The Republican Malthusians

At this time, the U.S. national debt is 9.35 trillion dollars on paper. That would buy a new house for every American family. In reality, the debt is far higher and obligations will increase it far more. American families did not get those houses, but they did get the mortgages, which they must repay with interest. Since they can’t pay the mortgages, they will pass the obligations on to their children. In effect, this is reverse inheritance.

The debt is the product of Republican voodoo economics. In 1981, Ronald Reagan resumed the failed economic policies that plunged the U.S. into the Great Depression of the 1930s. Reagan infused the failed policy with massive borrowing. The borrowing gave the initial impression of prosperity, just as a person who charges all of his credit cards to the hilt will appear to be very prosperous for a short time.

Reagan inherited a debt of less than $1,000,000,000,000. He left a $3,000,000,000,000 debt. George H. W. Bush and his son continued the disastrous economic practices. The latter holds the record with four trillion additional debt.

Republicans are robbing their children and grandchildren with no sign of remorse. Their immense greed and gluttony fogs their minds to the damage they are doing. They show no sign of a troubled conscience. Their guru appears to be Thomas Malthus, the 18th and 19th Century mathematician who proposed a solution to the looming food shortage problem today’s Republicans would love. Population was outstripping food production, so Malthus proposed they eat their children as the remedy. Today’s Republicans would devour, or sell, their own children for a new swimming pool, a pleasure boat, or even a new car. Unfortunately, they are doing far more damage to their babies, born and unborn.

Barbaric, predatory healthcare system

Refilling a prescription is nearly an insurmountable obstacle for the world’s most expensive healthcare system

I attempted to refill a prescription recently. The prescription service told me the refills were on the way. It was unusual for them to initiate a contact. Then I received a letter from an entirely different company saying I did not qualify for the prescription service I had been using for several years. They gave no specific reason. I called the original company. They didn’t know if I no longer qualified, and referred me to a third company. My wife has the same healthcare insurance provider and the same prescription service. Her prescriptions were refilled.

In the meantime, my supply of pills was nearly exhausted. I need them to avoid seizures and other problems. Apparently I was caught in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic maze. I had the misfortune of requesting refills just as one corporation was devouring another corporation and those two were then devoured by a third corporation.

During these feeding frenzies, CEO’s and other corporate executives congratulate each other and award each other massive bonuses for improving efficiency (see the book Barbarians at the Gate.) Meanwhile the company is left stripped of its flesh as cleanly as a fish in a school of piranhas.

The U.S. healthcare system is tailored for the free market. In other words, profits are everything, patients are nothing. Our healthcare dollars are split among exorbitant salaries for executives, high dividends for people who do nothing but sit on their asses all day, layer upon layer of bureaucratic filters to squeeze every possible penny out of healthcare premiums, advertisements to convince the unwary to buy snake-oil products, hire lobbyists, pay bribes to corrupt politicians and build voodoo factories to give the impression that they want to find cures for ailments and diseases. At best, we get about 25 cents of healthcare for each dollar we pay into the system.

In the industrialized world, the U.S. healthcare system is unique. No other nation is cruel enough to allow a few to profit so much from the misfortune and misery of so many. That predatory system could not exist in a democracy or a civilized nation.

The Bush Loser Administration

Enlightened people around the world have known for decades that the United States is a nation of cruel, barbaric goons and thugs. George W. Bush has removed any doubt for the remaining citizens of the world.

Bush is a loser in every sense of the word. He never won a national election. He stole those. He lost respect for the U.S. He lost billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury. He lost millions of e-mails. He is losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which morally should be lost.

Bush's blunders no doubt will be the final nails in the coffin of the U.S. Empire. That Empire is the last of the brutal, bloodthirsty 2nd Millennium Reichs.

Madman's finger on the button

Vice President Dick Cheney visited Saudi Arabia in April, 2008. One of the major issues discussed, allegedly, was how to deal with nuclear fallout.

Former high-level government officials including Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter feel certain that the Bush Administration, and Dick Cheney in particular, intend to strike Iran with nuclear weapons.

The Bush Administration recently removed Admiral William J. Fallon from command at CentCom, which oversees the U.S. military in the Middle East. Fallon said last year that there would be no attack on Iran under his command. The sycophant David Petraeus replaced Fallon.

It appears that the only question is the time of the attack. Actually, there are multiple questions, but none the dim-witted members of the Bush Administration are capable of answering or dealing with. What will Russia do? Will Iran annihilate the Green Zone in Iraq? What will China do? Will the Iranians cut off enough oil supply that the world will sink in to a massive depression unleashing chaos?

Will Bush copy his father’s tactic in Somalia and attack immediately after the election that ends his presidency?

Bush and Cheney may conclude that there are enough lizard-brain Americans around who can be frightened again into forming into a herd and stampeding into another fiasco that an attack on Iran would lead to another Republican presidential victory in November.

If an attack occurs, the Democrats are culpable. The Democrats can stop funding to the Pentagon. They have been able to do that since Jan. 2007. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution states that “All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives: . . .” Democrats have their greatest majority in the House of Representatives. They have the power to stop any funding and have failed to do so falsely claiming their hands are tied by the presidential veto.

Both parties are criminal, negligent, corrupt and treasonous. Both are unfit to rule a civilized nation.

Wright is right

I was disappointed when I heard Senator Obama denounce Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It’s a test of character when a person is asked to defend a minority race or minority opinion.

Al Sharpton was correct when he stated that Pastor Wright’s comments were “totally distorted.” Rev. Wright is frustrated, as am I and other righteous Americans, that his nation roams the world killing and extorting, and no one can or will stop it. The people and the Congress lack the moral sophistication and will to know and do the right thing. International institutions know the wrath of the U.S. includes scorched earth policies and annihilation of life on earth as was the policy during the Cold War. It appears that invoking God’s intervention is the only hope for stopping the world’s worst rogue state. Rev. Wright looks at the senseless, baseless war in Iraq, the death of over one million people, mutilation of millions more and the displacement of more millions and sees a hideous crime. The average American sees only bad judgment, a misdirection of tax dollars or the latest “–ism” phantom to fear.

In a similar situation during the Vietnam War, in which I served, the U.S. killed three million people for no valid reason using the most hideous WMDs available. Martin Luther King said: “ . . . the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government.”

The ability to analyze a political situation objectively and morally is limited to a handful of truly righteous Americans such as King and Wright. Morally confused people looked at the 3,000 deaths on Sept. 11, 2001 and the 3,000,000 deaths during the Vietnam War and concluded that the Sept. 11th deaths were the more reprehensible. Psychologists call this ethical confusion “cognitive dissonance.” It’s the result of the powerful herd instinct to remain loyal to one’s own group no matter how barbaric its members act.

The 18th Century Enlightenment strived to elevate us above the herd, but the “peer pressure” of the group proved to be too powerful. America was founded on those Enlightenment principles and ideals and was a beacon of nobility to the world. The Declaration of Independence was the pinnacle of American greatness. The animal natures dominated and the U.S. has been clawing its way back to the 17th Century ever since.

Only a disappointingly few Americans are able to recognize the evil in themselves, rise above the herd and practice this nation’s ideals. That’s true patriotism. Those few face enormous pressure from the primitive rabble of jingoists. Torture, aggression, disappearances, secret prisons, spying on everyone, denial of rights, rigging elections and indiscriminate killing are characteristics of pre-Enlightenment people.

Rev. Wright is right, righteous, Enlightened and patriotic. He doesn’t abide by the rules of the herd. He is someone to distrust, to fear. He advocates ideas alien to the herd and does not follow obediently. Like Jesus and Martin Luther King, he must be stripped of his power or eliminated.