rome

Ever thought the US is starting to resemble ancient Rome? Rome went from a democracy to a totalitarian empire. The same could very well happen here. And Rome's demise was followed by the infamous Middle Ages, something that is a distinct possibility for the upcoming century if not sooner. Only this time the event is more likely to be world-wide in scope rather than limited to the Western World.

In many ways the US is similar to Rome just before the empire. It dominates the world, it has gotten rid of its main competitor and it is ready for a Pax Americana. Granted the match is not one to one and there are some shifts in the time-line but the similarity is there.

The US is dangerously close to becoming a totalitarian empire. In some ways it is already there. I previously pointed out how real power is now in the hands of very few citizens. These super-rich effectively control our destiny. Sure we go and vote, but it matters very little how we vote and there are no more real choices left.

The legislature is becoming increasingly ineffective and superfluous. California is already pretty much ungovernable as many have pointed out, but even the US Congress is more often than not deadlocked until some rich guys come along and spread some money around to get what they want.

While it is true that the rich usually get their way, even in a democracy, never has so much power been concentrated in so few hands. It is only a matter of time before we formalize it into a dictatorship of sorts.

democracy?

We Americans like to go out and bring democracy to the world. But perhaps it would behoove us to look more closely to what is happening at home before we go out and try to help others. America of all countries is surely not a democracy.

Consider this: the top 1% in this country own more than the bottom 99% combined. If you think a democracy is possible in a country with such inequity, think again. Even if you -like most Americans- secretly dismiss the homeless and the poor, and believe the "true" inequities are much smaller, definitely think again.

More than anything, the so-called middle class, and that includes the upper middle class, are the true victims of this deplorable state of affairs. The middle class are the only ones who have enough money to feed this greed machine. Never mind the poor and the homeless. They literally don't own anything so they cannot be robbed.

The homeless and the poor may very well suffer, but they are not really counted when it comes to wealth. They simply don't count, not just in your secret dreams, but in everyday reality. They are not part of any statistic and nobody really knows who they are or how many of them exist.

When it is said the top 1% own more than the bottom 99%, then the bottom 99% means those people who are not part of the top 1% but are still counted because they have jobs, social security numbers, driver's licenses, jobs, homes, etc. It means the rest of us. The American consumer. The ones who can vote but somehow never seem to use their vote to protect their own rights.

Modern America is closer to a Vegas casino than you think. In its vast halls there are millions of people playing the losing game. They do so because they are led to believe they may one day be rich by playing the game join the rich. But in reality they are slowly but surely robbed of all possessions they have, and -as the recent credit crisis shows- then some.

And where are the top 1%? They are the ones running the casino. You never see them because they are hidden behind the scenes. All you ever see are their enforcers and their highly paid entertainers. In this world the entertainers are called president, senator, and representative. They are the ones that keep you hooked to the machines. And when their magic fails, there are always plenty enforcers to keep the peace.

cold shower

Showers are synonymous with fresh and clean. They are the hallmark of luxury living and all modern American homes have more at least 2 or 3. Showers are a consumerist pleasure driven by cheap water and cheap energy. They are pushed by soap and shampoo manufacturers and sold on fear. Yes fear, fear of being dirty and stinky. The worst kind of ostracism.

That is why no self-respecting American would dare to go without at least one shower a day. Showers are not only an enormous waste of drinking water but they also waste a fair amount of heating energy. Now it appears they are not good for you either. Rather than being fresh and clean, showers are a fertile breeding ground for molds, fungus, mycobacteria, and other micro-organisms. Despite a wealth of cleaning and scrubbing products, keeping your shower micro-organism free is an impossible task. At best you will end up breeding micro-organisms that are resistant to any and every chemical you throw at them, including bleach.

Daily showers are a fairly recent phenomenon. There is little evidence people fare better or are "cleaner" when they take shower, but there is a fair amount of evidence that hot showers are not so good for your health. To begin with, long hot showers, the kind most Americans cherish are responsible for a lot of skin ailments. Nothing dries out skin like a long hot shower and we could probably do away with 90% of the moisturizers, lotions, and skin care products we love if we just kept our showering to an absolute minimum.

Daily shampoos are even worse. They remove the beneficial oils that protect your hair and make it look good. The more you remove them, the harder your skin glands work to make more and the oilier your hair (and scalp and possibly face) becomes. Better to leave your hair alone and let it shine naturally. Cheaper too.

There is more. The micro-organisms that populate our showers aren't just lining the walls with visible or invisible films. They are everywhere and no place less visited than the ever wet and warm shower head. What better place to incubate bugs? Plastic shower heads with their many microscopic nooks and crannies are ideal for growing tons of bugs.

Furthermore, when you turn on that hot spray, you effectively vaporize and nebulize those bugs and make it so they quickly and effectively spread around the whole room. And there is more. When nebulized like that, the bugs can penetrate deep into your lungs. Fortunately for most people, these critters are not enough to make them sick, although we have to say that nobody has yet looked into asthma, chronic bronchitis (COPD) and other chronic lung ailments. Don't be surprised to read a few years from now that those refreshing clean showers are slowly destroying your lungs.

For those with compromised immune systems however, showers are a veritable death chamber. Even a cursory look in the literature results in tens of proven cases of lethal infections that could be traced to shower heads. And rest assured, those with compromised immune systems now number in the tens of thousands. If you are older, a heavy smoker, HIV infected, have severe lung allergies, are undergoing chemotherapy, or had a transplant, you are one of the unlucky souls who would do better to stay away from the in house death traps called showers.

There is an upside to this story. First, you won't get smelly if you don't shower. People lived happily for centuries without showers. Few people actually suffer from bad body odor. You certainly don't have to believe everything the soap industry tells you. And finally, here is another good reason to save water and energy and live longer and healthier.

health care reform

It looks as if Health Care Reform will die a slow death. That is to be expected when powerful for profit forces with ample media access stand to lose their lucrative honey pot. Health Care will forever be a problem in America because both parties stand in the way of meaningful reform.

First one would need to take the lawyers out of the picture. We need to end the malpractice lawsuits and the punitive damages. These things accomplish nothing and they cost each and everyone of us a fortune. They cost us in more ways than one. We are denied simple things because people are afraid of being sued, and we pay through the nose for other equally simple things because the liability insurance is so high. We have to fill out tons of paperwork and stand in long lines before we can participate in everyday routine activities.

Unfortunately, the lawyers are a major force in the Democratic party so don't expect anything here. And if the Republicans want to take on the lawyers, they only do so to enlarge the already excessive profit margins of the major players.

Second, we need price controls on drugs, and we need competition for private health insurers. Better would be to get rid of private insurance but that is another matter. Both of these groups are ardent Republican supporters so here is another impossible roadblock towards reform.

The problem is simply this: health care is so full of conflicts of interest that even without a profit motive, it is hard to ensure fairness and equity. If you add in profits, everything goes to hell. If your doctor stands to gain from procedures, he will perform more of them. If the drug company stands to gain from selling pills, they will sell them to everyone regardless of need.

It costs us and it costs us in many ways. We pay for it over and over again, not just directly, but also indirectly. And we get very little value in return. No American Health Plan comes even close to what Europeans take for granted.

Even the wealthy with unlimited access suffer as the profit incentives force them into unnecessary tests and procedures. And the liability issues make it so their doctors and providers practice defensive care (i.e. another incentive to do even more tests). No test or procedure comes free of risk and in most cases the cost benefit is simply not there.

Now you say, but isn't our long life expectancy proof that we have great healthcare?

Unfortunately longevity is not a good measure of success. Longevity correlates well with wealth because good food, clean water, good sewers and an ability to stay away from dangerous (job) situations promote longevity. Anything that brings you closer to a doctor or hospital on the other hand is likely to reduce your quality of life or artificially extend the duration of it in ways that are unsuited for a dog, let alone a human. Every Terry Schiavo does wonders for longevity statistics.

Apart from party politics, one other bipartisan hurdle remains: the moralists. A key benefit of medicine is pain relief. And not surprisingly, pain is grossly under-treated in this country. Not because we don't have good drugs, but because a handful of moralists feel it is imperative to prevent drug addiction. Heaven forbid that a terminal cancer patient should become addicted to morphine! For that simple reason we all have to suffer. And suffer we will, because modern medicine will make sure we don't die a quick death. Euthanasia is out of the question, even if one's condition is hopeless and one's suffering unending. How's that for first do no harm?

gas guzzlers unite

Sporting a panel that read: "Congress get in touch with America," an oil industry worker bused in by her employer, Anadarko Petroleum, protested the upcoming climate change bill at a meeting in Texas.

The America Congress is supposed to get in touch with is a gas-guzzler nation that seems to care very little for the future or the environment. It is a nation that burns gas for no good reason. It is all part of the great consumerism wave.

David Leland, a geological map maker for the petroleum industry, was quoted by the NY Times as saying: "We provide a product at a reasonable price, and we're going to get punished for doing a damn good job." What he forgot to mention is that the price is so "reasonable" because his company fails to pay for the environmental damage it does. What he also forgets is that this reasonable price is conducive to some very unreasonable behavior on the part of consumers.

Big oil, like big pharma and many other big businesses realize that they can only keep going the way they are now if the public behaves in an extremely irrational and wasteful manner. People have to consume oil, drugs, and other goodies as if these things have no value.

Unfortunately, this is not a viable long term strategy. The executives with their fat bonuses and lavish lifestyles may not care, but in the (not so) long run their irresponsible behavior is going to cause massive harm and loss of life.

Wouldn't it be better if we could tone down our economic activity to a more reasonable level? We would all be happier and we'd live longer too.

Death panels

I am sure you are all aware of the fact that the President's healthcare reform plan will not only bring socialism to our country, but it will also encourage embryo-factories, where embryos will be grown to be used for stem cell research, abortion clinics, where young women will be forced to undergo unwanted abortions, condoms and birth control pills in schools so pupils engage in early sexual activity, and death panels, where experts will decide who will live and who will die.

Yes you got it! It is all part of the master plan devised at the UN to make America weak and to undermine religion and family values. Obama is really a UN spy in disguise, who wasn't even born in this country and illegitimately claimed the presidency so he could sell us all out to atheist aliens.

Fortunately for all of us however, the healthcare plan will be administered by the government. That means it will be so inefficient and wasteful we won't have to worry about it. We will just pay higher taxes, but none of the bad things will happen because bureaucrats in Washington won't be able to make decisions in a timely manner.

And so you see, it all balances out in the end!

clunkers

Congress just expanded the cash for clunkers program. It is a typical example of Washington "dual use," as we used to call civilian programs with military applications. This one is not of the civilian-military dual nature, but rather of the green-consumerism variety. Once again, it is one of those attempts to do the impossible. One that achieves nothing good.

Destroying perfectly good cars and replacing them with new ones, even if those new ones are more efficient, is an environmental disaster. Every time you throw out something that works fine to replace it with something new, you are creating excess waste, and unnecessarily consuming resources. There is no free lunch here, no matter how you add up the numbers.

If Washington wanted to do something they should make gas more expensive. Much more expensive. That -unfortunately- appears to be the only way to achieve our goal of using less fossil fuels. I have never seen another incentive that works and I doubt one exists. I don't like high gas prices but it appears to be the only option.

If you are serious about the environment and the future of our children, then pay more for gas. Pay more and use less. Unlike what you may think this is not silly. Paying more is the only way we can pay for the true cost of gas. Right now, we are not paying the true cost. We are only paying for the cost of finding, refining, and distributing it -and let's not forget the fat margins for the oil companies. But we are not paying for the environmental destruction and ongoing pollution.

No matter what you think, eventually we will pay. The longer we postpone, the more it will cost too, and the more painful it will be. So, wake up and get real. Pay the bills now before it is too late. And tell Congress cash for clunkers is a dumb idea.