And there is nothing wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor or despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised and hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to have a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred, than to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to incur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.

Wrong-Way, Shoot-from-the-Hip

Barak  Sets New Records

for False Starts and Muck Ups

            In Rajjpuut’s 15 “Anti-FDA Rant” blogs (stating the first step in any new Health Care Program is to eliminate or completely redo the FDA) and his now 19 “A Far Better Health Care Alternative” blogs, the single most repeated phrase was a 2400 year old piece of wisdom: “First do NO harm.” Barak Obama has spent his first seven months in office proving that he, more than any physician on earth, needs to understand and practice Hippocrates’ wise counsel and avoid harming America. However, it appears rather than slowing down and thinking things out before initiating action, Mr. Obama is even more committed to a permanent policy of act first, think later and undo the mess created much later, if ever at all.

            Before his now infamous “The Cambridge Police Department acted stupidly” statement last week, Obama said most of the right things.  He acknowledged that he didn’t have all the facts; he acknowledged that there is a problem with racial profiling by policemen . . . and had he been wise he would have also said, “there is also a problem with minority citizens having a bit of a chip on the shoulders when confronted by police officers, particularly white police officers.” At that point a wise man and any half-way astute politician would have ended the comment by stating, “those attitudes might have played a part, but, of course, I wasn’t there and have no way of knowing exactly what happened.” AMEN

            By all accounts, Barak Obama is a superb student. He learns easily. However, it appears that some of the areas he’s never bothered to study are areas he should have not only bothered to study but also to master. Keeping your promises, Economics, Bankruptcy Law, Constitutional Law, Practice What You Preach, Common sense justice and fairness, Making and keeping a balanced budget, understanding science and tarot cards and the differences between them, and When to keep your big fat mouth shut: just to name a few of the more obvious. In fact, in a very real sense . . . it’s his miserable habit of shooting off his mouth before thinking, of shooting from the hip as his approach to every issue, that has marked his first seven months as memorable.

            Some of the promises Obama’s broken or is now in the process of breaking: 

A.      A.  Running one of the most open, accountable and transparent administrations in history

B.      B.  Not just in word but in deed honoring people’s health care coverage without undermining it for the present and the future

C.     C.  Treating the American people fairly (ask Indiana pension holders; Chrysler dealers and GM dealers who supported McCain and are now seeing profitable dealerships close; ask folks in counties that supported McCain who’ll now get 50% less stimulus money per capita than those that voted for Obama)

D.     D.  Promising to preserve, protect and defend the United States Constitution (By creating 22 czars thus bypassing the legal right of congress and the FBI to vet and approve of all such appointees? By ignoring 222 years of bankruptcy law and precedence and orchestrating your own illegal resolution to Chrysler’s bankruptcy and setting in motion the same resolution for GM? By depriving people of rightful property and rightful business ownership without due process of law? 

Barak’s most noticeable strategic errors have been created by his abysmal lack of economic understanding. He obviously does not understand even the most basic ideas such as the key concepts found in the brief wisdom of  “I, Pencil”** or the “Broken Window Parable”^^ but instead deliberately strives to stifle free markets and believes solidly in government spending as the panacea for all ills. His doubling of the national debt in the first five months in office; his “threat/promise” to double it again (to a total of four times more national debt than was created in the first 223 years of American history) by 2017; his support of “Cap and Trade” laws that would cost Americans a minimum of $120 Billion each and ever year of their existence; and most importantly his commitment/threat to create “five million new green-tech jobs” (at a cost of eleven million jobs lost elsewhere in the economy via taxation . . . and since only 1/10 of green-tech jobs have proven “permanent” in studies done elsewhere, only replacing them with 500,000 real green-tech jobs: a disastrous 22/1 job loss ratio) and his decision to push forward an unneeded extra level of ultra-expensive bureaucracy with his health care initiative all show a man who believes that “free lunches are fact.”

Rajjpuut could belabor the point by showing the President’s failings in the other areas mentioned (Bankruptcy Law, Constitutional Law, Practice What You Preach, Common sense justice and fairness, Making and keeping a balanced budget, understanding science and tarot cards and the differences between them, and When to keep your big fat mouth shut) but  it’s just not necessary to do so, the clear fact is that Obama’s shoot from the hip presidency is every day becoming more and more dangerous to the American people and their Constitution and their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Instead of “First do NO harm,” the President’s motto: is leap now, perhaps we’ll look things over later.” Nowhere is this failing more clear than on the health care front. Mr. Obama knows not one tenth of one millionth of one percent of what Rajjpuut has forgotten about health care but ignorance as with the economy is not considered a handicap by wrong-way Barak.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/i-pencil/

^^ http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

Along with good nutrition, the Golden Rules are the primary part of his program’s health education emphasis . . . but far from the only such emphasis. Rajjpuut has already had the pleasure of praising the Center for Disease Control as the most effective health care organization in the country (if on a scale of 1-10, the FDA rates a 1; the CDC earns a 9.7. A recently touted program: the Atlanta-based CDC’s obesity-info programs are models of health education excellence. Rajjpuut, as mentioned earlier, would assign a whole new role for this great agency with a much greater role in fighting chronic diseases (cardio-vascular ailments; cancers; diabetes; etc.) added to the agency’s already well-known battle against acute infectious diseases.

Besides the Seven Golden Rules of Health, one of the most useful tools for helping people change their health profile from dangerous conditions such as morbid-obesity to healthful is exercise. Of the 23 major markers of aging which begin to show up in healthy people after age 25 or 30: moderate to semi-vigorous exercise directly counteracts; or slows down the debilitating progress of, or impact of 22 of them. Exercise is truly a fountain of youth. In a very real sense, exercise is every-man’s hope for rejuvenation. 

“23 markers?”  You say, “That really makes getting older sound pretty dreary.” As one Harvard scientist put it, “Aging is definitely NOT for sissies!” Harvard was the source of one of the most promising studies of the beneficial aspects of aging in countering the onset of age-related health markers. Two of the most consistent patterns many health studies have shown is that A. exercise slows down or reverses many of aging’s effects in healthy people and B. In unhealthy people, the effects of aging occur at younger ages and accumulate faster and more profoundly.

The good news is that the 2005 Harvard study strongly suggested that most of the worst aspects of aging are due to disuse. The Harvard study emphasized aerobic exercise but also discussed the benefits of resistance training such as calisthenics or weight-training; flexibility exercises such as pilates or yoga; and balance exercises particularly for those of advanced age. 

Here are the 23 health markers of aging and the 2005  Harvard study’s conclusions about the benefits of endurance (aerobic) exercise (It’s worth pointing out that their conclusion related to exercise and maximum oxygen uptake has been refuted by at least two recent studies which suggest that exercise slows down the rate of decrease of max. O2 uptake):

                So the challenge is for each American who isn’t already exercising regulary  to find some sort of  overall  exercise program and some sort of endurance exercise(s) they can start small at and enjoy all of their lives. And the government needs to find appropriate ways to reward their efforts because healthy people cost the health care system much, much less year after year after year.

Ya'al live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** Seven Golden Rules of Health

   Interested in adding 35 years of high quality living to your lifespan? Here's how, and here's WOW!

   While working as a health educator for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas in 1977, Rajjpuut read about a recently-completed long-range study of vigorous older people. The gist of it all came to this: the University of California (Berkeley campus?) extracted seven lifestyle practices that these hardy senior citizens tended to share as a group. As for the study results, here's what those salubrious old folks had in common:  

The Seven Golden Rules of Health

1. Eat a very large healthy breakfast daily

2. Regularly eat 3-4 smaller meals daily

3. Maintain a healthy normal weight

4. Avoid tobacco and drug use (and minimize over-the-counter remedies)

5. Drink alcohol extremely moderately

6. Sleep 7-8 hours nightly

7. Practice regular vigorous exercise  

   The "magic" from the study came when UC extrapolated their finding out into the general populace. They discovered that if they took two men, one aged 55 years old and the other 20 and compared their lifestyles . . . if the 20 year old practiced 0-1 of the "Seven Golden Rules" and the 55 year old practiced 6-7 of them: the two men had the exact same life expectancy. That is, it would be absolutely no surprise at all if they both dropped dead on the same day, say 28.2 years in the future. I'm not sure what that means to you, but the 35 years difference between the two men is my personal definition of "quality of life."

   Further studies by other groups have shown that when it comes to changes made before age 42, once the individual starts to practice the Seven Golden Rules . . . within eight years most of the harm from the prior twenty years of a dissipate lifestyle is gone. That means, for example, quit smoking and follow the seven golden rules for eight years, and it's almost as if you've never smoked a day in your life. Benefits from lifestyle changes after age 42, were less consistent but still quite significant.

A few comments are in order. Buckling seatbelts was a fairly new idea at the time of the study. If an eighth and ninth golden rule are needed which I would add from my experience as a health educator, they would be:

8. Buckle-up in moving vehicles and always observe proper caution around machinery

9. Avoid highly processed foods and fried foods and eat some high-fiber food daily

   Rule #5 "Drink alcohol extremely moderately" deserves some discussion. After a brief flirtation with boozing as a youngster, I myself rarely consume a six-pack a month these days, so that's what I practice and preach. However, in the actual study the amount of liquor mentioned was "averaging one beer or glass of wine per day." Over the years since the study, much has been made of the value of red wine in the diet. All this implies that a little bit of alcohol is preferable to none at all. If there is one area of the study that I would put in question it would be that conclusion. Here's my "take" on the matter. The trouble with saying that teetotalers are less healthy than extremely moderate drinkers comes in two areas: A) a whole lot of teetotalers are reformed alcoholics who in many cases regrettably did great damage to their health prior to quitting drinking altogether and presumably shortened their probable lifespans in the process. It is my intuition that IF the study had eliminated this effect from former alcoholics in its study, their fifth rule should have been: "Rule #5 "Drink alcohol extremely moderately or not at all." Additionally, from my experience I suspect that there are "overly pious personalities" out there who don't drink and resent everybody in the world who does . . . and in fact they deeply resent almost everybody in the world for any number of reasons. If they were removed from the rolls of non-drinkers, I'm sure the non-drinkers would have averaged a longer life also. So my last addition to the Golden Rules of Health is:

   Rule #6 7/8 Have a sense of humor, relax

   If on top of all this great advice, the individual, let us call him "Bill" takes charge of his own health and finds a health-conscious (rather than disease-oriented) doctor "muy simpatico" who believes that the purpose of wise medicine is to keep people hale-healthy and out of his office . . . and if Bill always seeks at least a second opinion in considering serious health care matters, then he and his doctors are part of the solution to the health care mess rather than part of problem. If every company had a full roster of employees like Bill then health care costs and costs across the board would drop markedly starting now.

Rajjpuut has steadfastly maintained that if the Federal Government wanted to do only one thing to vastly improve the health of Americans and dramatically reduce health care costs it would be to remove the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from the face of the earth. Easily the most corrupt agency and harmful entity in the health care world, the FDA operates with an arrogance that should only be reserved for those who know what the hell they’re doing.   Tuesday’s mercurial “about-face” on mercury in dental fillings showed the FDA to be even more evil than Rajjpuut had suspected.

Study after scientific study dating back to the late 1800’s have repeatedly shown the element mercury to be one of the most devastating long-term poisons the human body can encounter. Yesterday, the FDA proved itself for the thousandth time to be an agency of liars with no accountability to the health of ordinary American people but only to the pocketbooks of wealthy American corporations. Here’s how they fouled up again . . . .

Given past studies about mercury in general and mercury in dental fillings in particular, the FDA has had numerous clear opportunities to ban mercury in dental fillings altogether. In a similar vein, no drug has proved itself too deadly for the FDA, 50,000 60,000 deaths is not enough to get dangerous drugs removed from the marketplace.   

A quick list of the utterly useless (they cure nothing, just mask symptoms) killer drugs that the FDA, despite strong contrary indications has allowed to stay on the market is enough to make a compassionate person’s stomach revulse: Ritalin, Celebrex, PPIs, Avandia, Rezulin, NSAIDS, and especially COX-2 inhibitors regardless of the death and misery they cause are all still approved. Even Thalidomide(the single most infamous drug in history) is back again on the approved list making its second run at infamy. All the danger in these poisons was only enough to get them a “stronger warning label.”

Consumer groups are up in arms. The FDA, get this, is not even requiring a stronger warning label in the case of mercury. They now say that only people who are “allergic to mercury” are at great risk from mercury in dental fillings. If, as every significant study has shown . . . IF mercury is a poison, then every single person on earth is “allergic” to mercury . . . that’s why it’s a poison, you FOOLS! The FDA is now “urging” dentists to give a more strongly written warning report to their patients. The last time Rajjpuut checked, an “urging” has absolutely NO legal power. Amazing.

Mercury has been a health concern in America since the early 1970’s when mercury ingested from eating fish by Japanese was shown to cause: an incredible array of birth defects; learning difficulties in school children; heart problems and soft organ problems in teens and adults; as well as blindness and death. Anti-mercury activitsts were shocked that the FDA broke its word to them that it would, at least**, require warnings for children, and for pregnant women as it continued with further study of mercury. Instead the agency sided with the dental industry 100% just as it has inexorably sided with the drug companies over the consumers it was created to protect.

Last year in response to the legal action of the activists the FDA made a “huge step” for the impotent and corrupt agency by posting warnings on its website about the dangers of mercury in fillings. Again, Rajjpuut, does not regard internet warnings as having the force of law. Amalgam fillings have lost favor over the years as more and more mercury dangers have been revealed. Today they still account for 30% of all fillings. The FDA stated as one reason for their belief that mercury was harmless, removing the fillings would allow mercury vapor to be breathed . . . not dealing with the real issue, as usual, the effect of mercury in the bloodstream and brain (implicated in many diseases considered of anti-immune origin by the AMA including Multiple Sclerosis) every second of life.  If Satan is not already in charge of the FDA, is awfully, awfully proud of their work.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** it being far too much to ask for the FDA to actually ban a dangerous practice and substance

Rajjpuut’s Health Care Innovations and

Learning from the CDC

            Throughout these many looks at the health care system in America, Rajjpuut has maintained all along that the wisest medical words ever spoken were those of Hippocrates -- almost 2,400 years ago this wise healer said, “First do NO harm.” Huge parts of the mess that’s called the American health care system and the misery and great expense it’s produced is directly associated with someone or something doing “unnecessary” harm to people that are treated within the system.

            One potentially obvious case in point: if CNN has it correct with their “breaking news,” the doctor for Michael Jackson, a man named Conrad Murray, administered a drug to the singer that is believed to have killed him. This is an example, most likely (since I don’t hear that they suspect deliberate foul play) of an “iatrogenic death.” Iatrogenic deaths are the fourth largest killer of Americans behind stroke, cancer and heart attacks.  They are deaths caused by medical treatment in some form or other. We won’t leap to judgment here, but we will look at this a bit deeper in a while . . . for now let’s sum up a bit about the health care program and the numerous common-sense novelties that Rajjpuut has exposed in these blogs . . . .

If you’re a loyal reader, you’re familiar with Rajjpuut’s series of sixteen blogs in his “A Far Better Health Care Alternative” wherein the Ol’ Health Educator himself takes on Mr. Obama and all his liberal cronies to create a far less expensive; far more responsive health care system that would actually help get Americans much healthier than they now are and improve service to the patient while slashing health care costs to the bone. Much of it is new: the only truly expensive aspect would be creation of the NHF professional: the “National Health Facilitator” a government employee involved in first contact with a high percentage of patients and would-be patients: his/her job, however, is actually expected to cut costs dramatically. But the NHF is first and foremost a person trained to ask the right questions and “do NO harm.”

You also know that Rajjpuut has written a series of thirteen blogs in his “FDA Rant” series in which he declares that the single biggest reason that Americans are not healthy (other than their own choices) is the corrupt and incompetent Food and Drug Administration and, therefore:  the first necessary step in any serious health care effort is to ditch that whole organization in the dumpster and start over from scratch because the FDA is not part of the solution, but rather a monstrous part of the problem. The FDA and the two entities they “monitor”: the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry are responsible for much of the human misery and much more of the unnecessary individual and government cost that we’re saddled with. No one else is advocated this FDA elimination or revamping. 

Right now immense and incalculable harm is done to Americans primarily via the FDA and pharmaceutical companies but also by the food industry and its closer watchdog the ADA (American Department of Agriculture) which in Rajjpuut’s brief exposure appears to be a government agency so unbelievably corrupt that it might indeed rival the FDA for the dubious honor of “#1 Corrupt American Agency.” No one is talking about these entities seriously in congress, but they are definitely part of the mess that we call the American health care debacle.  

By the way, every so often someone accuses Rajjpuut of  “exaggerating” when he uses words like “mess.” Those familiar with the Kepner-Tregoe Management Training system know that “mess” is actually a “technical management term.” A problem is one issue that creates unwanted or undesirable anomalies in a system. Often you can look at a bad situation and see several independent problems are creating the bad effects. When the number and complexity and intertwining of the problems becomes a “problem in itself,” such as we see with the American health care experience: that is a “mess.” Using Kepner-Tregoe management tools to deal with health care is also something completely new.

            The CDC, which Rajjpuut has labeled the most important, upright and underused solution to America’s health care troubles, has today again proved the Ol’ Fella right. The CDC is at present hosting a three-day Obesity awareness gala to help make Americans aware of the high cost of obesity in their personal and fiscal lives: the CDC claims that obesity costs the nation $167 Billion yearly . . . and although he’s praised this fine organization uninterruptedly, Rajjpuut must beg to differ. The enormous cost of obesity in suffering, death and wasted lives is immeasurable. 

The enormous cost of obesity, morbid-obesity, and adult-onset diabetes and pre-diabetes and the eleven severe conditions mentioned in other blogs including heart attacks, strokes and cancer is incalculable. The CDC has by and large been used only for acute disease outbreaks up till now. One of Rajjpuut’s ideas is to create a CDC branch whose main purpose is health education and helping intervene to motivate Americans to far healthier lifestyle choices “such as the “Seven Golden Rules of Health” that Rajjpuut promises from evidence of an old study can in some cases add 35 extra quality years of health most Americans have thus far never known anything about. This emphasis on the CDC is not found in other health care packages.   The "Seven Golden Rules of Health" have been preached by Rajjpuut for 33 years now, to his knowledge no one else in the country has referred to this ground-breaking study as consistently and NO ONE is referring to it now except Rajjpuut.

In fact, when the entire twenty part health care blog series is finished, Rajjpuut expects to do a bit of editing and then to send his entire package to the CDC so that august organization might help in crafting a real and vibrant health care package for Americans. And that idea of involving the CDC in crafting the law also is new.

Let us return to the situation with the highly-visible death of the celebrity Michael Jackson. Initial reports are sketchy, but let’s have Ol’ Rajjpuut say a few words about iatrogenic deaths . . . . The first thing is that no one else is taking this serious. This is the fourth leading cause of death in America and no one is really paying attention. Well, Rajjpuut is paying attention, you’d better believe and that too is a novelty. Where do iatrogenic deaths come from? They come from a lot of places in a lot of ways . . . but the overwhelming cause of iatrogenic deaths is drugs, prescription drugs. These next two statistics needs to be burned into the minds of every doctor, nurse, the American Medical Association (AMA), the FDA, and every drug company in America:

1.      You are ten times more likely to go to the hospital for a drug incident from a legal drug prescribed “correctly” by a doctor in accordance with AMA procedures and standards than you are to go to the hospital for an automobile accident.

2.     You are four times more likely to die from such a drug incident than you are to die because of an automobile accident.

In previous blogs Rajjpuut has mercilessly attacked the AMA** for being “the Spanish Inquisition of health care” among other things. The AMA decides upon orthodoxy and heresy in American medical practice. Well, if that particularly arrogant non-profit corporation wishes to keep that right, Rajjpuut says then the AMA must be made legally responsible and LIABLE for every single iatrogenic death, illness or injury in the country, other than drug induced ones, because as the “guardian of the medical faith” in the nation they have not obeyed the prime directive: “first do NO harm.” This is a new approach no one has mentioned.

The FDA and the pharmaceutical companies are responsible for every single iatrogenic drug-induced death, illness and injury. Why? Because they have obviously not obeyed the prime directive: “first do NO harm.”

 Without going into all the facts shown in the thirteen blog Anti-FDA Rant series . . . the facts are that the FDA

1.       Allows pharmaceutical companies to “legally bribe” them to push their drugs through with quick studies rather than full-length ones

2.     Approves every single one of the most harmful drugs in the nation which are not even necessary. They are a class of drug called “palliatives.”   Palliatives do not cure anything ever.   Study after study has even shown they don’t even relieve or mask symptoms very well. They end up being life-time subscriptions to expensive, dangerous (side effects) and useless medicines that in many cases even carry addiction risks. “First do NO harm?” NOT the FDA, not the drug companies . . . they do much harm all the time and they drive up the cost of medicine beyond belief. 92% of what you hear advertised on television are palliatives.

3.     The FDA will frequently raid the offices of health stores (for “unfounded claims” that really are well founded) and also of doctors for instance who prescribe natural ingredients and dietary supplements such as lithium- orotate and lithium-aspartate which have NO/ZERO side effects when taken in proper dosages instead of for example, the pharmacological agent lithium-carbonate which has many nasty side effects such as “abject-apathy,” suicidal thoughts, and loss of sex drive (libido) to name the most common. The FDA will bring heat to health food stores and doctors that make the claims Rajjpuut just issued, but will do absolutely nothing about the dangerous and nasty side effects of drugs like Avandia, Ritalin, Celebrex, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

4.     As mentioned, Rajjpuut has thirteen blogs in the Anti-FDA Rant series, this is just to get new readers a picture of the most corrupt government agency in America.

So, while there are a good twenty frequent causes of iatrogenic deaths, but reactions to legally prescribed drugs are one of the most frequent. For the sake of argument, let us imagine that is the case with Michael Jackson . . . no drug overdose; no doctor shenanigans . . . just a case of a drug with a side effect killing a person, in this case a very well-known person. Think on this simple fact: every single drug ever produced has numerous harmful side-effects, every drug ever produced can kill under the wrong circumstances. And then remember this: these are almost all palliatives: totally unnecessary, expensive drugs which when you get right down to it: do nothing, cure nothing and just cause problems. FDA, Drug companies: “First do NO harm.” 

Something needs to be changed in our system badly.   And while there are a few bold voices out their like Kevin Trudeau and Rajjpuut, the government authorities have deliberately ignored and overlooked this problem for at least sixty years. Here is where 67% of the unnecessary cost and unnecessary risk in medicine is found. Michael Jackson’s death is very likely totally unnecessary and caused by the corruption of the system as a whole and the FDA and drug companies in particular.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

            It now appears very likely that if Republicans make a stand against Barak Obama’s spendthrift thrust toward total socialism about 60% of the American voters will applaud them and the Blue Dog Democrats  and Independents who turned their back on the Democratic Party’s consistently profligate ways.  First this "coalition of Republicans, Independents and Blue Dogs must defeat Obama's nightmarish health care reform bill.  If they can do that, all things are possible.   It may not seem like much to some Republicans with big dreams but it’s a start, a new chance at dignity. And it lights the path Republicans need to take to have a chance of turning things around first in 2010 and then again in 2012. But the first big ultra-conservative whine against abortion or in favor of religion in schools can undo all the good that simple being the party that defends the downtrodden taxpayers can bring.

            If the G.O.P. wants to flourish again any time soon, or perhaps ever again, the path before us is straight and narrow. No more fundamentalistic ranting by high profile Republicans. Obama has opened the door a crack and only one thing will burst it open fully: total devotion to what America needs from its Republican Party:  fiscal responsibility; strong national defense and the courage to patiently explain as often as necessary the simple lessons of the “broken window parable” and “I,Pencil.”** It’s time for a comeback, the path to respectability and relevance lies clear before us, I pray to God we’re wise enough to take it.

If Republican presidential candidates start bringing up their outdated “litmus testing” of abortion; creationism in public schools and Christmas carols in public schools    . . . denying the 36-year fact that abortion is now the law of the land, like it or not (and we don’t); and that the single most Republican documents in America are the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights within the Constitution which just happens to establish SEPARATION of church and state as the most crucial principle in American life . . . if we go down those roads again and/or if our big-mouthed ultra-conservatives start acting like the Civil War was never lost by the south and racism and integration really never died: then the Republican Party might very well slip into the dustbin of history and deservedly so. The path to respectability and relevance lies clear before us, I pray to God we’re wise enough to take it.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

                    While Wrong-Way Obama fumbles the former greatest nation on earth into mediocrity, and tries to force-feed us a pathetically unimaginative and expensive “health care reform" bill, Rajjpuut has been busy writing up a storm of health care blogs, to wit:

1.        A 13 blog series of anti FDA Rants stating the first step in improving the health care system in the United States is the complete eradication or total Redo of the Food and Drug Administration: easily the most corrupt entity in the country and cause of much of the health misery and a huge proportion of the health care costs.

2.      A 15-part series written from the perspective of a health educator; on what needs to be done to actually keep Americans healthy and dramatically reduce their health care costs.

3.      A blog on iatrogenic death and illnesses (4th leading cause of death) and the culpability of the AMA, doctors and especially the FDA and their friends at big Pharmaceuticals.profit.

4.      A blog detailing the obesity and morbid obesity epidemic in the U.S.

5.      Another blog detailing the connections between adult-onset diabetes, pre-diabetes, obesity, morbid obesity and 11 or 12 lethal or crippling diseases or conditions.

6.      The “auto-immune” scandal here in the United States and how it’s forcing patients into becoming lifetime subscribers of dangerous, expensive drugs that will NOT cure them ever and the FDA and AMA and Pharmaceutical culpability in this tragedy.

7.       Detailed facts about a 1976 study that dramatically cuts health care costs and gives participants 35 years of quality life they might not otherwise have: called the ‘Seven Golden Rules of Health.’               

                    Mr. Obama apparently was NOT paying attention . . . as this picture clearly shows . . . .

                    Benjamin’s whole history starts her off with 2.99999 strikes against her. When Obama introduced her he described her as “a relentless promoter of programs to fight preventable disease.” Wrong-way Barak, got it wrong again. Listen to the litany of bad habits she’s been surrounded with since childhood, in her own words . . . .

                Benjamin said her family could not be with her at the announcement because: her father died of the effects of high blood pressure and diabetes; her older brother died at age 44 from an HIV-related illness; her mother died of lung cancer after smoking since girlhood; her uncle and mother's twin brother, a lifetime smoker could not attend because, she said, “ he is at home struggling for each breath.” She went on to say, "I cannot change my family's past, but I can be a voice to improve our nation's health for the future,"

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

The first tenet of feminism is that “men and women are culturally interchangeable.”

Toy manufacturer: “We’ve tried, we’ve really tried, we could make twice as much money if every toy was bought equally by boys and girls, but the kids don’t understand feminism!”

                Well, ladies, the legal-beagle political-correctness that has raised “equality” to part of the trinity is not just damaging to victims lives – it kills them. Having to water down physical standards so that women who canNOT for their lives do a proper fireman’s carry to rescue a 200 pound victim . . . so that these women can be accepted as firefighters costs victims lives and sometimes the lives of the women themselves. When, on March 11, 2005, an ex-football player felon in Atlanta overcame 51-year old grandmother Deputy Sheriff Cynthia Hall in the courthouse and later killed four people . . . physical equality in the name of cultural interchangeability killed those four people in Rajjpuut's not-so-humble-opinion.

                Human sexuality is completely different from man to woman. As with 99% of animal life, human males tend to be the aggressor; human females the respondent.    Even today, virtually always (90+%)the man proposes marriage. Human males seek youth, health and beauty; females strength, status and character. Feminist cave dwellers thankfully either didn’t exist or all saw their genes unreproduced in future generations. Ask “The Red Queen” author Matt Ridley, you want to see the differences between men and women, “good God, five or ten minutes of fun versus nine months of pregnancy ought to make a pretty stark example for any intelligent person.” In studies of 186, pre-civilized societies in the book “Taking Sex Differences Seriously” mothers were found to be the nurturers of children in 100% of instances in 100% of those societies. 

Rajjpuut

Forms of Government                                       Description

Anarchy          --- total freedom without any responsibility: chaos

Aristocracy      --- "Nobles" as a group control lower classes

Communism    --- the government controls the country's economy

Democracy      --- the majority in popular voting processes dominate minority

Democratic/Republicanism --- Like the American government where ruling officials are popularly elected; but a "Bill of

                                    rights" and electoral college protect the rights of individuals and individual states               

Despotism       --- Powerful individual and his supporters rule the land and "crush" any opposition

Dictatorship    --- Much like despotism, but "benign dictators" have been seen from time to time

Fascism           --- an authoritarian leader controls all aspects of life right down to family life and schools

Federalism      --- Belief in the benefits coming from strong central government rule

Fundamentalism --- a very stringent form of Theocracy

Kleptocracy     --- "thieves rule" means goverment officials extort as the price of doing their jobs

Libertarianism --- a democratic/republicanism which is inclined toward strong national defense; low taxes; and an

                                    emphasis on individual freedom

Minarchism     --- Commitment to "a government that governs least:  a minimal libertarian government

Monarchy       --- one person within favored lineages rules a nation

Oligarchy        --- a few, supposedly elite, persons dominate government

Plutocracy       --- the rich control the government

Republicanism--- elected representatives make government decisions

            On the other hand, when talking with extreme-right-wing conservatives Ol’ Rajjpuut gets the feeling they actually believe they OWN the constitution.  Some of them, many of them, espouse ideas that are very much Theocratic or even quite Fundamentalist:  “This is a Christian country.” These people tend to get upset when separation of church and state is brought up; they tend to get upset when children don’t learn Christmas carols in school or creationism in school science class.  When asked whether they’d get upset if their children had to learn Buddhist chants or the Hindu Creation myths in science class . . . these folks tend to hide from the issues and insist that some mysterious “they” can do that in “their” countries, but not here in ours:  not noting that the majority of people in this country don't go to church every Sunday, nor feel they should be compelled to do so. In short it is the extreme-right-wing conservatives’ belief that the Pilgrims and others like them escaped religious intolerance in their original countries just so they could come here to these shores and become the new dominant intolerant religion. The song that gets their allegiance is “Gimme that Old Time Religion.”

            As you know, Rajjpuut is, in point of fact a Libertarian and almost a Minarchist.  Call him 95% fiscal conservative and 90% social liberal. In other words: tax almost nothing except enough to defend the nation and see to necessary infrastructure and NEVER interfere in people’s lives, religions, personal decisions, bedrooms, etc.  Rajjpuut believes if this reasonable and conscionable stance was to become the Republican Party’s “raison de etre” they’d win nine of ten national elections and at least 70% of the statewide ones as well. Why? Because it’s simple common sense,this is what everyone wants for himself/herself . . . though often eagerly denying to others.

            Liberals want big government to own the right to invade everyone’s wallets. Conservatives want the a different sort of big government to freeze out the separation of church and state tenets of the constitution and have the right back into everyone’s bedroom and privacy.  Americans lost an awful lot over our history by allowing government intrusion into both those spheres of influence since 1787.

America's governmental patterns                                       Range of years

A. Monarchism                                                                      1606-1776

            Revolution                                                                  1776-1783

B. Semi-anarchy                                                                     1783-1787

C. Minarchism                                                                        1787-1799

D. Libertarianism                                                                   1799-1829

E. Democratic-Republicanism                                               1829-1861

F. Federalistic Democratic-Republicanism                          1861 to 1933

G. Federalistic Socialism                                                      Since FDR

H. Semi-communistic Federalism???                                   Under Obama???

            Both of the present major parties are unwilling to stand by the individual as both a taxpayer and as a son or daughter of the “Bill of Rights” by respecting separation of church and state. The party that finally decides by necessity that it will stand by the individual in both those arenas will dominate American politics for the next 100 years.  It’ll be as if a new “Bull Moose Party” Teddy Roosevelt is running against only pure Democratic opposition: under those conditions would anyone be surprised if the Republicans won a consistent 56-60% of the electoral votes in every national election?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090713/cm_csm/ylawton

            The article took me back to my undergraduate years at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. Greeley, unlike say Boulder, was not a hot bed of liberal thought** but whereas there was one instructor in the teaching program that was embarrassingly conservative (not really a mental mastermind and seemed to think he was very subtle in his racism) there were three that were obnoxiously liberal. Since Rajjpuut had the habit of always sitting front-row center and always speaking his mind . . . a lot of heated debates went on in those classes. Ol’ Libertarian Rajjpuut’d argue liberally on social issues with the conservative and conservatively on fiscal issues with the liberal teachers. Two of the liberal teachers only tested with long multiple-choice tests so his grade was never in doubt. 

However, the most liberal of the three used a combination of multiple-choice plus a one question written essay. On the midterm Rajjpuut only received eight of ten possible points on the essay question though he was sure that no one could have answered the question any better. He was pretty sure the teacher’s liberalism was skewing the result for that part of the test.

On the final after a full eleven weeks of liberal haranguing, Rajjpuut blazed through a very easy multiple test question and then took out the requisite little blue notebook for the essay question. The question  was loaded, it was a veritable Communist Manifesto of liberal assumptions and most importantly . . .  it had nothing to do with effective teaching. Rajjpuut took ten minutes reading the question over and over before beginning the essay:

“This is a very stupid question. Please allow me to try and convince you why it makes no sense; then I will reveal an important and more accurate question along these lines that it would have been better to have asked and I will finish by answering that more appropriate one . . . .” I don’t remember the question or the answer except for saying something like “when will people come to understand that continually flushing money down a rat-hole will never make the world a better place?” Ol’ Rajjpuut was shaking like a leaf when he finished writing.

On the last day of class when we went over the questions, Rajjpuut had not received his essay back, but he’d done exceptionally well on the multiple-choice so he knew he could not receive less than a “B” for the class, but without his essay returned, he was mighty peeved. The Prof than read the essay question and his own idea of what a perfect 10-point response was – all the most sickening liberal garbage.  He then, without revealing the author proceeded to read Rajjpuut’s essay aloud for the whole class starting with the words, “This is a very stupid question . . . “ and near the end he really emphasized the phrase “when will people come to understand that continually flushing money down a rat-hole will never make the world a better place?” there wasn’t a sound in the lecture hall when he was finished.   He paused and shook his head . . . “It isn’t often that I learn this much from a class I’m teaching, this is a 14-point answer.” And then he dropped the essay on Rajjpuut’s desk. The 104 point result was a far greater testimonial to the character of that professor than to Rajjpuut’s own.  Here is the article Tish Gance sent me, in case you didn’t follow the link yet . . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090713/cm_csm/ylawton

             The writer neglected to mention the character of the man he was speaking to at the moment when the “lady” teacher went berserk. I think he should have. Yes, a lot of liberals are totally intolerant and actually stupid as the lady was . . . but there are people of character among them too, don’t ever forget that . . . and if you’re a pure conservative, don’t ever argue social issues with a liberal because they’ve got the high ground and will pin your ears back. But if you know I, Pencil@@ and The Broken Window  Parable^^%% don't be afraid to educate them.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** Yes, yes, that is clearly an oxymoron

@@ http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20090713/cm_csm/ylawton

^^ http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

%% when Rajjpuut tells the broken window parable he always adds about 25% for “waste” in the form or all the display items ruined at the bakery when the glass fell on them -- for that is about the cost of government doing business (they pay more to get people out of the private sector and the money goes through several other hands and governments never actually produce anything), hence: WASTE!