When something bad happens, like a Crank feature article, our instincts are to say, let’s make sure something like this never happens again, usually via a better life through litigation.  But this build-a-new-law strategy is usually counterproductive.  Have you heard about the family who took pictures of their kids in the tub?  They turned some glossies into Wal-Mart to develop and ended up losing their kids for a month to CPS.  Who knew long term babysitting could be so easy?  Fox News, sensationalism with zero forethought, dons its red cap of justice and flies in for the rescue.  The same shortsighted binary-thinking imbeciles who championed the laws that made this fiasco possible are now the most surprised by the ramifications of their deeds. Sadly, this is their usual MO (hint: they’re not horribly bright).

Bill O’Rielly flits scantily clad teens all day long on his program to prove how much he hates and despises such practices.  Mr. Reaction Formation would have called anyone who questioned any aspect of the constitutionality of child porn laws a pedophile.  Yes/no, right/wrong, good/bad.  You are either with the pedophiles or against them.  Sith happens.  If someone ever said, “but this law might be draconian because if someone innocently goes to Wal-Mart to develop some pictures of their kids in the tub”—(Insert your favorite O’Rielly rant here, pedophile appeaser!) 

People are doing a lot of time for pics on their hard drive. No proof of distribution, no proof they tried to go near any child, no proof of anything, really.  In fact, someone jumps onto your unsecured wireless from next door and they still come after you.  These have turned into modern day witch hunts.  By all means, monitor the internet and nail these perpetrators to the wall, but can we stop before we arrest grandma at the Fotomat booth? (Remember those?)  According to Megan’s Law anyone possessing a nude picture of someone deemed under age is subject to five years in jail (per picture).  Why isn’t this Wal-Mart family in jail then?  Throw the book at em’.  My parents need to report to prison and yours probably should too.  Megan’s Law was another one of those classic let’s never let this happen again moments. 

Did you ever end up on the wrong website?  You’ll have five years to think about your egregious clicking.  Remember that photo attachment that was big laughs at the office?  She might not be 18.  We’ll let a jury decide.  That should tack on five more years to the tally.  No one apparently IDs these girls, it’s based on the subjectivity of the jury.  So I’m sure Howard Stern’s ‘collection’ could land him in jail until long after the sun depletes its supply of hydrogen.  Forget Howard Stern, I own Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy.  According to the letter of the law, I should turn myself in, along with the million or so other Zep fans, on child pornography charges. I asked a federal attorney during a trial once (I was there professionally, really), how does this shit happen?  He said that any politician who tries to reform child porn regs is doomed.  The media will spin the shit out of it and paint that politician as being pro-child pornography. 

Enter Fox News.  Fox, particularly Bill O’Rielly, championed this bullshit the loudest.  Now people like him are the most outraged by the results of their idiocy as it spills into one family’s Wal-Mart nightmare.  There are quite enough actual perpetrators out there to keep law enforcement busy, isn’t there?  I don’t think marching half the country into jail right now, wrongly, is the best way to handle this issue.  I had the same conversation with the Crank a couple of years ago.  He sided with O’Rielly (imagine that) and I’m sure this Wal-Mart story outraged him as much as any Foxer.  As if limiting child pornography laws to, er…perpetrators is a bad thing.  But, to be fair, there are only those two switches in their head. 

As for behavioral health, one case in Arizona, Arnold vs. Sarns, has brought the system to its knees. Two kids died at the hands of a serious mentally ill individual and it’s all over. Granted, this guy should have been monitored better, but the real culprit is this: society has never made this a priority—never has, never will.  Behavioral health is under funded, increasingly more so by the minute, and with our let’s never let this happen again mentality, we cripple the few case managers left who could actually do something about it.

Foxers are also the first one’s to go: “Why wasn’t this nut being watched before he killed all of those nuns!”  Well, Foxeteers, as the least common denominator, you’ve systematically helped to decimate services.  Remember?  You championed each and every budget cut, when in reality every dollar spent in behavioral health is likely to save society three.  But they’re not interested in the facts.  They’d rather continue breaking news down into tiny shards of sensationalism.  Good luck with that. 

Before that ‘nut’ killed those two kids he received two phone calls and his case manager attempted one home visit.  They couldn’t find the guy and shortly thereafter the two kids are dead.  Today, post the Arnold vs. Sarns decision, post the investigation on mental health-land, post all the revamping, post the additional monitors, post the additional forms to fill out, post the misallocated dollars. Today this same man would receive one phone call (we’d fudge the other one) and, forget the home visit…at 30 mph we’d throw a rock with a note on it that says ‘please call us’ as we speed passed toward client number 412.  Feel safer society?  This isn’t litigation, this is shitigation.  Hint: if a case manager has considerably more paperwork due to shitigation and is even further under funded, they’re going to see their clients even less.  This isn’t calculus, kids.  We do need monitors, but not to death.  And we do need to fund things as a society that are important, or guess what?  Shit is going to happen.  I would like to see a senator or congressman try case managing several hundred severely mentally ill people for a day.  You can film it for entertainment purposes. It would be rather like listening to a baseball announcer broadcasting a hockey game.

Invariably, the overblown reaction to never let this happen again causes a legal shit storm that further handicaps the very system that erred in the first place.  This results in more, not less, people getting substandard care or, for our first example, police focusing their time on grandma at the Fotomat booth instead of area pedophiles.  This shitigation is happening in every quadrant of our society.

One doctor a little hungover in Cleveland makes a mistake and, after court, all docs from sea to shining sea have another form to fill out. End result: my one minute of actual doc time is whittled down to forty-five seconds.  Is this form going to stop the next hungover doctor from making a similar mistake somewhere?  Hell no.  That’s called supervision. That involves that doctor and his supervisor (or in this case, his bartender). But national forms are fun!  Kill a forest for victory!  So each lawsuit designed to help protect the consumer actually puts and increasingly debilitating strain on the entire system.  As a therapist, if I have to fill out one more form I’m going to just start mailing my clients a letter that says, “Tell me about your mother” with an enclosed bill. 

 I think there should be a law about over reacting.  That’s it!  I’m going to make a law about over reacting, so that this never happens again!

Amidst much chagrin, chest-thumping, and gnashing of teeth, this post highlights the problems of expanding public healthcare.  Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.  After all, the truth is the truth is the truth, lied Zano.  Government funded healthcare is complicated to the point of absurdity.  In fact, Managed Care has created whole swaths of self-important middle men and middle agencies that both spend and make oobs and gobs and loads of tax payer’s money while desperately trying to justify their own existence.  This is not uncommon in super capitalism land, which is another reason why this house of cards called the U.S. economy has less sustainability than a freshly baked Krispy Kreme in Crank Manor.

Today’s post focuses on behavioral healthcare, because when I’m not bitch-slapping nuns during wild crack binges, I’m out here in the field (fighting for my meals).  OK, that’s an exaggeration, I rarely use crack.  The fact is, some of these “big brother” agencies were created by Hillarycare.  They function as liaisons between the state and the actual behavioral health providers on the ground.  So, the state comes up with dumb, unrealistic—I really don’t have a clue about healthcare—mandates, and these middle agencies complicate the matter, add forms, shake, stir, and pass-on the love to those folks supposedly treating Uncle Louie for his tendency to wear aluminum foil on his head to block out the government transmitted microwaves (GTMs).

Many of these agencies are even for profit, which translates thusly: they get all the state money to distribute to the behavioral healthcare networks that they oversee, and, if they don’t spend it on the schizophrenic crack addicts in our streets, they get to keep it! It’s unconscionable…like appointing Dick Cheney Prison Reform Czar. 

These swaths of middle men siphon off tons of money from those most in need—the money allocated to actually treat people.  They create monitors to watch the mental health and the substance abuse providers on the ground, which, in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but in this peer-reviewed society gone wild (PRSGW), the pendulum has not only swung too far, but it has lodged itself into the side of Manute Bol’s head.

When you translate 500 “best practices” into 500 monitors, people in the trenches, the ones actually providing services can no longer function.  We stop having time to actually treat people and embark on a daily juggling act that even Squidward would find challenging. Let’s try this example: say some bean-counting, pencil-pusher decided that it’s best practice to see all 235 people on your caseload each week.  So some case manager somewhere will then run around to all 235 people and say, “Please sign this form to show that I was here.”  They will then—whether the person is drooling, tripping, or has a gun to their head—jump back into the agency van and speed away toward client 167.  But, hey, it will look great on that report for that bean counter.   My agency is not doing this, by the way (yet), but you get the idea.

This is happening all over the country.  The field is collapsing.  Put your stock in aluminum foil, folks, because the Uncle Louies of the world are going to need it.  The best example happened as my agency just announced the next round of massive budget cuts.  On the same day my agency raised our health insurance (a lot), slashed our PTO, and discussed lay offs, I heard a radio commercial during my drive home: Have you considered doing next to nothing while mental health care providers are being laid off in droves?  Join our middle men, bean-counting band of bad-karma case-manager cops.  Why actually do shit for a living, when you can move to a cushy, nearly pointless position in the heart of an entire colony of middle-management, like-minded Stepford Czars.

Now, I’m not saying all these folks are baby killers.  I have friends in several of these agencies, so I don’t say this lightly.  There are some impressive individual efforts, but overall this is a failed experiment (like American capitalism today).  But, overall, wrong career choices do have negative karmic consequences (just ask the Ghetto Shaman).

So the money these middle men receive for sanctioning mental health providers goes to hiring more of “them.”  So over time we end up with more monitors, monitoring less people that actually do stuff.

Someone at work joked recently “Therapy? We don’t have time for therapy.”

But you can bet we met all of our monitors for that month.  Rah!  If we can avoid treating anyone, we’ll do just fine.  These people must sleep at night by saying things like, we’re holding them accountable.  Of course no one’s holding them accountable. Hey, let’s have another layer of bureaucrats oversee them!  Yeah, that’s it, and eventually our healthcare system will resemble one of those Escher paintings from hell.  Oh, that’s right, it already does.  Fact: these folks shouldn’t be sleeping at night (not without Jacko levels of downers).   They are diverting money from places where it is sorely needed (aka, my checking account).

Our current healthcare reform debate is embarrassing.  To have important debates overrun with bullshit is depressing. This is important stuff, peeps; I’m talking to you Foxeteers. Just the facts, thanks, and leave the middle school rhetoric out of it.  The second healthcare wrinkle is legalese. Someone sues anyone anywhere in the U.S. and reams of paperwork are created in every nook-and-cranny of our system to assure this never happens again.  Oh, it won’t, because I don’t have time to see anyone on my caseload, let alone sleep with them. Lawyers, as usual, are at the heart of the problem.  This is where Tort reform is a must.  If a driver for my agency decides to have consensual nooky with a client in the back of the agency van (we call it the Mystery Machine, by the way, because of the mysterious things we find in it), of course, that staff person should be fired. The victim should not, however, be able to close the agency by successfully suing for millions of dollars in “damages.” Although, it is kind of fun watching a dissociative person drive a Dodge Viper through a county fair.

So each lawsuit designed to “help protect” the consumer, actually puts an increasingly debilitating strain on the entire system.  As a therapist, if I have to fill out one more form for the lawyers or the Stepford Czars, I’m gonna start mailing my clients a form that says, “Tell me about your mother…” with an enclosed bill.  Speaking of which, this IS a bill.  Subscribe to the Daily Discord, now, or it’s your turn to clean out the Mystery Machine.

Folks are finally taking notice of how the media has reduced the political debate to something akin to a cafeteria-style food fight.  Each side only lobs the meatballs of mutiny when the opposition party is on cafeteria duty.  Both patriotards and libertards (roughly 80% of the pop) are ready and willing to storm the Bastille, but for all the wrong reasons.  MSNBC tried to start a revolution to oppose Bush, and rightly so, and they got roughly forty-percent of the U.S. armed to the teeth with tiny condiment packets of petulance.  Then they tried to stop the food fight amidst the coronation of King Obama. Try as the libertard media might, those tater tot-toting Teabaggers came all the same (God bless them).  In fact, they are marching on Washington right now.  They are not exactly sure why they are marching, but the next ‘Fox Transmission’ should further terrorize them enough to dodge the tartar sauce of tyranny and counter with the two-fisted fish sticks of freedom!

Since Obama took office, the most anti-American, anti-government rhetoric has transitioned to the right.  You see, patriotards only love America when they’re fucking it up.  God forbid someone else should get a crack at it.  But as long as the Teabaggers allow their movement and message to be hijacked by the Hannity’s of the world, they are destined to be drenched by the pre-frozen rib-a-cues of repression.  Here’s a recent excerpt from Republican blogger, Andrew Sullivan, who landed a wad of hot mozzarella smack in the face of Teabaggers everywhere:

“Here’s a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.”

Of course, the last part is wrong.  Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the American people.  Many believe this dark road the patriotards and the Teabaggers have taken will ultimately back-fire on them like a cafeteria taco in an H1N1 victim.  But Sullivan is assuming that people are going to wise up, while the Flynn Effect and our educational institutions tank outright.  Sorry folks, but stupidity is likely to get more, not less, traction in the food fights to come.  This is why yelling something like Death Panels right before a vote will always have a chilling impact on legislation.  And, NO, Mr. Crank, Palin was not basing this statement on fact.  Patriotards like to yell shit and then try to connect the dots later, kind of like Iraq.  If there really are death panels in the UK, Palin didn’t know shit about them. Besides, they already exist here and now.  Life and death decisions are made every day here in the U.S., only with private insurance companies the decisions are based on cash and for Obama’s public option the decisions would be based on, er…cash. 

Countering Glenn Beck’s recent defamatory rant against Cass Sunstein, David Frum wallops the neococoon with the sloppy joes of justice.  This is a noble attempt to move the conservative dialogue toward some semblance of reality: 

“The ultimate happy ending of the story should not however close the page on this appalling episode of broadcast recklessness and political cowardice. We conservatives are submitting our movement to some of the most unscrupulous people in American life. This submission disgraces conservatism, discredits Republicans, and damages the country. It’s beyond time for conservatives who know better to join us at NewMajority in emancipating ourselves from leadership by the most stupid, the most cynical, and the most truthless.”

The patriotards are clearly the most responsible for breaking the country (only they haven’t figured this out).  Sorry, but the book The Collapse of America will have one chapter on Frank and Dodd, one chapter on Obama, and the other twenty-some-odd chapters will be entitled “W”.  Sure the libertards might have ruined us.  They are quite capable of doing so.  But, sadly, they never got the chance.

And make no mistake, the last showdown at the salad bar is coming.  The patriotards (forty-percent of the pop) are lining up on one side, under the guise of pro-life, pro-religion, pro-fundamentalism, and pro-free markets.  Meanwhile, the libertards (roughly forty-percent) stand for pro-choice, compassionate legislature, the green movement, eco-feminism, gay rights, and other socially liberal issues.   God, I hope the sneeze bar holds.

What both sides fail to understand is that neither faction owns the truth.  Both perspectives have valid points but both perspectives are mired in their own inherent ideology and stupidity, not to mention vanilla pudding.  And unfortunately both sides tend to champion the lowest common denominator.  Lately, there’s nothing more glaring than the Patriotard Menace.  They believe distortion after distortion until the truth ends up looking like Mr. Fabulous caught in a turbine. 

Healthcare debate update: I will now be paying $173 more per month for my family’s health insurance under this failing paradigm.  This happy news arrived after my last healthcare post.  I fear a public option too, but I don’t fear it nearly as much as those most in danger of personal economic collapse: those fightin’ forty-percent, the Italian dressing drizzled patriotards.

Michael Moore, Sarah Palin, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Rush “the salad bar” Limbaugh are all dangerously stupid individuals.  But our first amendment rights should prevail here.  They have the right to talk, but the size of their viewing audiences, particularly on the right, herald a rather gloomy forecast for our collective future. Stupidity resonates much further than it should.  Fear remains a key force in driving policy, and our media invariably never focuses on the real problems.  OMIGOD, Limbaugh reached the chicken salad! 

I hate to quote Pat Buchanan, because he’s been such a loon lately, but…

“We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others’ throats.”

And now for something completely different.  It’s time to implement a coup detater-tot on the libertards. A republican blogger, Jon Henke, appeared on the Rachel Maddow show last week.  They both agreed on a lot of his Republican criticism.  She glowed when he said, “the Republican Party has abandoned its intellectual roots.”  Say it aint so, Jon.  Henke admitted that much needs to change on his side of the aisle, but asked Rachel if she would start covering the mess on the left, aka, things like Acorn and the Spendulus package, which has more zeros after it than the S.S. Lexington.

At the very least, Rachel, try covering the libertard fringe with a hint of something once known as objectivity.  She was the most likely person on MSNBC to take this challenge, but she failed, miserably.  On a major cable news network, Maddow admitted she was not even willing to look at the other side of the debate.  It’s dead to her, like the week old ‘ham surprise’ hanging from the ceiling.  If I were Henke I would have called her out in those closing moments of the interview and battered her face with the perogies of partisanship.

I like Rachel Maddow, but Fox and The Crank are right on this point (happens once a year like clockwork).  If NBC is not going to be critical of Obama, EVER, under any circumstances, because the owners of NBC stand to make money on Cap and Trade, then they have officially sunk to the level of Fox News.  (Hint: this is not a good thing.)

To sum up, Mark Bowden from The Atlantic pointed out in his blog that no one is seeking the truth anymore:

“No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it [media entertainment news] for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all “news” is unapologetically propaganda.”

Hint: if Jon Stewart polls as the most trusted journalist, it’s time to resort to the Daily Discord.  Really subscribe NOW. And support our advertisers, er…as soon as we get some.

Much like the Frums, Sullivans, Wills, Bowdens, and Buckleys of the world, I too have flung my own controversial coleslaw to these ends.  In fact, I was one of the first to spit Jello from the cheeks of change.  Most rants in recent years involved the dismantling of conservatism outright.  I always wanted to fix it.  Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for his book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back.  His view will stand the test of time, and the Cranks of the world, who never identified the problem, can wallow in the burnt baked beans of human bondage.  So liberal media peeps, hit the showers.  As for the Wills, Buckleys, Sullivans, and the Frums of the world unite—shape of non-patriotardic.  And, for god’s sake, scrape that Thousand Island dressing off your nose.

P.S. You’re right about my last post, Crank.  At the time, I thought huffing all those cleaning products before my weekly blog was a good idea.  But, to win yet another round, I only reread my post three times before I understood it.  So there…

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.  The point of my last post, Mr. Crank (if that is your real name), involved the healthcare debate being hijacked by the propaganda arts, the Goebbels Peanut Gallery, if you will.  Those town hall paranoids were stoked by the “Fox Transmission”. Using fear in such a way has disturbing ramifications.  NPR just did a nice piece on this, but I never said there was nothing to fear (that was FDR).  Point being, this tactic is effective regardless of the issues being debated.  So for the healthcare debate, we double the number of those ‘real concerned Americans’ invading our town halls.  But sorry to break this to you, Cranko, our healthcare system is changing at light speed and not for the better. Your view of it is a rosy snapshot taken some years ago through a disposable camera now floating in someone’s unattended beer.  And I was clearly not championing Obamacare in my last post.  I stated that our current system ‘sucks ass’ and Obamacare is likely to ‘suck balls.’  What part of ‘sucks balls’ has you baffled? 

I am championing neither side, as usual.  But let’s say a phenomenal new healthcare system is developed for half the cost of your current policy (just hypothetically).  It could easily be derailed by something akin to repeatedly shouting death panels, over and over again.  I don’t want to play Sun City.  This tactic is working far too well.  Politicizing global warming is just as wrong as politicizing healthcare reform.  Using fear and lies to derail whatever threatens super capitalism brings us to a frightening juncture in U.S. history, kind of like the season finale of The Bachelor.  For a Dr. Seuss moment: fear tactics are more fearful than another healthcare option, I fear.  

As for healthcare, I understand the disadvantages of both sides.  You, sadly, are still way too enamored with one side of this prearranged lose-lose scenario.  I know why Obamacare would suck balls.  But, since you went there anyway, let me splain why your side of the current healthcare debate sucks ass.  If you’re loaded, you are correct; this country has the best healthcare available in the world, but for the other 97 percent of this country, not so much.  And that disparity is only growing.  Less and less people can take advantage of this increasingly expensive system.  Every day doctors and behavioral health providers are moving toward accepting only private pay, because they refuse to play this asinine claims-game any longer.  Claims are denied routinely, often for no reason, well, for one reason: no insurance companies can get those cool ice sculptures for their luncheons. 

Government red tape?  Dude, I have to fill out the equivalent to War and Peace to direct someone safely to our restrooms.  We had an hour long training the other day on how to fill out a taxi voucher.  No shit.  Punch line: it should have been two hours!  I still don’t understand it!

I give this system a D and it was a C just a few short years ago.  When something is broken, why not listen, not vote for, just listen to someone’s suggestion on how to fix it?  Obamacare may well add more layers of bureaucracy, but topping this shit pile would be challenging even for this banana republic.  Besides, another layer and it might collapse outright and we can start over.  And maybe, just maybe, there are contingencies in place so the public option wouldn’t completely monopolize healthcare, but no one asked.  Everything I heard came from the euthanize Obama squad (EOS), aka, the Fox News All-Stars.  My last health plan, Last Priority Health, was charging my boss six hundred dollars a month to insure my family.  Each year the cost went up, like 10-15%, and so did my copays.  For six hundred dollars a month there should be no copays and I should get a free blowjob every time I pick up my meds.  “Step up to the window, please” would have a whole new meaning.  

Here’s an example from my town.  I know more about the behavioral health side of life, and, yes, it was completely destroyed by Hillarycare.  Everyday I feel like Deniro in that movie Brazil.  The tsunami of paperwork is always looming over me.  But, for the purposes of this debate, there are nine psychiatrists currently in my area.  Eight work in my agency and the other guy is a private practitioner downtown.  My company is no longer taking private insurance and, much like my last place of employment, is no longer interested in playing the claim-game.  Now we only take AHCCCS (AZ state funds).  So homeless people still have their choice of eight psychiatrists and I, steadily employed, have one choice in fifty miles (Dr. Killpatient).  And, whereas state coverage is limitless, I have X amount of sessions and then I start paying in full.  Oh, that’s after I meet my deductible, which goes up year-after-year faster than a meth head at a Jolt Cola convention.  Each year more and more money comes out of my pay to cover my Incredible Shrinking Plan (1957, Grant Williams).

Doctors, meanwhile, don’t actually have time to meet with you anymore.  They are filling out paperwork and trying to not get sued, which is much easier to do if they can stay the hell away from you.  Thus, you get five minutes a year with your doc, and he is typing the whole time and probably thinking about baseball.  Crankly, your “great system” can’t get much worse, and if Obamacare is worse, great, at least I’ll never have to see clients anymore.  I can just Sumo Wrestle my papyrus pile back in my office.

As for your comment on Native Americans, I have authorized helicopters to take folks from their reservations to their doctor appointments.  No shit.  Oh, that’s only state funds again.  My insurance, for someone stupid enough to work for a living, won’t cover my trip from the lobby to the examination room. Native Americans truly have choice in Arizona and we flip the bill to get them wherever they need to go (at least on the behavioral health side).  I’m not saying this is right or wrong, I’m just sayin’.

Oh, and, by the way: NO, I am not expecting Obama to restore the rule of law.  That ship left port circa 2004.  I am only saying this: Crank, because NO LEADER IN KNOWN HISTORY EVER HAS.  Well, I suppose you could make the argument that we’re overdue.  That was the whole point back in 1776, but good luck with that.  Our term limits are our only hope, so I suggested Obama clean up your guy’s mess on the way out.  That’s why are founding fathers encouraged a revolution if anyone fucked with the Bill of Rights. 

I’ll try to come up with seven more ways to explain this to you, for your next seven posts.  How do you say ‘absolute power’ in Klingon anyway?  And, NO, I don’t care about spending at this point.  This is the part just before bankruptcy when you buy a Porsche with the last of your credit and go on a crack and hooker spree.  If you recall, I was for neither Bush’s nor Obama’s bailouts, but I also understand that capitalism ended last November, or at least capitalism as we know it.  This recovery is a farce.  While you had your Bush pom-poms in full bling, I was protesting, you know, back when something could have been done?  You probably backed Bush’s first bailout, as per “The Transmission”.  So blaming the guy who has been right all along is hardly a great tactic. But keep saying it over and over again and at least the Foxers will believe you.  I have backed NONE of this bullshit, so you lecturing me on being fiscally conservative is your best joke yet. 

Review time, kids: both sides are typically wrong these days.  Democrats (libertards) wrong on most things, Republican (patriotards/The Crank) wrong on most things, and a Third Way (Zano) right on most things.  You’ve been programmed to attack what you think is the only other side of the argument, binary boy, but what you’re failing to realize is that none of your bullets are finding the mark. 

Hat-tip on the discovery of the Sarah Palinlovian reaction. This is a very real psychological phenomenon.  I believe it stems from the realization that the Palin voter, by and large, best identifies this massive group of folks on the very edge of reason. I can hear you already, Crank.  Yes, there are tons of crazies on the left as well.  Maybe the Perez Hilton 2012 campaign will smoke out the shadow-side of green but, for now, the Palin poll will have to do.  You see there are plenty of crazies on both sides of the aisle these days, which is why I like to think I’m not even in the theater anymore (but in a good way).  Or maybe integralists are on the balcony, only this integralist is not beyond sneaking in a bag of rotten vegetables (just in case).

The fear generated around this last debate was created for one purpose: to derail the debate itself.  I don’t care if you’re from ACORN, or you’re a Swiftboater, you’re dead wrong.  The ends do not justify the means.  Right now there seem to be no good answers, but your unswerving ability to defend the sociopaths on the right is disturbing, but it does jive with the “Fox Transmission”.

Imagine that.

But, on a lighter note, a big hat-tip for your last posts, Crank.  Funny shit.  I actually have a related Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Blucher story (which is much more important than fixing healthcare).  When I was Eurailing across Europe some years back, I ended up on a tour of some château in Bruges, Belgium.  As it turns out, our stuffy tour guide was Flemish and anytime someone said Bruges (which the French pronounce Brouge), he, being all Flemishly nationalistic, would correct them with the proper Flemish pronunciation (Brook-uh).  So every time someone said Brouge, he would say Brook-uh.

And, of course, I would say “NEeHeheheeehee”.

So the Americans on the tour thought I was hysterical and everyone else just thought I was an obnoxious asshole.  As it turns out, they were both right.

Yesterday, a guy standing on a corner in downtown U.S.A asked me, “Would you sign this petition to support universal healthcare?”

And I said, “Unlike the rest of the country, I’m rather ambivalent about the whole thing.  Our current healthcare system sucks ass, but more government bureaucracy is rarely the answer.  Besides, the Dems are never going to get the bill passed, because Dems are, by their very nature, pussys.”

Now, I didn’t actually say that last sentence to that young college idealist.  I did say something arguably similar, such as, “Nice dog.  What’s that a retriever?”

But the other statement was implied.  If he was really listening, he would have picked that up. 

Back during the Bush fears people protested the dismantling of the Bill or Rights, wars of choice, and the freakishly frightening expansion of executive power (FFEEP).  They marched into town halls dressed in pink or some such, and I applaud them for it; heck, I was one of them.  I can accessorize in pink with the best of them.  Today, across our great nation, we had an organized group of political assassins invade our town halls to derail the debate itself.  Under Bush, town hall meetings were designed to disseminate White House talking points to a chosen few, prescreened sycophants.  Nothing would be derailed with a Bush protest, because there was no discussion, only proclamations and bullshit-ridden mandates from the neococoon.  No worries if you didn’t hear it over the screaming libertards, folks, we’ll repeat the message on Fox News a hundred more times by Thursday.  On the contrary, for this healthcare fiasco, folks went into town hall meetings to dismantle the actual debate itself. They didn’t want to even talk about the real issues, because America might choose “unwisely.” 

Translation: my personal stock portfolio might suffer.

The fact is, we were assailed by ringers, people in cahoots with Republicans and insurance companies, whose soul purpose was to scare the living shit out of the terminally dimwitted (maybe death panels could have practical purposes, hmmmmmn…I’m just saying).  The debate really comes down to this: behind door number one we have our current healthcare system, which is putting small businesses out of business everyday.  The rates are increasingly unaffordable and by 2050 Warren Buffet’s cryogenically frozen ass is anticipated to be the last insured American.  And even he will probably be bitching about his skyrocketing co-pays.  Door number two: for Obama’s plan you could keep your insurance or you could use a government run option similar to our VA system (which even Bill Krystol admits runs well). That’s about it.  A little healthy competition.  Maybe it wouldn’t be this huge government take-over.  But, of course, you don’t know what Obama’s plan really entails, because all you heard was: death panels, socialized medicine, Mexican Radio (1983) Wall of Voodoo. (I still can’t figure out that last one).

“But government isn’t the answer; it’s part of the problem.” 

There you go again…

That statement is ubiquitous in my worldview, but for most it seems only relative depending on who is in power.

Death Panels? AHhhhHHHhHhhhhh! They’re trying to kill my Alaskan Governor with Down Syndrome!

Oh, really…it’s her son that has…er.  And she’s no longer Governor.  Well, this is embarrassing.

 Death panels?  Really?  I have never heard anything so ridiculous derail public discourse since, well, insert any Discord post here.  In our current healthcare system, insurance companies and doctors determine whether or not you get the procedures approved or not.  Er, sounds eerily similar.  Or, if you do get the procedure approved, your insurance covers only a percentage, and they foreclose on your house to pay the difference.  It’s very American.

A certain faction of our population is in complete denial about the realities and limits of our current healthcare system and even our own mortality as human beings.  Every day doctors and administrators choose who gets what procedures.  Those “death panels” already exist as Advance Directives (which covers end of life choices).  A thousand page document and that’s the best you could do?  Well, it did work.  Truth is not nearly as important as the end result these days.  Very Crankvellian. But you keep scurrying around Chicken Littles; you’re so much fun to watch.

I run around and yell the sky is falling, when the sky is actually falling.  You yell the sky is falling when Fox sends “the transmission”.

I work in behavioral health and, as our budget slides into the abyss, we are deciding every day who gets what services in mental health land.  More and more crazy people wander our streets because our current system has more gaps in it than the combined malls of America.  Sorry, folks, but offering free service worked when this was a vibrant country with assets backed by things of actual worth. Hint: this is not that time.

Fact: today a homeless man in Tucson is not entitled to every procedure known to man to save the liver he decided to kill with several Maersk freighters worth of vodka.  Fact: the same would be true for with the public option.  And, yes, your insurance is only going to cover certain procedures.  Most of us normal peeps are not entitled to mega coverage, all the latest equipment, and a team of specialists headed by Dr. House, nor is it feasible.

Jon Stewart recently interviewed the originator of the death panel nonsense (you mean, Palin didn’t start it?) and, believe it or not, she’s even making less sense than old Sarah.  Stewart had to rip a page out of her hand to read the very phrase of Obama’s policy that made everyone go stark-raving mad.  The targeted phrase was something like: “the doctor can talk to you about life sustaining processes and end-of-life choices.” Here is the math:

Life sustaining processes + choices + stupidity + propaganda = death panels

I can see that.  I just forgot to carry the logic, is all.

I don’t trust the government either, but you cats are whacked. Look, I remain passionately ambivalent on this issue. As I’ve said before, we should focus on insuring our children and the truly disabled (aka, Republicans).  We’re going broke, so the plan needs to be realistic.  If that works, maybe healthcare coverage could be expanded to include the Discord staff and their families.  But why are so many people afraid of changing healthcare when the present system sucks ass so bad?  What’s worse than sucks ass?  OK, the next plan might suck balls, which is arguably worse.  Fox News started mass hysteria over a decision between a healthcare system that sucks ass and a healthcare system that sucks balls.  Well done.   

Obama’s plan might have added a great option for some and could have saved many many lives.  We’ll never know, because we never had the debate.  But wasn’t it heart warming to see stocks in United Healthcare and Pfizer rally the other day, when it became clear that the public option was failing?  Of course, the rest of the DOW dropped like a certain Republican senator’s pants at a truck stop men’s room, but it was still a feel good moment for the patriotards.  Perhaps you and Senator Craig should get a room.

I would like to point out, here and now, that you are not the tools of entrepreneurialism, but rather you are the tools of super capitalism, or maybe your just tools.   Most of you are so far removed from super capitalism it would take real math, Stephen Hawking, and a warp capable vehicle to even reach.

You will vote against your own interests time and time again. Soon you will probably not be insured or, if you manage to hold onto that precious policy, it will be jeopardizing your company’s very existence to maintain your benefits.  Can you say raise freeze? And, as time goes by, the insurance companies are going to get better and better at this game and you will lose more and more coverage as your premiums climb into the stratosphere.   So you won’t be able to pay the cover at the door and you’ll miss part of the ultimate Vegas experience.

My health insurance premium should not be as high as my rent.  The insurance company plans to fix that.  Soon it will be higher than my rent.  Enough is enough. I’ll show them.  I’m going to move into my hospital’s MRI machine.  Hang up my Hendrix poster and roll a fat one. 

This is what we are all facing as this current healthcare system continues its present trajectory and buries itself deep within our collective bowels. Oh, wait that procedure is not approved under your current policy either.  Sorry.

It should be interesting to see what is next on Obama’s agenda and what nonsense will be fabricated to derail it.  Fox News could get the patriotards to fear Jello products if they wanted to.  Stop the Jello menace!  Jello will lead to socialized gelatin extremism.  Then the t-shirts will adorn the Drudge Report: Jello is UnAmericun, Jello is Pudding Us On.  Oh, I can’t wait.

Jello is American as apple pie, damnit.  I won’t sit here and listen to you bad mouth an American Confectionary Institution!

I will try to stay ahead of this game.  As Obama proposes his policies, I will try to guess the Fox fear fabrication (FFF) to come. That should be fun and educational.  Well, not for half of you.  But to continue to prove, once again, that I am not a pessimist: here is my good news/bad news installment for the week: 

Bad News: Fact: an estimated 52 pubs are closing in England EVERY day. 

Good News: Fact: ninety percent of U.S. currency tests positive for cocaine! Par-tay!

Listen up patriorards…oh wait, so you all put on your thinking caps, this is a Fox News Alert! There, now that I have your undivided attention: the Bush legacy is inextricably linked to the Sarah Palin Phenomenon (SPP). The only reason I mentioned Bush was to segue to the stupidity yet to come. A vote for Bush Part Deux and then supporting Sarah Palin is not a position, it’s a diagnosis. Doing the same thing over-and-over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Dr. Killpatient, have the Thorazine ready. I am appalled that the same people who voted for Bush, twice, are enthusiastically supporting his female counterpart to set things right in 2012. I am even more appalled that we’re talking about nearly half the country. I never said you were alone, Goomis, it’s just that you should be. As the “mental health professional” in the room with over six years of bachelor level education, when really it was only 5 ½ years, exaggerator, going from Bush to Palin is like divorcing your first husband for beating you and then marrying that sweet hunky guy down the street, who immediately starts beating you! As my domestic violence therapist oftensays, your picker is broken. But that’s OK. These things are fixable, but the first step in the healing process is recognizing the problem. This isn’t just a post, peeps, it’s an intervention.

Crank, there’s very little I can argue with in your last post, because you consistently misrepresent my position. With one notable exception: “Mick, you really haven’t actually read any of her (Sarah Palin’s) stuff, have you?”

She can write?!

Sadly, the Fox News ideological pattern is neurological and it seems We the People have suffered from some kind of society-wide stroke recently. From the psychiatric perspective, the neococoon certainly is anti-social, neurotic, and stress inducing (like Midget Reiki). What we are witnessing is the Hannitization of the Republican base. Facts and logic have no place here. Only facts that back their own ideology are viewable from the reason-twisted depths of the neococoon. Patriotards hate the alternative so much that they will follow any Tom, Dick or Sarah that is believed indigenous of “Real America.” In one of my articles, I discussed how the human mind is easily tricked (again and again).

• Fact: our minds are easily duped by any semi-talented media spin meister.
• Fact: we should be on the lookout for this in the future, because the media has completely tanked.
• Fact: you’re not getting it yet.

Here’s the even sadder part. History goes in cycles because eventually people forget the mistakes they once made and, oops, history repeats itself. What is stunning these days is this: people don’t even realize they made the mistake in the first place. So now, presto, we can avoid all those pesky decades of reform and make the same mistake six to eight seconds later. Here’s how it works: some talking head puts the dirty laundry on the spin cycle and we, as a society, are ready to lock-and-load a few minutes later with Bad Idea: Part Deux.

Enter Sarah “I really don’t know a hell of a lot” Palin. How does one penetrate this bubble of non-reality? This is all deeply disturbing to me, like my friend Shag.

Hey, let’s play a game. Name one credible conservative pundit that…

Oh, a hard game.

Now, now, let’s name a credible conservative pundit who has been right about something in the last decade. …

This game sucks! I don’t want to play.

Wait, here’s the clincher. Name one of those four conservatives left standing that thinks Sarah Palin is a viable candidate in the near future?

You mean, there aren’t any?! So she’s sooo poorly qualified that her profound lack of experience, credibility, and smarts has even pierced the impossibly thick exoskeleton of the neococoon?

You mean to tell me, no dems, no independents, no one from any other county on the planet, and *gasp* no credible Republican thinks she’s a viable candidate? What about David Frum? George Will? Andrew Sullivan? Christopher Hitchens? Heck, even your own hero, Charles Krauthammer, thinks Palin’s a joke.

So how, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, are 42% of the population of the United States of Dysphasia even less informed than the people with Terminally Wrong Syndrome (TWS)? Hmmmm. Oh, that’s right, a few conservative propaganda experts are still grinding out those 24 hour snooze cycles that are somehow successfully downloaded directly into the brainpans of the patriotards.

Now, I admit, Palin is getting a raw deal. This poor woman was thrust into the limelight by this crazy old coot, who, incidentally, stopped making sense several years ago. But couldn’t that also explain the George W. Bush story?

Thanks a bunch Herbert Walker Texas Deranger and John McCognitive Decline.

The Democrats suck, but they’ll be out of power in no time because, say what you want about those liberatards, they won’t vote in a total asshole twice. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice………………..we won’t get fooled again.

At least the dems went into this round with two of their star pupils (sad as that may be).

On the other hand, here is the vetting process from the neococoon in its entirety:

Raise your right hand if you love America.

OK, great.

Raise your right hand if you think the world is 6,000 years old

Great, you’re in.

What’s not to love?

Your quote: “the thought that if you are conservative, religious and value all human life you can’t be taken seriously is flawed in every sense.” I agree. That was the whole point of my last article. Thank you for summing up my point. You can take off the Hannity filter any time now. You are free to move about the cabin. Newsflash: conservatives have some important ideas and represent a valuable perspective, but the problem is, it’s been hijacked by morons. One’d think you’d notice.

I’m really crossing my fingers this point sinks in. Here it goes: it’s not about your views, Crank, and never has been; it’s about your unswerving ability to hire third-graders to champion your views.

Yes, Fox is huge, which is, once again, my point. They are the quintessential bottom feeders. Why are they so big? Not a great sign for the future. Liberals don’t have to like Air America either. They are both ideology driven, only Air America has four viewers and Fox has half the country. And, your quote “maybe he (Obama) should leave office now.” Are you kidding? You and the Foxers cheered on the worst president in history for nearly eight years. In six months, I am already greatly disappointed with Obama. You see, I use something called independent thought. You should try it some time.

And, like you, I believe smart people and patriotic people should not be mutually exclusive categories. It’s just that, these days, you can’t seem to be both (at least not on TV). I am basing this on observations. You see, one of the most crucial things about humanity in this day and age is a concept Freud called Reality Function, which stresses independent observation and the importance of rising above societal-based inherited patterns. One does this by eliminating all of those pesky preconceptions that muddle independent thought.

The one thing we must teach our children is the value of independent thought (which is on the endangered list, by the way). Yes, the shadow sign of green is often psychotic and troubling, but there is no better measuring stick for this failure of Freud’s Reality Function than those 42 percent of our country ready to forget what brought this country to its knees a few short months ago and vote for the only person who clearly represents Bush’s third term, Sarah “what does this red button do?” Palin.

I do agree with the Crank that Bill Maher is wrong. America isn’t stupid, just hopelessly misguided. OK, it isn’t as simple as that. The Flynn Effect, the theory that discovered that we, as a species, get 3 IQ points smarter each generation, has finally screeched to a halt. Does that mean we’re all stupid as Maher asserts? I wouldn’t put it as bluntly as him, because I’m trying to sarcastically salve society, not overtly fuck with it. I am still rooting for this bunch, thus the tragic optimist plug at the top of this website. The fact remains, America’s IQ may be dropping for the first time this century. Is that related to the Fox News phenomenon?

Things that make you go, hmmmmm.

Crank, you do an awesome job dismantling ‘green,’ and I encourage you to continue the good fight. And I couldn’t agree more with your last paragraph, but please, for crying out loud, turn that same critical eye toward the heaping pile of shit in your corner of the room. The other night while listening to Fox talk about ‘The Obama culture of corruption,’ I couldn’t help but think, “there’s alcohol of some sort in my Listerine, isn’t there?”

Sure the corruption they were talking about is probably true (hint: Obama is a politician), but these days there are at least five Republican scandals for every one Democratic scandal. That is math we can believe in. But, as I have come to understand, this doesn’t make any sense to the neococoon and invariably falls on deaf ears. You see, they are a binary bunch: good/bad, liberatard/not liberatard, right/wrong, American/anti-American, terrorist/not terrorist.

I know, I know, does not compute, ignore, moveon.org. Warning, Will Robinson, Danger, Danger!

Geez, wasn’t changing the patriotard’s perspective one of Hercules’ labors? I think it was right before he diverted that river and right after he wrestled that giant squid.