Health-Care Reform, 2009, and Credibility

Be careful! Be warned! The huge problem right now is the credibility of all those who are coming up with figures to fund health care in the U.S. We should not easily, automatically, grant credibility to any politician, senator or representative, nor any TV pundit or government bureaucrat. Credibility must be earned by demonstration. To whom shall we respectfully listen, and to whom shall we grant authority to put a figure to the cost to us for our health system?

How might that required credibility be demonstrated?

To satisfy me? Not the “Republican plan” for lowering cost! Not the “Democrat” plan for spreading availability! I want a general understanding of the sources of the cost estimates. I want to know how the figures are arrived at.

Credibility can only be demonstrated one way.

I want to see a systems analysis in the form of a FLOW CHART of the health-care system as it exists before reform, and a second FLOW-CHART analysis of the system and its costs, and how the costs are to be funded, to be proposed as the reformed system of health care. A side-by-side comparison. Commissioned by the President, or by Congress. Explained by the President in his inimitable way. NOW YOU’RE COOKING WITH CREDIBILITY! There’s no better way! (Don’t hold your breath!)

A system is a collection of functions. The FLOW CHART requires the specification of all functions of HEALTH CARE. The FUNCTIONS must be articulated; that is, shown in a relationship one to the other. I have analyzed a system of education with an exemplary FLOW CHART elsewhere on this blog. (See on the Blogroll to the right the caption “Systems Analysis of Education”. Sheer genius! The hard-work kind.)

Democracy and Orthodoxy

There are several major orthodoxies on Earth. An orthodoxy is “belief” systematized, or catechized. As I have said elsewhere, the Protestant Christian belief has sought the effect of regimenting society in the United States. Just so the Catholics formed the church universal. The Islamic “faith” has the majority of the population of Earth under its jurisdiction. The common characteristic of the major religions is, as I see it, “orthodoxy”.

Orthodoxy produces “true believers” whose minds can go only so far in any discussion until the territory of orthodoxy has been reached. There is that boundary to freedom that cannot be surmounted because the habit of the catechism comes “naturally” to mind. Deliberation is side-tracked.

Democracy is defined as a discussion process, stating the problem, defining the terms of the problem, brainstorming all possible solutions, evaluating the qualities of each possible solution, and choosing the one best solution. Freedom of thought and speech is at a premium. Leadership of many types, to keep the discussion on track and to involve and dignify all the people present and all the contributions in that search, will be spread among all the parties to the problem-solving continuum. Everyone must have a deliberative mind. Everyone must become an “owner” of the solution. The special skills of debate should be held in reserve for a time when there is a stalemate on two best solutions that must be put to a proposition, a moment when consensus cannot be reached but something must be finally done.

The orthodox mind cannot be a democratic, deliberative mind. We see in our society the problem of unwanted pregnancies. That debate eventually reaches the Supreme Arbiter because there has been no consensus. Systematized belief has defeated the balancing of alternatives (reason). In that instance, democracy has failed.

Democracy and Gun Violence

Gun violence is one alternative response some people take after suffering the stresses of everyday social problems, job loss, bad bosses, co-workers, foreclosures, and others. We have seen several lately, the murder of a prominent abortion doctor, and another at the Holocaust Museum. The stressed individual’s reflexive act is to take the power of government into his own hands. The democratic alternatives, on the other hand, are to investigate and take action which is the best solution derived from discussion and debate. That is the peaceful resolution of major problems which is fostered by education in democratic processes.

Who among us is capable of being radicalized and easily turned to violent solutions? People who are not grounded in the peaceful means of discussion, persuasion, and the debate process will find the ever-present, quick and easy power to have the solution on their own terms, consequences be damned! Discussion, talk, is not so easy. And the talking solution is nearly everywhere ignored and overlooked in the education system. Early in education. Frequently. Effectively. Demonstrably.

Hate-filled people will reveal themselves in discussion. The dangerous narrative of their internal monologue will be dismayingly heard. And something may be done about it. Something terribly wrong may be prevented. Discussion will uncover, reveal, expose the toxic talk. Bring into the open what may be turned aside to more peaceful solutions.

The writing-and-reading discussion and democracy of the internet and blogosphere is absolutely inadequate, not up to the task. Completely useless for peaceful solutions to the gun-violence problem. Think what crucial information is lost in the written word! Intelligence of the nonverbal exhibition of hate becomes crystal clear as it pushes the spoken message to the extremity of violent consequences. Verbal reasoning may be the only act to assure that the hate-filled can be retrieved from a very sad end.

The ultimate goal is to ground all learners in a democratic society in what must be mastered. Discussion. Debate. And the investigations those verbal acts require. Not only will those so trained be better acting citizens themselves, but they will also be the better handlers of communication deficits they see in others.

That is the ultimate and best (and perhaps only) solution to gun violence in our society.

The Rule of Law and a Supreme Court Nominee

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am writing only from my reasoning ability and personal observations which have given me my opinions, my understanding of law. I am not a scofflaw. I respect the law.

What is the “rule of law”? Many speak of it with iron and steel in their voices, like it clangs in the big brass bell between their cheeks, THE RULE OF LAW!!!!!!!!! Oh, MY! What deep and booming clangs ring out to deafen your ears! THE—RULE—OF—LAW.

The “Rule of Law” is really the “Rule of Language”, which is ultimately the rule of lawyers; they speak the language of law better than most because they have had concentrated study of it for several years so that they can charge you a nice fee for reading for you the law that they have written in their language. Language has a lexicon, the words. A grammar, for putting the naming words together with action words, words describing the nuances of that action, and words descriptive of the naming words. And many of the words are of “ancient” currency, Archaic, OE. The “Rule of Law” is actually the “Rule of Rules”, for rules are more readily amendable.

The writers and signers of the U.S. Constitution took as their source for that document’s authority from what they called “self evident truths”. Another name for “common sense”? I am doing the same in my interpretations of the meaning of the rule of law. “SELF-EVIDENT” is not a substantial footing for truth. A statement of “truth” is also its evidence of “truth”? We since have had a highly developed discipline of science from which to derive definitions.

There is no rigidity in the substance and use of language. The rule of such an unpredictable, dynamic and multicultural medium of understanding, where cultures of communities vary widely by demographic variables over the codes of comunication — ultra-complexity is the rule. The “rule of law” falls so easily from the lips of those who would deceive you into an ideology that they hold in mind but would not care to explain. They know what they mean, and they say “The rule of Law” in that peculiarly sonorous way. If they hold the keys to the meaning of the legalese that they have mastered, you are locked out of that exclusive, and nearly secret, community.

Please show more respect for the word, “law”. We are subject to the laws of nature. It requires engineering and engineers to repeal what laws of nature they can. Gravity. The lift of the airfoil against gravity. Playing one force against another. Now that’s the rule of law in action that I can comprehend; I am not an engineer.

We are subject to the laws of thermodynamics, which I have made an attempt to comprehend. It leads me to try to understand the concept of “entropy” and its consequences for civilization. Though I am not a physicist, a scientist, I am forcibly subjected to all those complexities of this universe if I want to continue to live in it, me, my family, my country-men.

Please respect the word, “law”. We should, strictly speaking, speak of the rule of “rules”. The “Golden rule”. Rules of etiquette. Rules of the road. Rules are changeable. Our laws are amendable. The death penalty is here not there, there not here.

So we come to the question of the Supreme Court nominee who is to apply the (drumroll please) “RULE OF LAW!!!!!” We want a “strict constructionist”, some kind of iron-willed, mind-of-steel, unbending conservative girder of hard-rule JUDGE. Not susceptible to “empathy”. But I see “empathy” as a crucial substance lubricating the vagaries of the language of the law that can be so misunderstood. The empathic response will be there because we are human, and laws must be made to express the humanity involved in writing, promulgating, enforcing and obeying the law.

We make laws which are really rules, legislators’ best-practices codified to govern all our interactions, leaving aside our personal verbal and non-verbal expressions and private choices, for the most part.

There is enormous room for all coniderations of the person of the judge to enter any judgments to be made, even in the highest court in the land because the language of the lawmakers is so imperfect in its maleability.

Is “law” made from the judge’s bench? Probably. Laws, as written by even the best, suffer from all sorts of lexical and semantic ambiguities.

One recent example, the “law” that was drawn up to give billions of dollars to the bailout of the Wall Street frauds is an example of poor legislation. The strictures on any use of that money was so poorly specified in the language of that law that everyone was angry. Did we enjoy the rule of that law? Never. And those who perpetrated that fraud are the villains of this society who got off scott-free.

I simply want all those people in nationally responsible government positions to just plain stop trying to foist off on the vetting procedures for Supreme Court appointees their ideological loaded language to describe the duties, functions, and skills of a Supreme Court Justice. They should know better. So many things they want to write off as criteria for judgment of what a fine Supreme Court Justice would embody are nothing but code words for their own biases for or against the person. Empathy. Temperament. Experience. And so on.

A New IQ Test for American Culture

I propose that the simplest and most revealing IQ test would be this: “What can you say about Rush Limbaugh?” The answers should be studied using a content analysis, and the normative results should be published in the American Quarterly Journal of Broadcast Mediocrity. The curve will not take the bell-curve shape. The subjects will be clearly divided between the intelligent and the unintelligent, yielding a pool of subjects useful, on the one hand, for further studies on solutions for difficult problems of our economy, energy shortages, health care, etc., and on the other hand, studies of problems of the educational system, mental health, and antisocial behaviors of many types.

On Seeing the Movie, “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days”

German made. German acted. For the German people. Finely acted. Portraying the Nazi system of justice, the Nazi ideology, the Nazi automatons. (The Nazi salute had the valuable function of detecting and enforcing compliance, and may have had some brain-washing effect.) Also, portraying some German heroes, a German heroine dying for Redefreiheit (freedom of speech). One most interesting scene portrays the German bureaucrat in conflict with that heroine.The script and director of this film reveals the underground feelings toward the Nazi automata. Very subtle signs in the facial affect of the antagonists and protagonist could only be achieved by a German director. Look closely. It pays to have some familiarity with that period and the nature of German society at that time. (I taught the German language in secondary school in the late 50s.)

When I was in Germany with the U. S. Army, I went to a German movie house. Showing was a film of the opening of the concentration camps, the chambers and ovens and instruments of the murderous business there, and the huge piles of clothing and suitcases and the naked skin-and-bone bodies of the victims which were not yet disposed of. The walking dead, nearly naked, struggling to walk through the now open gates with the painted sign above, “Arbeit macht frei” (Work Liberates). The theater was packed tight. I sat at the rear. The people, bolt upright, unmoving, deathly quiet, sat in stony silence.

One of my duties was to attend the war-crimes trial of Hermann Goering, Hjalmar Schacht (on the stand when I was there, eventually acquitted), and others, those in the first show trials of Nazi leaders. I was appointed to report back to the GIs in my company what I had witnessed in Nürnberg in the trials. I mention this because the Sophie Scholl movie shows Sophie shouting at her judges, before her sentence was pronounced, that they soon would be standing where she was. I was able to see what she never got to see, her Nazi persecutors confronting their crimes in a court of international law.

This film of Sophie Scholl indicates that the people of Germany are still in a process of coming to terms with their past.

OFF TOPIC

I did research in Germany on a history over the twenty-year period after the war focusing on instruction in communication, to determine the nature and curriculum of German schooling in public communication, one of the chief means by which the Nazis were able to attain and hold power over a populace unable to resist Nazi party line. I found no stories at that time of cases of Germans standing up to Hitler’s regime, of course. There was that attempt on Hitler’s life by some German officers. The German constitution contained, at the time of my study, a model statement granting the right of free speech.

I had been granted a Fulbright scolarship to pursue that study in Germany. However, I turned it down because my two sons were ready to begin their primary education, and I felt it might have a disruptive effect on them to spend a year in a foreign land. I took one summer vacation to do it.

I am of German descent. How did I feel about that, my German name, my being there with the army, amidst all the destruction brought down on the land of my ancestors? I happen to love the music of Wagner, favored by Der Führer. which was banned in Israel until a German symphony recently played Wagner there. I know his music was shunned by broadcasters during the war to some extent. I felt no shame. But I was interested enough to write my dissertation on that culture. I could easily disassociate myself from the fate of those native Germans because I was a twice-removed American. German culture was naïve in political experience to say the least. Only after the war did they learn about opinion polling.

I played (American) football in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium (where Jesse Owen, a black man, chagrined Hitler and his pure Aryan athletes in 1936 by beating them) just after the concrete swastika was dynamited by our soldiers. I played first-string QB. When I was discharged and in my home town, I took a date to the Northside Theater in Mishawaka to see a movie. As was the usual program, short subjects were shown, a Mickey Mouse and a newsreel. That night, they showed a “March of Time: Germany Today”. There I was, running across the screen in that football game in Berlin. I rose in my seat and shouted, “That’s me!” I inquired of the manager how I could get a copy of it. Nah! I’ve looked ever since.

I experienced one episode that has an interesting irony. One day, I was standing in the chow line when behind me there was a distrubance. I turned around to see a G.I with a long, two-pronged spinach fork in his hand. He was swaying drunkenly and aiming the waving fork at my back. He slurred, “You goddamned dirty Jew!” I turned my back on him. After a few moments, I felt his full weight come down on my back. I flipped him over my head in a jujitsu move, slamming him on his back on the floor. I jumped on top, straddling him. He looked drunkenly dazed. “You know I could pound your face in, don’t you!” I got up and proceeded through the chow line, not looking back. The next morning, by chance, he and I shared a jeep ride to the train station where he was sent to ride to redeployment to the States and I on guard duty on a train going to Vienna through the Russian zone. Not a word. A sober Gaddis said nothing.

The irony was this: the war we fought to end the regime of those who used a Holocaust, a genocide targeting the Jewish people, to inflame the German people to prosecute a world war toward the end of world domination was fought by many in American ranks who held those same genocidal prejudices, and I, in some way, evoked those nasty feelings in that drunken loss of his inhibitions to expressing his latent hostility to Jewish people.

In another swastika event, we own an American Indian blanket, purchased in Colorado by my late mother-in-law on a stage-coach trip to Grand Lake, CO, in the thirties. Its design incorporates what looks like a German Hakenkreuz/swastika but in reverse. It was hung on a wall of a home we were selling. The realtor reported that some lookie-loos said they would never buy any house owned by Nazis. So I cut out a little piece in the newspaper that explained the nature of that symbol in Native-American terms, and stuck it up by the blanket.

My forbears were North German farmers. There were 18 sons and several daughters. All the sons were killed in the Franco-Prussian war of 1880-1881. The father picked up the daughters and emigrated to the United States.

I remember driving through Western Kansas many years ago heading west. I stopped at a farmhouse to get a drink of water. They invited me in for a glass of water. The mantel held many photos of their relatives and life in Germany. One had a Nazi flag. And there was a flag there with the Hakenkreuz.

German empiricism is well known. I have a bit of that in me. And I believe in a family motto, “LABOR OMNIA VINCIT IMPROBUS”. (Steady Working Conquers All.) There is another saying, “Genie ist nichts als ungeheueres Energie” (Genius is nothing but monstrous energy.) I have been led to think I can have it two ways: if I can’t make it with brain power, I can succeed with hard work. Then what can brain power AND hard work produce? I have no excuse.

So you see what watching a good German movie puts in my reflective mind.

To Max Baucus, Senate, Chair of the Committee Hearings on Health Care

SIR! You are the villain, killing the democratic process so precious to American society. Any good democratic procedure could adapt to any spontaneous actions in the hearing and not stand on ceremonious standards of proceedings. Democracy has to be flexible; deliberative minds have to be fluent. If they are not, it can only mean the one in charge has a predetermined end in mind and is just going through the motions for show.

Single-payer, national health care, like Medicare has not had a representation at the round table. You could have shown some forbearance. Any civilized person could have, but you are too inflexibly bound up in your position to have done something spontaneously democratic. At least you could have called the protesters out for a brief chit-chat ex parte for a few minutes and set up something. Rigidity of mind is all you showed.

Is there really something to this charge that you, big shot Max Baucus, are in the hip pocket (where the wallet is kept) of the insurance company lobbies and others who like the way things are now?

To me, you are a public SERVANT! And you should start acting like one!

Who made you king, pope, ayatollah, chief, boss, Fuehrer, master decider of all things American?! Act like a small-d democrat! I wonder how you would define “democracy”.

Come on, Max! Give us something to respect! Show us your democratic credentials by democratic behavior!

The U.S. Does Not Have a Democracy!

Democracy is a daily event. Our Revolution, fought against the foreign, arbitrary power of a king, is a daily, continuing battle. As I have discussed in another blog entry, democracy is primarily discussion, and, secondarily, debate for deadlocked discussion. Discussion and debate argue for best solutions to our problems. All possible solutions must be put on the table and everyone of them must be represented to the fullest extent.

The one and only best use of freedom, liberty — why we make elaborate claims to have it in our way of life in the U.S — is for the advancement of solutions to social problems. Discussion is a very formal method of producing the one best solution to any issue and should be respected, learned, and practiced. It is not an easy process. It has a continuum of events that lead to the discovery and acceptance of the one best solution that everyone understands and feels comfortable with, and for which solution every citizen can feel a sense of pride in ownership by having participated in its determination. I am herewith having my say. If single-payer health care, my chosen solution, is not the outcome, will I be content that I, at least, have had that experience of using my freedom to speak, even though I have been unsuccessful in gaining my objective?
No. I had no seat at the table, as represented by those spokespersons for single-payer health care, my surrogates.

When one person, a king, a pope, any single authoritative source as for certain religious faiths, or a dictator, has the sole power to dictate a solution, there can be no democracy. Authority preempts discussion, truncating the democratic process.

In this present case of health care, a senate committee chairman, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), will be writing healthcare legislation. Quoting a May 5th article in the Wall Street Journal: “Single-payer health care proposals have seen little-to-no footing in congressional debates on overhauling the U.S. health-care system, though many Democrats favor the creation of a public insurance plan to compete alongside private insurers. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who chairs the committee, sought to calm the protesters. ‘That is a view which many have and which I respect,’ Baucus said of single-payer health care. ‘The point of this and other hearings is to determine the best option.’ ” A-HA! THE DEMOCRATIC METHOD IS PROPOSED!

It was reported by talk-show host Ed Schultz that Sen. Baucus has had huge pay-offs into his campaign fund from the health care-industry sources. There may by tons of money being shoveled into the protection of those standing to lose big-time if a single-payer (U.S. government) health care plan is legislated. When protesters at the hearings held by Sen. Baucus and his committee arose and shouted that the single-payer solution had no representation at the roundtable, Sen. Baucus had those protesters arrested by the police. DEMOCRACY WAS THWARTED.

If Baucus is the leader of our national discussion on the health-care issue, and he has a demonstrated bias against single-payer health insurance, then there is only one recourse we citizens have: the President of the U.S., the arbiter-in-chief. But his oversight is absent in this discussion. At least as far as I can tell, from my distance from the scene of the battle, he has not made a loud, significant, pointed stab at the fairness of the discussion. He has not spent any political capital in defense of a democratic discussion on this issue. Absent. Quiet.

Arlen Specter’s Spectacle

A sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Health Care: Not a Capitalistic Private Enterprise! A “General Welfare”, Constitutional RIGHT!

The title says it all. The venerable U.S. Constitution was the beginning of our form of government. It is the social contract/compact that cannot be violated. It guarantees certain rights, and they are not all in the Bill of Rights. The Preamble promises a more perfect union (a work in progress) to promote the General Welfare. Health Care is a right.

How did the operators of our economic system of private, capitalist enterprise begin to think it could interbreed with, take over, commandeer health care? The capitalist entrepreneur is a microbe which invades every aspect of life in the U.S. It’s their second nature. BUT!!!!

Capitalistic entrepreneurship applied to health care has a deleterious effect on something so fundamentally and personally precious as health care, and becomes a parasite on the system we are forced to have. Nothing operates without good health. NOTHING! It’s the big stopper. Bad health brings everything down, defeats all. Health care is more a public utility than a capitalistic concern. There is nothing more central to our democracy. Absolutely NOTHING.

The British system of health care puts a premium on Preventive Medicine, as a direct result of being so dedicated to the public welfare provided in their laws. Testimony to that fact is in the number of publications on preventive medicine originating in England. Those doctors have a personal interest in reducing the number of people in their waiting rooms. In our nation, the doctors have a personal interest in keeping their waiting rooms crowded. Does preventive medicine become a minor issue here? That’s a pregnant question.

The dedication of health-care givers should be expected to rise above the profit motive and to do things that may not be profitable in terms of monitary payoff. Remember the service of the old-times family doctor who made house calls? I do.

Our Congress is considering re-forming the health care system because so many people are excluded for monetary/jobless causes. The best care goes to the wealthy in a for-profit system. Doctors get wealthy through individual payers and the private insurance system. “General Welfare” health care does not have a seat at the table, witness the hearings where the voices of the “General Welfare”, single-payer health care alternative were handcuffed and escorted out under arrest.

The name-calling by opponents, to wit, “Socialized Medicine”, can be effective among people who do not know that Medicare is made possible as a product of a “socialized-medicine” initiative, which I would call “General Welfare” health care under the entitlement implied in the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution.

IN POINT OF FACT, the “general Welfare” statement may be construed, by me, if not Constitutional scholars, to allow, or even to require a “socializing” of several aspects of life in the United States. I take that statement, “promote the general Welfare”, very, very seriously. I capitalize the word “General”. The writers and signers of the Constitution were socializing their vision of what they wanted these States United to be and become.

BOTTOM LINE

I think and believe that all business would have greater prosperity with health care removed from its responsibilities, and transferred to a single payer, the government of all the people, the federal government, under its responsibility for “the general Welfare”. In the Medicare style. CONGRESS: Shut up and get cracking! DO IT!

Skill, Behaviorism, Learning, Drama, Voice

I am a behaviorist. A playwright must be a behaviorist. Drama focuses on action. Thought must be “outed”. Description must be detailed in the technicals. Theme, philosophy, meaning must be converted to the phenomena of character and plot, the dialog. The effect must convert a collection of individuals into a uniform behavioral outcome. The totality is an exhibit in the museum of human behavior. The recipe then gathers dust until its next incarnation.

We need to hear (take a deep breath): a good voice speaking in conflict with an adversary words that resonate great ideas set in poetic devices to make ideas memorable to an audience eager to hear what may transform them into better human beings through understanding of the ways of resolving life’s important conflicts. (Whew! I stuffed that trunk full!) The drama form serves that aim very well. And that is the province of rhetoric.

I am a behaviorist. As a teacher, I wrote goals for behavioral outcomes of learning experience. Ethics, speaking, writing, and listening are behavioral skills. (Write the last act first.) The meaning of life resides in what you “do” with it. (That’s in the Oly play.) I need to understand the grammar of everything. That is fundamental. For instance:

What is the fundamental math skill? For nearly everyone in everyday life, the foundation should be “probability”, or statistical reasoning. They do not teach that.

What is the fundamental history skill? They teach the facts of history without teaching how historical facts are generated. For nearly everyone, assigning the writing of a family history, picking the brains of the elders while they are still alive would teach the basis of history.

What is the most fundamental skill of all? It’s nutrition. We are all amateur eaters where we should be professional eaters. They do not teach that. And what’s the fundamental fitness skill? You answer that one. I say, be a self starter, with one principle in mind, discipline. And so it goes.

About learning. Give my mind a problem, and I have enjoyed, after some strenuous effort, some good outcomes. That’s fun. If it hurts, you are in the throes of learning. Learning is change, the destruction of old habits and creation or substitution of new ones. “Stop that!” is not constructive. “Do this!” is. Change destroys confidence. You are motivated to believe that the new level of behaving will improve on the old comfortable way of doing things. You experience what Gerald Heard called egression into a new state of consciousness. You have evolved in the only way that humans can evolve. Having learned gives satisfaction.

Here’s a basic communication skill. Since I love the drama form of entertainment, I love reading aloud with old fashioned, shameless bravura. (I can be had.) I don’t know if I am good or just another Florence Foster Jenkins. I would like to narrate an evening, Hallowe’en ballet program where I read Riley’s “Little Orphan Annie comes to our house to stay…”, Carroll’s Jabberwocky, Poe, and others.

The awareness of voice for the multitude is minimal to non-existent. (Except for extreme makeovers, in which the voice is being operated on to make it not incongruous with the youthful appearance.) The television and movie technologies have a retrograde effect through the electronically assisted voice when needed for the live, public voice for the stage. Body mikes? What the hell! What speaker at the rostrum would eschew the microphone? Not one. And do they know how to handle the mike? Most will stoop to it. Even actors at the awards ceremonies who depend on the boom man for that. Many actors have lost it for the stage. I taught voice and articulation. Actor’s voices are not as beautiful in quality nor as strong as they need to be. Loud, impassioned lines too often sound shouted, a high-pitched, strident, broken, cracking, rough screech. The tools, the instruments are not there any longer. “I am old, Father William.”

Correlates of “Epidemics” and “Pandemics”

Evolution is generational. For bugs, a generation for the Fruit Fly (Drosophila) can be days. [Disclaimer: I am speaking from my viewpoint, not from the viewpoint of any experimental nor empirical scientist. From my opinion and only my present knowledge.] For a virus, very very short. They evolve, adapting very quickly to get around lethal barriers being erected by humans who are in a battle with them. They are impelled to feed to live, as with all life, parasitic or not.

Co-occurring with the deadly virus we want to avoid are certain conditions that imply their causation. Here follow my speculations.

We have:

• what is going around
• an outbreak (local)
• epidemic (more general)
• pandemic (global)

At this time, we are puzzled by the H1N1 Virus (Swine Flu) that is infecting large numbers of people, mostly emanating from south of our border with Mexico. Where are we on that sliding scale of extent?

What conditions seem to be related to the incidence of infectious diseases? (Leave aside those diseases associated with lifestyle habits of smoking, diet, etc., that seem also to be “going around”, and some believe to be “epidemic”—obesity, diabetes, and so on.) Are those conditions coincidental, occurring together by chance or by cause?

O Great infecting Virus, how do I help thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Overpopulation
2. Population Mobility
3. Packaging the Poor
4. Hygiene Habits
5. Health Education (Hygiene Awareness)
6. Preventative Medicine
7. Global Warming
8. Warning Skills and Sources
9. Credibility of Warners
10. Availability of Health Care and Providers for All
11. Cost of Health Care and Care-Givers
12. Virus Containment Strategies and Technology
13. Medical “SWAT” Teams (intelligent, obscure and incomprehensible technology)
14. Etiological Myth (“Swine” Flu)
15. Government Responsibility/Oversight and Emergency Action Policies
16. Forecasting and Planning (“When the house is on fire, it’s too late to dig a well.”
17. Research Funding
18. Vulnerabilities of Age (i.e., the aged, the very young), Race, Gender, Cultures, etc.

What have I left out?

What have we done to adapt and change what our government has promised us, our general welfare?

The “HUBRIS” of the Wall Streeters Is Our Tragedy—

—another, as old as the ancient Greek understanding of their goddess, Themis, “Right Action”, disregarded in the highest echelons of American commerce. [I am following here the scholarship of John A. Sanford, Fate, Love and Ecstasy: Wisdom from the Lesser-Known Goddesses of the Greeks, 1995] Themis was equal to the spirit and will and voice of Mother Earth, the embodiment of justice. Disregarded and offended, She now exacts her payment. Her boundaries and limits are to be observed by all living creatures, the right order. The concept of “themis” was a personified abstraction in those ancient days. She had three daughters, (1) one of custom, law, and justice, (2) one of good order, and (3) one of peace. Nemesis, or just retribution and vengeance, joined Themis in supervising human affairs.

Follow Themis and good fortune can be expected. Or else, the original sin of the human race, hubris, becomes instilled in the human mind by an exaggerated sense of personal pride and importance and leading to wanton violence and destruction for personal gain. I call it the blunt force trauma of excessive wealth, the major cause of the isolation of some beings from the society of people not so traumatized.

Modern forms, archetypes of those ancient mythological creations, live in our collective consciousness. They had the concept of the “spiritual eye” that saw the beautiful, the just, the reasonable, the concept of an active conscience, what I call a sense of the ideal self. My recent studies would similarly affirm the capacity of an inner narrative that is healthy or ill. Self awareness, sense of knowing thyself in comparison or contrast to one’s fellows. Therapy would require the re-development of that lost awareness. What clouded or darkened that “spiritual eye” was hubris, bringing on a person’s ruin.

Re-education, re-training our leaders of manufacturing and financial enterprises who have failed millions of the victims of their hubris must be some powerful chastisement that gets their attention. I have a sense that they indulge in horrible grumblings, when they congergate, about their sorry lot in having to “suffer” the humiliation of interrogations by Congress and the press, and riding public transportation to their dates with their executioners in th town square, with Mme de Farge clicking her needles while the heads roll.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

Book by Vincent Bugliosi

<prosecutionofBush.com>

“BookTV”, CSPAN, Sunday, August 03, 2008

He lays out the case for the Attorney General of the U.S. and all the states attorneys to take up the case and prosecute George W. Bush for murder.

The Financial Prophylactic

We need a financial prophylactic to prevent financially transmitted diseases spread by the financial, serial rapists in banking, mortgage financing, and credit-card usury and their usurIOUs greed and fraud. We should never again have unprotected relations with the diabolical financiers of Wall Street and banks and financial groups that are too big to fail. The prophylactic condom separates boring banks as a public utility from financial institutions in more risky dealings.

I have just watched Bill Moyers Journal, PBS, 4/24/2009. Guests were two brilliant fellows who neatly delineated the whole of the current economic crisis.

I’ll say it again: every family that does together what families should do together should reserve Friday evenings every week as the family night to watch NOW, with David Brancaccio, and Bill Moyers Journal with Bill. There should follow a family “discussion” on the contents of those programs.

Dick Cheney. Ideologue

Saying it makes it so. Whatever you say, Big Dick. You and your buddy, Boner.

Piracy in the Economy

How can people serve in a government that they are of a mind-set to starve, strangle, and deprive of its life-blood? That is their motive. They want to sink the ship of which they are the mutinous crew. If you want to isolate and capture a gang of such murderous pirates, look no further than the Federal government and its Republicans. PIRACY is what they are about. Their vessel-boarding war-cry is, “TAXES! Kill the taxes!” Their monomania is to steal all the tax booty on board and dump it overboard.

Or in the boardrooms of the captains of the auto industry, “Pension Plans! Raid the pension plans! Kill retirement benefits!”

Financial piracy is everywhere, threatening the economy.

On the Rhine River lived the Robber Barons, in their castles on the high hills bordering that major stream of commerce. They frequently raided those barges centuries ago and took what they liked. Each a law unto themselves.

Piracy. And the robber barons of today are alive and well. Republicans. Captains of industry. Wall Street financial inventors of toxic assets, investments in money schemes to hi-jack the economy, and. Presidents Bush and Reagan and their Republican pirates in Congress. Add in the credit-card moneylenders charging unconscionable rates of interest with fine-print rules for jacking up rates at the drop of a day. They are the true villains of our world drama.

Carly, the Fired Cheerleader Coach, an Interesting Phenomenon

Carly was fired from her position as a coach of cheerleaders at a high school because nude photos of her were widely circulated. Her morality was questioned. She appeared on a Thursday (4-24-09) interview on a national tv network, when she produced another phenomenon. She has “tin-lizzie” speech. I have noticed a significant number of occurrences of such a speaking habit. I think it generally involves young adolescent girls. I think Carly is an old adolescent girl. (Remember the “Valley Girls”?)

Remember the “tin lizzie”? It was an endearing name for the Ford Model T. Remember what was one important characteristic of that car? It had no starter. So why is Carly one of the “tin-lizzie” bunch? She has no starter. She has to have a crank-start. Tin Lizzies had to be cranked up front to get them going. What is Carly’s crank, as I have heard in a number of others being interviewed on tv? “Um,…..” Carly began every sentence with “Um”. Except her last one, which was a “Thank you” at sign off.

Watch for it! You’ll see (hear) it.

To All People Who Report the Weather—

We want to know what the weather is, yes. But a meteorologist should also make us understand the weather. We are always informed but seldom instructed in the weather dynamics. I remember a forecaster in Chicago who would do just that, exlpain it! Maybe you do not have time to give of your knowledge base. I think the weather is more than what you say it is. We would be more impressed with your ability if you revealed some of the dynamics of weather and its various phenomena, history, and longer future, what lies ahead in the bigger picture. Can you do that? You have not done it so far. You are all Al Rokers, turning the job over to what’s in our neck-of-the-woods.

The U.S. as “Deus ex Machina” to the World

The ancient Greeks operated their theatre so that it would tell the stories vital to their collective experiences. Their stories in tragedy and comedy at times required the story-tellers to invent the deus ex machina (theos ek mēchanēs). If the story had seemingly created a set of circumstances for which there was no resolution that could be attained through philosophy or rhetoric or logic or politics, the last resort was to the power of the deity Zeus to be brought in. To do so, they invented a machine that would lower Zeus in a basket from the top of the skēnē. The higher power to contrive a resolution to an insoluble dilemma.

Watch for that plot-device often staged in our dramas. There are many characters in our contemporarty drama who pray for that intervention. There are many people in our social “tragedies” (and catastrophes) who believe that that is the most efficacious or only way out of very difficult situations. Others, rare exceptions in this country, put their hope and faith in one or more of these alternative recourses for deliverance: intelligence, imagination, learning/education, ambition, physical fitness, curiosity, prudence, insight, experience, or luck. They do that because they do not have to pray for celestial intervention or some frantic, death-bed appeal because they’ve been going all along, as the poet (Dickenson) said.

Here we are, a nation insulated by two natural barriers to the east and the west, a similar nation and artic cold above us, which could partner with us, and an amorphous and subtropical nation below us, which could only infiltrate us. We could very easily, and often have, become insular and protectionist in our politics. When lethal threats have endangered the Eastern or Western sources of many in our population who came from beyond our natural insulation, the U.S. has leaped that insulation and descended like Zeus in a basket to contrive solutions sane and barbaric to those difficulties. We have dropped out of the sky our troopers to enter into their battles that had to have been shown ultimately to be our battles, even where the pretext was simply humanitarian.

What besides our vested interests has lead us to do that? Our early isolation, when those boundaries were impressively tough, has allowed the people here, all with a freedom to think and improve on the ways of worlds beyond its boundaries, to construct a government the envy of many. America has been admired as a haven for people fleeing their native lands for many distressing conditions, becoming a last hope for many to preserve their lives and improve their lives on Earth. Americans have had to live up to the standard expected by its immigrants.

[Let this be my signature:
I continue my aim in all things
to order the world
according to what I consider
intelligent behavior.
(Present company forgiven.)]