Healthcare

the only way to fix the situation ... is not going to happen ....

Doctors, clinics, hospitals and homes must be made to be accountable for their procedures,
patients and parties responsible for paying must have motivation to control costs.
The only way to do that is to totally ban health insurance
and require all procedures to be paid for with cash in advance.
If you aint got the bucks, you dont get the help.

its cold I know, but its necessary.
The "profit motive has so overwhelmed the "standard operating procedures"
that the customary ways that doctors and nurses and hospitals do things
are wasteful and unnecessary and unhelpful in the extreme, motivated solely
for their self-interest.
It has been so much easier to manipulate and take advantage of a large group of people (the insured) than it is to take advantage of an individual.

Example:
I recently went to a cosmetologist with a skin problem,
its simply eczema, dry skin aggravated by stress.
But he still took a small sample to test for cancer,
even though it does not present as cancer at all.
Moreover, he put a fucking stitch in the skin where he too the 1mm square patch,
so that I had to go back to his office to get the stitch taken out two weeks later!

cost of his "surgery" --$250
cost of the biopsy -- $350
cost of the stitch removal -- $90

Now, he did not even tell me in advance what he was doing,
or else I would have blocked it.
My insurance company will go ahead and approve this "preventive medicine".

But this is the kind of thing that makes our medical system the most expensive in the world
without being anywhere close to the most beneficial system in the world.

-chiz

Advice

People have asked me why my blogs have been tapering off.
Despite a disastrous winter (it took me quite awhile to
assimilate the enormity of what the government is doing,
behind the veil.) I am still one of the top amateur investors
in the country.
About two months ago I was driving around, maybe looking for
free firewood, maybe just looking. I ran across a car with a
bumper sticker that said, "Bark less. Wag more."
Made sense to me. Still does. More and more ...

fracking

There is a new story on the NPR website
from an amateur investigator
declaiming the process of "fracking"
for extracting natural gas from shale substrate.

basically the article claims that the chemicals used,
pollute the groundwater.

I really don't know, firsthand, if there is any truth to this
or if its just muckraking and fearmongering.
I tend to doubt its veracity because the average natural gas well into shale
is 7,000 feet or more deep.

Americans are going to find that
the only energy source remaining to them
will be the predominant one now employed in Ethiopia,
where there are as many asses on the streets as cars ...

From a Distance

I am tired of talking about it. Really, I have only been talking to myself, anyway.

From the time when I was a very little boy I have been ostracized. I still
don't "get" why, but it is what it is. My own family, my work comrades, my wives, everybody; they all label me as "crazy", "different", simply damaged or wrong.

I test out as very much more intelligent than most people. I test consistently as triple sigma. Teachers, parents, mentors all my life have told me what a gift that is and that I should do something with it for mankind. But you know what? You
do not want me to. All of you are simply jealous and envious, you all put me down, spend serious time just trying to prove me wrong. The only ones who look at me eye-to-eye are cats. All of you who can read are too busy putting poison ivy leaves on my butt when I'm asleep and then accusing me of having herpes when I wake up.

And the effect of that is to give me distance. I have no vested interest in this society, in this culture. It is neither better nor worse than any other culture that has ever come along. You all are every bit as crazy as the nazi's cremating all those jews or the late romans going to the coliseum every week to watch the latest christian do battle with the most recent lion.

Every one of you knows the story of the emperor's clothes, you were taught as little children. The sad thing is that every one of you is wearing clothing that was made from little bits of the same cloth. You all are just too embarrassed to admit it. Its not just the emperor who is naked, its every single one of you.

Show is over folks.

I'm not sorry.

Prices

I went in to the local Roy Rogers fast food outlet yesterday
(never mind why, it certainly was not for myself!). On one
section of their price board, above and behind the cashiers, was
the following list:

bottled water $1.45
coffee or tea $1.25
milk $1.10
orange juice $1.35

Now, I lead a lonely life here. I insist that nearly everybody in
my culture is insane, and as a result, must people want nothing to do
with me. But am I really wrong? What am I missing?

Solution

There is one, and only one, way out of this crisis.

The crisis was brought about, slowly, over a very long period of time, by allowing for too many debts; for loaning too much money to too many people who will never be able to pay it off. (It was bad judgment on the part of the bankers,
to begin with. They created it by taking too high risks.)

It cannot be fixed the way that they are trying to fix it now;
everything that is being done is the equivalent of throwing gasoline
on the fire. It cannot be fixed any other way. Either you do it or else
it will be done to you by forces that are bigger than you are.

The only way out is for all debts, public and private, to be forgiven.
Wiped off the books. Start over.

You cannot postpone it much longer ... we are about to see civil
unrest and general social collapse ... your money is all worthless anyway,
it has no value at all ... the emperor has been quite naked for such
a very long time ...

Endgame

I interpreted last thursday's 1000-point drop, and subsequent recovery,
to be the warning-signal to anyone still in the water, that the sharks are coming.
My own portfolio was heavily short. I happened to close out most of the shorts
when I saw the jaw-dropping changes; then reopened them just before the closing
bell, so I had a profitable day. Even after the next monday's gap up I was
still looking good. After that, of course, I took on even more shorts.
That leaves only one gold position as a naked long, everything else is hedged or
short.
From what I'm reading about the deterioration in European markets, I
believe that not even the PPT can keep stocks from falling now. For what its
worth, I stand to clean up better than John Paulson did last time. I
seriously doubt that I'll ever be able to actually spend the cash.
The only thing saving us all from instantaneous breakdown is us shorts;
I'm quite aware that there's a whole lot of savvy folk like me, who
have gone short with a whole lot more wealth than I have.
I traded my physical gold for a piece of real estate last month.
I expect gold to continue up for awhile. However, in a situation of
anarchy and general social collapse, owning gold is not going to be
good for one's health. Not with americans armed to the teeth and
drugged to a frenetic torpor with CNBC.
The internet itself will not last too much longer. Satellites have
a way of drifting out of orbit when they are not closely monitored.
Infrastructure requires constant vigilant maintenance. However,
more and more of the intellectual giants find that the only stimulating,
fascinating endeavors lie in the arena of finding new holes and
more devious exploits.
I pay for old sins. My parents had imminent trust in "the establishment"
and they turned me over to the psychiatrists, I expect as much in order
to protect me from the drafty winds blowing towards southeast asia as
because of genuine concern fore my behavior. Still, I believed in
personal change as much as social change, so I gave them enough rope
to do real damage to my body. With my smattering of chemistry, I surmise that
Lithium, the drug of first choice for bipolar, mainly acts by binding
with any free iodine in order to short-circuit the thyroid gland and
just radically dampen-down all bodily function. Yes, it definitely
reduces the intensity of emotional expression, and the parents and doctors
and nurses have no idea of what that feels like from the inside, where
the turmoils and dilemmas are just as intense, they just don't show themselves.
Of course it does, as the metabolism slows, the cholesteral and weight rise, the
kidneys, liver, and gastric system all begin to deteriorate. In enough time,
the thyroid typically sustains permanent damage so that stopping the lithium
cannot save you. Thyroid replacement hormone is a safe, simple, well-understood mechanism. If there is enough of a social system exisitng in the world in
order for drug factories to produce it and pharmacies to dispense it. If not,
a young man will slowly become very, very sick. An older man like myself
will whither. I hope it does not take too very long.


God will be with all of you. After a generation or two, the detritus of our
failed culture will whither and become overgrown. Nature will be able to heal
itself and overgrow all our pathetic and ugly social structures. Life itself
will survive and prosper. People will learn to trust and to rely on each other
again, they will learn that giving is a better means of survival than taking.
I just won't be there to see it. But still, its okay, I know that its coming.

chistletoe,(formerly "Pan" of "Pan and Dora")