‘Comprehensive Planetary Regime could control development and distribution of all natural resources.’

Article II of the U. S. Constitution clearly states the powers and limitations of the Executive Branch of the federal government.  Of course, this is PC (pre-Cheney), and, having actually read the Constitution on a number of occasions (along with The Icky Sticky Frog), I can say with absolute certainty, nowhere does the president have the right to appoint Czars to positions of authority. First, what exactly is a Czar, besides a very tasty Imperial Stout? A Czar is a person of great power.  A Czar is essentially a monarch or an emperor. Most notably, the Czars of Russia ruled over the population with an iron hand and a foamy stout.  In its simplest terms, a Czar is a dictator (or the, aforementioned, dark beer). Obama has appointed thirty, or so, of these dark beers, or dictators (who were never confirmed by the Senate as cabinet members, as they are constitutionally required to be).  Anyway, these unconfirmed despots wield infinite power, like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings, only worse! John Holdren (who incidentally was confirmed by a voice vote in the senate and several thousand orcs) is Obama’s Dictator of Science and, according to FrontPage Magazine, wrote “There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated. It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing [U.S.] Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

Holdren’s comments, made in 1977, mirror the astonishing admission this week of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said she was under the impression that legalizing abortion with the 1973 Roe. v. Wade decision would eliminate undesirable members of the populace, or as she put it “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”  This is an outrage!  This is unacceptable!  Our Supreme Court Justices should NEVER be ending their statements with prepositions (or propositions)!

If anything we should be aborting these Czars themselves.  Hey, wasn’t Czars also that plague/diseasey thing that hit during the Reagan years?   I think I knew someone who had czars. Let’s couple this revelation with the global warming hysteria. Holdren believes a "Planetary Regime" could be created for the use of population control. Al Gore this week praised the passage of Obama’s Cap and Tax (I mean Cap and Trade) global warming bill, in the House of Representatives and urged the Senate to do likewise. Gore believes this legislation could lead to global governance and since we are all carbon-based life forms, who breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, our very presence is a danger to our planet. What better way to curb CO₂ emissions and reduce Earth’s “fever” than to destroy carbon emitters via abortion before they can do harm to the planet?  Oh, Al Gore is taking the world’s temperature, alright, but he’s using a rectal thermometer the size of Florida. Who will be the first Abortion Czar?  Who will be the first Soylent Green Czar?  Who will be the Brewing Czar and will he or she outlaw imperial stouts? We are on a very dangerous path with these liberals controlling both the government and our very lives. Beer today, gone tomorrow.

IS THIS THE CHANGE YOU WERE HOPING FOR?

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.  The point of my last post, Mr. Crank (if that is your real name), involved the healthcare debate being hijacked by the propaganda arts, the Goebbels Peanut Gallery, if you will.  Those town hall paranoids were stoked by the “Fox Transmission”. Using fear in such a way has disturbing ramifications.  NPR just did a nice piece on this, but I never said there was nothing to fear (that was FDR).  Point being, this tactic is effective regardless of the issues being debated.  So for the healthcare debate, we double the number of those ‘real concerned Americans’ invading our town halls.  But sorry to break this to you, Cranko, our healthcare system is changing at light speed and not for the better. Your view of it is a rosy snapshot taken some years ago through a disposable camera now floating in someone’s unattended beer.  And I was clearly not championing Obamacare in my last post.  I stated that our current system ‘sucks ass’ and Obamacare is likely to ‘suck balls.’  What part of ‘sucks balls’ has you baffled? 

I am championing neither side, as usual.  But let’s say a phenomenal new healthcare system is developed for half the cost of your current policy (just hypothetically).  It could easily be derailed by something akin to repeatedly shouting death panels, over and over again.  I don’t want to play Sun City.  This tactic is working far too well.  Politicizing global warming is just as wrong as politicizing healthcare reform.  Using fear and lies to derail whatever threatens super capitalism brings us to a frightening juncture in U.S. history, kind of like the season finale of The Bachelor.  For a Dr. Seuss moment: fear tactics are more fearful than another healthcare option, I fear.  

As for healthcare, I understand the disadvantages of both sides.  You, sadly, are still way too enamored with one side of this prearranged lose-lose scenario.  I know why Obamacare would suck balls.  But, since you went there anyway, let me splain why your side of the current healthcare debate sucks ass.  If you’re loaded, you are correct; this country has the best healthcare available in the world, but for the other 97 percent of this country, not so much.  And that disparity is only growing.  Less and less people can take advantage of this increasingly expensive system.  Every day doctors and behavioral health providers are moving toward accepting only private pay, because they refuse to play this asinine claims-game any longer.  Claims are denied routinely, often for no reason, well, for one reason: no insurance companies can get those cool ice sculptures for their luncheons. 

Government red tape?  Dude, I have to fill out the equivalent to War and Peace to direct someone safely to our restrooms.  We had an hour long training the other day on how to fill out a taxi voucher.  No shit.  Punch line: it should have been two hours!  I still don’t understand it!

I give this system a D and it was a C just a few short years ago.  When something is broken, why not listen, not vote for, just listen to someone’s suggestion on how to fix it?  Obamacare may well add more layers of bureaucracy, but topping this shit pile would be challenging even for this banana republic.  Besides, another layer and it might collapse outright and we can start over.  And maybe, just maybe, there are contingencies in place so the public option wouldn’t completely monopolize healthcare, but no one asked.  Everything I heard came from the euthanize Obama squad (EOS), aka, the Fox News All-Stars.  My last health plan, Last Priority Health, was charging my boss six hundred dollars a month to insure my family.  Each year the cost went up, like 10-15%, and so did my copays.  For six hundred dollars a month there should be no copays and I should get a free blowjob every time I pick up my meds.  “Step up to the window, please” would have a whole new meaning.  

Here’s an example from my town.  I know more about the behavioral health side of life, and, yes, it was completely destroyed by Hillarycare.  Everyday I feel like Deniro in that movie Brazil.  The tsunami of paperwork is always looming over me.  But, for the purposes of this debate, there are nine psychiatrists currently in my area.  Eight work in my agency and the other guy is a private practitioner downtown.  My company is no longer taking private insurance and, much like my last place of employment, is no longer interested in playing the claim-game.  Now we only take AHCCCS (AZ state funds).  So homeless people still have their choice of eight psychiatrists and I, steadily employed, have one choice in fifty miles (Dr. Killpatient).  And, whereas state coverage is limitless, I have X amount of sessions and then I start paying in full.  Oh, that’s after I meet my deductible, which goes up year-after-year faster than a meth head at a Jolt Cola convention.  Each year more and more money comes out of my pay to cover my Incredible Shrinking Plan (1957, Grant Williams).

Doctors, meanwhile, don’t actually have time to meet with you anymore.  They are filling out paperwork and trying to not get sued, which is much easier to do if they can stay the hell away from you.  Thus, you get five minutes a year with your doc, and he is typing the whole time and probably thinking about baseball.  Crankly, your “great system” can’t get much worse, and if Obamacare is worse, great, at least I’ll never have to see clients anymore.  I can just Sumo Wrestle my papyrus pile back in my office.

As for your comment on Native Americans, I have authorized helicopters to take folks from their reservations to their doctor appointments.  No shit.  Oh, that’s only state funds again.  My insurance, for someone stupid enough to work for a living, won’t cover my trip from the lobby to the examination room. Native Americans truly have choice in Arizona and we flip the bill to get them wherever they need to go (at least on the behavioral health side).  I’m not saying this is right or wrong, I’m just sayin’.

Oh, and, by the way: NO, I am not expecting Obama to restore the rule of law.  That ship left port circa 2004.  I am only saying this: Crank, because NO LEADER IN KNOWN HISTORY EVER HAS.  Well, I suppose you could make the argument that we’re overdue.  That was the whole point back in 1776, but good luck with that.  Our term limits are our only hope, so I suggested Obama clean up your guy’s mess on the way out.  That’s why are founding fathers encouraged a revolution if anyone fucked with the Bill of Rights. 

I’ll try to come up with seven more ways to explain this to you, for your next seven posts.  How do you say ‘absolute power’ in Klingon anyway?  And, NO, I don’t care about spending at this point.  This is the part just before bankruptcy when you buy a Porsche with the last of your credit and go on a crack and hooker spree.  If you recall, I was for neither Bush’s nor Obama’s bailouts, but I also understand that capitalism ended last November, or at least capitalism as we know it.  This recovery is a farce.  While you had your Bush pom-poms in full bling, I was protesting, you know, back when something could have been done?  You probably backed Bush’s first bailout, as per “The Transmission”.  So blaming the guy who has been right all along is hardly a great tactic. But keep saying it over and over again and at least the Foxers will believe you.  I have backed NONE of this bullshit, so you lecturing me on being fiscally conservative is your best joke yet. 

Review time, kids: both sides are typically wrong these days.  Democrats (libertards) wrong on most things, Republican (patriotards/The Crank) wrong on most things, and a Third Way (Zano) right on most things.  You’ve been programmed to attack what you think is the only other side of the argument, binary boy, but what you’re failing to realize is that none of your bullets are finding the mark. 

Hat-tip on the discovery of the Sarah Palinlovian reaction. This is a very real psychological phenomenon.  I believe it stems from the realization that the Palin voter, by and large, best identifies this massive group of folks on the very edge of reason. I can hear you already, Crank.  Yes, there are tons of crazies on the left as well.  Maybe the Perez Hilton 2012 campaign will smoke out the shadow-side of green but, for now, the Palin poll will have to do.  You see there are plenty of crazies on both sides of the aisle these days, which is why I like to think I’m not even in the theater anymore (but in a good way).  Or maybe integralists are on the balcony, only this integralist is not beyond sneaking in a bag of rotten vegetables (just in case).

The fear generated around this last debate was created for one purpose: to derail the debate itself.  I don’t care if you’re from ACORN, or you’re a Swiftboater, you’re dead wrong.  The ends do not justify the means.  Right now there seem to be no good answers, but your unswerving ability to defend the sociopaths on the right is disturbing, but it does jive with the “Fox Transmission”.

Imagine that.

But, on a lighter note, a big hat-tip for your last posts, Crank.  Funny shit.  I actually have a related Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Blucher story (which is much more important than fixing healthcare).  When I was Eurailing across Europe some years back, I ended up on a tour of some château in Bruges, Belgium.  As it turns out, our stuffy tour guide was Flemish and anytime someone said Bruges (which the French pronounce Brouge), he, being all Flemishly nationalistic, would correct them with the proper Flemish pronunciation (Brook-uh).  So every time someone said Brouge, he would say Brook-uh.

And, of course, I would say “NEeHeheheeehee”.

So the Americans on the tour thought I was hysterical and everyone else just thought I was an obnoxious asshole.  As it turns out, they were both right.

I assume you have won the lottery, Zano, based on your latest foray into the mind numbing netherworld of healthcare reform. You see, as has been stated before, the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money. Now I assume you haven’t given the money aspect a thought, have you? How could you have, when you still have no idea about how money works, other than its uses when made tubular? Mental health expert, maybe, money maven, not a friggin clue (but I digress).

Government run anything is a problem. It’s inherently corrupt and its ability to block out the Sun by covering the earth in red tape is an accepted theory by most well edumakated scientists and mathematicians. England’s government run healthcare system is the largest employer in that country and have you looked at their teeth? “Well geeh, Medicare and Medicaid work well,” is in fact a total fallacy, as these programs are at or near total bankruptcy. Some of the worst care in the world is our own Government run Native American health system, where the phrase “nocto barumba kotchaxcalla juto” (no get sick past June when money run out) is a well accepted fact. They also have a provision in the plan to tax any small businesses that don’t offer healthcare to their employees, and they may figure out that an 8% tax is cheaper than coverage, so in the free plan they go, and soon, no more insurance companies, no more competition. You think the VA runs well? Ask my father-in law. They suck. No money, going broke, substandard care. One of the head doctors at the Long Island VA hospital told him that this was the last place on earth you wanted to be if you were sick.

You actually have the ‘hones to bring up a Jon Stewart interview as if he was a real journalist? Uh, well, ah, no Mikko, he is an entertainer, like Billy-O, only with a sense of humor.

Now there ARE ways to improve the healthcare system, and I only hope some of these ideas make it to the final bill that will be rammed through at 3:00 AM. on a Sunday by Sith Lord Rahm and his not-ready-for-prime-time, communist Czars (you know, the ones who get to sidestep the whole “checks and balances” thingy). Oh yeah, but that’s ok ‘cause Bush started the dismantling of our Constitution, so continuing to do so is just peachy. After all, in your world as a mental health expert, maybe two wrongs DOES make a right. I’m just sayin’.

As far as the “Town Hall” meetings go, you couldn’t be more wrong and still be in our solar system. I have now been to three of them. Real people, real doctors, lawyers, trailer trash and Wal-Mart shoppers. These are working people, not Acorn unemployed, paid for with tax dollars, bussed in by Democrats types. They are very scared at anything government run, well, maybe not the lawyers.  They can read, believe it or not, and don’t see anything they like. If you really think they are not for real, or that their fears are “wrong” and “shouldn’t matter”, please pick up your one way ticket to cloud nine, you know, where all the elite geniuses live. This is America, or as most of these people say, Uhmurcah, which is at last look a Democracy, for better or for worse (just our like our marriages, no?).

Oh, and lose the “FOX LIES! FOX LIES!” thing too, will ya? They lie no more and no less than any one else, and if you can actually read and check out what they say, not just assume they are wrong cause it fits your lopysided idea of reality, and it IS true, well then guess what? I may be a Gorilla, but I can read, and use Google. Just don’t tell anyone or I’ll be a guinea pig for science for the rest of my life.

The ideas that I don’t seem to hear anywhere but the evil Fox Empire are as follows:

1. Why the fuck can I travel to Joisey from the desert southwest to buy a fucking microwave oven, but I can’t do the same for a better cheaper health plan? This will bring on more competition than any Government run system could hope to accomplish. This actually scares the hell out of the insurance companies (which, if you haven’t figured it out by now, is a good thing).
2. Tort reform, which will never happen, cause they’re all trial lawyers duh (“old Billy was right, kill all the lawyers, kill them tonight”). The more “cover my ass” decisions doctors make inherently means more wasted dollars. And my wife could tell you how much friggin malpractice insurance costs. Yes, in our current tort-reformless world nurses need it too, and I for one would rather have a fancy new CD player with a big subwiffer thingy in the Ram.
3. Fraud investigations. The amount of money stolen by “Michael Jackson’s doctor” types is staggering. It’s in the realm of near 20% of all costs.
4. And lest we forget the masses of people who have no insurance, let’s go over them. In reality, when you take away the young and stupid “I am steel and will live forever”, the “transient Americans” who cross the boarder to have their 12^th baby on the steps of the Laredo, Texas hospitals (whom I have absolutely no wish to pay for, seeing as how I, a one of the few actual wage earning taxpayers left on earth will be footing all these bills) and the ones who would rather buy that new F150 instead (who should actually die from their stupidity), you end up with around 12 million people who are unemployed, or have pre-existing fat-er-I-mean conditions and take too many of the wrong pills to get any affordable coverage (and no, I’m not talking about me, no, really). Let’s concentrate on getting them coverage. It’s cheaper, and more direct. It would make sense. (You know, Mick, sense, the word that describes efficient thinking)

Now, my final issue. WHY NOW? Cause Obama says so? FUCK HIM. How’s ‘bout we fix the fucking economy first, figure out how to pay for Social Security and Medicare long enough for this old beige gorilla to see some of it, huh?! How ‘bout REDUCING instead of adding to the deficit? Adding taxes now is a money 101 no-no. And taxes we will pay, just wait. You think you don’t make shit now. My infant grandson is already looking for 4 jobs. He’s already got the projectile vomiting thing down good, and he’s workin on shitting in yer hand, and peein in yer face. There are many very important things that need doing RIGHT NOW. We can and should do this layta! Peeps from the woild ova come here for treatment, they don’t go to Canada or Italy, they come here! Let’s not lose that. And as far as saving lives, people are dying every day waiting for their cancer treatments in Canada, so that argument is bull puppy.

Oh yeah, and Mikko…PALIN!

NEEEHeeheeheeheehee

I ♥ liquid dinosaurs

The Crank

Yesterday, a guy standing on a corner in downtown U.S.A asked me, “Would you sign this petition to support universal healthcare?”

And I said, “Unlike the rest of the country, I’m rather ambivalent about the whole thing.  Our current healthcare system sucks ass, but more government bureaucracy is rarely the answer.  Besides, the Dems are never going to get the bill passed, because Dems are, by their very nature, pussys.”

Now, I didn’t actually say that last sentence to that young college idealist.  I did say something arguably similar, such as, “Nice dog.  What’s that a retriever?”

But the other statement was implied.  If he was really listening, he would have picked that up. 

Back during the Bush fears people protested the dismantling of the Bill or Rights, wars of choice, and the freakishly frightening expansion of executive power (FFEEP).  They marched into town halls dressed in pink or some such, and I applaud them for it; heck, I was one of them.  I can accessorize in pink with the best of them.  Today, across our great nation, we had an organized group of political assassins invade our town halls to derail the debate itself.  Under Bush, town hall meetings were designed to disseminate White House talking points to a chosen few, prescreened sycophants.  Nothing would be derailed with a Bush protest, because there was no discussion, only proclamations and bullshit-ridden mandates from the neococoon.  No worries if you didn’t hear it over the screaming libertards, folks, we’ll repeat the message on Fox News a hundred more times by Thursday.  On the contrary, for this healthcare fiasco, folks went into town hall meetings to dismantle the actual debate itself. They didn’t want to even talk about the real issues, because America might choose “unwisely.” 

Translation: my personal stock portfolio might suffer.

The fact is, we were assailed by ringers, people in cahoots with Republicans and insurance companies, whose soul purpose was to scare the living shit out of the terminally dimwitted (maybe death panels could have practical purposes, hmmmmmn…I’m just saying).  The debate really comes down to this: behind door number one we have our current healthcare system, which is putting small businesses out of business everyday.  The rates are increasingly unaffordable and by 2050 Warren Buffet’s cryogenically frozen ass is anticipated to be the last insured American.  And even he will probably be bitching about his skyrocketing co-pays.  Door number two: for Obama’s plan you could keep your insurance or you could use a government run option similar to our VA system (which even Bill Krystol admits runs well). That’s about it.  A little healthy competition.  Maybe it wouldn’t be this huge government take-over.  But, of course, you don’t know what Obama’s plan really entails, because all you heard was: death panels, socialized medicine, Mexican Radio (1983) Wall of Voodoo. (I still can’t figure out that last one).

“But government isn’t the answer; it’s part of the problem.” 

There you go again…

That statement is ubiquitous in my worldview, but for most it seems only relative depending on who is in power.

Death Panels? AHhhhHHHhHhhhhh! They’re trying to kill my Alaskan Governor with Down Syndrome!

Oh, really…it’s her son that has…er.  And she’s no longer Governor.  Well, this is embarrassing.

 Death panels?  Really?  I have never heard anything so ridiculous derail public discourse since, well, insert any Discord post here.  In our current healthcare system, insurance companies and doctors determine whether or not you get the procedures approved or not.  Er, sounds eerily similar.  Or, if you do get the procedure approved, your insurance covers only a percentage, and they foreclose on your house to pay the difference.  It’s very American.

A certain faction of our population is in complete denial about the realities and limits of our current healthcare system and even our own mortality as human beings.  Every day doctors and administrators choose who gets what procedures.  Those “death panels” already exist as Advance Directives (which covers end of life choices).  A thousand page document and that’s the best you could do?  Well, it did work.  Truth is not nearly as important as the end result these days.  Very Crankvellian. But you keep scurrying around Chicken Littles; you’re so much fun to watch.

I run around and yell the sky is falling, when the sky is actually falling.  You yell the sky is falling when Fox sends “the transmission”.

I work in behavioral health and, as our budget slides into the abyss, we are deciding every day who gets what services in mental health land.  More and more crazy people wander our streets because our current system has more gaps in it than the combined malls of America.  Sorry, folks, but offering free service worked when this was a vibrant country with assets backed by things of actual worth. Hint: this is not that time.

Fact: today a homeless man in Tucson is not entitled to every procedure known to man to save the liver he decided to kill with several Maersk freighters worth of vodka.  Fact: the same would be true for with the public option.  And, yes, your insurance is only going to cover certain procedures.  Most of us normal peeps are not entitled to mega coverage, all the latest equipment, and a team of specialists headed by Dr. House, nor is it feasible.

Jon Stewart recently interviewed the originator of the death panel nonsense (you mean, Palin didn’t start it?) and, believe it or not, she’s even making less sense than old Sarah.  Stewart had to rip a page out of her hand to read the very phrase of Obama’s policy that made everyone go stark-raving mad.  The targeted phrase was something like: “the doctor can talk to you about life sustaining processes and end-of-life choices.” Here is the math:

Life sustaining processes + choices + stupidity + propaganda = death panels

I can see that.  I just forgot to carry the logic, is all.

I don’t trust the government either, but you cats are whacked. Look, I remain passionately ambivalent on this issue. As I’ve said before, we should focus on insuring our children and the truly disabled (aka, Republicans).  We’re going broke, so the plan needs to be realistic.  If that works, maybe healthcare coverage could be expanded to include the Discord staff and their families.  But why are so many people afraid of changing healthcare when the present system sucks ass so bad?  What’s worse than sucks ass?  OK, the next plan might suck balls, which is arguably worse.  Fox News started mass hysteria over a decision between a healthcare system that sucks ass and a healthcare system that sucks balls.  Well done.   

Obama’s plan might have added a great option for some and could have saved many many lives.  We’ll never know, because we never had the debate.  But wasn’t it heart warming to see stocks in United Healthcare and Pfizer rally the other day, when it became clear that the public option was failing?  Of course, the rest of the DOW dropped like a certain Republican senator’s pants at a truck stop men’s room, but it was still a feel good moment for the patriotards.  Perhaps you and Senator Craig should get a room.

I would like to point out, here and now, that you are not the tools of entrepreneurialism, but rather you are the tools of super capitalism, or maybe your just tools.   Most of you are so far removed from super capitalism it would take real math, Stephen Hawking, and a warp capable vehicle to even reach.

You will vote against your own interests time and time again. Soon you will probably not be insured or, if you manage to hold onto that precious policy, it will be jeopardizing your company’s very existence to maintain your benefits.  Can you say raise freeze? And, as time goes by, the insurance companies are going to get better and better at this game and you will lose more and more coverage as your premiums climb into the stratosphere.   So you won’t be able to pay the cover at the door and you’ll miss part of the ultimate Vegas experience.

My health insurance premium should not be as high as my rent.  The insurance company plans to fix that.  Soon it will be higher than my rent.  Enough is enough. I’ll show them.  I’m going to move into my hospital’s MRI machine.  Hang up my Hendrix poster and roll a fat one. 

This is what we are all facing as this current healthcare system continues its present trajectory and buries itself deep within our collective bowels. Oh, wait that procedure is not approved under your current policy either.  Sorry.

It should be interesting to see what is next on Obama’s agenda and what nonsense will be fabricated to derail it.  Fox News could get the patriotards to fear Jello products if they wanted to.  Stop the Jello menace!  Jello will lead to socialized gelatin extremism.  Then the t-shirts will adorn the Drudge Report: Jello is UnAmericun, Jello is Pudding Us On.  Oh, I can’t wait.

Jello is American as apple pie, damnit.  I won’t sit here and listen to you bad mouth an American Confectionary Institution!

I will try to stay ahead of this game.  As Obama proposes his policies, I will try to guess the Fox fear fabrication (FFF) to come. That should be fun and educational.  Well, not for half of you.  But to continue to prove, once again, that I am not a pessimist: here is my good news/bad news installment for the week: 

Bad News: Fact: an estimated 52 pubs are closing in England EVERY day. 

Good News: Fact: ninety percent of U.S. currency tests positive for cocaine! Par-tay!