More like Leopold and Loeb than Lincoln and Douglas*

He says, he gets anxious with the approach of time. Well, time is always approaching, yet he is not

always anxious. Although, some times it seems like it. He’s always anxious when he contemplates being late, he says. Not anxious about actually being late, just thinking about being late. Try sometime actually being late, I suggest to him. You’ll find that most of the time there is no repercussion for  being late. I’ve tried that, he says. It doesn’t work. This morning he is anxious about his 8:30 appointment for physical therapy. They won’t even know you are late and besides you still have twenty-five minutes to get there and its only a five minute drive. He is asking if I will drive him there. He can walk back, he says. It won’t take any more time for me to drop you off at home and for you to take your own car, I tell him. Finally he relents. I would have to have driven right by the house anyway to have driven him to his PT. I dropped him at his house. I can’t help it he said, it’s the way my brain works. It drives his girlfriend crazy.

If the indispensible man dies / The world looks around for another mother with milk for her child / If the indispensible man were to come back there wouldn’t be a job for him as a hall-porter – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p399

Flotus

Scotus

Potus

Coitus*

*Man of the US (Motus) might have worked but not First Man -
        Too bad Bill. We could have just called you Mr Coitus
         Certainly My Tweek needs a better hash tag than just 
         Potus

We do not want to be sansculottes, nor simple citizens, nor venal presidents; we want to found a democracy of gods, equal in majesty, in sanctity, and in bliss. You demand simple dress, austere morals, and unspiced pleasures, but we demand nectar, ambrosia, crimson robes, costly perfumes, luxury and splendor, the dancing of laughing nymphs,music and comedies. – Heinrich Heine

The Democrats have proven to be better at making the rich richer than have the Republicans

Intellectual activity that does not have relevance to established money is not likely to be highly valued – C Wright Mills – White Collar p156

75% of US military enlistees claim that educational benefits were a major reason for their decision to enlist. Would providing free (or low cost) higher education hinder the military’s ability to recruit?

Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind – Antonio Damasio – Looking for Spinoza, 2003 p26

The average credit-card debt owed by an American indebted household is $8,500. The total credit-card debt in the US is expected to surpass $1 trillion by the end of this year

In a society based so largely on illusions and appearances, the ultimate illusions, art and religion, have no future - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p96

Real estate busts nearly always begin in the hottest markets

Commercialization [of sports] has turned has turned play into work, subordinated the athlete’s pleasure to the spectators’ and reduced the spectator himself to a state of vegetative passivity – the very antithesis of the health and vigor sports ideally promotes - Christopher Lasch – The Culture of Narcissism, 1979 p103

According to a recent Gallup poll only 23% of US employees agree that they can apply their organization’s values to their work every day. Only 27% agree that they ‘believe in’ their organization’s values

Women must defend themselves, and the lie, it becomes a good weapon. But there are three people, to whom a woman should speak the truth. To her Father Confessor, to her hairdresser and to her private detective – Agatha Christie – The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, 1960

45% of Americans claim to have used prescription psychotherapeutic drugs last year. More that 7% of the population self-reported misuse of those drugs. Over half of the drug abusers say they obtained their medications from family or friends.

The New York Times committed the most egregious of the media mistakes. It chided [Gary] Johnson for being wrong, then got it wrong itself. It started by describing Aleppo as the “de facto capital of ISIS.” (That would be Raqqa) - Sophia A. McClennen  (Salon)

People are increasingly pulling out their phone and recording emergency situations rather than providing assistance. Fortunately as of yet they are not recording selfies of themselves next to suffering people as they have done with suffering animals. The Bystander Effect: people are more likely to intervene if there are few or no other witnesses.

Being a muckracking political writer often makes me feel like a custodian in a horse barn, constantly shoveling manure. It’s a messy, stinky job — but on the bright side, the stuff is plentiful, so the work is steady – Jim Hightower

The average family healthcare premium for Americans who receive their healthcare insurance through their employer is $18,412. 83% of US workers have a deductible with an out-of-pocket expense of at least $1,500

Sin’s such a wretched, mean, ignoble little thing. It’s terribly necessary to make it seem grand and important – Agatha Christie – The Pale Horse, 1961

I got into my car

And I drove that car

And now I’m only a speck

            On the horizon

I leave it all behind

Good-bye to all of it

I’m dropping off

            The edge of the earth

I’m packing no baggage

Just put it on my plastic

What I need I can buy

            At Wal-Mart

Headed for the land

            Of milk and honey

Some say you have to die first

But it’s not true

So long as you have

            A hight credit score

Check all three

           

Bureaucracy, however much it serves as the immediate organizer of situations of power and structural blindness, does not create them. Mainly it simply evolves to manage them – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p63

The world’s three largest corporate entities have a combined value larger than the entire Chinese economy

Behind every great fortune there lies a crime. – C Wright Mills

The weather continues to be “strange.”

People in these parts have a heaven. They have come to the conclusion that God / Requiring a heaven and hell didn’t need to / Plan two establishments but / Just the one, heaven. It/ serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful / As hell – Bertolt Brecht – Poems p300

When aridity becomes normal it sould no longer be called a drought. Deserts are arid. They are not suffering from a drought.

I must pray you to inculcate upon the overseers that it is not their [the female slave’s] labor, but their increase which is first consideration with us. – Thomas Jefferson, 1819

Having an annual physical exam helps to diagnose new diseases but it don’t correlate with having a better health outcome. That’s because some diseases are analogous to song birds that have flown their cages. It’s already too late to get them back into their cage once they’ve flown. Other disease are like turtles, they are not going anywhere fast. Getting an annual check-up is like treating all disease as if they were rabbits (which can be caught and put back into the hutch). But all diseases are not rabbits. The Society of General Internal Medicine recommends that you go to your doctor only when you have a specific health need, so long as you don’t neglect establishing the doctor/patient relationship itself . Americans currently spend about $10b a year on annual checkups.

I sit by the roadside / The driver changes the wheel / I do not like the place I have come from / I do not like the place I’m going to / Why with impatience do I / Watch him changing the wheel? – Bertolt Brecht – Poems of 1913-1956, 1997 p439

Brain tissue uses 22 times more energy than does muscle tissue – think rather than work your way to weight loss.

Those on the bottom spend a great deal of time imagining the perspective of, and actually caring about, those on the top, but it almost never happens the other way around – David Graeber – Revolutions in Reverse, 2011 p51

Clowns are universally disliked by children. They don’t understand them (that’s OK sonny, I don’t understand em either, maybe it their perpetual smile? Which reminds me of models and spokespersons who always show lots of white teeth – constant smiling and showing lots of white teeth are sure signs of insincerity). They find them creepy. Ronald McDonald ranks 2,109 our of 2,800 celebrities

* Title refers to 2nd Presidential Debate and is from - Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (Sept 19, 2016)