Category: Rantings

I have a friend from South Africa who tells me their laws are based on maintaining human dignity and justice. Ours seems to be  based on maintaining peace.

When the police arrive at our crime scenes they want to keep the peace or blame someone for disturbing the peace. Our judges have strict guidelines for what lines in the sand have been crossed.

According to my friend, in South Africa they look for who maintains justice and dignity and fine or punish those who violate the dignity of others or show disregard for justice.

Ours is a nation in decline, the letter of the law will bring us down. Millions of examples daily.

Where is the Republican to stand up and debate Republican support for immigration laws that don’t control immigration, drug use laws that don’t control drug users, health care laws that make our health care system double the most expensive health care in the world, mandatory insurances…  I mean, our laws don’t serve the people, they serve industry.  And Republicans support the bad laws and oppose the good laws.

Health care?  Who knows why the system is so complicated.  Perhaps it is good for the economy to purposefully make complicated laws and procedures, to force us all to hire professionals, lawyers, insurance companies, tax specialists, anything that spreads our money around.  Perhaps there is a master plan, but I doubt it.

In the case of health insurance my doctor apparently charges me three times what he wants to earn so that he can get the maximum my insurance company will pay. I am not sure, I am only reading between the lines, but on the bill he charges a huge amount, then discounts it.  I am guessing insurance says they will pay, say, 75% up to a maximum of some figure.  He charges high so that he will reach that figure.

 

 

 

There is a way of doing arithmetic taught in schools these days called common core.

When we learn simple adding and subtracting we retain the skill not realizing how.  When we write a number and another under it with the addition or the subtraction function in mind we don’t realize our algorithm, and we hardly realize there are other ways to perform the same function.

Children in school on the other hand have not yet learned the algorithm and need to be taught.  So they are, and teachers need to evaluate their learning,  So the students write down the process.

Enter politics: That isn’t how I wrote arithmetic when I was in school and I turned out alright.  So should there be a new process?  Is there even a new process?

In my mind these days there is hardly a worse word any person could call another than Republican.  In my mind only a Republican would complain about a new arithmetic taught in grade school.

 

The idea is to be able to think about numbers differently, some say in a more basic and helpful fashion, than traditional arithmetic.

Those who resist this way of doing things and believe that the tried and true way is simpler merely do not understand common core.

Those who resist and ridicule what they don’t understand  are Republican.  And I can prove it.  Will get back to this later.

I am not a Democrat but I am anti-Republican these days.  The GOP had some good ideas, simply government being the only one that pops to mind anymore, but they oppose simplifying government at every turn, it seems.  They want laws extending into the bed room, they want automatic prison terms tying the hands of judges, they want simple government that costs more.

So I will actively seek to help defeat Republicans where I can.  I am starting by looking at good information about the coming elections.  Here is one:

http://cookpolitical.com/house/charts/race-ratings

and more ammunition:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/31/worst-congress-ever-the-case-in-7-charts/

I will finish this later.

A convicted rapist and murderer’s Torrington girlfriend  is Lisa Meneguzzo, owner of Oddo Print Shop, 142 E. Main St., Torrington, CT.

Many Torringtonians have no idea the colorful personalities we have in our little town.  Generally people don’t know or care what is printed in the newspapers or plastered on hot dog stands.  We don’t read who gets arrested, and if we happen to hear about something in the paper we almost certainly don’t read past the charges.  And if someone’s name is cleared in a jury trial or by judge’s ruling those events won’t appear in the Register Citizen.

But the arrests are.  And sometimes the police and the newspaper want to malign and shock the community and put in a picture of those arrested.  But when a Torrington native tries to break a man out of prison then wins immunity from prosecution by testifying, for example, that she smuggled a telephone with naked pictures of herself into prison, as reported by WSB-TV, that story escapes the Register Citizen.  When the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that she bribed prison guards with money earned in her Torrington business and traveled to visit the rapist and murderer in prison at least seven times our local news is silent.

Brian Nichols killed a Judge, an FBI agent, a Sheriff Deputy, a court reporter and a bystander in his escape from his rape trial in Georgia.  Lisa Meneguzzo must have decided that was a reason to become his “girlfriend” which is what happened according to several news sources.  But when national news sources report that Lisa Meneguzzo did not remember hours of phone conversations recorded by the FBI with the cop killer detailing the outside of the prison we heard nothing from our local news.

Lisa Meneguzzo, who Fox News calls the cop killer’s girlfriend is our neighbor. And I need to decide if Torrington deserves to know more about what the Associated Press reported about our native daughter: “Nichols’ girlfriend, Lisa Meneguzzo, played a key role in the plot, coming up with cash, writing letters to Nichols and doing research for him”.

Does Torrington benefit by knowing more about Oddo Printshop?  Should we ask to hear the story of the soft side of mass murderer Brian Nichols from this woman?  And if so will our local newspaper tell the complete story?

We sell the finest governments on earth.  Depending on the model government you purchase, we can keep corruption and infrastructure decay to a minimum, and optionally improve social services and clean up the environment.

Recently our company has been under attack for selling our excellent product to nations and territories where controls have been lost.  But our product is a very good government, and if it is used as directed we will warranty our government for a full ten years.

Our warranty is void, however, when our product subverted.  Look at the examples. In Quebec things run on time, no violence in the streets, not at lot of overspending on Government services, taxes are low, businesses are growing.  The USA has been considering our product as well, but they have trouble with corruption at the top, too many high paid politicians and not enough tax base, so our models show they need to cut government spending, reduce the number of prisoners and government employees for our government to work for them.

In the US laws favor lawyers, insurance companies and government workers too much for our governments to work.  We require that the government take control of health care and energy or to leave it to market systems.  In the US there is too much government meddling for it to work.

 

My first cousin Terry Saunders died a week ago.  I remember his Corvette when I was quite little. Two weeks before he died I had a stark reminder of my own mortality as well. In a routine blood test there were nearly 30 times the normal number of liver enzymes.  I read up on it, and I should have been horribly sick with numbers that high.

I had no symptoms, so I thought is was all a mistake, had a re-test and the numbers were down, but still about 6 times higher than normal.  Had my vital organs ultrasounded and my blood tested for hepatitis and everything my doctor and I could think of.  Nothing so badly out of the ordinary except those darn liver enzymes.  Did I say no symptoms?  No symptoms.  Maybe, just maybe a shadow on the liver, but so slight it would not explain those numbers.  Maybe a cancer in some other organ is making my liver work hard to make those enzymes.

My doctor wanted a liver biopsy and a CAT scan but I said hold off.  My numbers were normal in September, so if there is anything it is brand new, not a month old, let me hold off a month.  I had plans.  I was going to stand tall and do things in my life that I had always intended but never did.  I wanted to run every day, eat right, begin this web site, publish, write those two new books and finish the one I started years ago.  No one in the world thinks like I think and I think what I think is valuable.  More people should think like me.

But I did hardly any of what I planned during the month.  And my cousin died. But here is something interesting.  Terry had hemochromatosis  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_overload  a hereditary disorder that is very treatable if caught BEFORE symptoms appear.  And today I got the tests back.  My hospital doesn’t normally test for hemochromatosis but they were able to test for iron in my blood and I had about twice the normal iron.  My liver enzymes were normal again.  And my blood has been sent to another hospital for more testing so I should know more tomorrow.

So now I need to step up and do the things I have told myself to do all my life.  I have not listened to myself until now.  There is no one in my life to encourage me, so I need to encourage me and others.  I have often thought religion has had a negative effect on me, but there is good in religion as well.  I need to explain all this in a clear voice.  Who cares if no one is listening.  I am doing it for others, and in so doing I am doing it for myself.

Thanks to Terry I may have dodged a bullet.  I would never have been tested for hemachromatosis.  Not even Dr. House would have found it.  I am not sure I have the disorder, but I am certainly glad I was tested for it.  The things that went through my head, the songs asking people to live like they are dying, the things I have said about lives having value if and only if they are valuable to others.  What we do for humanity is our worth, I have said, and now I am looking at me, and how my life has helped others, and what more I can or should do.  And I come up wanting.

Here is the beginning of the rest of my life.  My first second chance.  I hope I get many more second chances.