Political Endorsement Queens 19th

Lord Dan Halloran (R, I, C, L coss party)  for City Council, 19th Queens NY

Halloran ( known to the greater heathen community as Lord Dan) is the type of quasi -libertarian GOP  pol I am comfortable with. He is in tough race and has impressed me with his political street smarts, in particular how he has avoided turning the campaign into some kind of referendum on his religion, Theodism.

Here's the NYT City Room Blog on the campaign,  not a big story to them, links for those who want to follow the whole story.

For me to pretend that I am endorsing Lord Dan for any reason other than his religion (which I do not adhere to, but share certain values with) would be hypocritical.  He might be a doosh but he's our doosh.

We need winners. And Lord Dan is if nothing else, a winner.

What is interesting to me is how the whole religion thing has played out in the media. Which is practically not at all. The only aspect of his religion which the media find controversial is the fact that some heathen groups,with  none of which Lord Dan is associated with in any way, espouse a racially exclusionist policy.

Polytheism, animal sacrifice, and sacral kingship in cosmopolitan New York, are non-issues. A mere whiff of racism  is political poison.

rebuilding buildings

I was filled with a bittersweet feeling when I read an article about rebuilding New Orleans and looked back at the seventies visions  of energy efficient, intelligently designed projects that never quite happened. What did happen was thirty years of "cheap cheap", and those were the good customers, the ones who actually intended to pay.

Afghanistan 101

1- The Taliban were the ones who came out on top when the various factions that managed to throw out the Soviets got done fighting each other.
2- The primary cash crop is opium, with hashish being secondary.
3- People will  gravitate to anyone  (Taliban in this case) who is fighting an occupying power, Afghans are no exception, and they have plenty of practice.
4- any policy that fails to take 1-3 above into account is doomed to fail.

gimme a spade!

2009 WSOP* Final Table - What will be the suit of the final river card in the final hand of the 2009 Main Event?
All wagers have action. ($50 max)
Hearts
5/2
Clubs
5/2
Diamonds
5/2
Spades
5/2

from bodog - I was gonna tap on spades till I saw the chickensh*t 50 max

attn: Obama haters

Cut with the bullsh** about his name, his birth certificate, his wife's clothes. All you are accomplishing with this disinformation is making it tough for those who have rational objections to his policies to be taken seriously... which may be the reason that your masters are encouraging this idiocy.

And quit fantasizing about violent resistance or revolution.  Do you really want to see the US become the next Iraq? Do you really think you are as tough as the taliban?

Ya shudda said no , O

This is the third time Obama has let somebody put him in a trick bag.

The first was answering an  easily dodge-able question about his pal Gate's arrest. This set in motion a series of gaffes that led to the condescending and awkward beer summit.

The second was the olympic bid. Presumably Daley called in his chits, and he really couldn't say no,  but still, O looked the sap.

This time is trickier.

This is going to make it much tougher to bail out of Afghanistan. Whatever he does he will look like either a tool or a hypocrite.

Shaman or Sham man?

A few days after I was extoling the healing power of shamanism a self proclaimed warrior shaman   presiding over a plasticized sweat lodge sent several new agers to the hospital and two to meet their ancestors  thereby further discrediting shanmanistic healing in the eyes of the masses, 99% of whom already  believe it to be bullshit anyway.


Nanny staters and grandstanding politicians will call to regulate or, much better,  outlaw  sweats or shamanry.  The fact that each day a hundred times as many folks die from medical errors in our hospitals will go unremarked. Plaintiff's attorneys will go after the resort and maybe even Oprah.  Hopefully Ray gets a bit of jail time, in Arizona with it's high percentage of native inmates.

But was James Ray even a warrior, or much less, a shaman? Not by my reckoning. He may have been sincere in his beliefs, but he was  expropriating Native traditions, messing around with spiritual energies he had no comprehension of.  He was definitely tapping into something powerful, though. Those  gullible (paid 9k) rubes were  not the types normally willing to endure much in the way of discomfort, yet were willing to sit in his sweat box unto their deaths.

At least he made good on his promise of a life-changing experience.

Placebo Effect

One of the reasons that new drugs cost so much is that testing is so expensive. One of the many reasons that testing is so expensive is the influence of the placebo effect, which skews test results. 


The placebo effect is the mind tapping into subtle spiritual energies to heal. While modern scientific medicine may take advantage of these emergies by accident, there are other technologies; shamanic, spiritual,  auric, that make deliberate use of them. 


True health care reform would have a place for the shaman. 

the Mandated Nightmare

The centerpiece of Obama's proposed health care reform is the mandate. It does not refer to a trip to farmer's market. It refers to a requirement that every individual (not companies) carry health insurance, and those who resist will be subject to stiff penalties, collected by the IRS. The stated justification is that the uninsured are just foisting their costs on the rest of "us" and that with the mandate costs will come tumbling down. Presumably there are those who actually believe this, but I doubt if Obama, who  is neither stupid nor naive, is among them. 


The claim  that this is no different than requiring people to get car insurance . No, this is more like requiring people to buy cars, or at least pay for them.  I might digress here and point out that mandatory car insurance is brutally regressive. While 150 a month for full coverage on a new Lexus may not seem like such a bad deal, 80 for liability on an old beater can be  crippling. 

Anyone remember that great bipartisan triumph, the  Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005? This was as far as I can tell the only real response our leaders had to the real estate mortgage bubble, no fresh starts anymore. We were told that with the losses due to fraud and "abuse" eliminated the grateful card issuers would be able to lower rates for the honest folk who faithfully paid their obligations. What actually happened,  is that once escaping their grasp became more difficult the card issuers simply itghtened the squeeze and the juice got higher.


Tighten the insurance/ big med monopoly stranglehold and costs will come down? Gimme a break!


There are all sorts of reasons that a person may decide to go without health insurance, simple economic self interest undoubtedly  being most common, but there are also religious, philosophical, and especially biological factors for avoiding the medical monopoly.
People who prefer macrobiotic or paleolithic food therapies,  herbalist, shamanic, acupuncture, prayer, reflexology, or any number of other approaches are out of luck. Free market means choosing between coke and pepsi when it comes to health.


Check out the  new mission for the IRS,  big Med's collection agency. Mission creep is inevitable, gee, I wonder what other uses the IRS can be put to?




Tens of millions of our  most economically marginal countrymen are about slated to be punished  economicaly  for the benefit of higher social classes. What's  progressive or even compassionate about this? Not a damn thing.


Sacriest part though, is when I discuss this topics  to my proObama friends, they get a faraway look in their eyes and start reciting to me the benefits of universal public health care. As if anything of that nature that was remotely on the table.