May 31, 2014

Come On Down to "Big Earl's" the Hottest "Gay Bar" in Pittsburg, Texas, 1 1/2 Hours East of Big D

Live in Dallas or Houston and don't have anything to do this weekend? A bunch of folks are planning to head on out to East Texas to visit Big Earl's, reportedly the hottest "Gay Bar" in the area.

?w=650

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/05/30/controversial-texas-restaurant-becoming-a-highly-rated-gay-bar/

Here is another:



http://uproxx.com/up/2014/05/heres-the-best-yelp-reviews-for-big-earls-bait-house-and-country-store-that-doesnt-serve-fags/




Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/online-activists-mock-alleged-anti-gay-restaurant-satirical-reviews-


But watch out!

"We are aware that they are attempting to come out here," Christina Cheney told the CBS station. "We're ready for them. We have informed the sheriff's department and the state."


Ooo. Men in uniform.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/online-activists-mock-alleged-anti-gay-restaurant-satirical-reviews-article-1.1811501#ixzz33H1S0ldf

May 31, 2014

McCamy Reports: GOP Bold New Proposal, Abolish ACA, Let White Folks Keep Their Insurance

In response to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell's bold re-election strategy ("Let's abolish the ACA but have the federal government continue to pay for health care for everyone in Kentucky&quot , Republican Senators from across the nation have come up with a plan that they think will energize their base this fall.

Said a spokesman for Texas Senator John Cornyn (R) "Kentucky only has 10% minorities. Their state could take the Medicaid money without compromising Republican principles, since for every Negro and Hispanic insured, nine hard working real Americans would get the health insurance that they need in order to keep this nation strong. In Senator Cornyn's state of Texas, over half the citizens are colored---excuse me, minorities. There was just no way that Governor Rick Perry could justify helping all those undesirables reproduce. Unfortunately, that means some of our own have had to do without. And that's just not fair. Why should a hard working American be deprived of health care just because a bunch of wetbacks decided to move in next door?

"Under Senator Cornyn's plan, the Affordable Care Act will be abolished--but all white Americans who have already obtained insurance through the plan will be able to keep their federal subsidy or Medicaid. And, states which opted out of the Medicaid expansion will be given a 24 hour window in which to change their minds. I understand that Mississippi governor Phil Bryant (R) is tickled pink about the plan. He told the Senator 'John, it tore me up having to tell the nice lady who does my wife's hair that I couldn't support getting her health insurance, because it would mean giving health insurance to the wrong kinds of people. And she said she understood completely, even though her gallbladder was acting up. This way, Charlene will be able to get her gallbladder out, and the Welfare Queens won't be able to get their tummy tucks.'"

When asked how the federal government would determine who was "white" enough to be insurable, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus responded "We're still working on that part of the legislation. But anyone darker than Rep. John Boehner will definitely be disqualified."



McCamy Reports: 100% As Real as Fox News News. Would I Lie to You?

May 27, 2014

Rinse, Lather, Repeat

The Republican strategy in 1980 and 2000 was the same---use the men and women in the mainstream media to denounce the current Democratic Administration as 1) sleazy 2) weak 3) uninspired 4) unAmerica 5) no fun. Use 1) Nightline ("America Held Hostage&quot 2) House Committees (Dan Burton) 3) Fox News 4) National Enquirer or any other tool at their disposal to repeat the same Big Lie over and over.

Then, whip out some moron who is obviously too dumb to organize a conspiracy to write a bad check, let along a conspiracy to to kill Vince Foster and run the Arkansas Mafia. I am speaking of Ray-gun and Dumb-ya. The anti-Nixons The whores in the press gush about how refreshing it is to have an administration that has brought dignity and integrity and good old fashioned American values---like blindly leading your corporate masters into a great big war of choice on the other side of the globe---back to Washington. After eight or twelve years of this bullshit, the members of the press grudgingly admit that they were fooled, but they vow they won't get fooled again, and they call for a fresh start. We get a fresh start. The GOP begins sliming the (fresh start) Democratic administration again (recall that Bush Sr. left Linda Tripp behind meaning that he was already planning the slime when he left and W. raided the coffers and gave all the money to the banks so that he could hand Obama a recession/depression). And the media lackeys pick up the refrain.

"Oh, how shameful. How divisive. How weak. If only we had a president who could restore honor and dignity to the White House. One whom we could follow (blindly)..."

If necessary, I will name names. The media whores know exactly who they are. Or, they could decide not to play the game this time. I don't mind if they want to play. It gives me something to write about. Like this little gem from Margaret Carlson:

http://www.angelfire.com/indie/pearly/htmls/gore-nightmare.html

Oh, yes, Ms. Carlson, it is so very amusing to watch Iraqi children die. I am sure you get such a chuckle knowing that you and your colleagues hold this kind of power over life and death. You'll argue "But we could not have known!" Yeah, well this time, you know.

May 25, 2014

A Question Corporate Fascist America Does Not Want You to Ask: Who Benefits from “White Privilege?"

Easy, right? White guys. Not so fast. So called “white privilege” is not really about rewarding people for their lack of melanin---although most of the folks who benefit from it are fairly deficient in skin pigment. Racial politics in America has very little to do with the way that your body absorbs the sun’s rays to create Vitamin D to prevent rickets and much more to do with corporate profits. And “white privilege” only works if a very large number of white folks are dirt poor and mad as hell—at the wrong people.

Way back in the 19th century, American capitalists learned that they could keep wages down, by pitting different groups of workers against each other. Most often that meant one immigrant group versus another immigrant group. Or one religious group against another. Any way you could divide people---by gender, age, skin color, language---the bosses could divide and conquer workers, employing the most oppressed, desperate group as scab labor to break the strikes of the slightly more empowered groups. If your Germans demanded an eight hour day, the factory owner could point out the Italians newly arrived on America’s shores. Rather than hating the bosses, the Germans turned their rage on the Italians.

After the “Levee Broke” in the 1920s and rural Black farmworkers fled the South for the North, Blacks became the low wage workers of choice for capitalists intent upon keeping salaries low. Now, it’s Latinos coming up from Mexico and Central and South America who are being presented as the villains who are “forcing” wages down.

The problem with this rotating immigrants game is that eventually, the latest wave of immigrants gets absorbed into American mainstream culture---and then there is no more divide and conquer. All the workers see each other as fellow Americans. They start looking out for each other’s best interests---you know, unions, universal health care. The 1% stops being massively insanely rich and is only ridiculously rich---and they can’t have that. They are too scared of what might happen if their own personal house of cards were to collapse. In the secret heart of every billionaire, there lurks the specter of Enron and Ken Lay. And so, they plot and scheme to do what capitalists have been doing since the dawn of industrial capitalism--- harness the state to prop them up. That’s what fascism is really all about. The tax coffers of the people laid at the feet of the factory owners, so that they need never fear going without foie gras . The people’s army ready to defend their financial interests in Nicaragua and Iraq.

What does “white privilege” have to do with fascism? Everything. Here’s a definition of fascism from Robert O. Paxton from the book Anatomy of Fascism:

Key characteristics
1.“At bottom is a passionate nationalism”
2.“a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions”
3.“the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external”
4.dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences”
5.“the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary”

The key word here is “decline.” Create a myth---a myth of an America in which every white man was once king of his castle. Never mind that up until the post WWII period, most workers of all colors labored long hours, died penniless and had no real power. Whisper into the ears of white folks “Hey, I know you’re just a working Joe, but you and I have something in common. We’re both REAL Americans. You know what I mean. Those unions want to take away your job. They want to give it to some ____. But because you’re like me, I’m going to look out for you. I’m going to protect you. As long as you stay out of that union.” When the issue of health care comes up, whisper into those same working class white ears “I know you really need that surgery, but we both know that those Mexicans down the street would just use this insurance to have more babies. And then, you’d be out of a job. Trust me. I have a plan to get rid of those Mexicans that are making me pay such low wages. Then, you can get your old job at the mill back with your old wage and your old benefits. Would I lie to you? Look at me? We’re alike, you and me. The same color.” When the subject gets around to the mortgage crisis and the banks “Hey, it wasn’t the bankers. It was all those dumb____ trying to buy houses they could not afford. That’s why you lost your house. I’d give you a house, except the ____s would have a fit. Just you wait. I have a secret plan. Once things get bad enough, we’ll get rid them of them. You just be sure you’re ready. Be sure you have plenty of guns and ammo. Because the president is one of them.”

Those who have been trying to engineer a corporate fascist coup in America are running out of time. Pretty soon, white folks will no longer be the majority. That’s why we see them resorting to desperate tactics, like Bush v. Gore and Citizens United. Their tactics are so extreme that they are likely to torpedo their own movement----Americans value their rugged individualism and it will be extremely difficult to get a majority of them to agree about anything, especially about a cause that demands that they “abandon democratic liberties”--aka goose step. Our ancestors left other countries precisely because we were so pissed at being told what to do. However, that will not stop the corporate fascists from trying---and from hurting a whole lot of folks, including a great many of their so called “privileged” white brothers and sisters, deliberately, in order to provoke them. And so, they engineered the Bush recession, the housing crisis, the unemployment crisis and they have all but shut down the government, knowing that the worse the economy gets and the more people suffer, the easier it will be to feed some folks their lies. Tens of thousands of people will die from their refusal to expand Medicaid in 24 states. This includes lots of so called "privileged" white folks. That's what they are hoping for. That is what they are counting on. That is the terrifying evil at the heart of corporate fascism---it treats real live human beings---including children--as commodities. It makes cannon fodder out of innocent babies. And the only hope any of these folks have is if they manage to resist the lure of the lie of "white privilege", turn off Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, get out there and make their real needs and wishes known.

"White privilege" is a poison, a lie, every bit as toxic as the myth of "frail femininity" that has kept women working for a fraction of what men make for centuries. It needs to be purged from our psyche and replaced with human values like kindness and compassion.



Tears for those who were martyred in Chicago in 1887 and those they left behind. Solidarity!

May 24, 2014

It Takes a Child to Raise a Village

Intro: Neil Gaiman's short and sweet piece about war from the point of view of children ( http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4993504 ) got me thinking today. Yes, I know that's a dangerous thing to do. And not very American. Plus, last night, I was reading a thread in which several people complained that there were fewer "long" OPs at DU and fewer OP's with links. So, I thought What the hell! I'll pretend this is 2007, the "Good old days" when we still had attention spans and people still read OPs that were longer than two paragraphs and contained complete sentences.

Warning! Extremely long thread ahead. No, not as long as some of the Moby Dick-esque threads I used to write, that often had to be broken down into three or four parts, because they were so monstrously, hideously long. But if you have places to go and things to do, I would skip this one, because I don't sum it up in the opening and closing paragraphs, the way that journalists are taught to do, so if you don't read what comes in the middle, you'll probably miss something. Also, extreme Corsi Warning! because I link something I wrote myself, way back when I was still doing Gone With the Wind length threads. And, if you don't know what a "Corsi" is, that is what Google is for.

Ok, now that I've completely alienated everyone, here is the actual OP. Why would I want to alienate my readers? To put you in the driver's seat. To remind you that "You are the OP you read, and the OP becomes the OP you read" to paraphrase Wallace Stevens "Idea of Order in Key West". You know what a Readerly Text is, don't you? If you need to refresh you memory, here is a link to "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes.

http://www.deathoftheauthor.com/

Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. Which is why it is derisory to condemn the new writing in the name of a humanism hypocritically turned champion of the reader’s rights. Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

Now that this OP has been thoroughly McCamy-fied, here it is, the actual topic du jour:

It Takes a Child to Raise a Village


Personal liberty or group safety----a conflict as old as civilization. Which is more important? My right to own a handgun or society’s right not to be shot to hell when someone gets into the 12 Item Only Express checkout line with 13 items in his cart? Society’s right, obviously. Which is more important, my right to own a handgun or my potential rapist’s right not to get his balls shot off when I pull out my piece and aim it between his legs? My right, of course. We could play this game forever.

If you want to find answers, sometimes you have to ask the right questions. How many children are killed or injured each year with guns in this country? 10,000.

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/the-toll-gun-violence-children

The thought of 10000 children, some of them toddlers, injured or dead is not enough to make you cry? Ok, how about a visual to go along with the cold, hard numbers.



http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/03/04/year-old-gunshot-victims-skull-preserved-abdomen/



No one, not even the NRA would argue that the deaths and serious injuries of these children are desirable. They are evidence that something is very wrong in our country. We have a serious gun safety problem. So, the real question is not whether we should own guns. We need to ask ourselves How do we make the guns we own more safe? The NRA will hem and haw and claim that this is a back door way to limit their Second Amendment Rights. I suggest that this is the Child's Way to Raise a Safer, Saner Village.

National security or other nation’s right to self- determination. Which is more important? Do I have a right to lob a missile into your backyard if you blockade my country? Certainly not! Do I have a right to invade your country if you hijack a plane and crash it into a tower full of my citizens? You betcha! If you examine these two scenarios closely, you will realize that when it comes to conflict between countries, the smaller countries are screwed. Anything they do---and they have very few options---will be the “wrong” choice. Anything the powerful country does will be “right” because the word rhymes with “might.” So, why are there any weak countries left in the world? Because, whenever violence erupts and the powerful nations proclaim that they can do whatever the fuck they want to do, some inconvenient person reminds everyone about the effects of war on children. Way back when, during one of those conflicts that give Democrats the moral willies, because we are supposed to support one side, but we cannot help but feel sorry for the other, too, I wrote a generic piece about Children and War. I called it “’To Kill the Big Rats You Have to Kill the Little Rats: Children and War’”. It’s still online in my old DU Journal Archive. It's very long and depressing, so I suggest bookmarking it to read later and then forgetting it. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/357 .



War is easy. We all know that war is bad. What about wealth disparity? What about poverty? What about health disparity? Those of us who were raised Baptist were taught that God elects the chosen before birth and that He rewards them with material wealth in this lifetime to show that they have been chosen. Therefore, anyone who is poor and hungry and sick, deserves to be poor and hungry and sick. We are taught in school that America is the land of opportunity and that everyone has a chance to get an education and a career and become a millionaire. We are told that the poor are poor because they are too lazy to work---

But what about poor children? What about hungry children? What about a child whose mother gets breast cancer, and because their state opted out of the Medicaid expansion, Mom cannot get timely treatment and she dies, leaving him in foster care, where no one thrives? What about a child whose father suffers from mental illness which he cannot afford to treat and therefore, he is sent to prison, leaving the family homeless, hungry, destitute? Sick and poor are two words that go together, because illness is the number one cause of bankruptcy in this country. When the breadwinner gets sick, he or she can no longer work. There goes the health insurance. Meanwhile, the medical bills keep piling up. And, without health insurance, health care options become limited. There is no chance for a “cure” that might get the bread winner back to work. The best the family can hope for is an occasional “patch up” in the Emergency Room---and twenty or thirty thousand dollars more in debt---that keeps Mom or Dad just barely alive---and the kids hungry, cold and homeless.

Individual responsibility versus the “nanny state”, which is more important? Do we coddle those who allow themselves to get sick with cancer or lupus or who happen to be standing in the wrong place when a building collapses? If I told you that every forty year old dying needlessly of preventable heart disease comes with a ten year old son who knows that his father is dying and every thirty year old woman dying needlessly of breast cancer that could have been cured with a simple surgery has a six year old daughter who does not know that Mom won't be here next year, but she knows that they had to give up the dog because they lost the house and she knows Mom cries herself to sleep each night because of the pain...

Would that make you see things differently? Could those children teach us how we ought to raise our village?


Personal health versus the "Health" of the Economy. What about the child that is born with birth defects, because of pollution in our water that ended up in the fish its mother ate while pregnant? What about the boy who loses his father to lung cancer, because we had to make sure that tobacco farmers got a good price for their crop? If we could see through their eyes, would we run our village differently?

http://whyquit.com/whyquit/BryanLeeCurtis.html

May 24, 2014

John Conyers Appreciation Thread

Just because. And because anyone who was on Nixon's Enemies list is a national treasure.





I love you! I loved you during the Clinton Impeachment! I loved you during Grand Theft Election Ohio! I loved you during Downing Street Memos! I love you still! You are the best in Congress and you are MY Congressman, even though I live in Texas. So, you better stay in Congress and stay vocal for all of, especially those of us who don't have anyone who speaks for us.

May 20, 2014

Why is Turdblossom Talking about Hillary?

Two possibilities. One, Turdblossom has had a stroke of his own--but I don't think they would put him on TV if he was a blithering brain dead idiot.

Or Two, he realizes that the GOP has NO winner topics to run on this fall. The ACA helps dems. Ben-gay-gate is nothing. The GOP House is a laughing stock. Everyone hates the Kochs. So, he is going to try to make this fall's midterm elections be all about something that the GOP base can get together on---

---their hatred of Hillary.

So, cool. Let Turdblossom hate on Hillary. Meanwhile, I am going to focus on all the millions of people who are being denied healthcare by their own elected officials who think that genocide by lack of health care is the way to get ahead in the Republican Party (i.e Rick Perry). I dream of a 2016 in which any Republican who said "No" to the Medicaid expansion discovers that he is a pariah even among the GOP. Won't happen, but I can dream.

May 20, 2014

The Politics of Reasonable Fear

I don't like the politics of fear. But some fears are reasonable. Right now, rural emergency rooms all across Georgia are closing for lack of funding. According to a story I read yesterday, Macon County has no emergency room. The lack of Medicaid expansion will be the nail in the coffin of rural care for many states. And without rural hospitals, people who live in the country do not have a fighting chance to survive their strokes and heart attacks. Without the ACA and the Medicaid expansion, people will not get care when they need it and they will die needlessly.

If you live in one of the 26 states that took the Medicaid expansion, you dodged a bullet. However, what happens if all that Citizens United money is used to elect a veto proof Republican Super Majority in Congress? The very first thing that will happen is your Medicaid and your ACA will be canceled. Because someone in the GOP decided to call your insurance Obamacare---and they hate Obama. Yes, it can happen to you.

Right now, hospitals are closing and people are dying for lack of health care equality in this country. The national press will not report on the story. The national press has never heard about Macon County. It is up to Democrats to tell the story of poor and rural Red state America as it suffers from the lack of health insurance. So that everyone knows exactly what is the worst that can happen if they decide to sit this one out this fall.

It's very simple. If you like your new health insurance, go to the poll to protect it and to help others get it, too. If you wish that you had been offered the chance to get health insurance, go to the polls to make your voice heard. And, since the GOP will try to distract us with a lot of this and a lot of that, it will be up to Democrats to keep us all on topic in the most effective way---by putting a human face on the suffering caused by lack of health care. If you know of someone who is sick or dying for lack of insurance that someone in another state got, encourage your friend to share his or her story.

May 19, 2014

Democrats OWN the Center: I'm Not Giving It Back Without a Fight

Ok, my two cents worth. Carter did not lose because he moved to the center. Carter lost, because some very bad people made a deal with the Iranians to exchange Hostages for Votes. McGovern lost by a landslide in 1972, because the GOP was able to portray him as the “Abortion, Acid and Amnesty” candidate—he had spent so much time courting the left wing of his own party in the primary, there was really no time for him to move back to the center for the general. And right now, with the Tea Baggers jettisoning their own semi-sane Republican incumbents in a rite of Calvinist slash and burn frenzy that would make the Salem Witch Hunters proud and replacing them with GOP candidates who are so crazy, so extreme, so far out in far out right field that Goldwater of 1964 would have said “What’s up with these guys?”---

Now is the time for the Democratic Party to proclaim “Hey, America, who are you gonna trust? Those crazy extremists who want to take away your Mom’s Medicare and Social Security? The ones who want to arm kindergarten teachers? The ones who want to privatize your fire department? The ones who would rather see your wife die from being pregnant than allow her to get an abortion? The ones who think that Blacks had it better under slavery? The ones who think that children born to undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay---as indentured servants, not subject to ordinary labor laws? The ones who want to criminalize sex? The ones who want the Bible---their version of the Bible—taught to your kids in school? The ones who want to wage holy war against Muslims? The ones who want to cut taxes on the rich while raising them on the working class? The ones who think you should get your health care in the Emergency Room? The ones who think that corporations are citizens and that the more money a citizen has, the more influence he should have in a democracy?”

Now is the time for Democrats to remind Americans that our party stands for equality for all before the law---a good old fashioned American value, straight out of the Bill of Rights. Democrats stand for freedom of religion. We stand for the right to privacy. We stand for one person, one vote. We stand for marriage---for all. We stand for children---including children’s safety and health. We stand for a country where no child should go to bed hungry at night. We stand for families---and we won’t stand for having families split apart, so that Dad can be sent to fight a war of choice for oil or that Mom can be sent “back” to a country she never knew where she could be killed.

Citizens United gave some rich folks the right to buy a party. They bought the Republican Party. They filled it with a bunch of kooks who are so far right that only a well-paid media whore could love---no, no one can love them---only a well-paid media whore can stomach them. And now, their party full of kooky, crazy Tea Baggers is having a very hard time trying to connect with ordinary Americans, because they say the kinds of things that only 1% of Americans want to hear. Imagine that.

Since this is politics and not a game of golf or darts, there is no reason why the Democrats have to offer to accept a handicap in order to make the upcoming elections more “sporting.” We do not have to say “Oh, you poor Republicans. Your corporate masters have saddled you with a lot of brainless, right wing zombies. Here, we’ll move on over to the far left, so that it will be a better contest.” We would be fools to make such an offer. Since the GOP has abandoned the Center of the Road as if the Center of the Road has a horrible infestation of cooties, I suggest---no, I demand that we stake a claim to the Center of the Road. We are supposed to be the Big Umbrella. We are supposed to be the party that represents as many people as possible. Seems to me that the Big Umbrella will catch more folks in its shade if we set it up right in the middle of the road where all the traffic will be going. And then, if I may stretch the metaphor, maybe we can gently nudge the traffic and get it moving in a direction that will benefit all of us, economically, socially, emotionally, culturally---

The trick will be resisting those within our own party who look at the Tea Baggers way, way off in right field and then look at us in the center of the road and then look at the Tea Baggers, so very, very far away with their "Privatize Medicare Now!" and "No Gay Marriage ever" and then look at us and then look at the Tea Baggers who call children on food stamps "feral" and then look at Hillary Clinton and proclaim "Hillary is the same as Ted Cruz! Eeek!" Just like all those folks back in 2000 who said "Gore is the same as Bush" though they could not have told you a single thing that Bush did as governor of Texas, because if they could, they would have known that Bush was never the same as Gore. They just liked the way that sounded "Gore is the same as Bush. Yeah, that sounds like something a political rebel would say. I'm a rebel. I wear white shoes after Labor Day!"

The Center of the Road is not a bad place. The Center of the Road is where most of the people who need our help---working class Americans of all colors, religions, ethnicities who are struggling to keep their jobs, their homes, their retirement savings---live in a democracy. It is Nancy Reagan's Morning in America, and while her campaign was a bunch of lies, if the Democrats promise the same thing, we can deliver. Oh, and if I remember 1984 (which I do) all of my liberal friends were absolutely delighted with the Democratic ticket--that got trounced by Reagan. Proving that going "center" was not what did us in.

May 18, 2014

U.S. Health Care Spending 17.9% of GNP in 2011...Do You Feel Healthier Yet?

Rhetorical question. Of course you don't. The US spends over twice as much per person per year on health care costs and yet our health indicators would put most second world countries like Mexico and Eastern Europe to shame. Our infant mortality is high. In many rural counties life expectancy for women is going down not up. And yet, we spend money like there is no tomorrow---on end of life care for people who are going to die, so we stick them in an ICU and bill their insurers hundreds of thousands of dollars so that they can die in style. If anyone demands to know why it costs so much to die in this country we are told hospitals fear malpractice suits--but is a grieving family really going to sue because their dying relative did not get an extra machine that goes "ping"? Often, relatives watch in horror as the health care industry takes over what should be a natural part of life---death---and turns it into something macabre. Why?

The rest of the world knows that we are crazy---and they love it. When we tried to control Medicare Part D costs, the British Pharmaceutical industry protested. If they couldn't sell their drugs in the US at inflated costs, how could they give their own countrymen discounts on the same drugs? Think about it. Your mother and father on a fixed income pay more for their medicine so that Brits on National Health can get cheaper government subsidized health. Why?

We have the fast food industry encouraging us to get fat, the petrochemical industry encouraging us NOT to walk and to breathe crappy air, and the government can barely get a word in edgewise with its wimpy, underfunded public health campaigns. We have private insurers that know that the minute we get truly sick we will go on Medicare or Medicaid, so they are not going to waste any money on disease prevention. We have a private pharmaceutical industry which dreams of the day that everyone in this country has to take 10 or 20 pills just to stay alive---they are not pushing for more disease prevention. We have medical schools that keep turning out specialists who want to fix your diseased coronary arteries and replace your diseased hips but very few who want to keep those arteries and hips healthy, because there is no money in that, and without money they can not pay off their enormous education debt....

If a single insurer was going to be responsible for all of your medical bills from the moment you were born to the moment you died, that insurer would have specialists crunching the numbers, analyzing the data, doing research, figuring out the cheapest most effective way to keep us healthiest longest--because that insurer would make a lot of money for doing it. The insurer could Blue Cross. It could be Aetna. It could be Medicare. It could be the governments of France or Canada that spend half as much per person as the US to get excellent health quality results. As long as we hop-scotch from insurance to insurance--and occasionally off insurance--and finally onto government financed insurance, public health and efforts at disease prevention will remain a joke in this country.

If you make a best selling diabetic medication, who is your best friend? Coca-cola and Big Gulp. If you make a best selling COPD medication, you love R.J. Reynolds and car emissions. If you make a killing sell heart medications, you hope that we spend the next fifty years eating at McDonalds. If you make prosthetic knees, you love all of the above.

Face it my friend, to the Medical Industrial Complex, we are rats in a maze being force fed, forced to breathe smoke, confined to small spaces where we can not exercise and then subject to inhuman experiments that are heavily funded for the good of the profits of the Medical Industrial Complex, not the good of the rats in the maze. Pretty soon, the entire world--China, India, everywhere---is going to make its money making the drugs and machines and tubing that we need to continue our pathetic barely human existence---

---unless we decide to take charge and start living like healthy human beings again.

Eat less, exercise more, don't smoke, sign up for ACA, get a check up, insist that your community clean up its air and its water, eat organic, say no to toxic chemicals, say no to Frankenstein foods---if you really want to stick it to 1%, it is a great place to start. They will hate you for it. Hell, they will probably consider you un-American.