Monthly Archives: October 2012

You know that you are in an expansive State when you’ve been behind the wheel for more than a day and the sign says that it is 543 miles to El Paso. But since we are not heading for El Paso, that is information we really do not need to process. We’ll turn left quite a ways before we get to El Paso and head south through Balmoreah, Ft. Davis, Alpine and then to Big Bend National Park.

You also know that you are in an expansive state, i.e., getting a big head, when you read by way of Huffpost that the meningitis outbreak that has killed a couple of dozen people originated in a Massachusettes pharmacy the regulation of which slacked off during Willard Romney’s term as governor. I’m not swell-headed because of the epidemic. It appears that Republican candidates of all sorts are the only ones who can draw deep breaths of satisfaction when government money is not wasted on responding to public emergencies and regulating industries that can police themselves. I am feeling rather proud of myself because I anticipated the Huffposting in an earlier entry right here entitled “Do Away With Job Killing Regulations.”

In my initial entry about job killing regulations, I got the facts wrong about how many people had been killed at that time in the outbreak, which mistake was quickly corrected by alert readers, but I got the facts right about the threat to lives and public safely that a relaxation of regulation brings down upon us.

Twit Romney will probably now deny that he ever was governor of any State just as he has denied being the head of Bain when he was the brains behind it. The ease with which Romney lies and denies is either a character trait or a pathology. Either way, he is not fit to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.

You know, if Mr. Romney would come out and say, “Well, I’ve got to own up on this one. If regulations had been more thorough in the State where I served as governor, this probably would not have happened,” I’d vote for him.

I say that with a bulge of hyperbole distorting my cheek because there is no danger of Mitt Romney having the smidgen of integrity it would take to own up to anything.

Pundits like Lou Dobbs have likened the ongoing pressure by Mexican nationals pushing through our porous southern border to an invasion of the USA. Huge sums of money through Homeland Security mount an attempt to repel this ‘invasion.’

But when the threat comes to our northern border, it is met with indifference or encouragement. The threat from Canada is not from masses seeking to improve their economic condition or to better the education of their children. No, the northern threat is in the form of a highly toxic sludge of Canadian tar sands pushed under pressure along a 2,000+ mile-long pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline.

When this pipeline breaks catastrophically or springs small leaks, it poisonous ooze can contaminate streams, wells and entire aquifers from Montana to the Texas Gulf Coast. This dirty oil can be refined in Texas, but it is not our oil and will not contribute to our energy independence. It contributes to Canada’s export balance and energy independence.

Like it fraternal twin, the current frenzy of fracking, the tar sands pipeline is but another profit-motivated grab by the corporate state in the latest of its last-gasp efforts to exploit the environment until the very life is wrung from our planet. It is a wholesale disposal of our well-being to boost the bottom line of a trans-national entity, a corporate ‘person’ without loyalty to any nation.

Studies have indicated that not only may the pipeline result in only handfuls of jobs, in the long run, it may destroy jobs. With the apparent short-sightedness of expecting an immediate reverse in the unemployment numbers as the result of the pipeline, both President Obama and Gov. Romney fully support this invasion of our country. Not that anyone is surprised that both are willing to ignore the real security of our homeland when corporate arms extend an ‘ata boy’ reach across their shoulders.

As an aside, it is my guess that the popularity of such apocalyptic TV shows as “The Walking Dead” can be explained by a widespread feeling that something is about to destroy us and zombies give our fears a focus. The slashing and shooting of these walking dead by the remnant of survivors gives viewers the sense that we can defend ourselves against a lethal enemy. In truth the enemy is indeed a dead ‘person,’ i.e., a ‘person’ without empathy for its fellows and they are a horde. The enemy is a plague of corporate ‘persons.’

In the interest of all of us right now and our descendants, it is time to tell the oligarchs and corporate cartels: “No, we’ve had enough!”

Yes, by all means, let us have done with the cramping Federal Regulations that oppress small business owners and deny the job-creating power of entrepreneurial capitalism!

That is exactly what happened in the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the FDA regulations regarding compounding pharmacies. So now, we have individual States regulating their own compounding pharmacies through their State boards.

Did that stop the job-killing? I have no idea. How many compounding pharmacies have employed how many people since 2002, I do not know.

What I do know is that more than a dozen people have died of fungal meningitis and about 200 are ill resulting from a poorly regulated industry in the State of Massachusetts! So would you rather follow the myopic libertarian commitment to ‘less government is better government’ by eliminating more Federal regulations or would you rather be kept safe in the knowledge that what your physician injects into your body is a substance free of pathogens.

Apparently you cannot have it both ways. Either you accept that the Federal government, in the form of FDA regulations, has an essential role to play in safeguarding the manufacture of drugs shipped across State lines, or you risk that the maple syrup you order from Vermont may be much more pure than the pain-killer that your doctor got from Massachusetts.

It is way past time to call out the libertarians and false conservatives on courts and in political parties. It is time to name them for what they are. Their insistence upon the individual’s freedom as the ultimate value in our society puts at risk the very well-being of our citizens. They seem to ignore the two other equal values in that trinity so hallowed, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ I would rather keep my life to their kind of liberty.

Chameleons have always fascinated us, but seldom is a new kind discovered hidden in plain sight. Most of these camouflage  capable reptiles blend into their immediate background. This new kind though, is able to blend into what it anticipates is required to move forward. It apparently has the ability of foreknowledge of the background into which it will move. Weather and climate may be involved in this chameleon’s ability to disguise itself. Although this type of chameleon has been known for some time, its unusual abilities have only recently been identified.

Named chamaeleo willardi, after a political candidate with similar abilities, c. willardi exhibits its clairvoyance only when under a threat to its life. The candidate, W. Mitt Romney, can be seen changing before our very eyes in the final days of the contest in which he is engaged. Fearing for his political life, ‘Mitt’ behaves as though he’ll survive only if he looks more and more like his opponent. He has now begun to look like a ‘centrist.’ When he will return to his rightist extremes is probably just a matter of time.

It is very difficult to know exactly how the reptile or the candidate will look when the cold weather arrives in early January.