An apathetic public is the surest guarantee

I really must find the ibrary book I so diligently hand copied and then typed these notes from so many years ago.

Competition at election time between the parties turns about as much on issues concerning the average person as competition between General Motors and Ford turns on quality and price. In both cases preserving the shared monopoly by excluding dangerous competitors is more important to the monopolies than the exact share of the market held by each party or firm.

An apathetic public is the surest guarantee that office holders can continue to profit in peace from their alliance with those who screw the public. Loss of faith can lead, not to more skeptical and self-reliant political beliefs, but to falling for the next persuasive pitchman.

Paranoia is the clay from which our great novelist Thomas Pynchon fashioned his art ... Persuasive though it is, the paranoid interpretation is ultimately innocent, for it assumes that the evil doers must meet in order to serve each others interests. History suggests otherwise. The baron on this side of the river has always justified the tribute he levied on his people as needed to defend them against the enemy across the river, and yet--though each enemy was necessary to preserve the others' prosperity--no evidence exists that the two barons had to meet in midstream to orchestrate their cover stories.

A "none" is something of no value we are forced to buy

Words are used ... to conceal reality. "Goods" is one of those words ... "Bads" are beginning to be recognized, even by economists, as something we should subtract from our goods in calculating where we stand. "Nones" are less well known. A none is something of no value we are forced to buy. Professionals specialize in nones. The purest example is perhaps the requirement in some states that all corpses, even those to be cremated, must be embalmed: it does not good, it does no harm, it simply transfers some money from survivors to undertakers. Government is a might producer of nones.

Some government agencies pass their time administering themselves without doing any good or even harm to the public; debate about those agencies frequently centers on how well they do their jobs rather than on whether the job is worth doing. The military industries of course provide the most colossal examples of the type: a nuclear aircraft carrier, in the unlikely event it is used, is a good or a bad, depending on your point of view; most likely, however, it will rust peacefully away, as a billion-dollar none.

As he reached out to punch the clock that would meter his bill ... the lawyer could reflect that his profession was doing as well as any this side of organized medicine. The medical analogy intruded itself ever more insistently. Lawyers began asking whether prepaid might be the M&M of their profession. M&M: that's not the candy, it's Medicare and Medicaid, and the sweet rewards those programs have brought to the health industry. M&M, and before them Blue Cross, had successfully severed the link between patronizing the professional and paying the bill.

If the third party principle is working right, the source of the money will be so muddied that it will be clear that no one is paying--but that of course means everyone, so the average man will once again receive the bill.

Of malpractice, shortages of primary care physicians, and such

More notes on medical care in America:

The doctors' anger about malpractice has mainly been directed at the lawyers--another case of two guilds at each others throats--because lawyers take malpractice cases on a contingency fee gamble. This, says the doctor, gives the lawyers a stake, not in justice but in a huge award, from the jury. The lawyers counter-claim that the contingency fee is the only way the average man can get a lawyer to take his case. That's true if the lawyer can smell a killing, but the average small butchery will never see the light of justice. Doctors have also made much of the idea that malpractice cases force them into “defensive medicine;” too many tests and a reluctance to do anything, no matter how desirable for the patient that carries any risk of an eventual lawsuit. Spencer Klaus reports a study that showed defensive medicine to be much less prevalent than the doctors claim, and over testing, which as noted earlier is a real problem, is more likely not to be defensive but rather the doctor's aggressive response to all that free money flowing in from Medicaid and Medicare.

One healthy effect of the malpractice boom may be to motivate doctors to do that which they've always refused: discipline their fellow physicians. The old tacit understanding which let the other fellow bury his mistakes in silence begins to break down when his malpractice suit comes home to roost on your insurance premiums.

Avoiding the medical care we don't need does not, of course, guarantee us the care we do need. The chronic shortage of primary-care doctors makes most people grateful to get a scrap of the physician’s time. If we are to be more demanding of our doctors, there must be an adequate supply of them.

The supply of the types of doctors is not controlled by the medical schools but by the number of residencies available in each specialty, and that is determined by the teaching hospitals.

Even the projection of an increased supply of doctors depends on the U.S. continuing to rob other countries which for years have been supplying the nation the doctors denied it by the AMA. As recently as 1973, almost ½ of all newly licensed doctors were graduates of foreign medical schools. The majority were from countries short of doctors who were lured here by better pay and amenities. The AMA didn't mind during the halcyon days of doctor shortage. Its members would get suburban practices while Pakistanis worked night shifts in city hospitals.

China Doll

Here is evidence that I was once young, romantic, and subject to heartbreak. Didn't even know I still had a copy of this, written in 1969, when I wore a younger man's clothes. Assuredly, I gave away too much of myself - in those days anyway. Has anything changed?

China Doll

I am a China Doll.
Fragile.
Don't breath too hard,
I might fall and shatter.

The little brown-eyed, blond haired,
four year old child holds me
in his fingers (he can squeeze and I
might or might not shatter, probably
not, he's not yet strong, although he is
as a god with the power
of life and death. Unconsciously
he holds me to set me
down gently to play with
another day or to end suddenly
me. and when he does (he will, for he
knows no better) he may laugh,
or he may cry, but he will be
changed and he will remember.

I am a China Doll.
Fragile.
Don't breath to hard,
I might fall and shatter.

You hold me in your heart,
now, at least. You hold me
more than you will ever know.

A China Coll is at first fascinating,
lovable. But a China Doll
is unsure and even having the
power, he can only hold it impotently
until it inevitably changes hands.

You hold me more than you will
ever know. You hold me to set
me down gently to play with
another day or to drop and end suddenly,
me. you know, or at least should know
that China Dolls break and suddenly;
though if not forever, broken, they are changed.
I can be glued together again, and
again, and maybe I'll laugh and
maybe I'll cry, but I will be changed
and I will remember, and
I will break and break and break and break and break and
break and break again until finally,
I jump. Myself. And shatter
into a million lost pieces.
A China doll.

YOU HOLD ME MORE THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW.

The victims, not surprisingly, are women, children and the poor

From The Well Body Book by Michael Samuels (notes I took some 20 years ago):

Getting what we need from the health industry begins by not accepting what we don't need. first on the list is unnecessary surgery ... about 17% of all operations are unnecessary -- 3.2 million operations / year, 16,000 deaths, $4.8 billion. The reasons are clear enough: the nation has too many surgeons, surgery pays better than other medical work, the doctor who decides the operation is needed gets paid for doing it (under fee-for-service system).

The victims, not surprisingly, are women, children, and the poor. Hysterectomy is what surgeons like to do to women; almost 700,00 performed in 1975, resulting in 1,200 deaths, depending on who's making the estimates were avoidable. As a Baltimore specialist said: "Some of us aren't making a living, so out comes a uterus or two each month to pay the rent."

For children, the leading unnecessary operation is tonsillectomy; the classic example is the doctor who, when one kid shows up with a sore throat, schedules all the children in the family to have their tonsils out on the same day.

As for the poor, a 1975 study found that Medicaid patients are operated on at 2 1/2 times the rate for the rest of the population. Here greed is not the only factor: the poor provide most of the patients for teaching hospitals and there just aren't enough sick organs around to supply the practice needed by interns and residents in surgery.

SECOND OPINION -- And what of the poor surgeons already in surplus? He might make his living as a consultant, giving opinions about surgery instead of wielding the knife, ESPECIALLY if he can convince the health insurer of the need for a third opinion -- the tie breaker. In the case of Cleam Caldwell, a D.C. Metro tunnel worker who had contracted silicosis and then been fired for "unreasonable questioning of safety on the job," all Caldwell had gotten as compensation was $750 plus an offer of reinstatement in the same hazardous place.

With only 10% of illness does scientific medicine have any value at all

Found this on a numbered series of typed notes, probably from the early 90's.

Fully 80% of illness is functional and can be effectively treated by any talented healer who displays warmth, interest, and compassion regardless of whether has finished grammar school. Another 10% of illness if wholly incurable. That leaves only 10% in which scientific medicine - at considerable cost - has any value at all.

This makes me think about Jesus of Nazareth - carpenter, teacher, healer. This helps us to better understand the miracles of his healing - which were directly linked to the miracle of his warmth, interest, and compassion.

An admonitory and truculent concern primarily for the virtue of other people

As I delve more deeply into the spring cleaning 1992 project, I continue to find treasures - these are the type-written notes I took from a book many years ago. Basically, I was blogging before blogging was invented (or plagiarizing).

The title of the book eludes me now. But what this says fascinates and resonates:

When there is no demonstrable organic physical finding, a diagnosis based on what a person does, what he thinks, what he feels and how he expresses those feelings is not illness. What we are talking about is behavior, and I think that to call certain kinds of behavior that are strange and bizarre and that we have difficulty understanding-to call that illness is presumptive.

While it may be true that any action has its hidden motives, in "normal" life we agree to ignore this analytic precept. Society simply could not function smoothly if at every turn secretaries were saying to bosses, and mothers were saying to children, and lovers were saying to lovers, "I wonder what you really mean by that." Life outside therapy does not--cannot--run this way.

Unfortunately, the debate on this issue seems to consist of an overwhelming babel of specious and self-serving contradictions. But in the less than great, who are numerous, and especially in the meager of mind, who are countless, there is an admonitory and truculent concern primarily for the virtue of other people.

It is this "truculent concern" about OPV - other people's virtue - that drives the debate about same sex marriage and don't ask, don't tell. John, at the record store pointed this out just the other day to me. Some people just really want to get their noses into other people's stuff, in order to condemn them.

I say, live and let live. Man, ain't chew all got enough problems for your own self to be worrying 'bout? I sure as hell do.

It is not so much that I ignored the social amenities--I seemed never to have known they existed. It has proved easier to judge a pregnant girl than to provide her with proper food. It has proved easier to punish her for mistreating a fetus than to try to help her stop mistreating herself.

One hazard of the "get to know people" trades is that they can turn young skeptics into old cynics ... Be we already knew he was clever and observant about the failings of others ... If we stare at ourselves honestly, we all have our secret bigotries ... Having said all that, it is worth realizing that a bitter humor that seemed interesting and funny at the time really concealed a bitter human being. And as another hero settles back into the ranks of humanity, we have a choice of not to have heroes or not looking at them too closely.

The most dangerous animal in the world is a zealot or salesperson who believes in his product. Deadwood--useless personnel, characterized by aimless trifling action, torpidity, indolence, procrastination, languor, lethargy, sluggishness and even stupor. The wrong person in the wrong job at the wrong time.

In the main, psychiatrists and psychiatric patients exhibit the same thirst for big 'mental health' lies as do crowds of disaffected people thirsting for the redemptive messages of messiahs, whether religious or political. Nearly all WASPS believe in the punishment theory of illness which has that air of commonsensical rightness about it which is almost invariably a symptom of some aberration of reasoning.

One doctor said to another: "About the terminating of pregnancy, I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic, the mother tuberculous. Of the four children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was dear and dumb, the fourth was also tuberculous. What would you have done?"

"I would have ended the pregnancy."

"Then you would have murdered Beethoven."

Completely Notional $35 million Medicare Ripoff

Back in the 1950's, the TV show Playhouse 90 wanted to do a production about an insurance scam (based on actual events) that involved corrupt insurance agents selling disability income policies to people who would then be involved in staged automobile accidents, and go to corrupt doctors' clinics for the diagnosis of disability. In those days, disability income policies typically paid Lifetime Benefits for accident, and limited period benefits for sickness.

The insurance industry was aghast and said "please, please, oh please, please, please, do not show the public at large how easy it is to concoct and commit this scam."

The San Franciso Chronicle and BBC News report on "the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the [Medicare's] history." Interestingly, the fraud has been perpetuated Armenian criminals prompting U.S. attorney Preet Bharar to say, "When it comes to making money illegally, this Armenian-American group puts the traditional mafia to shame."

BBC reports

The group, most of whom are of Armenian origin, are accused of setting up some 118 clinics across the US, most of which existed only on paper or were "nothing more than shams, shells, and storefronts" ...

They allegedly stole the identities of real doctors and beneficiaries of Medicare - the US federal insurance programme for the elderly - and "submitted bill after bill for treatment that no doctor ever performed and that no patient ever received" ...

In addition, the gang were accused of carrying out "a raft of rackets, extortion, credit card fraud, identity theft, immigration fraud, and even the distribution of contraband cigarettes and stolen Viagra".

This ought to be very useful information to help those putting together the manual for Medicare ripoffs. Make mine a Medicare ripoff with side orders of extortion, contraband cigarettes and stolen Viagra, s'il vous plait.

Apparently the organization attempted to defraud Medicare of $163 million, and was successful in obtaining at least $35 million.

The SF Chronicle note that

Unlike other cases involving crooked medical clinics bribing people to sign up for unneeded treatments, the operation was "completely notional," Janice Fedarcyk, head of the FBI's New York office, said in a statement. "The whole doctor-patient interaction was a mirage."

Look, Ma, at what the computer can do!!

The computer has helped make American workers more productive. This, supposedly, is a good thing. These stories make clear that the computer has also made criminals more productive. This includes the criminals on Wall Street, arguably the most destructive criminal class in the U.S. All this automation and hyper-productivity might not be such a good thing.

Authorities began the New York-based investigation after information on 2,900 Medicare patients in upstate New York — including Social Security numbers and dates of birth — were reported stolen.

The defendants in the New York case also had stolen the identities of doctors and set up 118 phantom clinics in 25 states, authorities said. The names were used to submit fake bills for care that was never given, they said.

Some of the phony paperwork was a giveaway: It showed eye doctors doing bladder tests; ear, nose and throat specialists performing pregnancy ultrasounds; obstetricians testing for skin allergies; and dermatologists billing for heart exams.

But WAIT a minute - trying to get Medicare to pay for pregnancy ultrasounds? THAT wasn't a giveaway? You mean Medicare is paying for pregnancy tests? Shudder.

How about these quotes to challenge the American mafia:

"When it comes to making money illegally, this Armenian-American group puts the traditional mafia to shame," ...

"So in terms of profitability, geographic scope, and sheer ambition, this emerging international organised crime syndicate would be the envy of any traditional mafia family," he said.

Hey guys, you can't even sniff these Armenians' jock straps.

Note how helpful this article is in pointing out the mistakes these criminals made. The next organization attempting this scam will know to not make these mistakes, and thus become more difficult to detect.

All the news that's fit to print.

A thought experiment: Support the troops; fight the war machine

Recently it was rammed home to me again what potential hot button issue it is to question any of the wars the U.S. has fought in the last 60 years.

Some people immediately assume that you question the ability, the character, the ingenuity, or whatever of U.S. troops. If you pose the question the wrong way, your audience will quickly turn on you, and perhaps, there is no right way to pose the question to some people.

However, let's try this thought experiment. I've always despised the New York Yankees, and I've always been a Chicago Bears football fan.

For the sake of argument, let's assume we all have a most hated baseball team, and a most beloved football team.

Suppose further that the decision is made that your favorite football team will play baseball against the baseball team you most despise, with the stipulation that your favorite football team must play wearing only football gear - full shoulder pads, helmet, etc, etc, both on the field when playing defense, and off the field when batting.

Ridiculous, yes. Totally ridiculous, yes.

Now, who wins baseball game?

Well, that's not fair, you say. The football team is not equipped to play baseball. They are not trained to play baseball (some of them may have played baseball, but probably not wearing helmet, pads, cleats, etc).

Will the baseball game even be completed? Perhaps, our the football players, out of frustration, lose control, and start tackling, or blocking the baseball players. If they catch them, they can do a LOT of damage.

So, whose fault is it that our football players did not win the baseball game?

Is it their fault that they were not equipped for, nor trained for the mission they were tasked to accomplish?

No. Not at all.

The fault lies with the idiots, morons, whatever, that put them into a situation, into a position, where they could not accomplish the mission.

Blame those people. Blame the owner, the general manager, the head coach ... but you cannot blame the players for attempting to do that which they were asked.

Our military is quite adept at blowing things up and killing people. This is what they train to do, this is what they are equipped to do, and they do it very well.

But who is this enemy our troops are being asked to fight?

Terrorism?

Terrorism is a tactic, and the tactics of the car-bomber and suicide bomber (the 9-11 hijackers were suicide bombers) are the tactics employed by the weak against the strong.

Our generals tell us that we will be fighting the now-called "Long War" for the rest of our lives, and our children's lives too. This war we are fighting is against an enemy that has no army, no navy, no air-force.

Ours is a nation protected by two oceans and a benevolent neighbor to our North. If south of our border is deemed to be a problem, then for heaven's sake, bring the troops back home so they can defend it.

But we, the people, cannot continue to let our political, military, and media elites tell us that we must fight these wars in distant lands.

Support the troops. Bring them home.

Low wages are the official policy of the U.S. government

This remarkable and startling observation was made by Jim Hightower in his book: If the Gods Had Intended Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, published in 2000, before the the November Presidential elections:

Let me be blunt: Low wages are the official policy of the U.S. government. If you're a manufacturer wanting to hold down wages here at home, the government will book you on a trade delegation to Asia, hook you up with a contractor that provides workers for as cheap as fifteen cents an hour, underwrite your foreign investment, suspend tariffs and quotas so you can ship your cheap-labor products to stores back here, and put out a press release saluting you for joining in a private-public partnership to foster "global competitiveness." If you're a minimum-wage employer, don't worry about any rabble-rousing populism from Democrats--they'll give you a wink as they hold any increases to a level way below poverty. Even at the higher wage levels, if you're a Microsoft, IBM, or Silicon Valley giant and want to put a drag on the salaries of your engineers, programmers, and other high-tech workers, count on the Democrats to join Republicans in helping you import an extra fifty thousand or so of these workers each year from Pakistan, Russia, and elsewhere, letting you pay them a third to a half less than U.S. workers, thus busting the American salary scale.

And if wages do show any sign of creeping up, count on Uncle Alan to step in and stomp on them. Alan Greenspan, as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is the ruling authority over our nation's monetary policy, and he hates wage increases. You see, if wages rise, that might possibly pinch corporate profits ever so slightly, and this might spook your big Wall Street investors, causing the high-flying stock prices of corporations to slip a notch. Since today's upper-class prosperity is built almost entirely on the bloated prices of those corporate stocks, both parties are determined that nothing should spook those investors, even if this means keeping [ordinary working people] down. It's really a choice of who you want to help--the few who profit from stock prices, or the many who depend on decent wages. Both parties have made the same choice--Greenspan, first appointed by President Reagan and reappointed by Presidents Bush and Clinton, has been their bipartisan hit man ... There's no relief in sight ... since both Democrat Gore and Republican Bush have signaled that they Uncle Alan back for yet another term... [E]ssentially Greenspan uses the Fed's power over interest rates ... much like some clod might use a sledgehammer to swat a fly. At the slightest hint ... that it's possible sometime in the future for wages somewhere to rise even negligibly ... Grenspan pounces. This guy hunts down wage hikes like Joe McCarthy used to hunt down commies, and he'll use every power the government has to keep working people's paychecks down. Last summer ... Greenspan openly urged Congress to bring in more immigrants, using them as wage-busters: "I have always thought ... we should be carefully focused on [what] skilled people from abroad and unskilled people from abroad ... can contribute to this country.... If we can open up our immigration rolls significantly, that will clearly make [wage inflation] less and less of a potential problem."

America did not lose the war it waged upon the Vietnamese people

America did not lose the war it waged upon the Vietnamese people.

This is patently true. Consider two countries that were defeated by the United States and its allies: Germany and Japan. There is no question that they were defeated, they surrendered. The United States armed forces continue to occupy military bases in those countries. The United States played a significant role in the writing of the constitutions of those countries. This is conclusive evidence that the U.S. (and its allies) defeated the nations of Germany and Japan.

Consider now the end results to the United States after the United States chose to stop waging war upon the people of Vietnam.

1. The United States did not surrender to Vietnam.
2. No Vietnamese armed forces occupy military bases on U.S. soil
3. The United States made no modifications to its constitution based on stipulations made by the Vietnamese government.
4. The U.S. never paid one dime of reparations to the Vietnamese Government.

In no way can there be claimed a military victory over United States forces comparable to the victory which was clearly won by US forces (and their allies) over Germany and Japan.

Politically, of course, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, (North Vietnam) and the Viet Cong (the "insurgents" or "freedom fighters", depending on one's perspective in the South) achieved a political victory. They continued to fight until the U.S. chose to cease fighting. This should surprise no one. They were fighting, after all, to decide the future of THEIR country, the land upon which they were born. They had nowhere else to go. It was literally, a fight to the death.

Meanwhile, the government that the U.S. supported was a fiction of its own creation. It was a government that was overwhelmingly considered to be illegitimate, if considered at all.

Does this sound at all familiar?

Think Iraq. Think Afghanistan.

One day, and sooner rather than later I pray, we will leave those nations upon which we have wreaked so much havoc and turmoil, committed so much murder.

And for what purpose?

Our armed forces will leave because they have somewhere else to go. The Iraqi people, the ones still left, and the Afghani people, the ones still left, they have nowhere else to go. The will outlast us. Defeat us militarily. A ridiculous notion, but one that will be paraded and used to cast aspersions upon the democratic President who oversees the complete and total withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Should a Republican choose to do so, he or she might go down in history as a great and wise leader. Consider the current crop of Republican Presidential hopefuls: Gingrich, Romney, Patraeus, Palin, Huckabee. Which of them do you see willing to go down in history as a great and wise leader.

No, the bombs will continue to rain down as long as the likes of those are what the Republican Party offers to the American people as a Presidential choice.

Deliver us, Lord.
Deliver us.

Subervsive song lyrics Part III: God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)

If this Randy Newman song were more well known, it's doubtful that he would have scored the music for Toy Story, etc, etc, etc.

God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)

Cain slew Abel Seth knew not why
For if the children of Israel were to multiply
Why must any of the children die?
So he asked the Lord
And the Lord said:

"Man means nothing he means less to me
than the lowliest cactus flower
or the humblest yucca tree
he chases round this desert
cause he thinks that's where i'll be
that's why i love mankind

I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee
from the squalor and the filth and the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me
That's why i love mankind"

The Christians and the Jews were having a jamboree
The Buddhists and the Hindus joined on satellite TV
They picked their four greatest priests
And they began to speak
They said "Lord the plague is on the world
Lord no man is free
The temples that we built to you
Have tumbled into the sea
Lord, if you won't take care of us
Won't you please please let us be?"

And the Lord said
And the Lord said

"I burn down your cities--how blind you must be
I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we
You must all be crazy to put your faith in me
That's why i love mankind
You really need me
That's why i love mankind"

The most haunting line from the song is this, assuredly a question asked by most Iraqis of the American government:

"if you won't take care of us
Won't you please please let us be?"

Subversive song lyrics part II: Ain't That America

There's a black man, with a black cat, livin' in a black neighborhood
He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard
You know he thinks he's got it so good
And there's a woman in the kitchen cleanin' up the evenin' slop
And he looks at her and says, "Hey darlin',
I can remember when you could stop a clock."

Ah but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses for you and me
oh yeah for you and me

Well there's a young man in a t-shirt
Listenin' to a rockin' rollin' station
He's got ah greasy hair, greasy smile
He says, "Lord this must be my destination."
'Cause they told me when I was younger
Said, "Boy you're gonna be president."
But just like everything else those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went

Ah but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses for you and me
Ah yeah baby for you and me

Well there's people and more people
What do they know know know
Go to work in some high rise
And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico
Ooh yeah
And there's winners and there's losers
But they ain't no big deal
'Cause the simple man baby pays for the thrills, the bills,
the pills that kill

Ah but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free, yeah
Little pink houses for you and me, Ooooh

Ooh yeah

Ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America hey somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America oh home of the free
Ooh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Little pink houses babe for you and me

Ooh yeah, ooh yeah

In Chicago, at least part of the decision to build the Dan Ryan Freeway was to serve as a physical barrier sheltering white enclaves on the South side from "white flight."

And yes, every little boy (and girl to, even, I think) was told in grade school that they too could grow up to be President. Ahem. Let's think about that. Nah. Never happen. If you haven't got a degree from Harvard or Yale, it's no longer very likely, and to get one of those, well, you need to come from a wealthy family. The Harry Truman's and Lydon Baines Johnson's of this country, well, they don't get past the "powers that be" that determine who is suitable to run for election.

Oh yes, there are those who can live in the big city high rises and afford to vacation in the Gulf of Mexico. There are those who can afford to houses in two and three gated communities, Jack Nicklaus golf course developments. They can afford even more expensive vacations.

For her birthday, one of my bridge students husband's gift was to fly her to Paris to dine in a restaurant. The price of her meal was $564. This was in 1995. The meal was served over several hours. Nine courses, I think. She didn't name any of them. But, she DID name the price. So, what was the most important thing about the experience for her? I don't know. But, she did name the price.

Ain't that America? for you and me
Ain't that America? somethin' to see baby

Un-f-cking-believable.

And I'm not 100% sure of this (but, it makes for a great story), but I think she was the one who wanted to know if she could make up the class she missed for her birthday dinner.

Are these people for real?

Subersive song lyrics - part I: Born in the USA

Ronald Reagan liked the chorus of this Springsteen tune. Who doesn't? But how many are on a first-name basis with the verses?

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just covering up

[chorus:]
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

[chorus]
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said "Son don't you understand"

[chorus]
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go

I'm a long gone Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.
I'm a cool rocking Daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A.

Born in a dead man's town -
End up like a dog that's been beat too much -
Spend half your life just coverin' up

What kind of images are these?
Certainly not the images of a man with a lot of hope for the future, nor pride in the past.

Got in a little home town jam
Sent me off to Vietnam

This was happened frequency. The accused would appear before the judge, and the judge would give the accused two options ... one of which, was to go to Vietnam. And in this manner did support the troops.

The refinery won't hire him; the V.A. won't treat him.

His buddy who had a Vietnamese girl friend gets killed fighting the Communists in Khe Sahn, and the Communists won (this is not accurate ... I'll explain why in another post).

And the landscape - in the shadows of the penitentiary - one of the significant employers in Galesburg, Illinois (formerly home to the Maytag washing machine manufacturing company) is the penitentiary. Knox College to the North of it, Monmouth College and Western Illinois University to the south of it. Dan Braun, one of the best basketball players to ever wear a WIU uniform works at that penitentiary.

When I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital the second time, it was ironic, because two of the staff were both Western Illinois University graduates - both of them sociology majors, as I recall. 6' 10" Walter also worked as a probation officer. Sociology majors weren't making a lot of money in 1984. Probably still aren't.

The penitentiary shadows, the gas fires of the refinery - this is a bleak landscape folks. Dystopian.

THIS is the USA into which "the Boss" was born and of which he sings. And if you don't get it, and if it doesn't bother you at least a little, then it's fair to say that irony is lying buried in its coffin, barely breathing, hardly moving.

Jeff Huber on why our armies aren't winning so much these days

At Antiwar.com, the indispensable Jeff Huber pens a harsh critique of U.S. military leadership, counterinsurgency doctrine and the integrity of its war-gaming exercises. He starts at the beginning of military theory, with Sun Tzu's Art of War:

Sun Tzu’s immortal The Art of War translates into a shade over 10,000 words of American English, roughly 40 pages of aphoristic wisdom presented in language that probably 75 percent of public-school third-graders could understand. One hundred percent of our military officers should understand it, but they don’t, partly because fewer than 10 percent of them have read it.

The single-mantra version of Sun Tzu’s philosophy is “charge downhill, not uphill.”* You’d think that even cadets at West Point and Annapolis and Colorado Springs who graduate at the bottoms of their classes could retain such a short and sweet maxim and comprehend its gist. Yet the history of war is choked with case studies of generals who paid the consequences of attacking uphill when they had every opportunity in the world not to.

And then takes to task the revered Robert E. Lee for failing to follow this basic military dictum at the Battle of Gettysburg:

Perhaps the most celebrated example of this was the Battle of Gettysburg, where Robert E. Lee insisted, despite the strong objection of his deputy James Longstreet, on attacking up not just one hill, but three of them (Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, and Cemetery Hill).

The drubbing Lee invited on himself at Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War and the beginning of the end of the Confederacy. That Lee continues to be our most revered and respected general despite having lost both a war and a country by violating the most common gem of military wisdom should tell us something about the kind of reverence and respect we show generals, especially the Long War hooligans we have now.

As always, Huber is highly (and rightly, to my mind) critical of U.S. General David Petraeus, while also faulting the integrity of the last 65 years of war games held at the Naval College:

If, as prominent warmonger Lindsey Graham suggests, King David Petraeus is “our best hope,” our ship of state is already on a bow-first vector for the ocean floor. Lamentably, the state of American military wisdom is so pitiable that Petraeus may in fact be the sharpest utensil in a drawer otherwise inhabited by spoons.

This is, in part, because of a lack of intellectual integrity in our so-called war college system, the most prestigious icon of which is the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) in Newport, R.I. NWC is home of the annual Global War Game, the template from which all other U.S. military warfare simulations are modeled. Lamentably, NWC war gaming hasn’t been a legitimate test bench for actual war since the 1930s, when the likes of Chester Nimitz and Ray Spruance devised War Plan Orange to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific. During the Cold War, the Global game was rigged to “prove” that the U.S. Navy would only lose a handful of aircraft carriers in a toe-to-toe slugfest with the Russkies. After the Berlin Wall went Humpty Dumpty, the Global game turned into a venue for validating whatever cockamamie doctrines and weapons systems the three-star in charge of the college wanted to verify.

Finally, he gets to the heart and soul of his constant criticisms of the underpinnings of U.S. military strategy and theory (emphasis mine):

But the most virulent warfare theory to infest our New American Century to date has been the Army and Marine Corps’ “new” counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, as manifested in “the book,” Field Manual 3-24. Contrary to the details of his manufactured legend, the only part of FM 3-24 that Petraeus actually wrote was his signature on the cover page. Maybe he did that so everybody would have an autographed copy. The book’s real authors were a team from the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., who plagiarized much of its material from older doctrines like the ones that worked out so ducky in Vietnam.

COIN doctrine suffers from a fatal internal fallacy. A successful counterinsurgency, the field manual insists, requires a legitimate host government that is in control of an effective security force. But major insurgencies do not occur in states that have a legitimate government and a functional security apparatus. Attempting to create those two entities in a country where they don’t already exist but an insurgency already does is futile, as proven by our experiences in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

America’s finest military minds (heh) have committed the best-trained, best-equipped armed force in history to an unending, ruinous war against an enemy that doesn’t have a single tank or airplane or ship and is led by a handful of cave dwellers who don’t even have a fort to fart in.

And thus, day after day, the long war continues, the Marines advertise how to "be all that you can be" on all the major (and minor) sporting events going down, another troop or two get killed every day, or kill themselves, and slowly U.S. citizens find their standard of living, the prospects for job security, health care, education slipping, slip-sliding away, while the talking heads give us "the elections" most of which are too close to call, because the candidates are in fact pretty damn close on "the issues" (at least the issues they can comfortably talk about) so there's a large focus on the money raised by the candidates - the money race.

And if any one of us thinks it's gonna start getting better any time soon before it starts getting worse for most of us, well, then, I'd guess you're right, but then I'd also guess that you're in the Disaster Capitalism business where perpetual war and ongoing disasters make for alarming levels of profit.

One trillion dollars spent for national defense? Good heavens, it's almost as if two oceans, a benevolent neighbor to the North, and a bunch of drug gangs to the South of us aren't enough to provide a pretty good starting place.

Save us from the capitalists
Whose insatiable need for ever more profits
Will eat away from all of the government services provided
Privatiziing education, transportation, law enforcement,
They eat their own kind
They are cannibals
And as long as they are well fed
With lots of shiny toys
They are happy
And the rest of us, be damned

Well it's a one, two, three what are we all fighting for
(Long War)
Don't ask me now I don't give a damn
(Hell no)
Next stop is South Yemen
Well it's five, six, seven open up them pearly gates
Now there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee we're all gonna die

Give us an L
"L"

Give us an O
"O"

Give us an N
"N"

Give us a G
"G"

Give us a W
"W"

Give us an A
"A"

Give us an R
"R"

What'cha got? LONG WAR
What'cha got? LONG WAR
What'cha got? LONG WAR