A Yappy, Zappy, Crabby New Year to One and All

When Hell freezes over, don't blame global warming.

 

 

Oh yeah?  Well, suppose YOU just sit there and try to be positive and upbeat and warm and fuzzy and loving.  If you enjoyed 2013, the new one's bound to be your really, really hot cup of Fukushima tea.

To the unhappiness of many a UFO researcher, Errol Bruce-Knapp, keeper of UFO Updates and conductor of extraordinary audio interviews and affiliated projects has announced an end to his popular message list - over 90,000 comments have enlightened readers for years.  Thanks Errol, and best wishes for the projects you intend to take on in the future! 

Sadly, UFO-related sites of relevance have been on the decline -- all that history dressed up with no place to go.  We all hope the day will come when our efforts, small or immense, gain proper respect among scientists as well as skeptics.  The debunkers who contribute nothing, of course, as usual, can go to hell. 

Maybe there was a bright spot this week when Egypt publicly got around to labeling the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.  Fantastic -- now if only our President would find time to do the same and condemn MB sympathizers affiliated with his filthy fleabag Administration.  In the USA, of course, they go by different organizational names, and I long for the politically changed day when each and every extremist Muslim insect is grabbed by his or her rat-like neck and tossed out of the country and/or influence.  Trust me, thousands of dead American military and civilian personnel justify this particular longing on my part.  Egypt's military just tends to be a whole lot smarter about dangers to national survival than the agenda-infested frauds currently scurrying about within the people's White House and Congress.  If only we could turn the Fort Hood shooter over to the Egyptians for some swift justice.

But, yikes!  It's Christmas Eve, and there's "evil Ed" Snowden giving an almost surreal "Christmas message" from Russia via British TV, sort of like a pope or something, and he's declaring victory -- makes you think of President George Bush's Mission Accomplished thing.  Well, um, anyway, there's Snowden on TV, and by the time he wishes everybody a merry Christmas at the end, I'm thinking, this guy's articulate speech sounds more presidential and far more sincere than Obama's occasional oratorical poop fests.  How is that possible? 

So the USA wants to hang Snowden by the thumbs, Snowden already hung the USA by the . . .well, by something else by waking us up to spies, spies, spies everywhere, and we now know the NSA's initials better than the rest of the alphabet.  The intelligence community is outraged still, and there's reason for that.  Nevertheless, while it's conceivable that Snowden might turn himself in to U.S. authorities, it also might make really good sense to promise him roses and forgiveness if he keeps (and can keep) the other 97 percent of secret what’s-its to himself and comes back home.  You see, no matter what side one takes, it's still a rotten, nasty world, and you can't solve it by a squeaky-clean trip to Disneyland because eventually you have to return.  An Administration plagued with such crowd pleasers as Fast and Furious and Hillary Clinton's adventures in Benghazi-land is hardly in a position to conquer Snowden's actions by throwing out a halo of self-perfection. 

In fact, some folks who remain honorable still get slapped around by officials supposedly hovering on the right side.  This seems to have happened to former Air Force technical sergeant John Burroughs, who survived some tricky cardiac surgery a few days ago.  Burroughs, reportedly intimately (as in in your face) involved in the alleged Bentwaters (Rendlesham Forest) UFO event of December, 1980 in England, could not get the Veterans Administration to release his Air Force medical records.  The information they hold might have been vital to his surgery and the questionable way his heart disease progressed following close-up contact with a bizarre object, along with another U.S. airman.  Unfortunately, not even U.S. Senators McCain or Kyl of Arizona could wrestle the records from the VA, not even by the time of Burroughs' surgery, and the official excuses of sorry but continued to ebb and flow.

One would almost suspect the records could be the final indictment against the world's biggest government secret, the one everybody suspects, but nobody at high levels admits publicly.  Lack of disclosure is the word some prefer.

Which is merely to say the UFO phenomenon is real, and to people such as Burroughs and military personnel who came long before him, its effects appear to be tangibly and dangerously real. 

This writer, a former Air Force staff sergeant, wishes the retired Air Force tech sergeant a speedy recovery and a basket filled with the answers he desperately needs and deserves regarding the long and winding road encountered in England 33 years ago.  War stories among military personnel -- of the strangest variety -- don't always occur on the battlefield.

Rage Against the Pharmachine: Drug Dynasty, Part 2 of 2

(Uh uh, no fair looking -- gotta read Part 1 first, way down past this entry.)

 

So.  So, the decades have rolled forward quite a distance since the Vietnam years, and you know what?  Very recently, I was again the recipient -- via the kindness of others -- of several drug dynasty gifts intended for physicians -- things such as flash drives (cool!), flashlights, clock paperweights, table clocks, laser pointers, key rings, balls that glow in the dark. . .etc., etc.  Man oh man, if I owned a drug company I guess I'd be bribing the white coat community with goodies, too.

Supposedly, all the gift-giving is going away, but I wouldn't count on that.  Backdoor deals never went out of style, as any D.C. lobbyist can tell you.  Ain't no ducks in Drug Dynasty, except for folks who need to duck for cover.

If you like your drug company freebie, you can keep your drug company freebie.  If you want to continue bestowing gifts and kisses upon the doctors who play the game, you can continue bestowing gifts and kisses. 

And now the 17 trillion dollar deficit, accompanied by an albatross named Obamacare, enters the room.  Wasn't it just yesterday when the medical establishment put on a happy face and announced to one and all that health care is a partnership between doctor and patient?  How is it that Congress allowed a partnership expansion, to include the Internal Revenue Service and government representatives aplenty?  What a deal, what a marriage, what a bureaucratic colonoscopy for the masses.

And the multi-national drug companies play on, as Americans plod forward still as the poor suckers forced to pay higher prices than anybody else for the alleged products of better living through chemistry.  A society hypnotized by medications, and doctors forced to spend more time staring at computer screens than examining the patients whose grand lives have been reduced only to pixels.  Computer says the pixilated human requires computer-determined drugs per digital calculations from hell.  Pac-Man guards the nation and Pac-Man diagnoses and treats the patient in a vast game of winners and losers.  Guess who loses, particularly if the patient wishes to try and is automatically denied access to alternative treatments or alternative supplements.

And what explosive piece of news hit the TV screens, radio and Internet this very week?  Why, it seems that vitamins don't do a damned thing for our health.  Nope, no cardiac benefits, no diabetic prop-up, no nothing.  You undoubtedly saw this announcement from on high by way of your local journalist-pretenders quoting, what was it -- The Annals of Internal Medicine? 

Trouble is, radio talk show host Michael Savage (see more below) went where pseudo-journalists fear to go -- right to the long-term study itself.  What did he find?  That researchers associated with the long-term vitamin study were actually unimpressed with their own results because a large number among thousands of volunteers over the years had dropped out of the project, making results questionable, to say the least.

As if that wasn't bad enough for a situation which, you can almost bet, won't be corrected by the TV sound bite crowd -- some later discovered that the vitamin "study" was financed by a major pharmaceutical company.  Again.  I say again because this sort of thing happens over and over, with major "studies" condemning vitamins and other supplements paid for by drug companies and their panels of paid-off physicians, who might just as soon have us swallowing their expensive sometimes-poisons instead of alternatives which may work just as nicely or better.  Surely, it's no secret that drug companies exist to make money and sell, sell, sell.  And research IS so expensive -- that's why Americans have to foot most of the bill while the rest of the world gets off cheaply in the world of legal drug peddling.

Robert's WTF? of the day:  Yeah, I know, I don't generally do a WTF of the day, but today is different.  What the heck is it with the psychiatric community?  Now they're adding a new diagnosis to the DSM IV (the do-all, end-all reference source which codes every disorder known to man and woman in a numerical format and thus legitimizes new diseases, syndromes, maladies and, near as I can figure, crazy intellectual pipe dreams).  This time, they've outdone themselves, making a mental disorder out of folks who engage in free thinking and opposition to authority.  Hey, even as a kid I knew they did this stuff in the old Soviet Union, and we know the practice continues in Russia today.  Why are we intent upon becoming Russia?  For my part, and not as a patient (underline that, please), I've encountered a few psychologists in my life.  Some were rock-solid, and some appeared disturbed in their own right. Very, very.  I really, really buy that old chestnut hypothesis suggesting that some people in the psych field enter that troubled portal as much to learn about themselves as to learn about their patients.  Meanwhile, the medical conjurer class continues adjusting that freakin' lucrative DSM.  Who's going to stop the clown show?  Surely not the clowns.

From Drug Dynasty to Duck Dynasty:  Gay lobby, you are becoming ever so tiresome in your militancy.  Why the speech-fascist tendencies?  Would you be better off in Iran or Russia?  Look, I fought for your right to serve honorably in the military, but tone down the persistent outrage.  If you keep going off half-cocked (um. . .) like this, some might believe that you aren't comfy with your own sexual "identity."  There will always be folks who cannot or will not accept gays, and just as Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty exercised his First Amendment rights by quoting biblical history and pointing out -- correctly -- how human anatomy is constructed, your representatives did the same by taking Mr. Robertson to task.  That should have been the end of it.  However, when members of any group take the extra step of demanding firings or resignations, that's a wrong-way street, cowardly and absurd.  We must not shut anyone up in these matters.   You've already pounced mercilessly upon the recent release, The Book of Matt, which portrays tragically murdered gay kid and agenda-cloaked poster boy Matthew Shepherd (hope I spelled that right) as the victim of drug use/users rather than intentional gay mayhem.  Come on, there's room for everybody to speak.

 

The DD controversy?  I can't comment on the religious aspects, but having worked in the medical field I can suggest that gay folk check out human anatomy reference sources -- where all available evidence indicates the dangers and inappropriateness of anorectal activities other than those intended via human physiology.  I've never seen a medical textbook suggesting the anal highway journey as a way of life, and there can be severe consequences.  I mean, do what you want to do, as gay people have throughout history -- but it's kind of hard to argue against basic anatomical principles, no matter how nature, in her own peculiar way, instructs some to manipulate the dilemma for sexual reasons (and I do believe homosexuality is hard-wired, not a flip of some coin of choice).  Be yourself, live free or die, whatever, but respect the rights of others to speak, as you would have them respect your rights to speak.  To do otherwise puts our society in serious trouble, and guess whose heads are the first to be chopped off in the end if things go bonkers?  Got that?  Good, 'cause I ain't in the mood to reiterate today.  By the way. . .

Have a happy 2014 and don't forget to vote bad people out in November.  That should be interesting.  And don't forget. . .

TURN OFF THE TV beginning January 1 and find Michael Savage's "The Savage Nation" on your radio dial.  The "controversial" Dr. Savage is going big, big time on major stations from coast to coast, and neither his wit, nor twist on political and scientific issues should be dismissed.  Yes, often he sounds like a crabby old man and can seem as unpleasant as your least favorite uncle -- but once your mind cuts through the crust you may discover that his brilliance and common sense imparted on national radio are medications for the mind. You may hate his show for a few days, but chances are you'll become hooked.  Conservative?  Yes -- doesn't everybody quest to be something?  Borders, language and culture are more than words in The Savage Nation.  Bonus:  A poodle named Teddy (you'll find out).

Rage Against the Pharmachine: Drug Dynasty, Part 1 of 2

Drugs sure are funny critters, aren't they?  Scummy folks, in lieu of any other tangible reason to live, risk their lives and the lives of others by running illegal varieties across U.S. borders every day and every night on behalf of far scummier people who bask in the profits of destroyed lives and death.  Border agents do their best to keep the pathway narrow, of course, but shackled as they are by Washington hacks (many of whose lives are probably infested with drugs when they make vital national decisions) and regulations friendly only to drug runners and illegal aliens, the welcome mat for criminal activity hasn't budged much.

Me, I never tried marijuana in any form, nor sampled the other illicit drugs.  I tend to believe life is horrible enough, and we should just tolerate it the way nature intended in order to get that truthful hit of, you know, absolute emotional misery.  But drugs?  That's not to say I could avoid illegal drugs..  I served in the Air Force during the Vietnam Era, when it was common to find pretty much any drug you wanted, either on or off base.  We, the medical corpsmen (or corpse men, in President Obama's words, bordering upon illiteracy) worked in hospitals, and off-base drug parties among some medical personnel were not uncommon -- not that I could blame them, because they really needed escape from the human agony and stress encountered every day, thanks in no small part to LBJ's ongoing indecisive self-panic regarding the seemingly endless Southeast Asian conflict. 

One of my roommates, "busted" off base for drugs, was hospitalized for a while and then kicked out of the Air Force.  To this day, I'm not altogether sure he didn't want it that way all along.  Remember, these were years when the military draft was in effect, and -- unlike the wonderful, dedicated military members whom today enlist of their own accord -- a good many servicemen weren't exactly serving because we were patriots, we were there to avoid draft-dodger prison sentences.  The vast majority performed assigned duties expertly.

But just because I never indulged in illegal drugs doesn't mean I wasn't addicted to a medication.  My final 15 months of service occurred at an Air Force base hospital where I was the one and only medical person trained in a particular specialty -- physical therapy -- and I operated my own clinic, and my entire chain of command was the chief of surgery, followed by the hospital commander.   Their first impression of me may have been lacking, because the very day I breezed into town, outside the base I got a speeding ticket from a local cop (I contend this was only because my car had NY plates and this was Georgia, no fan of northerners. . .), and though I paid a fine right away there was still a chance that the entire chain of command would be called into court.  As if.  Didn't happen, seems physicians were needed at the hospital more than at some kangaroo court of the deep South.  Not to digress. . .

At some point I developed a nasty cold or viral infection, and after days of illness ended up with an overbearing cough.  By then, I knew all the hospital physicians and routinely treated patients referred by each, so it was no trouble to get a prescription -- in these less-regulated times -- for anything I wanted.  So, I needed something for the cough, and a script for a brand-name cough syrup containing codeine was provided.  Oh yeah, that stuff did the trick.  The syrup, brown like Coca Cola, curbed the cough until I didn't care about the cough anymore -- but I cared about the codeine in the syrup.  A lot.   That was some pretty decent cough syrup.  So decent, in fact, that I went from hospital doctor to doctor, none knowing of my similar requests of their colleagues, for extra prescriptions.  For a few weeks I downed a fair amount of "cough syrup" both on and off duty and achieved a bit of very nice tranquility.  The mild addiction was brief and I eventually knew enough to extract myself (and my precious liver) from its joys, but I entertained a better appreciation for harmless medication addictions gone wild.

That was a lesson I should have learned during a duty assignment at another Air Force base, when a pharmacy specialist airman (and friend) who filled a prescription for me replied, when I asked if a particular medication was "good" for me, "Bob, none of the stuff in this room is good for you."  I knew what he meant right away.  Wrong word, good.  He was always witty and intellectual and right to the point -- and, not too much to my surprise, in later years I discovered that he held a high position with a U.S. government cabinet-level department..  Apparently, his talents extended far beyond an occasion where, despite my protests, he easily picked two locks on my locked briefcase in less than one minute.  Maybe in less than 30 seconds.

Though not having much interaction with the hospital pharmacy at my final USAF base, I did make some very basic observations.  First, the staff displayed a large jar in which was deposited one each of every pill in stock, and even in 1971 that glass jar, stuffed with capsules and pills of all shapes, sizes and hues, reflected rainbow colors like a kaleidoscope.  Why so many pills in the world?  What's the cost and who makes the money?

Second, I frequently witnessed the arrival of what I almost assumed were fashion models, a never-ending cavalcade of impeccably attired young men, routinely making their way to either the pharmacy, physicians' offices or administrative areas.  These, I was to learn from folks who knew, were the pushers -- the sales people representing various drug companies.  And they brought presents -- not only medication samples, but little forget-me-not gifts such as pens, posters suitable for framing, paperweights and the like.  Things to keep visits and drugs fresh in the minds of those with the power to purchase and prescribe medications.  I still have a series of artists' adventure scene posters -- given to me by the chief of surgery (my boss), who received them from a salesman, and probably would have thrown them out otherwise because such "gifts" materialized constantly.

More?  Okay.  As my final Air Force weeks wound down in 1972, I started collecting my own personal pharmacy to take into civilian life.  Just in case.  Just in case.  It wasn't difficult.  I simply visited the emergency room up the hall from my clinic and grabbed whatever I desired from the medicine cabinet (yes, life was so carefree back then. . .) with the approval -- make that nonchalance -- of fellow corpsmen who were counting their own days until exit.  By this time the military was really cracking down on illegal drugs, but nobody was really watching the legal medication treasure chest.

When my discharge day arrived at last, I had already packed up my personal belongings, and at customary Air Force expense they were shipped back home by a major moving company.  Among several cardboard boxes of stuff accumulated over four years of service  -- and, fortunately, not searched for by them -- was, I guess you could call it, a generous pirate's booty of Darvon, Librium, Valium, Compazine and a wealth of enough other bottled goodies to make a street corner drug fiend lapse into ecstasy.  Just in case.

Alas, there really is no exciting climax to this story.  My ill-gotten collection of colorful capsules and pills remained concealed and safe for a few years, untouched.  Just in case never came, but I stayed ready, just in case.  I nearly forgot about them, but one day I simply gathered the tokens of just in case together and threw them out, no longer even sure why I shipped them home (over multiple and  forbidden state lines, yet, wha-hoooooo!).

Okay, so much for my personal tour of memory lane's "drug dynasty."  Next time, we'll fast-forward to the future.  The pharmaco-now.

All I Want for Christmas is Two

Readers:  Winter presents occasional or seemingly perdurable obstacles to many of us.  For me, access to computers becomes hit-and-miss, so I'm sure you'll understand, should there be lengthy interludes between blog entries.  However, as always, if you keep in touch with many of the links listed on this page you'll be way ahead on both UFO news AND the real and vital news "they" don't give us via TV's fantasy-drenched progressive "news" spin.

Not to keep you in suspense about the title.  It's very simple, really.  My Christmas wish is that Congress grow a pair and start impeachment proceedings -- successfully -- against the person whose mail received at the White House, if had my way, would merely be addressed to "occupant."

This is hardly my little lonely pipe dream.  National Review Online of December 5 explored the "I" word's possibilities, and apparently there is a spark or two in Congress willing to start some kind of impeachment fire, but the general will just isn't there.  Further, the possibility that the Senate would ever complete the act of impeachment and throw a constitutional parasite out of office is highly unlikely.

Frankly, when you have 100 percent of one party's representatives in the House successfully destroying, despite its faults, the best health care system in the world in an attempt to please a progressive agenda, instead of heeding the demands of millions of angry constituents, what can one logically expect? 

Unfortunately, impeachment wouldn't gut the totality of rot infesting this bunch, because the mantle would simply be passed down one level, but at least it would be something.

One thing's apparently for sure:  This do-nothing Congress, comfortable in its complacency and, all too frequently, contempt (hint:  immigration "reform") for the Americans it's sworn to represent, deserves an appropriate Election Day surprise next year, a time when voters can both send a message and rid the legislative branch of those foolhardy enough to ignore the message.

DON'T DEPEND ON THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION WHEN YOU HAVE A UFO ENCOUNTER:   Many thanks to Linda Moulton Howe's Earthfiles Web site for posting this attorney's press release regarding victimization in a famous alleged UFO incident -- and note that, perhaps wisely, the release makes no mention of a UFO. . . as a UFO.  Click below for the press release, and below that for an extended article: 

http://www.earthfiles.com/images/news/B/BurroughsVAmedDenial111913.pdf

 

http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=2150&category=Environment

***

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate its meaning!

Demand the AVOIDable Health Care Act

 

 The heartbreaking result of addiction to hope and change?  Even the squirrels have had enough of the Obama bunch.  Save a squirrel today by voting out evil politicians (non-credited photo from the Web).

Psst, hey kids -- just about now, or maybe a few weeks ago, you started catching on to the fact that President Obama needs your money to get the devious Affordable Health Care Act rolling.  That's probably one reason why he wants the minimum wage increased dramatically, so's you can make more and then pay more in taxes to inflate this failing dirigible.  ' course, it's kind of hard to know how that would work out, being that businesses burdened with super-high wage difficulties and faced with customers who can't afford to buy their stuff anymore would have no option but to lay you off and then close their doors forever  Heck, the prez already classified you as a minor until the age of 26, allowing you to remain on your parents' (disintegrating) health insurance plan -- but now the truth is out.

So polls show that your confidence in Obama is quickly going down the drain, as it should have five years ago, but at least the progressive history-altering crap you're being injected with in colleges and universities by mad-dog, America-hating socialist professors is being called into question by whatever remains of inquiring minds.  Just consider yourselves fortunate to be, as yet, mentally unencumbered by the Common Core freak show currently invading public schools from coast to coast, making even the best teachers irrelevant.

You might be in shock, actually, realizing as you should that the mainstream media currently exists in large part to be Obama Administration cheerleaders and butt-kissers, and despite your own potential aspirations to enter the world of journalism as a career, perhaps you understand that you first serve your masters -- and then you impart either the truth they allow or the truth they manufacture for public consumption.

Perhaps you're also raising a bejeweled eyebrow at another astounding revelation -- that both the Democrat and Republican parties --and don't forget the labor unions -- are uncomfortably populated by progressives, a word that sounds harmless and wonderful but, historically, leads to nothing but communism in the quest for a Utopian fantasy.  Workers of the world unite -- into slavery. 

You young folk even embraced the Environmental Protection Agency, since pumped up by Obama and his regulating minions into a hulking monster intent upon fining and suing into extinction great American corporations, small businesses and individuals.  Maybe even your own family.

Yes, you're young, but, my oh my, how you're starting to mature!  Now you begin to see how those in government consider themselves in charge of you, fully.   And that's not the United States we used to know.  Obamacare?  The ultimate insult, and you damned well know it.

Were I a superhero, and I guess I could call myself Eraserman or something, I'd obliterate those thousands of absurd health care act pages devised over the decades by evil, progressive nanny-state lizard people, and then I'd make things simple.  Like this:

 

ERASERMAN'S  AVOIDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT:

 1.  Allow Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines, forcing hundreds or thousands of insurance companies to compete for customer dollars by offering appealing and wildly affordable health insurance plans, unencumbered by government control except for minimal provisions regarding pre-existing conditions -- and coverage for pre-existing conditions should become affordable once rates decrease and the patient load is spread out all over the nation. Less people enrolled in Medicaid-style state programs because of decreased insurance rates for all should result in significant taxpayer savings as well.

2.  Allow neither the vast pharmaceutical industry, nor the American Medical Association to dictate how Americans spend their health care dollars.  Wasn't it just a few years ago when medical professionals and patients were encouraged to have a compatible relationship, instead of one side force-feeding the other regarding health care?  With all the drug commercials on TV, one might think there's intent to control every part of one's anatomy with medications.  Obviously, too many among us can't function without obligatory drugs anymore.  Just say no. . .to big pharma and the big health care industry, and have the choice to do so without being penalized by government regs written so somebody could be paid off or whatever.  Freedom to control one's medical destiny is really a libertarian thing.

 

3.  Don't tax the medical equipment companies as per Obamacare.

 

4.  There is no number four, but somewhere there's a bureaucrat wishing to write a number four right now.

Well, it's a start, kids -- and far better than the bureaucratic nightmare those rats in Washington just put on your backs.  My suggestion?  When you vote, seek out "Tea Party" candidates.  That seems to be where honesty and integrity flourish these days, and the apparent hatred by the lackluster GOP for Tea Party people just shows the need to get the old guard progressives out of the Washington rats' nest.  What other choice have we?  Isn't it bad enough that Obama's techno-serpents are monitoring everything you do on the Internet -- right now?  Oooh, I know how much you hate that.