More things which make me wonder

                 More things which make me wonder.....

A current commercial hyping the rigors of car buying  makes me wonder. Is  the process so arcane and difficult , and salesmen so  evil and accomplished that, no matter how hard one tries, the unsuspecting customer will be  browbeaten and coerced into buying  something other than what they really wanted?  

        The commercial features two persons, obviously in different locations, discussing the horrors of this process and maddeningly finishing each other's sentences throughout the advert.  Along the way we see buying an automobile analogized to ordering a meal in a restaurant, for Pete's sake!  "Gimme a  Big Mac, fries,  and a two door hardtop!"  Really?

        The leap of illogic here is that there must be a better way which, they are happy to point out, is to go to the sponsor's place of business and just pay whatever  price they happen to have pasted on the windows of their vehicles, because unlike all the other scumbag dealers in the marketplace, they and only they, are trustworthy, loyal, helpful (insert the rest of the Boy Scout's Creed here). "Trust us, we're here for you!"   

        What amuses me about this on reflection is that for me at least (and my wife, because I asked her) in this instance, and for all the production value and expense,  the first goal of commercial advertising has not been met. Neither one of us can remember who the sponsor is!

Short takes:

If "Ted" Cruz is so damned proud of his Cuban heritage, why doesn't he go buy his real first name - Rafael?

Now that Dodge has been forced to do a massive recall on their vaunted Ram Trucks,  will Sam Elliot do an apology commercial?  "Ram tough -  (some of the time)."

Are contestants  on the "Bachelor /Bachelorette" reality shows actual mentally defective sluts  or are they just playing them on TV?

Is there an ad agency somewhere which specializes in nifty and original names for local TV stations' radars?  We have  Accu-radar, Super Doppler 9,000, Storm Tracker 2 HD, Storm Authority 5K, and the list goes on. If I were a weather guy, I'd hold out for "Big Ass, All Seeing Sumbitch""

Speaking of weather, who exactly did the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore piss off all those years ago? It must have been intense, because ever since, if there's a really, really big storm, ol' Jim will be in the thick of it getting wet and blown around.

Finally, how is it possible for a fairly small dog to occupy so much space on a king sized bed that I have about an eight inch wide place on the very edge in which to sleep? 

Liberal Moron?

     This in response to a comment from a former student and Iraq vet who implied I am a "liberal moron" because I posted a meme showing  Fox News in a bad light . 

            I root for the side which doesn't waste our troops in a war we started and never finished, against an enemy who never attacked us. Every PTSD, amputee, and otherwise injured soldier we sent to Iraq lies on the head of George W. Bush. The soldier you posted in the meme is clearly a WWII soldier, the next to last "just" war we engaged in, Korea being the last.

         Since then we have, in the name of Oil, or "We gotta kill someone for 9/11" sent brave young Americans off to die in places where we should not have been. Many who served in Iraq feel angry at those who criticize that war, in the same fashion Viet Nam vets (some of them) criticized anyone who thought that  was a bad war. The reaction is one of "I was there, and if the war was an unjust war, what I did was wrong." That anger should be directed at Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the neocons who propelled us into it, but in many cases it isn't. Why? Can't answer that.

         It doesn't take a lot of critical analysis, starting with what Colin Powell and numerous Bush White House staffers have later said, to figure out that we ill used our military by invading Iraq. It only takes a rudimentary knowledge of history to realize that Russia and Great Britain failed in Afghanistan , as we probably will in the long run. It also takes a sense of the change over time in the world to understand that which has brought us to the point at which we are. Terrorism changes the entire face of how we use our troops. WW II and Korea were simple. we knew where and who the bad guys were. My war (the Cold War) was scary, but also simple, it was us and the Soviets and we knew, as they knew, that we could destroy them no matter what they did first. In the end, they went broke trying to keep up in an economic system which didn't work, If anyone won the Cold War it was Adam Smith, certainly not any US President.

        Viet Nam was fought because we were too dense to see that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist first, a Communist second. He begged us not to let France steal his country again, and we not only refused to help, we helped France. 58,000 US troops dead and over a million Vietnamese dead later, we left. Nixon called it "Peace with honor", but we and the world  knew better. Jump ahead from 1975 to 20015. We now have $35 billion annual trade and $1.1 annual investment in Vietnam. No one had to die to accomplish this, but they did. This was the last war we fought with any semblance of "conventional" tactics, and when these broke down in the 1960s, it became the guerilla quagmire which lasted until 1975 when we declared victory and retreated. Many Viet Vets have never come to grips with that, but those who have returned to Vietnam , have, in many cases.

         The current Mideast mess is far worse and far different than Vietnam, because the aspect of religious fanaticism (on both sides) is in the mix, as well as terrorist tactics (can't always tell the good guys from the bad guys, and sometimes they're the same). I wish I had the answer, but I don't. Unfortunately at this point, with 13,000 US dead (civilian and military, and half are civilians) and a total of somewhere around 350,000 dead, we are no better off than when Saddam Hussein ran Iraq. Counting all the deaths, we are for worse off. The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result. 

        So call me a liberal moron, but I served this nation 26 years, so don't you dare question my patriotism. Perhaps the better patriotism to question would be that of the old men who sent the young men to die in the desert in a war based on hype, lies, and (since "W,"  upon taking office didn't even know what Sunnis and Shi'ites were [fact] and why they hated each other) gross ignorance on the part of an easily manipulated President with an agenda.  I grieve for all the casualties we suffered in Iraq, but more so because they never should have occurred.

I Wonder

Things which make me wonder:

I have heard several commercials in recent weeks which seem to feed from our societal addiction to acronyms and miracle cures.  Most of these "conditions" have been well known for years, but apparently a catchy acronym was needed to sell a new drug(s)  which, if it doesn't kill you with the several dozens of side effects just might ease whatever the rest of mankind has just quietly suffered in silence for so long.

 The most recent was a commercial for the problem some individuals have exhibited when using opiates for pain management. while the issue has been around for about a century, we now have a catchy name  - OID! (opioid induced constipation. Why? So a drug company can name your symptoms, so you can then ask your Doctor to prescribe their new drug.  

In the same fashion, we have in the past several years, "catch-phrased" any number of long standing well known medical problems, each with its own "NEW DRUG" and (in smaller font) numerous side effects.

Movantik! (possible side effects, tears in the intestinal lining)

Relistor! (same side effects as above plus opiate withdrawal and diverticulitis)

Amitiza! (mood changes, swelling of limbs, problems breathing, nausea, vomiting, headache and trouble sleeping)

OR -  you could eat a diet higher in fiber and drink more water, add some olive oil to your diet, and maintain a healthy electrolyte balance - side effects - essentially none!

OR - you could break your opiod addiction!

Of course we have already seen  AFIB, PAD, etc. All with "new" treatments, all with "new" side effects, and all with names picked by advertising agencies to be catchy, easy to remember and easy to tell your doctor you want, not because you've done the research, but because you've seen the commercial.

Another thing I wonder about: Do pickup trucks  run better when their advertising has some sort of  semi-patriotic/cowboy/country song associated with them? Are they even better when the singer is obviously trying to reprise Bob Seger's "Like a Rock,"  but lacking that talent, simply screams raspy nonsense instead?  Also, why do all truck commercial voiceovers  sound like Sam Elliot? Does Sam even own a truck?  Does Bob  Seger?

A quickie: If you walk all the way around Vin Diesel, is he actually three dimensional, in contrast to his acting which exhibits only one?

Based solely on observation of local auto dealership TV advertising: Is it actually mandatory to use your children and /or your dog in your commercials? As a corollary to that issue, why doesn't someone, anyone, tell certain dealers that they  should consider paying professionals to do their commercials, vice doing  it themselves and speaking and looking like inbred hicks?

At what exact time in what exact motion picture  did some producer and/or director  have this idea? "I know, let's take the script and insert "fuck" every seventh word for every second adult in the cast?"  I think it was somewhere between Tropic Thunder, and "The Heat."  I loves me some Melissa McCarthy, but dang girl, we all know the word, you're  being scripted to use it as punctuation.  

It's not the word which I find offensive, it's the redundant gratuitous use of it. As an example of when it's funny, try Mel Brooks' "History of the World", where it's used exactly once (The Roman Senate scene) or Animal House where it is hilarious, as in "Hey, you fucked up; you trusted us!"  A classic example of the overuse of an individual swear word may also be found in the Southpark "Shit" episode.

 

I also wonder how Faux news viewers can complain about "liberal media bias"  when most of the ones I know freely acknowledge that they absolutely never watch any other news source than Fox. What is the sound of one hand clapping? How does one compare with only one example? Oh, but wait, I forgot - these persons are being told -  by Faux - of the dreaded liberal bias, so they are spared having to actually use critical analysis to make up their own minds. 

These and other conundrums make me wonder.

Faux Follies

          Faux News is at it again. This time it's a Faux News website headline trumpeting    "Obama seeks to ban Social Security recipients from owning  guns"  Oh, the horror, the horror.  Well, it might be, if it were true in the context that Faux wants its ignorant readers to believe that it is.  As a Social Security recipient in his early 70s, I would be furious if the government or any other entity told me I couldn't have a gun for hunting. A handgun would be irrelevant in my case, since statistically, handguns in the home harm far more unintended or heat of anger victims than they do actual bad guys.

        Placed in context, the story is very different. Under an existing law (More about the law in a moment) the Veterans Administration is tasked with reporting anyone in their cognizance, meaning specifically, those receiving some sort of Veterans benefits; this was aimed primarily at PTSD.  Any veteran receiving "voluntary " treatment by the VA is not subject to said review. The purpose was to insure that those who were so profoundly mentally incapacitated such as to be a danger to themselves or others would not have access to guns. This might have kept James Holmes on the radar, had he been a vet. He wasn't and 12 died in Aurora. The same is true for the deranged VA Tech killer.

          “a veteran, surviving spouse, or child who is mentally incapacitated, deemed mentally incompetent, or experiencing an extended loss of consciousness shall not be considered adjudicated as a mental defective” for purposes of the Gun Control Act, “without the order or finding of a judge, magistrate, or other judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such veteran, surviving spouse, or child is a danger to him or herself or others.”   

        Discussion of this provision was carried on throughout the Bush administration but was largely little regarded by most Americans. The actual implementation was amended thus: The Veterans Medical Administration has not submitted any disqualifying records on VA beneficiaries to the FBI for inclusion in NICS for any medical/psychiatric reason (like PTSD), unless those veterans had been involuntarily committed under a state court order to a VA medical facility because they posed a danger to themselves or others. In those cases, the state in which the court resides would submit the disqualifying record to the FBI. In plainer English - people who are mentally incompetent and dangerous to themselves and others shouldn't have guns.  

        Now, the story I promised earlier. This law is not recent. it was passed 22 years ago, to a thunderous silence by a Republican controlled Congress and signed into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Again - a Republican Congress did this, a fact which Faux News will not mention. Jump ahead to the present. President Obama has made no proposal, none,  to bar Social Security recipients from gun ownership. Yeah, I know what the headline says, and like most Faux News drivel, it is aimed at inflaming that portion of the population which gets their news from only Faux News, ergo, never engages in critical analysis of multiple sources. It is skewed to enflame, not inform.

        Having mental incompetents armed is already a national crisis (see Colorado, Aurora) This Faux article in a typical sleight of information maneuver, cites one case, a veteran , not a senior, who was being investigated by the VA under a the 1997  law, and in true Faux News fashion extrapolates it to the entire population. If you truly think persons deemed mentally incompetent should be allowed guns, then you are right up there with the several shrinks, all of whom have known that their clients were mentally unstable, yet did nothing to bring it to the attention of those who needed to know. The results: 12 dead in Aurora, more dead at UVA, more dead at Sandy Hook.

        The actual Obama proposal was simply to extend the same rigor we use with veterans, to another group of federal funds recipients, those on Social Security. Taking emotion out of it and using simple logic (never Faux's strong suit) it is a common sense approach to keeping the mentally incompetent from needless accidental, or mistakenly purposeful,  gun tragedies. It is exactly the same principle as the 1997  law which has been around since 1997, passed by a Congress (the 105th) in which both houses were controlled by Republicans. I repeat, REPUBLICANS PASSED THIS LAW WHICH DISARMED ABOUT 88,000 VETERANS DEEMED MENTALLY INCOMPETENT. Was the Far Right angry then? Of course not, because Obama wasn't President. If Republicans thought disarming the mentally incompetent was a good idea then, why not now? If you're 85 and healthy, this law is of no consequence to you. If you're 65 and crazy as a bedbug, this proposal  protects you and your family.

        On a broader canvas, while I generally respect the doctrine of doctor patient privilege, I'm really tired of seeing deranged persons who should either be institutionalized or disarmed, killing innocent Americans. Reading after the fact, as in the case of James Holmes, Adam Lanza and the Virginia Tech shooter, that their  psychiatrist/counselors had ample concern regarding their states of mind and violent ideations, yet told no one and did nothing  sickens me. I'm even more tired of this obvious, no brainer idea, that the insane shouldn't have lethal weapons, being a political football instead of doctrine.

  

They deserve it, we don't.

Ronald Reagan with his absolutely insane supply 

side theories was elected in 1980. How's that old 

"Trickle Down" economics working for ya?

I'm really really sick of hearing the same drivel 

from the Far Right ala "What's happened to this 

country?", when what they are

complaining about is attributable, in no small 

measure to the policies of the party they blindly 

support. Granted, there are other factors, such as 

the results of destabilizing Iraq (remember that?) 

which are presently not in any one American's 

sole control, but are world wide phenomena, but 

the CEO - worker gap is almost uniquely 

American, as is the cost of medical care increase. 

Drug costs here far exceed prices for the exact 

same medications (brand by brand) in Europe. 

Why? Gutless legislators and a drug industry 

which spends more on advertising and lobbying 

by far, than on research and development, all 

while lying to the public that the 

reverse is true.

What is truly troubling about all this is that 

persons who consider themselves political 

conservatives and vote for the same group of 

bandits who support the lax-to-nonexistent price 

regulation of the US drug industry, will read this 

and assume I'm indulging in the Faux News 

practice of "Just making shit up." Nay, Nay, all I 

write, unless I specify that it is my opinion, is fact 

based (again unlike Faux News.) So, my 

Conservative friends, if this meme bothers you 

even a little (and it should) and you try to figure 

out yet one more way to somehow blame your 

misery on the Black guy in the White House, You 

are delusional and you are the problem.

I have numerious very bright conservative friends 

who simply refuse to consider or even 

acknowledge any "inconvenient truths" if they 

conflict with their inbuilt biases and pre (mis) 

conceptions. "The truth is out there" as Mulder 

and Scully would say. It's as close as using a 

judicious and critical analysis of data readily 

available by Googling . How tragic it is, that so 

many Americans will reject out of hand, what 

they can deduce and learn by the use of logic and 

reasoned judgement, in favor of the rantings of a 

Trump, Santorum, Cruz or Walker. If you vote for 

the principles (oxymoron alert!) of these men, 

you deserve what you get. 

Unfortunately those of us who can reason and 

don't deserve it will possibly get it too!

What Agenda?

        I am now officially sick and tired and over the use of the term "Gay Agenda." The word "agenda"  has become, over time, a code word used by persons who have problems with the very existence of gay people. When I ask a hater to actually describe the so called "Gay agenda" it usually involves some sputtering about "recruiting" or "flagrant and  deviant sex" or, in the most egregious and diametrically incorrect insult ever handed a group, the pedophilia card, as played by a moron in a FaceBook   thread last night. For the record, he vast majority of pedophiles self identify as heterosexual, many like Jerry Sandusky, actually married with kids.  "Gay" and "pedophile"  are practically antonyms as shown in various studies here's a short selection from one.

"Groth and Birnbaum  studied 175 adult males who were convicted in Massachusetts of sexual assault against a child. None of the men had an homosexual adult sexual orientation."

         If you actually (again, OK you "have gay friends", but have you ever actually openly talked with them about this?) ask an out and functioning gay person what the "Gay Agenda" is, they will most likely respond with  "What agenda?"  Upon further discussion it will turn out that the  "agenda", such as it is, is just about exactly the same as it was African Americans in the sixties - equal status and protection under the law as other Americans. Period. Exclamation point.  How sad it is that any group seeking what the constitution guarantees all Americans  (equal protection under the law) is labeled as having an agenda, especially when the term is used almost as a curse word.  The current politicization of this issue has elevated primarily  because one side of the political spectrum (the Far Right, Evangelicals, and uber Catholics, a la Rick Santorum, have made it one by appealing to the basest and most ignorant of those in the body politic.

         My brother, a pretty smart guy, takes this one step further, that being to simply ask, "And in any case, what does it matter?"  Why do some  need to attempt to refute the personal accounts of millions of gays who have said over and over again that it isn't a personal choice? Do they need it to be like holding up liquor stores - something one can choose or not choose to do? Why does someone else's personal behavior , social status or sexual orientation in any way interface or interfere with their personal space?

        The one thing we know for sure is that anyone , being heterosexual,  has  zero true personal internal perspective and/or frame of reference, ergo all they  actually can do is offer their opinion on the subject. Yet these persons  choose to attempt to refute the personal statements of millions of LGBT persons.  Why would that be? Are they asking for special treatment which the haters are unwilling for them to receive? Are they criminals? Why the antipathy and  denial? Truthfully coming to grips with the reasons for their own bias and personal  position as evidenced by what they write might be revelatory.  Perhaps Shakespeare was right, and the fault is not in their stars, but within them selves.