so why should “the people” complain about organizing a medical system that really works? Obviously, there’s no consensus to make that happen. Too many doctors want to drive BMWs. Too many insurance executives and hospital administrators want to make multi-million dollar salaries. Too many lobbyist parasites and lawyers are feeding off that revenue stream. Too many politicians with gold-plated health insurance coverage don’t want to change the current distribution of goodies. End-of-story, as the late Tony Soprano used to say.
It’s the old quandary of fire or ice… which way do you want to go? Since I’m interested in reality-based outcomes, my bet would be on implosion. In any case, several of the other systems that currently support the activities of our society are scheduled for near-term implosion, too. That would be the banking-finance system, the energy supply system, and the industrial agriculture system. As those things wind down or crash, you can be sure that everything connected with them will be affected, so the chance that we could mount a real national health care system is, in my opinion, zero.
The ObamaCare duct-taped system will go down. The big hospitals, HMOs, insurers, pharma companies will all starve and shrivel. Like all things in the emergent new paradigm, they will reorganize on a small and much simpler basis. Everyone will make less money and high-tech medicine will probably dwindle for all but a very few… and for them, only for a while. Eventually, we’ll re-set to local clinic style medicine with far fewer resources, specialties, and miracle cures. There will be a whole lot less aggravation, though, and people may die more peacefully.
Finally, there’s the pathetic American lumpen-public of our day itself, steadily committing suicide en masse by corn byproducts, the three-hundred pounders lumbering down the Wal-Mart aisles in search of the latest designer nacho. What can you do about such a people, except let fate take them where it will?
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How ironic; I haven’t read the new JHK post but I’m the first one to post.
… I’m the first one to post. – Arn
===========
But why? Yesterday you gave us all a cyber middle finger and said “buh bye”.
Skipping the reading and heading straight to the comments will do that.
In the comment below, you wrote “it pays to do your research.” That seems to be true in more ways than one. Something that is increasing the cost (and hopefully effectiveness) of American medicine, medical research, is going full-blast. I’ve been collecting the research press releases from all the research universities in jurisdictions holding elections tomorrow for the past two months, and every week I have a huge entry full of nothing but health news to post. Here’s a link to the most recent, which on the one hand has useful material about how living near airports can be bad for one’s health and a warning sign about diseases in our food animals, but on the other promotes the work of a lawyer (!) who thinks the medical profession’s concern about obesity is misplaced. Maybe he should stick to the law.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/11/health-news-for-week-of-halloween.html
And I can reply to you after reading, thinking and then commenting way down below as number 24. Making me number four sort of and having done so I deserve a one liner.
Lets get our priorities straight and sweep away all the layers of racketeering bullshit with a single-payer system.
Posting is supposed to be for comments on the day’s blog. Why are you posting if you haven’t even read it? Grow up.
Grow up? Why? Why would I want to do that? I like to play and if you take this blog seriously; I would suggest that you get a life.
Jaysus, just look at the posts; they’re ludicrous for the most part.
Cheers Helen; may you find independence…
I read your comment and had to give pause for a moment.
After due consideration, my response is, “If you don’t take yourself more seriously than this, why would you expect anyone else to?”
Being first is not a big deal. Neither is not being last.
Bigger is not always better. Size and temporal position are not always important.
You need to think about what is important, and why. Some of your comments following show that you can do that. Taking time to think and then posting thoughts can be fun; even if I do not agree with folks, I will read and consider their ideas (including yours). that is also fun.
Just saying.
Craig
Sorry to hear you had bad outcomes; but that’s why it pays to do your research.
My knees are shot, but I’ll be damned if I’ll have them replaced. Based on my own investigations it’s a very iffy solution and not worth the risk.
When I can no longer walk I’ll revisit the replacement options.
Cheers JHK and I wish you well.
Same here, Arm. I’m going out with the joints I came in with.
Recently drove thru Hartford, where just about everyone is on foodstamps. Recently the benefit has been cut a little, still, everybody must be eating a lot because some of the people on the street (in the middle of what used to be known as the ‘workday’) were immense. Maybe foodstamps should be cut back some more. 47 million people are now on foodstamps, which is bankrolling the illegal gun and drug ‘industry’, as well as making rendering people idle and fat.
Update on the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Canadian Govt. as well as a consortium of oil companies have pretty much given up on it, but instead decided to move the crude by rail, mostly to the west coast, where it will be shipped to China and other Asian countries. This is a boon to the railroads, as well as the economies of the far east. How it affects the US is not yet known. So you can say McKibben and his organization out of Middlebury College in VT have been successful in their attempt to stop that pipeline.
–BTH
I think you’d be a little slower to advocate more cuts to food stamps if you depended on them to feed your family. Food stamps aren’t the cause of obesity, and I doubt they are what’s bankrolling the illegal gun and drug industry. I’d like to see you prove your assertions, and not just from some wingnut websites, please.
Your post is strangely uninformed. The reason people on food stamps are fat is that $175 a month (in Texas, for a child) is insufficient to purchase wholesome food products, and those without jobs are forced to go for the ‘cheap carbs’ in the form of processed junk food. Those are high in calories, high in fats and high in salt. No wonder health care is so expensive here!
If you want a serious criticism of health care, it is that ‘we’ are such idiots that ‘we’ believe we can have single payer without increasing taxes. In a system where money is lent into existence, that is impossible. And, in a system where money is lent into existence and the lender of last resort writes checks on accounts having no funds, the whole thing is bound to fall apart sooner or later. Probably sooner.
Craig
I read somewhere that they think that our current unsustainable farming and animal husbandry practices will eventually collapse and that the people will inevitably turn to new protein sources like insects and bugs.
I’m putting together some novel menu ideas to entertain my hungry guests this Collapse Holiday Season, and I was wondering if anyone has any good recipes for tasty Bug Dishes?
I’ve heard that in Thailand ant larvae make tasty omelettes. And that roasted grass hoppers and tarantulas in Cambodia make tangy, tasty hors d’oeuvres that could perhaps be served before a meal of pine tree bark with a moonshine “totty”.
Thanks.
“[T]he people will inevitably turn to new protein sources like insects and bugs.”
Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera America is into that. They based their reporting on a U.N. report from earlier this year. Tech Feed decided to ride that wave and show people how to build a bug house to grow edible crickets.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/06/now-un-says-edible-insects-are-future.html
” I was wondering if anyone has any good recipes for tasty Bug Dishes?”
The BBC does, and they fed them to some unsuspecting Brits. It made for great TV.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/03/eating-bugs-on-beeb.html
Caterpillar pizza, anyone?
Check out Bizzare Foods with Andrew Zimmerman on the Discovery Channel. He travels the world eating anything that can be eaten. Most of it is totally gross to our palates but if it means putting food in your belly then so be it. I’m not sure if he has put together a cook book. Some stuff doesn’t sound too tastey. And on rare occasions you can catch him blowing chunks of whatever out.
You want bizzare foods, try out the local supermarket. About 70% of the food Americans eat is genetically modified. Read the list of companies fighting labeling of GMO foods in Washington state:
PEPSICO
COCA-COLA
NESTLE
HERSHEY
GENERAL MILLS
KELLOGG
BIMBO BAKERIES (OROWHEAT, SARA LEE, BALL PARK, LAND O’LAKES)
DEL MONTE
CAMBELL SOUP
MONSANTO
CARGILL
CONAGRA (HUNTS’S KETCHP AND TOMATOES, BANQUET FOODS)
DAVID SEEDS
BAYER
DUPONT
I’m going to do my ballot today !!!!!!
Good post. I wouldn’t eat anything made by any of those companies. They are poisoning us. I grow my own veggies and fruit and buy meat from local farmers who I know and trust. And I probably spend less on food than most people do.
A number of these companies use flavoring compounds developed a company that has used aborted fetal tissue – specifically the poor victim’s kidney cells. We’re literally cannibals! Nestle and Pepsi were two companies that were known be employing this research firm.
But this will all pass away when the trucks stop rolling and the gas no longer arrives to fill our SUVs hungry bellies.
How about growing flies. Drying them out and then feeding them to tilapia.
Straight up flies are less nutritious than beef. I’d prefer eating the fish. I’m not that big on fish but tilapia is good. I had it a few times last month. Now I’m hungry…………
Above a typo broke my link. Here it is.
Tilapia
Hi Pucker:
Grasshoppers or chapulines are commonly eaten in Southern Mexico. They are great with beer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapulines
I can attest to this personally. When I was in Oaxaca, Mexico, two years ago, I ate both grasshoppers (chapulin) and mezcal worms (gusano). The grasshoppers I ate because the superstition is that if one eats the grasshoppers, one will return to Oaxaca. The mezcal worms I ate because I was curious and wanted to show off. Both were actually quite tasty.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2011/11/travel-is-broadening-especially-food.html
It’s a myth that without industrial agriculture we’d all be reduced to eating insects. The multinational ag companies want people to believe that so we’ll go along with pesticides, herbicides and GMOs. There are numerous studies that show that small-scale organic agriculture can feed the world, if people have access to the land on which to do it.
Well said sir. I live in the model of governance that Obama and Co. are steering the empire towards, suburban Chicagoland. Here the racket is that the D-party mobsters openly brag of getting their lamphreys onto the government taxation revenue stream, the R-party mobsters have to pretend to hold the brakes on the lamphreys.
Anyway if you fine people want an image for this racket, one of the nature shows went to the bottom of the ocean one time and found a whale carcass being Hoovered up by hundreds of large leech like creatures, there you go.
I don’t care what they tell you on Daily Kos or Hannity, Jim is right.
We had an overnighter in the hospital, billed for a pack of chewing gum we never asked for nor even saw it. Single payer will be nothing but a racket for the connected. It lurches along in countries that still have a core population like Canada and GB but as they diversify their populations into warring camps of entitlement they will fall quick and fast. And no I don’t care about your utopian fantasies learned in liberal arts schools and prattled on about at Kos, total junk.
Good day to you
Remember that in the UK, while there are ‘parallel’ healthcare systems, the best medical expertise doesn’t always follow the best hotel services or money. The NHS for all it’s faults has some top class people and services. Private medicine is often where you go for a straightforward operation with a nice room and dinner; they can do this well. When it goes wrong some private hospitals have to call 999 and get an NHS ambulance over!
RobH –
I live in New Zealand, which also has a single payer (Government) health treatment system (subsidized GP care & medication, but 100% tax-payer funded hospital treatment). But, like anything operating with finite resources, sometimes it has to be rationed. If your life is in mortal danger, your treatment will be immediate and as effective as anywhere else in the first world.
But if it’s not, say a 65 year old who needs a hip replacement, you may have to wait (in some discomfort!) for some time, OR have medical insurance to fund it privately OR be prepared to write the $20,000 cheque to have it done in the parallel private system. it’s the same doctors in both systems – most of the specialists who provide the treatment in the public system are contracted to do so, but only so many procedures are funded. The rest of the time, these medical professionals are making obscene incomes in the private sector. (they’re well-paid under their public sector contracts too, do not doubt).
But, all in all, it is a hugely preferable system to the clusterfuck that is the American system of 100% ‘insurance’ funded treatment – which is just so not true!. I have a brother & a cousin living in the US.
My brother works for a large corporate and so has a gold-plated healthcare plan for he & his family.
My cousin’s husband has the dubious honour of being a federal government employee (a (union-busting Reagan-era Air Traffic Controller) who has 7 kids and while it’s employer subsidised, his healthcare premium contribution & the co-pay liabilities make it hard to cope, They both agree they’d rather have a single-payer systems, where the costs are controlled.
Our publicly funded drug-procurer (Pharmac) negotiates with pharmaceutical suppliers for the whole local market (primary, secondary & tertiary care levels), and as such has an effective control on prices. But this mechanism is likely about to become illegal under the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) which will give giant US corporations sovereignty over the policy settings of elected governments!
The US sick-care system has been broken for quite some time now, and there appears to be no cure in sight.
This is because, like most of the corporate-government hybrids that rules our lives now, sick-care diverts far too much money into the pockets of the 1% that rule us.
There is no revolution coming. We are slowly descending into a feudal society. Read it and weep.
I’m not so sure the descent is now so slow. As we approach peak ignorance and wishful thinking the descent appears to be getting exponential.
” Finally, there’s the pathetic American lumpen-public of our day itself, steadily committing suicide en masse by corn byproducts, the three-hundred pounders lumbering down the Wal-Mart aisles in search of the latest designer nacho.” Thanks! You made my day, JHK.
Denzil Washington movie, John Q. (2002), says it all – takes a hospital hostage in order to get his son an operation. The military industrial complex is more entrenched. Food industry is a disaster, ie.. ‘fat-land’. As long as we sell the law the decay will grow.
JHK
I see first hand the problems in health care. I am a physician at a large trauma center in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. 70 percent are either medicare or indigent with the medicare reimbursements being so low that after I subtract out my expenses, I operate at a loss. Private insurance is 30% of my practice and it is shrinking every year. I drive a 2008 prius and my wife drives a 2005 Honda pilot with 185,000 miles. I have huge debts from medical school and the hospital is reducing my stipend that is meant to partially reimburse me for indigent care. My child is 6 years old and I have never seen him trick or treat. I work 60 to 80 hours a week including nights and weekends. I realize the medical system is going to go down, however it is not because of me or those like me. I just hope that after the smoke clears that we still have vaccines and antibiotics.
Nate
Gasman–
Shall I suppose you are an anesthesiologist?
The line-charge for anesthesia for my 4-hour single bypass op was $16,000. I was wondering: what exactly was that about? Gold-plated fentanyl?
Well, all snark aside, I can’t argue with the difficult facts you present about your situation. I have, of course, heard that a lot of doctors are falling through the cracks along with everyone (everything) else. It sounds like you are mentally prepared for the new model, when it comes along… and my apologies if I seemed unsympathetic to the plight of young doctors who are entering the system at a harsh moment. — JHK
Of course we’ll have antibiotics… in our cheeseburgers.
Ralph Nader said “Single-Payer”, did America listen? Who wouldn’t want a consumer advocate in the nation’s executive branch holding both parties’ feet to the fire in this age of tyranny?
I voted, you voted, we voted.
Voting is pointless.
Q: Who wouldn’t want a consumer advocate in the nation’s executive branch holding both parties’ feet to the fire in this age of tyranny?
A: Corporations, Republicans, Democrats and all those too busy consuming to care.
I think they wrap the bill for the bypass machine tubing in with anesthesia. For the average coronary artery bypass graft I will collect 500 dollars from medicare. My Blue Cross contract pays about $1400.00 for the same. The Cardiothoracic surgeon will on average collect $ 1000.00 to $1200.00
Nate
Gasman,
Having worked in hospitals and engineering firms taught me that the key requirement of many professional licenses is that one be highly sue-able. I bet your malpractice bill is astronomical.
Hospital administrators don’t understand the single, key nexus: skilled person uses caring hands to ease pain. I bet you’ll be doing exactly that, no matter what the future serves up.
Thanks Jim.
Just wanted to let you know I enjoy your blog and other writings. I worry about the future for our children and if small things like an appendectomy will be available under anesthesia in the future.
Those in power in Washington need to identify critical areas and target those that should have priority, however it appears the whole of the US is in some sort of fugue state and unable to see what is coming. Instead our hospital is investing in 2 million dollar robots to replace laparoscopic surgery.???
Nate
Well Jim, your thoughts are not my thoughts this morning..I was thinking proctologist…Anyhow, I believe the “badguys” are the paper pushers here, not the Dr’s..Ever see a building in NYC with a big,illuminated umbrella on it? Bet not to many Doc’s have an office like that. I’m a dentist south of you, you know me outside of Annapolis…I agree that costs are out of control, but we the Dr’s are not driving the model..we are at the mercy of the system,not running it..also, all this talk about 44% of New York Dr’s posturing to “not participate” in Obamacare is just that,posturing.It is a consumer driven model here in the USof A, and just where will those Dr’s patients come from? I say ‘bullshit” to them…or they will starve..Wall Street drives it all,and our ball less politicians fall in line also..nothing has been done to fix any of it..The chosen one has “enabled it more”..Wonder what the money to the Muslim Brotherhood would have done to drive done healtcare costs and save a few innocents from breast cancer…?
“There was never any discussion (or offer of discussion) of the cost of care before a procedure. When asked, doctors commonly pretend not to know what their work costs. Why is that? It’s not to spare the patient’s feelings. It’s because sick people are hostages and both the doctors and the hospital management know they will agree to anything that will get them through the crisis of illness. This sets up a situation that allows the “providers” to blindside the patient with charges after the fact.”
I agree with Superfishal’s assessment about the role of the Hospital vs. the Doctor. There’s a grand paradox involved in making healthcare a retail business like a bed&breakfast. It’s really not possible.
Medicare/Medicaid is forced to put a cap on expenses because we have such things as limits in available tax dollars. It’s always been at the Doctor’s discretion to order limited healthcare services. However, limits have never been good for capitalist economies such as ours, nor have they been deemed acceptable in the cases of people suffering life threatening distress, and that’s why they go hand in hand with our financial racket of no limit credit cards at 22% interest.
The first thing one is asked of by the emergency room administrative intake personnel is “Give us your personal information and How do you (or your partner/family) plan to pay for this service? We accept all major credit cards because your insurance plans my not cover 100% of emergency room visits (or anything else).” They don’t tell you that the reason plans don’t cover something is because it’s already been “negotiated” by the fed legislature that people have a bill of rights when seeking healthcare in ANY U.S.A. hospital. They must be informed of treatments and agree to them, this all must be signed off by their primary doctor, otherwise they may not be billed for them. That’s why hospitals generate a detailed medical record throughout the stay and people receive statements in the mail in order to check that they actually had a procedure or a service. Thus, there is plenty of time for negotiating after the fact. If someone never wakes up from the gas…that’s a different story altogether. Other legalities come into play having to do with end of life insurance. Usually, people have life insurance and receive humongous payouts that may or may not be taxable depending on those products. If people don’t have end of life insurance than SOMEBODY will…such as an employer, bank and even hospital. Like any corporation, hospitals can write off their losses.
As far as how competent a doctor is when out in the bush as opposed to an antiseptic environment…you’d have to ask doctors who have had to do that kind of work of which there are MANY.
To JHK,
I would surmise that a good part of your inflated costs reflect, in both cases of anesthesia and hardware, the cost of malpractice and product liability insurance.
I would further assume that a good part of all inflated costs are the efforts by various parties to cross-subsidize other services which do not pay, creating a Rube Goldberg accounting that defies any sense of proportion, or any other form of sense.
It is a tough competition between those who practice institutional kleptomania, and those who are simply trying to cover bases in an irrational economic ecosystem. In either case, the result is the same.
JHK
Some other misleading factors about the system, from experience of working “in the system” the last 20 plus years. 1985-hospital bed on psych ward. (area I work)=250-350 a night/day.
1987- The hospital hires an MBA rather than an MD as President of the hospital and price suddly jumps to 650 a nigt/day. within 2 more years the prices jumps another 100-125% in other words 1300-1500 plus itemized expenses. And that room which has doubled again since then consists of a single or double occupancy with 1-2 mattresses sitting atop framed boxes attached to the floor; and being checked every 15 minutes to make sure they’re still breathing and not bleeding. wages haven’t changed for nursing staff that drastically. The only difference is it must cost alot to keep track of all those itemized expenses (?)
Currently in my practice an hour session is billed any where from 120/280-350 depending whether it is a counseling/therapy session or form of psychological testing. Of course most of my clients are mostly MA and they reimburse at 88 for counseling/therapy (nothing if the client doesn’t show up) and I’m not big on telling someone what kind of DSM qualified pathology they have so I don’t test much what I’d rather treat through therapy and sometimes medication. But whatever the Insurance pays I currently endup with 40%… I’d be better off financially driving bus for the city or being a bartender. But I love what I’m doing and that I see positive changes in my clients(the ones who show up).
It’s said that the Barefoot Physicians of Revolutionary China performed miracles with a few rusty acupuncture needles and a razor or two. We need to start training such cadres now. The handbook used to be around in stores, but I haven’t seen it in over twenty years now.
There’s a used on on Amazon.com for 10 bucks.
Theres an ancient form of acupressure that is just as, if not more effective than acupuncture called Tui-Na which roughly translates as- Push-Pull. In China it was referred to as “the peoples medicine since the techniques would be taught by the traveling physician to the family of the ailing patient. This way if the Fa family was dealing with a breach birth while a traveling physician was in the village the next time the issue would come up for another or the same family they would be able to treat it without having to worry about the physician getting there in time to turn thingws around so they would come out “right”.
Apparently, the phenomenon of complexity eventually leading to hyper-complexity also seems to apply to bacteria. It seems that the over use of antibiotics has lead to super-bacteria that are pan-resistant to all antibiotics. I read somewhere that if a pan-resistant bacteria (that involved in say India) invades the host, it can rapidly transmit its DNA to other bacteria in the host’s body thereby creating new forms of pan-resistant bacteria. Very nasty….
It seems that Big Pharma doesn’t want to spend money on creating new antibiotics to fight these new pan-resistant bacteria because it’s not profitable.
My primary care doctor drives a car not much nicer than my own. He’s not getting rich at this.
The current system is rigged, in favor of huge, for-profit insurers and a hospital-industrial complex. I wish we’d chosen long ago to make that system non-profit and provide basic, preventative care to all citizens under a single-payer National Health option. You want more? Buy in, as I did in Spain when I worked there as a non-citizen.
Then reward those who stay in shape. Fatties and smokers pay more. But it’s too late now. We have two Rube Goldberg machines creaking into operation: one a government-industry contraption, the other, all to often, a system of managed cruelties.
In Canada, the spiralling costs are controlled by triage of services. For example, I had to wait 3-4 months for an mri on my knee. However, 2 years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and had surgery within 1 week; cancer halted at stage 1. We do pay a premium at just over $100 per month for my family, but this is covered by my employer.
God bless Tommy Douglas for fighting to start our single payer system. Doctors went on strike to protest (lasted about 10 days), but it works quite well after 50+ years. We have an influx of excellent doctors arriving from around the world to augment our less than perfect training/university system. My own doctor is from South Africa and has proven to be fantastic. I don’t see him complaining.
By the way, every doctor I know lives in a very nice home. They also have a pension to look forward to. While they don’t make the money US doctors make, they do pretty damn good as far as I can see.
Most Canadians are extremely proud of our health care system. Any Govt that tried to change it would be voted out of power. I guess that is what you get when you don’t try or attempt to take over the world. Good healthcare for all.
Oh yeah, our booze costs 2X as much to help pay for it. And our fuel is taxed as well. Canadians don’t seem to mind paying taxes, (unlike US citizens) because we see everyday how we benefit.
regards….Paulo
(born in the States, seldom even visit…never visit without added insurance!!)
Well guess what, Paulo – Conservative (think Republican Tea Party) Prime Minister Harper is trying to change the Canadian health care system by cutting the amount the feds provide to the provinces for their health care budgets by about $36 billion. Originally the federal government was supposed to pay 50%. Now they only pay 20% but they still think that’s too much. He’s also negotiating a Canada-EU trade deal that will drastically increase the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. Harper would love to see a system like the US has so his corporate buddies could get even richer. Be on guard. Get involved if you can.
More at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/maude-barlow/harper-economic-summit_b_2175693.html
There are more rackets in this country than people. The medical industry is a glaring example. Even veterinarian animal care is horrendous in expense. My sister’s service dog developed diabetes partly because of the breed and developed cataracts overnight. To have the surgery done will cost 5,000 dollars and that’s for a 20 minute operation. 10 years ago the cost was 1500. This country is being ruined by the capitalism practiced here and of course I have know this for years. I didn’t just come down with yesterdays rain.
Maybe you and the folks at Kos can set the prices then. This is all propped up by the easy credit regime, take it away and those prices will reset, but oh the cry from the masses and the elites as all their rackets get a price reset.
If you paid attention the fall of 2008 was a little touch of the future, in November of that year I traveled across I-80 and I-90 and it was a ghost road, wonderful to travel.
But I had a feeling that the economy wasn’t going to reset at that time simply because the banks were still lending for farmland so that racket could still persist.
Anybody who can pay $5000 for surgery on a dog obviously has a lot more money than they need.
I don’t agree.
Jim sez:
” It’s the old quandary of fire or ice… which way do you want to go? Since I’m interested in reality-based outcomes, my bet would be on implosion. In any case, several of the other systems that currently support the activities of our society are scheduled for near-term implosion, too. That would be the banking-finance system, the energy supply system, and the industrial agriculture system. As those things wind down or crash, you can be sure that everything connected with them will be affected, so the chance that we could mount a real national health care system is, in my opinion, zero.”
Since all I see around me (for the most part) is a lot of pretending and wishful ‘positive’ thinking and empty, unsubstantiated hoping, my bets are also hedged on implosion and the continued slide down the slope of The Long Emergency.
(I’m not certain the Waltons, one of the most successful examples of capitalist family dynasties, have america’s best interests at heart. How ’bout you?)
“Finally, there’s the pathetic American lumpen-public of our day itself, steadily committing suicide en masse by corn byproducts, the three-hundred pounders lumbering down the Wal-Mart aisles in search of the latest designer nacho. What can you do about such a people, except let fate take them where it will?” -JHK
Yep, plus, you can’t save those who have no interest in saving themselves… Lumber on, ye lumberers!
More likely those barely ambulatory 300 pounders will be riding the little electric carts the big box stores have begun providing. Obamacare was a compromise of a compromise of a compromise. The first thing Obama took off the table was single payer. He was very inexperienced, but there was a compelling case that could have been made for single payer, and he never even tried. The second thing he took of the table was the “public option.” It was all downhill from there.
-Phut,
Don thy dominos and black lace mask. Welcome to the class war masquerade carnival. Dress and dance with the masked insurance providers as they move and spin. With scented lace and coy waiving of Japanese fans they’ll smile curtsey and woo. The bows, the smiles, their easy grace comes deftly knowing you’ve no choice. Its protection money now or a penalty later. Better now than later. You don’t want anything broken.
Pine not for your loss. The Obama duct tape keeps the party going. Another day closer to the hard crash true, but for now another day at the dollar store will drive your uglies away.
Rejoice “Obama’s Socialist Healthcare” isn’t really socialist at all. It sprouted to life in the Heritage Foundation, that conservative think-tank. It’s actually Republican disguised as Obama Care to bait switch and bamboozle. Upside down Robin-Hood and American as apple pie. Exhale thy teeming masses it’s really your party after all. Must be for you demanded nothing else. More for them and less for you, same as it’s always been. Just like you like it, for in your dreams you think you are one of them. In your dreams your rich and so you let them steal from you like your one of them. Dream on and sleep America because now waking up is just too hard to do.
Another question about 522: Does this labeling system exist elsewhere in America or is it new? How many other States, if any, have gone down this road? Great if we are the first, just wondering. As you know, this stuff is given much quality reportage.
isn’t
California
Trouble with links today. The above did not work. I’ll try again.
California
“I don’t know, frankly, how the Germans are doing.”
From what I observed, most Germans are ashamed to admit to having illness so their visits to the Stadt Krankenhäuser und Kliniken are somewhat limited.
As for us, I’m inclined to think we’ll become like some of the more dysfunctional locals in Latin America where there’s a thin veneer of strict formality beneath which there’s be some access to medical care for the very wealthy and little besides occasional shoddy pre-natal care for everyone else. Since the whole focus of Western medicine is way off base, catering too much to curing symptoms instead of promoting healthy life style choices, I envision a cornucopia of suspect alternative forms of medical care (some good and most little more than abject quackery) will quickly evolve in the relative absence of the kind of oversight that enables the dominance of the AMA and its minions.
http://www.thesisa.org
Jim,
Glad you are well. The way I understand it the Germans use an “All Payer” system where the country is divided into sectors and all insurers in that sector bargain as one with the providers. This system makes way too much sense for the US to use.
As for your bill, I always think back to the movie ‘The Exorcist”. When the old priest says to the younger as they are about to enter the room, “The demon is a liar. He will mix truth with lies in order to confuse and deceive us.” Get the picture?
Mike
George, I can’t go along with you on this one. I’ve been living here since the end of 2010, okay, less than three years, and my evidence is purely anecdotal, but…
A visit to my Hausarzt (family doctor) costs 10€ per quarter, so if I go to him more than once in a three-month window, I only pay the office visit fee that first time. This actually encourages people to go to the doctor much more often, on average, than the typical American. One goes for something as simple as when one catches a cold; I need the doctor’s note for work (and btw people here don’t take sick days, they tend to take sick weeks).
We do have a two-tier system… It’s explained at this website for English-speaking expats living here… http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/Health_insurance
I’m a teacher, so no private health insurance for me. I’m satisfied with my public insurance, though, for now.
Since 2006 or so, I was good for one serious gout attack yearly. Before I moved here, I never knew that gout was what it was. The one time I went to our local Urgent Care center in Pennsy to get some medical assistance / advice, I waited four hours to be told to take some ibuprofen. That was even less helpful than it sounds.
Here, in one of München’s analogous clinics, I got real face time with a doctor who listened to my complaint, a blood test for uric acid levels, a correct diagnosis, a shot of cortisone, some topical analgesic, a few days’ worth of meds until I could get to the pharmacy, one hour start to finish, right around 45€ including the prescription for ten days’ worth of meds.
Nowadays I’ll go annually to get that uric acid level checked, and this test costs me nothing… Which was the case with my first blood test at the Hausarzt — a page and a half worth of measurable stats. And the half-tablet of Allopurinol I take daily costs me 5€ / 100 tabs at the pharmacy. I have no issue paying $7 for 6+ months’ worth of meds.
Oh, yeah, by the way, I know… Up there I said “costs me nothing”… You could point out the % of my pay that goes to my socialized healthcare… But I’ll reply that I feel I get something in return for the taxes I pay here. I’m good with it. Can’t say the same for my prior situation.
Tons more I could say on this topic (this was long enough!), but from where I’m looking, the system here in Germany is doing all right.
They ignore their ailments and push on.
Holy shit. i just opened a bag of cornchips…
Enjoy, then run two miles.
Fine to have corn chips as long as you don’t confuse them with food as too many in fat-land do. They are a treat or desert or merely mostly empty calories that are ok if you have burned up an additional 1000 or more in hard work or exercise recently but they are not food!
Ok.
Instead of running two miles, K-dog, I’ll go do something productive! Thanks for the advice(s)!
I should do something productive for a change. That would be a good idea. But getting back to you and your brain fart above. It is not a matter of being productive. You ate some useless empty calories you did not need and now need to burn them off. Unless you get your heart rate up for twenty minutes and locomote the body you won’t neutralize the chips.
If you meant productive as in chopping a cord of wood up with an ax or some other strenuous activity fine. But you did not specify what productive is. Productive could be an activity sitting in front of a computer screen on your butt. Most of the time such activity isn’t really productive and we deceive ourselves into believing it is (like right now) but it can happen.
You did not define what productive is. By itself productive covers too much ground. That’s all.
Meanwhile, the most common diseases that sicken Americans (or that they inflict upon themselves) such as diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimers, depression, autism, cancer, and obesity are being linked by one MIT researcher to Monsanto’s Round-Up. Even before considering the health effects of consuming GMOs and all their crapitude, the glyphosate and adjuvants in Round-Up screw up those who consume any plant grown with it. Which is how Monsanto managed to claim this brew didn’t hurt humans–we don’t have a Shikimate pathway, through which Round-Up does its nasty business- -but our gut bacteria do. And we rely on our gut critters for metabolic and immune functions.
Watch the vid here. The researcher has credentials up the wazoo. Pretty staggering:
http://vimeo.com/65914121
Oh, and of course, American taxpayers pay for the subsidies to grow this crap.
I will be curious to see if ACA actually puts the public over the hump.
It was sold as the Big Fix, and when it turns out that things are worse, far worse, perhaps this might serve as a tipping point. Or not. But it is very immediate. Everyone knows someone who was directly and badly screwed by the health care system. Everyone pays too much. Everyone lives in utter fear and loathing of it. Even rabid right wingers have to admit it is badly broken.
I wonder if forcing everyone to participate will be the tipping point. There is no way to opt out. No safety valve.
Now everybody has to pay $12,000 or more per year and get ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in return.
It’s moved from con racket to strong-arm extortion.
JHK-
The company I work for just gave a presentation to kick off the open benefits enrollment push. In it, they talked about how expensive healthcare is, how great the company is for “providing” insurance and keeping the cost down for the employees, and how they have our health and best interests in mind. Then they had three slides that talked about auto insurance, the thrust being that bad drivers are charged higher insurance premiums. That was all to set up the next several slides. In 2015 the results of the employees’ health screenings will be considered in determining how much the employee will pay for health insurance. One’s numbers for HDL Cholesterol, Triglycerides, Glucose, Blood Pressure, and BMI are all in play for this first round. Tobacco users, that self-declare that they are tobacco users, already pay higher premiums. Currently, no one is tested for tobacco, alcohol, or drugs once they are employed, but that is coming.
Arguments ensued at the presentation—fat people saying that tobacco users were driving the premiums up and that the company needs to stay out of their diet; men saying that pre- and post- natal care drives premiums up; tobacco users saying “what? Drunks never get liver problems? Test them!”; several saying that cancer patients should have separate policies that don’t affect the rest of us; and my favorite, young people saying that sick old people drive the premiums up. (Can’t wait until the nation turns on the elderly to eat them–5-10 years maybe?)
The system keeps us at each other’s throats and it will only get worse. And the elite will keep getting richer. Organized crime by the consent of the people.
….the three-hundred pounders lumbering down the Wal-Mart aisles in search of the latest designer nacho. What can you do about such a people, except let fate take them where it will?
This pithy comment is analogous to “it is what it is”–these people can’t/won’t save themselves so why should anyone else bankrupt themselves trying to save them?
djc
“England’s National Health Service has degenerated into a two layer system of half-assed soviet-style medicine for the proles and concierge service for the rich.”
I don’t know what experience you have had of our U.K. health service but your above comment is utterly unwarranted and untrue. It is true that our tory party is doing it’s level best to convert our system to some “half assed” copy of your lousy tragedy but thus far we still have a functioning health care setup. All three of your procedures would have been (assuming they were imperative to your survival and not cosmetic) dealt with efficiently with high quality treatment provided free of charge at the point of consumption.
Don’t fall into the trap of believing our crappy press. The powers that be are longing to get their snouts into the public purse and pillage it in all ways possible.
Generally a good blog though, thanks.
Duct Tape Policy…Obamacare is to Healthcare what Bakkin Frakkin is to Peak Oil…Nothing.
Jim,
Sorry to hear you lost your insurance.
It does not surprise me though.
The real goal is to get those who don’t use their insurance much to pay high premiums and kick off those who do use it.
Don
I had wondered why individual insurance applications were so hard to fill out; then I read somewhere that they are complex on purpose, because the goal is to induce you to make a mistake or omit something. Then, when you actually get sick, they say you lied on the application and reject you.
Man, that is immensely pathological.
Of course, they won’t be able to drop you after Jan. 1, so that’s why so many are getting Dear John letters now. As this Obamacare dilemma is reaching critical mass, it will be interesting to see if this Rube-Goldberg contraption will survive. Shoddy website aside, to think that this stillborn creature could work in a polyglot country of 300 million plus is the height of democrat hubris. It will die of its own complexity
BTW, the relatively few young who are making decent salaries are expected to pay the lion’s share of the cost. Word is that many will choose to pay the fine, which would be the smart thing to do economically. How are the youngsters expected to subsidize the masses when they have such huge college loans to pay off?
What’s so bad about losing an insurance that can’t cover 100% of the costs?
Once people are confronted with reality and how much things actually cost, why should they pay for a poor product? Most people end up paying for their healthcare out of pocket. End of story.
“Obamacare” may be a cheap fix but it gets people to see how broke our systems are. Healthcare is a human right that can not be denied anyone. Most 1%’rs are involved in some kind of medical based charity or are on the boards of major hospitals because they have the money to promote expensive research, treatments and development (from which they also benefit if they get sick).
The irony is thick for someone at the head of a fast food company promoting the end of starvation. How can someone willingly and knowingly not provide nutritious food for their populations while at the same time ask said populations to support food production for other countries?
Diet-care is healthcare.
Speaking of the “health care” racket- which is exactly what it is- I’ve noticed here on the east side of Seattle there is fierce competition for the private insurance health care dollar. Fancy lobbies are the rule, at least one even has a “destination” restaurant and a “spa”. Like a fancy ribbon on a mediocre gift, the packaging can’t make up for the substandard care received once the lobby is left behind.
I had back surgery at one of these fine establishments a little over a year ago. I would much prefer that the money spent on lobby “upgrades” be spent on recruitment, training and adequate salaries for the nursing staff because the nursing care was pathetic around the clock. They even have a “room service” meal delivery system, in which you have to call “room service” (the number is often “busy”) and wait an hour for your “order” to arrive, at which time the food is cold and inedible. No doubt some “marketing genius” organized it, going for that private insurance consumer who demands “the best”.
Hospitals were never meant to provide a 5 star hotel experience. They just need to be clean, efficient, professional and safe
In the last few years I’ve spent a lot of time in the lobbies of Valley Medical Center and Issaquah Swedish.
Both have top quality cafeterias with really good food. Better than a average restaurant and prices are not outrageous at all. The lobby in Issaquah Swedish is totally five-star, it’s new. That hospital is only two years old. The other is also pretty nice too.
Having nice surroundings is good when someone you love is going under the knife and the dice are being rolled and you have to wait it out in the lobby during a three hour operation. A good time to have pleasant distractions in a pleasant environment. It calms the nerves.
There is a lot of traffic through both over a year and I’d prefer the staff working experiences be good. If they have a good attitude they will do a better job and the staff passes through the lobbies every day. Staff uses the cafeterias, not just family and I want them happy.
In the long run I don’t see that having nice lobbies costs much per patient. Make it nice, keep it up and don’t be remodelling it all the time. That would be wasting money. Maybe four-star is good enough and the Rodeo Drive quality speciality gift shops do push the envelope a bit over-much. Nice to look at though; and being as high end as they are keeps my money in my pocket. So for me I guess they work after all.
For those not in the know, Seattle has an ‘East Side’. It consists of all the land east of Lake Washington out to the Cascade mountain range. The area contains the east side burbs and some are cities in their own right.
Excellent points, K-Dog. I worked in Oncology at Providence on First Hill 15 years ago and that certainly wasn’t fancy. But the food arrived on trays in an efficient manner, was really pretty good, and was served hot. Room service for hospital patients seems a bit pretentious.
I’m new to this blog. . . been hanging out at Michael Moore for years but it seems way too tame these days. I love JHK’s feisty articles (which the Michel Moore blog routinely censors when I try to link them).
“Finally, there’s the pathetic American lumpen-public of our day itself”
There’s the root of it, right there: ourselves.
As George Carlin said 17 years ago: “The Public Sucks”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk
Most taxpayers today continue to be blissful entertainment addicts who spend most of their leisure time strung out on techno-gizmos and television. We would much rather play games on Facebook and watch “reality” shows on TV than try to deal with the real world outside our comfy livingrooms. We’ve taken the Ramones song “I wanna be sedated” and made it our national anthem.
Blaming others (including the standard targets of government, politicians, corporations etc.) is a handy way to avoid taking any personal responsibility and avoid doing anything positive on our own.
When it comes down to actually doing something, all we do is talk. And by “talk” I include writing comments on blogs — a very entertaining (but ineffective) activity which has become an additional substitute for doing something constructive.
The Powers That Be know this, and that’s why they’re completely safe in continuing business as usual.
Exactly. Democracy means rule by the Mob – which means rule by those who control the Mob. The Vote should be limited to the educated, the loyal, and the solvent. A small minority in other words.
The best healthcare for the largest number is/was in the Nations of Northern Europe: small, homogenous, and independent. If we want good healthcare we should replicate these conditions. Not sure if Japan was able to attain this level but it’s possible. But they are very homogenous and have a genius for cooperation which would make up for their large size.
Hopefully the whole thing will fall apart and be such a complete disaster that it will be declared “a noble experiment” like Prohibition – and then be thrown in the trash bin. Many Conservatives think that’s the whole purpose to begin with – as a way to get us to single payer. But I’m not sure there will much goodwill left to legislate much of anything after all this.
I still think the ACA is a stalking horse for single payer. Single payer may work in small homogeneous countries that believe in the common good, but will not work in the empire of greed. I think the disastrous ACA rollout has all but finished the Obama presidency and, as I suggested earlier, it will die of its own complexity. But President Hillary may be just around the corner. She could be dusting off her failed plan from Bill’s first term and getting it ready.
Modern medicine has become incredibly complex. I am considering a knee replacement. The large orthopedic group I use has fellowship trained super-specialists that concentrate on one or two special areas – back, hand, foot, joint replacement etc. This has advantages. I prefer having my knee replaced by a surgeon who does this procedure frequently as opposed to occasionally. But the trend to specialization and super-specialization has contributed to a growing shortage of primary care physicians. I checked out the new book “Heart” by Dick Cheney and Jonathan Reiner MD from the Camarillo library. Regardless of how much one dislikes Cheney, the book is a interesting primer on modern high tech cardiology. One of the subtitles is “The Story of a Patient, A Doctor and 35 Years of Medical Innovation” Cheney medicine is compared to Eisenhower medicine (which at times included the service of an experienced cardiologist accompanying Ike around the golf course). Eisenhower had essentially unlimited resources – of those available a half century ago – but not the possibility of the multiple modern interventions that Cheney received, including LAVD (left ventricular assist device) and 21st Century transplant surgery.
“I worry about the future for our children and if small things like an appendectomy will be available under anesthesia in the future.”
BOOM! JHK already solved that problem in “The Witch of Hebron”
JHK – How is the third book coming buddy? I have had more success in opening people’s minds with your non fiction than with “The Long Emergency” – although I sell used copies of most of your books at my farmer’s market stand every week. I normally have:
World Made by Hand
The Long Emergency
The Witch of Hebron
The Geography of Nowhere
Home from Nowhere
The City in Mind
I have sold a bunch of them – I often say “Wow, that is pretty advanced stuff” when they pick up “The Long Emergency” – that leads to a discussion of the resource constraints the planet is facing, andd they will often buy the book after that conversation.
I think these so-called “health care” and “insurance” systems are pretty much the result of people just trying to get ahead.
What is frustrating about the current state of affairs is that – much like our Federal Government – there simply is no common protagonist force to beat back the greed and scheming of all the industry insiders.
Like so many of our social constructs – we are left with the systems and utterly preposterous situations that benefit the people who live off there confounding illogical framework.
I’m not so sure Obamacare should be compared to duct-tape solutions. Duct tape could stop some bleeding if applied correctly.
JHK,
You don’t mention why your policy was cancelled in October.
Like you, I have had substantial health expenses in recent years, and have recently received notice from Cigna that my individual policy will be cancelled at the end of this year, due to Obamacare changes.
Would appreciate your thoughts on alternatives for self-insured individuals (including no insurance).
Thanks
If his policy was cancelled it was only because he did not like it, after all the President has said time and tie again that “If you like your policy, you can keep it. Period”
I never go to the hospital unless I’ve been injured. I’m a old man and have learned through bitter experience to otherwise avoid the medical profession. I take no meds and get no “checkups”.
But several months ago I sustained a minor cut to the back of my hand. I went to the local urgent care clinic, where they gave me seven tiny stitches and sent me on my way. Two weeks later I returned and a nurse removed the stitches…so far so good.
I calculate the total time in treatment at about 40 minutes.
I then received an invoice for $186.00. I called to protest: “I have Medicare and that should cover 80% of the bill!”
The answer,”It did.”
The total bill, then, calculates at $930.00…for 40 minutes and a few inches of thread. No meds, no checkup.
This comes to about $33,400 for a twenty-four hour period. I’d say Jim did OK at 23 grand!
JHK, thanks for having a registration process which is fairly straightforward. Though I have to say, I still think the font is too small for the comments, they are difficult to read.
I’m an internal medicine physician, and I agree that the problems are too deep now to be fixed. We just let things slide for decades and now it’s too late.
I could rant and rave forever, but I will briefly say this: Much of my frustration is that I don’t get paid for what I’m good at, and what works, but I’m paid for fluff, and to do things which aren’t needed or proven.
Please, everybody, don’t get mad at doctors. Most doctors are middle class, comfortable but nothing more. On the totem pole of American life, we are nowhere near the top. A few who are in the right field or work really hard do better, but still, they don’t approach the elite.
We spend our lives amongst the diseased and dying. And we can be blamed or sued if patients do what 100% of them will do at some point, namely, to die of an illness. So we order more and more tests to cover ourselves and make everyone happy and feel like they are getting care. All of the incentives are there, there is no incentive for doing less.
JHK for President!
$23,000 per night? I’ll bet you left one hell of a tip.
My younger sister back in 1959-60 was not diagnosed in time with appendicitis and it perforated, leaving her near death. Our family doctor, whom we paid in cash for office visits and house calls, was so distraught he took care of her weeks-long hospital stay. In real terms I’ll bet it did not come anywhere close to $23,000.
My partner was a month out of COBRA, between coverages, and suffered a heart attack. An angiogram, one night in the hospital and a stent. His bills, not itemized, exceeeded $100K. He declared bankruptcy.
Things fall apart. The medical-industrial-financial racket apparently will be the first to implode from its own energy-intensive complexity.
We are all Detroiters now.
Let’s play “Can You Top This?”
I’ll see Jim’s 3 major surgeries and raise him the combined medical nightmares of my wife’s mother, brother and brother’s wife, and the associated financial nightmares of dealing with insurance companies, medicare, medicaid, hospice, etc.
Notice, I left out my wife’s father because he did the most sensible and wonderful thing a person can do for himself and his family…he dropped dead at age 75 while cleaning out a crawl space above his garage. Oh sure, it was a shock at the time but given the certainty that we are all going to die sooner or later it was a blessing. He left this world a fully functioning oldster, in dignity.
Readers here have probably heard all they care to hear about my aged M-I-L’s broken hip but the story would be incomplete without an update on what happened today. She has been in a rehab facility for 6-7 weeks. She was taken by ambulance a few miles (cost $83) for a scheduled appt with the doctor who did the surgery on her broken hip. This was a follow up to an identical visit 4 weeks earlier. The results were not good. The bone is not healing well enough to put weight on it and so rehab activity is all but impossible. This means she will be booted out of the rehab center in 48 hours. We anticipated this outcome and have been converting our (first floor) dining room to a bed room. She will leave the hands of professionals and be wrestled in and out of bed by two rookies. From now for the duration, short of a miracle, hygiene-wise she will receive nothing more satisfying than sponge baths. Costs to date have been covered by Medicare and secondary UAW (Ford) insurance. She is among the fortunate in that respect.
But Mom ain’t the half of it.
My S-I-L has a rare form of Parkinson’s disease where the afflicted person slowly gets worse and worse until they die. There is no known cure. Everything is affected. They call it MSA for Multiple System Atrophy. Darlene is 66 and when not in bed sits hunched over like an old hag in a wheel chair. She drools and can barely articulate speech even though her mind is sharp. Eating would best be accomplished by someone simply feeding her but she is too proud. She can barely hold a utensil. She brings it in slow motion from the plate toward her mouth and more often than not stops half way and slowly returns the fork and food to the plate to start over. It is painful to watch.
Dar’s husband, my B-I-L, must do everything for her from morning till night although they do have hired help during certain periods each day. There’s dressing, cooking, cleaning, food shopping, etc. I’ll spare you a detailed description of what is involved with urination and bowel movements….. and, oh yeah, enemas. Peter recently laid out more than $2,000 for a high tech toilet seat that he says has been a savior.
The physical effort needed to hoist a totally disabled person in and out of bed, cars, toilets numerous times a day would exhaust an Olympic weight lifter. Peter is 67 years old. He still operates his own business. He averages 150-200 miles per day on the road. The stress on him is palpable.
On Thursday of last week my wife and I were in Peter’s car with him driving. It was as though his mind was disconnected from his body. In the course of a mile we had several near crashes. His timing and coordination had left him. He was very slow to make a left from our street onto another road and a woman behind us started blowing her horn. Peter slowly glanced in his mirror and gave her the finger.
Peter knew for more than a week that he “wasn’t himself” and had a doctor appointment set for the next day. Not a moment too soon, either. The upshot was he had had a stroke. They kept him in the hospital 3 days for further tests. Dar’s sister was summoned from a hundred miles distant to drop everything, pack a bag and go fill in for Peter in the care of Dar.
Yesterday my wife and I drove 40 miles to the hospital in Summit to spring Peter. For liability reasons they wheel a patient to the door where a family member or friend must be ready to take over. I drove Peter and his car, my wife following, 50 more miles to his home in the boonies.
Dar’s sister had been making arrangements for additional help to relieve Peter from his impossible schedule as primary care giver. It was handled like an “intervention.” Peter had been resistant to hiring MORE help unless he could pay them “under the table” but that would have meant not being able to claim the expense on his tax return. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Dar finally gave up her former resistance to hiring more help. Her logic had been that she only had $45,000 in the kitty, the modest accumulation of a lifetime of working, and was “saving it for an emergency” as if this didn’t reach the status of “emergency.” P.S. I forgot to mention, they never had any kids and also that they are both in dire financial straits. Dar has thousands in unpaid credit card debt at some high interest rate that would condemn a banker in an Islamic country to the death penalty. The house has been re-fied a couple of times and is currently “under water.” It is impossible to discuss financial issues with Peter. I think he is embarrassed about the way he has mismanaged his financial life. One example being a $50,000 Corvette in his garage that he needs like a hole in the head. A second would be his purchase of a 1941 Harley Davidson Trike two weeks ago (involving a 10 hour round trip to Virginia that he credits with his stroke) that he and his motor-head Uncle Ted are going to restore in Peter’s “spare time.” Ted is 80 years old.
Going back a year or so ago Dar had “hospice” caretakers helping out. I think this is/was paid for by Medicare. Hospice care is only provided to people who are certifiably imminently ready to die. When you don’t “hurry up and die for Christ’s sake” they terminate your hospice care. Such was Dar’s situation.
Oops, just got interrupted by Ocean Home Health who called to confirm that someone would be home tomorrow to receive a hospital bed, wheel chair, etc that will be needed for Mom when she’s delivered by ambulance on Wednesday. Everything will be covered by Medicare except the wheel-less walker. For that please have a $100 in cash or check ready.
Finally, I almost forgot to mention:
. in her early 20s Dar lost her Spleen in a car accident
. 8 years ago Peter had a quintuple heart bypass
. 1 month ago Peter was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes and told to lose 45 lbs
There’s more than enough statistical data supplied every year by hospitals to let the government(s) know how much money and facilities we need to maintain and help Americans and their alien residents.
I feel for you Q. My father died of MSA 3 years ago.
San Jose Mom
Sounds like they need an appointment with Dr Jack K. All kidding aside, my sympathies. It sounds like an impossibly painful situation on all levels.
How about you? Would you consider going to Dr Jack when your time comes? I can’t as it’s a sin. But it makes sense in many ways. If one did it to avoid bankrupting the family then that makes it a very different action than just trying to avoid pain. And is even that so wrong either?
I just heard from my Japanese “Bro” named “Socki Tumi” that the Japanese government has recently passed a law making it illegal for reporters to report on the situation at the Fukishimi nuclear power plant.
I just heard from my Japanese “Bro” named “Socki Tumi” that the Japanese government has recently passed a law making it illegal for reporters to report on the situation at the Fukishima nuclear power plant.
That would be a really weird law since the elements of the offense would have to include some level of intent to tell the Truth, or a reckless disregard for the Lie. (If the reporter told the Truth, then he’d be guilty. Or if he was reckless and inadvertently told the Truth, he’d also be guilty.)
“Did you intend to tell the Truth in your article about Fukishima? Remember that you’re under oath to tell the Truth.”
“No….I mean Yes… I mean No….”
The World has gone Insane…..
I am from Canada and my experience is pretty similar to what RobH describes for New-Zealand. I am certainly sheltered from some harsh medical cost realities, but I’m reading this story of a hospital charging 23 grands for room and board, and I’m incredulous. Is that correct? Do Americans actually pay an amount anywhere near that? Not for surgery, anesthesia, or hours of specialist care but plain “room and board”?
Just for kicks I googled around and found this: http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/patientcare/patient_and_visitor_information/financial_information/hospital_fees/pages/index.aspx
Room and board, non-ICU: somewhere around $1500/day. Not the cheapest bed in town, and yet *15* times less than what was on JHK’s “bill”. Can you Americans enlighten us? Are the Ohio State University hospital fees incredibly cheap? Is that hospital a dump? Is JHK’s hospital a palatial cutting-edge research center for millionaires? Are the fees mentioned on JHK’s article a pleasant accounting fiction and no one, not even insurers actually pay anything near that? I am honestly curious to know.
scouby,
The inflated costs are expected to be whittled down – either by the insurance company, or if uninsured, by settlement or just payed in full. There’s a variety of programs, charities, etc., one can hope to take advantage to pay the bill.
Consider my recent hospital stay where I was treated for a mild heart attack (widowmaker) and given a stent. The bill came out to be about $55K, including one day/night in ICU and another day and night in the regular bed before I was sent home. I paid about $6K out of pocket, total, after deductible plus coinsurance. The insurance company paid about $18K or something – so $22K the hospital made after all was said and done – the rest of the 6K was the ambulance and other things.
Had I been uninsured – and they thought I was one of those when I first came in and due to the hurried procedure I was unable to adequately inform them of my insurance (the emergency portion of the hospital bills separately). So while I was in the regular bed, I was visited by a couple of guys in suits that come around and talk to the uninsured people about being able to pay and talking about forms to fill and stuff to obtain forgiveness, and the like.
But, the bottom line is that the Hospital expects to be paid a certain amount of money – that amount is the negotiated amount – or the amount that would be agreed upon via arbitration or by settlement from those who are sued. If the patient chooses to not actively pursue an agreement, and the hospital should be very amenable to reaching an agreement to avoid such unpleasantries.
So therefore, the bill is originally “astronomical” because, after arbitration and settlement, the amount drops to an agreeable one that all parties can live with. Had the high mark been set too low, there would be too much money lost and the Hospital would be unsustainable.
Hi BeerBarrel,
Thanks for your reply. I understood the first quote can be like in a moroccan bazaar, something to get started as you sit down for business. Still, I was surprised at the order of magnitude difference between what JHK was “billed”, and the published rates from that Ohio hospital (“one of the largest and most diverse academic medical centers in the country”).
I am curious to see what it’s like out there for ordinary Americans… would you consider you have great insurance? What kind of monthly payment do you pay, and is the employer paying part or all of it? I am currently on a waiting list for (non-urgent) heart surgery. Based on the Ohio price list, I’d guesstimate a 40K bill, or, applying the Kunstler conversion factor, a half a million dollar bill, negociated down to a bargain basement 200K.
Hope you’re recovering fine from your procedure.
My insurance is standard for small business employees – full coverage paid by my employer – my wife and kids cost $85/wk. Dental’s another charge, but in the range of about $11/wk. So, about 100 bucks a week.
Those who work for large companies, or gov’t agencies such as the local police – they get the sweet deals – family coverage for 56 cents extra. It’s all negotiated – costs are spread across a plan – it is all calculated based on expenses vs. premiums paid.
I’m doing fine- still skiing.
Should we be eating Chinese pork?
It looks like Big Pharma is bribing Chinese middlemen in the form of kickbacks to push antibiotics in China. We’re all gonna die….
Meanwhile, Big Pharma wouldn’t pursue new drugs to fight pan-resistant bacteria because it’s not profitable to invest in research to invent such new antibiotics. In other words, it is profitable to create conditions that inevitably give rise to new pan-resistant bacteria, but it’s not profitable for Big Pharma to fight new pan-resistant bacteria. Insane…… They’re willfully trying to kill us.
http://qz.com/122774/chinas-farms-are-joining-its-hospitals-in-churning-out-antibiotics-resistant-superbugs/
In fact, come to think of it, it’s probably much more profitable for the medical establishment to not invent new antibiotics to combat new pan-resistant bacteria.
The logic being that the medical system wouldn’t make much money from simply applying a smudge of a new cream and a bandaid to Little Billy’s minor swing set wound. But the medical system would stand to make a lot of money if Little Billy’s minor swing set wound got infected with a horrific new pan-resistant bacteria that quickly spread its drug resistant DNA to other bacteria in Little Billy’s body. Little Billy’s minor low cost swing set wound metamorphoses into a hellish and very expensive life-and-death drama in the hospital ICU.
Sick…..
“I feel for you Q. My father died of MSA 3 years ago.” – San Jose Mom
============
Wow, you’re the first other person I know with any direct acquaintance with MSA. Any details about your Dad’s experience that you’d be willing to share would be greatly appreciated. For example, how long was it from the first moment you began to realize there was something unusually wrong with your Dad until he died?
What symptom do you feel finally did him in? For example, in Darlene’s case I can envision her being unable to eat/chew/swallow. The loss of muscular coordination is something to behold.
Dar’s first sign of a problem was to stumble over insignificant impediments in the sidewalk and fall on her face. Then she got something they called restless leg syndrome.
She continued to drive 50 miles one way to work and we would wonder how she ever made it there in one piece. Then we wondered what earthly good she was as an employee since one could barely understand her speech.
She had a doctor appt and the subject of her driving to work came up and the Doc said WHAT!!???. YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU’RE STILL DRIVING?? He says let me see your license. He hands it to P:eter and says I want you to cut it up; her driving days are done.
My dad went downhill really fast. Once he was diagnosed, he lived two years. He was able to communicate until the last day, and kept his sense of humor. His neck muscles were the worst, and caused him terrible pain. In the end, his head was at a 90 degree angle to his back. He couldn’t sit up straight at all. He did physical therapy, but it was torture, and when I look back I conclude that it wasn’t worth the pain it caused, and it didn’t improve his quality of life.
The last six months of his life he was in hospice care, but he was able to stay at home. He has a legal DNR notice posted on the fridge, and he didn’t want any IV’s. The hospice workers would come and shave and bathe him and help my mom every other day. Also, my parents are in Salt Lake City, intergalactic Mormon headquarters, so they got LOTS of support from the Mormon neighbors.
He died on May 1, 2010. I’d flown in from San Jose that morning to help my mom for 3 days, because my brother (my only sibling who lives in Utah) was out of the country. Until that morning, he’d been able to manage drinking with a straw, but it wasn’t working and he indicated he was really, really thirsty. I took a needle-less syringe and gave him about a teaspoon of water at a time. He wanted, more, more, more……but after five minutes or so, he started coughing. Then he stopped breathing. So I’m pretty sure not being able to swallow is what killed him. But the timing seemed to be of his choosing because when he died, I was at his bedside along with my mother and his only sister. A very rare convergence of women.
Our family wonders if it was caused by his life-long love affair with herbicides and pesticides. He didn’t believe in pulling weeds, he thought it best to poison them. His strawberries tasted like onions.
I wasn’t keen on eating anything he grew.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Jen
Q. and SanJoseMom,
If you’d prefer to communicate a bit more freely (out of blog sight), please contact Prog at: betterhotwater@aol.com
He’ll make it happen if both parties are in agreement.
Thanks again Prog; very helpful!
My Chinese doctor recommended Vick’s “Vipor Rub”.
Who’s Vick?
Is that short for “Vicky”?
Physicians aren’t fully to blame, just as patients aren’t fully to blame, but both are certainly partly to blame. It’s a system, and many different constituents contribute to propping up and perpetuating this dysfunction. Take physicians, for example. Many rely on the so-called expertise of the pharmaceutical companies in treating symptoms rather than holistically engendering health. Many patients, in turn, expect and demand symptom relief but are unwilling to make behavioral changes in their respective lives that, in a collaborative effort with holistic physicians, will bring about positive health outcomes. The ACA addresses none of the above, and ironically, legislation that was allegedly an attempt to save money will in fact waste even more money by treating mounting symptoms rather than engendering good health. But hey, at least birth control is now covered, so it’s worth it, I suppose.
Exactly.
We should admit that there’s a LOT of skimming by the insurance ‘industry’ that the ACA has simply codified as legal extortion. That doesn’t help matters. If tweaking the ACA were to ensue, I’d start whittling away right there, but thinking of the monied interests involved, it could get very risky. Grifters are not known for possessing high-minded scruples; that’s why they have the money to hire the best law firms! 😉
Not to mention the resurgence of AIDS from watching football on high-definition as this fella presciently points out. This is real folks, and it needs to be taken seriously before it becomes an epidemic. In fact, I’d say it’s already an epidemic. When I observe all these men fervently watching every weekend, and now every day it seems, I know this is what’s going on in their sick heads and their sticky sweat pants. Talk about a Clusterfuck. This is the real thing; The Real Clusterfuck, quite literally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY3W9Z4bdS8
Somehow JHK, I get the feeling that, like most Americans, when you say England you really mean Britain, or the UK, of which England is a part, not the whole.
Actually though, to be fair, the National Health Service systems in England and Scotland are separate entities, so it’s accurate to say the NHS in England is suffering under the predations of the Westminster government. In Scotland though, our NHS is still relatively safe under the care of the devolved Scottish government. This can only last so long while Westminster holds the overall purse strings.
I have to defend our NHS in Scotland. I have MS, and it’s helped me out immeasurably. My Vermonter girlfriend (about to become a citizen) is also amazed by it. Whether it remains as good as it is depends on us voting yes to independence next year. Long term – well, we can try.
BTW, I’d be fascinated to read your take on the global implications for the possible end of the UK within two or three years. Imagine that – your favourite ally gone. (But two new ones in its place).
Watch for news out of Scotland in September 2014. Our little patch of Earth may be about to shake things up in the Western world. 2014 could be our 1776.
I’m hoping it is, and voting yes.
Regards,
Gus Steedman.
Whoa!
Scotland as the black swan of decentralization! Who knew? (Certainly not americans via their vaunted press; bad for morale you understand… Gives people ideas.)
Yeah but what does it matter if the place is filled up with Pakis and Blacks? It wont be Scotland – just more globalism.
Sorry if this should prove a misinterpretation, but I think he means: “Just another bunch of niggers that we’re going to have to move along to their own ghettos and territories”.
‘Away single-focused pest!
So you want a Black King of Scotland like Idi Amin? Why? They don’t belong there. And dark skinned people will have trouble getting enough Vitamin D at those latitude once there are no more supplement and fresh fruits and veggies are in short supply. We are the People of Northern Europe. Stop hating your brothers and sisters just to score cheap points with the corrupt powers that be.
You fancy that you are better than that – but you’re not.
Medical costs are expensive because they’re not subject to market forces. The same thing would happen to auto costs if prices were not advertised and everything was negotiated through your auto insurer. Imagine how much even a simple oil change would cost if you couldn’t shop around on your own and your insurer was a middleman in every transaction. The analogy holds up surprisingly well even in cases involving car repairs where some initial work must be performed to fully determine the extent (and cost) of the repairs.
In any case, certainly simply procedures like vaccine shots can and should be advertised. Flu shots are advertised which is why the total procedure can be had for less than $20. Now if this was a routine 10-year tetanus shot, you’d be told that you must meet with a doctor before any medical services can be dispensed. The doctor would speak with you for about 90 seconds and then the technician would come in to give you the shot. Total cost would be around $200—most of which is that 90-second chat with the doctor where he asks you when was the last time you had a tetanus shot, if you have any allergies, etc. These are the same questions you’re asked prior to a flu shot, only the person dispensing the flu shot is not a licensed MD and so the costs reflect that. They won’t be able to explain why a routine tetanus shot requires a doctor, while a routine flu shot does not.
So, yes, medical costs, being immune to market forces, are a scam. I’m surprised other business sectors don’t catch on. Maybe all grocers should collude and just stop advertising prices. You put the groceries in your cart and you get to know how much it all costs at the checkout aisle. Congress has certainly caught on: you vote the bill into law and then you get to find out what you voted for…
Couple of provisos –
I posted that email address a couple of years ago, out of a sense that JHK might be shut down. I was surprised how many posters I heard from, and how little spam/hatemail I received. (Haters will be ignored, btw, and aol has good spam filters.)
I’m pretty slow to check emails, as O3 will attest. So don’t ever expect a rapid response from me. If something is time sensitive – better reach me by smoke signals or CFN.
I honestly (personally) prefer communication like that now occurring between SJ and Q be done on this public forum – where others can benefit and where, hopefully JHK benefits from the “realness?” of what his posters are experiencing and sharing.
I’ll be working up a response to JHK’s week’s work this evening, if time permits. I’ve been a frustrated party to so many medical f*ckups and financial slights-of-hands, that I hardly know where to begin.
JHK I like your work. I am a fan. I read your blog often.
I am a civil engineer. I spent the first twelve years of my career in bridge replacements and most of the last 17 years in site development and stream studies. I am well aware of the serious flaws in our socio-economic model of pursuit of the almighty dollar in lieu of societal and environmental costs.
This health care theme affects us all in every aspect of our lives. It cannot be avoided unless you are wealthy beyond concern. Most providers will take cash and provide great care, but they are not allowed by law to protect themselves from potential lawsuits that will ruin them and their practice. As many doctors in this area have noted, “Once this all falls apart, I will maintain my skills and will always take cash whether or not I have an office and an official practice.”
Personally, I had avoided all the dental insurance offered to me. I had thousands of work done on my teeth both onlays and realignment work. When I was asked why I refused to get insurance for the orthodontic work I noted: “Insurance companies get between you and your doctor and tell you doctor what to do. They have no medical certifications and they don’t care anything about me. So, I don’t need them to be involved.”
My own experience is in three surgeries to date; I paid at least half for each of them.
The first was in the 1980’s for wisdom teeth removal, The Maxillofacial surgeon doubled as the Anesthesiologist. He performed the work in his own office with a professional, medical aid who also held a license I think. Upon waking, I was given Tylenol with codeine and sent home with a refill prescription.
The second surgery was for a typical hernia. I sought out my friend, an attorney who defends doctors in the area. He recommended a doctor who practiced privately but performed surgeries at only one hospital. I went to that hospital, requested that doctor and gave all the background and insurance (single contract, catastrophic insurance only) an he performed the surgery. The total cost came to $3,900. The original bills were in the $6,800 range. The insurance company brought them down to about half and they paid half of that. I paid the rest.
Once the other hernia on the other side became an issue, I went back to the same hospital only 18 months later. Again I had catastrophic insurance only and again they took my background information for surgery to be performed by this same doctor. However, she refused to tell me what the cost would be! I pressed her and finally she admitted: “These have been going lately for about $9,400.”
I was a returning patient who had ‘paid in full’ but was being treated again like I was a probable ‘problem’. However, I was signed up and upon arriving for surgery at 6:30AM, they prepared me, performed surgery and then I was wheeled out at about 11:30AM the same day. I got up out of the chair and walked to the car and went to work the next day.
When the bills came, they tried to get a ‘gross’ amount of $7,900. There were no overruns nor special anything. it was standard procedure. Ultimately, the insurance company negotiated this back to about $4,500 and again I paid half.
It seems to me that the thing a Kentucky hospital administrator told me in the early 1990’s is quite true: “The only way we are going to arrest these constant increases in medical costs is to settle upon a standard payment amount for a typical surgery. The system will pay you only this amount for your condition. If you want more, find money elsewhere or pay for the additional costs yourself.”
Our federal government has corrupted every aspect of the civil engineering world, development, municipal improvements…nearly everything done by people on the surface within each state is now affected by some entity in our federal government. I believe the federal government is way beyond its mandate and way beyond its means. I see it has done the same throughout all other aspects of our society.
I believe we must give all the healthcare system back to doctors and have doctors determine all of the care and costs. The ‘pool’ should be managed more locally and be watched carefully by the paying public into the pool. There should be a lot of journalists involved who are in private practice and paid to keep an eye on this pool. The pool and the management thereof might best be done at the state level. Boards of doctors should be set up to observe the results of the system and rule over procedural changes in the system. More substantial changes might be submitted to payers into the pool. All in all, any tax based guarantees must be limited and very carefully watched. The corporations have turned all taxing authorities into wholly controlled subsidaries and we must reverse this corporatocracy subversion of our socio-economic-governmental system.
Those that cannot pay may be given care but at some point, you cannot pay multiple millions in tort-feaser cases to a single patient and you also cannot give open-heart surgeries to those that cannot afford to pay into the system. Somewhere along the way, you must accept that lifestyle choices affect health outcomes. The difficult decisions about spending tens of thousands on an 85 year old must be addressed openly by society.
Given that we as a country lost control of the corporations quite some time ago, asking insurance companies to act at the behest of patients is akin to asking the wolf to be kind to your infant child as you go off to pick vegetables from the garden for dinner.
“The difficult decisions about spending tens of thousands on an 85 year old must be addressed openly by society.”
If you asked most 85 yr olds what they would like to have done with them if they become unconscious or require major (expensive) surgery for anything, they’d say don’t bother (and doctors would agree with them). Most people over 80 live at or below poverty, living with family caretakers or in a nursing home under a doctors care.
Their hearing is going, going, gone along with their eyesight and all hopes for a pain free existence have long ago died.
They know wherein their true relief lay and it has never been with a doctor or registered nurse. Most of their old friends, spouses and family have gone before them; therefore, they will welcome the big sleep.
Hello Greg5,
I am “surprised” that you are unable to recognize that the problem of corruption has gone much further down the rabbit hole. The states and localities are also corrupted. The Federal corruption did not occur in a vacuum. Trusting any level of government is a formula for failure. The government at all levels has one constituency. The 1%’ers who have bought and paid for the majority of them! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0 If you don’t believe me then try Strother Martin in “Cool Hand Luke”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnO9Jyz82Ps
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/systemic-risk/the-20-mega-corporations-who-are-controling-and-shaping-you/
I don’t know what you are implying with your comment:
“I am “surprised” that you are unable to recognize that the problem of corruption has gone much further down the rabbit hole. The states and localities are also corrupted…”
Believe me, in the early 1980’s, I was carrying a theodolite to the projects and bringing back the data and then calculating and printing out computer generated computation sheets and having the people working for me draw up the plans. Our work would go out to bid and get built. Three years later, those bridges looked like the bridges we were hired to replace. Our plans were far more detailed than those plans from the 1930’s and we know a great deal more about materials today than they did then.
My mentor, the office manager and one of the partners in the firm, used to fly Mitchells out of SE England over Germany. After returning to the states, he obtained his degree and began working for one of the “Eisenhower’s Interstate” consulting firms. Ultimately, he reached the level of Chief Structural Engineer in a firm with offices in PA, WV, TN, OH and KY.
He was a proud Kentuckian. He responded to many hundreds of requests for interest letters to the Commonwealth of Kentucky for many years, getting no response. Only after $5,000 tribute money was paid to the Commonwealth’s Cabinet did a project finally materialize. I did much of the work on that bridge replacement project. I have those details to the present day.
He and I had various conversations in the mid-1980’s about the newly built replacement bridges looking after only three years like those 1930’s built bridges that were replaced. That we knew was a tragedy. We knew how and why. He was paid by various county engineers to inspect bridges and place them on a rating scale. He was very skilled at this.
I know people in various DOT’s in construction. They are often told by the politicians to look the other way when a favored contractor wants to use a lesser material or place only 4″ when he or she is being paid to place 8″. This is common around your world and my world. Nobody jots down notes about what really was built. Nobody will ever be prosecuted. There is nothing I can do about it on my own projects…I can just see it happening and it brings tears to my eyes. If I say anything, I will be eviscerated.
Recently, on a major 4-lane divided highway project, the District Manager (they removed engineers from this position years before…a horrible mistake…) ordered that the base material not be placed! YES…that would be the sub-base granular clayey, silty material with the compacted gravel above…none of which was placed for some 18 miles of brand new project on VIRGIN GROUND! Yes, how simply horrible can that be? That pavement started breaking up ten months after placement. That idiot District Manager got a little feather in his cap for “SAVING TEN MILLION DOLLARS” – hurray, hurray and then retired. It will cost the state over a hundred million in the coming decades to deal with that disaster.
I am very well aware that each time I visit a County Engineer’s office in hopes of getting a chance to bid on a project, I must have already attended his fundraising event and contributed. I am well aware that my contributions have to be in on time with the County Chairman of the PARTY IN POWER (Yes, both sides do this…) to be eligible to get A CHANCE TO BID on the state work. Name your state…they all do this.
From what I have learned after years of research, this has been going on in most western “democracies” since the pre-Roman era. Much about this was written about the first democracy in Greece a very long time ago. I had a conversation yesterday with a Greek lady whose father is in Greece now trying to deal with various issues. They assured me that nobody trusts the Greek government and everyone keeps most of their money in cash in their houses.
I know someone who had a vehicular while on his scooter.
I do not know the details but he was hospitalized for weeks [months?] with a broken or smashed leg.
The bill, about 1/4 million dollars.
“Finally, there’s the pathetic American lumpen-public of our day itself, steadily committing suicide en masse by corn byproducts, the three-hundred pounders lumbering down the Wal-Mart aisles in search of the latest designer nacho. What can you do about such a people, except let fate take them where it will?”
For someone committed to reality based outcomes this is disappointing. The pathetic lumpen-public is by definition a population of trusting creatures which can be lead to mass murder or holy grace depending on what those doing the leading choose. Mass media reinforces suicide en masse by corn byproducts because selling corn and the packaging it comes in and everything else consumed is the one and only priority of those doing the manipulating. The defeatist attitude that there is nothing that can be done for the three-hundred pounders is a defeatist attitude that does no one any good. I can appreciate the humor myself but the fact is the values and fantasies pushed by corporate America, Hollywood and the Military Industrial Complex made those three-hundred pounders who are really only doing what they are being told to do. The three-hundred pounders are being fed (pun intended) empty values and empty calories every day and those who manipulate them have evolved into a group of elite assholes
who wind up despising their own creation. We live under a rain of lies. So what can you do about such people, except let fate take them where it will.
Stop the lies and deception and start telling America the truth.
Your wires are showing. What you’re saying is that guns kill people and that people are innocent – so ban the guns. Likewise, spoons create fat girls so spoons must be banned. People have to become afraid to have spoons in their house.
There has to be a core of responsibility assumed and demanded, otherwise you end up degrading the very people who are trying to help. That being said, corn syrup is unnatural and terrible for the body. I lost 15 pounds since I gave it up. It’s much worse than regular sugar – and yes, it should not be part of our food system.
I must agree with Janos. You, I and all others on this site are presumably operating with our eyes open yet these lumpens are not. What differentiates us? Is it IQ, genetics, curiosity, what? We’re susceptible to the same mass media as they so are we not also being manipulate?. I cannot speak for you or others, but at six feet tall and 165 ponds, at the age of 43, I am in excellent health because I take care of myself and stay away from processed foods, refined sugars, GMOs, wheat, sweat-shop, hormone-laden, antibiotic-riddled meats and designer nachos. This is what we call taking responsibility for ourselves and our health. I plan on never taking a prescription for as long as I live and hopefully never going to a hospital except for a catastrophic injury. Maybe these 300 pounders just don’t care. Anyone with half a brain knows when he’s being manipulated, especially in such a transparent manner.
Yes, lumbering is not the last stage. Women around here graduate to motorized wheel chairs. Some of them seem to love being the center of attention, Queen Bees to be served by others.
It’s been wonderful to lose the weight. Not quite there yet, but my body’s beginning to look like I did when I graduated from High School.
Liberals like Kdog assume egalitarianism but in truth there are vast difference between people – differences that we are born with. Genetic? Yes. Culture is important too, but Conservatives never denied it. Liberals on the other hand deny Genetics, consigning themselves to confusion and us to the failure that follows from their policies. Of course they are reacting to social Darwinism that disrespected the ordinary man. Fascism rejects this as well. The lower classes are like our feet, legs, and arms. Where we would be without these? A head sitting on a table. What kind of life is that? So Liberals want a body without a head and social Darwinists a head without a body. Fascism embraces the whole man and want the People to become whole and healthy.
Many Capitalists have leaned towards social Darwinism – thus giving the Socialists a stick to beat them over the head with.
Are you allergic to wheat?
No, he isn’t.
What gives him hives, heebie-jeebies and loss of sphincter control is being introduced to reality of any kind.
Here………. take this stick and whack him with it; a few stout licks proves to have miraculous curative powers. (No, no, the head, the head.)
“How about you? Would you consider going to Dr Jack when your time comes?” – Janos
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Absolutely, yes. I think suicide is a perfectly sensible and honorable thing to do. I’ve already told my wife, if push comes to shove, pull the plug. She jokingly said “Oh, don’t worry about that honey…etc.” At least I THINK she was joking.
I read where suicide is a common and growing phenomenon…it only makes sense with people growing to ridiculously old ages when every bodily system begins to break down…not to mention dementia and Alzheimer’s.
There are numerous over the counter drugs that can kill you if taken in high enough quantity. For example, I think a hundred of various common pain pills will do the job. As a result drug manufacturers are changing the way they sell certain drugs from bottles to blister packs. Old people have a hard time extracting a hundred pills from blister packs.
Michael Moore did a good movie: Sicko, that exposed the American Health Care Racket!
Ala Leni? Who did the Hitler films?
Michael would replace ‘it’ w the Cuban Racket?
Doc bashing seems to be getting popular here…….but most docs actually try to help people and are BETTER than the rest of us rolling around in the dirt doing stupid degrading stuff for nickels. The next time you are bleeding or need your kid’s broken bone set…..try calling a naturopath, chiropractor, or acupuncturist.
You are right that doc bashing can get out of hand. But let me add this.
As a doctor, I know firsthand that doctors are not, in fact, better than anyone. They are fallible, imperfect human beings who try to use science and good judgment to alleviate suffering and prolong life. Ultimately, they are doomed to failure.
See, that’s what the medical establishment never admitted. It’s not so much that science is wrong, and that the flaky alternatives are right. It’s that the science itself actually tells us that we are organic creatures subject to decay. The science doesn’t say “x amount of drugs and procedures will keep you alive to 300 years old and you will feel like a 20 year old adonis” There is no scientific basis for this idea.
Doctors, and the medical establishment, need to admit their limits. But they won’t do it, anymore than the wall street crowd stops trying to turn everybody else’s money into infinitely more money for themselves.
Why do people bash docs? Because docs promised eternal life at no cost, and have failed to deliver. So docs need to be honest if they want the bashing to stop.
Docs are also worshipped as gods. When people are sick and afraid, they will take anything that’s said or prescribed as gospel. My ex-husband and I used to joke about this–until he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Then we followed all orders to the letter, only to have his 5-10 year life diagnosis end at 18 months when he passed away last year. I often wonder if the 10 drugs he was prescribed did more harm than good. He didn’t have health insurance, so when he first felt sick, he waited until he was almost dead before visiting an urgent care clinic. I know his life was cut short because of our failed health care system.
“In any case, several of the other systems that currently support the activities of our society are scheduled for near-term implosion, too. That would be the banking-finance system, the energy supply system, and the industrial agriculture system.”
There are people who are trying to prepare for collapses from these causes along with those getting ready for the zombie apocalypse (yes, really). PBS caught up with a group from New York City two weeks ago as part of their Sandy anniversary coverage (video at the link). They were practicing “bugging out” in the event of another natural disaster. What they ended up doing was camping in the Catskills. “Mad Max” or “The Walking Dead” it wasn’t. Instead, it was an exercise in survival through community. I hope they take that lesson back to NYC with them.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/11/pbs-newshour-on-preppers.html
Hey gang, apparently new cars all have black boxes and a plan is afoot to tax us by the mile. But before you all start cheering, the boxes may well be used to spy on our movements. Is it right to tax us in this way? And if so, is it worth the almost inevitable snooping.
I say No and No. But if an alternate economy was to develop, it might be a way to manage the tension between the haves who still drive and the new poor who do not. Mr Kunstler has predicted this coming conflict.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/26/nation/la-na-roads-black-boxes-20131027
ALL cars have black boxes: cellular phones.
They cause cancer. You should only use them when necessary.
Hello Karah,
Not all people have “cellular phones”. Some of us don’t have mobile devices. That was the main reason for making the cars have black boxes. It make it easier to track. The government is getting so fat and lazy that they want all information handed to them on a “silver platter”!
Okay, if you’re driving and you don’t have a cellular phone then you must have ONSTAR or someone riding with you that has a cell phone or someone you can reach by cellphone wherever you may stop to use the phone because YOU don’t have a cell phone.
A black box in a vehicle only tells people where the car is going, not who is actually in the car. This would be very beneficial in case of theft in order to recover stolen assets.
People do not and will never have little black boxes installed in their bodies; therefore, we will always need INTELLIGENCE while undergoing any kind of surveillance.
From what I can gather about the NSA, there’s over 800,000 people involved in or specializing in spying for the government.
Found a woman for Ozone. A real freak like him but also a xtian of sorts to save his soul. Am I not merciful?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bolz-webers-liberal-foulmouthed-articulation-of-christianity-speaks-to-fed-up-believers/2013/11/03/7139dc24-3cd3-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html
Yes, its call ‘infiltration’ and just plain disinformation. I do not know the new Testament well but know an ignorant con when I hear one.
If you don’t stop with the “firsting”, personal jabs and youtubes…I’m going to be the only one left posting and NO ONE WANTS THAT EITHER! :o)
Are you a man, woman, both, or neither?
How come everything on the internet ends up resembling a dating website?
Intelligent discussion is not the monopoly of any one kind of person.
There’s no need to share your personal information with anyone anywhere on the INTERNET in order to share viewpoints. Eventually, through the natural course of dialogue, you will gradually reveal personal aspects about yourself, so there’s no need for profiling.
The LAX shooting incident didn’t draw even a single comment here. We have become so jaded.
The Government loves these excuses to become ever more tyrannical. So was the kid wrong in his viewpoint? Or only his actions? Or perhaps just his timing? Surely the lionizing of the TSA guy is ridiculous.
Yes, you loves Breiveks philosophy but not his carnage.
To Q-Stick
There is a site for MSA (Multiple system Atrophy) or Shy-Drager as it was also known. It is patients & their families posting back & forth & you can pick up a lot of useful stuff from reading the posts.
shydrager@yahoogroups…
I might have it but so far my diagnosis is “Parkinsonism” . I am already retired & on medicare (retired under state of Ohio public employees – I worked in a library. Right now I have Humana & Medicare, They gave good coveridge on my cataract & other eye surgery) Hope things will remain under control for us all.
My best to you and your family
“Change we can believe in”. Tis ironic that I roamed here after trying to find a local theater showing the movie “The Fifth Estate”. Speaking of duct tape. It hasn’t been out that long, and I could not find one theater in Michigan that is showing it. The movie is based on the brave patriots who revealed various dirty deeds by the US government on wikileaks, based on a true story. Amongst other things, a video of a US military helicopter firing on and murdering unarmed reporters? The US became a torture state, and now engages in sanctified murder? Well, I guess after the JFK coup de tat, we all know it has been around all along.
Is it my imagination, or is this movie being suppressed, like Oliver Stone’s “Salvador” or this other one based on a true story of another whistle blower, Christopher Boyce “Falcon and the Snow Man”? The latter was just kinda suppressed by the media and then swept under the carpet. Political sabotage, subverting entire economies, and after this revelation a media black out on the subject, not unlike the JFK coup, the CIAs cocaine smuggling to fund Reagan’s illegal terrorist “contra” war against a legally elected government, which resulted in the crack epidemic in the 80s, etc etc
My curiosity got the best of me, so I checked out the wikileaks site. I encourage everyone else to do so. Massive surveillance of social networks such as that vast wasteland, facebook, illegally opening the e-mails and listening in on/recording the phone conversations of millions of innocent americans without their knowledge or consent?
I googled Edward Snowden.and he confirms what the sources of the wikileaks had revealed. He said he was tempted to go forward to warn us in 2008, but he, like too many others, actually believed Obama. “Change we can believe in” my ass. Nothing has changed, and like Obamacare, it is a sick joke. What a waste of time voting proved to be. Snowden saw Obama didn’t keep his promises, so risked his life and liberty to warn us. A true hero if there ever was one. Why the paranoia on the part of the CIA and NSA? Do they know something that most are not aware, like a whole sale economic collapse and the imposition of martial law? That would explain the “national defense authorization act” and the “department of homeland security” purchasing billions of rounds of hollow points and tens of thousands of mine resistant armored vehicles. They obviously know the shit is about to hit the fan.
$23,000 per day for taking one’s blood pressure and serving up 6 meals that in all likelihood are not fit for human consumption? I work in the healthcare field, I knew the mark ups were beyond criminal after watching the documentary “Sicko”. I am just too busy starting and hanging IVs, giving meds, and being threatened by my morbidly obese supervisor who refuses to help us out on the floor as they cut back staff, fire seasoned veterans and hire in fresh graduates for less pay to save money as I am seeing the healthcare industry slowly collapse along with everything else. Like it or not, the healthcare terrorists (your money or your life) do not give one monkey fuck if you are a staunch free market conservative or a left leaning socialist. We all wind up bankrupted or dead after they extract your pound of flesh.
That leaves me to wonder what the racketeers, extortionists, and murdering bastards will steal from people after the US dollar finally collapses? The fillings in your teeth? Perhaps a kidney , testical, eyeball or other organ for the for likely soon to be profit organ “donor” market? They have gotten away with murder, and nothing has changed under Obama. How embarrassing it is for so many that actually believed a man who took massive campaign donations from giant pharma and the other crooks that continue to fleece us. Just another stooge of Goldman Sachs and the other elements of the 1% that are killing us one by one. What a joy it is to think that if there is indeed an election in 2016, we have a choice between Hitlery Clinton or some other cocksucker like Donald Trump? Like a choice of getting burned at the stake or boiled in oil. Take your pick
Yes Snowden is a very real Hero: he had a six figure salary in paradise with a hot pole dancer girlfriend yet he gave it all up for us. Greater love hath no man.
When we is invited back to the United States, given both an apology and a Congressional Medal of Honor, we’ll know we are on the path to recovery as a nation.
I am happy to see that one views Snowden as a true, freedom loving patriot. However, I do not envision a US that any sane person would want to come back to. If anything, with our resource base spent, people that came here from “third world” countries will be the first to flee when the dollar collapses and all the roads, highways, bridges, and other infrastructure that lead to the suburbs which will no longer be accessible, back to their “banana republics” where they were used to living with a lot less than the US did during its joyride, this relatively brief anomaly known as “industrialization” brought on by the use, abuse, and extinction of fossil fuels. Russia will fare better as will other countries, so nobody in their sane minds will wish to return to a post collapse US
No wonder they can’t wait to get this movie out of the theaters and swept under the carpet. This is actual wikileaks footage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0 Humans gunned down like animals in broad daylight, 2 of them reporters. The helicopter pilots can’t wait to “engage” and congratulate each other on their shooting skills. Such men indeed. Then when an SUV pulls up to rescue an injured man trying to crawl to safety, they open fire on that vehicle, injuring 2 children. Add that to those who were tortured and killed in prison, the troops capturing it on film for the “fun” of it. And these are just the few instances where they were exposed. Imagine the things we didn’t get to see and the media suppresses. And some wonder why other countries are eager to dump the dollar as the world’s reserve currency? I suspect atrocities like this play a great role
“There is a site for MSA (Multiple system Atrophy) or Shy-Drager as it was also known.” – queenie
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Thanks for the link.
Darlene’s doctors used the term Parkinsonism alternately with MSA. In discussing her condition I always favor MSA because it describes so well what I see happening. Regarding your own case I can only say I wish you the best of luck.
Y’all might enjoy a blog called ‘Ambrose Kane’.
Health insurance is not the only racket. I recently incurred damage to my garage roof from a storm. The insurance company not only denied my claim, they cancelled my policy. From what I can surmise, my home is now considered a liability that they don’t want to incur–much like people who get sick and are subsequently dropped from their insurance policies. Why is this practice not illegal?
I have insured my home and car with this company for over 25 years and spent probably 35K. I called them for help when I needed it and was instead spit out like some odorous road kill. Imagine what I could have done with that 35K? I could have fixed my house, and then some. Instead, I am left 35K poorer with nothing to show for it. Insurance companies, along with Wall Street, banksters and corporate ilks, are a blight on humanity.
The whole concept on INsurance (the black pronunciation) is flawed. It shouldn’t cost so much to live and die that we have to put odds on it with a bookie.
At one time, I had a credit rating above 800 and three houses rented with mortgages and all costs paid with the rents. On one of them, with a three year, renewable insurance contract coming due, I received notice that the insurance company would not renew the contract. I called to ask why. The insurance salesman that hooked me on the contract three years before would not take the call. I asked for an explanation and that company would not give me one. I have never filed any insurance claim…not in any insurance realm except for surgeries.
I learned later….through much effort in discussing this issue with many people including attorneys and others in the insurance field, that these companies could all see your ongoing purchasing histories as well as your outstanding liabilities and could calculate what “exposure” they wanted from you at any given time. Your credit record and good standing with all accounts meant nothing.
After that policy non-renewal, I learned that all insurance companies could see that non-renewal and now insurance for that one building was much higher than just a few years before…by more than 25%! There was nothing I could do about this. I checked with a dozen companies. They all read from the same playbook and all could see that non-renewal. There was nothing in the residential area around that building to cause any increase in risk. It was a stable, middle to upper middle class neighborhood.
In seeking answers, I came upon and bought Peter G. Peterson’s book many years ago about his business experiences in selling wares for a company. He was informed privately that he had to “visit” the senator in the state in which he wanted to do his business. He visited that senator and paid the dues noted of half a million for which he was assured that he would get exclusive selling rights in his region to sell his wares for an 18 month period. Over the next several months, Mr. Peterson did not see any benefit and learned his competitors were still selling their like wares. Hence, Mr. Peterson revisited the Senator. To Mr. Peterson’s shock and horror, the Senator was heard to say, “I got a better deal from someone else.”
We could call this institutional rape. I am aware that Mr. Peterson is a member of the CFR and what that entails. That aside however, the message about this senator is very clear. The people who make our laws are for sale and have no conscience. Hence, the newer laws for nearly any issue are thousands of pages thick to hide all these dirty deals.
The only way to return this former Republic to oversight by the voters and taxpayers is to permanently wrest control from the corporations and force that form of organization back into the box from whence it came. That box should be very tightly controlled. Corporations must pay taxes. If a corporation wants to exist to protect shareholders and seeks profits behind a mask, it must pay a minimum tax regardless of operating costs or any other tax abatement deals it makes with whatever taxing authority.
Clearly, stating an oath to uphold the Constitution is presently a meaningless concept. The people elected to these various positions in the government use that oath only for the ceremony where voters might be paying attention. Afterward, most of these people have no concern whatsoever about prosecution for even Treason. This must change.
I sat on a Jury in the early 2000’s and was shocked to see cameras – five cameras pointed at every position in the jury deliberation room – in order to record every conversation and get facial images of every single jury member. I was shocked and challenged the judge. Sadly, nobody else on the jury wanted to challenge the government about that open act of Treason. That judge, the administrative judge, the prosecutor and at least two of the county commissioners should have been put on trial for Treason against the Constitution of the United States.
As Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler noted, “War is a racket.” So too is our legal system and our representative government system. We have no hope to deal with these conscienceless corporations until we get the three branches of government cleaned up.
So, JHK…I would point out I am on your page about all this senseless development. It only serves to make a very few people rich and uselessly destroys resources better applied to the greater good for much longer periods of time as has been the standard for thousands of years of human habitation of this planet.
It’s all a fucking scam. They take your money and say “well….maybe if you have something unfortunate happen, maybe we will compensate you”. Good luck trying to make a claim. Not to worry, they will be as extinct as the dinosaurs and the automobile when the dollar collapses and the second great depression becomes widespread. Give it another year or two at best. Just another racket along with a long list of sordid crooks, including politicians, lawyers, creditors/bankers, Goldman Sachs, the federal reserve, the US government, child molestors, etc
Last nite I had a brief talk with someone who boasted, ‘I was raised in Ethiopia, went into the US military after testing in the top1%, went to Yale and was a Lawyer at Goldman Sachs.
Then I gave up and joined OWS.
The USA is a military-petrodollar Ponzi.’
Can you appeal the denial?
“The whole concept on INsurance (the black pronunciation) is flawed.” – Janos
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This is not so much a black pronunciation as a southern pronunciation. I will bet ten bucks that Prog says INsurance.
Whenever I hear it I say to myself, there must be two kinds of “surance,” INsurance and OUTsurance.
OUTsurance should cover any and all debts left by the decedent. Call it Life Insurance with Balls.
Would anyone else like to see JHK take on the views of Catherine Austin Fitts in that the system is merely “shedding its skin?” She argues very persuasively that the economy will NOT collapse. It is merely in painful transition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gssxv35TA-8
I called the phone number of a particular Horizon BCBS sales rep and he actually picked up the phone…no menu tree to deal with while tearing out my hair. We spoke for more than a half hour. He was sailing down the highway in his car.
I had received yesterday two different packages in the mail from Horizon that I was plowing through and just threw up my hands and called the sales rep whose card was included.
I defy any person with an IQ under 200 to understand the contents of these two health insurance/drug plan packages…to the degree that they would be comfortable signing up for a plan WITHOUT first conversing with a live human. A dozen Cray computers hooked up in series and fed your particulars MIGHT be able to determine the optimum direction to go on, lets say, drug coverage but I suspect those 12 computers would be whirring and cranking for an hour with smoke pouring out of them.
Horizon is so overwhelmed with people (like me) wanting face to face meetings that they have actually cancelled these in-home personalized face to face meetings and set up sites around the state (in hotels) where people can come and sit down with a rep. At first the Cranford NJ site set for Nov 11th from 9 to 5 was to have 1 representative. Then they figured they needed two reps. Now the sales guy in his car tells me there will be at least 6 reps. They are fully booked but I was told to come as a “walk-in.”
The system is incomprehensible on purpose. What purpose? One, it creates a Priesthood that has to interpret these scriptures – as does the legal system. And two, it allows for thievery and skullduggery since who can say it is such except another priest? And are they going to rat out their conferee? Obviously the political system with its two thousand page bills is the same. You have to pass them before you can know how they will be interpreted to know what’s in them. Ditto the documents of Vatican Two: left vague on purpose so they could be interpreted in such a way as to destroy the Church.
Alas Babylon. Read the divine Miss B for the ultimate Truth. We are the Gold. There is and never was any system that can bypass the need for morality. No gimmicks can replace it – not even the gold/silver standard. That can be and has been gotten around. She was a commodities broker who renounced it all last year because of its corruption. She now mops floors.
http://www.barnhardt.biz/2013/11/05/the-one-about-how-we-are-the-gold/
is not
Bravo to the Mayor of Toronto for standing his ground. The people of Toronto are lucky to have a joyous Man capable of such dangerous pleasures. That he could say I took it during one of my drunken stupors shows an honesty rare in our day.
For those interested in an extensive takedown of “Obamacare” you can go to Truthout and read the article from Dr. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese on how the ACA is the greatest insurance scam in history. It is very detailed and will reveal that once again President Sparkle Pony has pulled the proverbial wool over our eyes.
In the fall of 2012 prior to the last presidential election, I was surprised that many people supported Obama simply because they were/are desperate for some kind of government protection from being bankrupted by medical costs. I recall that I kept asking them: “And you believe that Obama, who has lied about everything else to date, is really going to deliver healthcare?!”
Chalk it up to more mass denial: I guess that when people are confronted by the possibility that something might be true (however improbable) and the horrifying prospect that they may be scammed to face the consequences alone, most people will take the bait and drink the Kool Aid. Here, it looks like most people bought the Snake Oil (i.e., Vick’s “Viper Rub”).
But Mr. Obama would have delivered it had it been demanded of him. Blaming him personally is an easy out. It is an easy out, taking things to the extreme. A human failing which even dogs sometimes succumb to. Another sip of the Kool Aid for you. A bite of poisoned meat for me.
We blame politicians for they do deceive but with so few citizens voting or even looking at issues with any depth they’ve little incentive to stop.
I take your point.
By all accounts (see Greg5 above) the ‘citizenry’ just shrugs and looks the other way as thoroughly corrupt BAU goes on practically in their faces by the very folks they’ve voted into positions of trust.
(Which is the upshot of Pucker’s comment that the lumpen are afraid to face the issue and instead wish and hope for the exact opposite of what they’re going to get.)
Another stunningly obvious (but unmentioned) example:
The government can find the funds and ghouls to hire legions of sociopathic I.T. ‘talent’ to pester, distort, deceive, misinform, gather data on and otherwise mindfuck any user of the internet that they consider might be asking the right questions and visiting blogs that buck the official narrative, but they don’t seem to be able to put together a competent team to design a working ACA website. What’s wrong with this picture? Are true priorities finally exposed?
This is part of the very same dysfunction. All I can say is that when the hangings start, it’s probably not the ‘Il Duce-s’ that will face the noose first, only at the last, when the wishing and hoping is slain and buried by long-obvious realities. …And some actually have the temerity to posit that the ultimate corrupt power system, Fascism, would be the answer to corruption. Gobsmacking unintended comedy that loses more its’ tiny thimbleful of legitimacy every time it’s invoked. (Nobody wants to call it out, because it just lets more stink into the room instead of fresh air.)
Fascism accepts both the collective aspects of human life and the individual – thus both socialism and capitalism. What is corrupt about such realism? You have trouble accepting that some of our early American socialists like Debbs, Gompers, and London were Nationalists and American Patriots. Marxism and its hatred of the Nation have flushed all this down the memory hole. And you have no problem with that or them, eh little man?
Read Ezra Pound’s “Jefferson and/or Mussolini”. Perhaps you can take the Truth from a man far above either you or me. He spent years in a mental hospital as a political prisoner. Is that street cred enough for you Mr “anarchist”?
“The government can find the funds and ghouls to hire legions of sociopathic I.T. ‘talent’ to pester, distort, deceive, misinform, gather data on and otherwise mindfuck any user of the internet that they consider might be asking the right questions and visiting blogs that buck the official narrative.”
True words, the road to hell (I mean that metaphorically) is paved with lies deceit and distortion abetted by a blind worship of technology and a trust in the privacy of communications which are compromised beyond the average man’s wildest dream. And a naive ridiculous belief that the eavesdropping of communications is not being used for evil ends. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out the temptation of power to abuse the eavesdropping of communications is irresistible.
Fascism the ultimate corruption may be a real danger here. Look at what is happening in Greece right now with Golden Dawn and an argument can be made that from a practical point of view we already have Fascism ‘lite’ right here, right now.
Huh? The Leaders of the Golden Dawn – some of them members of Parliament – were dragged off in the middle of the night by the goons of the “Liberal” State. And you are making them into the bad guys?
Get a clue dog. And admit that you are only for Democracy when it suits your prejudices. The Golden Dawn were getting too popular is the long and short of it.
Wow.
Misdirection is becoming a sweet specialty in the strata of “employable skills”. Collect them paychecks and perks whilst ye may; ostracization and hard stares will inevitably follow.
“Get a clue dog. And admit that you are only for Democracy when it suits your prejudices.”
Actually your right Skore-frenzy as in Democracy 24-7!
Gawd! What IS that stink!!!
oh, nevermind…
Blaming him personally is the logical step. He studied with Cloward-Piven. He’s obviously following their strategy of crashing the system. Your doggish loyalty is leading you astray here. And then there are the other scandals such as Benghazi, running guns to Mexico, the appointment of Eric Holder etc – each of which is more serious than anything Nixon ever did. You are ignoring all that as well.
So 522 was defeated. The people failed again. The public sucks and thus Democracy per se is a doubtful proposition unless severely limited in a Constitution Republic.
Not all the people are so easily swayed by millions of dollars of false advertising. Sadly too many are. But this will change.
Initiative 522 fails.
Monsanto and their minions have billions invested in GMOs and they are willing to spend millions to defeat any such initiative.
Same thing in California.
Proposition 37 Defeated in California
Advertising defeats reason and the people again.
Not so sure about that. At least here in Spokane, the advertising was about 50/50 for the last few weeks with some really quality ads for 522. Where did the money for that come from I wonder? In any case, it is and will remain a fundamental right to be able to eat good food
Good Post, Oz! Sounds like you’re still focused amidst all this leaf raking, leaf blowing, and general panic before another hard winter sets in.
All this talk about healthcare reminds me: my blood sugar was up a little at my last physical. Should I worry? Doctor says, “No more Sam Adams.” I’d hate to turn my back on that good friend.
What would I not give to have been present when the great poet Oscar Wilde visited with Jefferson Davis in the 1880’s at Davis’ plantation in Mississippi, or when Jack London got together with Wyatt Earp for an afternoon in a Hollywood studio back lot in 1908.
Into November and still no collapse. I notice all carbon fuel prices are going down, stock market is up, way up, not that I care about the stock market. In fact all economic indicators are up right now. Maybe it is all bullshit done with smoke and mirrors, I don’t know. Jim says things might go south in 2014. We’ll see.
–BRH
BRH,
Yes, we shall see. My crystal ball is still filled with nothing but smoke and haze, but I will go so far as to predict this: The Great Crumbling will continue apace as the funds to renew infrastructure will become harder and harder to scrape together and more townships commit hara-kiri by “rails-to-trails” and other beautifying give-aways to friendly contractors. Bankruptcies (whether by acknowledgement or observance) will put many communities under the tender mercies of appointed ‘managers’ who will attempt to extract any remaining nuggets of value and leave an economic wasteland in their wake.
The most dangerous of social rots will become noticeable: TRUST will continue to erode until it will become nearly unattainable by government operatives. (Your average government operative doesn’t find this to be the Big Deal it ought to be, all they require is that you OBEY leadership and the laws it makes to perpetuate itself rather than have trust in it.) More and more will turn away or simply disconnect from government as it proves to be ineffective at helping to feed and house its’ citizens and becomes ever more oppressive in trying to extract wealth and fealty that it shouldn’t expect and doesn’t deserve.
…And I predict we’ll hear very little about it. 😉
“Doctor says, “No more Sam Adams.” I’d hate to turn my back on that good friend.”
Now that’s a serious deprivation!
Here’s a suggestion. Keep the brew; cut out the cookies, cakes and doughnuts. All fixed! 😀
“All they require is that you OBEY leadership and the laws it makes to perpetuate itself.”
The Orwell classic 1984 methinks was more about this than about a surveillance state of cameras and microphones as is the popular view. A ‘party’ existing to preserve itself as its first priority above all other considerations. Even going so far as to maintain a perpetual state of war as status-quo to maintain its authority.
You think any of those guys weren’t White Nationalists? Or that even Oscar would approve of guys marrying?
http://clashdaily.com/2013/11/gay-west-point-men-become-first-marry-academy/
Fighting Fags. Feel safer?
Great article on Joe McCarthy, of whom the world was not worthy. He didn’t want to publicly reveal the names of the Communists but he was forced to – and then those forced him to blamed him for destroying reputations. As one of the people in the article says, it was McCarthy and those that supported him who were afraid and destroyed. It was chic to be against McCarthy. Tragically, McCarthy never understood that the Revolution had already commenced from above and that it’s main funders were not Russian Communists but Wall Street Bankers. But what a heart, what a great Man, what a Patriot.
A few stood by him including the US Marines who resisted the slander that he had not served with distinction.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/11/joe-mccarthy-and-the-establishment-bolsheviks/
A bracing dose of reality amid the ACA static. Well done, Jim!
That was a fantastic Catherine Austin Fitts interview! Thanks.
Ms. Fitts obviously has her “shit together”.
You know how they teach us in US high school civics classes about the tripartite division of power in the US Constitutional system (legislative, executive, judicial). I wonder if anyone has written a book updating how the US government is really structured in light of (a) huge administrative expansion of the government bureaucracy; (b) the rise of corporations as powerful actors financed by international capital markets; and (c) the post-WWII rise of the national security state and the secret government, which, according to Catherine Fitts, has siphoned off US$40 trillion, which no one can seem to account for. So much for transparency…..
It sounds like the best option for young people under Obamacare is to pay the penalty and only buy health insurance if one gets seriously sick. This should be allowable since insurance companies under Obamacare cannot refuse someone who has a preexisting condition, right?
In fact, why would anyone buy any health insurance now under Obamacare. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just pay the minimal penalty and only buy the insurance when one gets seriously ill?
I believe the penalty gets less mimimal each successive year you refrain from purchase.
But even though the penalty for non-purchase of the Obamacare insurance may progressively increase downstream, it doesn’t matter since in the early stages many people will opt out since payment of the penalty is more economical, right? It may make more economic sense to pay the penalty and only buy the insurance if they incur a catastrophic medical problem. If enough people opt out, the Obamacare program goes “tits up”, right?
Why would someone pay US$12,000 a year for monthly insurance premiums when they can just sign up the day that the doctor tells them that they’ve got a health problem?
Excellent point since they can’t refuse prior conditions or so they say.
I’m not buying it and hopefully if enough people refuse it will be just a glorious failure like Prohibition.
No need to fear – everything’s *rosy*!!! The economy whuz (iz?) up 2.8%! Gee whiz, wonder why that is? Could it be due to insurance premium hikes of 20-40+%, or massive double digit inflation on basic foodstuffs/utilities? Or could it be those salary increases for the 2 million+ 6-fig-salaried govt stalkers working for the NSA, through no-bid/cost-plus contractors?!? What is the latest *REPORTED* (adjusted) inflation rate (0.7%? 1.3%?!?)
Oh, and apparently (so they *say*), twitter lookz liek da schw33-@$$ investment – disregard their performance consisting of nothing but losses for 6 years. 200+ million *customers*!!! Haha, I’m guessing the only *FOLKZ* who got that initial $26 IPO asking price, were the banksters/brokerage firms, who immediately turned that around for $47 to sucker individual investors. And can you imagine, all the profits those said-same bankster/brokerage firms made, leveraging 30::1 on their customer’s account valuations, and going long for 1 day/1 week, thus *skimming* from all those individual’s 401k/IRA plans?!? Haha, that makes long term capital gains seem liek a total *JOKE* (MORON – you held the stock for 1+ year?!?)…
PS – I’m diggin’ how JHK hisself poasts what’s floating around in my mind this week. Lattice of coincidence? Collective consciousness?!? (or maybe he reads the replies here? too much!)
I’m agreeing with you. How can something worth nothing be worth $47 a share. He can’t pass this up. Talk about unearned riches here it is. Madness.
I suspect that the insurance companies have rigged it so that Obamacare in many cases may prove to be a bad joke.
Insurance agent: “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
Patient: “What’s the good news?”
Insurance agent: “The good news is that your insurance covers you and will pay for your emergency life saving treatment that you need right away.”
Patient: “That’s fantastic! Thank God for Obama and Obamacare! What’s the bad news?”
Insurance agent: “The bad news is that under your insurance policy you can only go to Dr. Z, and Dr. Z won’t be able to perform the emergency life-saving treatment at the earliest until 8 months from now.”
No worries; we gots a nice comfy hospital bed and eager practicing physicians waiting for you in the Philippines with a brisk and cooling ocean breeze… Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?
Okay, now YOU (the disinterested observer) tell ME (your uninteresting observer) why all this negating and blustering blather should coalesce around my innocuous and easily verified comments…
Then —– decide what you are going to do with your remaining time.
Rally in support of a new neo-nazi state? Run by those whose only motivation is the accumulation of power and evermore power over others? Are you turning away in disgust, or just cowed by vituperative demagogues and website trolls? This is how it’s done… a small piece at a time; a slow erosion, so you won’t notice/give up in disgust.
I’m not really sure folks know what game is being played on/against them anymore. There is no empathy or pity evidenced in those that intend to run this planet. There’s your ‘new world order’ in a nutshell and you’d be advised to get yourself ready. (Nope, it’s not “a train that’s comin” and “it’s bound for glory”, it’s ecocide for the gain of a tiny minority.)
Ecocide – the *nice* ride!!! Hah! (I used to say “suicide” there)
Yeah, the trees – can you *imagine* all the trees that would still be in the Saharan desert (northern Africa), had the Egyptians not clearcut and burnt every last source of CO2?!… There’s lots of satellite imagery studies going on there, showing large cities/civilizations that existed 4-6k years ago…
But, alas, we never learn from history – the whole elite’ster thangy that happened in Egyptian/Greek/Roman/Middle Ages times seem to be repeating, *AD NAUSEUM*. Create “money” out of nothing, with no basis, to keep the indentured slaves *servile* (who is the *SOURCE* of the money economy?)…
Only a blind man can’t see through the bullsh!ttery of our current media blitz (they all *BLIND*?!?). Just keep munching on that GMO, hydrogenated oil, ([high] fructose) corn syrup over-processed *SALTY* poison.
My understanding of GMO crops, is that *they* developed some mutant bacteria that produces “roundup”, grafted those genes into vegetables (corn/soy/beet/wheat/etc), and then the plant continuously produces “roundup” throughout its lifetime – so if you eat that vegetable, you are guaranteed a nice dose of “roundup.”
Hard to believe that poison would be good for you, or even non-effectual. I believe the GMO/hydrogenated oil/corn syrup/salt diet is the primary cause of diabetes and other digestive ailments that plague our society (in a few years, 50% of children will suffer diabetes[autism – heavy metals in immunizations don’t *HELP*]).
It’s pretty unfortunate that the GMO crops require more fertilizer/pesticide/herbicide than their natural counterparts – and also the fact that the seeds are now patented, so you can’t re-use leftovers, but must purchase more toxic poison seeds from Monsanto/et al – and finally the fact that they x-pollinate native crops thousands of miles away (proven fact with corn – South American native corn crops contaminated by GMO’s grown in the US, over a decade ago).
So – let’s just *FOCUS* on 2.8% economic growth, and *TWITTER*!!!
GMO crops are best not understood if you wanna sleep at night. Monsanto always gets their way.
For Example:
EPA to Raise Allowable Glyphosate Pesticide Levels in Food Crops by 3,000%!
Mr Obama & Monsanto
Unroll that Duct Tape. Who needs the rule of law. There is no end to the connections between Mr. Obama and Monsanto.
Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto
By neo-Nazi do you mean the Plutocrats? Remember, Fascism is in favor of the nation state. Obviously the Globalist ‘crats are not. And also the “Nazis” were just one example of Fascism. Debbs, Gompers, and London were American National Socialists – not Nazis in other words. Care to try again?
These three may not have been Fascists – not sure. Fascism is not against private property and Capitalism – as long as the latter is loyal to the People. They may have been good old non-Marxist Socialist Patriots. I know this getting kind of complicated for you, but what can I do? It’s the reality. Sorry about that.
Gobsmacking unintended comedy that loses more its’ tiny thimbleful of legitimacy every time it’s invoked.
*PHUNNY* poast about the prop 522 outcome (which lost 45% to 55%, when apparently *EVERY SINGLE POLL* showed it winning):
http://www.infowars.com/gmo-labeling-initiative-522-seems-to-have-failed-proving-once-again-that-corporate-money-can-buy-food-secrecy/
This one brought my own investigation of voting fraud (’05) back to mind (whatever happened to that douchebag Secretary of Defense from Newbraska [Old Braska!], an ES&S CEO/board member, who got elected in a landslide upset [’96], after the state implemented ES&S voting booths?).
I find the comments sections about voter increased costs curious as well – they vote against more costs on 522, but for *MORE* costs when it comes to taxation!!! That touches very close to *HOME* (we in Orygone, as in WA, use mail-in voting, and we always seem to vote *YES* to more taxes)…
I was wondering about that. Oregon is so Liberal – the Liberal North and West totally dominate the rest of the State in terms of population. Yet still they couldn’t get it through, eh?. Very interesting.
Glad you’ve tuned into Alex Jones. He’s a great patriot just like McCarthy was.
Others accuse him of Zionism. And what do you think?
Welcome back. Jones is not overtly pro-Zionist but he doesn’t criticize them enough for my taste. Maybe because he’s a Christian or some say because he’s married to a Jew. But he’s utterly against the big Globalist Agenda even if he doesn’t point out the large Jewish component of it.
Check this out: Ramz Paul knocks it out of the park. Work is becoming passé and Switzerland recognized this and voted whether to give people a guaranteed income. The Luddites were on target if just off in their time frame. Tobor was right too.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/caution-wet-solar-power-a-breakthrough-in-solar-paint-research-86878
Wrong video. This one is doomsday has been cancelled. But check out the Ramz one too.
Harassing people based upon their freedom of speech (via threat of death/execution), given by the constitution, hardly makes that @$$hole an American hero.
He did some srs damage that still prolongs – and I don’t see any benefits that came from his witch hunts (*PROVE* me wrong).
Don’t even pretend, that U and me R the *SAME* (ahaha – *GOTCHA*).
The Witch hunt didn’t work because the Media protected the Witches – since the Witches owned it.
Alex Jones throws a lot of mud. But sometimes it sticks.
How did Barack Obama become Monsanto’s man in Washington?
When babies start being born with two heads will it be: Change We Can Believe in?
You set yourself up for that one.
Sickening, at elast to many Pro Euro Culture folks…so see Nations fall to Dimmitude.
http://www.islamichistorymonth.com/ihmc2010/
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/janice-fiamengo/islamic-history-month-comes-to-manitoba-canada/
‘For those with negative perceptions of Islam, the Manitoba announcement will, if not lay our fears to rest, certainly indicate decisively that Manitoba has now ruled them out of bounds. The Manitoba provincial website proclaims that Islamic History Month is intended to “recognize and celebrate the history and heritage of Muslims.”
One might be forgiven for not realizing that Muslims have made a significant enough contribution to Manitoba to deserve an entire month of celebration. Manitoba’s Muslims number around 9,000, less than 1% of Manitoba’s total population of just over 1.2 million people.
Like most parts of Canada, Manitoba has a relatively multicultural demographic, with many diverse groups who have made substantial contributions to the province’s history.’
Lawyers are the penultimate master-debaters. ‘Bomber whuz a lawyer, correct? These people will argue either side for enough $$$ – I mean, it’s *ONLY* about proving your “case” (who gives a sh! if they believe in their cause or not)…
What happened to the 20 different aliases poasting here (FAUX NEWS) – it’s a total desert of discussion. We’ve got the racist, who clearly states he wants a democracy of the *MOST FIT* (i.e. the white racist inbred sociopaths) that decide the future, and all others *DON’T COUNT* (they’re not entitled/too st00pid/p00r race). Sounds liek the same ol’, same ol’, game of elites making the decisions, as they *PRODUCE* the *DINERO*, out of thin air, to enslave the poverty-stricken masses of indentured servants…
I’m not convinced. I view most of “Hezuz Christoz” poasts as nothing more than irony/sarcasm… And if not, he’s a srs head case.
You want the least fit to rule? Or are you just afraid your Black pets wont be able to qualify if voting is held to a standard? Your fears are completely justified.
OMG – d00d – I don’t have no “Black pets.” I’ve got an ashtray, a chair, and a *paddle game*… I’m sure you’d give them a 3/5th vote!!!
I want to *KNOW* – who are these *PEEPZ* who create money out of thin air, and *LEND* it at usury rates?
*I* want to KNOW! Who are these economy-creators?!?
My guess – the sock puppets don’t want NE-thang to do with *ME*, so they no respond.
No problemo – just tell me who leverages 30::1 on a daily (minute) basis!!!
Thought *NOT*. Well then, do you believe in that price on your *SOUL*?!?
Did I tell you how the aliens raped my @$$, then gave me comfort?!..
Thought *NOT*
Trust you-me – they made it *perfectly* clear!!!
Oh so now it’s UFO porn? Go for it but it’s been done. The cutting edge is Sasquatch women on men.
Stay up – I got sum reel gud stuff for *U* later (Falling Down – U and Me…)
Last time this got *deleted*@!@ (stay *tuned*?)
So how’d you vote on prop 522?!… The *aliens* tell me you voted for it, so how do you feel, loosing by a (rigged/fraudulent) *landslide*…
They tell me you’re hard to control – a sort of anti-humanist. Is that *TRUE*?!? You hate peeps? Or just non-white-racists?!… Do those Asians with 120 IQ get to you?!… Or the Indians, with their mere 110 IQ…
I dig the Asian 4″ peckers – being non-GHEY me-self!!! 4.4 inches is the *AVERAGE* (believe DAT – shrinky-dink dix)… Yeah, I obsess on penus size (porn stars with their 8-9″ peckers)…
This could be your best, most accurate assessment in a good long while, JHK. And thank for your work, as always.
The ACA is surely designed to facilitate profits for big pharma, big medicine, and big insurance. It is surely designed to increase the power, control, and cash flow of big government.
And, as surely as night follows day, corruption and mismanagement will ooze into all of the cracks to be found in the 1000 pages of this new law. You suggest that this is intentional on the part of the law’s designers – and you are probably correct.
“The ObamaCare duct-taped system will go down. The big hospitals, HMOs, insurers, pharma companies will all starve and shrivel. Like all things in the emergent new paradigm, they will reorganize on a small and much simpler basis. Everyone will make less money and high-tech medicine will probably dwindle for all but a very few… and for them, only for a while. Eventually, we’ll re-set to local clinic style medicine with far fewer resources, specialties, and miracle cures. There will be a whole lot less aggravation, though, and people may die more peacefully.” ….jhk…..
Best lines of an excellent essay, James – I thought I’d repost them.
=========================
There have been some excellent, EXCELLENT comments to this week’s work, btw. I’d go find some of them and link to them, if I could – and we might see some honest-to-God discussion get started up around here, maybe.
But I can’t easily find them, and I can’t easily link to them.
I don’t miss the Trolls, but I certainly do miss the old website comment software. You guess we could tweak it a little. First suggestion would be to allow comments to post as a single searchable page.
K-Dog, what do you think about that? Shouldn’t be that hard to change, right, depending on what platform this is?
That’s probably it for me for the week.
These are the delightful results of a carefully constructed fascist (melding of government and corporations), authoritarian police-state… and they’ve barely begun! It’s been about 12 years now that we’ve been aggressively “protected”; how’s that workin’ for ya? Unless you’ve snagged employment with a 3-letter government agency or are independently wealthy, I’d guess, “not the swell-est.” Better hope Jim is correct that funds and legitimacy will be lost to them and that their plans simply sink into the swamp of black-hearted hubris they’ve made.
“Americans need to understand that they have lost their country. The rest of the world needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the most complete police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with Washington’s huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet. Washington is the enemy of all humanity.” -PCR
Geeze, I wish that Mr. Roberts would drop the subtle hinting and tell us what he REALLY thinks. 😉
So, in tandem with the JHK snippet, cui bono?
This dysfunctional dialogue we’re having is really valuable. You fall into the usual mistakes though your level of hatred is far above average. Ok look: in the Industrial State, big business and big government cannot be kept separate. So then the choice – or battle – becomes which one is going to dominate. Communism and Fascism say the State. Capitalism says the Corporation. So in our case Capitalism has clearly won, thus we have a Plutocracy – the very opposite of Fascism.
Despite this, Communism and Capitalism are united since both are economic approaches to life. They will cooperate against Fascism every time just as they did against Germany. And just as they did in the creation of the Soviet Union and Red China.
Your opening statement which I repeat below indicates you actually have a soul, yet it’s one that has been run over by a dozen eighteen wheeled semi-trucks and left to fade in the sun.
“dysfunctional dialogue we’re having is really valuable.”
I suppose even government trolls have to justify their existence.
You are well on the way to the Kingdom of Arn, Zone. Do you really want to become a gibbering fool incapable of reason and only capable of bullshit posturing? No? Then knock it off and get serious.
Looks like a quote from someone else to me. My sniffer senses the word flow not be his.
Just another beautiful day in the neighbourhood.
Looks like a quote from someone else to me. My sniffer senses the word flow not be his.
Just another beautiful day in the neighbourhood.
Sorry about the duplication. I double posted thinking that I was not responding to Ozone as intended but the thread has been so badly Skorenzkied that it hard to tell what’s up.
I was thinking the double post would go in the ‘right place’ and then I would have put a disclaimer on the original.
Looks like Janos must have taken the day off from his ‘day job’ or he is unemployed looking for work like me.
Unless this is his ‘day job’.
That’s another problem with the format – it’s hard to tell whose talking to who. How did you miss that? Do I sense hesitation in your attribution of trolldom to my person? There may be hope for you yet. Don’t keep going down the road to Arndom hand in hand with Zone. Let go of his hand. If he wont let go, give his arm a karate chop for Pete’s sake!
K-Dog,
Yes, I noticed that too. Much more finessed and nuanced; it almost has a whiff of erudition if not for the ubiquitous nastiness. Is someone else “doing his homework” now? Not the usual clumsily transparent, pretend-fascist, proto-high-school febrile raving.
Damn! This place been Skorenzkied! Secure the bulkheads!
(We take our fun where we find it. Now for the threats — oh boy.)
Sometimes he goes the other way and gets overly clumsy too.
Of course such things are not apparent to someone stopping by and only getting a quick wiff of swamp gas who then flees. To notice such things one must become comfortable with the stench and then upon properly perceiving the pervasive odor most flee in terror from being put on ‘the list’.
oooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh
The list, the list. Oh be afraid, be very afraid.
NOT
Secure the bulkheads! A storm is coming!
The only thing I miss about the old format is the background color and font. Other than that the changes are an improvement (except the Status Counter should be returned).
I don’t like social networking software. I don’t want computer algorithms involved manipulating human and social interaction. I don’t Twitter and am not on Facebook. Targeted advertising seemed cool at first but I’ve learned the hard way. The very hard way that a certain three letter government agency is able to take it over in order to fuck with your head. I now realize that it is another case of too much power given over to too little responsibility. More seduction by techno-narcassism.
I had my own idea of modifying WordPress software to make for a democratic exchange of ideas which would suppress trolls. Several ideas actually, but giving what Jim so affectionately called the lumpen-public this week a voice goes against the grain of the powers that be and would be repressed.
I looked at how the WordPress software was put together and made a few WordPress sites myself on my local host accessible only to me. I thought of starting a Kickstarter project to get it all going. It would not be hard to do. But any such an attempt by me would lead to a lot of personal trouble and interference. The efforts and dollars spent to keep the noise of dissent and criticism of the status-quo here at CFN to a whisper over the years have been immense.
Woe to anyone who was detected improving article comment software that would facilitate actual intellectual discourse. They would certainly experience trouble with their hardware breaking down to start with and seriously more trouble would come. I’m already in the cross-hairs so it can’t be me. Washington only wants squeaky clean Republican and Democrat sycophants in suit and tie. Were the internet to actually become a place where ‘the people’ have a voice the status-quo would be seriously threatened and they can’t have that. Collapse is preferable as the suits think they will survive when shit hits the fan.
But will shit hit the fan and life fall over a Seneca cliff or will it be a long slow emergency? That’s a question for another time.
Basic comment software that does not facilitate crosstalk such as what I have on my site and which everyone else has on other blogspot sites and elsewhere is to democracy like what driving a Prius is to saving the planet. Not much better than nothing and quite possibly counterproductive. Counterproductive because it maintains a fiction of a freedom which actually does not exist.
I’ve been told the Joe Rogan board has an effective way of developing a community of users reasonably free of trolls but I have not been there. I may soon.
What does crosstalk mean? Do I have to go to your site to find out?
What’s up with this. I don’t even have time to correct a clusterfucked sentence and you respond already.
It’s like you were reading what I was typing before I even hit “SUBMIT COMMENT”
Regarding the context of my comment just consider it to be the free exchange of ideas.
Perhapsy you’d like to define ‘gaslighting’ pour moi.
Cause and Effect are far more nuanced and complex than usually understood. Sometimes the future beckons the past. Things have already happened and effects seek out causes to cause them. Or as Fort put it, “It’s steam engines when it’s steam engine time.”
Do you mean like this? I got it from ‘pi’ the movie.
“You want to find the number 216 in the world you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from your street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere 320, 450 ,22 whatever you’ve chosen. 216 you will find it everywhere in nature but max as soon as you discard scientific rigor your no longer a mathematician you’re a numerologist.”
So from a practical point of view a small bit of unreality could be pushed on someone via the internet, smartphone, or actual real life physical contact. Such a person lets call him a ‘rube’ which seems to be a term popular in a social circle I’ve been made familiar with but am not actually a part of myself and appropriate to the circumstances.
Your ‘rube’ experiencing a small nudge of unreality would then become highly agitated and see evidence of dark forces of manipulation everywhere.
But what do you do if the ‘rube’ has enough steam pressure in his boiler to figure it all out and makes mental adjustments to thus nullify such gaslighting? It could be a case of ‘Mission Accomplished’ when in fact nothing had been accomplished at all.
Seems to me such activity if not effective could be highly counterproductive and might actually create a dog comfortable in his own skin. A dog with a strong well defined backbone and a fierce growl.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR !!!
Should be:
Several ideas actually, but giving what Jim so affectionately called the lumpen-public this week a voice going against the grain of the powers that be would be repressed.
Janos Skorzeny is right. I mentioned the black box, camera etc., in a post a few months back, but I think it’s worth repeating. On a trip through the South last summer, we went through Memphis
Tenn. My wife was driving. She ran a red light. We journeyed on through a few more states before returning to Minnesota. When we arrived home, I found a ticket in the mailbox. Yup, from the city of Memphis for running a red light. There were three photos, the first one was a closeup of the car and the license plate. The second one showed the car at the beginning of the intersection, and the light was red. The third one showed the car halfway through the intersection, and yes, the light was red. The fine was fifty bucks. The point I’m making is that the ticket got home before I did! It was the first time I realized that we are on cameras everywhere we go. It’s not just the black boxes, its your cell phone etc. Look how easy it was to catch the Boston Bombers. All they did was review the tapes at the scene of the bombing, & the rest was easy. Now when I read a story about something happening I look to see whether a camera was involved in the story. Most of the time it was. What I’m saying, is that George Orwell’s society is here already, not in the distant future. The gov’t already has the ability to track you down. Facial recognition is next. We already have the tools in place to make this a turnkey dictatorship. When did any of you ever hear of a piece of technology that wasn’t used and abused somewhere by somebody. Ford help us all.
What’s really annoying is when your going the legal speed limit through a school zone and the lights to reduce the speed limit go on after you are already in the zone. A brain dead relay enables the camera and ‘poof’ an innocent dog gets a ticket.
The school zone is on south second street in Renton WA. The school is Renton High School.
It was a hundred and two bucks to the city if I remember correctly.
Arn said, First but I haven’t even read the article – and Helen told him to grow up. He hasn’t been back since. Good work Helen! One of the few intelligent things she’s ever said.
Oh and thanks for the Amazon listing. Another good thing for you.
Some thoughts on Capt Spaulding’s post:
How many times have you heard some millennial say/sneer “Privacy? What’s that?”
No big deal, they say, what’s to worry if you’ve done nothing wrong?
And so the Captain is right, Big Brother is here. The psychological groundwork has been laid, the groundwork is solid, the technology is there, people are accepting. It’s now all part of daily life. Intrusion is “necessary”. David Brooks is ok with it. He said so. He deplores that no-ass, uppity 29 year old pretending to know better than his betters.
And why? Because it’s all been done within the framework of democratic processes and institutions and oversight. Nothing to worry about. And who are you to say otherwise? What do you know?
People are surrendering their right to privacy and with it, as sure as night follows day, will be the right to free speech and the other civil rights you thought you had. Secret ballot? Pah.
A chorus of pundits all say get used to it. Necessity is the plea. But the newfangled term is “new normal”. Don’t you want security? Sure you do. So what’s the problem?
But you’re not worried. No, you see, you’ve done nothing wrong. Your conscience is clear. But “done” and “wrong” are slippery terms. What if what you’ve done also comes to encompass what you’ve said or written?
The trouble is what’s seen as “wrong” shifts with the times. What you say and write can come to be seen as inimical to the stability of the state, hurtful to social peace. Even addressing certain topics can be seen as injurious. You, the unqualified, are unqualified to express an opinion. You see, they’ll say that times have changed, that social attitudes have changed and now it’s enshrined in law. Unacceptable and illegal says the law.
Illegal and punishable. But don’t worry, it’ll all happen within the framework of democratic processes and institutions. Apologists and justifiers will go on a public relations campaign to sell it, the academics and pundits will jump on board, folks will buy into it. They’ll write history to say that these new and reasonable limits were the will of the people.
Secret ballot? Do you think that political parties have zero idea how you voted or are likely to vote? How many times have you disclosed to a candidate that he’s got your vote? Do you think nobody took note? Do you think that the answers given in telephone surveys aren’t analyzed to get a pretty good fix on how you personally are likely to cast your ballot?
How long before the right to a secret ballot is thrown away entirely? I bet it’ll go something like this: we have to go after voter fraud so we have to ascertain without a shadow of a doubt who is voting. And for the sake of data integrity we have to maintain records of who voted, when they voted, from what location they voted, how they voted. And so when you vote you’ll have to input to the machine your personal SSN/PIN/voter I.D. number. And don’t worry, encryption methods will keep all this confidential. Nobody will look at it. Guaranteed.
Doubters and naysayers will be cast as reactionaries, defenders of a defunct and untenable status quo. At best they’ll best seen as nostalgics for an era that never existed except in false and erroneous histories written by people with dubious agendas. They’ll be slapped aside. Make no mistake, we’ll stick these subversives in a hole if we have to. You can go with the flow of history or against it. Those that go against it get swept away.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions they say. Bad intentions too.
Of course the ubiquity of Big Brother assures that your post (above) lands you smack on the shit list. The software will have no problem recognizing that…
“And don’t worry, encryption methods will keep all this confidential. Nobody will look at it. Guaranteed.”
…….is sarcasm.
Hey, wait!
I thought we were discussing fascists and nazis and niggers [oh my]?
Who’s this Big Brother and where does he live? Does he have a REAL job? Why would he want to protect his parade from being pissed on? What kinda car does he drive? New or used? Gas grill or Weber klassic kettle?
Finally — What’s this sarcasm stuff and where can I purchase some at a reasonable price? (I think there’s a couple shreds of credit left on my American Excess card.) 😉
Think of it as metal scrap thrown out the tail of an airplane to confuse ground radar. I saw it done once in an old black and white movie. And enjoy it while you can. Racist and fascist talk will return to drive naive and new readers away from CFN soon enough.
Gays on Cape Cod published the name of people who had voted against Gay Marriage. No one had a problem with that since they’re GAY and GAY is GOOD. If anyone else did it, there might be a problem depending on who it is. Needless to say we didn’t get this un-American overnight. Our morals, morale, and understand of the Constitution have been whittled away piece by piece by things like affirmative action and foreign aid – both utterly against the Constitution by any reasonable interpretation.
Looks like the Anti-Federalists were right: we should have stuck with the Articles of Confederation since the Constitution doesn’t stipulate anyway to fix the wrongs of the Centralized State. The 10th Ammendment is just hanging in mid-air by itself.
Why involve privacy here? The Diebold Machines should be opened up and examined for their potential for fraud. But apparently the machines are people too and have rights. Genesis of the Daleks.
I’m thinking of just throwing in the towel, so to speak, and running off to New Zealand. Seriously…..
What’s with the fascination with the original 1956 movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”?
There have been 5 or 6 remakes of the movie.
I mean, it’s a good movie, but it’s not that good.
Psychotropic drugs, like Prozac, and Zanax, turn people into “Pod People”.
Moral corruption turns people into “Pod People”: They turn a blind eye to all the t,yr,,an.ny in exchange for the promise of healthcare. And, in the end, they get f..cked outta healthcare, but they don’t care because they’re obese, stupid, and doped up on TV, Prozac and Zanax…Pod People…..”Johnny Pod”.
You how the f,,as,,cist,s and the co,mm,,uni,,sts organize people into “work brigades”, “work units”, etc. I think that in corporate environments you get organized into “groups” (e.g. the “corporate group”), or “practices” (e.g. the “tax practice”, or “tax practice group”), or for the liberal progressive types, “teams”.
We should organize people into “Pods”. For example, the “Corporate Pod”, or the “Corporate Practice Pod”, etc.
What would happen if a free-thinking, eccentric, US college football fan during a highly-charged football game came down from out of the stands with a bullhorn, stood in front of the bleachers full of cheering, crazed fans and started shouting?:
“Our Team’s wrong! Our Team’s doing it all wrong! Our Team’s destroying the academic spirit of our college! Our Team’s cheating and has bribed the referees! Our Team’s engaged in recruiting violations! Our Team’s morally bankrupt and is destroying the integrity of the game! Stop cheering for our Team until they clean up their act!”
What does “Kunstler” mean?
I guess that it’s like the word “Hustler”—One who hustles?
A “Kunstler” would be one who “Kunstles”, whatever that means, right?
JHK has the logo of a family car being pulled by a horse with some bloke in a suit-and-tie riding the car rather than driving the car from behind the steering wheel of the car. Thus, I suppose that the act of “Kunstling” would be to endeavor to adapt modernity to a future driven by the past. Modernity projected into the past. Right? Like those Back-to-the-Future movies?
Pucker, Wikipedia is your friend.
“Kunstler is a German surname meaning ‘artist.'” It even lists our host as a prominent person with that name. Apt, isn’t it’?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCnstler
I have to chuckle; apparently I made an impression on vlad.
Good or bad, he seems need to refer back, that in itself is telling.
He’s such a maroon and doesn’t see his harlequin position in the blogosphere.
But, my main objection here is the continued tolerance of this person here on this site. He is a hate monger, pure and simple!
As the head primate (humans) here on the planet earth we seem loathe to progress to the next level of intelligence; which would be a paradigm shift away from conventional thinking and action.
We seem to be following the virus model, in which we kill our host.
This is operative on an intellectual level as well as a functional level and both paths lead to our ultimate end.
So, there is always choice; the choice here seems to be acceptance of the status quo…
Gaia will most certainly survive us; she may in fact lead the charge of our reduction; be ready for it…
The Road to Arn begins with a slight dip in the road. It winds around and around and even elevates here and there in the beginning, but make no mistake: it goes steadily down. And Arn himself is waiting at the end of the road, in the pit, in the City of Arn in the Kingdom of Arndom. He sits on his throne surrounded by ghouls and goblins who respond his every gibbering decree with shrieks of approval.
Did you read the article yet, your majesty?
The road to Raging Hell leads right through the heart of Mr. [vladdie] Lederhosen’s pretended political, religious and economic “philosophies”. Follow his “deeply held beliefs” to a nightmare world of rivers of blood and wholesale, ice-cold murder of every living thing… think Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s more lurid paintings. (While he’s busy posting here, he’s got little time left to attend mandatory meetings of the Volksbund and the scribbling of his comprehensive anthropological history called, “It’s All the Niggers’ Fault”. For these small mercies, we should be eternally grateful.)
“Perhapsy you’d like to define ‘gaslighting’ pour moi.” – Dog
===============
Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity.
Yes as I said above before the most recent Puckerfication.
“A small bit of unreality could be pushed on someone via the internet, smartphone, or actual real life physical contact.”
…
And someone experiencing a small nudge of such unreality would then become highly agitated and see evidence of dark forces of manipulation everywhere.
Mental abuse for sure and a violation of the first and fourth amendments. Damn those secret presidential orders. But such intent may fail and thus might actually make a dog comfortable with his memory, perception and sanity.
And mirrors looking at mirrors looking at mirrors looking at mirrors. The presentation of such false information becomes part of the real world and in this kaleidoscope of deceit becomes no longer ‘false reality’ but simply untrue.
I said you were ripe for gaslighting and then explicitly said I wouldn’t do so. But you turn it around to say that I am gaslighting you when in fact I was warning you. Is this not like what was done to Joe McCarthy? He didn’t want to reveal the names but his enemies forced him to – and then blamed him for ruining reputations. He knew he might be wrong about some of the names so he wanted them investigated more thoroughly first.
Needless to say, he was right about all or nearly all the names as being traitors even if not Russian Communists.
Which is more true the light of the sun or the silvery moon? Some things may be seen by the gaslight that our invisible to florescent reality. Remember the runes that can only be read by moonlight.
“and then explicitly said I wouldn’t do so”
Make sure the minions get the memo next time.
And this from a guy who spends most of his waking life sowing discord and mistrust on the intertubes?!? It’s a new high score on the WTF? arcade machine.
Sure thing then… if you don’t believe him, just ask him, he’ll tell you: he’s perrrrfectly trustworthy and has only compassion and warm feeling for his fellow humans. Bwwwahahahahaha! (Maybe that warm feeling is simply radiating from the branding iron he’s holding in preparation of marking the foreheads of the undesirable and disposable.)
Lib’ruls and commies and fags [oh my]!
Then he follows his deeeeep philosophical exposition with some more patented cobbled-together occult horseshit. Perfect. I wouldn’t trust the fellow to find sand on the beach.
I grant you that paranoids may have real enemies. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t paranoid and that all their imagined enemies are real.
Don’t blame me for warning you of your own destructive tendencies towards self gaslighting.
Runes and goons. This fellow better stay in moonlight. Sunlight will spark him into a florescent reality of burning flame. Occult horseshit from a thing who’s got no reflection in a mirror.
Come on guys, lighten up. Turn up that gaslight but don’t light a match.
Ozone(!), why does trying to get you to define your terms make me a monster? Fascism has a real meaning – and it’s not just a synonym for all the baddies and badness in the world. Your Lenin and Stalin should prove that. Likewise Racism: I invite you to jump in at any time. Do you believe Blacks can sprint faster than Whites? Is that racist or just racist to NOTICE that they do while being White?
To deny me is to affirm Arn. He awaits you and you have just gone another mile towards him.
“This ghastly matrix of corruption really only has two ways to go. It can completely implode in a fairly short time frame (say, five years, tops), or we can, by some miracle of political will, get our priorities straight and sweep away all the layers of racketeering with a single-payer system.”
But a miracle of political will must have new political forces in the circus of politics. But where are they? With mass media locked down by special interests how is any change possible? Misplaced trust is everywhere.
It will take a miracle. No doubt about it.
Q says:
“And don’t worry, encryption methods will keep all this confidential. Nobody will look at it. Guaranteed.” …….is sarcasm.
Sarcasm? You bet.
You probably heard that, in Sept 2012, US District Court Judge Christine Arguello ruled that there is no fundamental right to a secret ballot in the US Constitution.
No, seriously. This was over a court case brought by activists because there were apparently counties wanting to use numbered ballots which, if someone wanted to, they could attach to individual voters.
The learned judge said, you people, you people, what’s the problem, there’s no problem. Even if a specific ballot could be traced to an individual voter it doesn’t mean that voting rights were violated.
OK, well, I’ll bet there’s a lot of manly men out there, you know, strong, silent types that always suspected that secret ballots are for sissies anyhow. Does the constitution say you have the right? No? Well if that sacred document sez you ain’t got it, then you ain’t got it.
A show of hands or open outcry in the town square is the way to conduct votes. Isn’t it? Think about it. Voting in the light of day, democracy in full view. John Smith, how do you vote? And John Smith, in front of his peers, states his preference.
It’s the way for upright and honorable men, don’t you think, who have the courage of their convictions, who say what they mean, who mean what they say, who look you straight in the eye, who stand up for what’s right, who provide for their families and whose families respect them. And who believe in God, Guns and Guts.
Or maybe you have a problem. Maybe this isn’t to your taste. Maybe you’re one of those, um, “progressives”. Maybe you have a law degree. Maybe you’re one of those “the Constitution is a living, breathing document” pussies. Maybe you grew up in one of those places where robust, red blooded American boys are systematically deprived of their manhood, emasculated, convinced of their inferiority and unworthiness, indoctrinated into shame and initiated into pussy-dom.
Ok, ok you’re right, all this smacks of the worst kind of intolerance. I’ll back off. My bad.
Oh, you SUPPORT the secret ballot? That’s ok. You have your reasons. No, really. People are how they are. But what about you? How is it with you? It’s a fair question. I mean, given that privacy is over and done with. I mean, remember how hip, forward thinking urbanites (you know, the ones with a proliferation of electronic gadgetry sprouting from them) pronounced the death of privacy? It’s over. They said so.
So, do tell us, are you one of those “nice guys” that modern women all say they yearn for? You know, one of those sensitive, stay at home dads who’s in touch with his feelings, who isn’t afraid to cry, who gives his little boy dolls to play with and who tends the kids while the lady is out earning?
Er, are you sure the little one you’re breast-feeding is really yours? Or, is the biological father, unlike you, a REAL hombre? You know, one that isn’t afraid to use his fists and sweat and smell the way the Good Lord intended. Geez, I did it again. So judgemental of me.
But I do have a question. Have you ever gone hunting and shot and butchered a deer? And brought the meat home to your family? What? You’re a vegetarian? Jesus, give me strength, why did you inflict yourself on that poor, lovely girl, you despicable, useless, spineless, sorry assed excuse for a man.
Ok you support the secret ballot. But nevermind, no matter your feelings on the wisdom or desirability of the secret ballot, a judge decided that you don’t have the right to it. And, if you don’t like the decision, that’s tough. What are you gonna do about it?
Why any privacy at all then? Discretion is the better part of wisdom most of the time. Reality is something most people can only take in small increments. Most people shouldn’t be voting to begin with. I don’t want to be the one to tell them that – that’s not my job as a friend, co-worker, or neighbor. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Remember to say thank you to the deer for the gift of his meat.
“Sarcasm? You bet.” – Volodya
=======
Speaking of which… my favorite scene from last Sunday’s Boardwalk Empire episode:
The character Nelson Van Alden has been catching a load of shit from his wife Sigrid about the lack of running water in the kitchen (Nelson had built a Sears Roebuck kit home and various things were not yet finished and/or not working right.) Nelson needs this badgering like a hole in the head. He’s got much bigger fish to fry. He has committed to Al Capone that he will kill O’Banion that evening under threat of his own life. He takes a big pistol from a drawer and slips it in his belt. His wife walks through the doorway which has only a curtain, no door. They have a tiff over her barging in. Harridan wife that she is, she asks “did you call Sears Roebuck?” Barely restraining himself from decking her he says “Yes, and I spoke with Mr. Roebuck himself…he’s going to send over a dozen of his top men.” Naïve Sigrid, lacking a bullshit detector, smiles slightly and asks “This is true?” Nelson, on his way to go kill Banion, brushes past her and says “No, this is sarcasm.”
I think that one of the posters above said that “…we need a miracle.”
Well, you’ve come to the right place!
I specialize in Miracles.
Of course, a Miracle, by definition, is something so improbable in the Real World as to make it for all practical purposes IMPOSSIBLE.
Some Real Life MIRACLES that I’ve read about in the press in recent years include the case of the hysterical mob who witnessed the appearance of the Virgin Mary in the pool of water in the shopping mall parking lot. Another MIRACLE was the temple in India where the statue of Ganesha was seen to be snorting milk with his nose from the cups of worshipers. Some onlookers were allegedly beaten when they questioned the practice of some devotees who were seen poring milk down Ganesha’s nose (an elephant trunk).
Obamacare may go down in the history books as yet another false Miracle, Elvis sighting. (So strong was the desperate mob’s AUDACITY OF HOPE for deliverance from eternal damnation and bankruptcy by out-of-control healthcare costs that they turned a blind eye to turnkey t,yrr,,anny desperately believing in Obama’s promise of “Affordable Health Care”—-NOT!!!!)
Speaking of Elvis, I read a book once about Elvis Presley. The author interviewed people who insisted that at the moment of Elvis’s birth in Tupelo, Mississippi the sky above the hospital turned a strange color of purple and they had visions.
Japan’s in for a major FREAK OUT.
Some “experts” are insisting that if Fukashima experiences an earthquake of 7 or above that the crippled Fukashima reactors would all “GO TITS” and that all of Japan would have to be evacuated as well as large parts of the U.S. west coast.
According to these same experts, the probability of the area around Fukashima experiencing an earthquake of 7 or above within the next 3 years is 95%.
The Japanese people will literally FREAK OUT.
Do your remember how the Japanese people used to have premonitions of Godzilla rising from Tokyo harbor to breath fire on mobs of terrified repressed salarymen and stomp Tokyo into the dust? It’s all going to come true…..
To be honest, I rather like the Japanese people.
The Chinese people hate Japanese people, which is sad, but I guess understandable in light of WWII.
I read in the book “The Rape of Nanking” that the Japanese General in command had given strict orders that the Japanese soldiers were to show restraint when entering and occupying Nanking. For some reason, his orders were ignored by a junior officer who, according to the book’s author, was a politically well-connected iaristocrat’s kid in Japan, probably a bit like George W. Bush, Jr. Very tragic…..
Marx believed that declining rates of profitability in the capitalist manufacturing process would eventually lead the capitalists to stop reinvesting profits as there would be no more profits to be had due to the inability to eventually squeeze labor as everything would eventually be automated and done by machines.
The problem is that under conditions of resource scarcity and money printing the Capitalists can continue to make infinitely increasing profits by engaging in asset, real estate and stock speculation. Of course, the common people will ultimately all be unemployed and drowning in inflation.
“So it would seem to me that Karl Marx might prove to have been right in his contention that crises become more and more destructive as the capitalistic system matures (and as the “financial economy” referred to earlier grows like a cancer) and that the ultimate breakdown will occur in a final crisis that will be so disastrous as to set fire to the framework of our capitalistic society.”
Marc Faber
We here in Langley have always used our asset Faber to innoculate the public against a financial “schwarz swan”. We have achieved full financial dominance along with full spectrum dominance……the present economic order is quite stable and will remain so well into the future. We are now running about 5% actual inflation while building into our economic statistics 1%. This means that savers and creditors are being wiped out (according to the rule of 72) about 50% of their purchasing power every 18 years. Why pay debt back when you can just inflate it away?
Someone said that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to re-inflate the flaccid economy are part of the “Holmesian School of Economics”. Has anyone heard of this branch of Economics? Thanks.
Holmes’ main asset in the porn business was his exceptionally large penis. No definitive measurement or documentation verifying this exists, leaving its exact size unknown. Holmes was also one of the first uncircumcised actors who became popular in American porn.[citation needed]
Veteran porn actress Dorothea “Seka” Patton has stated that Holmes’ penis was the biggest in the industry.[21] Holmes’ first wife recalled him claiming to be 10 inches (25 cm) when he first measured himself.[22] Holmes himself once claimed his penis to be 35 inches (89 cm) long and 22 inches (56 cm) in circumference.[22] Holmes’ long-time friend and industry associate, Bill Amerson, said that “I saw John measure himself several times, it was 13 and a half inches” (34.3 cm).[1] (In contrast, medical studies of human penis size have consistently found erections average between about 5 and 6 inches.[23][24][25])
At the height of his career, Holmes had his penis insured by Lloyd’s of London for $14 million. Holmes reveled in claiming he was insured “for $1 million an inch”. [26]
Another controversy regards whether Holmes ever achieved a full erection although much of his early work clearly reveals he was able to achieve a substantial erection. A popular joke in the 1970s porn industry held that Holmes was incapable of achieving a full erection because the blood flow from his head into his penis would cause him to pass out.[27] Annette Haven stated that his penis was never particularly hard during intercourse, likening it to “doing it with a big, soft kind-of loofah.”[27]
You go too far funny man. This is still an English speaking country. Do you want to get banished to France where they fight with their feet and fuck with their face? Well were our boys warned, “Don’t come home from France with the enemy in your pants.”
Public Service Announcement: Kdog still likes and believes in Obama. He would vote for him again.
What’s up with this. You testing to see how often I stop in here to check if the dogs been kicked or what? The answer is now and then. I’m preparing for a white board test for a potential employer right now and taking a break. Since I am taking a break I’ll answer this though I seriously question the need to respond at all.
The answer is Herr Lederhosen no way would I do that.
Seems Mr Obama gets personally involved in the war on terror. He loves his drones and even targets 16 year old boys. He has all his priorities in the wrong place. He is the Manchurian candidate for the 1%.
I found about the murder of Al-Awlaki 16 year old son the day before yesterday watching this.
I’ve serious misgivings about answering your government trolldom but what the hell. I’m not planning on being in Yemen any time soon.
The buck stops where?
Crocodile Tears
That got messed up. There are two links the ‘this’ is the first and the second is ‘Crocodile Tears’.
Al-Awlaki‘s 16 year old son
I am not a troll. I am a not a number. I am a Man. You make me feel like the Prisoner. Stop gas lite attack. Look, you seemed to be defending him on Nov 7 at 8:37 am when you said he would have delivered if asked. I’m glad I was wrong – if I am wrong.
Remember what they say in the Village: Questions are a burden to others. Answers, a prison for oneself. But that is discipline of real community – as opposed to the Hillary’s village. I will continue to press for real dialogue even if such Sunlight makes you, Arn, Zipdic, UFCIA, and Zone uncomfortable. Join me in the Light. You’ll learn to like it once your eyes get accustomed.
This just gets more hilarious as it goes along!
The perpetual bloviating bully now whines and pules for understanding and [heaven forefend!] co-operation in his “VISION”?? WTF?
Unless not true to his stated belief in the niggerless utopia and the endless erotic potentials of fine patent leather (crafted from jewskin), he should have attended this in support of his fellow travelers:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/neo-nazis-stage-rally-kristallnacht-anniversary-kansas-city/story?id=20839380
Ps. “Dirty Wars” from Jeremy Scahill is excellent in its’ truly disturbing and disgusting revelations. Sure, we knew these things, but Scahill punches you right in the face with ’em.
You really are a relic, more of an anachronism than an anarchist. Even Jews now admit Nazis didn’t kill Jews and then use their skin for lampshades. No soap either – sorry you poor fool.
The solution to our health care system (and many of our other broken systems) is relatively simple. It is the execution thereof that is impossible.
Bill Ayers said the answer is mass execution – 25 million or so in fact.
The terrible storm in the Phillipines may be the biggest in all recorded history…it follows on from a similar hurricane a few moinths back in India,,,and is like the huge hurricane a year ago the the East Coast USA
These storms are much greater and more destrucive with each passing year
The experts have warned that this will be a feature of Global Warming…not more Hurricanes but much bigger and devestating ones
and what unfortunate community will be next,,and what can we do ?
seed prof Cole’s comments
http://www.juancole.com/
And I still have apples on the tree!!!!! Strange days indeed!!!
Speaking of hurricanes/typhoons and climate change, I was surprised that the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy didn’t make more of an impression here. Now that the topic has come up, I have the latest climate research from Rutgers, Columbia, and NYU, places that experienced Sandy first hand, along with an expert from Columbia speaking to PBS about the connection between climate change and the ferocity and frequency of hurricanes. PBS at least acknowledged the role of climate change. Media Matters pointed out that Fox News and CNN didn’t. Only MSNBC out of the three major U.S. cable news outfits did.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/11/hurricane-sandy-anniversary-and-other.html
Your video with Klaus Jacob was very good. I hope general consciousness is soon raised enough so people pay attention to dogs like him. Reality will not be ignored.
Looks like Art Bell was right in his potboiler “The Coming Global Superstorm”. The global warming actually trigger the next ice age in this scenario. The storms turn into blizzards in much of Europe and America leaving tens of feet of snow than never melts.
We here in Langley have been toasting each other with a delightful abreu vineyard cabernet sauvignon ($500/bottle in quantity)……the ACA has been such a wonderful success accomplishing all our objectives. What remains of the independent small biz private sector will be further strangled by 400% rate increases……while tens of millions (eventually) of government mendicants will be added to the rolls…..very reliable voters indeed making it unnecessary to continue rigging the voting machines…… And gainful productive employment gains have been realized by hiring on 50,000 new IRS agents to harass all those whining small biz types….high fives all the way around…need a refill of abreu?
“Holmes’ long-time friend and industry associate, Bill Amerson, said that “I saw John measure himself several times, it was 13 and a half inches” (34.3 cm)” – Pucker
===========
The worst thing a straight male can do in the gym locker room is to be caught checking out some nearby guy’s equipment…..but sometimes you just can’t help noticing things.
There was a tall slender older black man who I saw dressing/undressing on a number of occasions. His penis was the thing of cartoons. Soft, it hung to his knee. You would think he’d be proud of it and maybe swing it or flourish it around in the showers, but no, I think he was embarrassed by it. I think he had to coil it up in his pants as a sailor “flemishes” a line on a ships deck.
And then there was the short old Italian man I dubbed Geppetto when I told my wife about his (estimated) 9″ flaccid schlong which included an ugly dangling foreskin.
Q: I didn’t write that about the actor John Holmes. I should have put that quotation in quotation marks and referenced the quote to Wikipedia. Sorry….
John Holmes’ penis is just a metaphor for problems with the Too-Big-To-Fail economic model, and how it may be inherently problematic via money-printing to keep trying to re-inflate the economy under the Too-Big-To-Fail model.
It’s also a metaphor illustrating problems and the difficulty of trying to support and grow a large, complex economic system (penis) without increasing the size and complexity of underlying system (person) supporting such system (penis).
Thank you.
It’s Oil that makes complex energy systems (and other complex systems such as the financial system) possible, right?
So, in other words, Wall Street’s got it ass-backwards: It isn’t money (or throwing money at a problem) that makes complexity (.e.g. a nuclear power plant) possible, but rather Oil, right? Oil is Real; Money is an illusion.
In other words, it’s Oil that makes the nuclear power plant possible, rather than Finance, even though it’s true that the nuclear power plant can’t be built without Finance. It’s just that Finance alone isn’t the necessary pre-condition for the existence and maintenance of the nuclear power plant. The nuclear power plant needs constant infusions of finance (money) but also water (to make steam), highly specialized manpower, land, natural resources, etc. Right?
So this hubris of Wall Street that Finance (i.e., Money) solves all problems is fundamentally flawed. Right?
Actually, what the Actor John Holmes probably should have done is to have surgery to reduce the size and complexity of his penis and revert to a simpler less complex life style? Of course, he didn’t do this since he didn’t want to face Reality. Unfortunately, most men are Holmesian Economists who want bigger more complex systems as it makes them feel better about themselves and feel more powerful.
Some info in relation to the hope of a doctor who posted comments to this blog post for having antibiotics in the future: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/11/09/antibiotic-drugs.aspx?e_cid=20131109Z1_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20131109Z1&et_cid=DM33171&et_rid=331366035
For non-life threatening infections antibiotics do much more harm than good, especially if not followed by a probiotics course. This is a common practice in Europe and in South Africa, but here in Canada, GPs are not even aware of it and readily dismiss any suggestions for probiotics.
The same goes for most modern vaccines, those after 1980s.
I am sorry to hear that Jim had to go through three surgeries this past year. This must have been awfully difficult, and yet, he still kept up with his blog! I am glad you are fine now, Jim. I wish you feel good in the years to come.