Monthly Archives: August 2021

Morning blog-readers,

Nice morning here.  Moon’s still full, almost straight overhead, cool, clear sky.

A friend told me a couple of interesting anecdotes she’s encountered recently, yesterday.

Seems there’s an outfit in California that’s found a successful means of treating Alzheimer’s, which is a happy piece of human gossip.  Lady just out of the village is putting her home up for rent to take her mother out there for a year to go through the complete 19 month regimen.  She’s gone through the first phase here (six weeks) and seen such improvement that she feels a lot of confidence the treatment works.

Interestingly, it’s mainly a matter of retraining the communications within the brain, re-routing electrical impulses to do what they did before the brain deterioration began, but via different packets of nerves.  Evidently, the mere restoration of communications within the brain halts further progress of the physical damage.

The nursing home industry and possibly the medicos won’t like this, but everyone else probably will find it a blessing if they’re able to afford the treatment for their loved-ones whom they’re watching slowly sink into an ugly oblivion.

Same friend also told me an interesting anecdote about the daughter of yet another woman who’s just come back from Iraq, evidently National Guard.  Says she’s overwhelmed by nightmares, getting no sleep, won’t go anywhere and sleeps with her M-16.  Constant state of unreasoning fear and anxiety.

The ship carrying all her belongings and those of her co-troops was evidently destroyed in the NO hurricane, so there’s also that to keep her feeling down.

Crazy sending women to a place such as that.  This whole all-volunteer army thing is one that could have used some testing in a lot of ways before it was implemented, but the political atmosphere was absolute death to the draft, and they needed to shore up the numbers of warm bodies to use for cannon-fodder some way.  Adding women doubled the pool while tipping a hat to political correctness.  Still does.

And strangely enough, while men mostly weren’t much interested in making a career of the military if they could do anything else, except those of a particular personality type, women chomped at the bit to get in, then fought to get into the combat arms branches.

A person has to be careful what he asks for in this life, out of respect that he might get it.  They’ve got it all worked out now as a precedent.  Next war big enough to involve the draft will have women coming home in body bags in roughly the same numbers as men.

What a piece of work is man!
How noble in reason!
how infinite in faculties!
in form and moving, how express and admirable!
in action how like an angel!
in apprehension, how like a god!
the beauty of the world!
the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither.

I have of late,–but wherefore I know not,–
lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercises;
and indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory;
this most excellent canopy, the air,
look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,–
why, it appears no other thing
to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

William Shakespeare
Hamlet II

Back during the draft days a major part of the young men were tickled pea green to have flat feet, anything to keep them out, while women had an automatic non-obligation along those lines.  They were what young men were supposed to be fighting for.

Strange stuff, when you think of it.

It’s going to be interesting to watch the battle between the FDA and medicos and that new Alzheimers treatment bunch, thinks I.  It’s not a ‘medical’ treatment, per se, and it has all the earmarks of just the sort of thing that ought to bring the folks who make a living out of keeping the status quo on ugly death out with their jack-boots polished to a fine sheen.

Similar to the way they’ve kept out a simple herbal method of shrinking tumors to zip clean out of the respectable cancer treatment business.  Native American herbal recipe involving sheep sorrel, black burdock, slippery elm and turkey rhubarb you can brew at home, knocks out benign and malignant tumors anywhere and in the human body, but there’s not a medico in the US who will prescribe it, despite the thousands of people whom they’ve pronounced living dead who are walking around because of it.

Ah well.

Jack

A decade ago emergency management workers used to marvel.

A tidal wave, an earthquake, mudslides, floods hit in South America, China, Armenia, casualties would be in the thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands.  But a similar event in the US would leave a few dozen people dead with just a lot of property damage.

Emergency management workers knew this wasn’t their doing.  Mitigation workers knew it wasn’t their doing.  A few believed it was just a confirmation that God was on the side of America.  Most believed it was pure, dumb luck.

Everyone knew the potential was there, the vulnerabilities.  In fact, one of the reasons no effective mitigation efforts found support lay in the fact that these things simply don’t happen to the United States.  They happen elsewhere, to foreigners, to strangers.

We watched the tragedies, helped as we could, we Americans, but we came to believe a catastrophy for America was an airline crash where a hundred or so people died.  A hurricane where people lost their homes.

It’s clear our luck ran out on this one.

I saw a newspaper this morning and read with shock about the chaos and the inability of the emergency response and recovery infrastructure to deal with an event of this magnitude.  I shouldn’t have been shocked, because it’s obvious, in retrospect.

Maybe things would have been different if we’d not stretched our resources so thin…. if we’d continued to use our regular Army to fight our wars and left the National Guard and Army Reserves inside the US boundaries, but there’s no assurance of  this.

There’s a certainty that a lot less human death and suffering and property damage from looting would have resulted if there’d been a determined evacuation before the storm came in.  There’ll definitely be a lot of questions asked about why that didn’t happen.

But the reason it didn’t happen is right there in the beginning of this jotting.  Things of this magnitude don’t happen here.  Those victim-faces filled with anguish could have made the choice to leave.  They didn’t do so because they believed as we all tend to, that US soil is somehow sanctified against such stupendous tragedy.

The costs will by high in their personal lives because of this tragedy.  Their choice to stay will also be enormously high for the rest of us, as well.

If those traumatized victims had merely used good judgement, taken measures to behave the way any prudent person would behave when a CAT 5 storm’s coming in from the Gulf of Mexico, the only thing those FEMA, National Guard, Police, Firemen and rescue workers would be dealing with would be a few stragglers who simply found it impossible to leave, and the hospitals who couldn’t.

Hopefully all over the US people with spare bedrooms will give over a piece of themselves in the form of shelter, make the sacrifice to trust those people who made a lousy choice we might well have made ourselves.

Somehow those people have to be relocated to the spare bedrooms of America for a while.

Are we up to the task?

I’m not.

Jack

There’s probably a lot Americans can learn about themselves, about the government, about foreigners, and about victims from this event, provided they’ll allow themselves to do it.  However, that seems unlikely.

That’s an unfortunate trait we humans share, not allowing ourselves to closely observe, digest, and learn things we’d rather not contemplate.

We’ve grown accustomed to the shrill cries of immediacy, the razor edge of opinion communicated as fact, of analysis while the water’s muddy and incomprehensible, then the unfortunate decisions left behind and forgotten after the scapegoating and recriminations are over.  There’ll be another crisis or exciting sports event, important musical concert to demand our attention to help us avoid learning whatever’s to be learned from all this.

Time was when we could afford such things.  The US once had a gross national product that involved manufactured goods, as opposed to raw materials, agricultural products and hamburgers.  Today all we have is an enormous military, a lot of computer related activity, and an inflated view of ourselves because of what we once were, similar to the one the Brits had of themselves during the first generation following the dissolution of the Empire.

We’ve done a lot to get where we are, to maintain the self-image, but it’s going to go away.  Deficit spending simply can’t happen on a sustained basis, even though ours has set a lot of records.

Fact is, there’s got to be a time coming when the remittance man knocks and wants to be paid.  When the addict, the gambler, or just the poor guy who’s buying groceries and gasoline on his credit card tries one last time and the guys who’ve been making the loans shake their heads, no.

Hopefully that won’t happen during the immediate aftermath of this storm.  But in view of petroleum prices there’s reason to suspect it will happen sooner than we’d like.

Americans are going to have to pull back the reins, begin to examine what things they’re willing to give up as a nation, or the issue will be decided for them.  But, of course, the first half of that sentence is an absurdity, moot.  The issue’s going to be decided at the bankruptcy auction, by the remittance man, by the grocer, the car dealer, the world when it finally shakes its head, no.

When Americans begin to come down off the emotional high of watching storm victims and marching goose-step in their legions of admiration-explosion for the heroes and their pity for the victims they could serve themselves well by turning off the television, cancelling the newspaper, and simply thinking about this disaster, about America, about foreigners, about the national deficit, and about what, precisely, the common dollar bill has to eat to keep it alive.

Jack

For some while I’ve been haranguing you bloggers to take a look at what this War on Drugs is doing to destroy our institutions, mainly in the criminal justice arena. Here’s an example of a tip-of-the-iceberg for-instance:

The Lincoln Courier, Lincoln, Ill, reports police Cpl. Diana R. Short, 46, and her husband, paramedic John T. Short, 41, were charged with several drug felonies, including growing marijuana in their home for distribution, plus charges of illegal weapons possession. Short’s husband has already accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to six years. Meanwhile, Diana Short has pleaded not guilty; she faces 18-90 years in prison.

Okay. There’s going to be a bad apple in any barrel. Right? A cop sees a river of money running under her feet, same as all cops do. She’s holding a cup and she’s thirsty. Her pay, according to her thinking, isn’t at all what it should be, and she drives past crack houses and drug deals enough times a night to know the battle to get it off the streets is futile. Begins to wonder, “Why not give myself a raise?”

Several months later Diana’s daughter, Brianna D. Strohl, 24, was charged with conspiracy to do a meth cook raise money for her mother’s bail. Short evidently instructed her daughter by phone from a jail phone and the calls were recorded. The daughter faces 6-30 years.

You have to read a lot between the lines here to see the implications.

First, this lady cop certainly knew phone calls from the jail were recorded, but for some reason we can only guess, she wasn’t deterred from talking about committing a felony on a jail phone.

Hmmmm.

Secondly, this officer was raising weed in her home. Is it possible the officers charged with enforcing drug laws aren’t being tested regularly? Even if the cop wasn’t smoking there’s pollen. Pee in a bottle. Hair, clothing, that sort of thing.

The fact is, in the State of New Mexico police officers are almost never given drug tests. During the several years I worked for an agency within the New Mexico Department of Public Safety not one employee of that department was asked to take a drug test.

Now why, one wonders, would that be?

Probably a visit to your own police department, bloggers, will reveal the same is true in your own State Police and local police administrations.

“I can’t answer for you,” Bob Dylan once whined, “You’ll have to decide,

Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side.”

Jack

Tonight when I went down to Bernalillo to buy my lottery tickets the price on gas, I saw again, is again the highest I’ve ever witnessed in the US.  I’m told the price jumped immediately when the hurricane came in.  I got to talking to a guy outside the store who was obviously taking a break from driving.  Noted his Maryland tags and asked how the gas prices had been along his route.

“Higher than here.  $4 a gallon in Needles, California.  But it’s going to go higher.”

Interesting news.  A person has to wonder how high gasoline can go before it puts a boa-constrictor squeeze on all other consumer spending.  I’d guess, not a lot higher than it’s gone already.

Meanwhile, Public Service Co of NM, has notified customers that charges for gas and electricity will be maybe doubled this winter.  If that’s true here, I’d guess it’s also true elsewhere.

So, I asks myself, what’s happening here?

I’m seeing no assertions that these higher fuel prices have anything to do with the war we’re in, but  they’re coincident with it.

I’m hearing no explanations for fuel prices going up the exact moment when a hurricane comes inland leaving a path of devastation, but from here it appears to opportunistic price-gouging.  The fuel in those tanks couldn’t possibly have cost more as a result of the storm.  It was bought before the storm.  But, the price increase happened to be coincident with the storm in much the way the earlier price increases were coincident with the war.

In ’74, when the Arab oil embargo drove gasoline prices sky-high for those times, Americans got awfully angry about it in fairly short order.  Admittedly, that was before the wussification of the citizenry was complete.

But I’m inclined to believe that if this fuel price situation becomes an enduring feature of American life, there’s no way it can fail to result in inflation, a wintertime disaster to almost match the Hurricane, but concurrent with it, and a lot of Americans who’ve never experienced hunger suddenly knowing there are more important things in life than who won the Super-Bowl.

My pre-wussification mind tells me those Americans will be looking for scapegoats, which might well not be true.  But if Americans discover suddenly that they’ve squandered the legacy of abundance left them by their ancestors, that they’ve sent their industry overseas by sleight of hand, that they’ve elected politicians based on the deadly desire to abdicate responsibility for their own lives, there’s probably going to be a comeuppance.

Today there’s a tender compassion for victims of a disaster.  But the day mightn’t be far distant when Americans turn their backs on those in need because their own needs seem hardly less demanding.

I recall pictures when I was a kid, of Benito Mussolini hanging upside down from a lamp post while his former admirer/worshipers strolled by to spit on the corpse.  That’s because Il Duce quit making the trains run on time.

But that’s all pre-wussification.  No bearing on what happens in America when gasoline prices go to five bucks a gallon and home heating oil doubles in post wussificated America.

Jack