The intent of this blog is to promote human equality, human progress, human peace and justice, and optimism. To accomplish this, to encourage the discussion of ideas after identifying and discovering problems, and then creating positive solutions for "we the people," in order to provide for the "general welfare" and "domestic tranquility" of America now and its "posterity" into the future. To encourage an emphasis on separation of religion and state for all, no matter if this is for those "of faith" in a Maker / Creator (Deists, God-loving people, Christians, various people of spirituality) and atheists or agnostics.

Archive for June, 2021

Gerrymandering

I just received information that Manchin of West Virginia intends to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Does this act include abolishing gerrymandering? I don’t know unless I delve into this issue more.

The reason I ask is that I have observed and experienced how gerrymandering has done more than just shut down voting rights, but has carved congressional and state districts in Florida according to those with a majority white population. Thus, in the city where I built a home and lived in integrated communities and not far from a black community, gerrymandering meant the government districts consisted of majorities of people who were white, due to the bastard redneck whites who lived in central Florida. Congressional and state legislative districts, both state House and Senate, ended up being controlled by a white Republican Party power base. The Florida legislature has become a one-party control of Republicans. I have not checked it out, but I would wager that the congressional delegation of Florida is majority Republican. There is only one statewide elected Democrat in the state. Yet, Democrats outnumber Republicans in that lainbrained redneck controlled state.

Then we hear politicians in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania glorify what Florida has done., due to the RPOF.

Gerrymandering needs to be abolished and go to a system of representation based on geographic jurisdictions, letting the chips fall where they may. That would mean the county where I was living, with more Democrats than Republicans, but with ONLY Republicans representing them in the state legislature (and Republican Brian Mast in the Congress), would actually have representation by and for the people.

Gerrymandering must go. HR1 eliminates gerrymandering. Not sure if it is the same as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, so I speak out what I believe to be correct.

As I said about the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate, moderation is not about reforming within rules such as gerrymandering (and filibustering), but moderation is important regarding solutions and actions which make life better for peace, justice, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. Gerrymandering might be considered by some to be a “conservative” issue, but I balk at such designation. In this case, “conservative” becomes the “code word” for white supremacy values. I know. I have observed and experienced this in Florida.

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Commentary, Political Commentary

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New York Times Ross Douthat: Moderation and Filibuster Rule

According to Ross Douthat of the New York Times, moderation means moderating in the decisions of U.S. Senate rules. I wish to disagree. I propose that moderation means moderating on the actions taken by the U.S. Congress, particularly the U.S. Senate for legislation beneficial for the American people. It’s not the damn rules for running the U.S. Senate, stupid.

Moderation would be to abolish the damn filibuster rule completely and the U.S. Senate stop spending taxpayer dollars to make McConnell and others happy when they are in the minority at this time. The way to do that is to simply take votes and not be concerned with the time-consuming resource-grabbing details of a rule. The idea is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s broke already and it is breaking the backs of the American taxpayers who are loyal to the American government and what it CAN achieve. Thus, if it’s broke, then abolish it completely.

Yes, we need to acknowledge that all voices are being heard. But when a minority controls the U.S. Senate and is given the freedom to block legislation with a refusal to negotiate which is girded by a stupid rule like the filibuster, then it is time to rid the nation of the stalemate. In the process, don’t be stupid and claim the issue is moderation about the rule.

A man now sitting in the U.S. Senate, from Florida, is a jackass. When the people of Florida voted in favor of a rail line from Orlando to Miami, passing through an area where I had built a home and would be enabled to ride that train to work each day, the same as those living 60 miles from New York City can ride a train to work in Manhattan each day, this senator who now occupies a seat in the U.S. Senate, as governor, blocked the wishes of the people of Florida and stopped the building of that train. Even within the Republican Party, there were those opposed to Rick Scott doing this, but Rick Scott did not give one damn.

I feel like filing a lawsuit against Rick Scott because he caused me to lose money on a beautiful house I had built. Rick Scott and others don’t moderate, they dictate their desires, including Trumpicans doing the same thing. Many great Americans lose money, due to what they do. Thank God that I received a bit of help from President Obama’s HARP program. Even then, it was not enough to truly help me as much as I needed. But those are the lumps one has to take in life. But going forward, I intend to speak out against the stupidity of Douthat and Senate Republicans in blocking the progress of America while people like Mitch McConnell get rich from the American taxpayer. I wish I had his money because I could do better for America than SOBs like McConnell, Scott, and others to work to destroy democracy by not listening to the people. For instance, the SOB from Wisconsin who likes to hold the Republicans of Florida up on a pedestal for the way they have turned it into a one-party Republican state, while falsely claiming it is democracy. It’s a dictatorship, stupid. We need moderation in actions of a democracy, not rules of the U.S. Senate.

Former Governor and Senator Bob Graham, while governor of Florida, heard a great deal of complaints about the car inspection program in Florida. As has been told, there was one day, as governor, Graham took his own car into an inspection station and watched the inspection. He decided that it was not worth keeping the program. He moved to abolish it. He did abolish it. When Jeb Bush took power, he reinstalled the stupid inspection system which did no good. Within a few years, it was once again, cancelled. So the taxpayers paid for a program which was disliked and had been removed by Democrat Graham, who later sat in the U.S. Senate as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Tells me that Graham had intelligence for democracy by and for the people, while Jeb Bush was a dumb ass who had no intelligence.

Former U.S. Senator and Governor of Florida, Lawton Chiles decided he did not want to have to spend taxpayer dollars on the health costs required due to lung cancer from cigarette smoking. Did he choose to block Medicaid, as Rick Scott has tried to do? No. He got together with several other states and did not file a lawsuit against government, but filed a lawsuit against big tobacco, business people like Rick Scott. Florida and several other states won the lawsuit. According to a report by a journalist suffering from lung cancer due to cigarette smoking, Peter Jennings, Gov. Chiles took that money awarded to Florida and invested it in public education training of young people to help such people learn the ramifications of smoking. According to Jennings’s report, the program demonstrated good results in reducing smoking among the younger people of Florida. Then Jeb Bush came to power and he nixed the entire public education program, plus more in public education because he and a brother (Neil Bush), the destroyer of the FS&Ls of America (because they were implemented by FDR), wanted vouchers and privatized education, paid by Florida taxpayers.

So we hear from Douthat that we need to moderate the rules in the U.S. Senate for filibuster? I don’t think so. Moderation is about the actions necessary to support the American people and the use of our tax dollars. Moderation would be the abolishing of the crap done by lawyers to clog our court systems for personal injury and workman’s comp lawsuits (and other examples) and benefit only the lawyers and a few good people in America, while overall, we overspend on a court system which should be used to challenge a former governor of Florida who caused people like me to lose money when a train system, approved by a majority of Floridians, is decimated from taking shape. Meanwhile, we spend the money to expand I-95 in South Florida from six lanes to 10 lanes and implement the anti-train fantasies of Ayn Rand and her “virtue of selfishness” theories, as written in the book and movie, Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand approved of abortions and the ideas that anything goes, according to what individualism wants and community, society, self-sacrifice, and “what can I do for my country,” can be damned. Ayn Rand came here from Russia so she had no idea what capitalism is about, but got quite a listening ear in America, destroying the gains made by people like “trust buster,” Republican Teddy Roosevelt (and others) in the process.

To the U.S. Senate, Manchin and other stupid ones there, abolish the filibuster rule and get America going again by compromising and working for moderation regarding actions necessary to make things happen for the American people. Douthat of the New York Times, think again about what you are saying because you seem to be speaking with a bias that favors the minority side of U.S. Senate which is now the Republicans, yet you claim it is “moderation.”

I would say that anyone against abolishing the filibuster is lazy and does not want to do the job they are paid to do. Lazy human beings in the U.S. Senate, where they are paid huge salaries, health benefits, and retirement benefits which are far better than what the average American citizen receives. All of this paid by U.S. taxpayers to lazy people who do not know what it means for democracy and peace and justice in America. Dictator McConnell, ripping off the American taxpayer and then denying the average American citizen opportunities to earn more, in the name of “don’t spend,” but a big lying hypocrite who takes and takes for himself.

In the words of a SNL comedy routine in days gone by: Douthat, “you ignorant slut.” Douthat, not only ignorant, but his bias towards McConnell and Republicans in the U.S. Senate is showing.

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Commentary, Political Commentary

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Venomous Rupert Murdoch & Company, Including Trump

Quote found on the Internet:

“After being in the United States for only one year, Ronald Reagan made this Australian [Rupert Murdoch] a citizen. Then he had his FCC Chairman scrap the Fairness Doctrine which kept newspapers and television programs from lying to the American people. Ever since, Rupert Murdoch has been brainwashing Americans into believing our legitimate press is lying like he lies. Fox News is not news. It is propaganda that the oligarchs use to poison the minds of Americans. It is time we treated it as such.”

With this statement, it could be true. Likely based on circumstantial evidence. It would take further research to find substantiated and conclusive evidence of its truth.

Nevertheless, I have an idea. Let’s build a wall around immigrant Rupert Murdoch and never let him get out? Let’s hold his children against their will (if he has any children). Let us be as barbaric to him as the Russian people are barbaric and approve a barbaric leader called Putin whose barbarism is indicated because he would hide the poisoning of his opponent and then back what the thugs did to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Perhaps the woman called “First Lady,” under Trump, is as barbaric as other Russians and in her silence promoted the barbarism of Hitler-loving Trump? Nevertheless, Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Green of Georgia, Matt Gaetz, Steve Bannon, David Duke, Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, and numerous others who support Murdoch and Trump are barbaric people.  They are savages and they likely think the only savage people in the world are indigenous Americans and people of color. They separated Napoleon from the world, in order to save the world. Let’s do it with these guys. Perhaps isolate them on an island and away from all others?

The same thing with Trumpty Dumpty who gets his parts put back together every time. Build a wall around him and let him suffer there. These guys need to learn what it means to suffer when, after their influence on America, people lose jobs, pay taxes the wealthy don’t have to pay, don’t fight a war against COVID-19, suffer from change for the sake of change due to oligarchs and plutocrats who move people to the heat and humidity of Dixie and herd them into cities resulting in shutting down  the ideas of capitalist competition based on supply and demand, suffer from the lousy privatized Medicare medications ripoffs, and numerous other ripoffs perpetrated by these vulgar and savage beasts called males.

Those who support this s**t and lying from Trump and company take for granted the gains America HAS gained, for more than 200 years, and don’t even recognize that, like Hitler, once Trump fully consolidates his power, he will spit many of them out like seeds in his mouth. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it. The sheiks of Saudi Arabia are doing it today. All savage, vicious, vulgar, venomous beasts of leaders. Stupid people, those who don’t spit Trump out, like spitting out a big pit from a plum which should not be in our mouths.

Rupert Murdoch, go to hell. You are a lousy venomous person.  Go to hell where Satan and the Evil Spirit need to be put by God, and put there permanently so as to rid the earth of the hell Murdoch and others promote on earth. 

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Commentary, democracy

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IF IT’S BROKE LET’S FIX IT TOGETHER: Ranting and Raving

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In my 20s, I viewed the Monty Python movie, The Holy Grail. It was very humorous and, as a 20-something and with much less knowledge and wisdom than what I have today, I thought it was absolutely hilarious.

The time period is the age of supply-side economics of the Medieval period. We often call this economics, feudalism, too. Nevertheless, the aristocracy ran a top-down economic system with trickle-down economics and draining the lower classes of their resources and never considering that money could be spread around for the success of many.

One scene in that Monty Python movie was about the pandemics / epidemics which spread across the land. You see many people placing dead bodies in wagons and so forth. One person, perhaps a town crier, is yelling out, “bring out your dead… bring out your dead… bring out your dead.” At one point, a younger man is carrying out an old man over his shoulders as the old man is yelling out, “but I ain’t dead yet.” The old man repeats these words several times. Then one man takes a paddle and wacks the old man over the head and says, “there, you’re dead now.”

That is how, as a senior citizen in the USA today, with supply-side dictatorial business people who have come in to take over since the Bush Recession of 2008 and helped create supply-side economics on the scale which existed in Medieval times. They were inspired by the lousy man named Ronald Reagan who purported that “government is the problem.” That insulted me then and insults me now, for its lashing of Uncle Sam and the wonderful legacy we have with it. Over the course of the years since Reagan and the 2008 recession, I have been dismayed at those who take the side of the mentally sicko people who propose something that is reminiscent of the Medieval days.

Sad to say, that I am beginning to think that we senior citizens in today’s world are being carried out, saying, “I ain’t dead yet” and getting banged over the head by younger bastards who love the idea of individualism and a love of money, helping to create a lousy supply-side economics and helped along by the SOB Scalia and other justices and a Citizens United Decision which should be called “Corporate Monopoly and Supply-siders United.” As in the days following Adam Smith’s pronouncement that humans are not perfect so need guidelines for business morality and those who wished to maintain a status quo of supply-side economics, we have justices on the Supreme Court, too stupid with their law degrees, to recognize true justice associated with “we the people.” As in the Drew Scott Decision of the 1850s, these justices wish to do the same thing as they did with that decision and appease the white supremacists with all the power and money, with status quo, except this time around, they are not Southern plantation owners, but a class of people who model themselves after plantation owners and could be called the “plantation-owning class of people.”

This “plantation-owning class” works to bypass anyone like me who keeps trying to plead for people to recognize that our Founding Fathers and Adam Smith, from the Enlightenment Period of the late 1700s forward, tried to define common sense, rational judgment, and the idea of checks and balances in politics, economics, and justice. The Founding Fathers put words regarding checks and balances in politics and justice in the U.S. Constitution, but not the words of their contemporary, theologian and economist, Adam Smith, with regard to checks and balances in economics.

In the early 20th Century, a man like Teddy Roosevelt worked with a goal of incorporating ideas of checks and balances in economics by busting the idea of huge trusts controlling all the business in America. TR was known as the “trust buster” due to his work to establish rules of regulation which means a government could provide checks and balances within business. With TR’s ideas, America thrived, in spite of the destruction of a Depression and Prohibition on the economy. However, big fat pigs like J.P. Morgan and others really trashed TR and his cousin, FDR.

Checks and balances in justice were exemplified by a statue called Lady Justice who, while blindfolded, carried a balanced scale with two evenly distributed empty plates. Today, people poke fun at this idea in a sarcastic manner by showing a statue of a Lady Justice and a “scale” with two die dangling from it. Where are the checks and balances today?

A little “night history lesson” to go along, after what I have just mentioned. Along came capitalism in the late 1800s and Adam Smith defined capitalism as a checks and balances means of economics, based on supply AND demand. Then Karl Marx came along, shot holes in what he THOUGHT was capitalism when it actually was still the remnants of monarchical royalty aristocratic Medieval supply-side economics. Marx ruined the understanding of the intent of Adam Smith, with his publications of Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiment. After all, to protect the status quo, the wealth fat cats (the name given to the Americans aristocracy following the American Civil War) worked to protect their supply-side economics by re-defining capitalism to their idea of status quo, for the sake of the industrial revolution.

Am I ranting and raving? Really? Is that how it is interpreted? Or is it a lesson in economics and history which should be humbly considered?

Is ranting and raving, like the old man portrayed in the Monty Python movie, to be considered a mental problem? Was that man being carried over a shoulder mentally ill as he ranted and raved about his impending death, while he was still quite alive? Is that humorous? If you think it is, then YOU are the sicko one, not the man exemplified in the movie. I always felt bad for that man, but all the other 20-somethings at the time were laughing their heads off. Probably many of them have taken up the white person’s gauntlet within the Proud Boys today.

Ranting and raving has accomplished far more than carrying guns and weapons. I was told by a Filipino customer service person for an American company, after two months of complaining about my experiences with really lousy delivery of a morning newspaper, that I was ranting and raving. Of course, I was ranting and raving. Figuratively, I am feeling as if I have been pushed against a wall with a chokehold for two months now. I have not been wacked over the head like the old man in the movie. But today, apparently, dictatorial business people, like law enforcement, wish to use chokeholds instead. Again, I speak in a figurative manner, with all due respect for what George Floyd and his family has suffered with regard to the Minneapolis chokehold. I have not suffered by losing my life. Yet. And one hopes I won’t.

Rants and raves have given success in several areas and have done so without guns and the 2nd Amendment. Ironically, the Proud Boys, Qanon, and MAG crappers are opposed to most of the successful rants and raves which have led to freedom for many people, although remnants of the systemic racism are still with us today and the George Floyd incident exemplifies this. Black people have ranted and raved to attain liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. People like Billie Holiday have sung songs expressing their ranting and raving about what was done to black people. This ultimately led to two forces: violent Black Panthers and non-violent Martin Luther King. In that case, the non-violent ones helped push forward, with a collective voice with words, not guns, civil rights legislation and voting rights legislation. This notion really stuns the 2nd Amendment-supporting jackasses of white people in America, including the NRA, so this is how they respond with Trumpicans, Proud Boys, Qanon, and sicko MAG SOBs?

It took 70 years of ranting, raving and protesting by women seeking voting rights in order to attain such rights. It was not instant gratification and “me, me, me” first individualism which did it. It did not take guns to attain the vote for women. Even then, black women were not able to gain the right to vote until it was defined for all black people. What a shameful thing about America’s past which needs to be buried and stopped in its tracks as we move forward. The Trumpican folks despise NOW and other more radical groups which stand up for the rights of women.

Another group which used ranting and raving to attain its freedoms and come out of its segregated closet were those of the LGBTQ community. Even today, the freaking lousy DeSantis of Florida is trying to use a hatchet against this group of people. Maybe he wants to send the NRA-lovers after this group, as well? In 1969, a bunch of gay men said, enough is enough and we ain’t going to take it anymore. Without guns, they started a riot in New York City. Sure. They destroyed property and police cars in the process, but there were no guns. They continued their efforts to attain life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all the LGBTQ by ranting and raving, as well as showing off half-naked bodies in “pride,” sad to say, because of not being treated with dignity in the past. A group of gay men threw a pie in the face of Anita Bryant, the homophobic bitch who, as the Florida orange juice lady, was speaking out against gay men in a homophobic manner. The freedoms for the LGBTQ still need defending as their are lousy southern states of Dixie (and elsewhere) which are trashing gay people with their laws. So I rant and rave about the fact that freaking Tennessee wants to stop adoption by LGBTQ couples. Often these couples can define a family and keep functional (not dysfunctional ones) families better than in many heterosexual heads of households. There are plenty of examples to back up what I am saying, too. I send out my rant and rave to those in states like Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere who are nothing but lousy scumbags in the treatment of fellow human beings.

There are many other examples of how much better ranting and raving and the resulting collective voices which support the ranting and raving with words, not guns, can correct problems in our land. They can work, as it is said, “it takes a village” and find solutions which can work for more people and solutions which encompass more people in the process, than Trumpican one-sided jackasses with white skin and a penchant for a dictatorship of the white supremacists and any “Uncle Tom’s” or money-loving Jews with no concern for their fellow group of humans whom they can recruit to their sides.

I am a SOB in saying this in a ranting and raving mode. But I don’t care. Somebody has to say it.

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Commentary, If it's broke let's fix it TOGETHER

Healthcare for Millions of Americans or Limited to the Wealthy?

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Dear Men’s Health Advisor (Cleveland Clinic):
in 2019 and 2020, before COVID-19, I followed the directions, with approval of my primary care physician at Guthrie Clinic, Owego, NY, of Canadian Dr. Jason Fung, based on his book, The Diabetes Code. His instructions that insulin cause too much weight gain and the body eventually does not accept it were my guiding light, as I asked my PCP to discontinue the insulin injections from Tresiba. In addition, I followed the very strict “sugar de-tox” diet over several weeks, which also included intermittent fasting about twice during a week’s time. The results were fabulous. With diet, exercise (daily walking regimen, which I was doing BEFORE I started Dr. Fung’s advice) I continued Ozempic, jardiance, and 2 mg glimepiride, I lost nearly 40 pounds in just a few weeks. My glucose numbers went down tremendously so that many times, for the first time in years, my fasting glucose levels were usually in the range of 100 to 180.  There were several times my numbers went down to the 90s, but never below that. My A1C eventually dropped to 7.2, 7.3.  I was thrilled.

Then, I hit the Medicare donut hole in 2020 and discovered some exorbitant high prices for the Ozempic and jardiance (plus the xarelto).  It was breaking my bank, especially considering that Ozempic by Nova Nordisk is $1200 without any insurance coverage and the donut hole makes me cough up 25% of that price.  Ripoff city which was not the case BEFORE the privatized Medicare set in place by the Republicans about the time of the Bush recession.  Pricks, including Rick the Prick of Florida who now sits in the U.S. Senate. I was not able to afford the Ozempic, so my glucose numbers began to climb again.  It has gotten so bad that my latest A1C jumped to 8.3. 

Everything that is being done to me is experimental measures to replace the Ozempic. Nothing is working and the metformin gives me such bad abdominal pain and diarrhea, that I have been told to stop taking it. Yet, CVS and Walgreens were somehow instructed to continue with it, supplying me with six huge bottles of metformin that might last a typical patient six months to a year. 

I have also gone from Victoza to, within the past four days, Rybelsus.  Victoza and Rybellsus do not cost as much as Ozempic, but they are still expensive brand names which don’t work. So my money going out of my pocket is a waste, paying for something which does not do the job. The money someone in insurance spent on all that metformin is likely a waste of insurance and/or Medicare money, money which me and many others my age have funded for 40 plus years and are told there is not enough. No wonder, if there is a lack of regulation of this so as to keep the costs down. No wonder because we are losing money to lawyers with their damn personal injury and workman’s comp lawsuits which clog the court system and drain our tax dollars, as opposed to simply paying for the injuries directly, with no “middle man” of lawyer and the tons of money they get, plus the bleeding of our tax dolars in the process. (But does Cleveland Clinic, Guthrie, UHS, or Lourdes speak up about this? Nah). 

My glucose numbers, as I begin the Rybelsus (14 mg) and have been on it for four days now, have gone from 208 to 268. One time, they were down to 180. I have also not given up on metformin, so for the past few days, I have taken only one tablet of metformin each day.  Today, I developed abdominal pains and diarrhea once again. However, I did a test.  My glucose numbers BEFORE the metformin (and after the Rybelsus) were 208 most of the morning.  I took the metformin and the Jardiance and then began to develop the pains and diarrhea. After about four times going to the bathroom within an hours time and emptying myself out as if I was preparing for a colonoscopy, I took my glucose numbers once again. The numbers, following my emptying out myself, increased from 208 to 268.  Please explain this to me because I get no answers from health providers or pharmacists. No one seems to know the answers, whether health-related or how much the meds cost on privatized Medicare. 

In addition, I am so concerned about the time of day and with which meals I should take my medicine, that I consulted a pharmacist about this, as I picked up the Rybelsus. The pharmacist said, “there is no particular time and it could be taken at any time.” Nothing about meals or no meals.  I tried it before reading the instructions. Then after two days, I read the instructions and it said, “take without food first thing in the morning once arising in the morning and wait a time (half hour? I don’t recall) before eating or drinking.” Also, “take with only four ounces of water.” So I switched. But are we not supposed to consult with pharmacists on this and they are supposed to know? After all, when one picks up a new medicine, the pharmacy asks, “do you have any questions about this medication?” So I ask. This was what I got when I asked the question I had: “take at any time.” As a professor, I used to tell my students “that therei s no such thing as a stupid question unless there is one you don’t ask.” Sounds like we live in a society where we get false answers instead. And we wonder why American voters don’t know much about what is going on today, either, with the false crap thrown at them through bloviating political analysis at Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, in the name of entertainment, not news.  With entertainment, no one is concerned about whether someone’s bloviating opinion is correct or not and based on facts or not or just their own emotions and/or facts, just get the ratings that are the best and make the most money, like lawyers do with personal injury and workman’s injuries.  Like big pharma does with healthcare and the expensive commercials they purchase making lying claims to “get Ozempic” at only $25.00 per month and never mentioning their little discount does not apply to Medicare patients with complex and convoluted privatized Medicare crap (or I mean, GAP) of tiers and donut holes, ignoring the idea to “KISS.” We don’t want to “KISS,” do we? (If you know what I am saying here with this ACRONYM). 

We read your Cleveland Clinic Men’s Health Advisor regularly and appreciate the coverage. So, I thought I would write about the questions I have.  Right now. This ery minute, my last glucose number was 208. It has hovered right around there, with the exception of the time following my period of intermittent fasting. It then actually got as low as 180.  WOW!  I wish it were 80, not 180.  When I was following Dr. Fung’s sugar de-tox diet and doing intermittent fasting, my numbers did, at times, hover around a low point of 80-100.  Otherwise, it was from 100-180. 

What am I supposed to do? starve myself in order to keep my numbers down? Evidently putting ANY food in and my numbers are on the rise, or so it appears. Do I break my financial bank by paying 25% of the $1200 for Ozempic?  Tell me how I am supposed to do that and still live. Maybe I SHOULD starve myself and then have the money to pay for Ozempic, right? What the hell do I do? Because I pay 25% of the full price for Ozempic, Jardiance, and Xarelto – all three brand name drugs which are charged by Walgreens, CVS, and big pharma with ripoff prices.  That comes close to a $700 per month charge which is higher than my monthly mortgage payment.   Add to that the monthly figures for auto and homeowners’ insurance.  Also add to that the charge for my generic drugs, which is not a lot for each, but added up and boy do you have a large number.

I am being very critical of healthcare providers and pharmacies because they have no knowledge of what it costs those of us on privatized Medicare, with no options for some premiums which would help us offset the cost of such drugs and do so in a better way.  And none of the health providers and pharmaceutical companies give a damn about patients who are stuck in donut holes.  They don’t care, as this is “reality,” as one said.  Reality? It takes a village to collectively overturn reality which is dictated by fat pigs at the top of the mountains of big corporations.  It is tougher, too, when we are forced to deal, more and more, with the big corporations, including Rick the Prick’s Hospital Corporation of America (and with a conflict of interest for a benefit to Rick the Prick, he steals an election in Florida to sit in the U.S. Senate now), it is far tougher to do than the days in America when we had small businesses who were interested in the balance of supply and demand capitalism, replaced now by monopoly laden supply side economics.  The pharmacy which I now deal with is owned by a big corporate chain called Walgreens, but I recall when it was a small business owned by a local pharmacist and not a big company. That worked quite well, too.  And Walgreens, I am told, has tried to circumvent the use of unions to build new stores in upstate New York.  What a bunch of lousy scumbags.  The store Walgreens now occupies here was built in the days of union labour. 

That is my criticism, added to my questions. I hope and pray we can all come together and correct these problems which impact so many millions of people. You might think I am asking you to put yourselves in MY shoes, but in reality, I am asking if you can put your feet in the shoes of millions of New Yorkers and Americans who have many of the same concerns and conditions to which I am addressing.  Somehow I am not reaching the right people in order to get action and that is shameful in America where the ones who are now trying to get action are pointing to guns and the 2nd Amendment as a means to get actions and falsely proclaiming that the amendment was designed to support insurrection. Wrong and the Proud Boys, Qanon, MAG jerks need an attitude adjustment, as all the attention is given to them and not the concerns of millions upon millions of Americans like me, plus others I have not even mentioned here.

Category:

Commentary, Healthcare, wellness, medicine

Over the Hill and Through the Woods, to Pick up Morning Newspaper

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Shameful lack of delivery by a newspaper which has a rich tradition in Binghamton, NY, but is now being run from the USA Today Network out of town. I hate driving to get the newspaper, but these people are screwing us here in rural Newark Valley and they don’t care, as they have shut down their local office. Thus, I am really happy to listen to my music on a locally-owned radio station like Cool 106.7. I just don’t like hearing an advertisement which indicates you favor of those who like 1980s music and the rest of us, like those in rural Newark Valley who are not getting effective newspaper delivery, are like chopped liver. Don’t give me any excuses about why the Press & Sun-Bulletin is not doing delivery of the newspaper, because there is a hidden agenda of newspaper fat cat executives which began with the 2008 recession and contains a hidden agenda for strategies to destroy print copies of newspapers. It is not a “natural” function of progress. That is a complete lie. Thus, I become happy and positive from listening to Cool 106.7 and hearing about “locally owned.” I wish the Press & Sun-Bulletin were locally owned because what they have done to whittle down the content is what has hurt the newspaper, not printing of print editions. I protest and object to such a fabrication for which too damn many people just accept without question while giving BS about how bad the government and politicians are. The problem is not government. The problem is big fat cats in the younger generation who have centralized control of the supply siders in the same way the communists did to the Soviet Union – centralized control. The difference is that it is NOT the government doing this, as in Moscow of the past. It is actually the opposite with big fat cats and PACs following the words of freaking Reagan (who said “the problem is the government”) who supported supply side economics for the purpose of eliminating regulation by a third-party called the government and ultimately, the monopolization of business which has pushed small locally owned business under the bus. Therefore, I take this time to write to your station and express thanks for being a locally owned radio outlet with music I enjoy listening. But my interests are 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and less emphasis on 1980s. However, living in centrally controlled America with big business which acts like the communists of the former Soviet Union, I have less choices, so I have to put up with what I hear of people from the 1980s music. Believe it or not, there are others of us who like those other decades, cannot afford SiriusXM (in retirement), and ….. besides SiriusXM eliminated their channel 4 from the 40s, channel 5 from the 50s, etc., and replaced with boring repetitive stuff from one person we might like. I like variety, even if I do like Frank Sinatra or the Beatles, etc. I don’t desire to listen to one station which broadcasts ONLY Frank Sinatra or ONLY the Beatles. BORING! A variety from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc.We might be smaller numbers, but so what? SO WHAT? We are still alive and deserve music that we enjoy, too. And glory be, but teaching music appreciation in Florida, I discovered that many young people are never given the opportunity to listen to music outside the shallow young people’s herd, so they reject anything which does not conform to their wishes.

With all of this being said and based on what I said about being forced to drive to pick up a newspaper because of the lousy customer service at the Press & Sun-Bulletin (Gannett), I get to listen to Cool 06.7 while I increase my carbon footprint and pollute the atmosphere from my gasoline engine. What I really disdain are the damn little snippets which shallow people think are funny. Being forced to listen (or turn it off) this morning, I heard a statement about getting up and being positive. Driving a car to pick up my newspaper is NOT positive and does NOT start my day off very well. But to listen to a brief statement about, “be positive and don’t listen to the news,” I wanted to turn off your radio station. What a shallow remark to make. The correct statement would be, “be positive by demanding we NOT pay, through high cable television prices, for bloviating political analysis stations like Fox, CNN, or MSNBC, etc.” We are FORCED to pay for these things and that really removes my positive feelings. Listening to events and what is happening in the world, believe it or not, is not entertainment. It has been turned into entertainment and it sucks, especially when we are FORCED to listen to the bloviating lies of some of the politics. Some is NOT lies. Some of it is. But no one differentiates between the truth and lies. As a student of Syracuse University and the Newhouse School of Communications classes, I am speaking out about how bad this has become, but even more so. Rather than 350 channels of crap on cable, give us the opportunity to watch political bloviating, religion, ESPN and sports an opportunity to choose on demand. In days gone by, I chose Syracuse University football on demand by purchasing tickets at Archbald and/or Carrier Dome. I was not forced to purchase ALL sports games with an athletic fee, back in the 1980s. Today, based on the model of cable television, as a graduate student at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), I was FORCED to pay an athletics fee in order to get into any sporting event at FAU for free. And people complain about tuition? Go to hell. Our FAU Graduate Student Government Association failed at getting the message through – the graduate students did not want to go to all games. At SU, I have never held an interest in watching basketball, baseball, lacrosse, or anything else. Just football. Should I be there today and asked to pay an overall athletic fee, I would protest. But no one listens to the people today, only the shallow ones with big mouths get heard – such as those who love the 1980s music, as we hear in your commercials. Whether cable television and paying for a menu of choices as if we pay a restaurant for everything on its menu. But no one makes sense of what I am saying. So, I like learning the news and reading many non-news items in the newspapers. Our visual impairment makes it difficult to read electronic editions, let alone the expense required to make such a technology easy to use while sitting sipping coffee in an easy chair.

I am not going to shut up in this regard and work to reach out to as many people as possible. Because a collective voice does more than one voice. Sure. At FAU, that collective voice against an athletics fee was ignored. But that is not the norm in my life. We in the SGA of SUNY got the assistance of Binghamton Republican Senator Warren Anderson and did, with a collective voice, protect some of the destruction some lawyer-politicians from New York City metro area wanted to push on upstate SUNY colleges. I was part of that collective effort, even if I was not writing and leading the effort. That part was done by the SUNY SGA.

Do I make my point clearly enough? Or is it just going to have holes shot into what I say by unsubstantiated facts and then some lousy conclusions made?

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Many Americans Need an Attitude Adjustment

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You talk down about Uncle Sam as being the problem and you need an attitude adjustment. For human institutions are imperfect, but you insult me and many others with a legacy behind those who fought our American Revolution and gave support to a fledgling American government. They would be hurdling epitaphs of scorn at such Americans who say this crap and repeat lies about Joe Biden and his son. You have no right to your opinion because you are drawing your own facts just based on what someone like Fox or Sean Hannity is telling you. You don’t have the facts so I want to say this: SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTHS. For if you have nothing good to say with facts, you have nothing to say.

I am sorry that it has come to this that I have to say, “SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTHS.” But those who are saying these things as if “all politicians are bad” and “government is bad” and you are listening more to the lies of Ronald Reagan, the trickle-down economics person who advocated supply-side economics which results in the supply-side of the market regulating itself towards monopolies, not regulated capitalism which is designed to keep small business going by way of regulating the big bully fat pigs from decimating their competition. If you believe Reagan was correct in that statement, then you insult me and my ancestors who date back to the American Revolution, particularly a maternal great-grandfather who fought in the American Revolution and, as a wealthy person, gave money to boost a new government which had none. You want to turn things around, then stop your GODDAMN complaining about government and politicians and give money to this government. Stop your GODDAMN complaining and trying to avoid paying taxes. You insult me, so therefore I describe you as an evil person who needs damnation from God.

Joe Biden is a good man with good intentions for bringing America together. He has done a good job, in spite of the sabotage by Republicans who work more on the basis that they don’t want Biden to succeed than they do about fixing and healing America. Biden does not want red and blue, he wants red, white, blue with yellow fringe. Stop the GODDAMN attitude about whether it is red or blue. Stop the GODDAMN attitude that it is Democrat or Republican. Stop the GODDAMN attitude that it is liberal and conservative because you know what? You are stupid and don’t know the differences between the parts of the political spectrum. And I address both those who claim to be conservative or claim to be liberal because you all dig in your GODDAMN heels regarding actions needed to solve our nation’s problems and do so in the name of your values. You could maintain your freaking values, but compromise, to work together, on the actions for the direction America should be heading. Biden is a good man, as imperfect as he may be. He is far better than Trump and the Trumpicans who divide America. And stop your GODDAMN attitude, thrust on you by people who don’t have the facts, that all Democrats are bad. Stop that GODDAMN shit because you have no facts to back up what you say. You insult good Americans in the process, to the point of disenfranchising many good Americans so they stay home from voting.

Is this nation and its government perfect? Not on your life. Would I prefer the parliamentary democracy which my ancestors rejected in a war? You bet because it is easier to have a multi-party state than to have a two-party or one-party state. But I live with what our ancestors say and I speak out with words, not freaking guns, like the Americans who need an attitude adjustment do in mowing down their own people. Would I prefer something other than an income or sales tax when CONSERVATIVES like William F. Buckley, Jr., once proposed a value-added tax which would not penalize Americans for having an income or force American small business to cut into their profits and pay for lawyers and accountants do their ledgers – for the sake of taxes. But I don’t try to avoid paying taxes in order to get my point across. I also don’t use freaking guns to do so, either, you bastard Americans who claim insurrections are the reason for the 2nd Amendment. Again, you insult m ancestor who picked up a gun against a mentally ill king in England and despised the insurrection in western Pennsylvania (the Whiskey Rebellion) with its GODDAMN insurrection of the late 1700s under our first president, George Washington who fought for liberty against a tyrant in England. Then this ancestor and other wealthy folks gave money to our government for the war effort and for INFRASTRUCTURE to build America. Like all those who helped build transportation (i.e., a canal in upstate NY and General / President Eisenhower’s interstate road system for ALL 50 states whether a separate island or part of the 48 on the continent – for ALL Americans so poke fun all you want at the name of interstate and just let it be that it is an expressway system, not an interstate system), research and development to make America better and provide a better Internet access and phone system with audio which is clear as a bell. Infrastructure improvement to give us a phone system and better Internet access comparable to what other capitalist democracies and socialist democracies have – and Americans are denied due to the GODDAMN attitudes of those who sabotage our progress and are contentious with those who are TRYING to fix such infrastructure. Go blow your GODDAMN attitude out where the sun don’t shine.

I hate speaking in this manner with damnation and GODDAMN. But I am not taking the Lord’s name in vain because how do you know that God does not wish to say GODDAMN those white supremacists who ruin God’s children? How do you know he does not feel that way and will do so after death of such individuals, but right now leaves it in our hands to do something? Are you certain about this because I am not. If I were certain THEN I would be doing blasphemy against GOD. But I am here on earth to work with my brothers and sisters in Christ, not to condemn a government.

What happened between the words of JFK and his inauguration in 1961 and the lousy and despicable words of a charismatic man named Reagan, in 1981? JFK repeated, in words, what my ancestors actually did: “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Reagan’s foul mouth in 1981: “government is the problem.” Those words have had such a freaking lousy impact on too many GODDAMN Americans who need an attitude adjustment. But what happened between 1961 and 1981?

Well. White supremacists lost their position with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Today, they block, even with Democrat freaking Manchin of white racist West Virginia, with more power than what GOOD people in the U.S. Senate seem to have. Are they proud boys for doing this lousy s**t?

Besides white supremacists being taken down a notch or two by passage of those two acts in Congress, which was a good thing, what else happened? We had a fabrication of a lie about Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was done for the gratification of that white supremacist core in Texas who had money in oil. They wanted to control the world and used communism as the target to help them do so, sending thousands upon thousands of American youth to their deaths, while maintaining the killing of fetus illegal. Put those out of the womb on the line of fire and sometimes to death, but make sure we don’t kill more fetus in the process, so as to avoid the production of more slaves to take the place of those sent to Vietnam.

Thus, in 1973, we had a good thing called Roe v. Wade, which ultimately opened up discussion about the topic, protected young girls, (not from the noose, but from the coat hangers), and helped CURTAIL abortions in America, and not always increase the numbers of abortions. This was a regulatory attitude to help CURTAIL abortion, not be a human being forcing down our throats an attitude. There are statistics and facts which back this up, taught to me by a Roman Catholic, too, not afraid to stand up to a lainbrained pope who claims to be “representative of God” (now there is a blasphemy as it was Jesus Christ who was the human representative of God, not a damn pope; more blasphemy there than with statements with the word, GODDAMN).

I also have ancestors who fought in the American Revolution and in battles in America BEFORE the American Revolution, who were part of the clergy class to challenge, by way of the ANGLICAN Catholics, that blasphemy of a pope with regard to being a “representative of God on earth.” Certain about all of this? Then you need an attitude adjustment because we need to seek wisdom, not certainty. A Roman Catholic helped me gain wisdom on this topic of abortion and abandon any certainty, by using facts and statistics, not emotions and contrived and fabricated facts in an individual’s foul brain.

What else happened in that period between 1961 and 1981? JFK was assassinated, white racists got their benefit with the wealthy oil people fabricating a means to go to war which never should have happened. Just like with a Drew Scott Decision before the Civil War, we are doing this to “appease” a group of Americans, while abandoning the thoughts about having justice done. This time around, the Vietnam Conflict was done to “appease the Texas oil bastards who were white racists.” To appease them after civil rights and voting rights were legislated. Any Democrats who remain Democrats after that time, rather than switch to Republicans and align with white supremacists there, have their images tarnished. In other words, they refuse to go along with white supremacists, so Republicans target them to whip their asses and tarnish them with hatred, proclaiming that “all politicians are bad” and thus the attitude s**t I see which helps to bolster the election of Republicans with white power and banishing anyone who does not go along. Manchin is a Democrat who resembles the old Democrats of white supremacy, rather than move to the Republican Party as so many other white supremacist Democrats have done.

What else happened in that period between 1961 and 1981? Watergate and a resignation of a president. A moderate Republican president, Gerald Ford, who did a really stupid thing to destroy the moderate base in the Republican Party and ultimately losing his election to Democrat Jimmy Carter: pardon Nixon. When I describe my liking Gerald Ford as the last great Republican leader we had, what is the first thing I hear in reply? A distaste for Ford in pardoning Nixon. They also would say how they voted for Carter, not Ford, in the process. Meanwhile anti-government Reagan and his motley crew split the Republican Party in two and helped defeat moderate Ford in the presidential election of 1976. I don’t say these things about Ford and that election, based on my own facts. No. I say this things after listening to people talk about Ford.I listen and I am a great listener, something Reagan, Bush, and Trump never do. Trump, when he does not like what he hears, turns on people who say such things, with a vengeance – and pits his lousy followers to go after those of us who criticize rather than accept blindly, as if they are facts and the truth, what Trump, Hannity, Fox, and the herd mentality of goons for Trump have to say. You do this and you thus work to disenfranchise voters who are really confused by all of this, with your GODDAMN loudmouths of false information about Biden, Democrats and the fact that all politicians are bad, ignoring the ability to differentiate between the good and the bad, whether the good be in many Democrats or in a number of Republicans who are being silenced today by a dictatorial leadership of Trumpicans and a man who made his money in the U.S. Senate, stealing from the American taxpayer: Mitch McConnell.

You with your lousy attitude towards government and “Uncle Sam” want to hate government, right? Hate Mitch McConnell, not government. Hate the GODDAMN PACS who push our politicians into the direction of prioritizing the winning of elections, not doing what is good for ALL Americans (Manchin, for example). Direct your hatred at something other than the government, but at the lousy Supreme Court justices who changed the words of the constitution from “we the people” to “we the big fat cats and big fat pigs of the plutocracy,” with a lousy decision called Citizens United.

With this decision, people have worked to appease the fat cats and fat pigs, not WE THE PEOPLE. They set a course to pitting Americans against Americans, based upon the foul language of Reagan in 1981 and the love of money attitude of lousy lawyers who drain our tax dollars with frivolous lawsuits of personal injury and workman’s comp (blocking the ideas about healthcare for all in the process). These idiots a bunch of lousy neocons with a love of money and claiming to represent conservatism, when they don’t.

I am more conservative than those bastards who proclaim they are such today, but are really neocon fascists. But no one seems to differentiate and know the difference, do they? Unless one reads the words of economists, commerce people, and business people (and others across the board), including those with a “moral sentiment” (see the book by capitalist theorist, Adam Smith titled, The Theory of Moral Sentiment) and a warning flag about embracing the idea of selfishness and a “love of money,” which was forced upon this nation by a lousy woman named Ayn Rand who, coming from the Soviet Union, had little or no knowledge about Adam Smith and the TRUTH about capitalism v. Marxism. No one seems to know this truth, as far as I can see.

Unless one reads words of columnists who are right, left, liberal, conservative, moderate, Democrats, Republicans, black or white or of any kind, and gets the overall gist of what is happening, they feel helpless when listening only to the bloviating political analysis for which we purchase – FORCED to purchase – on these grand cable television crap with 350 channels, like purchasing all the food on a menu in a restaurant and never allowed to have “on demand” capabilities for this lousy bloviating political analysis.

Since the Bush Recession, newspapers have been overrun by the turds of lovers of money. Do you think this just happened with no strategizing? Think again and learn to gain wisdom, not certainty and dismissal of the truth. With fabrication of what was happening to newspapers as a result of a recession. The new guys brought in at the forced retirement of those who had been doing a good job in newspapers, had a hidden agenda. They had a strategy as part of this hidden agenda with an idea that they could rake in money and to hell with the demand of customers on the DEMAND side of the market. They had a self-fulfilling prophesy for destruction of the newspaper industry and just raking in the money for themselves and with no desire to consider the best practices for profit which benefits more people.

The fabrication by these nutso mentally ill lovers of money is working too well. The results have been a makeover of the newspapers only for the heads of the corporations, the fat cats at the top with a top-down control which ignores the needs of the people. Their lousy makeovers eliminated the publication of a broad array of columnists. The lousy makeover by these lovers of money eliminated many wonderful things about newspapers, thus driving down its readership so these fat ass fat pigs could then feel better about what they were doing to rake in the dough.

In the name of technological change, or change just for the sake of change (when it were not as broke as these bastard SOB fat pigs were saying from the top), they worked to fix something that truly was not broke, or at least broke as badly as was being claimed (and a refusal to fix the things which could INCREASE, not DECREASE readership levels). Thing did not need to be fixed in the manner to which they were speaking. Blatant lies and fabrications by liars with a love of money.

Within our great and wonderful IMPERFECT institution we call our government of democracy, the things which TRULY ARE broken, like gerrymandering, crushing the rights of Americans to vote, systemic racism, infrastructure projects which the wealthy bastard fat pigs of America refuse to support, whether by way of government or not, and these bastards are unwilling to help fund such necessary projects for the sake of America. There are levies in New Orleans which might need fixing, dams which might need fixing, improvements in R&D which have been shipped off to Europe and Asia (and go ahead, find some way to shoot holes in what I say here because it might help you feel better about “winning” and only for yourself). Don’t bother to accept what I say and look into details because you bastards with the attitude and need of an attitude adjustment only want to win. You bastards with the egotism of a vicious barbarian and you just want to falsely name me as a liberal when I am moderate. You want to stain me because I am a Democrat and never even consider that I put America first, not Democrats or Republicans or liberals or conservatives or blue states or red states. You bastards wish to hurdle crap at me behind my back. If that makes you feel better, then GODDAMN you shameful people who do this to me and others. No substantiation. No evidence.

Side note: In fact, a person remarked that the stupidity of Manchin in an op-ed he recently wrote was not substantiated by evidence and facts. What else is new for bluedog Democrats and Trumpicans who are white supremacists? What else is new among the lousy KKK-infused bluedog Democrats and the Trumpicans?

You don’t accept what I say and look into the details of what has happened. I am sick and tired of this sabotage of problem-solving for things which need fixing, while invoking fixes in things like newspapers (and other areas) which are based on fabrications and are meant to give wealth to a few younger people, while denying wealth to others.

I grew up in the midst of something better in America. I watched the improvements in race relations, while noting the areas where there was a lack of improvement. I grew up in the midst of the success of a REGULATED CAPITALISM designed to PROTECT CAPITALIST COMPETITION AND SMALL BUSINESS. Did I say this before? Did you get the point yet? In 1981, Reagan, with Ayn Rand enthusiasts and others, began a process to rip apart the great parts of the America I saw. In 1977, I had a chance to take a teaching job in Canada, but was not sure I wanted to leave the nation in which I was born and which I describe here as progress in this nation. Sad to say, with the idiotic attitudes which pit American against American, based on a lack of substantiation for the truth and the evidence which backs up the truth and the obstruction of justice which I have seen in various forms, promulgated by Trumpicans in their lousy leadership of the Republican Party, I do see Democrats and Joe Biden to be much better, even as imperfect as they are. So if you want to put down Uncle Sam and follow the fabrications which try to say “all Democrats are bad,” then go to hell and may damnation be upon you. I find good Democrats and I find good Republicans, too. But right now, the leadership of the Republican Party has gone all to hell and is evil. If these people don’t want to associate with such bad attitudes of the Republican Party, then leave it and join with the Democrats. Otherwise, you do a disfavor to the United States of America and its wonderful democracy, even if that democracy has some imperfections. Don’t condemn politics because your overriding emotions are so blasted bad that they cloud the overall picture regarding politics, Democrats, and Republicans. Clouded by thugs like Trump, Hannity, and others who use their money and love of money to dictate to the American people their desire to white supremacy and control by means of a hidden agenda.

I hate saying things this way, but none of what I say, or what others say, sink in. The bastards of proud white boys grab at freaking guns, not words with FACTS and EVIDENCE and TRUTH, hoping to justify the use of the 2nd amendment for their lousy attitudes and insurrection. Damnation to Matt Gaetz and the NRA with its false notions regarding the 2nd amendment. May you go to hell. Damnation to Trump and the Trumpicans who falsely lead the Republican Party. Damnation to anyone who stereotypes Democrats OR Republicans in a hateful manner and based on false information.

I just cannot, and refuse to, stop pointing these things out. My hope is that what I say will sink in with the people who can express a collective voice for what is good about America (not racism) and be able to promote a collective voice for having fun in fixing the imperfections in America.

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Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam, Why do They Forsake Thee?

Hearing anyone speak badly about our government with the name, Uncle Sam, and I want to smear them with my vomit and put it all over them. I want to puke on them and throw a cream pie in their face. For it is such people who make our lives miserable. They marginalize voters in favor of the Trumpican effort, as the Trumpicans rejoice about splitting America apart.

These people who insult me by blaming “Uncle Sam” are absurd and stupid. They are getting their cues from Ronald Reagan who said at his 1981 inauguration that “government is the problem.” BULLSHIT on Ronald Reagan and too bad I did not speak loudly against it in 1981. Alas. I was working for the U.S. Air Force and stupid idiotic Reagan was commander-in-chief in 1981. Reagan was a disgusting fool. People think all government people and politicians are bad when that is not true. I have given evidence over and over again about how most Democrats and SOME Republicans care about the people and the common folk. Only a freaking lousy man from a white racist state and a Democrat can be so terrible in putting political measures for “bipartisanship” before his country, as do the Republicans most of the time. This is not about blue or red. It is about peace and justice and voting rights for all. Stupid freaking Manchin can go to hell. And he plays up to the GD white supremacists with no brains at all, proclaiming he is defending this country. BULLSHIT on that notion. BULLSHIT on Manchin. Puke on Manchin, as well as the Trumpicans who are sabotaging efforts to get something accomplished, proclaiming they want to be “bipartisan.” BULLSHIT ON THAT fabrication of a lie, too.

Dumb idiotic Reagan, too, pushed for deregulation, supply side economics which encourages monopolies and trickle-down economics. And someone thinks jackass Reagan was good but “Uncle Sam” is bad. Damnation on anyone who figures that. Damnation on such idiocratic ways. Damnation.

At his inauguration in 1961, twenty years before dumb jackass Reagan, President Kennedy said, “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” JFK echoed the thoughts of America from its founding, when my ancestors said the same thing. If the GODDAMN Republicans wish to fight infrastructure, let them use their GODDAMN money like my ancestors did and contribute to infrastructure and the future of America, rather than to their GODDAMN PACS for the purposes of elections and not for America. GODDAMN these people today because they insult MY legacy and the legacy of many other Americans. I repeat. GODDAMN THESE LOUSY AMERICANS who are Trumpicans and call themselves Republicans. While we are at it, GODDAMN Manchin, too, from the state of West Virginia which also gave us a KKK member in the U.S. Senate named Robert Byrd. No wonder Manchin wants to appease his voters because they we are being controlled by freaking lousy white racists like those in West Virginia and other areas. You know. The people at U. of West Virginia who, in a 1959 football game with Syracuse University and a black man named Ernie Davis, pelted soda bottles at the SU team when they ran onto the field. Freaking lousy human beings who have no respect for their fellow Americans and now Manchin shivers in his boots in order to win the votes of freaking lousy white racists in his state. A coward who does not know how to be a man and stand up for America and ALL human beings in America. GODDAMN Manchin, too.

I don’t like to be saying these things and being in a war with idiots who have such GODDAMN power in America, from Kentucky’s McConnell to other jackasses, while Americans suffer in this GODDAMN world of contention for the sake of white honkies and the dictatorship they want. Manchin, oppose dictatorship of white racists, you jackass.

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THREE-PENNY OP-ED: Balance Between Fossil Fuels and Renewable Energy Fuels (Biomass, etc.)

NOTE: it is quite possible that WordPress blocks this article from being sent to my personal email in Google. Damn WordPress for doing this and not being willing to help me out in stopping it.

The June 5, 2021, op-ed by Thomas Friedman (New York Times; title of article: “Progress in getting fossils off fossil fuels” or under another title: “The ‘Mean Greens’ are Forcing Exxon to Clean up its Act”) was well-received by this author. Reading the first article title, I think I like it better than the one put on the article by editors of the New York Times (the second title). I believe it is because of a conversation which I had with a former upstate New York propane gas business man who moved to Florida and opened a seafood restaurant in the Tampa Bay area, when talking about the man’s friend and a vice-president at the company where I was working by the name of John Hancock. You see, Mr. Hancock headed the “fossil fuels” division of the electric utility where I was working. No surprise that this “fossil fuels” head was a friend of a former business man who sold a type of “fossil fuel” in the Southern Tier of New York, near Binghamton and Endicott, the former home of IBM. When I mentioned to this person from upstate New York that I was working with John Hancock at the electric utility, this guy from upstate New York laughed and said, “well you say hello to that old fossil fool friend of mine!” To which I did. Thus, with Friedman’s article titled, from newspaper editors in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania, something regarding “fossil fuels” rather than the “”mean greens” indicated by editors at the New York Times, I chuckled over this.

My dad told how, in the 1940s, he would drive a huge truck full of hay produced on Grandpa Cornwell’s farm to a New York City barge and then have it shipped to Cuba on the barge and sold to Cuban horse farmers there.

(Side note: my Cuban colleague from Florida told me about how HER grandfather owned a horse farm in Cuba in the 1940s and spoke about getting shipments of hay from America, but she never knew some of it was from upstate New York! Small world, is it not?).

Back to the story about shipping hay. My dad reported that, on his return trip from New York City, he would stop in the hills near Scranton-Wilkes Barre, PA, and pick up a load of coal and bring that load home and sell to customers in the Southern Tier, in the same area where the guy I mention about “fossil fuels” had a propane gas business (before moving to Florida). My dad, as he got older, went to work for that propane gas man and was working for him in 1948 when Grandpa Cornwell died at his home in Endwell, NY. After the gas man left the Southern Tier, about 1965, my father started his own propane gas business and appliance retail sales, which lasted about three decades after that. That business my dad had you can see today in the facility on Route 38 south of Newark Valley called Suburban Propane. Propane is great around here because the stupid residents of this town have voted against putting in natural gas, which some of us would like to have and perhaps could generate our own electricity independent of NYSEG. Voting against business opportunities here, whether the stupid Trump-like tea-totalers and Prohibition, dictating THEIR desires upon a population, removing the possibility of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” There. I had to get that part into my op-ed. Nevertheless, coal and propane, together with hay produced in New York. Quite a combination.

Now, tied to all of this is what Friedman says about the “fossils” of Exxon-Mobil” and how my thoughts go to the Florida propane gas man, seafood restaurant man, grouper fishing fleet man, whom I knew in the 1980s and 1990s in Florida. Friedman reports that the fossils within the Exxon-Mobil organization are being challenged by new investors who are described as the “mean green” crowd because they also would like Exxon-Mobil to diversify for the future and expand into non-fossil fuels. If anyone follows my own writings, they would discover that I have said something similar to Friedman, but without a reference to Exxon-Mobil. I have said that we need a balance between the green technologies and fossil fuels. Rather than building pipelines which pollute the atmosphere, build stockpiles of fossil fuels for the future, in the way FDR prescribed building federal savings and loan organizations, war bonds, victory bonds, and promoted the March of Dimes to fight a polio pandemic, for long-term investment into the future. But alas, Republicans have destroyed the means of long-term investment, even long-term housing investments with the greedy selfish approach of flipping homes, Florida over-developing new homes for the benefit of developers and banks, not the common folk, and an increase of common folk in Florida being left homeless because they cannot afford the homes of plantation-owning-mentality real estate people in Florida. Slum lords purchasing recycled homes and selling at a higher price or renting at astronomical rates and claiming it is “free market capitalism,” which is BS for “me, myself, and I” capitalism of the supply-side fat cat order and no concern for the demand side. Then when the Democrats wish to push money to more people and to the common folk, Mitch McConnell and gang refuse to work out a compromise, but insist that it ONLY be the way they want it. How does one expect Democrats to take this? Lying down and up where the sign doesn’t shine? Saving for long-term interest, whether in fossil fuels, real estate, or other resources, rather than promoting bank-style, “me, myself, and I” mentality of selfishness and instant gratification really destroys this nation, with Mitch McConnell, who made his money by being a U.S. Senator and nothing else, leads the damn charge and thinks he is a Teddy Roosevelt on San Juan Hill, when he is nothing but a lazy dumb ass who made him money, not by EARNING it, but by stealing it from taxpayers and lobbyists. The dictator on Capitol Hill, telling Republicans how they should vote against anything the Democrats propose, not working out a compromise unless the Democrats do as the McConnell Trumpican dictators want to have done. It is refreshing to hear of a bit of balance and moderation, as reported about Exxon-Mobil by Thomas Friedman. Will this last? I hope so.

Tied to this, as well, is my war with Gannett and the newspaper industry about delivery of print copies of newspapers in little Newark Valley. My grandfather came to this town because he was a classmate to the propane-seafood giant of Florida and that man’s father. I am told they were classmates at Syracuse University, so my grandfather, who became a teacher, was enabled to get a job teaching here in this town. Two of his children, including my mother, worked for this propane gas king, son of the SU classmate to my grandfather. What does this have to do with anything? Because I heard it told that my grandfather, who grew up in Fabius, NY, near Syracuse, and read the Syracuse Newspapers’ Post-Standard, Herald-Tribune, and Sunday Herald-American, was able to have those Syracuse newspapers delivered to his home in Newark Valley, NY, which is situated halfway between Binghamton and Ithaca, where there are two newspapers which are owned by Gannett. (There was once a third newspaper in Binghamton, the Sun-Bulletin, which was owned by an independent local publisher, then bought out by Gannett).

Thus, as I say things about this, I suppose someone could also conclude I am a “fossil” about reading newspapers. I wish to point out that my position about reading print copies is not fossil, but a responsible way of approaching reading which is acceptable to many people who are not fossils, but are ignored by the dictatorship of Gannett and its USA Today Network, with no capitalist competition to provide an alternative. Yet, I fully believe that moderation, as what Friedman describes happening with Exxon-Mobil, is fully possible in the newspaper industry. We need to rid the newspaper industry of those who grasp technology and force in a dictatorial way, their notions upon everyone and never acknowledging the words of us “fossils.” In this case, reading a print copy and re-implementing the details of the newspaper, as it once existed before people began dropping newspapers when the newspapers were changed as the “old coots” retired due to a Recession that did not beat around the bush and these young bastards grasped at a means of “change for the sake of change” so I can satisfy only, me, myself, and I, individualism, and these fat pigs and fat cats don’t give a damn about others. They fabricate reasons for why this happens in the newspaper industry and never wish to help the “fossils” out.

Kudos to Friedman, too, for revealing the progress being made at Exxon-Mobil. We can only hope it continues. We will try to continue to find Mr. Friedman’s column again and again. By the way. To those in America who are so stupid and having a lack of desire to learn in a lifelong learning environment, the Friedman op-ed was a very lengthy one with plenty of details to help us learn about what is happening, rather than relying on a quick video snippet which does not reveal the full details. Like a Sixty Minutes on CBS which is NOT a video snippet, but an in-depth report on what is happening, without all the BS of political analysis and bloviating political idiocy. Funny thing. Every time I speak with people about this topic of bloviating political analysis on cable television today, they tell me the same thing I am thinking. WE DESPISE THAT AND WE ARE THE PEOPLE TRYING TO TELL THE FAT CATS THAT IS NOT WHAT WE WANT. Do the freaking fat cats and pigs listen? NAH. They refuse to listen. And why is this junk like Fox News and others, so successful? Because the bastards of that network get paid much money and the viewers have no choice or “on demand” service for Fox, CNN, or MSNBC, or CSNBC, and others. They make money from ME when I never watch the damn crap, but I pay for delivery of a newspaper each morning and get nothing but crappy service and no one to fix the service.

And Sixty Minutes? I pay for Binghamton’s channel 12 which delivers the program through Spectrum, but I COULD receive it as a free broadcast, but that is rough to do. It is rough, due to the stupid commissioners of the FCC who side with big corporate fat cats in helping them rake in enough money so that freaking Sean Hannity has enough money to purchase the hate monger’s mansion in Palm Beach – the late Rush Limbaugh. I have done better things to deserve an award than Rush Limbaugh and it was not due to bloviating hatred, either, but having a love for all human beings and never concerned about the color of the skin.

Sure, I am contentious against the lack of balance, moderation, regulated capitalism and balance, and the checks and balances designed into our system of democracy. My contention and hatred is with the evil spirit and the one who runs the evil spirit, or devil or Satan, with his demons like Trump and other Trumpicans.

Interesting, the drawing of “Lady Liberty” in a New York Times book review of a book titled, Noise. Rather than holding a scale to balance out justice, the image is a sarcastic reminder of the legal profession today with its ill desires of love of money when “Lady Liberty” holds two dice (you can view this image by accessing the link to the book review). Believe me, there was a day when FCC commissioners and others did make some reasonable decisions not tailored to big business and we did not have to rely on love of money to decide our justice. My contempt of this system says one thing: peace does not exist without TRUE justice for all of us. That is possible, so when are we going to collectively get to work, write to our leaders and those in business and express what we wish to see happen. I hear it in the voices of people who say they don’t like to pay for entire menus of cable television offerings or who don’t want to pay for electronic editions. What is holding people back from speaking out? Fear of Republican and fat cat retribution?

Perhaps I am saving the best for last when I offer a final remark about Friedman’s op-ed about fossil fuels. There is the point about moderation, but also about weaning America of the oil controllers in Saudi Arabia, a nation which sent people of its monarchy to New York City on 9/11/2001 and which has a monarchy which inspires the Taliban and others to behead their own citizens. Unacceptable; and don’t give me the BS designed to shoot holes in these facts with fabricated BS about Biden and his son. The truth gets buried under fabrication of theories. Fantasies and conspiracies and the truth gets buried. And a people in the USA who have no brains and are able to differentiate between fabrication and truth because, as the Nazis say, “we can tell a lie over and over again and it becomes the truth.” There is no lie about the fact that Saudi monarchists were responsible for 9/11, yet we went after a foe of the Saudis while the Taliban and friends of the Saudis went free in another form of obstructing justice. Peace without justice cannot happen. It was Obama and his administration which brought down Osama Bin Laden and don’t you ever forget that as fabrications are tossed out there and you are expected to believe such fabrications and are unable to discern the truth.

Friedman’s point is about weaning America of the Middle East dictatorial control of oil and to do that, we need to encourage the “fossils” and the “mean greens,” together, or it won’t happen. We also need to designate oil from the ground as a reserved saving account for the days when oil is less available. I add this. That the “fossils” and the “technologists” of the newspaper and media markets need to work together, too, and right now, Gannett is like a centralized newspaper from communist Soviet Union called Pravda, not a pertinent American newspaper with an interest in local news, which was the content which got Gannett off the ground, originally.

Competitive capitalist forces between the “mean green” and the “fossils,” as well as the media “technologists” and the “fossils” can help us to bring down the prices and provide better service because that is what has been proven is the important part of capitalist competition. The goal in newspapers should not be the lousy one with blinders on and a total direction to embrace technology only.

To control the prices, government wage and price controls, pushed by liberals in the past, are not the answer. The answer is regulated capitalist competition and moderation in implementation, as Friedman points out in the energy industry and Exxon-Mobil.

And one note about the faculty of Florida where I found my career. Because the faculty salaries in Florida suck so badly, why did I have a concern about losing some of the state’s best educators to other areas of the nation? There were several I have known who departed Florida and did so at younger ages, before becoming entrenched with a fear of age always being considered last as it loses out to youth. It is called capitalist competition with an ability for, in this case, faculty to find better pay elsewhere. No one could consider the me, myself, and I instantaneous heads of the organizations about this, as we attempted to negotiate with them. They only saw their own salaries and contempt for removing the cap on FICA deductions to a more fair one for all (justice for all) as being better than making education better by keeping good educators rather than considering better salaries in order to keep the better ones. And those better educators went to states where they, too, could gain tenure, which the high-paid heads of the organization disdained, for some reason, and never would negotiate something feasible and better for all. In this respect, there is one big problem here. Capitalist competition would be better if the doors around the world were more open, as we talk about the globalization of business, but never consider the globalization of education and other items within our cultures. For me, I was fully recognized in the international community, but denied access to it by America and Florida. We don’t have open doors with Canada and other nations, regarding faculty (and other careers), so it makes it nearly impossible for open capitalist competition on a world-wide basis. When I get treated like crap by lousy Republican administrators, especially if I am part of a union, I lose my ability to capitalist competitiveness where I am accepted in a large audience.

Energy. Newspapers and the media. Education. Information industry. All “industries” with a common thread, but also differences in how they should be handled. Friedman’s article points to energy. I have brought up the fringe elements in the other areas where there is a common thread.

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SHORT & TO THE POINT: Thomas Friedman in Print

NOTE: it is quite possible that WordPress blocks this article from being sent to my personal email in Google. Damn WordPress for doing this and not being willing to help me out in stopping it.

The other day, I picked up a newspaper that was not from Binghamton. Binghamton has a newspaper which has scaled back its content, lost circulation in the process and now wants to fulfill its fat cat, Dickey’s plans to eliminate print copies and go exclusively to digital. The claim is a blatant false claim that “newspapers are dying, so therefore we need to only cater to the younger people with digital.” BS. That is a false statement and a blatant means of sabotaging the newspaper industry for the sake of more dollars i the individualist jackasses at the top dictatorial levels. It’s not true. Newspapers have reduced content and gone digital for one purpose only. To dictate and force technology and the COSTS of technology upon us all, the same as a lousy cable television industry has done to us without offering ala carte in choices of channels but DICTATING and FORCING Americans to pay huge amounts for television we don’t want to watch. It’s like going into a restaurant and paying for EVERYTHING on the menu, whether we eat any of it or not. Cable television making money from consumers with 250 or 350 channels or more, THEN making money from commercials from bastards like big pharma and lousy lawyers, all of them moaning and groaning about not making enough money. That is a boldface lie to which no Americans will speak proudly and bravely out en masse against. Newspapers, too, charging for digital and paper copies when many of us refuse to use the digital copies and COULD choose to purchase a huge number of archived newspapers from Newspapers.com. The newspapers make double the amount and force us to pay for the entire menu, like what would happen should we visit one restaurant. However, it was nice to recently read a newspaper from outside Binghamton and find an op-ed columnist which is no longer available in Binghamton in a print copy. Thomas L. Friedman, we were blessed to read your column once again and to LEARN (as Americans should be trying to do) from the overall bulk of information which is available out there, not the jackass shallow crap from a menu of entertainment on cable television. We want a print copy of a newspaper that contains op-eds from Friedman, George Will (conservative), Maureen Dowd (liberal), Paul Krugman (liberal), Michael Gerson (conservative), Kathleen Parker (moderate), Cynthia Tucker (moderate), Leonard Pitts (anti-white-racist and moderate-liberal), Jeff Jacoby (?), and many local columnists, religious writers, food and recipe writers, advice columnists, puzzle games (enough with the GD video games in which players on a basketball punch each other out) with interests tailored to people at the local level. America is being dictated and forced into accepting digital copies of newspapers and huge menus of lousy entertainment on cable television. We want the columnists and others back in the newspapers and stop the GD false claim, after eliminating and paring back so much of it, “no one is interested.” Of course, no one is interested and cancel subscriptions because these young whippersnappers taking over the industry following the Recession of 2008, have deliberately set up things this way – for their own individualistic, selfish, greedy, egotistical, snot Ayn Rand ways. Thank you for giving me a light at the end of the tunnel with a choice (“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) to enable me to purchase another newspaper. Only wish I could get the other newspaper delivered to me in print copy. But of course the snots like Dickey head of Gannett, and others, wish to snuff out that light at the end of the tunnel because, like jackass, Trump, they don’t like the criticism from loyal readers and newspaper subscribers of print editions. Dickey face and the others should go to plumb h-e-double-hockey-sticks and burn there in their own stench of evil anti-human-being styles. BTW. If you read this and are so low-life scum so as to reject lengthy detail in an op-ed or article, don’t bother reading the Thomas Friedman op-ed to which I just referenced. It might be too hard on your damn brain. Is this short and to the point enough? Tastes like chicken.

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