The Erection Market

The Free Market: Tell me you get things for free when you go to the market.

The free market sells everything now: health care, education, armies, Senators, elections, you name it and the Capitalist American Free Market sells it.

Even erections.

You might say that selling erections is nothing new. Playboy , Oui, Hustler

have been doing that for years.

Well now that's true to a certain extent but their sales marketing was very indirect. They thought they were selling sex and boners were simply a function of it.

Well now we have marketed a disease in order to sell erections for sex.

Isn't it great? Probably the best thing about it is that most of the intercourse it generates will not increase our population. Indeed, given the stress that an erection lasting more than four hours might cause it may very well be reducing the population.

I wonder would it be considered illegal under the Geneva Convention to give a detainee four or five little blue pills and then immobilize him in a chair with his hands tied until he gives up the next terrorist plot? Could you "trust" intelligence obtained in such a manner?

It is really quite ingenious. Even today in America the outright selling of erection causing agents just to get an erection would be frowned upon. But if you are curing a disease, well then, that's a different matter. I wonder will the proposed universal health care plan cover these?

I am a little confused however why a NASCAR race car needs to be advertising such products.

Is the name Viagra suppose to create an association with Niagara as in falls? Is the 6 on the car suppose to be a subliminal for sex?

Say, the fact that all of this took place during the Bush Administration mean anything? I mean they out sourced the housing care and feeding of our military, hell they even bought a private military. Maybe the boys were just sharing something they need themselves with us by letting the erection market develop.

One Big Bang Equals 25 Universes

During the Inquisition (Spanish one I think) the Inquisitors found a butcher that could not read , write, or understand Latin but went to Mass regular like etc. and thought of himself as a good Catholic. But this guy, let's call him Bob for a reference, was pretty bright though ignorant of almost all dogma or theology. So as Bob sliced up his animals he began to take the oral bible stories and sayings etc. that he had heard in his vernacular language and formed up the Cosmology and Theology of Bob. Bob did this so that he could support in his own mind stuff like the virgin birth, the trinity, a risen Christ and such that was paraded by him in a cryptic Latin that he of course did not understand. So Bob was called to the Inquisitor, as so many were. Bob proudly explained why he believe in God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit using his own framework and self explanations that had helped him understand these complex issues. Of course Bob did not fare well being that such ideas were were quite askew thus definitely heretical even though he had not actually been taught the "correct' cosmology or theology in the first place. In the end, Bob died, under the heresy purging activities.

Some days when I try to comprehend theology, dogma, science, truth, etc. I feel like what I know is about par to Bob's Cosmology, in that I have had to translate it from concepts and languages that I do not actually speak. But like Bob, I am compelled by something to try to sort, and order, and form up some cosmological system that lets me sleep and night and not just chunk it all out the door and live in a state of nihilism (Oklahoma is bad enough).

So, I have created my own cosmology, which we shall term, Dr. Lobo's Cosmic Concoctions.
(Ever notice that the only difference between Cosmic and Comic is a little s?)

So Today I will proudly present my cosmological concoction "One Big Bang Equals 25 Universes".

Like Bob, I will draw upon what I have read and heard that I understand in my own vernacular. In doing so I think I will not issue any convoluted arguments, will provide few footnotes , and dang near nil sources

Dr. Lobo's Law First: The Cosmos abhors uniqueness.
It is probable that each ancient tribe thought they were unique and alone in existence. then they met other tribes. Even then the tribes almost always defined themselves as unique (We Human Beings, for example) and the others as The Others (not Human Beings). This underlying trait is still with us but that is another concoction.

Every time we find something unique or rare it is just a matter of time, years maybe, sometimes just seconds, before we find the second one and the third and then discover them in the quadrillions. Recent examples, well take the sun. We were sure thatour Sun, The Sun, was the only Sun in the cosmos up until maybe 300 years ago. Then we discovered we could see 6000 plus other Suns with the naked eye at night, we just called them stars. Then along comes telescopes and and now there are really a very large amount of Suns. There are 200,000,000,000 (If Glen Beck is reading that number, Glen it is two hundred billion, not 200 trillion) in our Galaxy alone.

Indeed let's take the Galaxy, our unique galaxy the "Milky Way". First thing was, that we had to discover that we were in a galaxy. Then about 80 years ago, when they stuck a really big telescope on a mountain in Southern California, well, oops, there they were, thousands of Galaxies out there. Today THEY say that there are about 200,000,000,000 galaxies out there (that's the same number as before Glen). So that means there are about 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, er Suns out there.

Of course Earth is unique. Right!

Dr. Lobo's Law Second: the Universe is not what it seems.

Now here is a kicker that just blew away Dr. Lobo's original Cosmological Concoction: Dark Matter, and Dark Energy.

Now THEY say that all of those 400 times 7 zeros Suns, plus all the gases, planets and all other stuff that can be seen, only accounts for 4% of the mass and energy in the Cosmos that is reflected to exist by the measured action of gravity waves. OK, OK, OK, that' really great. So after all of my thinking, I've only got my mind wrapped around 4% of the Cosmos? Mind you even that was a loose wrap job at best.

But then reaching into the recesses of my store of trivia I remembered that Steven Hawking's had used multiple universes in his 2006 proof that his own Hawking's Paradox was wrong. Also, that String Theory predicted multiple parallel universes that would be intermixed and overlapping but invisible to one another because they vibrated at different frequencies, had different songs so to speak.

Alright, that's it.
Now I had my FIX to the previously deconstructed Dr. Lobo's Concoctions. It was simple, if the known Universe was only 4% of the energy and matter in the Cosmos then I could just divide that 4% into 100% and get 25 universes of the same size. They would be here and there and all around, but we could not see them because they sang a different song than we did. (actually there is a cosmological map showing where the dark stuff is relative to our universe's light stuff) No need to fix the big bang part, or the God part, cause those still worked with 25 as well as they did with one. God just gets more magnificent and the Big Bang just gets louder.

And yes, there was one other common denominator, gravity. The same gravity seems to be in all of them, and thus ties them together. (God = Gravity?)

Now that's Dr. Lobo's Current Cosmic Concoction.
Move aside Bob, a new sheriff is in town.
Thank God, there's not currently an Inquisition going on.

The next Dr. Lobo's Concoction will deal with how we might take short cuts through the other 24 universes to get to some place in our own. I think I may call the short cuts something like "Dream Passes".

Dancing in the Board Rooms

Edward Kennedy is Dead.

They are embolden.

They are dancing in the board rooms of the Health Insurance Conglomerates.

Did they not dance, those of this ilk, when his brother JFK died?

But look what happened then.

Is this the Apex of our Fourth Turning?

Is it Now that we choose our direction?

WWJD You Wicked Lazy Servant

What is most totally unbelievable about the current health care debates is the so-called fundamentalist Christian approach to it. Now some of the Christian leadership is recycling the WWJD concept to point out that Jesus would be on the conservative fundamentalist side.

Can't you just hear them at the "day of judgement"? You'll be proud of me Lord, I help kill the universal health concept in America back there in 2009 and kept the country from going into debt even further. I know you are a hard task master Lord, so we dug our heels in and buried all those unnecessary expenditure those liberal Democrats want to make. We were able to reduce the deficit and balance the budget in only 30 years.

What Lord, when were you sick and we did not provide you with hospitalization and tend to your every physical need? I don't remember that Lord. Well, sure we visited the sick and took them flowers too. Well, right, but we did hire the minister to do that for us, so that he was doing it in our name you know. Well, that's right, it was only for our own congregation, but I'm sure he sometimes stopped by other people's rooms as well.

I'm not sure I understand Lord, why are you so pissed off at me. Listen there were emergency rooms for the indigent and deadbeats to go to if they wanted. How about all those free clinics I saw on TV? Those young people could have afforded health care but they chose to spend their money on pizzas and sodas and stuff like that rather doing the responsible thing. Look Lord, I myself help sponsor the COBRA supplements in my own State. We extended help for unemployed insurance for three months past the Federal deadline. We were providing the best health care in the world, Lord. All of the world, I don't understand what you mean. Well they were not citizens were they? I mean we didn't have the responsibility to spend... What? Read what? You mean the whole chapter? Just the last...the part about the talents, goats, and sheep,..OK.

Matthew 25:

²⁴"Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

²⁵So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.'

²⁶"His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?

²⁷Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

²⁸" 'Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents.

²⁹For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

³⁰And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

The Sheep and the Goats

³¹"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.

³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

³³He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,

³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

³⁷"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?

³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?

³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

⁴⁰"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

⁴¹"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

⁴²For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

⁴³I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

⁴⁴"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

⁴⁵"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

⁴⁶"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Now Lord, that's pretty harsh, surely that doesn't apply to a political position....

What "outer darkness" do you mean? well if you had just let me know what you wanted me to do with all that wealth I surely would have followed....yes I did read all of this...but I thought, well...

WWJD, Lord, did I get wrong? Lord? Lord?...... Lord?

I'm Getting Older, Not too Many Friends Left (Any Young people Out There Need An Old Fart Friend?)

My friend Ed was not a Saint. Ed was not unflawed. Ed was my friend for four decades.
Dr. Ed died after a two year illness last Tuesday morning.

I first met Ed in 1970. We were in geography classes together in College. We had both served in the First Infantry Division in Vietnam and had often been in the exact same place at the exact same time but never actually met until we returned to Oklahoma.

Ed was a competitor. When I wrote a geography paper of 100 pages, he wrote one of 101 pages. When I created a presentation with 14 maps, he created one with 15 maps. When I gave a ten-minute talk, he gave an eleven-minute talk, but it took him thirty minutes to do it.

Ed wrote the longest Geography Master's Thesis in his University's history. It was 520 pages detailing the geographic settlement and movement of the Black population in and around Oklahoma City from 1890 to 1974. That was not an academically safe subject even then. Fortunately for myself, I got my Master’s in California, and because Ed wasn’t around, my thesis was only 60 pages long.

I went to work. Ed went on to earn a Doctorate and then his wife had me find him some work.
Wives are like that. If Ed and perhaps even myself, were left alone we would probably still be in school.

Ed has had a lasting influence on geographic policies and on education for the State of Oklahoma. As a Senior Assistant to a Governor, his influence reached into several other areas as well.

Ed was a central influence in the establishment and funding of the Oklahoma Geographic Education Fund under the National Geographic Society. Over the years this fund has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to schools across Oklahoma to further geographic education.

Ed was also a patriot. In our youth(1960's), being such was not popular. Ed not only volunteered for military duty in the Army, but he had a hernia repaired so that he could join. I gave him grief about that, but he wouldn’t let me forget that he volunteered for only three years, where I volunteered for four. Probably that was the only time I outdid him numerically.

Ed was my friend. I will miss the old curmudgeonly, grumpy, Ed and his dry and oblique sense of humor. In fact, I miss him even as I write this.

I Know Where We Can Save 35% of our Health Care Cost

35% FOR PROFITS


If the United Health Group and other Health Insurers want to raise the profit levels to 35% above cost, then it is simple isn't it.

35% of the cost to me is over and above any service or administration provided.

Well, heck, guys, they are showing us the way to finance this, just eliminate the profit.

That cuts our cost by 35%

"As recently as the early 1990s, 95 cents out of every dollar paid to insurance companies in premiums was used to pay claims, according to Potter, who spent more than 20 years of his professional career as an industry insider. In 2008, that percentage had dropped to “just slightly above 80 percent.” As if that 20 percent profit were not staggering enough, the Senate Finance Committee last spring was considering a 76 percent average reimbursement rate until, after fierce lobbying by insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, it settled on what Business Week has called “a more friendly industry ratio” of 65 percent. Though the final percentage is still being debated, the possibility that 35 cents on every premium dollar might go toward corporate profits does not signal reform that favors the consumer."

Source

See, It is so simple, a single payer government based program cost 35% less! Jobs? Just absorb the industry lock stock and barrel. the cost won't change. Just the profits.

Waiting for Ted to Die?

Back door conversations of the nasty kind suggest that part of the Congressional Republican Leadership's strategy is to force Health Care Reform far enough into the future so that Ted Kennedy has passed away, and has not yet been replace when the vote takes place. That strips the Democrats down to 59 votes in the Senate at the maximum.

Makes sense in a cold mean spirited way. Of course, the strategy is denied, but given what has been going on at the Town Meetings and on the airways and on cable news, it is not too hard to believe. Right after JFK was murdered many on the far right celebrated, threw their hats into the air, and cheered, until they realized they might be sucked into oblivion for their good feelings. Why should we expect any different actions from their sons and grandsons for his brother Ted.

I'm not a fan of Ted Kennedy, but even I see this as very very bad behavior.