Ya see, it goes like this:

• We leftys know that when all this is over the country will come trhough stronger than ever.  
• We will have learned lessons. 
• We     will         overcome. 
•  
• But, them folks on the right, 
• they're still going on, almost 
• one year after the big O left office,
• 'bout how awful He was and the damage and everything.   
• The right guys still go on 'bout what tRump's Gona do 
• even though he ain't  done squat. 
• 'less'n you call posturin' 'nd posin' doin' somthin'.

PoP KulTure ... Bah

Charles Manson died this last Sunday.   An interview on NPR labeled Manson as a sociopath.  The piece, also, reported pop cultures facination with  Manson as some kind of folk figure.  

Why?  Why take  the life of a mentally ill individual and polish it up for what?  

Pop Kulture also dotes on Joseph Stalin and che Guevara.  

Guevara raises issues.He stirs feelings positive, mysterious.    Manson and Stalin do not.

Reversing A. C. A. Outcome Incentive programs in favor of fee for service approach.

In the fee for service  ( FFS ) approach to medical billing, your physician, hereafter known as HE,  dings you everytime he turns his wrist or nods his head.    And he nods his head and or prescribes treatments just to build out the bill.

He gets paid whether you live or die or whether you improve in health or not. He takes no responsibility for the outcome. 

Isn't that just like a man.  Women never do things like that.

O'Bama Kare sought to encourage physicians to invest themselves in the outcome  of their treatments.  It also sought to steer physicians away from the practice of prescribing just to fluff up the bill.  

In the past few days, the trumpets in the IHS have set about to shut down the O'Bama trial and return to FFS.  I mean, after al, how is one to pay off the load on the jag.   Isn't that the real part that the sick person has to play in all of this?

I heard all of this in passing on NPR.   That report did not include the number of physicians who work under clinic contracts and hence reeive a salary instead of deriving thier income by way of a billing process. 

I work with a clinic type group.  Emory Hospital Systems may run a clinic system here in Atlanta. .  So, how many physicians  remain who run their own practice?

Upon reading Man On A Donkey

Most of us have an idea of God.   If we have any ense at all, we accept that this idea has limitations.  We get into trouble and or give up when god as we limit god fails to perform as demanded. 

We give lip service to that phrase of Paul's  " see through a glass darkly "  found in I Corinthians 13: 12.  We do so until the crunch comes:  Then we break the glass.  We function mostly like small children. 

In writing all this, I confess that I have faced little of the slings and arrows which Shakespeare says speaks of in Hamlet. 

For me, God holds us together even in the midst of  all that looks not like goodness. 

Lumen de Lumine that shines in darkness which compreheneth it not.  That also provides another point of consideration.  The believer always resorts to the caveat that human cognition lacks the capacity being a thing created to comprehend the thing creating.  D. T. Suzuki in his book Zen suggests the cauldron of naming  or using techniques approriate from inside the created order to describe that which exists outside the created order.  One  thinks of imaginary numbers.  But, history does not show an instance in which a mathematician has gone to the stake for taking exception to the use of imaginary numbers. 

We, in our various delusions and mental illness make god a monster.

liberte egalite fraternite meaning www.lawlessfrench.com Liberté égalité fraternité

Many of us who support
.
equality of outcome
.
do so in the belief that the rest of you cheat.  You may do this out of ignorance, or sheer conscious prejudice, but you cheat .   

You label and pre-judge persons based on a set of irrational prejudices.   How do we know this?  Because we do it ourselves.  It comes from human nature.  But, we recognize it and choose to circumvent it.   And, if we come accross and holier than thou, well

tough shit

We will risk that.  We will encure the danger of self-righteousness  and sanctimoniousness.   We can work around that.  We can apologize for that.  
What we can't tolerate in ourselves is 
.
bigotry.
.
we leave that to you.

New Operational Definitions Of Clinical Terms

Clinical Term:  Bat Shit Crazy
Appears in Southern editions only of the DSM IV.l 

The condition has a number of prominent features. 
.
One such is a preference for throwing a caniption  fit when a hissy fit would do just as well. 
.
A second feature involves telling anyone who will listen that "...they have always depended on the kindness of strangers."
.
A third feature consists of fantasies dealing with gentleman callers . 
.
A fourth feature invovles halucinations of robust young men resembling Paul Newman or Marlin Brando standing outside their house at night hollering Stella.

Men? Dong What?

In some part, I find myself shocked.  Another part counsels calm.  Since the Sixties, large parts of society gave themselves over to the notion that if we ounly shouted loud enough and proved sincere enough the edifice of privileged of and the rest of those endless list of evils would crumble as Marx, Leniin, and Mao promised. 

Alas dear friends none of those guys knew shit.   Their main suppositiions have proven wrong.  Society does not function like a mon olith.  It only appears to. 

So, in the realm of Feminist theory and practice and Male sexist backlash we struggle to find authenticity.  We search for a teory and practice that will work. 

We ain't there yet boobie.   And, no matter how hard you huff and puff and try to make yourself believe we are!  No.  We ain't. 

We have a few tools from ages past:  Ten of them in one set or Tweleve of them in another, if you like.  Takes lots of individual work.  

Keep on trucking.  

Again and again ...

The employeer goes into the market place and offers employmebnt.  The employee can take it or leave it.  Forget negotiation.  

Employers negotiate all other expenses such as but not limited to raw materials,  the cost of prostitutes, and the amount of bribes.  But, for some reason in the schizophrenia of the owners and management,  employees don't count.  Unlike Princess Camilla and horses, they can't paw the ground with their front feet to count.

But, O M G when employees organize to negotiate for wages and benefits the stuff has hit the fan.  The unions are foreign, subversive, and unhholy.   Like the song says
"... I've been slandered.  I've been  libeled.  I've heard words I've never heard in the bible..."

So when I suggest that labor  unions represent a stratagy by which people gain power in the market place, senile old men grab their golf clubs and come a hobbling dragging their  care givers  -- usually underpaid and black -- with them.    

Surthermore, when I suggest that failure to pay a fair wage and continue to tolerate slum landlords amounts to wealth transfer from the lowest segment of society to the wealthiest, the same group of the senile try and shout through their asthema, emphasis, and  COPD.  They lack the strength to pick up their portable oxygen tanks and throw them at me.  
    

Institutions And What?

I like reading historical novels.  In such, plot and such take precedence over history and accuracy.   

In one novel set in the Civil Ware, the author puts words in the mouth of John WIles Booth.    Allegedly Booth complained that Lincoln had destroyed Southern institutions.  

What institutions, other than slavery, cried  I,  as I let from my relaxed position.    I could not imagine institutions other than slavery.

So, I asked a most scholarly and thoughtful friend of  mine to fill in the blanks.  I did so while we lunched.  No, it was not Ms. Otis.   

The friend replied, though not in song,  that the conflict had brought an end to the exclusive agrarian nature of southern culture and economy.  Land ownership ceased to serve as the cheif and only element b y which a person secured their status in society. That owenership also served as the basis for an aristoracy which had also ceased.  

The land needed folk to work it.  If slaves did not do that work, who would?  Without that work, who would wrest  the agricultural wealth from the land? 

In the new South, moeny and invesments either took the place of land or stood along side of land as sources of wealth.  And, with wealth came social status.   

All through reconstruction the North controled the flow of money.  Land redistribution, or attempts at it, broke up the holdings of the old southern familys.  

As late as 1935, a repost ordered by FDR showed that more that sevety five percent ( 75% ) of financial matters and industrial wealth belonged to northern owners. 

Before the War, folk generally identified themselves as coming from V ermont or Virginia.  After, folk called themselves Americans.  Before, the phrase was These United States.  But, after folk said as today The Unived Sates.

Ban Reading Again ... Ein Wenig Verständnis

In reading a novel involving Isreal and Palestinian identity,  a set of ideas emerged into consciousness. 

One such idea stands out.  That idea posits that the conflict in Isreal has a number of cultural components. The cultural componant although parallel  to religion, originate in Israli and Arab culture.  The cultural aspect  can stand apart from the religious aspect.  

A look at several elemts and how they differ bwtween the two cultures will suffice. 
Take the attitude toward women.  Traditional Arab culture limits a woman's role in the tribe.   She seldom appears in public without a male family member.  She often appears veiled.  Her role consists first and foremost in bearing children.  

Israli cultre, by contrast , allows  women the same freedom of action as one might find ibn Europe and the United States.  The woman's role has many diverse and optional elements.  She chooses the ones which she wants to live with.   Sub-groups such as the ultrea orthodox  groups  have more conservative approaches to a woman's life style.   But, these conservative groups lack the rigor found in Arab applications of life style.

Land use serves as another mark by which to differentiate between the Israli and Arab cultures.   Many of the Palestinian Arab groups, whether displaced or otherwise, restrict land use to something close to subsistance farming.   Olive trees and sheep form the foundation of the economy in places.   This approach infuses the attitudes of many Arabs regardless of what the individual or family group actually does. 

 Israli farming practices relay on a broader range of crops.  The Israli settlers have made the desert bloom in many places.

Palestinian   Arab culture has a long history  rooted in the same reghion.  It , also, like many old cultures, has a fatalistic character.   This character fosters a much stronger resistance to change than the israli culture.  Although, Judaism and it's practice has existed for some five thousand years, the people who practice it have experienced  uprooting and dispersal.  Thus, have Jews had to reinvent themselves time and again over the ages.  Their  religious has afforded them a consistant identity.   But, at the same time,  Jewish culture has not had the opportunity to grow fatalistic as Arab culte has.


The differences between the two cultures  covers every aspect of life.    Israeli culture appears more flexable or open to change While at the same time  maintaining an identity through religeous identity.  

Although, Islam has spread  through out the world and has vast populations adhering to it's tenants,  the current trend of fundamentalist rigidity among Palestinians  and Persians appears to come from  the age of the culture and not just the religeoun.   Radical elements using this rigidity have sparked the resistance to the state of isreal., 

This writing does not attempt to cover  everything.  Laziness stalks all existence and wins.  The goal points at a broader perspective in the analysis of the Israli Plestinia conflict.   It purposes to redirect the question from religeon to a broader frame of culture.   The writing does not find any value in violence, terror,  or persoanl self-destruction 

The hope lies in the possibility  of choosing to look at the perspective and life of another.

... Whatever ...

Recently, a friend laid his disuse of  Zimmerman's little toy  at the feet of all of us who use

Too much liberal politics says he.   Yes, Well.  Zimmerman's little toy didn't exist in 2000 - 2005 or something.   So he and the world did not share in the vitrfiol, invective, and general appallingly ill tempred rant against Bush (43).  I indulged in this rant.  I enjoyed myself immensely.   

I have grown older but not wiser.  I refrain now out of a loss of energy resulting from the ageing process. 

Additionally, the present occupant of the Oval office whom I call the Junta presnts such an image of horror.  This almost makes me think that the Bible's  Book Of Revelations which exists onhly in the King James for all those in the know.  

Now that's a image:  rRump as beast -- anti-christ.

Conflicted

I find myelf conflicted with regards to opposing the present Junta occupying the oval office. 

Part of me believes that it will pass in four years.  That, our country / nation can survive this. That, his followers will not listen to anything we have to say.  So why shout  about it all.

A second part of me recognizes that the present Junta in the oval office should know and understand that large numbers of patriotic citizens disapprove of the Junta and all its works. 
Like big time? 

For me the Jury has not made up itls mind at this pointe. 

Here And Now: A Failure In Both Intelect And Manners

The constant attack on tRump as mentioned ABC agent resembles O C D ..

 

Shrill beyond belief. Imitates neo-facist skwack radio.

 

Insisting  on your point of view to the exclusion of others resembles Stalin style propaganda not reasoned discourse.

 

I did not learn this in college.  Neither did you.  

Shame on you.

On American Crass Brass

I always wondered about 
Mailer 's The Naked And The Dead  &
and Jones' From Here to Eternity.   
Why all the fuss:  The prizes?
  

A Town Like Alice by  Nevil Shute  showed me the answer. 

Shute wrote On The Beach.   In both novels he uses a polite kind of writing that the modern american reader who has grown up on Batman and Superman way too antiquated.  This, provided that one knows what antiquated is.   The which I doubt.   But, the afore mentioned American novles are anything but polite.  The two novels seem to go out of the way to offend. 

Dear friends reading this, I can hear you say, "So":  A needle pulling ....

All three novels deal with World War LL   themes.  No one could say that WWLL was polite, nice or anything other than hell.   

The two American novels read like the war was:   Rough, hell and fatal for all too many.  

Shute's book reads more like a dower report of a provincial  tea on the lawn thing of which our cousins acrross the pond are so fond.  

And there you have it.  Take an older conventinal style of writing and write about hell.  Or, use a style which reflects the utter mess that the subject matter is.   

 

Now, for an extra three points, boys and girls, what did I leave dangling in the last sentence?

 

Bankg Bang I'm Watching You !!!

Big Brother Zimmerman says that I posted this in the past. 

 

 O. K.?

 

As you might suspect, 

I hold that the subject requires a lot of differentiated discussion.

 

Evidence exists which suggests that 

interest in 2nd amendment in 1789 arose from slave holders wish to have guns to suppress slave rebellions.

 

But in 1789 and later in 1812 we needed a militia to defeat the British. The militia idea comes from our wish to avoid creating a standing army.

 

So do we need the miltia concept today?

I don't know. 

I do know that the N. R. A. now exists as a creature of gun manufacturers not gun owners.

And, yes, that is an exclusive condition not an inclusive one. 
The individual owner has no say in the NRA

 

I utterly repudiate any notion that we should all learn guns responsibly. 

That's the same kind of fantasy that eleted Trump!

Another Conundrum Of The Southern Cause

So many of the gentlemen of the Confederacy represented themselves as aristocrats.  Such an aristocratic background surely would have acquainted these gentlemen with the habits and practices of the Roman army. Practices of Julias Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Marcus  Aurelius.  Yet, repeated reading of history sources tell of the great disorder of the Souths military forces.  

How can this be?  I know not.  

Familiarity with Roman military practice should have left every soverign state of the Confederacy with formidable preparations even before the election of 1860. 


Whatever benefit might have accrued  from the Confederacyfailed to come to pass.   This can only result from the unwillingness to follow the Roman example.

Health Care Debate

It's not about health care.  It's about Insurance companies and their contributions to our elected representatives. The focus of even the ACA centers on the behaviour of health insurance companies and what they may do and not do.  As a secondary by product, some considerations looks at physicians and hospitals.  Actual health care and it's cost receives only inor attention as I see it.  

The real pre-existing condition which few have talked about is the Health Insurance business model with which we aflict ourselves.  And, as a total non-sequitur,  the free market does not exist in this area.  The health insurance companies have a monopoly.   

Nancy Pelosi put on her less than subtle hobnailed boots and told the republican side of the isle that the latest non-OBAMA bill would mark their forheads with something like day glow paint.  That republicans would suffer in the mid-terms.  I should live so long. 

Why doesn't the lady's pronouncment work?   The folk on the left most likely to suffer at the republican handiwork have a known lack of patriotism, gumption, or  motivation.  I refer of course to the urban poor whho suffer from the structural iniquities which the system and their subculture imposes on them.  The rural poor,often come from Scots-irish origins.  Their ancesters survived Appalachia.  Their ultra Calvanist  God / culture requires them to avoid charity as a mark of moral weakness.  That same Their origins on the border lands between Scotland and England  instilled in them a willingness to fight against anything oppresive / English.  And, that include government intervention in their personal lives.  

As you might suspect, I resnet these folk.  I wold not so much if they would confine themselves to hanbdling thier snakes and mis-reading this Authorized King James.   But they also, unlike the urban poor feel compeled to vote.  This, despite the fact that they know less about the work than last night plucked chicken. 

The only way I know how to show them any sort of respect at all is to avoid as much contact as possible with themn.

Plant Boon Doggle

Westinghouse goes boom:  Like Bankrupt.  

Two Problems

1. The design technology dates from the late 50's or early 60's.  A number of ways of building nuclear devices which will geneate electricity have come along in the meantime.   I have seen this documented on NOVA.  I would supply a link, but the NOVA web site asks so many questions that I can't make my way through it.    But I testify that I have seen it. 
2. The seconed issue deals with the likely hood that when Southeren Company and Georgia power have to eat the costs of thier bad judgment, the Public Service Commission will allow them to pass the cost along to us.  
3. God forbid that the lunk heads on the boards and share holders should forgo their new cars, furs, and jewelry just becuase they made stupid mistakes.  We, the small fry, esist to bear any burden pay any price ... etc. 

 

That Was Then This Is Still Then

Some time ago, it became clear that FDR won in 1932 as a result of a fairly even distribution of people in small towns, villages, and famrs. They shared the burdens of the depression in a similar way.  Their situations resembled each other by and large. 

Urbanization has rapidly moved people into suburbs and large metropolitan areas.  Mechanization and industrialization of farming and food production has reduced the population of farmers to less than ten percent of the overall population.  Among other results, we raise urban children who do not know that chocolate milk does not come from chocolate cows.  

Chocolate cows may sound trivial, but it points to a real and larger issue.  That issue is the disconnect in conscious and cultural framework between those who live in urban, suburban and rural settings.  

I confess to having this disconnect.  A part of me understand the desire of some to live in a rural setting.  Such a setting might permit a person to concentrate on rasing and loving a family.  That setting offers the opportunity to connect deeply with nature and develop self-suffency and enhanced self-efficacy.       

Now, a person can also do this in urban and suburban settings, but this writing seeks to focus on the lack of understanding between the people in the different setting.  Could this lack of understnding have slowly crept into the fabrci of our nation over time as we rushed through the depression, two hot  wars, a cold war, a a resurgence of once  beleaguered  now challenging the Amnerican hegemony in the market place.  

None of this is easy or pleast stuff to grasp.  The human spirit shys away from the hard work that lies ahead.   But, accept this new rality we must, if the best priciples of our founders are to prevail.

America, as the shining city on a hill cannot shine and embrace chauvinism, demagoguery, and selfishness at the same time.  We must embrace communicably and individually slef discipline and enlightened self interest.    We must frequently spend a period of time reflecting on what these characteristics of slef discipline and enlightened self interest means in any given situation. 

Again and again

Have the "trumpets" *  pushed us †   into another reactionary place?  I wonder. 

I lived, as a child, through the beginnins of the Cold War, H. U. A., C., Joe Mc Carthy, and a bat shit crazy aunt. I learned to think nimbly and practice dissimulation dn evasion.  The aunt  could not listen to another point of view.  She had to be right. 

The aunt was my father's sister. The last of five children.   Shortly after her birth instability attacked the family.   The family spoiled her.  She was quite attractive.  She spent her life waiting tables and running a rooming house with my grandmother.  I believe she possessed much intelegence.  She lacked direction. ‡

My cut on this says she never accepted reality fully.  Her expectations from being spoiled exceeded any  realistic point.   She failed to go beyond high school.  And, she could not understand why she didn't have more. 

My aunt consoled herself with reactionary fixations.  These played out in the usual way.  She followed many bizare  fads.  And, she vituperated vitriolically against the usual minority groups.   

From my perspective, trumpets behave in this way.  

We ±do have issues and  even threats.   That is not the question.  The question focuses on the degree of impact and the better way to address it.


* Trump supporters
† USA citizens
‡ How much of this comes from my own projection?  You can find out if you pay the theray bill.

± op cit

Thoughts on a State Department

Start with Ben Gazi.  Descisions dealing with the number of military assigned to an embassy most likly fall into the hands of  a high level career civil servant.  Does a Secretary Of State actually concern themselves with such.  

So why roast Hillary?  
Because they like to. 


Do career diplomats always get it right?  No, not always do they get it right. 
Could an international businessman do something different?  Could those international business contacts acumulated over a thirty year career serve the needs of  this country?  It seems possible.   


So, comes the word that numbers of seior level civil service specialists in the State Department have resigned.  It also seems likely  that many of them might not want to serve under the Trump administration.  But, also maybe the time has come to go do something else.  With such policy experience in one resume, an academic post or work in a private think tank could slo prove attractive.

So, do these resignations  -- head count not available as of this writing -- mean anything other than just the normal run of things?  Only Hannibal Lector knows for sure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/01/26/the-state-departments-entire-senior-management-team-just-resigned/?utm_term=.f0c3e34778f7

How to denude the worlds forests

Logging!  

It threatens to denude the Tropical Rain Forrests of  South America, Africa and Asia. 

Keep it up. 

 I've got a fix. 

We build Trump frames.  And, on these frames, we grow kudzoo and that invasive fern species taking over Florida'S swamps.*  

The resulting vegetation will do what tree huggers allege that the trees do.

Tree hugger research demonstrates that vines, ferns, and non-tree plants process more carbon dioxide than the much vaughented tree canopy.†

*  The plant has yet to swamp  the good o'l boys  in Tallahassee.
†  This is a fact, whether you like it or not.

Once Upon A Time

Once Upon A Time
Future Schock and two Third Waves 

-- or is it reverse, never mind --

predicted that automation / robots would put a lot of folk out of work.   At that time, off shoring and environmental degradation stood far off if at all in our consciousness. 

We, the people, failed to address the imponderables.  
We continued to let the Good Times roll.  
Or, later on, we rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic. 

Or did we fail?   We must ask if we can save all? 
Do too many  indulge themselves in victim hood and take their expectations from that chorus piece from the Stage Musical Li'l Aber:  "When the idle poor become the idle rich...".