Terrorist=Someone with a Bomb, but no Air Force

Many years ago, I lived near Moffett Air Force Base, and for two years, attended the Blue Angels show on 4th of July.

In some sort of dissociative state, I watched the precision flying with enjoyment, as if it were synchronized swimming or something innocuous like that.

Then I invited my Dad to go. He refused, pointing out that the purpose of those planes was to terrorize people and to drop bombs on them. Plus, it was a giant waste of energy.

I didn't go again.

But one year, as I was getting my mail, with my back to the base, a Blue Angel bomber flew very low over my head. I didn't hear it until it was over me, it was flying so fast.

Now I know what my Dad meant by terror! My heart was pounding, and I went inside and called the base to complain. Some sort of community soother calmed me down and promised that it wouldn't happen again. He told me that it was the last year the Blue Angels would fly there.

Lucky me, to be an American, and to be able to complain.

When the US attacked Iraq with their "shock and awe", which is very clearly an euphemism for raining terror on people, 24 hours a day, for days on end, how many people cared about the human beings on the receiving end?

I heard testimony about a woman whose two teenaged daughters couldn't take it. They were crying and screaming, so her husband and she and the kids got into the car to get out of Baghdad. They came to a roadblock of American soldiers.

As it happened, her husband had gone to college in the US., and spoke English very well. He got out of the car to explain to the soldiers that his daughters were terrified, and needed to leave the targeted area.

The soldiers killed him. Then they killed her kids.

I think about that man often. He came to America and met the tolerant, educated, friendly sort of Americans. Did he ever run into the nasty, ignorant, violent kind before that day? (At least, in person. Obviously, he had been a victim from the air). What did he think as he died?

Howard Zinn, like my Dad, was in WWll and came out with a hatred of war. I paraphrased his observation on terrorists for the title of this post. It says a lot about Americans that they think that someone with explosives around his waist is a despicable terrorist, but dropping bombs on people 24 hours a day is something to be proud of.

Baby Boomers-We Will Get Screwed Again

Many, many years ago, so many babies were produced for a couple of decades that they got their own name - Baby Boomers.

The Baby Boomer mass of people created their own economic conditions, like rain forests creating their own weather. From coonskin caps to hula hoops to rock and roll records, money was made from catering to boomer whims.

And the millions of boomers provided cannon fodder for the Vietnam War, while the ones left behind got drugs funneled to them to keep them subdued, and to keep the CIA well-funded beyond their official allotment.

In the 80s, Alan Greenspan announced to us boomers that there were too many to continue to fund Social Security on its pay-as-you-go system. We needed to pre-pay our retirement, creating a trust fund of trillions to pay for us, and only us.

So ever since then, boomers and all others working since, have paid extra for this temporary trust fund, so as not to burden our children. And now, of course, we're told that they spent it and we shouldn't be so greedy as to expect them to provide for our retirement. Think of the children!

And here we go again. The health care bill that is supposed to "reform" the insurance companies and stop them from discriminating against people has a loophole.

Older people can be charged more! And by older people, I don't mean over 65. They are covered by Medicare.

No. The people younger than 65, that is, the Baby Boomers, can be charged more than everyone else for their forced health insurance tributes!

As screwed as we have been, from Vietnam to extra SS payments to now being forced to pay extra into the insurance coffers, I have to wonder what they have planned next?

Are they hoping we die before we get old? Or are they going to make sure we do?

Markets for Opium

When the US invaded Afghanistan, the head of my ER, an Air Force brat who then used the military to become a doctor, announced that we were switching from Demerol to Morphine as our main pain killer.

This was a big switch. We give morphine all day and all night long, so it adds up.

I was always suspicious of that guy anyway. He was a right wing Christian, homeschooling, gun hoarding type, with, as I said, ties to the military.

I thought it was just us, but I've heard that the switch was nation-wide. I find that very suspicious. The US invades a poppy growing country, and suddenly only morphine is suitable to relieve pain.

But lately, we've been giving a lot of Dilaudid. On a hunch, I looked it up, and sure enough, Dilaudid is a morphine derivative, but six times stronger.

Are the CIA sharecroppers growing too many poppies for the ordinary markets to absorb?

By the way, I went to a forum sometime about 2003 where the local district attorney was speaking, and he mentioned that for some reason, they were arresting way more heroin users than before. Well, duh!

A Vietnam Vet Speaks and Boy, Is He Confused

So yesterday, I run into a man wearing a baseball cap saying "Viet Vet".

See, I don't think that's anything to brag about. What are they trying to say? "I killed peasants who were trying to improve their lives and I'm damn proud of it"? But that doesn't fit on a cap?

So this guy starts telling me how his wife went without medical care for two years, until they got poor enough to get public aid, and how she's ashamed of her medical card, but he thinks that he deserves it, since he paid taxes for years and all.

So I say that in other countries, people just get health care as a right. No shame, just medical treatment. And he says, oh yeah, that's how it should be.

So I say, but the US spends too much on war, so they tell us we can't afford health care.

OK, now he's torn. So he says, well, I'm glad there's no draft, because my son doesn't have to go into the military like I did. I was forced.

So I push a little, and point out that the US is waging two wars and is trying for more and we can't afford it.

This confuses him. He wants health care, but he's all about US dominance. So he says that the US should just go in and kill everyone, and then it would be over and we wouldn't have to pay anymore money.

So I say that that is uncivilized.

So he says, "I don't mean we should nuke them", in an aggrieved, misunderstood voice. How could I possibly have thought he meant nuke them when he just meant kill them all with conventional weapons? Jeeeez.

So I say we should mind our own business and not try to dominate the world.

Well, he didn't think we should dominate the world, but the world needed to do what we want, or we should kill them.

Then his wife put a stop to our conversation.

So. He's for universal health care, and against the draft, but he's for US imperial domination and mass murder of resisting dominees.

Does that make him a Democrat or a Republican?

Big Brother Makes Sure You Deserve Health Care

Yesterday, I noticed the ER Business Office had added cameras that literally looked like eyes, on eyestalks, at each desk. I asked what was up with that?

Well, it turns out that the hospital is concerned that some unworthy people might be getting treatment that they don't deserve. Some people who are ill, and don't have money or insurance, are borrowing other people's Medicaid cards and seeing doctors when they can't afford it! This, of course, must stop. Only people with money or insurance are allowed to see doctors in this country. The Congress and the President say so. And the hospital is spending more money to survey all its patients, to catch the few undeserving sick.

Congress is dealing with people's lack of money to buy insurance by passing a law to make it illegal. As someone pointed out, maybe they should deal with the homeless people living under bridges by passing a law that they must buy houses.

When my sister was in New Zealand, she needed to go to an ER for stitches. They treated her without retina scans, or ID, or billing info. They just took care of her. An alien!! For free!

This is absolutely unheard of in America. The right wing accuses the Congress of possibly allowing non-Americans to buy health insurance and the "liberals" respond by denying it heartily. No one in America defends the right to health care for all.

No one in America defines "health care" as access to doctors and nurses. "Health Care' is defined as insurance buying, although everyone knows that insurance companies deny claims, demand large deductibles and co-payments, and find pre-existing conditions at will.

I think that the next time there is a typhoon in the Phillipines, or a hurricane in Pakistan, and the rest of the world is sending doctors and supplies, the US should send insurance agents.

If it's good enough for us, it's good enough for them.