When I knew I was leaving Lawn Guyland, I visited my long time dentist for the last time. This man had done all my dental work since the early Reagan Administration. My union dental coverage had purchased him numerous fine German and, later, Japanese cars over the years. He used to say that when I came into his office, he could hear the revving of new engines instead of air drills.

The O.C.D. dentist I called him, as he was a true perfectionist. His work with crowns was so good, none of it ever had to be redone, even after nearly 30 years.

At my last appointment, I said to him,”So, Doc, when I move to Aridzona I want to look up your organization, so as to find a dentist as good as you.”

“What organization?” he replied.

“Oh, you know, the A.R.J.D.A.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

With a wink to his assistant, I said “Anal-Retentive Jewish Dentists of America!”

We all laughed, but I had the sinking feeling I was gonna miss him. Boy, was I ever right.

With the Valley of the Sun in my sights, I moved to a little cotton field west of Phoenix. A “city” they called it. Not like any city I’ve ever seen, more like a “town”. After taking four months off to, well, play hooky—after all, I had been working nonstop since I was eight—eventually my wife and I decided to find jobs. Hers would have to have health bennies. Only a blind man would give me any health benefits. Once that was settled, I went about the task of visiting doctors and dentists within our plan’s network.

Within a year, I realized there are 20 ‘truths’ concerning healthcare in ‘The Valley’ as everyone calls it. I will now recite these 20 Commandments:

1. There is a damn good reason your doctor or dentist isn’t in New York or L.A. Look up the term “Goober” in the dictionary. There’s his/her picture.
   
2. If you are waiting to see your doctor or dentist for way too long, and his waiting room is empty, he can usually be found in his office on his laptop, on E*Trade checking his retirement portfolio, or on the phone talking to the guy he’s got rehabbing foreclosures.
3. Dentists in The Valley do not like doing standard dentistry. If it doesn’t involve use of a blue light, and include the terms ‘Brite Smile’, or “porcelain veneers’, it’s beyond his/her scope of practice.
4. No matter how competent the doctor is, his office personnel will surely give a whole new meaning to the term “asleep at the wheel.”
5. Messages between the doctor and office personnel will get lost/changed/forgotten during its arduous six-foot journey from counter to computer.
6. Be prepared to get all of your information paperwork from the office personnel in Spanish, whether or not you even speak Spanish. Qué?
7. Referrals take years.
8. Test results always take until the day before your next test (Quantum Faxing?)
9. If you really like your physician, just wait, he will be moving back to his home state soon enough.
10. Check to see if their degree came from a degree mill, such as the Arizona School of Medicine and Animal Husbandry. Red flag: look out for the pictures of horses in the waiting room. On a related note, never say “Blücher” out loud. They hate that.
11. Nothing is permanent. Nothing. Any tooth repair, any surgery, any prescription for a problem, all will only work for six to eight weeks, then fall-out/drop/swell/delaminate/leak/become infected/hurt like a biatch and then you can start with the word “fall-out” again and reread that list. At that point you will be asked if you want the upgraded version at no charge. He will then redo what he’s already done poorly—poorly once again—and gets to bill your insurance company twice.
12. No matter what the problem is, do not ever interrupt the office girls personal phone calls. You have no idea how long you can be made to wait, or how fucked up your paperwork can get. Oh, and it’s no fun getting an imaginary molar removed from your testicles.
13. Appointments in Arizona are merely suggestions.
14. If you make an appointment, call back in an hour and ask if you made an appointment. You will be told “no” …at which time you can remake your appointment. This increases your chances of making the schedule, albeit only slightly.
15. Get a second opinion, like your life depended on it. It does. And maybe a third just for shits-n-giggles.
16. If your Doctor says to you, “What you have is inoperable/unfixable/terminal, what he means is it’s above his pay grade and he’s too fucking embarrassed to refer you to a physician that can do it.
17. Get to know all the Hindu holidays’ time tables, your doctor will be unavailable at these times.
18. Before your first visit to your physician, always go to his website and fill out all the pre-visit forms online. It won’t save you any time, as they will have lost them when you get there, but you have practiced and can now fill them out more efficiently whilst balancing the clipboard on your knee and talking on the phone simultaneously. This will also not help the wait, because you will finish the forms six to seven months before you will be seen. Luckily, all dentist and doctor offices in AZ are equipped with cafeterias for this reason.
19. “We do take your insurance plan” can be a deceiving statement. What it means is this: “It’s ok for you to do all the paperwork for us after we fuck it all up. It’s also OK for them to pay us, and for us to say we never got the payment.”
20. Win the lottery and pull an Elvis. When you’re sick or have a toothache just get on a plane to NY.

In hindsight, comparing John Boehner to Don Quixote isn’t very fair to Mr. Quixote. But what’s the GOP attacking now? Why are they so afraid? Even when they aren’t in power, they’re the story….a sad, sad story, yet an ever-evolving one, or in their case devolving. Look, don’t fear a reasonable amount of competence…it’s INcompetence you want to avoid. See how easy that was? Now you try to think of…just kidding, like that would ever happen.

The GOP’s premise that saying whatever the hell you want and having people cheer is not going to play out horribly well in the general election. If Rick Santorum says he hates Abraham Lincoln because he appeased the Klingons along the Neutral Zone during the Boer War, people are going to fact check that shit. For example, Lincoln appeased the Romulans, not the Klingons (Trekipedia). So put that in your sweater vest and smoke it, or your smoking jacket and sweater it.

Regardless, whoever gets the nod, Fox News will immediately try to create reality around their candidate, like Sarah I’m-Warning-the-British Palin and Michelle Jefferson-Freed-the-Slaves Bachmann. But you can’t create candidates this stupid and expect to get anywhere…or can you?

“Obama’s support among white men has slipped from 41% to 36%, with the drop being attributed to men without a college degree.”

—Lihat Terjemahan

Keep defunding education; it’s your only hope. Then, after 425 more debates, maybe you’ll end up with Rick Man-on-Dog Santorum. Someone recently said Santorum would be an impressive figure in the 1800s. I think that’s offensive to people from that era.

But the growing chorus of people coming around to my way of thinking gives me some small comfort:

“The GOP’s once credible attacks on the president’s record have morphed into an incredible attack on the country’s intelligence. That change is reflected by Obama’s double-digit lead over the GOP field. Sometimes it seems as if Santorum and the others are content with pushing each other closer and closer to the edge of idiocy because that’s easier than pushing ideas to convince voters they’re the best person for the job.”

—LZ Grandersen, CNN

So I get this email from a Republican friend of mine, apparently the word “dhimmitude” is written somewhere into Obama’s new healthcare law. The email said it’s designed to exempt Muslims from paying for Obamacare. Of course, the email said ‘please pass on and scare the shit out of your already paranoid friends and relatives.’ The email seemed scary, for sure, but I wrestled with even looking up the damn thing. I’m so sick of fact-checking some right wing moron, but alas…

Fact check.org:

Dhimmitude (according to them it is in the bill):

However, “The overwhelming majority of them are explicitly Anabaptist — that is, Mennonite, Amish or Hutterite. Those that don’t specify their denomination are still explicitly Christian. Having gone through the list, we can say with certainty that no Muslim group, and indeed no non-Christian group, has ever qualified for an exemption under the statute used to define exempt religious groups in the health care law.”

So I came up with my own, much better definition of Dhimmitude:

“A force countering the natural propensity of a society to become more intelligent (otherwise known as the Flynn Effect) through endless inaccuracies perpetuated by the early twenty-first century U.S. Conservative Party. This group, in essence, is hindering the naturally occurring cognitive acceleration of the entire species, making the world just a little dumber one Hannity episode at a time.”

There, that’s better. Now for homework please use the word in a sentence.

Geesh, you people are like the pundits who cried wolf. Henny Penny the pipeline is falling. Someday you’re going to uncover something real, or, worse yet, you already have, and everyone is going to blow it off when they consider the source. I know I will. For many, many years Republicans have been doing a huge disservice to reality. And they don’t even have to live here anymore! They can just visit now and again to check on their house plants and then climb back into their neococoon.

It’s like any other time when the right seems to be making a valid point, I make the terrible, terrible mistake of researching it (never do this). It’s astounding how little of what they say is based on anything but horse shit. Perhaps they represent the missing dark matter in physics? Hmmm. I believe that’s from the Theory of Smellitivity, which also states nothing in the Universe can lie faster than the speed of Right.

Please get some people with a clue on your side, because this is getting ridiculous…or, hey, let’s talk about Obama’s birth certificate again. I’ll clear my schedule…and my brain.

And don’t hate Gingrich, Santorum and Limbaugh, you are the party of Gingrich, Santorum and Limbaugh. You all deserve each other. This has been my clarion call for years. I gave Keith Olbermann a considerable amount of shit when he went uber-liberal, so did a lot of other people, and he’s gone…meanwhile, the Right embraces and promotes the suckage. A Dan Rather on the right would not resign in disgrace, but would inherent Murdoch’s empire. The fruits of your labor can be seen during this wonderful primary season. Oh, wait, you don’t like fruits. Scratch that.

Over the years, you haven’t been remotely interested in policing yourselves, and math? Naaaah. Math leads to socialism. So you made your bed, keep lying in it. In fact, get a room with some animals, midgets, harnesses, maybe some scuba equipment, and all those other things you’re repressing in the name of real American values, and have at it.

The scant few valid points the Foxeteers actually have tend to be issues I agree with Obama on. There are a few distinct differences between R and D; these are why we hold elections. For instance, the Right is making a big deal about the Keystone Pipeline. Obama really did vote this down. This is based on reality…whew, I knew reality would creep into this conversation sooner or later. Okay, I really didn’t, but I was kind of hoping…

But, instead of moving toward real solutions for our energy problems, the GOP fixates on temporary band aids in an effort to jury rig this psychopathic, oil-owned system of ours. Should we have done this pipe-whatsas? From my reading, it looked like a mixed bag—a measly 800,000 gallons a day of the dirtiest of the dirtiest (at best). Meanwhile, the Occupy Movement is really starting to focus on long term sustainable systems for our future. I heard some great things on a recent Coast to Coast show on their last summit and some new ground rules from another source here. Not that it will likely mean anything anytime soon, but I appreciate their sentiment. Meanwhile, the Right takes their marching orders from Exxon Mobile…well, I don’t.

“I do what I want!!!”

—Cartman

Apparently, gas prices are going to have to climb much higher before we start taking alternative energy seriously. It didn’t have to be that way, but you’ve been missing every memo on the subject of sustainable energy for, oh, about four decades now, so tough shit.

Also, after an exhaustive study conducted on approximately 1,400 professors across the nation, it found that college professors are slightly more conservative than the general population…NOT more liberal. Just add that to the long list of the GOP’s false assumptions, which now, if listed end-to-end, would reach from one end of Newt Gingrich’s ego to the other (okay, that’s an exaggeration). At this point, it’s really safe to say their entire world view is delusional—next to nothing pans out under the microscope, or even under the basement light bulb on a string.

I would have actually guessed more professors would be liberal as that’s part of the consciousness spiral, but, either way, is that the focus of each and every class? Is there really some diabolical coordinated plot? Did we all just pay our tuition fees each semester for some Loraxian-style brainwashing? “I am Dr. Lorax, I speak for the Ds.” I think I do remember him, actually…short guy, big moustache. And, I have to admit, I enjoyed taking Hollywood Celebrity Causes 101 and Advanced Sorosology as much as the next guy.

Face it, Matt Drudge combs the country for examples of this phenomenon and he comes up with about one a month. Frankly, there’s probably more teachers boinking their students than liberalizing them. Drudge, meanwhile, Cherry picks a whole host of headlines designed to anger and misinform the already angry and misinformed. Good work if you can get it. In fact, let’s look at The Drudge today: gun sales are up because people are frightened of Obama’s re-election.

Hmmmm. Soooo you’re all scared during this steady, albeit slow, recovery phase, but you weren’t scared during the whole….horrible decisions that led to …… catastrophic……… global…….. What the fuck is wrong with you people?!

I know, you’re worried about spending. So let’s end all of the Right’s unfunded policies, today. No? Congress got your tongue? Oh, I get it, you’re worried Obama is going to take away your gun rights, because clearly—no, I’m being told there’s no evidence for that either. Wow. Let’s go back to the bullshit about all higher education is liberal brain washing. I feel we’re on stronger ground there…and by stronger ground, I’m envisioning the lightening sand from the Fire Swamp.

For homework, please review the three dangers of the Fire Swamp and pay particular attention to the R.O.U.Ss, the Republicans Of Unusual Size. It might explain Newt’s head and solar system sized ego.

To bring this tangential point home, I have six years of higher education under my belt and never remember one liberal rant at a lecture. But those who have never set foot in a classroom are all convinced otherwise. And sorry Sean Hannity, but dumb should not be the new smart. That’s just fucking dumb.

I also believe the Right’s version of religion, namely fundamentalism, is not based on a deep metaphysical understanding of the cosmos, but of a collective arrested development (CAD). Check out my related article here. Yes, in almost every category I find these folks increasingly laughable. Yet they remain dead serious in their struggle to unthink their way to freedom and economic stability via a culture war of their own creation. Good luck with that.

The culture war can be summed up thusly: the people crying the loudest are actually more prone to impose their beliefs on others, than vice versa. For example, my decision to not own a dog will never affect you, but your decision may get me bitten, or keep me up all night, or force me to clean shit from my lawn. I don’t know where this analogy is going, but I feel similarly about Republicans. And I better not catch you shitting on my lawn again Limbaugh! I set up cameras!

What we do know is Fox News has an ongoing and very effective propaganda campaign that has convinced almost half the country of a whole laundry list of mistruths. That’s a fact…unlike the things you tend to cite in your articles, namely falsehoods. Our comedians, the real journalists today, have uncovered the internal memo machine over at Fox News here. The problem remains: half of the population already knows this and the other half supports it anyway.

I will continue to try to find any valid points or arguments from the Right. They must exist! They must! At this time, I would like to give a free pass to those few Ron-ulans out there (not to be confused with the Klingons). I think Ron Paul’s followers represent a distinctive third party mentality that should be nurtured and supported. They have figured out the Republican version of empire is certainly a large part of how we got here. Unfortunately, some of Ron Paul’s ilk remain enmeshed with the Tea Party, a faction of our society almost completely devoid of merit. Some are also prone to bouts of Foxeteerinism, a treatable condition, which can be countered by simply introducing a steady diet of facts into your normal daily news regiment. Let’s find real reasons to hate Obama, not make them up. I’m looking for them too and if you would just zip it long enough, I just might find some.

Ron Paul is a genuine and consistent candidate (as I have said for about a decade) and IF he’s being booted from the election illegally, which may well be true, then we no longer live in a Democracy. The Right should cover this story. It could be HUGE! I’ll just hold my breath on that one….

How about a wager? I think the Ron Paul being excluded from the Democratic race has more merit than nine out of ten of your “scandals”. There’s no info on it and no one is covering it. This is just a hunch, but my hunches have thus far proven much more accurate than your “facts”.

You see, Ron Paul getting the Democratic shaft may actually pan out, so it’s of no interest to a Foxeteer. To them real scandals are passé in their fairyland of unicorns and pixie dust. Oh wait, they hate fairies. Scratch that.

The Republican Party isn’t tearing itself apart; there’s nothing to tear apart. They’re a joke, hewn into the rock-solid-likeness of Sean Just–Splicing-in-Some-Footage Hannity, through the tried and true Chisel of Misinformation.

Oh, and by the way, I wrote a scroller joke on this site the day the contraceptive scandal broke, basically saying: well, I haven’t really looked into this yet, but if Fox News is up in arms about it, it’s probably bullshit. Well, the evangelical overreach is backfiring right on cue and Obama actually got the resulting bump from female voters. Any other bullshit scandals, folks? Then maybe we can just skip the election entirely and just pull a Putin.

The GOP is only united in their hatred for Obama. I may or may not vote for Obama next round. I have wanted a truly third party to emerge for a long time. But I’ll tell you who I won’t vote for…a group who prefers a depression over a recession, an incompetent foreign policy over a competent one, and stupidity over brains. The GOP is a group feverishly defending the very policies that got us here. If that’s not enough, they want to embroil us in another war with Iran, regardless if there are other viable options remaining. Can you imagine what the world would look like or what our economy would look like after this next Clusterfuck to Freedom? Well, it will go smoother if Obama handles it. He tends to do these things cheaper and more effectively, you know, as translated by Fox News 0 for 2.

The Republicans don’t like chess, they want to play checkers. None of that thinking three moves ahead crap, that’s for those elite European socialist types. We have bombs, drop em’! Oh, and King Me, bitch! What?….they can only move diagonally? Shit.

Now shhhh. Let Obama think. Unlike your candidates, he still has that in his arsenal. Besides, your handy work in Iraq is still lingering in the air, like the flatulent turd ball that is the GOP.

For homework, please work flatulent turd ball into a complete sentence.

Yeah, that’s right, The Crank is finally calling out the right wing. Why don’t you just put the f*&^ing election into a pretty foil box with a bow and hand it to Obama and say, “Sorry we bothered.” Or put on the cake, Enjoy Four More Years, oh Anointed One.

You people are making Obama look smart and that’s no easy task considering he has lived his entire pre-Presidential life in a box in Chicago on ex-Mayor Daley’s porch (only reading the Huffington Post, while viewing 24-hr live feeds from his most liberal university professors’ classes—with only the occasional “Al Capone Story” reruns to break it up).

I’m talking about Rick Sanitarium…er, Santorum. Evan Trump said it’s a gift to Democrats to make him run against The Evil Dr. Obamatron. Of course, it’s not ALL your fault. In states where independents can vote in primaries, many are being cajoled into voting for Sanitarium to “help the cause” as it were. It’s easy, actually. These are people who cannot, for the life of themselves, decide which side they’re on in any given decision. Independents spend their lives over-thinking a decision to its flaming finale. Making the decisions for them actually removes some of their stress.

Sanitarium makes one speech on “The Evil Satan” or talks about how much he admires Gays & any Non-Christians, and he’s history. Newt I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore Gingrich is faltering because we all see him for what he is—a hateful and resentful man who looks like a grown-up Cabbage Patch doll.

Mitt Headroom is our only hope. He is middle of the road enough to have a real chance to beat Obummer. Let’s all face the facts: no fat-assed Joisey Governor is going to ride in on a gleaming, but rather bow-backed, white stallion to save us. It’s just not gonna happen. And let’s all thank our deities that Palin isn’t running. As a local DJ said on his Facebook page: “Do I want her as President? NO. Would I like to bang her? Like a screen door in a cat-5 hurricane.” I know that’s sexist, but I’m told it will be edited out. And I believe in the crew at the Discord, they’re like a finely tuned…okay, they’re idiots. Sue me.

The Ron-ulans will have their 5 %—they always do—but never more. Paul wears two hats: one of them a cowboy hat and the other one hand-crafted from tin foil. Many great, great ideas about auditing the Fed and re-arranging our finances to suit our income, but he loses me with the “foreign policy” he has lodged in his eye.

If in fact gasoline is $4.50- $5.00 per gallon this summer, and the pipeline and the drilling are nowhere in sight, Mikko could beat Ohmamma. I am looking a C-note + to fill the Ram at $5.00, and America has more trucks than bicycles. As it heats up this season, Obama’s popularity will start to sink like a certain “I forgot to wear my glasses after I fell into the life boat” cruise ship captain.

The recovery that is happening in spite of Washington will give up by then, and I will be waving a tattered 3x white T-shirt in complete surrender. But that’s a crapshoot, and I’m not a betting man.

William F. Buckley, famed Conservative pundit, once said “I will vote for the most conservative person that I think can be elected.” He saw that a bird in the hand, may shit on it…wait, that’s not how it goes. He saw that two Bushes in the palm were…never mind. But he understands how having a semi-conservative in charge is better than the least conservative. Evidently, the Republicans last shred of intelligence died with old Bill.

Don’t fuck this up guys, the alternative is horrific.

Like a-planet-ruled-by-Mikko horrific.

Crank me a story