The Decade of Decadence

THE ABSURD TIMES

 

  

Our Life Today

by

Czar Donic

Maybe we should be considering the moments of the last ten years, but the "specials" tell us little about what really happened.  We all know that Donald Trump is a complete disaster for the country, if not the entire world (and this includes you Vladimir).  But none of these specials will tell you what started all of this.

So I will.

You have to remember back to the last White House Correspondents' Dinner with Obama.  Have you not noted that there has not been a televised one since?  Have you wondered why?  Have you ever considered why it is that Orance Donald has never appeared there since the last one?  Well, let me take you back there and let you know – since, after all, we are covering the events of the last decade.  People are thinking that the impeachment is the most important story.  Nope.  Some people blame the corporate sector for pushing Hillary while the entire country had enough on living barely, and some starving daily.  Well, we get a bit closer here, but it still does not explain it. 

No, it was Obama and the last dinner, which sounds or echos the last supper, and it still could be if the cowardly half of the Senate allows it to be and keeps him in office.  So, what did Obama do?

It has always been, with the exception of the first, Lincoln, a Political party of the  regressive.  It kept on this way until Goldwater and his amazing defeat caused it to crumble and shrivel up.  It would have stayed that way were it not for Nixon.  Now despite his many faults, he did have a brain – a dangerous commodity in a Republican.  We could go through all of that, but let's not for now.  Other than creating the Environmental Protection Agency, he accomplished nothing any other Republican would have regretted.  He simply got caught at one of his many faults – fear of loosing. 

So, we can move forward. 

Daffy Donald started out with the so-called "birtherism" nonsense long ago.  Obama made him look very stupid on, yes, the old Jay Leno Show.  When Jay asked him why Trump had such a grudge against him, Obama said "It all goes back to when he were growing up together in Kenya."  [It's on you-tube]  In fact, all of this is on You Tube.

Donald kept getting more and more obsessed with the issue and looking increasingly ludicrous.  At one point, someone said a group of subversives planned his rise to the Presidency back in 1950!  Obama remarked that it was "amazing that this group were so careful, brilliant, and well-planned, but gave me the birth name Barack Hussein Obama, especially the Hussein part.  Amazing." 

But it was the last White Correspondent's Dinner that was particularly incisive.  With flawless comic timing, Obama deconstructed Donald Trump (who was sitting there because he DESERVED TO BE) while Trump sat and red-faced silently fumed.

The part I remember most is something like this: "Donald Trump has finally admitted that I was, if fact, born in the United States – and I congratulate him on that.  Now he is free to investigate much more important issues – such as was the original moon-landing actually faked, and also area 51 and the captured aliens."  There was more, but by this time, Trump was destroyed.  Once he was elected, there never was another one of those dinners televised.

So, since Trump is better than everybody, he continued his race to the White House with the results we live with today.  It is fortunate, now, that the run of FDR so irritated big business that they passed the term limit Ammendment for Presidents.  If by some mishap the nutjob gets re-elected (as many voters here in the United States are nutjobs) he will be done soon.  At the same time, many remember the fears people had when Nixon got re-elected, four yeaars of Nixon not worrying about re-election?  A frightening thing. 

The Dems better not blow this one as they did the last one.  Corporate forces are telling them that a "moderate" (corporate whore) will have more support, but that is what happened last time!  Simply add up the votes or percentages for both Sanders and Warren in any poll whatsoever and you will find that they are easily more popular than any moderate.  Moreover, while a "moderate" polls high in many states, Sanders is always second or third along with Warren who is usually a bit behind him, but not always.  This is all to say, Sanders made all the progressive ideals or positions possible and popular this time around.  These are things to take seriously this time.  Very seriously.

* * *

Items to contemplate:

a) The climate.  We never write about that because our own sense is that it is already too late.  Back when people really became active about issues, the 60s, everyone had to have a cause so some boldly came out in favor of reading, others in favor of clean air.  Thos were considered saafe issues, but it was the last time, until about the mid 70s, that anything could really be done.  By that time, contaminates had started to work and would develop, many, such a Ozone, in a chain reaction.  Still, life may yet be preserved at 4-500 feet or greater.   People said that Greta was abused, but I could find no details.  If they are going by her behavior, note that she has a mild form of Asperger's, and she calls that her "secret weapon" as it helps her concentrate.  Another thing in her favor: Trump hates her because he thinks he should be PERSON OF THE YEAR.  (First, he has to establish himself as a person.)

B) Medicine.  We remain the only developed country in the world without a national health service.  We alone do not consider healthcare a right.  We have an insurance industry that makes billions out of this scam, aided by the drug companies.  So, how do we understand what is really going on?

          Insurance Companies are not in the business of providing health care, because they are in the business of making profits, making money.  This is the reason they have caps, used to luxuriate in prior conditions, have deductibles, and so on.  The last figures I have been able to find indicate that insurance companies operate with a 24% or 25% overhead (the amount of your premium that does not go into health care).  The figure for Medicare, on the other hand, is about 3%.  By eliminating the Insurance Industry, therefore, we immediately reduce the cost by at least 22%. 

          The next issue in this is taxes.  How much is it going to cost me?  Well, first of all, if you have an employer-based insurance plan, an average of half of that goes out of your salary (check your next paystub).  That amount would imply be placed either in your pocket or in your witholding.  No change for you.

          Then what about costs? Well, most Doctors or hospitals will tell you that a great deal of money is spent on dealing with up to a hundred different companies and filling out billing statements for all those different companies.  With a single payer arrangement, the paperwork would be reduced accordingly, perhaps a hundred-fold – who really knows?  This reduces the cost to the patients and doctors considerably.  Collection costs are eliminated almost entirely as well. 

          Obviously, a great deal has already been saved at no cost whatsoever.

          Medication.  Many U.S. citizens have managed to pay for their needed medicine by crossing the Northern or Southern borders.  One family pays half the cost by traveling up to Canada and another a quarter by driving across the border to Mexico, especially important because they needed the insulin and the cost ws simply too high. Why is that?  And patents are an entirely different matter. Simply by changing one irrelevant portion f the molecule, the company can retain its patent, thus freezing generics out of the market.  We should all be aware of the brat kid who bought a company and rised to life saving drug to thousands of dollars just because he could.  Well, that case made headlines and forced the government to pursue him and he would up in jail for awhile. 

          Deregulation. It is amazing how we see people calling for DEREGULATION when those very measures came about as a result of such dangers.  These regulations started mainly in the Roosevelt era, and he started them because of such things as THE JUNGLE, written by Upton Sinclair.  In it, he describes the meat industry and one case at least where a guy killed his wife and disposed of her body by having her ground up and packed into hot dogs or something like that.  FDR read about it, and regulations started in that industry.  Well, more profit comes from not having regulations, so ever since that ERA, money makers and fought against regulations and supported DEREGULATION in order to make more profit.

Socialism.  Gee. That sound like socialism, which was attacked recently by some politician by pointing to Pol Pot. That is socialism. I treated a veteran with PTSD and alcholism who had infiltrated Cambodia and was tortured when he was captured. His description of what happened sounded more like implementing capitalism than socialism.  [Oh, yeah, he also said that he would be killed if he told me about it and that I would be too. He eventually blew his own brains out, so I think I'm safe now. That was close.]

Well, there are many other things that need to be done as well, but perhaps this is all that is needed for a Happy New Year (other than to mention two of my favortie protest stories: One is seeing a sign saying DEREGULATE MY UTERUS, and the other is an off-hand comment from a Physicist friend who sai "I never thought I'd ever be marching in favor of facts.]

Bye all.