I read with great interest a story in the Monday newspaper about a student from UCLA who posed as a pregnant teenage girl so as to pull a "Sting" on Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is, of course, the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party devoted to promoting abortion amongst women. If you think that's an unfair characterization of their purpose, you need only check the public record to appreciate that a greatly disproportionate percentage of their efforts and funding are directed to providing Abortion services compared to all other methods of birth control. And when you think about it, that rather stands in contradiction to the name of the organization, since there's nothing "Planned" about pregnancy, at least when it comes to 99% of Planned Parenthood's pregnant clients.
But let's set aside for the moment that Planned Parenthood does a crappy job of preventing pregnancy, is the single largest agency promoting abortion in America, and rarely advocates for unexpected mothers to carry their children to term, that being so 70s and all, not to mention having a whiff of Religious Fundamentalism about it. No, the bigger question is: why is Planned Parenthood aiding and abetting Pedophiles and Pimps?
The case of Student Activist and You Tube star Lila Rose makes it abundantly clear that they are. Ms. Rose has "Stung" several Planned Parenthood clinics all over the country, asking for an abortion even though she made it clear that she was a minor female and her boyfriend was an adult. In the latest instance, she told a counselor that she was 13 and that her boyfriend was 31 (nice symmetry there; I wonder if the folks at PP appreciated the Irony?). She then stated she didn't want him to get in any trouble, since Health Care workers are required to report instances of statutory rape as well as other sex crimes. The "aide" in question told Ms. Rose that if she reported that a 31 year old man was involved, she would have to report it. Then, to move the abortion option forward, the aide tells Ms. Rose "OK, I didn't hear the age. I don't want to know the age." Ms. Rose then suggests she portray the father as a Middle School classmate, and the Aide agrees with her.
This isn't by any means the first time pro-lifers have conducted stings on Planned Parenthood and forced similar damaging admissions. What is surprising though has been the lack of follow through by the Media, various regulatory agencies and our Prosecutors. For example, why do Planned Parenthood employees get off with suspension, administrative penalties and only the very occasional termination? Where are the criminal charges for aiding and abetting sex crimes? And why does Planned Parenthood as an Organization get off with virtually no penalties? Where are the Grand Juries investigating what is clearly an institutionalized attempt to subverting the laws that protect Minors from Pedophiles? Why aren't the RICO statutes used against PP in what is clearly the very behavior pattern of Organized Crime for which the laws were meant?
More than anything else, why do we fund with billions of our tax dollars an organization devoted to the destruction of human life, both nascent and living? It's bad enough they advocate for not just abortion but abortion in its most gruesome forms, including Partial Birth abortion on full-term babies. It's bad enough that they advocate for girls as young as 13 being allowed to get abortions without the knowledge of their parents. Now they not only advocate for the availability of Abortifactants like Plan B for girls as young as 13 and it's accessibility by men, they are caught time and time again enabling criminal activity.
Absent the "Sting" aspect of this story, the case in question bears remarkable similarities to a Blog I did a few days ago wherein I described the recent court ruling to make the Plan B "Morning After" pill available to girls of 17 - and eventually to girls of any age - without a prescription and without Parental Notification. Planned Parenthood has been one of the loudest and most effective advocates for this policy. The dirty little detail that was played down in most Media reports, though, was that Plan B could also be purchased by adult men. I connected the rather obvious dots in asking why - if Abortion Advocates were truly concerned about empowering only teenage girls - this drug would be sold to any man other than the child's father?
The clear result of such a policy is to enable Pedophiles and Pimps, the only males who would stand to gain - either personally or monetarily - from such a policy. Pedophiles get to "clean up their mess" time and time again, not to mention improve their prospects for repeatedly having unprotected sex with minors, just by getting their victims to take two pills. Pimps get to improve their Bottom Line by managing unwanted pregnancies in a cost effective manner. The fact that the inevitable outcome of allowing men to purchase Plan B would be an explosion of STDs amongst prostitutes and minor girls seems to have escaped the Social Engineers in the Democrat Party, the Federal Government, and their various advocacy groups.
Planned Parenthood: making it safe for Pervs to rape your underage daughters.
Your tax dollars at work.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Public Health Rumors
In regards to public health concerns, there are several Truisms, or Old Wives' Tales, regarding the contamination of food and water by human waste that circulate with some frequency and are given considerably more credibility than they deserve, in many cases causing undue alarm with the public. Most of this phenomenon can be traced to the Internet, wherein when one false or questionable e-mail gets wide circulation, and takes on the appearance of legitimacy. This is a well documented phenomenon, and this and ones like it have inspired various fact-checking sites such as "Snopes" and "Mythbusters".
We review some of the more common myths below:
Myth No. 1) The average person will eat a "peck" of dirt before they die. A peck is equivalent to a quarter-bushel, eight dry quarts in terms of volume, or nine litres on the metric scale.
Harking back to at least the 17th century, this has been an oft repeated - and much beloved - bit of conventional wisdom. While convincingly more plausible back in the 1600s when people washed their vegetables none too often and their persons even less, it has become less so today by virtue of ever-improving standards of cleanliness for food as well as general hygiene. While there is considerable documentation of the intentional ingestion of dirt - or coprophilia - this is considered to be an isolated phenomenon. References to the unintentional ingestion of dirt, far from being a societal problem of any import, rather are considered to be a cultural means to console people in times of personal crisis. Parents have for generations used this simple aphorism to comfort a child who finds a bug in their cereal, or a friend who has suffered a financial reversal.
While the Truism is almost universal in its application, it also turns out to be essentially true. Over the course of a 78 year lifespan, a person would need to ingest a mere 1/10th of one percent of a dry ounce of dirt per day to consume a "peck" over a lifetime. Persons who invoke the "five second rule" just once per week ingest in excess of ten times this amount in a single occurrence. Persons of even the most stringent hygiene consume this much dirt regardless of their precautions.
Myth No. 2) If you drink a quart of water per day, you will consume a quart of E. coli bacteria in one year.
This is one of the more popular rumors circulating, but for this to be true, the water would have to be .27% pure E. coli, or 2,700 ppm (parts per million). Since E. coli is generally found in concentrations only 10% of the more common Coliform bacteria, total contamination of water by fecal matter would have to be an astounding 27,000 ppm of Coliform. At that rate, fecal contamination would be detectible by taste, smell and sight. These concentrations have only ever been found in the drinking water of some Third World countries, parts of Detroit, MI, a small section of a neighborhood known as "The Heights" in Houston, TX, and France.
Further to these studies, while all Coliform originates from feces, E. coli is shown to be the only form that has any noticeable impact on public health.
Myth No. 3) Water on commercial airliners is routinely contaminated by the self-contained septic systems on the airplane.
This has been a regular concern with airliners, as sundry studies by the FAA have found an incidence of Total Coliform contamination in the drinking water of commercial aircraft as high as 15 times that of normal drinking water. Coincidentally, studies over the past five years have shown that the frequency of occurrence of contamination seems to have risen in direct proportion to the financial reverses suffered in the airliner industry. Since Coliform bacteria concentrations are unaffected by the frequency with which the water is cycled through the self-contained systems on most airliners, this has led to some uncomfortable assumptions by health experts as to the source of contamination. Subsequently, Federal investigators spent three months reviewing the maintenance logs of all commercial airliners to investigate the phenomenon.
Those in-depth studies revealed that American-based airliners routinely fell within safe Coliform guidelines, while airliners from the Middle East (with the exception of Israel), showed Coliform contamination over 50% of the time. Surprisingly, while Western European airliners showed Coliform contamination an average 30% of the time, airliners from France were contaminated 90% of the time, as were 90% of all the planes of all other carriers combined who replenished their water supplies during stopovers in France. Thus, it is assumed that France skewed the averages of all other European countries.
A review of Third World countries found a wide range of Coliform contamination, with India and Cuba doing the worst, with contamination on average of 60% of the time, while Australia and New Zealand did the best, with average contamination of only 25%, slightly better than their counterparts in the more developed West.
A separate study on military aircraft found that over 99% of the U.S. fleet passed all tests for the presence of Coliform. Only Air Force One routinely failed, showing the presence of Coliform 100% of the time. The period of the study ran from Jan. 20th to April 20th, 2009.
Myth No. 4) The Mexican beer Corona is yellow because brewery workers urinate into the vats during the brewing process.
This Myth turns out to be absolutely true, and is the reason it is always consumed with a precautionary slice of lime.
Myth No. 5) Dark beer is colored with Feces.
This appears to be mostly apocryphal, and more attributable to the fact that the consumption of Dark Beer is likely to turn one's feces dark upon defecation, as opposed to any external contamination of the brew itself. There is also little in the historical record to support such a practice, other than the following poem, traced back to an issue of Poor Richard's Almanac in the mid-18th century, and possibly the hand of Benjamin Franklin:
ODE TO DARK BEER
Why oh why drink beer that's dark?
It leaves a coating on the tongue.
It tastes as if it's made from bark,
and dirt and sweat and lard and dung.
But dark beer drinkers love its savor,
swish it in their mouths, they do,
the fetid, musty, fecal flavor,
From a moldy running shoe.
So hoist a tankard of this vile,
felching, belching bitch's brew,
It must be borne of stomach bile,
shit and used tobacco chew.
Final Note: Curiously, the provable incidence of these various contaminations was much more prevalent in countries that used the Metric system of measurement, as opposed to the traditional English system.
We review some of the more common myths below:
Myth No. 1) The average person will eat a "peck" of dirt before they die. A peck is equivalent to a quarter-bushel, eight dry quarts in terms of volume, or nine litres on the metric scale.
Harking back to at least the 17th century, this has been an oft repeated - and much beloved - bit of conventional wisdom. While convincingly more plausible back in the 1600s when people washed their vegetables none too often and their persons even less, it has become less so today by virtue of ever-improving standards of cleanliness for food as well as general hygiene. While there is considerable documentation of the intentional ingestion of dirt - or coprophilia - this is considered to be an isolated phenomenon. References to the unintentional ingestion of dirt, far from being a societal problem of any import, rather are considered to be a cultural means to console people in times of personal crisis. Parents have for generations used this simple aphorism to comfort a child who finds a bug in their cereal, or a friend who has suffered a financial reversal.
While the Truism is almost universal in its application, it also turns out to be essentially true. Over the course of a 78 year lifespan, a person would need to ingest a mere 1/10th of one percent of a dry ounce of dirt per day to consume a "peck" over a lifetime. Persons who invoke the "five second rule" just once per week ingest in excess of ten times this amount in a single occurrence. Persons of even the most stringent hygiene consume this much dirt regardless of their precautions.
Myth No. 2) If you drink a quart of water per day, you will consume a quart of E. coli bacteria in one year.
This is one of the more popular rumors circulating, but for this to be true, the water would have to be .27% pure E. coli, or 2,700 ppm (parts per million). Since E. coli is generally found in concentrations only 10% of the more common Coliform bacteria, total contamination of water by fecal matter would have to be an astounding 27,000 ppm of Coliform. At that rate, fecal contamination would be detectible by taste, smell and sight. These concentrations have only ever been found in the drinking water of some Third World countries, parts of Detroit, MI, a small section of a neighborhood known as "The Heights" in Houston, TX, and France.
Further to these studies, while all Coliform originates from feces, E. coli is shown to be the only form that has any noticeable impact on public health.
Myth No. 3) Water on commercial airliners is routinely contaminated by the self-contained septic systems on the airplane.
This has been a regular concern with airliners, as sundry studies by the FAA have found an incidence of Total Coliform contamination in the drinking water of commercial aircraft as high as 15 times that of normal drinking water. Coincidentally, studies over the past five years have shown that the frequency of occurrence of contamination seems to have risen in direct proportion to the financial reverses suffered in the airliner industry. Since Coliform bacteria concentrations are unaffected by the frequency with which the water is cycled through the self-contained systems on most airliners, this has led to some uncomfortable assumptions by health experts as to the source of contamination. Subsequently, Federal investigators spent three months reviewing the maintenance logs of all commercial airliners to investigate the phenomenon.
Those in-depth studies revealed that American-based airliners routinely fell within safe Coliform guidelines, while airliners from the Middle East (with the exception of Israel), showed Coliform contamination over 50% of the time. Surprisingly, while Western European airliners showed Coliform contamination an average 30% of the time, airliners from France were contaminated 90% of the time, as were 90% of all the planes of all other carriers combined who replenished their water supplies during stopovers in France. Thus, it is assumed that France skewed the averages of all other European countries.
A review of Third World countries found a wide range of Coliform contamination, with India and Cuba doing the worst, with contamination on average of 60% of the time, while Australia and New Zealand did the best, with average contamination of only 25%, slightly better than their counterparts in the more developed West.
A separate study on military aircraft found that over 99% of the U.S. fleet passed all tests for the presence of Coliform. Only Air Force One routinely failed, showing the presence of Coliform 100% of the time. The period of the study ran from Jan. 20th to April 20th, 2009.
Myth No. 4) The Mexican beer Corona is yellow because brewery workers urinate into the vats during the brewing process.
This Myth turns out to be absolutely true, and is the reason it is always consumed with a precautionary slice of lime.
Myth No. 5) Dark beer is colored with Feces.
This appears to be mostly apocryphal, and more attributable to the fact that the consumption of Dark Beer is likely to turn one's feces dark upon defecation, as opposed to any external contamination of the brew itself. There is also little in the historical record to support such a practice, other than the following poem, traced back to an issue of Poor Richard's Almanac in the mid-18th century, and possibly the hand of Benjamin Franklin:
ODE TO DARK BEER
Why oh why drink beer that's dark?
It leaves a coating on the tongue.
It tastes as if it's made from bark,
and dirt and sweat and lard and dung.
But dark beer drinkers love its savor,
swish it in their mouths, they do,
the fetid, musty, fecal flavor,
From a moldy running shoe.
So hoist a tankard of this vile,
felching, belching bitch's brew,
It must be borne of stomach bile,
shit and used tobacco chew.
Final Note: Curiously, the provable incidence of these various contaminations was much more prevalent in countries that used the Metric system of measurement, as opposed to the traditional English system.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
MS150 Chronicles 2009, Pt II
SUNDAY - The Convoy To LaGrange
The bad weather is officially past, and the ride for Sunday is On! Very early on Sunday, Sharon and I meet Shawn at Tully Stadium to hook up with a double handful of Continental riders and one friend, Stuart Muirhead. Shawn had a utility trailer and a big Dodge Ram Diesel truck to haul the trailer and some Riders, and we had the Dodge Minivan. Everybody showed up by 5:15 a.m. as requested, and zeroed in on the Trailer in the near-dark parking lot of Tully. Quick introductions all around, we loaded up around 5:20, and were ready to go by 5:30.
We were slowed down by a few last-minute trips to the Port-O-Pottie, but I am happy to report that the last person to do it was not a woman, thus smashing another cherished preconception about Women, Car Trips and what my wife refers to as "The Necessary". So here's a tip of the old Bike Helmet to you, Jerry from Continental, for not only being the last to go, but taking longer than anybody else.
On a related topic, what is it with Women and potty stops? Is it just me, or are they in and out faster than any man these days? I contemplate the logistics of the whole proposition. For a man it's simple: 1) walk in to rest room, 2) step up to a Google of wall-mounted urinals, 3) unzip, 4) take care of business, 5) do that little dance, 6) zip back up, and 7) leave. If it's an outdoor event, you can actually dispense with steps two, five and seven.
For women, the drill is a little more complicated: 1) get in line at the Rest Room, 2) wait for one of the two stalls typically available in any restaurant, concert or other entertainment venue (occupancy 100 to 5000), 3) step in to stall, 4) undress, 5) clean toilet seat, 6) put down paper liner (in the fancier joints), 7) sit, 8) take care of business, 9) use toilet paper, 10) re-dress, 11) wash hands, 12) dry hands, and 13) leave.
There's something going on here, boys, that we don't understand, but we need to find out. Either the women are eliminating some steps, or the laws of space/time as we understand them no longer apply. My personal theory is that they're using the sinks, cowboy-style, but I have no means to verify this, having long since abandoned incursions into the Ladies Room under any pretense.
Anyway, the ten of us were Westbound on I-10 by 5:45 a.m., the only all-American convoy on the road. The migration from Houston to LaGrange was a sight to behold, as 75% of Houston's bike racks and what seemed 50% of its SUVs all made the trek in the pre-dawn of Sunday morning. Our modest convoy of one Pickup with trailer and Minivan appeared to be the only vehicles on the road that contained more than two bikes or two Riders. As wave upon wave of bike-laden SUVs passed our little group, I couldn't help but wonder if all of those folks missed the memo about meeting at Tully so as to carpool to LaGrange; or perhaps, two people and two bikes per vehicle constitutes carpooling for your typical MS150er. These are Cyclists after all, folks who regularly and happily strap their bikes onto their vehicles and drive them 180 miles (round trip) so as to ride their bikes for 35 miles in order to get in some exercise. In the interest of Full Disclosure, I am one of those people.
Makes me wonder what kind of trouble we would be in with Al Gore was he to find out. Fortunately, there's no Controlling Legal Authority, so I'm pretty sure we're off the hook.
We arrive at LaGrange around 7:30. Within minutes we've unloaded the bikes, packed our kits and are ready to go. I take out my bandana from my Peddle Partner buddy, Deven Woldd, and put it on. As any MS-150er will tell you, this is the single piece of magic you need to complete the Ride, particularly when your training, nutrition and, ahem, BMI (Body Mass Index) are not all that you had hoped they would be by the day of the Ride.
One last stop at the Port-O-John and we're off. This time, I'm the last one to go. Of course, I fall back on a bogus chivalry to cover my tracks. Within minutes, we reach the Continental staging area. Continental has a huge mobile kitchen going, serving breakfast tacos, bananas, cereal and a bunch of other stuff to anyone and everyone who is hungry, including, ironically, a guy who claims he works for Southwest Airlines. Having volunteered this information, I'm half expecting the Volunteers to give him a package of peanuts, but no, he gets a breakfast taco, too. Way to go, Continental. I start looking for somebody in an official capacity, because a cop at Tully Stadium had asked me to deliver a Rider's envelope to the Exxon tent in LaGrange.
I spot a traffic cop and ask him for directions to the Exxon staging area. He tells me "head down this side street for three blocks; it's right there next to the High School". I head down the street, and after three blocks, the only thing "there" is the middle of a neighborhood. I go up two more blocks and find a trailer park. I work back and go in every direction from the nearest intersection, but nothing, only more neighborhood. I ask sundry riders and neighbors, and none of them know where the High School is. In desperation, I call the name on the envelope and Kyle answers. He asks what intersection I'm at, I tell him, and he says he'll be right there. A few minutes later another rider pulls up, and I ask him where the High School is. He says "about two blocks that way", which puts the school about 90 degrees and three blocks removed from where the traffic cop said it was. Kyle pulls up in his pickup, I hand him the envelope, we exchange pleasantries, shake hands, wish each other good luck, and then we're both off racing to the Start.
This leaves me thinking: did the cop just not know where the High School was, or was he gigging me? Cops will do that sometimes.
Anyway, I hustle back to the Start line with minutes to spare. I put up the cell phone and adjust my brakes. I'm feeling a little underpowered despite a breakfast taco, a piece of banana nut bread the size of a WNBA basketball and a quart of coffee, so I pull out one of the Goos (raspberry) that had been in my cupboard. It's a little suspect, so I squeeze a little bit out and check it out before I eat it. The look is a little weird. I don't recall Goo being cloudy, so I sniff it. It doesn't have any discernable smell. That's funny. I suddenly realize that Goo doesn't have any smell. So much for that Tell. I eat it anyway. It tastes funny, so I throw out the other three packets except for the Chocolate one, on the theory that nothing can go wrong with Chocolate.
For those of you who have followed my little riffs over the years, you may have noticed that Goo and Butt'r have been recurring themes. Now granted, they're inanimate objects (except during application or consumption), but I find them funny, and so, I inflict them on you. Deal with it.
I throw out a little prayer to keep the wind at my back, seeing as how the weatherman was predicting winds out of the Northwest - roughly the direction we were to travel - and I hadn't done any wind training this year. Of course, I didn't do any hill or distance training either, so I wasn't quite sure I was in a position to request any Divine Intervention, what with The Big Guy's admonition about Him helping those who help themselves and all. One last adjustment to The Bandana Of Power so it is perfectly symmetrical, and I'm ready.
Finally, the announcements are over, and just that quickly, we're off! It's a great moment, and I never cease to be amazed that thousands of amateur bike riders can all take off under such cozy circumstances without a single casualty. I've never seen so much as a single rider fall at the Start, much less several go down in some kind of chain reaction. That's a credit to the Organizers, the Police and the Riders. I run out of time to appreciate the whole production as we are on our way, and I'm trying not to be the first person I observe to fall down and have a bunch of Riders roll over him. We make our first turn once we get out of town, and hit the wind which will be in our faces for the rest of the day.
That's all I'm going to say about the Wind until the end.
Next up: The Ride
The bad weather is officially past, and the ride for Sunday is On! Very early on Sunday, Sharon and I meet Shawn at Tully Stadium to hook up with a double handful of Continental riders and one friend, Stuart Muirhead. Shawn had a utility trailer and a big Dodge Ram Diesel truck to haul the trailer and some Riders, and we had the Dodge Minivan. Everybody showed up by 5:15 a.m. as requested, and zeroed in on the Trailer in the near-dark parking lot of Tully. Quick introductions all around, we loaded up around 5:20, and were ready to go by 5:30.
We were slowed down by a few last-minute trips to the Port-O-Pottie, but I am happy to report that the last person to do it was not a woman, thus smashing another cherished preconception about Women, Car Trips and what my wife refers to as "The Necessary". So here's a tip of the old Bike Helmet to you, Jerry from Continental, for not only being the last to go, but taking longer than anybody else.
On a related topic, what is it with Women and potty stops? Is it just me, or are they in and out faster than any man these days? I contemplate the logistics of the whole proposition. For a man it's simple: 1) walk in to rest room, 2) step up to a Google of wall-mounted urinals, 3) unzip, 4) take care of business, 5) do that little dance, 6) zip back up, and 7) leave. If it's an outdoor event, you can actually dispense with steps two, five and seven.
For women, the drill is a little more complicated: 1) get in line at the Rest Room, 2) wait for one of the two stalls typically available in any restaurant, concert or other entertainment venue (occupancy 100 to 5000), 3) step in to stall, 4) undress, 5) clean toilet seat, 6) put down paper liner (in the fancier joints), 7) sit, 8) take care of business, 9) use toilet paper, 10) re-dress, 11) wash hands, 12) dry hands, and 13) leave.
There's something going on here, boys, that we don't understand, but we need to find out. Either the women are eliminating some steps, or the laws of space/time as we understand them no longer apply. My personal theory is that they're using the sinks, cowboy-style, but I have no means to verify this, having long since abandoned incursions into the Ladies Room under any pretense.
Anyway, the ten of us were Westbound on I-10 by 5:45 a.m., the only all-American convoy on the road. The migration from Houston to LaGrange was a sight to behold, as 75% of Houston's bike racks and what seemed 50% of its SUVs all made the trek in the pre-dawn of Sunday morning. Our modest convoy of one Pickup with trailer and Minivan appeared to be the only vehicles on the road that contained more than two bikes or two Riders. As wave upon wave of bike-laden SUVs passed our little group, I couldn't help but wonder if all of those folks missed the memo about meeting at Tully so as to carpool to LaGrange; or perhaps, two people and two bikes per vehicle constitutes carpooling for your typical MS150er. These are Cyclists after all, folks who regularly and happily strap their bikes onto their vehicles and drive them 180 miles (round trip) so as to ride their bikes for 35 miles in order to get in some exercise. In the interest of Full Disclosure, I am one of those people.
Makes me wonder what kind of trouble we would be in with Al Gore was he to find out. Fortunately, there's no Controlling Legal Authority, so I'm pretty sure we're off the hook.
We arrive at LaGrange around 7:30. Within minutes we've unloaded the bikes, packed our kits and are ready to go. I take out my bandana from my Peddle Partner buddy, Deven Woldd, and put it on. As any MS-150er will tell you, this is the single piece of magic you need to complete the Ride, particularly when your training, nutrition and, ahem, BMI (Body Mass Index) are not all that you had hoped they would be by the day of the Ride.
One last stop at the Port-O-John and we're off. This time, I'm the last one to go. Of course, I fall back on a bogus chivalry to cover my tracks. Within minutes, we reach the Continental staging area. Continental has a huge mobile kitchen going, serving breakfast tacos, bananas, cereal and a bunch of other stuff to anyone and everyone who is hungry, including, ironically, a guy who claims he works for Southwest Airlines. Having volunteered this information, I'm half expecting the Volunteers to give him a package of peanuts, but no, he gets a breakfast taco, too. Way to go, Continental. I start looking for somebody in an official capacity, because a cop at Tully Stadium had asked me to deliver a Rider's envelope to the Exxon tent in LaGrange.
I spot a traffic cop and ask him for directions to the Exxon staging area. He tells me "head down this side street for three blocks; it's right there next to the High School". I head down the street, and after three blocks, the only thing "there" is the middle of a neighborhood. I go up two more blocks and find a trailer park. I work back and go in every direction from the nearest intersection, but nothing, only more neighborhood. I ask sundry riders and neighbors, and none of them know where the High School is. In desperation, I call the name on the envelope and Kyle answers. He asks what intersection I'm at, I tell him, and he says he'll be right there. A few minutes later another rider pulls up, and I ask him where the High School is. He says "about two blocks that way", which puts the school about 90 degrees and three blocks removed from where the traffic cop said it was. Kyle pulls up in his pickup, I hand him the envelope, we exchange pleasantries, shake hands, wish each other good luck, and then we're both off racing to the Start.
This leaves me thinking: did the cop just not know where the High School was, or was he gigging me? Cops will do that sometimes.
Anyway, I hustle back to the Start line with minutes to spare. I put up the cell phone and adjust my brakes. I'm feeling a little underpowered despite a breakfast taco, a piece of banana nut bread the size of a WNBA basketball and a quart of coffee, so I pull out one of the Goos (raspberry) that had been in my cupboard. It's a little suspect, so I squeeze a little bit out and check it out before I eat it. The look is a little weird. I don't recall Goo being cloudy, so I sniff it. It doesn't have any discernable smell. That's funny. I suddenly realize that Goo doesn't have any smell. So much for that Tell. I eat it anyway. It tastes funny, so I throw out the other three packets except for the Chocolate one, on the theory that nothing can go wrong with Chocolate.
For those of you who have followed my little riffs over the years, you may have noticed that Goo and Butt'r have been recurring themes. Now granted, they're inanimate objects (except during application or consumption), but I find them funny, and so, I inflict them on you. Deal with it.
I throw out a little prayer to keep the wind at my back, seeing as how the weatherman was predicting winds out of the Northwest - roughly the direction we were to travel - and I hadn't done any wind training this year. Of course, I didn't do any hill or distance training either, so I wasn't quite sure I was in a position to request any Divine Intervention, what with The Big Guy's admonition about Him helping those who help themselves and all. One last adjustment to The Bandana Of Power so it is perfectly symmetrical, and I'm ready.
Finally, the announcements are over, and just that quickly, we're off! It's a great moment, and I never cease to be amazed that thousands of amateur bike riders can all take off under such cozy circumstances without a single casualty. I've never seen so much as a single rider fall at the Start, much less several go down in some kind of chain reaction. That's a credit to the Organizers, the Police and the Riders. I run out of time to appreciate the whole production as we are on our way, and I'm trying not to be the first person I observe to fall down and have a bunch of Riders roll over him. We make our first turn once we get out of town, and hit the wind which will be in our faces for the rest of the day.
That's all I'm going to say about the Wind until the end.
Next up: The Ride
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Plan B "Birth Control" - Pedophile Friendly
Today I read with interest, disdain, and more than a little bemusement the A/P article wherein Federal Judge Edward Korman has over-ruled the Bush Administration's ban to restrict access to the "Plan B" morning-after pill, and approved its purchase by 17 year old girls. The article described Plan B as "birth control pills".
“Plan B”. “Birth Control Pills”. Such benign descriptions for what is in fact a drug that prevents pregnancy after intercourse by radically altering a woman’s body chemistry so as to - in a single dose - prevent Ovulation, and which may in some instances (according to the manufacturer) "inhibit implantation (of the embryo) by altering the endometrium”; in other words, a chemically induced abortion. Let's set aside the sheer mendacity of calling it a "birth control pill" for a moment. My first question is: why would a Federal Judge think he had the authority to change the law of the land regarding a Minor's access to what is clearly a prescription drug? The fact that the FDA ruled it could be made available to adults over-the-counter last year hardly justifies making it available to Minors, but that’s not the worst of it. According to the FDA, allowing 17 year olds to have access to it is merely the next logical step, and by their own admission, making it available to girls of any age is the next.
We’ll discuss the social consequences of the federal government promoting sexual activity amongst girls later. One might think from these rulings that the drug is without side effects; no more dangerous than aspirin, for example, since the intent is to provide it to Minors On Demand, without Parental Notification, without a doctor's visit and without a prescription. Let’s review that, shall we? We’ll start with Label Warnings and other advisories from the websites of the manufacturer and suppliers of Plan B, aka Progestin:
“Do not take Plan B if you have had an allergic reaction to progestin, the type of hormone found in the drug. You should also avoid this medication if you have any unexplained vaginal bleeding”. Call me crazy, but the cat truly is out of the bag if you’re a teenager who didn’t bother consulting a doctor about these issues before you took the pill, and since the whole point of the new ruling is an extension of the policy to allow young girls to get abortions without their parent’s knowledge or any adult supervision, it’s clear there is no check against abuse of the drug, or the consequences.
“There is a slight chance that progestin, the hormone in Plan B, could cause an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when a fertilized egg becomes implanted outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube”. Would you be surprised to know that per the FDA “ectopic pregnancy” currently is the leading cause of pregnancy-related death among women during the first trimester in the United States?
“Progestin is only effective if taken within 72 hours of Unprotected Sex”. Does the FDA really think this is going to dissuade young girls from taking the pill once symptoms of pregnancy arrive, frequently week’s later?
"The most common Plan B side effects include: Nausea; Abdominal pain; Fatigue; Headaches; A heavier menstrual period; A lighter menstrual period; Dizziness; Breast tenderness; Diarrhea; Vomiting. Aspirin, this is not. If a Girl gets drunk at a party, has unprotected sex and then takes her Plan B afterwards, if she throws up, aspirates her own vomit and chokes to death, who will the Authorities hold responsible? They sure as hell aren’t going after the FDA; my guess is the Parents, most likely, or perhaps the owners of the home where the sex and drinking took place.
Plan B Drug Interactions include: Aminoglutethimide (Cytadren®); Aprepitant (Emend®); Amobarbital (Amytal®); Butalbital (Fioricet®, Fiorinal®); Pentobarbital (Nembutal®); Phenobarbital (Luminal®); Primidone (Mysoline®); Secobarbital (Seconal®); Modafinil (Provigil®); Carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro™, Tegretol®); Felbamate (Felbatol®); Lamotrigine (Lamictal®); Oxcarbazepine (Trileptal®); Phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®); Topiramate (Topamax®); And finally, “Some (but not all) antibiotics”. And that's the short list. Does anybody believe there's no issues with a 17 year old (or soon, 12 year old) self-medicating without the knowledge of Parents, doctor or any other trained professional? The very secrecy the FDA is actively promoting ensures there will be no proper supervision of this drug, much less its interactions.
Next, we must consider the consequences of the FDA’s plan to allow the purchase of Plan B by Minors from any pharmacy or clinic that carries the drug, with nothing more than an ID with a birth date on it. Consider as well that FDA policies have explicitly blocked Parents or Doctors from playing any part in its purchase, or having an opportunity to counsel a Girl on how it’s administered, or its consequences. Let’s say you're 17 (or soon enough 11, if the FDA has their way) and you think you're pregnant. You go to Walgreens and get your “Morning After” pills, which must be taken at specific intervals. Just to be on the safe side, you go to CVS and get another dose. No sense taking any chances, and all you had to do was show ID with your date of birth. Fortunately, you didn't get pregnant, so you continue to have unprotected sex. A month later, you think you're pregnant again. Per the FDA, no problem, you can get another prescription.
Who is monitoring the frequency with which this drug is taken? Not the government. Nobody in a position of responsibility is any the wiser. For the sake of this argument, I’m assuming that a 17 having unprotected sex is not “responsible”.
Plan B doesn’t exactly sound like a drug without consequences. And in case you think there's a slippery slope to allowing such a drug to be purchased by girls 17 and younger, you would be right. In fact, the FDA not only encourages the slippery slope, they've been applying metric tons of KY Jelly (also available without a prescription) to it, and all in the name of “Science”. Reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar also authoritatively reports that in addition to the FDA and Judge Korman "more than 60 organizations petitioned the FDA to allow sales without a prescription", and that "a panel of outside advisors voted 23-4 to recommend over-the-counter sales without age restrictions".
No word as to who those organizations are, but I suspect that some of them have – how shall we say – an interest in promoting sexual activity amongst minors. More about that later.
And what of the risks? In their rush to release this for use by young girls, they fail to address the fact that they have done no studies to predict the impact of Plan B on sexually immature females, so girls 17 and under are essentially Guinea Pigs. Your children are the playthings of the Social Welfare crowd, long term impact be damned. Call me cynical, but the minute the Government approves the unrestricted use of such a dangerous drug by young girls so fraught with unknowns and consequences, can a rash of lawsuits be far behind? Put it this way, Product Liability attorneys are already reformulating their business plans.
And speaking of cynicism, Judge Korman – parroting the line of various spokesmen for the FDA - declared that the Bush Administration’s decision to block access to this drug without prescription to 17 year olds was “politics, not science”. Korman offered no proof for his accusation, and appeared not to entertain for a moment that Bush’s motives might have been governed by neither politics nor science, but principle. Aside from the fact that a Judge’s ruling, and comments, are supposed to be governed by the facts and the law, what purpose was served by injecting his opinion as to the motives of the Bushies? It would have no effect on the ruling, so in its proper context, his opinion is gratuitous.
Unmentioned by Korman, the FDA and other appendages of the Democrat Party were the principled concerns of the Bush Administration, among others: the lack of parental notification, the lack of oversight by a physician, the safety of the minors using the product and the illegal trafficking of the drug resulting from its unrestricted availability. It’s a Leap to figure how any of those concerns are “political”, but in the twisted universe of the Democrat Party, accusing Republicans of “playing politics” on matters of principle is standard operating procedure, as is criminalizing the political activities of the Republican Party. The last time I checked, the Democrat’s sole reason for existence was “politics”, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, getting a federal judge to jump into bed with you, advocating for your causes from the bench while denigrating those of your opposition is yet another distressing sign that our Judiciary is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party.
That being the case, who is it that is playing “politics” with this issue?
Finally, here’s an interesting tidbit from the New York Times that was left out of Alonso-Zaldivar’s article: “Men 17 and older also may buy Plan B for a partner”. In a sane world, where Democrats claim to stand for the empowerment of women and girls, is there ANY reason a man (other than a girl’s parent) should be allowed to purchase this drug? Is there any sane reason to allow Pedophiles to acquire this drug without restriction? What about Pimps and the Sex Slave trade? Could these be among the “more than 60 organizations” who “petitioned for over-the-counter sales without age restrictions”?
If you’re a minor girl, unrestricted and unsupervised access to this drug would only seem to promote promiscuity. Whether you’re a Pedophile or a Pimp, unprotected sex would seem to be the objective, since such predators are rarely concerned about the consequences of a “broken condom”. The consequences of this policy would seem to be a booming black market for the drug, more Pedophilia, more Prostitution, and an epidemic of STDs amongst our children. And it’s not too much of a stretch to predict that this will result in more teen pregnancy, not less, unless you’re counting on children to use it within the strict guidelines recommended by the Suppliers.
So, has Judge Korman enabled another constiuency for the Democrat Party? Call it "P&P", for Pedophiles & Pimps. Only time will tell.
It seems that rarely a week goes by that a Democrat policy doesn't end up having the exact opposite effect from what was intended. In the case of protecting our children from STDs and pregnancy, mandatory Sex Ed was supposed to do it, and failed. That was Plan A. The ironically named Plan B drug now provided to children appears to be yet another example.
“Plan B”. “Birth Control Pills”. Such benign descriptions for what is in fact a drug that prevents pregnancy after intercourse by radically altering a woman’s body chemistry so as to - in a single dose - prevent Ovulation, and which may in some instances (according to the manufacturer) "inhibit implantation (of the embryo) by altering the endometrium”; in other words, a chemically induced abortion. Let's set aside the sheer mendacity of calling it a "birth control pill" for a moment. My first question is: why would a Federal Judge think he had the authority to change the law of the land regarding a Minor's access to what is clearly a prescription drug? The fact that the FDA ruled it could be made available to adults over-the-counter last year hardly justifies making it available to Minors, but that’s not the worst of it. According to the FDA, allowing 17 year olds to have access to it is merely the next logical step, and by their own admission, making it available to girls of any age is the next.
We’ll discuss the social consequences of the federal government promoting sexual activity amongst girls later. One might think from these rulings that the drug is without side effects; no more dangerous than aspirin, for example, since the intent is to provide it to Minors On Demand, without Parental Notification, without a doctor's visit and without a prescription. Let’s review that, shall we? We’ll start with Label Warnings and other advisories from the websites of the manufacturer and suppliers of Plan B, aka Progestin:
“Do not take Plan B if you have had an allergic reaction to progestin, the type of hormone found in the drug. You should also avoid this medication if you have any unexplained vaginal bleeding”. Call me crazy, but the cat truly is out of the bag if you’re a teenager who didn’t bother consulting a doctor about these issues before you took the pill, and since the whole point of the new ruling is an extension of the policy to allow young girls to get abortions without their parent’s knowledge or any adult supervision, it’s clear there is no check against abuse of the drug, or the consequences.
“There is a slight chance that progestin, the hormone in Plan B, could cause an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when a fertilized egg becomes implanted outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube”. Would you be surprised to know that per the FDA “ectopic pregnancy” currently is the leading cause of pregnancy-related death among women during the first trimester in the United States?
“Progestin is only effective if taken within 72 hours of Unprotected Sex”. Does the FDA really think this is going to dissuade young girls from taking the pill once symptoms of pregnancy arrive, frequently week’s later?
"The most common Plan B side effects include: Nausea; Abdominal pain; Fatigue; Headaches; A heavier menstrual period; A lighter menstrual period; Dizziness; Breast tenderness; Diarrhea; Vomiting. Aspirin, this is not. If a Girl gets drunk at a party, has unprotected sex and then takes her Plan B afterwards, if she throws up, aspirates her own vomit and chokes to death, who will the Authorities hold responsible? They sure as hell aren’t going after the FDA; my guess is the Parents, most likely, or perhaps the owners of the home where the sex and drinking took place.
Plan B Drug Interactions include: Aminoglutethimide (Cytadren®); Aprepitant (Emend®); Amobarbital (Amytal®); Butalbital (Fioricet®, Fiorinal®); Pentobarbital (Nembutal®); Phenobarbital (Luminal®); Primidone (Mysoline®); Secobarbital (Seconal®); Modafinil (Provigil®); Carbamazepine (Carbatrol®, Epitol®, Equetro™, Tegretol®); Felbamate (Felbatol®); Lamotrigine (Lamictal®); Oxcarbazepine (Trileptal®); Phenytoin (Dilantin®, Phenytek®); Topiramate (Topamax®); And finally, “Some (but not all) antibiotics”. And that's the short list. Does anybody believe there's no issues with a 17 year old (or soon, 12 year old) self-medicating without the knowledge of Parents, doctor or any other trained professional? The very secrecy the FDA is actively promoting ensures there will be no proper supervision of this drug, much less its interactions.
Next, we must consider the consequences of the FDA’s plan to allow the purchase of Plan B by Minors from any pharmacy or clinic that carries the drug, with nothing more than an ID with a birth date on it. Consider as well that FDA policies have explicitly blocked Parents or Doctors from playing any part in its purchase, or having an opportunity to counsel a Girl on how it’s administered, or its consequences. Let’s say you're 17 (or soon enough 11, if the FDA has their way) and you think you're pregnant. You go to Walgreens and get your “Morning After” pills, which must be taken at specific intervals. Just to be on the safe side, you go to CVS and get another dose. No sense taking any chances, and all you had to do was show ID with your date of birth. Fortunately, you didn't get pregnant, so you continue to have unprotected sex. A month later, you think you're pregnant again. Per the FDA, no problem, you can get another prescription.
Who is monitoring the frequency with which this drug is taken? Not the government. Nobody in a position of responsibility is any the wiser. For the sake of this argument, I’m assuming that a 17 having unprotected sex is not “responsible”.
Plan B doesn’t exactly sound like a drug without consequences. And in case you think there's a slippery slope to allowing such a drug to be purchased by girls 17 and younger, you would be right. In fact, the FDA not only encourages the slippery slope, they've been applying metric tons of KY Jelly (also available without a prescription) to it, and all in the name of “Science”. Reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar also authoritatively reports that in addition to the FDA and Judge Korman "more than 60 organizations petitioned the FDA to allow sales without a prescription", and that "a panel of outside advisors voted 23-4 to recommend over-the-counter sales without age restrictions".
No word as to who those organizations are, but I suspect that some of them have – how shall we say – an interest in promoting sexual activity amongst minors. More about that later.
And what of the risks? In their rush to release this for use by young girls, they fail to address the fact that they have done no studies to predict the impact of Plan B on sexually immature females, so girls 17 and under are essentially Guinea Pigs. Your children are the playthings of the Social Welfare crowd, long term impact be damned. Call me cynical, but the minute the Government approves the unrestricted use of such a dangerous drug by young girls so fraught with unknowns and consequences, can a rash of lawsuits be far behind? Put it this way, Product Liability attorneys are already reformulating their business plans.
And speaking of cynicism, Judge Korman – parroting the line of various spokesmen for the FDA - declared that the Bush Administration’s decision to block access to this drug without prescription to 17 year olds was “politics, not science”. Korman offered no proof for his accusation, and appeared not to entertain for a moment that Bush’s motives might have been governed by neither politics nor science, but principle. Aside from the fact that a Judge’s ruling, and comments, are supposed to be governed by the facts and the law, what purpose was served by injecting his opinion as to the motives of the Bushies? It would have no effect on the ruling, so in its proper context, his opinion is gratuitous.
Unmentioned by Korman, the FDA and other appendages of the Democrat Party were the principled concerns of the Bush Administration, among others: the lack of parental notification, the lack of oversight by a physician, the safety of the minors using the product and the illegal trafficking of the drug resulting from its unrestricted availability. It’s a Leap to figure how any of those concerns are “political”, but in the twisted universe of the Democrat Party, accusing Republicans of “playing politics” on matters of principle is standard operating procedure, as is criminalizing the political activities of the Republican Party. The last time I checked, the Democrat’s sole reason for existence was “politics”, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, getting a federal judge to jump into bed with you, advocating for your causes from the bench while denigrating those of your opposition is yet another distressing sign that our Judiciary is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party.
That being the case, who is it that is playing “politics” with this issue?
Finally, here’s an interesting tidbit from the New York Times that was left out of Alonso-Zaldivar’s article: “Men 17 and older also may buy Plan B for a partner”. In a sane world, where Democrats claim to stand for the empowerment of women and girls, is there ANY reason a man (other than a girl’s parent) should be allowed to purchase this drug? Is there any sane reason to allow Pedophiles to acquire this drug without restriction? What about Pimps and the Sex Slave trade? Could these be among the “more than 60 organizations” who “petitioned for over-the-counter sales without age restrictions”?
If you’re a minor girl, unrestricted and unsupervised access to this drug would only seem to promote promiscuity. Whether you’re a Pedophile or a Pimp, unprotected sex would seem to be the objective, since such predators are rarely concerned about the consequences of a “broken condom”. The consequences of this policy would seem to be a booming black market for the drug, more Pedophilia, more Prostitution, and an epidemic of STDs amongst our children. And it’s not too much of a stretch to predict that this will result in more teen pregnancy, not less, unless you’re counting on children to use it within the strict guidelines recommended by the Suppliers.
So, has Judge Korman enabled another constiuency for the Democrat Party? Call it "P&P", for Pedophiles & Pimps. Only time will tell.
It seems that rarely a week goes by that a Democrat policy doesn't end up having the exact opposite effect from what was intended. In the case of protecting our children from STDs and pregnancy, mandatory Sex Ed was supposed to do it, and failed. That was Plan A. The ironically named Plan B drug now provided to children appears to be yet another example.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
MS150 Chronicles 2009 - Pt I
Howdy Folks -
Well, here's the first installment of the writeup, and thanks so much to all of you who contributed. Just remember, it's never too late to get in on the fun:
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/TXHBikeEvents?px=5492503&pg=personal&fr_id=10222
MONDAY, APRIL 20TH - IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
So, how often do you get to start out a story with one of the most clichéd lines in all of literature and make it seem fresh and relevant? Not often, is the answer, and props to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the godfather of bad prose for writing it. It only took 180 years for that line to find a context that would not inspire the scorn of Critics, and the 2009 BP MS150 bicycle ride from Houston to Austin was it.
Me, I think Bulwer-Lytton gets a little bit of a bad rap. This is the guy who coined the phrase "The Great Unwashed", after all. I'll be using that one later on in this narrative when we get to Sunday.
Now, just in case you were in seclusion or otherwise out of town, torrential rains on Friday killed the first day of the ride. That was a first. There were a number of other "firsts" for this year's MS150: First single day sellout; First Sunday-only ride; First mass migration of hardy Cyclists driving to LaGrange Sunday morning. Those would not be the only Firsts, as I would learn by painful experience. More about that later.
I've broken this narrative up into three parts. This is Part I.
THURSDAY - April 16th
What a difference a year makes. A year ago I would have ridden my seventh MS150 in a row and eighth overall. As fate would have it, an April campout the weekend before the 2008 Ride left me with a pulled groin muscle and a case of poison ivy that left me gimping around like Walter Brennan wearing a pair of spotted red shorts. My takeaway from the whole pulled groin muscle and poison ivy thing was a) don't lift beer kegs all weekend; in fact, don't lift beer kegs at all, and b) don't turn your workpants inside out and leave them on the floor of your tent to dry and then put them back on; you've likely tracked something back into the tent with you previously.
Once again, I plan to start from Tully Stadium in West Houston, the traditional MS150 starting point. For several years now, some folks have started from a location in Katy, TX, which is considerably closer to Austin than Tully. The starting point in Katy is called Rhodes Stadium, or "The Ladies Tee's", as some cyclists refer to it. Now, me personally, I think that's a little harsh, and even overly competitive, particularly since this year's MS150 management has gone out of their way to stress that "this is not a race". So, those of you who have voiced that sentiment about Rhodes ought to be a little ashamed of yourselves.
I prefer the perspective of the folks who claim that the distance of those who start from Rhodes is exactly the same as the distance of those of us who start from Tully Stadium, as long as you measure Tully in miles, and Rhodes in kilometers. Now, that's the kind of Christian perspective I think we need to bring into this whole deal, as long as you don't dwell on the fact that kilometers are generally the unit of measure for Socialist countries, where such generalizations are not only typical, but desirable so as to maintain the Self-Esteem of underachievers. See, that's the whole point of Socialism. And while it would be fair to conclude from the evidence that some of Riders who start from Rhodes are Socialists, that doesn't mean that they're not nice people. Just undermotivated.
But I digress.
FRIDAY
Now, as those of you who have read my dispatches in year's past know, I have never been able to get onto the St. Arnold's team, even though a lot of my Hasher friends have, and I've otherwise got all the qualifications that I think would make me a catch for any MS150 team:
- I'm a decent fund raiser.
- I'm a responsible cyclist.
- I know several people on the St. Arnold's team, including the most important people, the volunteers who feed them.
- I'm a pitch-in kind of guy when it comes to organizing training rides, etc.
- Finally, I'm that rare male Hasher that has not rewarded their hospitality at the brewery by going out behind the building to take a pee.
Still, I could never get any traction when I would call or reach out through friends. The Team was always full. I had started to suspect that the real reason was because I was mostly a wine drinker, but quickly admonished myself for attributing such low motives to the folks who ran the team, like they might be some kind of Beer Snobs. If they're full up, they're full up, and there's nothing you can do about that. The fact that a bunch of my reprobate friends made it on while I did not was just a matter of timing.
Anyway, a couple month's back I met a girl at a party who had just recently moved to this country from what I took to be South America. We started talking and she mentioned that she had taken up bicycle riding last summer and thought she would give the MS150 a try. "Which team are you with", I asked. "St. Arnold's", she replied. "And aren't they just the nicest people"?
I didn't bother asking her if she was a beer drinker. I already knew the answer.
That reminds me: One of my St. Arnold's pals told me with totally deserved pride that St. Arnold's was in the Top 10 in terms of fundraising, notwithstanding that St. Arnold's is a Microbrewery with one location (Houston). Congrats to St. Arnold's! Let this also dispel all the preconceptions everybody has about Beer Drinkers and athletic pursuits. Our takeaway on this point is that beer drinking is no obstacle when it comes to riding a bike 175 miles, and apparently an absolute virtue when it comes to fund raising.
My training schedule in preparation for the 2009 Ride has been somewhat - how shall we say - problematic, weekends not being as accessible as in years past; so my actual conditioning is not all I could wish it to be. It's not a huge concern, as I have only missed out on hill training, wind training, distance training and, well, riding my Road Bike. I'm kind of hoping my sundry Urban Bike Assaults from Cypress to Houston on the Hybrid will compensate. Time will tell.
Despite reports that rain will cancel the Saturday ride, I spend Friday night assembling my kit: shoes, helmet, gloves, packets of Butt'r (a fragrant paste you rub on your nethers about, oh, mile 80), and various other stuff. One of the items I take along are packets of Goo, a fragrant paste not unlike Butt'r, except that, instead of smearing it on your nethers, you eat it. It's a high carb concoction, and quite tasty; kind of like pudding on steroids. Anyway, I'm rooting around in my Bike Cupboard in the garage, and I come across a few packets of Goo that are, well, questionable. They've been in the garage since at least the 2008 MS150 that I didn't do, and might actually go back to the MS150 in 2007. See, this is the only long distance ride I ever do, so I can't justify a lot of Goo consumption. I stick them in the Bike Pouch under my seat, and don't give them another thought.
SATURDAY
Shades of Hurricane Ike. Texas got swamped by a storm yesterday, and by mid-afternoon, the LaGrange campground was a Lake. I got an on-the-scene report Friday night from my friend Jim Weitzel on the CapRock team that several large tents were damaged and the volunteers were all standing in water. The Saturday ride was cancelled, but Sunday was still tentatively a go, as weather reports indicated the storm would blow itself out Saturday night. The Riders were advised to get themselves up to LaGrange Sunday morning, and the MS150 team would get us back either to LaGrange or Tully Sunday night. I had put the word out to all the Riders I could that we'll be meeting Sunday, EARLY, at Tully Stadium to convoy up to LaGrange. Shawn Faris has volunteered his trailer and pickup, and we've got enough seats and space for a dozen bikes and people.
This year, I'm riding with the Continental Airlines Team. I joined Continental because the folks I knew best at Schlumberger (a wonderful team by the way; awesome training rides and support) had stopped riding for various reasons. Plus, I joined Continental because Debra Sandoval is a close friend who works for them, and she urged me to join so we could ride together, as we had a few years back when she last did the Ride. Six weeks after I joined, Debra decided to get hip replacement surgery and dropped out. Alone again, naturally. Debra's doing fine, but her butt is in the saddle come this time next year.
Side Note: I forwarded a suggestion to the Continental Team managers suggesting that each Rider be awarded 1 Frequent Flyer Mile for every mile ridden in the MS150, ha ha ha. The Team Captain, Beth Arlington, responded back that she felt Continental should pony up ONE HUNDRED frequent flier miles for every rider, ha ha ha. Now that I've been cheesed out of my Saturday ride, and inasmuch as somebody has to pay for my inconvenience, that sounds like a pretty darn good idea.
So far though, no bites from Continental Airlines.
Next up: Part II, The Convoy To LaGrange
Well, here's the first installment of the writeup, and thanks so much to all of you who contributed. Just remember, it's never too late to get in on the fun:
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/TXHBikeEvents?px=5492503&pg=personal&fr_id=10222
MONDAY, APRIL 20TH - IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
So, how often do you get to start out a story with one of the most clichéd lines in all of literature and make it seem fresh and relevant? Not often, is the answer, and props to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the godfather of bad prose for writing it. It only took 180 years for that line to find a context that would not inspire the scorn of Critics, and the 2009 BP MS150 bicycle ride from Houston to Austin was it.
Me, I think Bulwer-Lytton gets a little bit of a bad rap. This is the guy who coined the phrase "The Great Unwashed", after all. I'll be using that one later on in this narrative when we get to Sunday.
Now, just in case you were in seclusion or otherwise out of town, torrential rains on Friday killed the first day of the ride. That was a first. There were a number of other "firsts" for this year's MS150: First single day sellout; First Sunday-only ride; First mass migration of hardy Cyclists driving to LaGrange Sunday morning. Those would not be the only Firsts, as I would learn by painful experience. More about that later.
I've broken this narrative up into three parts. This is Part I.
THURSDAY - April 16th
What a difference a year makes. A year ago I would have ridden my seventh MS150 in a row and eighth overall. As fate would have it, an April campout the weekend before the 2008 Ride left me with a pulled groin muscle and a case of poison ivy that left me gimping around like Walter Brennan wearing a pair of spotted red shorts. My takeaway from the whole pulled groin muscle and poison ivy thing was a) don't lift beer kegs all weekend; in fact, don't lift beer kegs at all, and b) don't turn your workpants inside out and leave them on the floor of your tent to dry and then put them back on; you've likely tracked something back into the tent with you previously.
Once again, I plan to start from Tully Stadium in West Houston, the traditional MS150 starting point. For several years now, some folks have started from a location in Katy, TX, which is considerably closer to Austin than Tully. The starting point in Katy is called Rhodes Stadium, or "The Ladies Tee's", as some cyclists refer to it. Now, me personally, I think that's a little harsh, and even overly competitive, particularly since this year's MS150 management has gone out of their way to stress that "this is not a race". So, those of you who have voiced that sentiment about Rhodes ought to be a little ashamed of yourselves.
I prefer the perspective of the folks who claim that the distance of those who start from Rhodes is exactly the same as the distance of those of us who start from Tully Stadium, as long as you measure Tully in miles, and Rhodes in kilometers. Now, that's the kind of Christian perspective I think we need to bring into this whole deal, as long as you don't dwell on the fact that kilometers are generally the unit of measure for Socialist countries, where such generalizations are not only typical, but desirable so as to maintain the Self-Esteem of underachievers. See, that's the whole point of Socialism. And while it would be fair to conclude from the evidence that some of Riders who start from Rhodes are Socialists, that doesn't mean that they're not nice people. Just undermotivated.
But I digress.
FRIDAY
Now, as those of you who have read my dispatches in year's past know, I have never been able to get onto the St. Arnold's team, even though a lot of my Hasher friends have, and I've otherwise got all the qualifications that I think would make me a catch for any MS150 team:
- I'm a decent fund raiser.
- I'm a responsible cyclist.
- I know several people on the St. Arnold's team, including the most important people, the volunteers who feed them.
- I'm a pitch-in kind of guy when it comes to organizing training rides, etc.
- Finally, I'm that rare male Hasher that has not rewarded their hospitality at the brewery by going out behind the building to take a pee.
Still, I could never get any traction when I would call or reach out through friends. The Team was always full. I had started to suspect that the real reason was because I was mostly a wine drinker, but quickly admonished myself for attributing such low motives to the folks who ran the team, like they might be some kind of Beer Snobs. If they're full up, they're full up, and there's nothing you can do about that. The fact that a bunch of my reprobate friends made it on while I did not was just a matter of timing.
Anyway, a couple month's back I met a girl at a party who had just recently moved to this country from what I took to be South America. We started talking and she mentioned that she had taken up bicycle riding last summer and thought she would give the MS150 a try. "Which team are you with", I asked. "St. Arnold's", she replied. "And aren't they just the nicest people"?
I didn't bother asking her if she was a beer drinker. I already knew the answer.
That reminds me: One of my St. Arnold's pals told me with totally deserved pride that St. Arnold's was in the Top 10 in terms of fundraising, notwithstanding that St. Arnold's is a Microbrewery with one location (Houston). Congrats to St. Arnold's! Let this also dispel all the preconceptions everybody has about Beer Drinkers and athletic pursuits. Our takeaway on this point is that beer drinking is no obstacle when it comes to riding a bike 175 miles, and apparently an absolute virtue when it comes to fund raising.
My training schedule in preparation for the 2009 Ride has been somewhat - how shall we say - problematic, weekends not being as accessible as in years past; so my actual conditioning is not all I could wish it to be. It's not a huge concern, as I have only missed out on hill training, wind training, distance training and, well, riding my Road Bike. I'm kind of hoping my sundry Urban Bike Assaults from Cypress to Houston on the Hybrid will compensate. Time will tell.
Despite reports that rain will cancel the Saturday ride, I spend Friday night assembling my kit: shoes, helmet, gloves, packets of Butt'r (a fragrant paste you rub on your nethers about, oh, mile 80), and various other stuff. One of the items I take along are packets of Goo, a fragrant paste not unlike Butt'r, except that, instead of smearing it on your nethers, you eat it. It's a high carb concoction, and quite tasty; kind of like pudding on steroids. Anyway, I'm rooting around in my Bike Cupboard in the garage, and I come across a few packets of Goo that are, well, questionable. They've been in the garage since at least the 2008 MS150 that I didn't do, and might actually go back to the MS150 in 2007. See, this is the only long distance ride I ever do, so I can't justify a lot of Goo consumption. I stick them in the Bike Pouch under my seat, and don't give them another thought.
SATURDAY
Shades of Hurricane Ike. Texas got swamped by a storm yesterday, and by mid-afternoon, the LaGrange campground was a Lake. I got an on-the-scene report Friday night from my friend Jim Weitzel on the CapRock team that several large tents were damaged and the volunteers were all standing in water. The Saturday ride was cancelled, but Sunday was still tentatively a go, as weather reports indicated the storm would blow itself out Saturday night. The Riders were advised to get themselves up to LaGrange Sunday morning, and the MS150 team would get us back either to LaGrange or Tully Sunday night. I had put the word out to all the Riders I could that we'll be meeting Sunday, EARLY, at Tully Stadium to convoy up to LaGrange. Shawn Faris has volunteered his trailer and pickup, and we've got enough seats and space for a dozen bikes and people.
This year, I'm riding with the Continental Airlines Team. I joined Continental because the folks I knew best at Schlumberger (a wonderful team by the way; awesome training rides and support) had stopped riding for various reasons. Plus, I joined Continental because Debra Sandoval is a close friend who works for them, and she urged me to join so we could ride together, as we had a few years back when she last did the Ride. Six weeks after I joined, Debra decided to get hip replacement surgery and dropped out. Alone again, naturally. Debra's doing fine, but her butt is in the saddle come this time next year.
Side Note: I forwarded a suggestion to the Continental Team managers suggesting that each Rider be awarded 1 Frequent Flyer Mile for every mile ridden in the MS150, ha ha ha. The Team Captain, Beth Arlington, responded back that she felt Continental should pony up ONE HUNDRED frequent flier miles for every rider, ha ha ha. Now that I've been cheesed out of my Saturday ride, and inasmuch as somebody has to pay for my inconvenience, that sounds like a pretty darn good idea.
So far though, no bites from Continental Airlines.
Next up: Part II, The Convoy To LaGrange
Friday, April 17, 2009
Would You Let These Guys Babysit Your Child?
The Usual Suspects are at it again, this time demanding that the US submit to yet another United Nations scam on child-rearing, the sole result of which will be the further loss of personal freedoms in the U.S., the inevitable confiscation of yet more of our wealth, and our further integration into a nefarious "World Community" composed mostly of people and nations who - on their best day - couldn't hold our jock strap when it comes to human rights, much less the rights of children.
In her article "It's time for us to ratify pact on rights for children", children's "advocate" Randy Burton, founder of "Justice For Children" uses questionable data to reach questionable conclusions. Burton states that in the U.S. "....1,300 children die each year of abuse and neglect....and....90% of those children were age 5 or under". She then goes on to lobby for the USA to surrender our sovereignty to the United Nations by ratifying the UN "Convention on the Rights of Children" treaty, effectively making the UN the agency that can dictate to all Americans how to raise their kids.
Burton's statistics sound authoritative, but actual government data on the subject are all over the map:
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in 2006 that there were "more than 200" cases of death yearly due to abuse and neglect in children under five in the United States.
- In yet another report, the US government reported in 2008 that there were 1,100 fatalities in children under five yearly due to neglect and abuse, the study that Burton chose to cite.
While Burton is busy giving credence to the worst-case scenarios to justify our surrender to the UN, it's worth pointing out that the UN's performance to date makes a case against a further collaboration with them, not a case for it. After all, this is the organization that has coddled the worst child-killers in the world. Throughout the undeveloped world, the death of children due to disease, malnutrition, tribal warfare and violence is epidemic, most notably in the cases of Rwanda, North Korea and Darfur. In these countries and others, time after time the UN has stood by and let tens of thousands of children die every year. So why is it that Ms. Robbins thinks that surrendering to the United Nations is a good idea?
Burton also advocates for yet more "rights" for children, including access to legal counsel dictated by Child Welfare agencies against the wishes of their parents. Shades of Marion Wright Edelman and a younger Hillary Clinton flacking for the "Children's Defense Fund". They too constructed such a Straw Man back in the '70s by arguing that children don't already have the protection of the State when parents are abusive or neglectful to justify this new "right". The real purpose of such a law would be to allow underage children to literally sue their parents when they disagreed with how they were being raised, with the gargantuan Federal and State child welfare agencies being the arbiter between child and parent.
You're already seeing this play out in reality today, as total strangers can not only give your underage children condoms, but provide them with graphic demonstrations in the classroom, complete with a banana or other phallic substitute. These same strangers can also arrange an abortion for your daughter, even transporting her across State lines in contravention of the Mann Act; and all without the parents knowing a damn thing.
The whole purpose of such legislation is of course to yet further expand an already humongously large and humongously ineffective bureaucracy. Just as the Education establishment will finally get it right so long as we pour just a few more trillions into Education, HHS and CPS will finally get child care right if we just let them get a little bit bigger, and surrender just a few more of our freedoms to the Nanny State and the United Nations.
It is typical of the liberal prescription for the World's ills to focus on the United States as the source of any problem, statistics be damned, and Burton is no exception. She notes in her editorial that "all UN countries are signatories to the treaty except for the United States and Somalia". Subtle. Only the U.S. and that bastion of piracy, Somalia, have been so nefarious as to stand in the way of Progress, at least as she defines it. I wonder if a Thrill went up her leg when she connected those particular dots?
For Obama-era Liberals, there is apparently no World consensus that must not be adhered to. Memo to Randy Burton: the rest of the world was unanimous on the Kyoto Protocols too. You remember, the Global Warming initiative modeled on the UN's Oil-For-Food program whose only purpose was to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars per year out of the U.S. and give it to the World's worst polluters? The one the Senate defeated 99 to 0 when it came to a vote?
And just because Randy Burton and the U.S. government says authoritatively that it was either 200 children that died of neglect and abuse in America, or 1,100, it's worth keeping in mind that the folks generating these statistics are the same social welfare types who told you ten years ago that there were 3 million homeless people in America, when there was really less than 300,000. As recently as 2007, they were telling you that there were upwards of 300,000 homeless Veterans, when the actual number of homeless vets is likely in the range of a few thousand.
Not that numbers matter. The actual number of deaths of small children in the U.S. could be 50, and the same people would be blathering on about how "we're not doing enough to protect our children", while all over the world, there's a shortage of girls because so many societies abort them - up to and including full term - because boys are more cherished in many societies, and enslave a goodly percentage of the rest.
There's no doubt that we need to address the problem of child abuse as vigorously as possible, but advocating that the USA submit to an organization as criminally incompetent as the United Nations will result in the further destruction of the American family and higher rates of child death, not lower. Meanwhile, the tiresome and relentless predictability of Liberal solutions to society's problems always seem to accomplish the exact opposite of their objective.
In this instance, it seems Democrats aren't going to be content until they've totally destroyed the American Family, as they have done to Black Families in America for the past sixty years. If they want to discern the cause of death of hundreds of children and thousands of adults each year due to neglect and abuse, they should try looking in the mirror.
In her article "It's time for us to ratify pact on rights for children", children's "advocate" Randy Burton, founder of "Justice For Children" uses questionable data to reach questionable conclusions. Burton states that in the U.S. "....1,300 children die each year of abuse and neglect....and....90% of those children were age 5 or under". She then goes on to lobby for the USA to surrender our sovereignty to the United Nations by ratifying the UN "Convention on the Rights of Children" treaty, effectively making the UN the agency that can dictate to all Americans how to raise their kids.
Burton's statistics sound authoritative, but actual government data on the subject are all over the map:
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in 2006 that there were "more than 200" cases of death yearly due to abuse and neglect in children under five in the United States.
- In yet another report, the US government reported in 2008 that there were 1,100 fatalities in children under five yearly due to neglect and abuse, the study that Burton chose to cite.
While Burton is busy giving credence to the worst-case scenarios to justify our surrender to the UN, it's worth pointing out that the UN's performance to date makes a case against a further collaboration with them, not a case for it. After all, this is the organization that has coddled the worst child-killers in the world. Throughout the undeveloped world, the death of children due to disease, malnutrition, tribal warfare and violence is epidemic, most notably in the cases of Rwanda, North Korea and Darfur. In these countries and others, time after time the UN has stood by and let tens of thousands of children die every year. So why is it that Ms. Robbins thinks that surrendering to the United Nations is a good idea?
Burton also advocates for yet more "rights" for children, including access to legal counsel dictated by Child Welfare agencies against the wishes of their parents. Shades of Marion Wright Edelman and a younger Hillary Clinton flacking for the "Children's Defense Fund". They too constructed such a Straw Man back in the '70s by arguing that children don't already have the protection of the State when parents are abusive or neglectful to justify this new "right". The real purpose of such a law would be to allow underage children to literally sue their parents when they disagreed with how they were being raised, with the gargantuan Federal and State child welfare agencies being the arbiter between child and parent.
You're already seeing this play out in reality today, as total strangers can not only give your underage children condoms, but provide them with graphic demonstrations in the classroom, complete with a banana or other phallic substitute. These same strangers can also arrange an abortion for your daughter, even transporting her across State lines in contravention of the Mann Act; and all without the parents knowing a damn thing.
The whole purpose of such legislation is of course to yet further expand an already humongously large and humongously ineffective bureaucracy. Just as the Education establishment will finally get it right so long as we pour just a few more trillions into Education, HHS and CPS will finally get child care right if we just let them get a little bit bigger, and surrender just a few more of our freedoms to the Nanny State and the United Nations.
It is typical of the liberal prescription for the World's ills to focus on the United States as the source of any problem, statistics be damned, and Burton is no exception. She notes in her editorial that "all UN countries are signatories to the treaty except for the United States and Somalia". Subtle. Only the U.S. and that bastion of piracy, Somalia, have been so nefarious as to stand in the way of Progress, at least as she defines it. I wonder if a Thrill went up her leg when she connected those particular dots?
For Obama-era Liberals, there is apparently no World consensus that must not be adhered to. Memo to Randy Burton: the rest of the world was unanimous on the Kyoto Protocols too. You remember, the Global Warming initiative modeled on the UN's Oil-For-Food program whose only purpose was to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars per year out of the U.S. and give it to the World's worst polluters? The one the Senate defeated 99 to 0 when it came to a vote?
And just because Randy Burton and the U.S. government says authoritatively that it was either 200 children that died of neglect and abuse in America, or 1,100, it's worth keeping in mind that the folks generating these statistics are the same social welfare types who told you ten years ago that there were 3 million homeless people in America, when there was really less than 300,000. As recently as 2007, they were telling you that there were upwards of 300,000 homeless Veterans, when the actual number of homeless vets is likely in the range of a few thousand.
Not that numbers matter. The actual number of deaths of small children in the U.S. could be 50, and the same people would be blathering on about how "we're not doing enough to protect our children", while all over the world, there's a shortage of girls because so many societies abort them - up to and including full term - because boys are more cherished in many societies, and enslave a goodly percentage of the rest.
There's no doubt that we need to address the problem of child abuse as vigorously as possible, but advocating that the USA submit to an organization as criminally incompetent as the United Nations will result in the further destruction of the American family and higher rates of child death, not lower. Meanwhile, the tiresome and relentless predictability of Liberal solutions to society's problems always seem to accomplish the exact opposite of their objective.
In this instance, it seems Democrats aren't going to be content until they've totally destroyed the American Family, as they have done to Black Families in America for the past sixty years. If they want to discern the cause of death of hundreds of children and thousands of adults each year due to neglect and abuse, they should try looking in the mirror.
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Public Sector Full Employment Act, Part IV - Medical Malpractice
There was an interesting story in the newspaper today providing yet another example of the indestructibility of Public Sector jobs vs. their Private Sector counterparts, not to mention how insulated are Public Sector employees from the same rules that govern the rest of us. OffHisMeds was drawn to this story because, well, the name of this blog is OffHisMeds. That will make more sense in a minute. The key to this cautionary tale is whether or not the government runs your profession through any kind of "Review Board", and if that "Review Board" consists of members of your profession. If so, you're Golden. If not, you're screwed.
In the most recent example, a psychiatrist - Dr. Alan T. Lloyd - was accused of giving a female patient from Houston drugs and having sex with her after he began treating her for depression and suicidal thoughts. He saw her twice per week for four years, starting in January of 2003 and continuing through 2007. Assuming either the woman or Dr. Lloyd took a couple weeks off for vacation every year, that would come to upwards of 400 "sessions" wherein the good doctor administered to the woman some combination of drugs, counseling, therapy and bodily fluids, no doubt guided by his peculiar understanding of the Hippocratic Oath.
Before we discuss the drug and sex angle, let's review the financial impact on this whole affair, shall we? After all, it was you and I as taxpayers and victims of the insurance cartel that paid for all of this "counseling", making us in some small way victims of his predations as well. If the good doctor was knocking down a mere $150 per hour - small change in the psychiatric profession - his take for having "treated" this unfortunate woman for four years would have been $15,000 per year. Not bad work if you can find it. At those rates, he would need to work only twenty hours per week to gross $150 thousand per year and get his rocks off more than Wilt Chamberlain on a road trip. That's also thumping good money considering the tens of thousands of dollars per year he would otherwise have to spend pursuing more conventional options to satisfy his sexual needs, such as marriage or Hookers, since this arrangement didn't involve the inconvenience of a wife, much less the embarrassment and other consequences of hiring a prostitute, which is illegal.
Since the government does such a good job of policing its own, it took the TMB (Texas Medical Board) only four years to swing into action, so intent were they to right this horrible wrong, and restore public confidence in their ability to protect the populace from sexual predators. For reasons not explained in the article, the TMB did not refer Dr. Lloyd for criminal prosecution, although that was certainly an option. His punishment? Dr. Lloyd was subject to "administrative" penalties, including a fine of $10,000, mandatory attendance at a workshop on "professional boundaries", and a job at the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, a psychiatric hospital in San Antonio. No mention of who is to pay for the workshop.
Way to go, State of Texas. It's nice to know you've set the bar so high for anybody else in the medical profession who wants to administer psychotropic drugs to persons they are treating so as to abuse them sexually. And Shades of Deja Vu'. Doesn't seem like it was all that long ago we were reading about a Dentist who did much the same thing to his female patients. If this keeps up, we might all have a hard time submitting to drugs or anesthesia for any future medical procedures. If the only thing between you and your doctor's fly is his sense of right and wrong, you might want to opt for the temporary discomfort of treatment without meds.
After the TMB administered the slap on the wrist, the woman's ex-husband delivered a classic example of understatement - not to mention restraint - when he said the he was amazed that the doctor didn't lose his license after the malpractice was discovered. I can think of other punishments the Ex could have claimed in amazement that Lloyd was not subject to, including tarring, feathering and being run out of town on the proverbial rail.
But that's me.
There appears to be no end to the perks of Public Sector employment. Not only was this Hump earning substantial Jing off this one woman for seeing her only two hours per week, he was banging her like a Drumline Walk-on looking to make it to the First Squad. That has got to be the ultimate dream for the under-motivated, not to mention morally challenged Public Servant: having sex with a mental incompetent during work hours, getting paid for it to boot, and then getting a nice promotion to a publicly funded psychiatric facility.
You might think that getting paid for malpractice would be as bad as things could get where the Public Sector is concerned, but is it really all that different than what we Private Sector types are subject to every time we pay our taxes, or have to endure yet another "stimulus" package whose sole purpose is to confiscate our money so that it can be pissed away satisfying the political needs of the Democratic Party? Minus actual penetration of our bodily orifices and the fact that we weren't administered any drugs whilst being fleeced, there's really not a hill of bean's worth of difference, except of course that this woman was only abused for four years, whereas abuse of the Taxpayer is never-ending.
As to the consequences in this case, I know what you're thinking. If a truck driver or office manager was to drug a mentally ill woman in the workplace and then molest her even once, they would likely be subject to something more than a small fine and some sensitivity training, much less get a promotion. Heck, last time I checked, sex with subordinates in the workplace under any circumstances was grounds for immediate dismissal with 99% of all private companies in America (the notable exception being the radio business); but, the Government takes care of its own.
In the Irony department, the article also revealed that at one point in their "professional" relationship, the woman attempted to take one of the prescriptions the good doctor had previously given her, photocopied it, and tried to get it filled. She was arrested and charged for attempting to fraudulently obtain drugs. There was no information on the outcome of the charges, but hopefully her punishment options also included a small fine and a workshop. And I wonder if the good doctor was shocked by this woman's betrayal, not to mention her breach of ethics? Apparently the government was, since she was prosecuted, whereas he was not.
The whole sordid affair did have a heartwarming conclusion: Dr. Lloyd is now living with his victim in San Antonio. The lack of a proposal of marriage at this point is certainly understandable, what with her background and her forging his signature and all. Either that, or he's got commitment issues. I'll have to defer any judgment on that, since I'm not a Psychiatrist.
This story reminds me of the time back in the mid-90s when then-President Bill Clinton attempted to molest the distraught wife of a friend who had died unexpectedly, when she came to our randy Chief Executive for comfort. Kathleen Willey was her name. The resulting scandal led to Impeachment for Clinton, who nonetheless served out his term, and then went on to knock down a quarter billion lobbying on behalf of sundry Middle Eastern potentates and other unsavory characters. In the larger scheme of things, though, Clinton was deprived of his reputation - whether he valued it or not - as well as his law license, and he was most certainly not given any promotion after doing once what Dr. Lloyd apparently did hundreds of times over the course of four years.
The lesson the State of Texas apparently wants us to draw from all of this is, if you want to molest women who are emotionally vulnerable or even mentally ill, use drugs, have a bunch of high-placed Enablers with a really distorted sense of Professional Courtesy sit in judgment, and under no circumstances attempt this unless you are a trained professional.
In the department of small consolations for Houston area psychiatric patients, Dr. Lloyd is now practicing his craft in San Antonio. Good news for Houston, unless his current employer, the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, reimburses him for mileage.
In the most recent example, a psychiatrist - Dr. Alan T. Lloyd - was accused of giving a female patient from Houston drugs and having sex with her after he began treating her for depression and suicidal thoughts. He saw her twice per week for four years, starting in January of 2003 and continuing through 2007. Assuming either the woman or Dr. Lloyd took a couple weeks off for vacation every year, that would come to upwards of 400 "sessions" wherein the good doctor administered to the woman some combination of drugs, counseling, therapy and bodily fluids, no doubt guided by his peculiar understanding of the Hippocratic Oath.
Before we discuss the drug and sex angle, let's review the financial impact on this whole affair, shall we? After all, it was you and I as taxpayers and victims of the insurance cartel that paid for all of this "counseling", making us in some small way victims of his predations as well. If the good doctor was knocking down a mere $150 per hour - small change in the psychiatric profession - his take for having "treated" this unfortunate woman for four years would have been $15,000 per year. Not bad work if you can find it. At those rates, he would need to work only twenty hours per week to gross $150 thousand per year and get his rocks off more than Wilt Chamberlain on a road trip. That's also thumping good money considering the tens of thousands of dollars per year he would otherwise have to spend pursuing more conventional options to satisfy his sexual needs, such as marriage or Hookers, since this arrangement didn't involve the inconvenience of a wife, much less the embarrassment and other consequences of hiring a prostitute, which is illegal.
Since the government does such a good job of policing its own, it took the TMB (Texas Medical Board) only four years to swing into action, so intent were they to right this horrible wrong, and restore public confidence in their ability to protect the populace from sexual predators. For reasons not explained in the article, the TMB did not refer Dr. Lloyd for criminal prosecution, although that was certainly an option. His punishment? Dr. Lloyd was subject to "administrative" penalties, including a fine of $10,000, mandatory attendance at a workshop on "professional boundaries", and a job at the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, a psychiatric hospital in San Antonio. No mention of who is to pay for the workshop.
Way to go, State of Texas. It's nice to know you've set the bar so high for anybody else in the medical profession who wants to administer psychotropic drugs to persons they are treating so as to abuse them sexually. And Shades of Deja Vu'. Doesn't seem like it was all that long ago we were reading about a Dentist who did much the same thing to his female patients. If this keeps up, we might all have a hard time submitting to drugs or anesthesia for any future medical procedures. If the only thing between you and your doctor's fly is his sense of right and wrong, you might want to opt for the temporary discomfort of treatment without meds.
After the TMB administered the slap on the wrist, the woman's ex-husband delivered a classic example of understatement - not to mention restraint - when he said the he was amazed that the doctor didn't lose his license after the malpractice was discovered. I can think of other punishments the Ex could have claimed in amazement that Lloyd was not subject to, including tarring, feathering and being run out of town on the proverbial rail.
But that's me.
There appears to be no end to the perks of Public Sector employment. Not only was this Hump earning substantial Jing off this one woman for seeing her only two hours per week, he was banging her like a Drumline Walk-on looking to make it to the First Squad. That has got to be the ultimate dream for the under-motivated, not to mention morally challenged Public Servant: having sex with a mental incompetent during work hours, getting paid for it to boot, and then getting a nice promotion to a publicly funded psychiatric facility.
You might think that getting paid for malpractice would be as bad as things could get where the Public Sector is concerned, but is it really all that different than what we Private Sector types are subject to every time we pay our taxes, or have to endure yet another "stimulus" package whose sole purpose is to confiscate our money so that it can be pissed away satisfying the political needs of the Democratic Party? Minus actual penetration of our bodily orifices and the fact that we weren't administered any drugs whilst being fleeced, there's really not a hill of bean's worth of difference, except of course that this woman was only abused for four years, whereas abuse of the Taxpayer is never-ending.
As to the consequences in this case, I know what you're thinking. If a truck driver or office manager was to drug a mentally ill woman in the workplace and then molest her even once, they would likely be subject to something more than a small fine and some sensitivity training, much less get a promotion. Heck, last time I checked, sex with subordinates in the workplace under any circumstances was grounds for immediate dismissal with 99% of all private companies in America (the notable exception being the radio business); but, the Government takes care of its own.
In the Irony department, the article also revealed that at one point in their "professional" relationship, the woman attempted to take one of the prescriptions the good doctor had previously given her, photocopied it, and tried to get it filled. She was arrested and charged for attempting to fraudulently obtain drugs. There was no information on the outcome of the charges, but hopefully her punishment options also included a small fine and a workshop. And I wonder if the good doctor was shocked by this woman's betrayal, not to mention her breach of ethics? Apparently the government was, since she was prosecuted, whereas he was not.
The whole sordid affair did have a heartwarming conclusion: Dr. Lloyd is now living with his victim in San Antonio. The lack of a proposal of marriage at this point is certainly understandable, what with her background and her forging his signature and all. Either that, or he's got commitment issues. I'll have to defer any judgment on that, since I'm not a Psychiatrist.
This story reminds me of the time back in the mid-90s when then-President Bill Clinton attempted to molest the distraught wife of a friend who had died unexpectedly, when she came to our randy Chief Executive for comfort. Kathleen Willey was her name. The resulting scandal led to Impeachment for Clinton, who nonetheless served out his term, and then went on to knock down a quarter billion lobbying on behalf of sundry Middle Eastern potentates and other unsavory characters. In the larger scheme of things, though, Clinton was deprived of his reputation - whether he valued it or not - as well as his law license, and he was most certainly not given any promotion after doing once what Dr. Lloyd apparently did hundreds of times over the course of four years.
The lesson the State of Texas apparently wants us to draw from all of this is, if you want to molest women who are emotionally vulnerable or even mentally ill, use drugs, have a bunch of high-placed Enablers with a really distorted sense of Professional Courtesy sit in judgment, and under no circumstances attempt this unless you are a trained professional.
In the department of small consolations for Houston area psychiatric patients, Dr. Lloyd is now practicing his craft in San Antonio. Good news for Houston, unless his current employer, the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, reimburses him for mileage.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Barack's Obeisance Tour
Our President-in-training has been a busy Chief Executive. The flood of statements, legislation, proposals, Tonight Show appearances, virtual townhall meetings, proclamations and directives since his inauguration has been downright dizzying. Why, his reversals of former Bush policies alone would represent a normal two month's work for a typical President, but not Obama. From closing Guantanamo to the Frankensteinian harvesting of fetuses to abandoning such terms as terrorist, Obama has been working overtime to delegitimize not just George W. Bush, but most everything America has stood for in the past eight years. And so intent is he on advancing his agenda, that he has dispensed with the normal courtesy of not criticizing his predecessor, throwing W under the bus with a zeal that would be unseemly for, say, a bilious partisan like James Carville, much less the President of the United States.
Makes you wonder if he will have left himself anything to say - much less do - six months from now.
Which leaves us to contemplate the effects of all that rhetoric, particularly Obama's Worldwide Prostration Tour. In mere days, The Apologizer-In-Chief and his minions have:
- Tacitly apologized to the Russians for America's behavior in the past eight years, lending that brutal oligarchy a moral equivalence to America's democracy, complete with a symbol: the dreadfully embarrassing "reset" button, shaped as it was like the nuclear launch button found in every cheesy movie about Armageddon ever made.
- Suggested to the Soviets that America would unilaterally dismantle the anti-missile system staged in Eastern Europe designed to protect Europe from Iran's nuclear ambitions, so long as the Russkis would be nice to us.
- Advised Europe that an Obama-led America will not pursue a "war on terror", thus undoing eight years of a reasonable foreign policy with even a semblance of backbone.
- Went to Turkey and declared to the parliament of this Islamist republic that America was not "at war with Islam", and thus implicitly established as a fact that Bush's war on terrorism was a "war with Islam".
- Sent a video love letter to the Mullahs of Iran, announcing his intentions to honor their wishes as opposed to those of the freedom-loving peoples of Iran, lending their terrorist theocracy the same moral legitimacy with the U.S. that he granted to the Russians.
- Announced a unilateral effort to "eliminate nuclear weapons" from the world, notwithstanding that those nuclear weapons are America's - and the civilized world's - last guarantor of freedom.
- Revived the dreadful Kyoto Protocols, an agreement that essentially allowed for the extortion of countless billions of U.S. taxpayers dollars by the worst polluters in the world, and literally had provisions that incented these polluters to produce more pollution so as to maximize the money they could then extort from America.
- Announced plans to begin eliminating conventional weapons systems, including funding for the F-22 Raptor and missile defense, both essential to countering the growing military ambitions of China, not to mention the nuclear blackmail of nations like Russia and Iran.
- Announced plans to join the six nation talks on nuclear weapons with Iran without pre-condition, garnering a thumbs-up from Ahmadinejad, and apparently embracing the do-nothing strategy of the spineless Europeans that so contributed to North Korea's successful development of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
- Eased most travel and trade restrictions with Cuba as a precursor to normalization, even as Cuba chafes under the iron thumb of the Castro brothers.
- Flew to Iraq to announce America's complete withdrawal from Iraq by 2010, a move so unexpected the Iraqis themselves were dismayed. Suicide bombings escalated the following day.
- Prostrated himself before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, his head bobbing down to the level of His Majesty's genitals, a gesture that is not without significance to Islamist Imperialists.
It's amateur hour in the White House, and Barack's Obeisance tour has accomplished in mere weeks what the nation's other famous Apologizer-In-Chief Bill Clinton never achieved in two terms: a veritable prostration before the world acknowledging that America was not only the source of most of the world's problems, but evil to boot. Adding insult to America's injury, Obama took it a step further in explicitly and unilaterally repudiating not only the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, but of his predecessor's predecessor, Bill Clinton. Say what you will of Boy Clinton, he at least kept most of the essential building blocks - military and diplomatic - of American foreign policy in place; policies that had been forged by a succession of Presidents - Democrat and Republican - going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson.
Never has one President undone so much in so little time for so little return. Forget whatever value you think each of the pieces of Bush's foreign policy might have had; they were all potential bargaining chips that Obama could have used to force meaningful concessions from the World's Bad Actors to counter their nefarious ambitions. Instead, he frittered them all away without getting anything in return, and humiliated himself - and his country - in return. What's next? The mind boggles. Perhaps a quick trip to Venezuela to chat live with Hugo Chavez on his radio show, complete with an abject apology for supporting Columbia in its efforts to fend off the druglords who poison our children with cocaine. Perhaps Obama will take a knee the next time he greets the King Abdullah, getting his face perilously ever closer to the Royal Johnson, whilst simultaneously declaring his conversion to Islam.
It's hard to imagine who the biggest losers are with Obama's actions. The American people come to mind, as does any portion of Western Europe that had hoped to avoid being swept up by the Islamist tidal wave engulfing the EU; and of course, there's the people of the former Soviet puppets who so recently gained their freedom from Commie oppression. For all that, though, my money is on Israel as The Biggest Loser. With the vast majority of the announcements he made above, I can't help but think that the one thing he has done was to communicate in no uncertain terms to the Israelis that they are on their own, and to their Islamist enemies that it is open season on Israelis.
It's hard to imagine how he could have done more harm with his words, that is, until two days ago, when he came up with a way to harm us further still by saying nothing at all. As usual, The Media found a way to turn it into a virtue.
Kathleen Parker - the faux Republican for the Washington Post whom I have skewered in the past - wrote an article with a fresh innovation in what has become the growth industry for Media Bobbleheads: complimenting, nay, praising, Obama. In her article "Obama tough enough in handling N. Korea", she gives the President props for, rather uncharacteristically, having nothing to say. I won't bore you with the details other than that Parker managed to devote 600 words to praising Obama for making no gesture or pronouncement about the recent launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile by North Korea.
Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, it's just that his non-pronouncement caught The Media off guard, inasmuch as they had never not heard Obama say something about anything up until that point. Plus they've been having a hard time keeping up with our Peripatetic President. Having already exhausted all of the superlatives in the English language, they had been scrambling of late for ways to renew the franchise, and unless they came up with something quick, they might have actually been put in the position of having to, you know, report on him objectively. The Horror. So, imagine the Media's relief when Parker and others started complimenting Obama for saying nothing. Sheer genius, as presidents throughout history have been capable of long stretches of saying nothing, all of which in this modern era is then ripe to be spun into the proper context by Parker and her clones, and regurgitated as yet another compliment for Obama. Harmony has been restored in the Media universe.
It would be quibbling of me to point out that, in the one instance where Obama arguably should have spoken up that he was silent, but I'll take what I can get. I'm actually OK with Obama saying nothing, even if it hurts us. I wish he would do more of it.
Makes you wonder if he will have left himself anything to say - much less do - six months from now.
Which leaves us to contemplate the effects of all that rhetoric, particularly Obama's Worldwide Prostration Tour. In mere days, The Apologizer-In-Chief and his minions have:
- Tacitly apologized to the Russians for America's behavior in the past eight years, lending that brutal oligarchy a moral equivalence to America's democracy, complete with a symbol: the dreadfully embarrassing "reset" button, shaped as it was like the nuclear launch button found in every cheesy movie about Armageddon ever made.
- Suggested to the Soviets that America would unilaterally dismantle the anti-missile system staged in Eastern Europe designed to protect Europe from Iran's nuclear ambitions, so long as the Russkis would be nice to us.
- Advised Europe that an Obama-led America will not pursue a "war on terror", thus undoing eight years of a reasonable foreign policy with even a semblance of backbone.
- Went to Turkey and declared to the parliament of this Islamist republic that America was not "at war with Islam", and thus implicitly established as a fact that Bush's war on terrorism was a "war with Islam".
- Sent a video love letter to the Mullahs of Iran, announcing his intentions to honor their wishes as opposed to those of the freedom-loving peoples of Iran, lending their terrorist theocracy the same moral legitimacy with the U.S. that he granted to the Russians.
- Announced a unilateral effort to "eliminate nuclear weapons" from the world, notwithstanding that those nuclear weapons are America's - and the civilized world's - last guarantor of freedom.
- Revived the dreadful Kyoto Protocols, an agreement that essentially allowed for the extortion of countless billions of U.S. taxpayers dollars by the worst polluters in the world, and literally had provisions that incented these polluters to produce more pollution so as to maximize the money they could then extort from America.
- Announced plans to begin eliminating conventional weapons systems, including funding for the F-22 Raptor and missile defense, both essential to countering the growing military ambitions of China, not to mention the nuclear blackmail of nations like Russia and Iran.
- Announced plans to join the six nation talks on nuclear weapons with Iran without pre-condition, garnering a thumbs-up from Ahmadinejad, and apparently embracing the do-nothing strategy of the spineless Europeans that so contributed to North Korea's successful development of nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
- Eased most travel and trade restrictions with Cuba as a precursor to normalization, even as Cuba chafes under the iron thumb of the Castro brothers.
- Flew to Iraq to announce America's complete withdrawal from Iraq by 2010, a move so unexpected the Iraqis themselves were dismayed. Suicide bombings escalated the following day.
- Prostrated himself before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, his head bobbing down to the level of His Majesty's genitals, a gesture that is not without significance to Islamist Imperialists.
It's amateur hour in the White House, and Barack's Obeisance tour has accomplished in mere weeks what the nation's other famous Apologizer-In-Chief Bill Clinton never achieved in two terms: a veritable prostration before the world acknowledging that America was not only the source of most of the world's problems, but evil to boot. Adding insult to America's injury, Obama took it a step further in explicitly and unilaterally repudiating not only the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, but of his predecessor's predecessor, Bill Clinton. Say what you will of Boy Clinton, he at least kept most of the essential building blocks - military and diplomatic - of American foreign policy in place; policies that had been forged by a succession of Presidents - Democrat and Republican - going all the way back to Woodrow Wilson.
Never has one President undone so much in so little time for so little return. Forget whatever value you think each of the pieces of Bush's foreign policy might have had; they were all potential bargaining chips that Obama could have used to force meaningful concessions from the World's Bad Actors to counter their nefarious ambitions. Instead, he frittered them all away without getting anything in return, and humiliated himself - and his country - in return. What's next? The mind boggles. Perhaps a quick trip to Venezuela to chat live with Hugo Chavez on his radio show, complete with an abject apology for supporting Columbia in its efforts to fend off the druglords who poison our children with cocaine. Perhaps Obama will take a knee the next time he greets the King Abdullah, getting his face perilously ever closer to the Royal Johnson, whilst simultaneously declaring his conversion to Islam.
It's hard to imagine who the biggest losers are with Obama's actions. The American people come to mind, as does any portion of Western Europe that had hoped to avoid being swept up by the Islamist tidal wave engulfing the EU; and of course, there's the people of the former Soviet puppets who so recently gained their freedom from Commie oppression. For all that, though, my money is on Israel as The Biggest Loser. With the vast majority of the announcements he made above, I can't help but think that the one thing he has done was to communicate in no uncertain terms to the Israelis that they are on their own, and to their Islamist enemies that it is open season on Israelis.
It's hard to imagine how he could have done more harm with his words, that is, until two days ago, when he came up with a way to harm us further still by saying nothing at all. As usual, The Media found a way to turn it into a virtue.
Kathleen Parker - the faux Republican for the Washington Post whom I have skewered in the past - wrote an article with a fresh innovation in what has become the growth industry for Media Bobbleheads: complimenting, nay, praising, Obama. In her article "Obama tough enough in handling N. Korea", she gives the President props for, rather uncharacteristically, having nothing to say. I won't bore you with the details other than that Parker managed to devote 600 words to praising Obama for making no gesture or pronouncement about the recent launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile by North Korea.
Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, it's just that his non-pronouncement caught The Media off guard, inasmuch as they had never not heard Obama say something about anything up until that point. Plus they've been having a hard time keeping up with our Peripatetic President. Having already exhausted all of the superlatives in the English language, they had been scrambling of late for ways to renew the franchise, and unless they came up with something quick, they might have actually been put in the position of having to, you know, report on him objectively. The Horror. So, imagine the Media's relief when Parker and others started complimenting Obama for saying nothing. Sheer genius, as presidents throughout history have been capable of long stretches of saying nothing, all of which in this modern era is then ripe to be spun into the proper context by Parker and her clones, and regurgitated as yet another compliment for Obama. Harmony has been restored in the Media universe.
It would be quibbling of me to point out that, in the one instance where Obama arguably should have spoken up that he was silent, but I'll take what I can get. I'm actually OK with Obama saying nothing, even if it hurts us. I wish he would do more of it.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
The Media Get Another Thrill Up Their Leg
Oh my, what a fuss they make in Democratland when there is an opportunity - however fleeting - to dredge up Camelot. OffHisMeds has observed that whether it is Democrats or The Media (to the extent that you can distinguish one from the other), so wanton is their desire, so ardent their need, they would not stoop to digging Jackie O bodily out of the ground if they thought that would help the latest heirs of the Kennedy aura - Barack and Michelle Obama - to their rightful Celebrity Station.
The Usual Suspects are working overtime to revive the Mystique of Kennedy. They swooned when Michelle arrived in London. They gushed when she made it to Paris. They gleefully portrayed Carla Bruni of France as Yesterday's news, going so far as to impart to Michelle - as attractive as she is - an iconic beauty and sexiness that she does not possess. They compare her - endlessly - to Jackie Kennedy, as if that was a good thing. Michelle went over big in Europe, mostly because she was - to the True Believers - The One. Trust me on this one. Most of the world wants to nail Carla. Michelle and Jackie, not so much.
Speaking of which, am I the only person in America who remembers the real Jackie Kennedy, or should I say Jackie O? A love for clothes, social station and status so complete as to be a thing that cried out for parody? A face dominated by a toothy grin and eyes that would readily transfer to a Dali poster? And does nobody remember the grating accent? A nasally Boston Brahmin with a smattering of upper crust Brit and just a dash of Français, Kennedy satirized herself merely by opening her mouth. Does nobody remember that you almost never heard Jackie speak during Kennedy's presidency? It's because it was so painful to listen to her. On this point JFK's instincts were flawless. Of course, he had to listen to her more than the rest of us.
On the subject of clothes, a quick memo to Sarah Palin: Designer duds are now back and guilt free; the Media Mambos have so declared, as they trip over each other to read the labels on Michelle's clothing, shoes, luggage and - who knows - probably her underwear as well, and then report it all back to a breathless and celebrity starved public.
As to the press fawning over Michelle Obama for feeling up the Queen Of England, whether it was "appropriate" or not, I am amused that they would portray the incident as not only appropriate, but avante garde; and not only avante garde, but Significant. Just as with Barack, she can do no wrong. Every faux pas is readily converted - along with reality - into a virtue. Every gesture or word is fraught with meaning, whether it is or not. And all in service of The One.
On this subject OffHisMeds is not near so concerned about Michelle inappropriately touching the Queen - however briefly - as he is with the extent to which The Media and Democrats inappropriately touch themselves - constantly - whenever they mention the Obamas. If you think there's something creepily undemocratic about the Democrats worship of Royalty, you're not alone. They've been indulging these teenage girl fantasies for generations, relentlessly stalking one Liberal icon after the next, desperate for somebody able to scale the Tower and sweep them away, or touch a sword upon their shoulders, or invite them into the Salon for Meaningful Conversation.
Or perhaps, perhaps, into the Presidential bedchamber. Barack being King of the World and all, it would not be beyond the worldly mores of his worshippers to submit to a Presidential quickie, without so much as a promise to protect a woman's right to choose in return, as Nina Burleigh so giddily proclaimed of Bill Clinton. When it comes to romantic fantasies involving helpless Damsels with a bodice ripe for removal, Barbara Cartland's novels ain't got nothing on Democrats. That includes Democrat men by the way. The only reason Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams haven't tricked themselves out in a peasant dress complete with cleavage is that Obama hasn't asked them to. Yet.
So, they content themselves to flack Michelle wherever and whenever, but there's a cautionary tale in there somewhere. By so inflating Michelle's celebrity, the Media and Democrats run the risk of neutralizing her ability to position herself as a serious player on policy. Who in their right mind would trust Jackie O or Carla Bruni with Health Care, for example? And make no mistake, Michelle is positioning herself as a serious player.
Meanwhile, no word yet as to any further intimacies the Obama's have planned for the World's Royalty, Prime Ministers and Dictators. I look forward with great anticipation to the next episode of "Michelle touching people inappropriately!". Watch in amazement as The First Lady fondles world leaders, kneads Royalty and shakes the left hand of the Princes of Islam. Or perhaps a Wet Willie for some Mullah in the obligatory reception line.
Now that is something I would gladly allow that the Media should cover, with high praise.
The Usual Suspects are working overtime to revive the Mystique of Kennedy. They swooned when Michelle arrived in London. They gushed when she made it to Paris. They gleefully portrayed Carla Bruni of France as Yesterday's news, going so far as to impart to Michelle - as attractive as she is - an iconic beauty and sexiness that she does not possess. They compare her - endlessly - to Jackie Kennedy, as if that was a good thing. Michelle went over big in Europe, mostly because she was - to the True Believers - The One. Trust me on this one. Most of the world wants to nail Carla. Michelle and Jackie, not so much.
Speaking of which, am I the only person in America who remembers the real Jackie Kennedy, or should I say Jackie O? A love for clothes, social station and status so complete as to be a thing that cried out for parody? A face dominated by a toothy grin and eyes that would readily transfer to a Dali poster? And does nobody remember the grating accent? A nasally Boston Brahmin with a smattering of upper crust Brit and just a dash of Français, Kennedy satirized herself merely by opening her mouth. Does nobody remember that you almost never heard Jackie speak during Kennedy's presidency? It's because it was so painful to listen to her. On this point JFK's instincts were flawless. Of course, he had to listen to her more than the rest of us.
On the subject of clothes, a quick memo to Sarah Palin: Designer duds are now back and guilt free; the Media Mambos have so declared, as they trip over each other to read the labels on Michelle's clothing, shoes, luggage and - who knows - probably her underwear as well, and then report it all back to a breathless and celebrity starved public.
As to the press fawning over Michelle Obama for feeling up the Queen Of England, whether it was "appropriate" or not, I am amused that they would portray the incident as not only appropriate, but avante garde; and not only avante garde, but Significant. Just as with Barack, she can do no wrong. Every faux pas is readily converted - along with reality - into a virtue. Every gesture or word is fraught with meaning, whether it is or not. And all in service of The One.
On this subject OffHisMeds is not near so concerned about Michelle inappropriately touching the Queen - however briefly - as he is with the extent to which The Media and Democrats inappropriately touch themselves - constantly - whenever they mention the Obamas. If you think there's something creepily undemocratic about the Democrats worship of Royalty, you're not alone. They've been indulging these teenage girl fantasies for generations, relentlessly stalking one Liberal icon after the next, desperate for somebody able to scale the Tower and sweep them away, or touch a sword upon their shoulders, or invite them into the Salon for Meaningful Conversation.
Or perhaps, perhaps, into the Presidential bedchamber. Barack being King of the World and all, it would not be beyond the worldly mores of his worshippers to submit to a Presidential quickie, without so much as a promise to protect a woman's right to choose in return, as Nina Burleigh so giddily proclaimed of Bill Clinton. When it comes to romantic fantasies involving helpless Damsels with a bodice ripe for removal, Barbara Cartland's novels ain't got nothing on Democrats. That includes Democrat men by the way. The only reason Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams haven't tricked themselves out in a peasant dress complete with cleavage is that Obama hasn't asked them to. Yet.
So, they content themselves to flack Michelle wherever and whenever, but there's a cautionary tale in there somewhere. By so inflating Michelle's celebrity, the Media and Democrats run the risk of neutralizing her ability to position herself as a serious player on policy. Who in their right mind would trust Jackie O or Carla Bruni with Health Care, for example? And make no mistake, Michelle is positioning herself as a serious player.
Meanwhile, no word yet as to any further intimacies the Obama's have planned for the World's Royalty, Prime Ministers and Dictators. I look forward with great anticipation to the next episode of "Michelle touching people inappropriately!". Watch in amazement as The First Lady fondles world leaders, kneads Royalty and shakes the left hand of the Princes of Islam. Or perhaps a Wet Willie for some Mullah in the obligatory reception line.
Now that is something I would gladly allow that the Media should cover, with high praise.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Barack Obama, The Virtual President
What is up with the Obama's and Europe? As the press hyperanalyzes recent controversies involving our President, the First Lady and Great Britain, and downplays the enormous p*ssing contest Obama's gotten into with the Czech Republic, OffHisMeds is left to wonder if they are a result of rampant megalomania, rampant cluelessness, or both. OffHisMeds also suspects that these recent contretemps reflect just the kind of heavy-handed diktat that Obama and the Democrats have accused George W of practicing, garnering cheers of approval from the Usual Suspects in Europe who so delighted in portraying our former President as an out of control Cowboy who imposed his will on the world.
Whatever his legitimate faults, W looks positively light on his feet in his dealings with Europe compared to our President in Training, and lest anybody forget, by the time he was done, his influence had resulted in explicitly Socialist leaders being overthrown by Conservatives in France, Italy and Germany. The results of Obama's first significant exposure to other world leaders are not near so auspicious, nor do they bode well for him.
First, there was the fuss over gifts exchanged between Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Obama a few weeks ago when Brown visited D.C. Brown offered Obama a rare book and a penholder fashioned from Lord Nelson's hip bone (or somesuch). In return, Obama gave Brown a batch of DVDs of "classics" of American cinema that wouldn't play on Brown's Brit DVD player. Oh yeah, and Obama also gave Brown's kids some Hot Wheels. Then he dissed Brown by not giving him a state dinner at the White House. Then an aide notified the British that they shouldn't expect preferential treatment since they're only one nation out hundreds.
Classy.
These gestures were followed the other day by a gift from the Obamas to Queen Elizabeth of an iPod full of "photos, videos and Showtunes". The mental images this generates in one's brainpan are excrutiating: One of Obama's seemingly inexhaustible supply of Webheads busily ripping content off the Internet for the iPod. Later, Her Majesty - earphones firmly in place and iPod jacked to her bicep via a velcro strip - is seen resolutely jogging around the Palace and rocking out to All That Jazz. Later still, she discovers that the recharging unit is incompatible with the Royal outlets, and the thing goes dead.
I wonder if Obama paid all the appropriate royalties on that content?
Next up, he decided to teach the Czech Republic a lesson after their Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek declared last week that Obama's Stimulus Package and other spending plans were "a road to hell", and other Czech leaders declared their unease at Obama's suckup to their former jailer, Vladimir Putin. So before arriving in the Czech Republic, he cancelled a meeting with Topolanek, cancelled plans to attend a State dinner in his honor with President Vaclav Klaus, and his press secretary declared that Obama and Michelle would instead have a "romantic private dinner".
Now, I don't mind so much that Obama went all the way to The Czech Republic just so he could urinate in their shoes personally. And I don't so much mind that he did it to the hardy nation that is one of the living symbols of a continent freed from tyranny by dint of their own resolve and so much American blood and treasure. And I don't so much mind that Obama saw fit to reserve his tantrum for men who fought so bravely - and recently - for the freedom to express an opinion of any kind. I guess in Obama's world, opinions critical of the U.S. seem to be reserved for dictatorships like Iran, China and Russia.
No, what I do object to is Obama going all the way to Central Europe just to get his freak on with The First Lady. If Air Force One and all the other presidential perks aren't enough to put lead in the Presidential pencil, a taxpayer-funded romantic dinner with his clothes-horse wife in Prague isn't going to do the trick either. I also object to their announcement of a romantic dinner as being newsworthy. Can you imagine the reaction if W had pulled such a stunt?
I detect a pattern here. Obama's personal gestures to the Brits, the Queen and the Czechs are very much like his self-promotion as "The One", not to mention his approach to governance. In so relentlessly pressing on the British gifts of such an impersonal nature, and in so publicly flogging the Czechs for daring to criticize him, Obama is merely repeating the modus operandi he employs in dealing with the American people. Intent on dragging his countrymen - not to mention the rest of the world - into his universe, this Elitist Hump is as tone deaf as politicians get. Like some vain coquette at the Cotillion absolutely convinced of her desirability, Obama preens as he demands to be courted. It's not Obama that is out of touch, it's Gordon Brown that needs to come around. Same with the Queen. Same with Topolanek. Same with America.
And it doesn't help that Obama exists in a world more virtual than any we have ever seen. His every word is scripted, his every utterance relayed to him by the ubiquitous TelePrompTer (rarely shown to the public by The Media, but feeding him not only his "spontaneous" speeches, but answers to questions at press conferences, complete with stage instructions such as "make forceful palms up hand gesture to convey sincerity"). And then the Left gushes at how articulate he is compared to Bush.
Please.
As to Michelle's having touched the Queen, while there is no evidence that such a thing is inappropriate, let us not lose sight of the fact that, by stage managing the gesture into an international "incident", The First Couple have connected with the British Elites in a way sure to hit their sweet spot as George and Laura Bush never did: You matter. You are important. Your obscure and - might I say - explicitly un-Democratic and un-American obsession over royalty is important. We, the President and First Lady, can relate to your discomfort at the violation of protocols so obscure as to seem silly, but the Royal Person must never be touched.
Obama can relate on a personal level to the Queen's dilemma. During the campaign, then-candidate Obama had an encounter with then-V.P. nominee Biden at the Democrat convention, when Biden approached Obama from behind and placed his hand on the Royal Shoulder. What a priceless moment, as Obama shot Biden "The Look", a piercing stare that conveyed in a glance all you need to know about this self-important blowhard; and no, I'm not talking about Biden: "I am special; I am The One; nobody is allowed such familiarity with my personage". Biden, not the quickest study but a man used to public ridicule, gamely removed the offending hand, and was rewarded with a smile of forgiveness, albeit reservedly. It was a classic moment in politics, and more revealing of the man than anything else he had ever said or done, yet it was virtually ignored by The Media, inasmuch as that would provoke questions about his character that they so desperately do not want the American people to ask.
But such is the self-absorption of a generation (and it's Icon), that spent too much time in front of a TV, too much time celling, texting and Tweeting, too much time being told they were wonderful, and entirely too little time contemplating right and wrong, The Golden Rule, hard work or God's admonition to selflessness. If Al Gore infamously invented the Internet, President Obama is infamously the first world leader to have been birthed by it. While some cynics look at his hyperly over-scripted persona and see nothing more than a really tricked out Facebook profile, his admirers see The Future.
In Obamaland, all the world's a First Person Shooter Video game, and Barack is the Shooter. That's why he not only wouldn't understand the fuss about him inflicting a bunch of electronic crap toys - twice - on our British Cousins, but he would be offended by them taking offense. Not only could he not relate to criticism from the Czechs - people with actual street cred in the fight against communism and still savoring the first sweet breaths of freedom - he would self-importantly dismiss them. And never mind that in so doing - along with making unilateral concessions to Russia on everything from missile defense to Iran - that he has signaled to the former Soviet Empire that it may begin reconstituting itself.
None of this is even remotely a part of his reality. It's kind of like when a cannibal offers you the first tender morsel at a feast in your honor. It matters not that you're not a cannibal yourself, much less a virtual Child of our electronic age; the cannibal is going to assume you like human flesh, since that's the only perspective his monomania allows him. Lacking the ability to do anything other than admire himself in an electronic mirror, Obama likewise is simply going to assume that everybody else is just like him, and if they're not, that they should just defer to his worldview because, well, he says so.
I take comfort in the knowledge that we have seen his sort before, and all too recently; Al Gore and John Kerry being the most prominent examples. Manically scripted, pompous and self-righteous, they both dominated the political scene, right up until the point that they didn't, the good sense of the American people finally having exerted itself. Having had the benefit of two full years of exposure to Obama, there's only two differences between Obama, Gore and Kerry. He won, they lost. He's black, they're white.
Come 2010, there will only be one difference.
Whatever his legitimate faults, W looks positively light on his feet in his dealings with Europe compared to our President in Training, and lest anybody forget, by the time he was done, his influence had resulted in explicitly Socialist leaders being overthrown by Conservatives in France, Italy and Germany. The results of Obama's first significant exposure to other world leaders are not near so auspicious, nor do they bode well for him.
First, there was the fuss over gifts exchanged between Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Obama a few weeks ago when Brown visited D.C. Brown offered Obama a rare book and a penholder fashioned from Lord Nelson's hip bone (or somesuch). In return, Obama gave Brown a batch of DVDs of "classics" of American cinema that wouldn't play on Brown's Brit DVD player. Oh yeah, and Obama also gave Brown's kids some Hot Wheels. Then he dissed Brown by not giving him a state dinner at the White House. Then an aide notified the British that they shouldn't expect preferential treatment since they're only one nation out hundreds.
Classy.
These gestures were followed the other day by a gift from the Obamas to Queen Elizabeth of an iPod full of "photos, videos and Showtunes". The mental images this generates in one's brainpan are excrutiating: One of Obama's seemingly inexhaustible supply of Webheads busily ripping content off the Internet for the iPod. Later, Her Majesty - earphones firmly in place and iPod jacked to her bicep via a velcro strip - is seen resolutely jogging around the Palace and rocking out to All That Jazz. Later still, she discovers that the recharging unit is incompatible with the Royal outlets, and the thing goes dead.
I wonder if Obama paid all the appropriate royalties on that content?
Next up, he decided to teach the Czech Republic a lesson after their Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek declared last week that Obama's Stimulus Package and other spending plans were "a road to hell", and other Czech leaders declared their unease at Obama's suckup to their former jailer, Vladimir Putin. So before arriving in the Czech Republic, he cancelled a meeting with Topolanek, cancelled plans to attend a State dinner in his honor with President Vaclav Klaus, and his press secretary declared that Obama and Michelle would instead have a "romantic private dinner".
Now, I don't mind so much that Obama went all the way to The Czech Republic just so he could urinate in their shoes personally. And I don't so much mind that he did it to the hardy nation that is one of the living symbols of a continent freed from tyranny by dint of their own resolve and so much American blood and treasure. And I don't so much mind that Obama saw fit to reserve his tantrum for men who fought so bravely - and recently - for the freedom to express an opinion of any kind. I guess in Obama's world, opinions critical of the U.S. seem to be reserved for dictatorships like Iran, China and Russia.
No, what I do object to is Obama going all the way to Central Europe just to get his freak on with The First Lady. If Air Force One and all the other presidential perks aren't enough to put lead in the Presidential pencil, a taxpayer-funded romantic dinner with his clothes-horse wife in Prague isn't going to do the trick either. I also object to their announcement of a romantic dinner as being newsworthy. Can you imagine the reaction if W had pulled such a stunt?
I detect a pattern here. Obama's personal gestures to the Brits, the Queen and the Czechs are very much like his self-promotion as "The One", not to mention his approach to governance. In so relentlessly pressing on the British gifts of such an impersonal nature, and in so publicly flogging the Czechs for daring to criticize him, Obama is merely repeating the modus operandi he employs in dealing with the American people. Intent on dragging his countrymen - not to mention the rest of the world - into his universe, this Elitist Hump is as tone deaf as politicians get. Like some vain coquette at the Cotillion absolutely convinced of her desirability, Obama preens as he demands to be courted. It's not Obama that is out of touch, it's Gordon Brown that needs to come around. Same with the Queen. Same with Topolanek. Same with America.
And it doesn't help that Obama exists in a world more virtual than any we have ever seen. His every word is scripted, his every utterance relayed to him by the ubiquitous TelePrompTer (rarely shown to the public by The Media, but feeding him not only his "spontaneous" speeches, but answers to questions at press conferences, complete with stage instructions such as "make forceful palms up hand gesture to convey sincerity"). And then the Left gushes at how articulate he is compared to Bush.
Please.
As to Michelle's having touched the Queen, while there is no evidence that such a thing is inappropriate, let us not lose sight of the fact that, by stage managing the gesture into an international "incident", The First Couple have connected with the British Elites in a way sure to hit their sweet spot as George and Laura Bush never did: You matter. You are important. Your obscure and - might I say - explicitly un-Democratic and un-American obsession over royalty is important. We, the President and First Lady, can relate to your discomfort at the violation of protocols so obscure as to seem silly, but the Royal Person must never be touched.
Obama can relate on a personal level to the Queen's dilemma. During the campaign, then-candidate Obama had an encounter with then-V.P. nominee Biden at the Democrat convention, when Biden approached Obama from behind and placed his hand on the Royal Shoulder. What a priceless moment, as Obama shot Biden "The Look", a piercing stare that conveyed in a glance all you need to know about this self-important blowhard; and no, I'm not talking about Biden: "I am special; I am The One; nobody is allowed such familiarity with my personage". Biden, not the quickest study but a man used to public ridicule, gamely removed the offending hand, and was rewarded with a smile of forgiveness, albeit reservedly. It was a classic moment in politics, and more revealing of the man than anything else he had ever said or done, yet it was virtually ignored by The Media, inasmuch as that would provoke questions about his character that they so desperately do not want the American people to ask.
But such is the self-absorption of a generation (and it's Icon), that spent too much time in front of a TV, too much time celling, texting and Tweeting, too much time being told they were wonderful, and entirely too little time contemplating right and wrong, The Golden Rule, hard work or God's admonition to selflessness. If Al Gore infamously invented the Internet, President Obama is infamously the first world leader to have been birthed by it. While some cynics look at his hyperly over-scripted persona and see nothing more than a really tricked out Facebook profile, his admirers see The Future.
In Obamaland, all the world's a First Person Shooter Video game, and Barack is the Shooter. That's why he not only wouldn't understand the fuss about him inflicting a bunch of electronic crap toys - twice - on our British Cousins, but he would be offended by them taking offense. Not only could he not relate to criticism from the Czechs - people with actual street cred in the fight against communism and still savoring the first sweet breaths of freedom - he would self-importantly dismiss them. And never mind that in so doing - along with making unilateral concessions to Russia on everything from missile defense to Iran - that he has signaled to the former Soviet Empire that it may begin reconstituting itself.
None of this is even remotely a part of his reality. It's kind of like when a cannibal offers you the first tender morsel at a feast in your honor. It matters not that you're not a cannibal yourself, much less a virtual Child of our electronic age; the cannibal is going to assume you like human flesh, since that's the only perspective his monomania allows him. Lacking the ability to do anything other than admire himself in an electronic mirror, Obama likewise is simply going to assume that everybody else is just like him, and if they're not, that they should just defer to his worldview because, well, he says so.
I take comfort in the knowledge that we have seen his sort before, and all too recently; Al Gore and John Kerry being the most prominent examples. Manically scripted, pompous and self-righteous, they both dominated the political scene, right up until the point that they didn't, the good sense of the American people finally having exerted itself. Having had the benefit of two full years of exposure to Obama, there's only two differences between Obama, Gore and Kerry. He won, they lost. He's black, they're white.
Come 2010, there will only be one difference.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A Modest Proposal Regarding Government Employees
In America, government employment has long been described as "public service", and looked on as a calling, lending it a cachet that jobs in the Private Sector generally don't enjoy. OffHisMeds can't fault this common misperception. That's what we were all taught in school as impressionable young kids, and back in the days when government jobs actually paid less than the Private Sector, there might have been a skosh of truth to it. Now, of course, it's mostly a crock. I've learned through long and arduous observation that all work is good and virtuous, and Private Sector work is arguably more so because - unlike our Public Sector counterparts - we actually a) compete for our jobs every day of our lives with the rest of the world, b) are mostly unprotected by the government and unions, c) universally provide services that people would actually buy, not the ones that are forced on them, d) get nothing in the way of guaranteed health care and pensions and, e) are held to standards of performance and improvement to ensure ever increasing productivity, as government employees most assuredly are not.
Largely because of what I will generously call "Public Sector Overemployment", federal, state, county and municipal governments in their various permutations now consume over 40% of GDP whilst creating only 20% (30 million) of the jobs, including direct employees and contractors. That's not only three times as much of a bite out of GDP as in the time of Obama's hero FDR, it also comes to a cost of $185,000 per job, and it's killing the economy. Here's a few things to think about:
- Government employees earn far more than their Private Sector counterparts in comparable jobs. Of the many outrages about government employment, this is the most under-reported.
- For all the squawking about CEO bonuses, Public Sector bonuses for non-executive jobs far exceed that paid in the Private Sector. That's right: regular incentive pay for even the most menial positions, and no discernable performance standards to acheiving it, other than showing up.
- Government employees work a lot less days and a lot less hours than the rest of us. Consider that - in this age of seven a.m. to five p.m. workdays, unpaid overtime and workweeks that run Sunday to Saturday - government employees have been working nine to five (not including mandatory breaks), and enjoy all of the national holidays to celebrate a collection of inanimate objects that most of their Private Sector counterparts do not. The term "sabbatical" - or paid long term vacations - is nowhere found in the Private Sector, but found everywhere in government employment.
- All government employees retire on sumptuous medical plans and cushy pensions guaranteed by the rest of us and paid out at a rate that NGEs (Non Governmental Employees) could only dream of: generally 50-75% of total compensation for the last five years of employment. The vast majority of the Private Sector gets nothing.
- The vast majority of Public Sector employees don't put a dime into Social Security, which as you know is a 15% siphon off the top of every Private Sector paycheck in America. So while you're struggling to save anything in a 401k, your fellow citizens in government have it made.
- One last little irony in this CEO-bashing era: government employees account for the majority of all passengers living it large flying on heretofore unacceptable "private jets", and government ownership of private jets exceeds that of the Private Sector.
On top of all of the above, what really puts the nation in a bind is that government employees - for all that they spent their lives rendering services that rational consumers would for the most part never have willingly paid for - virtually all retire 10-15 years before the rest of us stiffs. Twenty-and-out or Twenty five-and-out are the accepted norms for virtually all government employment in order to qualify for the maximum pension. Get a government job when you're 22, and call it a day when you're 47, assuming you're one of the unlucky ones that has to hang in there for 25 years.
Our current financial woes aren't just caused by Evil Bankers making imprudent mortgage loans at the behest of Barney Frank. No, a good deal of the economy's downturn is directly as a result of tens of millions of able bodied people living it large while the rest of us pick up the tab. All of the Giant Brains in Washington have lost sight of a simple elemental truth as they twiddle the knobs on the Starship "Economic Enterprise", trying to find just the right mixture of interest rates, monetary policy, government spending, "stimulus", earmarks, milking your 401k and prostrating themselves before the Chinese as they beg for another loan that will put things right: At the end of the day, money is a Medium Of Exchange. It represents nothing more than turning labor and materials into the things people want, which results in Fulfillment. Pay 50 million people for doing very little - or even nothing at all - and you not only aren't producing Fulfillment, you're killing the entire system.
That is why our Public Sector brothers and sisters are ideally positioned to not only bail out the economy, but do the right thing, and be the Public Servants they were destined to be. For starters, my suggestion is that all retirees go back to work until they're 65 or 70, just like the rest of us. After all, it was their unsustainable salaries, pensions and packages of goodies that is largely responsible for the economic downturn in the first place.
Here's how it would work: Let's assume your average retiree ended their career making $50K per year (including bennies). Put just ten million of those able-bodied folks back to work for nothing more than their pension, and the economy would get a $500 Billion dollar shot in the arm every year. And I would take it a step further and not return them to their previously unproductive lives as Congressional Aides, IRS agents, Grief Counselors, Department of Motor Vehicle doorstops or Fireman past their calendar-posing prime; no, this go-round, they would be required to work in the Private Sector producing a product or service that people actually would buy.
Think of it! Ten million healthy, well-educated souls unleashing their productive fury on the Chinese. And did I mention well-rested? As we discussed above, in their careers, government employees haven't really been tasked to do much, insulated as they were from the real world of producing a product or service on time, and against competition. That leisurely pace you see behind the counter of any and every government office is no illusion. That really is as fast as they move.
So they ought to have a lot of gas left in the tank, so to speak.
Next, we could take a significant percentage of active government employees and get them to actually do something productive as well. Since the Federal government has over 15 million employees and contractors and state/municipal governments employ another 20 million, that's 35 million souls with some spare time on their hands. Here's where we deploy OffHisMeds' "Half and Half" rule of government employment:
"At any given point in time during the workday, only one half of all government employees are actually working; of these, only one half are actually doing anything that needs to be done".
Therefore, we should be able to capture an additional 17.5 million man-years of work every year simply by redeploying government employees to more productive pursuits when they're not doing their regular jobs, which - as we have proven - is roughly half the time. At $50K per employee (including bennies), that's another $875 billion shot in the arm to the economy, each and every year! That's as much as Obama's stimulus package, only it won't cost taxpayers a dime!
Just think of how many roads, bridges, sewer systems, superhighways, wind farms, power plants and Carbon Sequestration demonstration projects we could build with that kind of manpower, with plenty left over to churn out all of the appliances, electronics, clothing, toys, overpriced sneakers and everything else that normally comes out of China. Our balance of trade would reverse itself overnight. Tax revenues would skyrocket.
America would be ascendant once again.
And one footnote: if the debate about overpaid and underworked government workers does nothing, it should at least stop the jaw flapping from the Obama administration about the "failures" of the Private Sector and the "unsustainable" solution that GM has proposed for its bailout, inasmuch as the only reason it is unsustainable is the retirement benefits forced on our auto makers over the past 50 years, courtesy of the UAW and a U.S. department of Labor dominated by the Democrat Party.
What's sauce for the goose.....
Largely because of what I will generously call "Public Sector Overemployment", federal, state, county and municipal governments in their various permutations now consume over 40% of GDP whilst creating only 20% (30 million) of the jobs, including direct employees and contractors. That's not only three times as much of a bite out of GDP as in the time of Obama's hero FDR, it also comes to a cost of $185,000 per job, and it's killing the economy. Here's a few things to think about:
- Government employees earn far more than their Private Sector counterparts in comparable jobs. Of the many outrages about government employment, this is the most under-reported.
- For all the squawking about CEO bonuses, Public Sector bonuses for non-executive jobs far exceed that paid in the Private Sector. That's right: regular incentive pay for even the most menial positions, and no discernable performance standards to acheiving it, other than showing up.
- Government employees work a lot less days and a lot less hours than the rest of us. Consider that - in this age of seven a.m. to five p.m. workdays, unpaid overtime and workweeks that run Sunday to Saturday - government employees have been working nine to five (not including mandatory breaks), and enjoy all of the national holidays to celebrate a collection of inanimate objects that most of their Private Sector counterparts do not. The term "sabbatical" - or paid long term vacations - is nowhere found in the Private Sector, but found everywhere in government employment.
- All government employees retire on sumptuous medical plans and cushy pensions guaranteed by the rest of us and paid out at a rate that NGEs (Non Governmental Employees) could only dream of: generally 50-75% of total compensation for the last five years of employment. The vast majority of the Private Sector gets nothing.
- The vast majority of Public Sector employees don't put a dime into Social Security, which as you know is a 15% siphon off the top of every Private Sector paycheck in America. So while you're struggling to save anything in a 401k, your fellow citizens in government have it made.
- One last little irony in this CEO-bashing era: government employees account for the majority of all passengers living it large flying on heretofore unacceptable "private jets", and government ownership of private jets exceeds that of the Private Sector.
On top of all of the above, what really puts the nation in a bind is that government employees - for all that they spent their lives rendering services that rational consumers would for the most part never have willingly paid for - virtually all retire 10-15 years before the rest of us stiffs. Twenty-and-out or Twenty five-and-out are the accepted norms for virtually all government employment in order to qualify for the maximum pension. Get a government job when you're 22, and call it a day when you're 47, assuming you're one of the unlucky ones that has to hang in there for 25 years.
Our current financial woes aren't just caused by Evil Bankers making imprudent mortgage loans at the behest of Barney Frank. No, a good deal of the economy's downturn is directly as a result of tens of millions of able bodied people living it large while the rest of us pick up the tab. All of the Giant Brains in Washington have lost sight of a simple elemental truth as they twiddle the knobs on the Starship "Economic Enterprise", trying to find just the right mixture of interest rates, monetary policy, government spending, "stimulus", earmarks, milking your 401k and prostrating themselves before the Chinese as they beg for another loan that will put things right: At the end of the day, money is a Medium Of Exchange. It represents nothing more than turning labor and materials into the things people want, which results in Fulfillment. Pay 50 million people for doing very little - or even nothing at all - and you not only aren't producing Fulfillment, you're killing the entire system.
That is why our Public Sector brothers and sisters are ideally positioned to not only bail out the economy, but do the right thing, and be the Public Servants they were destined to be. For starters, my suggestion is that all retirees go back to work until they're 65 or 70, just like the rest of us. After all, it was their unsustainable salaries, pensions and packages of goodies that is largely responsible for the economic downturn in the first place.
Here's how it would work: Let's assume your average retiree ended their career making $50K per year (including bennies). Put just ten million of those able-bodied folks back to work for nothing more than their pension, and the economy would get a $500 Billion dollar shot in the arm every year. And I would take it a step further and not return them to their previously unproductive lives as Congressional Aides, IRS agents, Grief Counselors, Department of Motor Vehicle doorstops or Fireman past their calendar-posing prime; no, this go-round, they would be required to work in the Private Sector producing a product or service that people actually would buy.
Think of it! Ten million healthy, well-educated souls unleashing their productive fury on the Chinese. And did I mention well-rested? As we discussed above, in their careers, government employees haven't really been tasked to do much, insulated as they were from the real world of producing a product or service on time, and against competition. That leisurely pace you see behind the counter of any and every government office is no illusion. That really is as fast as they move.
So they ought to have a lot of gas left in the tank, so to speak.
Next, we could take a significant percentage of active government employees and get them to actually do something productive as well. Since the Federal government has over 15 million employees and contractors and state/municipal governments employ another 20 million, that's 35 million souls with some spare time on their hands. Here's where we deploy OffHisMeds' "Half and Half" rule of government employment:
"At any given point in time during the workday, only one half of all government employees are actually working; of these, only one half are actually doing anything that needs to be done".
Therefore, we should be able to capture an additional 17.5 million man-years of work every year simply by redeploying government employees to more productive pursuits when they're not doing their regular jobs, which - as we have proven - is roughly half the time. At $50K per employee (including bennies), that's another $875 billion shot in the arm to the economy, each and every year! That's as much as Obama's stimulus package, only it won't cost taxpayers a dime!
Just think of how many roads, bridges, sewer systems, superhighways, wind farms, power plants and Carbon Sequestration demonstration projects we could build with that kind of manpower, with plenty left over to churn out all of the appliances, electronics, clothing, toys, overpriced sneakers and everything else that normally comes out of China. Our balance of trade would reverse itself overnight. Tax revenues would skyrocket.
America would be ascendant once again.
And one footnote: if the debate about overpaid and underworked government workers does nothing, it should at least stop the jaw flapping from the Obama administration about the "failures" of the Private Sector and the "unsustainable" solution that GM has proposed for its bailout, inasmuch as the only reason it is unsustainable is the retirement benefits forced on our auto makers over the past 50 years, courtesy of the UAW and a U.S. department of Labor dominated by the Democrat Party.
What's sauce for the goose.....
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