Of Pilots and Patriots

Everyone felt that magnanimous moment.  The moment our country accepted its first minority leader.  A moment when a reasonable man promised change and honesty in government.  Most of you voted for that.

It’s taken years, many years, for intellectuals whom truly understand the facets of history, patriotism and democracy to step forward, to have a voice, and to be reflected upon in our nation.  That voice came cast upon a ballot for a black man as our President, a voice cast amidst a failing economy, amidst a war of lies and deceit against an ambiguous enemy funded by our own hate and prejudice for over fifty years, and amidst a man whose previous leadership was as close to an institutional monarchy as our country has ever seen.

And people want to know why I am angry?  It’s because of this moment that I realize how truly braindead this country is.  It is this pivotal moment that separates those who actually care about their fellow countrymen, and those who are incredulous, self-centered bigots using patriotism as a mask for age-old supremest ideals.

Did you expect our President to single-handedly save the country in less than a year?  Did it occur to you that your opposition and ignorance might be inhibiting a larger underlying plan for our country’s economic recovery?  Has it occurred to you the last time we had a depression of this magnitude was over 80 years ago, lasted for 25 years, and that we solved it by going to war?   Of course not.  Because all you care about is your present situation, nevermind the mess passed to us from the last generation that we will pass on to the next generation.

You are all so quick to pass judgment and lay blame, and rather than support a progressive agenda to ease expenses on the middle class, small businesses, and provide each of us the general well being guaranteed to us by our own constitution, you all would rather go back to the old system.  The system that doesn’t work.  The one that got us into this mess to begin with.  It’s easy for Glenn Beck to get up on his podium and scream at the top of his lungs about how bad the real estate market is and then blame the President for the financial sector’s liberal expenditure of funds.  It’s easy for Sarah Palin to get up on her soap box and use her children as a crutch to promote her hip-and-motherly image to conservative liberals, although why she believes that disabled children and small town bumpkins deserve greater rights than a gay couple is a startling revelation of hypocrisy.  It’s easy for Billy O’Reilly to shout out condonations of gunning civilians down at abortion clinics.  These are the proponents of hate crime and violence in our country that will lead us into our next civil war.  I’d like to thank Fox News for their continued successes in airing bigotry and gross dehumanization.

If you were President, what exactly do you think you would do if your nation’s seven largest corporations went bankrupt at once and were in danger of closing down.  Would you let them fail? Would you allow 20 million Americans to become unemployed, another 200 million Americans to lose 4 trillion dollars worth of investments, assets, and retirement funds, watch as the system collapsed in on itself sending our entire financial and auto sectors into the dark ages and destroying a middle class that already can’t afford to power the economy.  Maybe you’d like to tie a bow around the country before you hand it over to China.  Your other option is to bail the corporations out, because you understand that the nation cannot handle a failure of that magnitude, while being fully aware that you will be branded a socialist and worse by attempting to control the market for the emergency betterment of your nation.

We’re in economic despair because of our overseas business, investing and illegal immigration.  Our government has to spend whatever it takes to get us out of this mess.  Unfortunately, I would have like to have seen congress make better spending decisions.  We spend 600 billion dollars a year on foreign oil.  That’s a big ole’ check for Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and South America.  There are an estimated 9 million illegal immigrants in our country which cost our country about 250 billion dollars annually.  While I agree that this is a problem, I also support Obama in that is a violation of civil liberties to assume that a Hispanic is not a legal resident, to which certain recent attempts by state laws exclusively target and alienate said minority, despite a fair number of illegal Cubans, Chinese and Canadians in the country.  How can you possibly support blatant racial profiling that doesn’t apply to white people?  Continuing, we invest in billions of dollars of Asian corporations and labor just to have our own products sold back to us.  We spend 25 billion dollars a year in free aid to other countries.  We’ve spent 1.5 trillion dollars on the Iraq war, much of that money goes to technology from other countries, private construction industries, and perishable goods, because you can’t go reusing fired bullets and missile shrapnel, can you?  When your country’s imports are greater than it’s exports in value, your country is losing massive amounts of money, because we need China’s rice more than they need our cell phones, the situation should be rather obvious.  We don’t make anything that other countries need in any great demand.

You want to save our economy? It is absolutely imperative to end our reliance on fossil fuels.  Saving the money we spend overseas and using it to develop hydrogen, electric, and ethanol products, thus creating entire new industries in science, farming, warehousing, transportation, automotive manufacturing, pipe lining, and technology just to name a few, recycling our own money, enjoying cheaper fuel, protecting our environment, and being able to produce affordable exports that can help rebuild our economy.  Our so-called socialist President has already allocated 60 billion dollars to alternative energy research.

Since we’re on the topic of socialism, lets talk about health care reform.  Your ancestor’s gave up your civil rights long ago when we adopted social security and medicare, car insurance reform, more recently seat belt laws, legalized wiretaps, public and traffic security enforcement cameras, and the Patriot Act, which among other things, illegalizes war protesting.  You’ve already been socialized, how can this possibly hurt?  Universal health care is possible because the health care industry, as published by the CATO institute, claims that the nation’s combined health care providers claim 340 billion dollars in revenue just from the insured alone, while only paying out 170 billion dollars a year in actual medical expenses. Americans only use 50% of their coverage.  You’re telling me that government can’t run a health insurance program for a fraction of the cost as health care companies by elimating10 million dollar CEO’s, saving  you and your employer a massive amount of gross pay, obtaining a plan tailored to what you need and can afford as opposed to what insurance companies tell you that you have to take, while being able to insure the financially destitute and those with pre-existing conditions. You live in a country with the 50th lowest mortality rate in the world, and you tell me that you don’t want a middle man between you and your doctor? What do you think a health insurance company is?  Hell, I wish the government would replace my cellular phone service too!

I’ve had enough ineffectual arguments from opponents without propositions.  Waving a flag while denouncing the government doesn’t make you anymore a patriot then driving your car off a cliff makes you a pilot.  Now is the time for action, not for cheap theories and ignorant mantras.  If you don’t have a real solution to our problems, lay down and play GOP.

I got your placebo right here…

So I’ve been researching a lot of different stocks lately, which brings me to my first official eco-political point:  Investing is nothing short of a chronic gambling problem. However even more alarming, as I was reading through countless company profiles, is how terrifying it is to watch a company collapse, and this is why it was of utmost importance for Obama to bail these industries out, simply because there are too many, that are too large, to let slip into the oblivion.  Too many peoples’ money and livelihoods are at stake.  While I sympathize with the small businesses who have to live in the shadow of these failing companies, millions of jobs and billions of dollars of invested money are at risk of being wiped right out the window if they fail, leaving the country in an even worse position than before.  You can’t blame the government for this mess and you cannot fault them for developing a strategy to deal with this kind of catastrophe, which is to appropriate, break up, and subsidize failing commodities.  Furthermore, it is also of utmost importance to understand trading and how to make intelligent decisions.  It’s important that companies with no future dwindle themselves down to nothing via slow bearish divergence, where investors can choose to take marginal losses, as opposed to say Enron, which blatantly went belly up seemingly over night.  With the new subsidy laws, any large corporation that goes bankrupt, is split into pieces and sold off, recouping some of the expenses of the investors and enrolling them into a new option with a potential future, further empowering burgeoning intermediaries.  For the purposes of demonstration of how this should work, and as smart investing advice, here’s an example of a small pharmaceutical company that most likely has no future.

Acadia Pharmaceuticals 2009 annual report:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDMwNDl8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1

Now, I’d like to point out a couple of things.  First of all, if you are not that intelligent and have difficulty understanding the information, what you perceive to read is about a company that is apparently developing a new drug treatment for sufferers of illnesses ranging from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s disease.  Fair enough, sounds like a good legitimate cause.  Second of all, the company states that it has made some progress in some areas and less in other areas.  Sure, it sounds like the company is at least being honest about its research.

If you are any kind of cynic at all, the article has many obvious flaws.  This is how you learn to think for yourself.  You should be cynical just going into this report, but in case you are not sure how, I’ll break it down step by step.

1.) It is a pharmaceutical company.  As with all pharmaceutical companies, they get rich by promoting overpriced drug products, seldom with proof of their actual statistical success, often with a myriad of side effects, while paying practitioners commissions to sell or endorse the product.  In my opinion, this is gross extortion of the ill and often in direct opposition of the Hippocratic oath.  For instance, my grandmother has been taking a water pill (removes water) for the past three years to ease swelling in her legs.  This medication has a side effect of dehydration and potential kidney damage.  Just a few months ago, she was diagnosed with severe kidney damage resulting in 75% reduced kidney function.  Since taking her off of this pill, her kidney function has stabilized.  Why would a doctor recommend this medication if it could potentially shut down someones’ kidneys?  That’s just stupid.  Who’s to blame here?

2.) Secondly, is the wording used in the company’s annual report.  While it may all sound official and forthcoming to the untrained eye, there are some choice phrases that the company uses which are dead giveaways that this company is almost surely a hoax as far as investment potential, and is more or less a laughable attempt to interest retarded investors.  Phrases such as PLACEBO THERAPY and PROVES RESULTS WHEN COMBINED WITH OTHER XYZ DRUG should be a giant red flag that this company’s research is uncontrolled and a complete joke.

3.) Anyone who claims to be developing medicines for such advanced diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, which even today aren’t fully understood,  better have some DAMN GOOD RESEARCH AND RESOURCES.  These people don’t.

4.) *hint hint* The CEO makes $1.2 million a year and gets another $1 million bonus.

5.) The numbers, If you analyze the company’s chart, show they’ve been in a steady bear decline for at least 52 weeks, and further results show that the company’s projected income trend for the next 12 months given their current and historic states results in a staggering profit of -54 million dollars.  I almost feel sorry for investors in this company, and this is why you don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

Now to be fair, it is possible that one of three things happens.  It’s important to take them under consideration regardless of how implausible they sound.

1.) Most Likely:  The company goes bankrupt and investors lose most, if not all, of a relatively worthless stock (as opposed to Enron).  Under the best circumstances however, the company may be bought out, merged, or subsidized, perhaps keeping some investments intact.

2.) Quite Possible:  The company pays off some key people, releases a placebo that does nothing but pretends its a treatment for Parkinson’s, ends up in the Journal of the American Medical Association as a wonder drug, and they end up charging $900.00 for a month prescription of skittles.

3.) Highly Improbable:  The company does, in fact, produce a miracle treatment for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Cancer,  Leukemia, HIV, etc…

At any rate, smaller companies like this can go the way of the dodo without much in the way of economic ramification (and should), however large dying companies, too proud, too stubborn, and too greedy require that a third party to become involved to liquidate remaining assets.  Otherwise the company, the investors, and all of its related sectors take massive casualties in not only enormous capital losses but also consumer confidence, skepticism, and further hampering economic recovery.

Seperation Anxiety

Let me make it quite clear that I will not tolerate any religious ideologies on my board.  As an agnostic, I hold no personal contempt against Christianity or any other religion (practiced peacefully), however, I stand firmly by my first amendment rights regarding the separation of church and state.  Religious ideals, and their biases, do not belong in a house of congress, or in a court of law.  Thus more, the influence of religion in modern politics still poses a threat today to each man and woman’s personal liberties to an end that can be considered nothing short of a socialist agenda.  This defeats the intention and purpose of the first amendment as drafted by Thomas Jefferson and the Bill of Rights.

1st Amendment

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

This means that the Federal government may not exercise any act or law supporting, nor denying, any religion or its practices.  Thomas Jefferson was no idiot.  He was aware of the diversity his nation was capable of, and drafted the Bill of Rights with that flexibility in mind.

14th amendment

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The fourteenth amendment, redundant as it is, ensures that all Americans receive equal treatment regardless of state-based laws that might inhibit their first amendment rights by including them as a single body of people, rather than people of a specific province and offer each the protections of Federal law.

In conclusion, institutions of religion do not belong in politics, but find their way in far too often, particularly regarding homosexuality, woman’s rights, and euthanasia, but the bottom line is keep your nose, and your religious ethics, out of other peoples’ business.

Addendumus Terminologus

I’d like to take a few moments to educate the masses on my personal vocabulary, and its definitions that I shall be tossing around from time to time, as to clear up any confusions that may result from the ambiguity that these definitions have befallen over the ages.

Vocabulary

Democrats:  A congressional group of bumbling altruists who believe that the federal government should involve itself in any endeavor which seeks to undermine the underprivileged American.  Whilst I generally loosely associate myself with this group, I do not always condone of its actions.

Republicans:  A congressional group of narcissistic hermits, self-proclaimed evangelists, and greedy profiteers who purposely inhibit progress and seek to undermine the efforts of Democrats for their own personal gain.

Olde Republicans:  A congressional group of narcissistic hermits, self-proclaimed evangelists, and greedy profiteers who seek to limit government spending and believe that the Federal Government should keep its nose out of other people’s business.

Tea Baggers:  A small militia of radical fundamentalists and fascist ex-republicans posing as liberals that wishes to overthrow congress and permanently set the American calendar back to the year 1950.

Liberals: Advocates of civil rights movements based on standards of equality whom support as much spending and involvement from the Federal Government as necessary to get a job done.

Conservatives:  Advocates of civil rights generally based on Christian family values, limited government spending, and unratified constitutional doctrines whom believe that State control should supersede that of the Federal Government even it if results in the burning of suspected heretics tied to stakes.

Fundamentalists:  Perhaps the only word I will use ignorantly, because fundamentalists are not always bad, however within  the context of my rants, fundamentalists are hateful, bigoted people of maligned religious or ideological ilks who seek to destroy everything that they cannot convert or control.

He who shall not be named:  The 43rd President of the United States.

Impeachment: A term for slapping a government official on the wrist and saying, “bad!”

Idiot: A nondiscriminatory adjective referring to people who are intellectually inferior to me;  those incapable of producing facts, logical arguments, rational opinions, or whom simply don’t care about topics that directly affect their lives or the well being of others.

Cynicalwizard now online: 7/21/2010; 6:00 pm.

Welcome to the blog of cynicalwizard; a staunch defender of libertarian ethics and your home to the cruelest, most venomous reviews of politics, economics, and entertainment that has ever seethed from human fingertips.  Please standby for ethical dysfunction and psychological alienation.