Handy Resources

Understanding the 2012 Election

My Sister's Blog New!

The Desktop Dyno

Salem Gravity Gran Prix

Jordan's Eagle Project.

Duke Boys Car Chase

LoL Cartoons

Logic Primer

Gymkhana Practice

Compass Course Spreadsheet

Complete Orienteering Course Files

Things you may not know about Sarah Palin

Amazing Grace on the Sax

Obama's Magic 8 Ball

Oh, wait . . . that's from an alternate universe

Refresh to get latest blog entry

A tale
2.24.15

Back in the nineties I worked for the corporate communications department at a local company. When that company merged the resulting entity had duplicate Corporate Communications departments. They decided to go with the one in Cincinnati, and I found myself laid off.

I hope you don't ever have the experience of having to go home in the middle of the morning and tell your wife that your source of income has disappeared. It is an event that permanently changes you. I went to work one morning and suddenly found myself sitting down with the HR guy who was explaining to me what life without a job was going to be like.

Apparently there was some law called COBRA that mandated that insurance companies were required to continue to provide you with the very same insurance after you lost your job. You wanna' do that? Oh, sure, that would be good. Gotta' have insurance. Why wouldn't I?

Now at the time I lost my job I was paying $28/month for insurance. That was just the share that came out of my paycheck. The company paid about $150/month as I recall. So the insurance company got paid about $180 every month for my insurance. Understand this: $180 was the amount that the insurance company, with all their sophisticated mathematical models, had determined they needed to collect from me to provide my young, healthy family with health care, pay all their expenses, and make their profit.

Okay, so thanks to the benevolent COBRA law, I still had insurance, even though I didn't have a job. One less thing to stress about.

During that semi-traumatic conversation it never occurred to me to ask "Wait a minute, when you say that by law they have to provide me with the exact same insurance, do they have to charge me the same, too?" Never occurred to me. Why would it? "Okay, so when you say a Big Mac costs 3.49, that includes the special sauce and both beef patties, too, right? And you're not going to charge me 12 dollars for the wrapper, right?"

When I got my first bill it was for $780.00.

Seven hundred and eighty dollars.

This is me, without a job, and bill for insurance that was one third of what my gross income was when I had been working.

I could imagine the insurance executives around a big conference table when the law passed. "So they say we have to continue to provide health insurance, huh? Well they don't say we have to charge the same! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hah!"

That was my very first experience with the government's involvement in insurance.

I immediately called and cancelled the insurance. Oh, but by the time you got the first bill the second month of coverage already started. You owe us another $780.00.

So those dirty ****ing bastard sons of whores took $1560 from a man who had just lost his job, and they were never going to pay one single dime for any of my medical expenses.

Honest to God, I'm so furious fifteen years later I would gleefully kill the next insurance executive I saw right this minute.

I got another job that paid very well, but they didn't provide benefits. When the boss told me that I was a little taken aback. What? But I thought about it for awhile and decided that I was good with it. Was I a conservative or not? Did I really believe that the welfare of my family was my responsibility?

So there I was without insurance. Now, I understood as well as anyone that if you go more than seven minutes without insurance your dead naked body will be found in a puddle on the darkest street in the worst part of town by morning.

I found another insurance provider who charged me the going rate, about $200/ month as I recall, to provide health insurance for my young, healthy family.

I don't remember how often I took my kids to the doctor during that time, but it was much much less than once a month. What I'm saying is that I paid them a helluva lot more than they paid the doctors. Then, on my birthday—I'm not making this up—I got a birthday card from the insurance company. How sweet. Oh, and by the way, now that you're a year older, we are raising your rates.

So I cancelled my insurance again. I went awhile without insurance and I never woke up naked and dead in an alley, but you never know. So I applied for insurance with another company.

They sent me a very nice letter explaining they were happy take my money, but they wouldn't cover my daughter. Well, my daughter is part of my family. If you aren't going to cover her, take this finger as a gesture of my appreciation and I guess we won't be doing business together.

I've never had leprosy, but I know exactly what it feels like to be a leper. You should watch parents shelter their children and rush them out of the waiting room when they hear you explain to the receptionist that you're "self-pay." You keep track of all the exits anywhere you are and sit in a corner with a view of the entire room just in case you have to mobilize when the SWAT team storms the place to neutralize you as a threat to their little system.

If you have kids you know that they never get sick on a weekday when they can do it at night on the weekends. One night we found ourselves in the after hours doctor's office with two sick kids. The bill came to $65. The sweet gal behind the desk said "Oooh, I see that you don't have insurance. Do you want to work out some kind of payment plan?"

I smiled and replied that I would just take care of the entire balance right then, thank you so much for your consideration. Sixty-five dollars! I could do that three times a month for what I'd have to pay for insurance, instead I'm doing it three times a year, and I don't have to pay co-pays and deductibles and then spend hours on the phone fighting with the insurance company.

So there we are. Or were. All these years later I just signed up for insurance again. I'm in a situation where I'll probably be spending a little more than $65 three times a year now, and now what they pay the doctors will be closer to what I pay them.

One or two more of these posts and I'll have it all pretty well solved for you. Nobody will ever have to write another word on the topic of health care coverage. But take this away. This is a fundamental law of the Universe that will be around long after the laws of Gravity and Entropy are revoked.

Insurance companies take in more money than they pay out.

Remember that. That part makes them no different from any other company--that's what allows companies to exist to provide us products and services. Here's the difference: Insurance companies are 100% parasitic. You could get the same service without their intervention. Half of what you pay to the insurance company goes to pay for something other than your health care.

So . . . well, okay then.

Let me just preface this post with a caveat: I am an idiot and I know it.

One cold day last winter I was inching along in brutal traffic when the oil pressure light came on and the steering got hard. Engine had died. Bam! Fortunately I was in the right lane and the freeway sloped slightly downhill (traffic was all but stopped) so I was able to coast off the road onto the shoulder. Starter spun, but didn't sound like it was engaging. I got out . . . well, you don't care. Point is I was a hundred miles from home with a car that was not going anywhere.

Here's where me being an idiot comes in. I'd had the car for over 100,000 miles and had never changed the timing belt. This particular engine is what you call an "interference" engine which, yes, is as bad as it sounds. When the belt that runs the valves goes, the valves hit the pistons. For those of you who think Obama gives a microcrap about the middle class—that is a very bad thing.

I had a large hunk of metal that needed some serious work to turn it back into a functioning vehicle.

More than $2,000 later I had a running automobile again.

Okay, here's my point (and not a moment too soon!). The engine ran again just like it did before I had the problem, but now it had several new problems it didn't have before.

The . . . what do you call a guy who works on a car but doesn't rise to the exalted level of a "mechanic?" . . . dipschlack who worked on my car broke the QD on the fuel line. He Just pulled on it until the sumbick came off, which left me stranded three days later and looking for a dealer only item that had to be ordered in. He also broke the timing belt cover (I usually like to take off bolts holding things on rather than just prying them off until they break). At least all the bolts were still there, they were just holding on the broken pieces instead of the cover. On the manifold cover they just plain left off one of the nuts. Right on the top of the engine where you can't help but see it. They also wrecked the radiator—I thought just by rough handling, consistent with the way they did the timing belt cover and fuel line, but later found damage to the front end caused when the car came loose on the roll-back (which event I personally witnessed).

You get the idea.

The part that was broken was fixed; it had to get fixed or the car was worthless. But in the process of fixing it a lot of things that were perfectly fine before the big problem were now broken.

Okay, now for reals, here's the real point (and not a moment too soon!). It occurred to me (while driving the car home from having a new radiator installed) that this was a perfect metaphor for a hospital visit.

When you go into the hospital for something major, I guarantee you that while there you will contract other maladies you didn't have. Your nose is going to be chafed and dried out from the nasal canula. You're going to have bed sores. Your muscles will atrophy from lying around. You'll probably get stasis pneumonia from the same thing. You may have hearing damage from an ultra-high volume bi-pap oxygen flow (ask me how I know) and you will have side effects from the drugs. Chances are pretty good that you'll also catch an infection from nasty bacteria that exist only in hospitals.

I have no idea what I'm trying to say here—a Leany on Life first! I just thought it was an interesting parallel. My car had all kinds of interesting new problems that had nothing to do with the big problem, and they were caused by the people who fixed the big problem.

Please God, oh please, I pray that there aren't any doctors out there as incompetent as the brain dead monkey who somehow got access to a toolbox long enough to work on my car. But I can't watch that whole hospital process and not think that something is very wrong with our approach to healing sick people.

Read this somewhat lighthearted article on why it would be great to replace Obama with a grown-up in 2016.

Then read this really good article about The President who Just Doesn't Get It.

Money quote: We don't have a president in these unsettling and slightly frightening times . . . We have Barack Obama.

---

You've heard the quip. Axelrod saying, completely deadpan, that in six years the Obama administration hasn't had one major scandal. That's great material, right there. Especially coming on the heels of Axelrod's revelation that Obama straight up lied about his position on gay marriage (What?!! Who knew?!) to get elected.

Of course, Axelrod's one-liner would be true . . . if you ignore all the major scandals the administration has been involved in.

But there is a recent administration that went a full eight years without a scandal. The George W. Bush administration.

In fact, if you had a score card of scandal, they would score less than zero on the number of scandals. That's because the Valerie Plame "scandal" would have to be scored in the negative. That manufactured attempt at trying to pin something on Bush was so ridiculous that it would have totally erased one Lewinksly-level scandal then about another half of a Watergate-level scandal.

That's the opponent scoring touchdowns for you is what that is.

Bush's enemies in the press huddled up, came up with that play, then ran around the field like idiots while the other team and the spectators alternately laughed at and ignored them.

Good ol' Axelrod. He says something as ridiculous as that right after pointing out in his book that Obama is a liar. Everybody knew it, but nobody expected Axelrod to admit it.

Okay, you know the deal. If Obama hadn't lied about his stand on gay marriage it wouldn't have cost him the Presidency. Nobody voted for him because of his position on gay marriage. Nobody voted for him for his viewpoints or beliefs.* Nobody voted for him because they were impressed with his experience or his record or his ability to do the job.

I refer you back to Season One of 24. The black candidate for President had just found out his son had been involved in a death that could be prosecuted as a murder. Major stuff. The candidate told his Axelrod that he had to withdraw from the race.

"Axelrod" looked at him a little puzzled. "You don't understand, do you? You think you can make the decision to withdraw? These people are not going to let YOU rob them of their chance to say they voted for a black man."

He had the mistaken idea that the deal was about him. It wasn't. Not in the least. It was about each individual ego getting the opportunity to prove how cool he was.

---

*Sort of. Only democrats are stupid enough to vote for a person just because he's black without regard to any other qualifications. So the fact that he was a radical is the reason they ran him. I've gone over this before. It makes no sense to waste your shot at getting in someone nobody would otherwise vote for if you don't install a radical.

What I'm saying is that the idiots who voted for the man didn't waste any time examining his beliefs.

Let's walk through this one more time.

Significance and Human Nature

Humans have an innate desire to be significant. That's a good thing. This leads them to want to be involved in things that matter. That's the driving force that gave us the American Revolution, for example. People want to be part of something significant.

It also gave us the Civil Rights movement. People want to get caught up in a worthy cause. In an interesting twist, the organizers of Martin Luther King's marches couldn't generate much participation at first. The blacks were afraid they'd lose their jobs when their white bosses saw them marching. Then one day the march got started late. The dozen or so marchers didn't get out to the streets until everyone was coming home from work. People wanted to watch and crowds gathered. The next day the press reported that hundreds had marched. So from then on they marched when all the people were around and the numbers the press reported were inflated. That was the turning point in the confrontation with Bull Connor.

That get involved mentality also gave us the Vietnam protests. College kids wanted to be involved in what was the defining issue of the time. Well, that and anything to not study. Plus hippy chicks are easy.

"Dude, you wanna go to a protest where a bunch of easy chicks without bras are hanging out?"
Nah, I've got all this homework.
"What?"
Dude, I got you. You totally shoulda seen your face. Of course I wanna go to a protest. What are we protesting, anyway?

It also gave a Ferguson. You get the idea. It's a good thing to want to be significant, but it's a human characteristic that's easily manipulated.

Civil Rights Movement

So the desire to be involved in something significant helped bring about Civil Rights in America. Most of us don't remember a time when people accepted as a fact of life that certain people had different rights because of their skin color. It's a no-brainer, but it wasn't an easy switch to make. Brave people marched and were tormented and terrorized and got beat up and even died to force the issue—the basic idea that people should be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Before that time being black was a disadvantage to getting ahead in society, and being a racist wasn't anything bad or unusual. Because of the sacrifices of those people, being called a "racist" became among the offensive insult you could fling at a person.

Election of 2008

Enough warming up the motor. Let's jump right to the election of 2008.

Those two factors—the desire to be involved in something significance coupled with the efforts of those who gave us Civil Rights—resulted a man as inept as Barack Obama getting the word "President" in front of his name.

During the election, Geraldine Ferraro, former candidate for VP and then member of Hillary's campaign team said "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." She was absolutely right. There was nothing to recommend the man other than his race.**

Here's the ingenious part of the maneuver. It wasn't about Barack Obama. Remember the line from 24. "These people are not going to allow you to deny them the opportunity to say they voted for a black man."

People elected him for themselves, not for anything he is or is capable of doing. The ingenious part of that is that because he didn't do anything to earn it, he can't do anything to screw it up.

That removes any burden from him. It immunizes the President against any failing he has or anything stupid he ever says or does. That's because, contrary to his belief, it's not about him. Not in the least. If it were, he would have screwed it up long ago. It's every person who supports him making sure they still seem hip and/or with it for voting for the cool guy.

They are rallying around like a game of wooden Indian keeping him from tumbling off his pedestal. Not that they care about him, but that would make them look bad.

---

**Ferraro's characterization echoed one that America has seen before. During one of Jesse Jackson's multiples runs for the Presidency he said that if he were not a black man, he would already be president.

Clearly, that's exactly backwards. If he were not a black man, nobody would have ever heard of him. A white man who had his temperament and intelligence and experience would never have been a candidate. The only reason anybody pretended to take him seriously was because he was black.

I keep saying that nobody voted for Obama for any characteristic he has other than being black. If that's really the case, why didn't Jesse Jackson ever win the Presidency?

Obviously there are certain characteristics that a man has to have to make him a viable candidate. Jesse Jackson comes across as way too . . . crazy? Just loud. Unpredictable. Not someone who could even fool you into trusting as a leader. As Joe Biden so Bidenically said, he had to be a "clean black man."

So that statement that "Obama's only virtue is being black" isn't 100% accurate, but I'm going to keep saying it to drive home the point that he has a much lower standard of expectation or performance than any other candidate. No other characteristic comes close to the importance that his race has.

Even taking into account Obama's poise and stage presence, there are a million white guys with resumes better than Obama who are working at fast food joints.

Post-mortem to the Election of 2012

So we watch Obama fumble, bumble, and stumble his way through four years as President. All things being equal, a fairly well-motivated minimally educated oyster on the half-shell could have beaten him out for re-election. But we run a man who is so eminently qualified that he should be able to beat the best of the best that they run against him. We run a guy whose life has been dedicated to successfully solving financial problems just like we face at the time. We run a man who is smart, strong, capable, good-looking, well-spoken . . . someone central casting sent down as the very best candidate for President of the United States.

And he loses. To maybe the least capable human being who has ever held the office.

Here's where the fun begins.

The really smart guys (the same ones who said Romney couldn't lose) start in telling us why Romney lost. He didn't appeal to this demographic or that. He should have done this or didn't do that.

So then the Republican party starts pointing fingers and in-fighting and going at each others' throats about who did what wrong and who needs to go so we can win elections.

The demorats are standing around with big grins like it's girls mud wrestling night down at the club. "Wow, did we do that? We weren't smart enough to orchestrate that, but we'll take it!"

And the Republicans continue to give the demorats the advantage by weakening themselves with infighting. Shoulda done this, you're too far left! No, you're too far right! But nobody acknowledges why Romney lost. He lost because he was not Barack Obama. That's all.

Nothing Obama did his first term showed any qualification for the office. Why would the guy who lost to him do so from any lack of qualification for the office?

Romney lost for the same reason a man as useless as Obama got elected in the first place. And you're wasting your time analyzing the data without acknowledging that.

So what if your data are irrefutable? You're finding cancer cells in a patient that was killed by a bus.

You know me. I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. It's just too much work. I don't think as far ahead as what I'm going to have for lunch, so I have a hard time ascribing those skills to others.

But . . .

Two million Republican voters stayed at home instead of voting for Mitt Romney in 2012?

I have to call bullcrap on that one.

Does that make any kind of sense on any level? We have the most incompetent excuse for a President we've ever seen. That at a time when the country needs a leader as badly as we have ever needed one. The Republican candidate is a man who is phenomenally suited for the job.

And Republicans—the responsible people who have jobs and pay attention to the issues—stayed at home because they were annoyed about . . . whatever the talking heads said they were annoyed about.

Bullcrap.

If the data show that two million votes went to Obama that were expected to go to Romney I'd start looking for other explanations.

So you might say that the democrats couldn't have committed voter fraud. Why not? Do they lack the technology to do it, or are they morally opposed to that sort of thing?

Both of those explanations are ridiculous.

So . . .

I'm not undermining the narration I just carefully outlined about how Romney lost because he wasn't Obama. I'm saying that in addition to counting on the stupidity of voters, the democrats wanted to shore up their bets.

I'm saying that two million Republicans did not stay home in 2012.

Most of the kids in my high school were Hispanic. By "most" I mean 70 to 75%. That means that most of the popular kids and the kids on the student council were Hispanic. Most of the jocks were Hispanic. If you had dealings--good or bad--with someone in my high school, chances are they were Mexican.

I grew up in a small farming community outside of "town" where almost all of the people were white. When I went to junior high in town, I found myself in a minority. Because of the particular junior high that I went to, whites were a smaller minority than were represented in the town in general. And in the particular part of town where that junior high was most of the Mexicans were what were called "chukes."

Now, a chuke is kind of a militant Mexican — a gangbanger. They were the ones that intentionally cultivated a thick, ugly Mexican accent. They wore taps on their platform shoes and roved in gangs looking for fights. I freaking hated chukes. And chukes were my first exposure to Mexicans on a broad level.

Because of the demographic makeup of that junior high, I hung out with the "honkeys." In that culture, a honkey wasn't what a black person called a white person. A honkey was a cowboy; a redneck. I'm not sure what the Mexicans called a white that wasn't a cowboy, but I hung out with the cowboys. More on that later.

When I got to high school we had a mix from the other junior high, so I drifted into other groups. I discovered that I didn't have to hide the fact that I could get good grades, and I started hanging out with the good students and student government types. So we had the groups everyone has--the student government, the jocks, the odd ducks that hung out in the drama department, and the nerds. The honkeys were all white, although there were a number of Mexican kids that lived on ranches and were more cowboy than probably most of the rednecks and drugstore cowboys that hung out with the honkeys. And all of the chukes were Mexicans.

Incidentally, I guess about three minutes after I graduated from high school the chukes filed the proper paperwork to have their name legally changed to "cholos" and everybody forgot the word "chuke."

So . . . wasn't that fascinating?

Because I grew up around ranchers and cowboys I felt comfortable in the culture. Although I wasn't unaware of my friends' failings, they were my friends. It's like they used to say about . . . FDR, I think. "He may be a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch."

The cowboy kids were kind of my default group in junior high, because who else am I going to hang out with? The chukes? Our group protected itself against the threats of the chukes, so they were my friends. I wore boots and western cut shirts, and the best representation of a western belt I could afford (you would not believe what it costs to custom make those layered leather belts that dangle down like a silly tongue). I liked the culture, I liked the people, I like their attitudes and values. I had good memories of the rodeos and the rodeo dances and the redneck girls. I had fond memories associated with country music.

Someone once asked me "How can you stand that twangy music?" Well, I associate it with fond memories and people I enjoyed being around.

Okay.

Now, the most evil human shaped organism that I personally know is a cowboy. He runs a huge cattle ranch, he rides horses, he ropes, he dresses in western clothing. And I hate him. He is a first-rate pile of crap. If you heard the things I said about him and the things that I would like to see happen to him, you would say "You really hate cowboys, don't you?"

Obviously, I don't. But I really hate him, and he happens to be as cowboy as cowboy can get.

The radical ideology of Barack Obama provides an interesting bonus to the liberals . . . or progressives, or socialists or whatever that group of kids is being called around the school these days.

First, that's the whole point. The reason you ran a guy who would "make history" just by being elected was to get in a radical that people otherwise wouldn't vote for. Why waste a Manchurian candidate maneuver on a man who stood a chance of getting elected anyway?

But in addition to getting their radical, they get opposition to him. Vigorous opposition. Because he's so whacked out (and annoying and obnoxious and wrong and stoooo-pid) people get red-faced about him. That strident opposition, that he wouldn't get if he weren't so radical, makes it much easier to paint his opponents as racist.

It's brilliant.

Wow. That fat guy in the cowboy hat really makes your blood boil. You must really hate cowboys!

That Barack Obama fellow drives you crazy. You obviously hate blacks!

Yep, and I must really, really hate Chevrolets. That's why I'm pissed off about that drunk driver who just killed a family with his Chevy. After all, you don't see me raging at all the people driving around in Fords.

We have been provided a couple of great snapshots of who Barack Obama is. One of the very best was the first debate between Romney and Obama. That was one of the very few times when you saw the actor that plays Obama on TV. Obama's forum of choice is talking at you. He has his teleprompters and crap. When he has to talk to a real life person who can refute his horsecrap, he falls apart.

The prayer breakfast speech was another amazing insight into how much Obama loathes America and the kind of people that live here. No one is surprised that he despises Christians. But if he were an evil genius you'd think he'd be smart enough to hide it better.

Jonah Goldberg, who seldom disappoints, wrote this great analysis of the crazy things that guy tried to shove at us.

That . . . speech, diatribe, insane ramblings of a crazed lunatic . . . was a great litmus test for whether or not you have a brain. If you could listen to it without your jugular popping, you flunked.

I used to work with two brothers. One of them, I'm going to call him "Ron," just to hang a name on the concept for the purposes of the story, had absolutely no diplomacy skills. He wouldn't know tact if it walked up to him naked in a bar. For example, during a meeting he might say "That was a stupid thing to do."

You know those guys that are listening to a story and say "Well, if I would've been there I would have said . . . !"? Yeah, well "Ron" really would have. No tact. He just didn't care about social niceties and he said exactly what he thought. He was a real dick.

I didn't like "Ron."

His brother, in contrast, was the nicest guy you'd ever hope to meet. Always smiling at you. Pat you on the back, how ya' doin? If you thought you'd offended him he'd let you know it was okay. "Are we good?" Oh, sure! Don't worry about it.

Then you'd find out that he threw you under the bus to the boss for that very thing behind your back.

I like "Ron" better.

The reason that little tale fascinates you so much is that Obama is the two-faced brother. He'll smile and assure you that he won't raise your taxes. Oh, sure, we're going to stick it to those filthy evil rich scoundrels that we all hate. But you? You're my bud. I've got your back. I'm telling you, no way will I ever even think about raising your taxes. Old buddy. Old pal o' mine.

Then he sticks it to you on your health care. Hey, it's not technically a tax. Sure, you hand him 15 grand a year, but it's not labelled as a tax.

And, wait! What's this?! The medical exclusion gets raised on my income tax? Who's that going to affect more, the guy with $15,000 of medical expenses and a 50K income or the guy with the same expenses and a 200K income?

Then you find out any of the "free" benefits that he handed you count as income which you get taxed on. The Cash for you Clunker? Considered income. You owe him tax for it. Your health care subsidy? Income. You get taxed for it. Any other "free" benefit? Income. You owe him tax.

And this?!! What's this?!! Raising the capital gains tax?!! You dirty son of a . . .

So to your face it's all "Hey, we're best buds. Look at me smiling! No way, not gonna' raise your taxes by one cent." But in a hundred other hidden ways he's sticking it to you hard.

All of a sudden you're considered one of the "rich." Back when you made that deal you figured it was the other guy that was going to get hosed. You . . . you weren't one of the rich people he was talking about, driving fancy cars, flying around in private jets. But in your pal's eyes "rich" means "has a job." So the words "fair share" sound pretty good until you realize it means he's stealing your money.

Okay, but here's where the two-faced brother analogy breaks down. It would hold if the only way he raised your taxes was cleverly behind your back. But he full on just plain raises your taxes. Period. No cleverness, no trickery. "What? I said I wasn't going to do that? Hmm, don't remember that."

I may have had an actual point behind that fascinating tale about Mexicans in my High School. I will get to it in the next blog. I've been so busy today that I haven't even read Ann Coulter's column yet.

Okay . . . everybody was on a commercial break. That’s my excuse. That’s why I pushed the button on my radio that had me listening to NPR.

I know you’re thinking "Why do you even have a preset on that station?" It’s actually a little bit entertaining—in a maddening sort of way—to hear their twisted version of the world. It’s like watching Alice in Wonderland. Just bizarre alternate reality views on things you’d never think of without the aid of LSD.

But it’s maddening. Irritainment, I call it. You can only take so much. At some point you feel like you’re watching the mentally handicapped kid in your class make a fool of himself.

It was Friday morning and the fine folks on NPR were talking about the . . . ahem, upcoming . . . election. Something about that whole experience seemed familiar to me. Listening to NPR talk about politics was like something I had just done . . .

Webelos!

Wednesday night we worked on the Citizen pin with the Webelos (10 year old Cub Scouts). It’s kind of interesting having a discussion with a 10 year old boy about the way the political system works. Bless their little hearts, they try to be interested, but their little brains just don’t have the background to understand what’s going on.

Just like NPR.

The fine folks on NPR were talking about the Republicans, which is a lot like Super Chevy magazine doing a feature article on the new Ford Mustang. They were talking about the last election, how so many Republicans were in the primaries. Everyone knew that Romney was going to be the eventual nominee, but each of the others (except Huntsman) one-by-one got a turn being the front-runner.

In the course of talking about that the guy said that even Herman Cain got a chance! Herman Cain!

He said it just that way, all drawn out and dramatic. Like "Are you hearing me? Can you believe it?!!" Then the lady continued and he interrupted, “But, Herman Cain!” Then the discussion continued for a minute. Then at the end the guy said one more time “Herman Caaa-aaain!” Like the man was a punchline.

Okay, I've listened to Herman Cain on the radio. I like him just fine, but the man is certainly not in the least qualified to be President of the United States.

He has that in common with Barack Obama.

So let's imagine if a Republican were to say "Barack Obama!" the way NPR said "Herman Cain!" You'd never hear the end of it. That would be proof that we are bigots and only hate him because he's black.

Which is interesting because Herman Cain is black. But it's fine to dismiss him as ridiculous because . . . wait . . . explain to me again why they get to beat up our black guys?

Okay, then. Point two.

The very smart lady on NPR spent a lot of time doing the same analysis you've heard about why Romney lost. Hispanic vote, this or that, not engaging hard enough, the binders of women, 47% . . .

People still are still pretending they don't understand why Romney lost. Romney lost the election because he was not Barack Obama.

Obama was not elected for any skill or capability or viewpoint that he has. What in the name of Dale P. Earnhardt makes you think that the person who loses to him does so from a deficit of those things?

That's your money quote right there.

So if you keep trying to analyze what he did wrong with the Hispanics or whatever, that’s like cutting off your numb foot because of a pinched nerve in your back.

The other thing they talked about was Mitt Romney's "47%" comment. They want us to be outraged about it, but they never get around to explaining where he was wrong or why we should be.

That's fine they're just giving people what they want. And what do they want?

People want to be bull$7!tted.

Prove me wrong. You can't. You know it's true. The last thing people want to hear is the truth.

You need to read this. The title is "If you're wondering why the unemployment rate is low and people still feel like the job market sucks, here's why." It outlines the lies that the President tells to make himself look good.

You know it's true. You listen to him give the SOTU address and you wonder what planet he lives on. Really. The man is delusional. I'm not using hyperbole. The man is genuinely suffering from a mental illness.

I . . . I just . . . Omigosh, I can't. I really can't. I am going to stroke out.

You've probably suffered through my theories on the things that inform our thinking. I'm convinced that language informs our thinking. The structure of language has a big impact on how we think things through. The very architecture, which word functions come in which order in the sentence. Here's my theory: The complexity of language in a culture is related to how advanced the technology is in that culture.

Germany has advanced technology. German is an advanced language. Spanish is a more simple language, even simpler in usage than actual structure. Mexico doesn't have an aircraft carrier or a submarine . . . or roads . . .

I know nothing's as simple as it seems, but I'm not trying to convince you. I'm already convinced, and it's not going to change my blogger's salary either way if you're not. Someone almost blew away my theory with a single word: Navajo.

But I thought about it and it bolsters my theory more than anything else. Navajo is a very sloppy language; it has very little structure. That's why the Germans couldn't break the "code" during WWII. They were looking for patterns, and there aren't any.

But language isn't the only thing. I think we'd be surprised to know the influence on our thinking of very little things, like the way traffic reacts to a crash up ahead. I'm convinced that British minds work slightly different from American minds because they make driving decisions based on turning right across traffic instead of left. And even their spelling. Reading in British has a softer feel.

Office 2013. Who is responsible for that obscenity? You can't read the screen in Outlook and you can't format it so you can. And all of the soft icons and crap load up the computer so much that the software is twice as slow as it used to be with your old computer that had a processor half as fast. When you click on a cell in Excel you have to wait while the outline of the cell leisurely glides across your screen to where you want it to be.

Between straining to see my e-mails and waiting for cute effects I go home pissed every single night. Every. Single. Night.

There are theories about Equal Temperament tuning causing background dissonance in our psyche. If that can do it, imagine something as overtly horrific as Office 2013.

Okay, here's what that has to do with the price of tea in China.

Obama is wrecking the economy. You don't believe his bullcrap about the unemployment rate and all of that bilge. Obama is wrecking the economy. You don't have money to spend and you can't get a better job and no one you knows has the economic freedom or opportunity they used to have. Wow . . . I feel like I just slammed a Pre-workout shake. My blood pressure is spiking. Who thinks that raising the Capital Gains tax helps the economy?! Wow. Breathe, Frank, breathe . . .

We can argue all day about whether he's a well-meaning idiot completely failing at fixing the country or an evil genius wildly succeeding at wrecking it, but the fact is that he is wrecking the country.

Okay, back to my theory on language and stuff. You held that thought, right?

Take your frustration about paying for insurance with what you saved to send your kid to college. Take the frustration you feel at being pissed on through a teleprompter and told that it's raining. Now multiply that by 300 million people in the country.

What do you think the effect of that depression of the psyche is on the country?

Even if Barack Obama is stupid, he's still evil.

You want another example of people wanting to be lied to? Of course you do! Here's an example. Insurance.

People buy insurance so they can get something for free. So they go to the doctor and only pay $20 for the visit. "Woo-hoo! 20 bucks! Look at that poor schmuck that doesn’t have insurance. He's paying 82.00 for the same service I got for 20 bucks."

Then that rocket scientist goes home and writes a check to the insurance company for $1,000. But his doctor visit only cost him 20 bucks!

And he does that again the next month even though he doesn’t go to the doctor. Twenty bucks!

Insurance does not equal Free Health Care.

I can't believe I have to explain this. Next I'll be outlining why you should manipulate your steering wheel with your hands instead of your feet.

You pay your insurance and they pay your doctor. Where in the name of Merrill Q. Lynch do you think they're getting that money? They don't make up the difference out of the goodness of their heart. They take it from you, month after month after month. In addition to what they're paying your doctor, they're paying themselves. You wanna explain to me how that's getting you free health care?

I know you're saying "That's great as long as you only go to a doctor once a year. Just wait until you get cancer and then get hit by a bus!"

Again. When you do get cancer from being hit by a bus the same rule applies. Do you think the insurance company just prints money to pay those costs?

Open an investment account. Put your insurance money in that and use it when you get hit by a bus. Or keep paying it to the insurance company. Just don't pretend you're getting a doctor visit for 20 bucks.

I have a close personal friend who doesn't have insurance. He doesn't understand why he should write a check every month to someone who doesn't provide him health care when he occasionally goes to someone else for health care. My same close personal friend occasionally books airline flights. He doesn't know how often he's going to travel during the year. At the time he books the flights he pays for them. He doesn't pay someone money every month in case he decides to fly in an airplane.

Recently my close personal friend has had some significant health care costs. When people ask him how it's going they often end up asking "Do you have insurance?" The people are being sympathetic, but they are saying "'Cause unless you have insurance, you have to pay all those costs."

No. No no no no no no. You pay for your health care, whether you have insurance or not. If you have insurance you pay for your health care in a different way than if you don't. But you still pay for your health care. The insurance companies don't pay out a single dime that they don't collect. That would make no sense at all.

But in addition, they collect more than they pay out to the actual people who provide you with health care. If you pay your doctor you get an immediate 30% discount. That's because that's all the insurance company would pay them, but that's after they fight for six weeks with the office staff the doctor has to hire to deal with them. Then the insurance company pays themselves with the difference between what you pay them, month after month after month, and what they pay the person who actually looked at your tonsils.

John Stoessel wrote this article about a parasite economy touching on some of the concepts I've been flapping my gums about. You know, how there are things you spend money on that increase value and things that just increase cost.

Parasites are bad . . . just to clarify.

Dennis Miller said something interesting. He was talking about Dick Cheney and how much he respects the guy (as do I—that's a great American, right there). Then he said "I can still say that, can't I? We can still hold views that are unpopular with the rulers. But I have to tell you, when the time comes, yeah, I'll lie." You can read about it here. Look for "Sticking your neck out."

Yeah, we all probably will. What good is it going to do anyone to take one for the team? . . . when they have already lost . . . My close personal friend is going to have to get insurance. He doesn't have any delusions that holding out against socialism is doing any good at all, and the second that becoming a socialist like the rest of the country benefits his family, he's going to do it.

For every Sam Adams that won a revolution there are a hundred thousand like my close personal friend who got trampled and forgotten.

Wow. I wonder if Obamacare covers strokes caused by its thievery.

Which leads us to Obama and the middle class.

I have to reiterate what I get out of this blog: Not a damn thing. No one reads it and if they did it wouldn't make a flick of sweat's difference in an ocean. What I'm saying is, I don't care. I'm not a good writer, but I'm not as bad as I seem when you're reading this crap. I just. Don't. Care. I'm just trying to get it all down before I lose consciousness from the stroke.

You remember on M*A*S*H when the boys let Winchester get into their poker game (Episode 134, the Merchant of Korea). He was cleaning everyone out. They took a break to clear their heads and were commiserating outside the tent. It was driving them crazy. Winchester was so calm. He whistled constantly. Even when he had nothing. In fact, he whistled even louder when he had nothing.

Wait a minute . . . He whistled louder when he had nothing!

That realization allowed them to go back in and win their money back.

Allow me to reveal Obama's poker tell to you.

He whistles louder when he has nothing. The thing that Obama is talking about saving is the very thing that he's intent on destroying. Bank on it. Every. Single. Time.

Do you really think he cares about the Middle Class? If you do, you have think he's stupid, because everything he does to "help" the Middle Class is destroying it.

If this were truly a democracy someone in the Secret Service would punch that man in the throat every time he utters the phrase "Middle Class."

. . . and Missy Eliot is singing for the Super Bowl