I am sure it doesn’t, but…

It seems we have become so lazy or self-absorbed in trivia, some fed to us by the drama queens in our own lives and much more via the news media, that a majority of US citizens have literally tuned out and are leaving their important thinking for others do. The most important decisions we seem to be able to make on our own are things like what to watch on TV. Taking the time to become informed about the political, social, or environmental issues of the day is to be studiously avoided.

The final outcome of a country’s people foregoing the heavy lifting required for informed decision-making is that the country becomes vulnerable to the master manipulators among us. For example, people completely ignorant of the facts behind the Nobel Prize winning scientific discovery of global warming and its consequences are easily persuaded to continue the ruinous behavior that is detrimental to all life on the planet.

Because we failed to act quickly in our own best interests, the people in this country responsible for relieving the citizens of trillions of dollars in savings and equity are in a position to do the very same thing again.

The very same people can do the very same thing… again.

Because we have been so focused nationally on sorting out the truth to the health care debate and its hundred billion dollar annual cost, we have allowed ourselves to be distracted from our wars. Phony wars based on lies and waged for the benefit of companies like Halliburton and Blackwater are where we waste hundreds of billions of dollars a year, gaining nothing except the opportunity to waste more money.

(You may disagree if you think spending billions of taxpayer dollars blowing up mountains and deserts while losing thousands of American lives in the process is good for America.)

We spend billions chasing long dead media darlings like Osama bin Laden(the only bite he has left is a sound bite). We pour billions more into a protection racket dedicated to making travel impossibly difficult and whose policies have literally rendered personal privacy in America a thing of the past, but haven’t made us any safer from fanatics.

Fear mongers have convinced us we will be much safer as soon as big brother has a window opened into every corner of our lives. By dedicating ourselves to perpetual ignorance and prejudice we have opened the door to all master manipulators. We seem quick to forget that those who stick their heads in the sand are leaving their butts in the air for opportunists to take advantage of.

Misery Loves Company
If you have:

No coin, no cash, no credit and no credibility left.
And if you are:

Down to the last roll of the dice,
or the last spin of the wheel,
or the last flip of the coin.

Guess what?
Things can only get worse.
Have I cheered you up yet?
Misery does love company.

Have you lost your job, your house, and your family?
Do you have at least one tooth trying to fall out of your
head now and do the rest seem destined to follow soon?
Is there no insurance of any kind protecting anything of
yours although you paid in for what seems like forever?
And are you still years away from being eligible for
Medicaid or Social Security?

Is your wall papered with late notices? Has your license
been suspended for back child support or court fines? Is
there nothing left in your house to turn off but the water
and that’s just because the water department is busy? Is
your camper in good shape?

You’d better hope so.

Or maybe your significant other of many years (some bitter,
some sweet) has decided to stick it out ( I mean, what choice
does she really have?) and is busy purchasing dinner at the
day old Exxon deli while you are filling up the home away
from home camper, soon to become home. You are eating
at the Exxon deli cause the Exxon card is the only plastic still
honored in your wallet, for one more payment cycle.

As I mentioned, misery really does love company.

And yet our government is pouring trillions into the deserts
And mountains abroad. We can’t afford healthcare, we can’t
help our own homeless, we can’t afford good educators or
legislators or honest Captains of Industry no matter how
much we are willing to pay them. Enough, clearly and simply,
isn’t enough.

If you have or on the brink of having:

No coin, no cash, no credit and no credibility left.
And if you are:

Down to the last roll of the dice,
or the last spin of the wheel,
or the last flip of the coin.

Guess what?

Things can only get worse.
Have I cheered you up yet?
Misery does love company.

Have you lost your job, your house, and your family?
Do you have at least one tooth trying to fall out of your
head now and do the rest seem destined to follow soon?
Is there no insurance of any kind protecting anything of
yours although you paid in for what seems like forever?
And are you still years away from being eligible for
Medicaid or Social Security?

Is your wall papered with late notices? Has your license
been suspended for back child support or court fines? Is
there nothing left in your house to turn off but the water
and that’s just because the water department is busy? Is
your camper in good shape?

You’d better hope so.

Or maybe your significant other of many years (some bitter,
some sweet) has decided to stick it out ( I mean, what choice
does she really have?) and is busy purchasing dinner at the
day old Exxon deli while you are filling up the home away
from home camper, soon to become home. You are eating
at the Exxon deli cause the Exxon card is the only plastic still
honored in your wallet, for one more payment cycle.

As I mentioned, misery really does love company.

And yet our government is pouring trillions into the deserts
And mountains abroad. We can’t afford healthcare, we can’t
help our own homeless, we can’t afford good educators or
legislators or honest Captains of Industry no matter how
much we are willing to pay them. Enough, clearly and simply,
isn’t enough.

An interesting news article on Dr. Nancy, MSNBC mornings (I’m sorry I don’t have more details) discussed a study concerning frequent but unemotional sexual encounters with multiple partners. In particular, the study sought to determine whether promiscuous sex could be proven to have negative consequences on (either or both) the physical and emotional well-being of those who participate in “the life”. The story didn’t cover particulars such as what they used for a control group. Presumably this would include people who had little or no sexual contact outside of the prescribed social norms like marriage or at least had the handle “committed” or “seriously involved” attached to their sexual activity.

So guess what?

Long story short the promiscuous group scored the highest across all age groups for emotional and physical well-being. The group labeled promiscuous was clearly happier, less stressed out, and in better overall physical condition. The study covered 12,000 people over a period of 20 years of their lives.

Guess further what?

Those who had a promiscuous past had a more successful marriage once they decided to tie the knot. Apparently, having solved the “curiosity of the cat”, promiscuous people were able to settle into a more reliable or complacent “I’m happy with what I’ve got” frame of mind.

Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat… it kills the marriage. Does it really surprise anyone that people enjoying active sex lives are happier, better adjusted, and less stressful? Apparently the last vestiges of our Victorian backgrounds are being shed. The ridiculous notion that sex under any circumstances, other than forced situations, could actually be bad for you in any significant way is being relegated to the trash bin of history.

Twenty years down the road I wouldn’t be surprised to see athletic sex the new Olympic sport. When in Rome….
one should act like a Roman.

Lets face it…War is a racket!

President Obama has, I suspect in order to relieve his incredible work load, turned over the war to the generals. (Eventually he was bound to follow the path of least resistance.) The generals will, without question, continue GWB’s domino plan. His plan, if you’ll recall, was to go from Muslim country to Muslim country on a Christian Jihad dedicated to eradicating the Taliban. (More truthfully
perhaps, eliminating Muslims.) Evidently, that’s still our plan.

What should have been a rabbit hunt, where a few thousand of our elite special forces troops chase a few hundred of the 9/11 perpetrators into the mountains and caves, will be blown into $100 billion annual expenditure. The generals will attempt to justify a MacArthur style sweep throughout the Middle East. The fact that
Osama bin Laden, the ALLEGED target of our pursuit, has been dead these last 8 years doesn’t seem to dim the generals enthusiasm to hunt down and capture him.

The generals will fight this war phony with overworked, worn-out, suicidal troops. At least one soldier, when faced with yet a third tour to the Middle East, elected to end his own life rather than return. The suicide rate among the military is increasing monthly!

We will pay for this war on credit at our most critical economic point, when the stability of the nation’s economic and financial well-being is still in question. We will neglect the needs of this nation in favor of another useless and unproductive war on the other side of the planet. In spite of what our leaders tell us, it doesn’t take a big brain to realize what’s going on outside our borders has nothing to do with our national security. No country on the map today is crazy enough to take on the USA.

If our national security is weak it is because our National Guard is overseas. The rationale behind sending our national defense troops overseas is as substantial as fog. The really stupid part of what we are being expected to swallow by the war council is that the people in these countries subjected to our bombarding appreciate us. It really
takes a complete moron to even consider we may be able to win over the hearts and minds of a people by using guns and bombs on them.

We might stand a chance of winning over a nation’s people if we helped them to build schools or hospitals. If we helped the poorest of the world’s nations with their infrastructure; their roads or electrical grid or water resources. If we did so I suspect they would learn to love us in double quick time. As long as we abuse their country they will never love or even appreciate us. But imagine the noise and uproar the good citizens of this country would create if it were known we were upgrading their country before upgrading our own infrastructure. It is much more politically correct to bomb them first.

The insanity of continuing to do over and over what has failed in the past will continue to plague our future.

The people in this once great nation are either too poorly informed, too misguided, too greedy, or too apathetic to care what is done in their name.

We follow blindly the actions of our leaders for one overarching reason. We all believe our nation’s deciders know more than we do. We sincerely believe they have secret knowledge which, were we privy to it, would convince us the course we are on is true.

However, after watching the Bush/Cheney parade of people spouting the same lies over and over, I am convinced otherwise.

Fact: we are alienating the very people we are supposedly liberating. By indiscriminately killing them we couldn’t possibly do more harm to our long-term interest.

We have allowed our generals to bring to full living color the popular board game RISK. One huge difference between a game and real-life is at the end of the game the troops, with no enemies to face, presumably get to go home. Our troops will never come home.