The Masque of the Orange Death

Watching Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it struck me as the most tone deaf, myopic public health policy since Prince Prospero locked himself and a thousand of his richest friends in his abbey and tried to party through the plague. But then I remembered our own Henry Tifft Gage, and his "Business First! Bodies Second!" approach to the San Francisco plague of 1900.

Henry T. Gage was a lawyer from East Saginaw, Michigan who followed the advice of Horace Greeley and went west to seek his fortune. He managed to marry the heir to a minor Spanish Land Grant family, and parlayed her real estate holdings into a single term as California Governor.

Gage served from 1899 to 1903, and is chiefly remembered for his resemblance to Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, and for his tireless efforts to hush up an outbreak of bubonic plague, fearing the news would be bad for business. And Henry was big on big business; if he'd still held the governorship in 1906, I imagine you would have found him in the smoldering ruins of San Francisco, bitterly denouncing the Fake News and their irresponsible rumors of rubble.

But why would someone in a position of public trust basically commit negligent homicide, especially when there were multiple better options (Gage spent the last half of his term beating the Federal government off with a stick to prevent their assistance). Well, Gage was a Republican, and like others of his kind he paid greater obeisance to his constituents in the boardroom rather than the boarding house. But he was also a pioneer, and faced with a deadly public health crisis, he whipped up an avant garde parfait of science denialism, sociopathy, and personal pettiness which anticipated the Trump Administration by well over a century.

Gage began his political career as a corporate lawyer for the railroads, which basically owned California government at the end of the 19th Century, and proved himself just the kind of grasping, ambitious, morally gray lickspittle the likes of which Cornelius Vanderbilt, Collis P. Huntington, and E.H. Harriman doted on. In 1898 the Southern Pacific Railroad engineered his selection as the Republican gubernatorial nominee, but even with the backing of the railroad barons he only managed to squeak out a narrow victory against his opponent, San Francisco's Congressional representative.

He began his inaugural address by slavering over the spoils of the Spanish-American War, rhapsodizing, "The peaceful acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, extending our empire beyond our Pacific shore, should be followed as a political necessity by the annexation of the Philippines. The center of commerce must move westward." Which wasn't great for the Hawaiians, and wouldn't have been fabulous for the Filipinos either, but it would certainly have proven a windfall for the railroads, a fact which the press noticed. One newspaper published an editorial cartoon depicting a railroad tycoon leading the new governor around on a leash, and Gage responded by "ramrodd[ing] a censorship bill thru the Legislature, restricting the press whenever editorial content involved politics or politicians." Again, c'est très Trumpy!

Gage demanded the formation of a "western merchant marine for the carriage of our imports and exports, and luring to our markets the nations of the world." Unfortunately, that year one such ship arrived in San Francisco with a cargo of imports that included "rats carrying the Third Pandemic of the bubonic plague."

The disease quickly gained a foothold in Chinatown, and Gage, realizing this could be bad for his patrons' bottom line, snapped into action by denying there was any plague at all, and by defaming the head of the federal Marine Hospital Service, who was in charge of quarantines.

When the U.S. Surgeon General arranged for a commission to investigate the situation, Gage immediately denounced their findings, and "denied the federal commission any use of the University of California, Berkeley's laboratories to further study the outbreak."

Sticking with his belief that "On a scale of 1 to 10, the 1st Amendment has to be the least important, right?", Gage tried to ram through another law, this time making it a crime to even report on the plague. It failed, but other laws gagging the medical community did pass, making it harder for the public to get scientifically valid information.

Republican newspapers in San Francisco backed up the governor's lies, but scandal sheets like the Sacramento Bee honestly reported on the pandemic, even as Gage begged the U.S. President to cancel the quarantine. Rebuffed, Gage took the Trumpian tack of fighting news with rumor. He accused the Federal government, especially the hated head of the Marine Hospital Service, of injecting germs into cadavers to make it look like they'd died of plague. Can a dead body develop a disease? I dunno, and Gage gagged all the doctors who could'a told me, so...

They say money can't buy happiness, and apparently it also can't be used to buy off a virus, because even though "$100,000 was allocated to a public campaign led by Gage to deny the plague's existence", the plague continued to exist. And while the plutocrats holding Gage's leash were happy to pooh-pooh the plague to the hoi polloi, they did actually want the pandemic dealt with, before it killed all their customers.

So Gage backed down in a sulfurous cloud of ill grace, and sent a gaggle of railroad lawyers to Washington to "negotiate a settlement with the Marine Hospital Service", i.e. the federal official Gage had been slandering. Why not just negotiate directly with the man, who was right there across the Bay? For the same reason Trump refuses to meet face-to-face with Nancy Pelosi: his grudge was > the lives of his constituents.

Incapable of doing the right thing for its own sake, Gage devised a means to save face, promising that if the Federal government would only remove the head of the Marine Hospital Service, then "the state would secretly cooperate with the Marine Hospital Service in stamping out the plague outbreak."

You caught that, right? "[T]he state would secretly cooperate" in stamping out the plague the governor publicly declared was a hoax. When they finally went in and decontaminated Chinatown, ground zero for the outbreak, the state denied it was an anti-plague measure and painted the massive effort as routine street maintenance.

And in a final Trumpian gesture, when the feds agreed to remove the head of Marine Hospital Service (remembering that the only thing he did wrong was be right), Gage reneged on their bargain.

"Despite the secret agreement allowing for [MHS head's] removal, Gage went back on his promise of assisting federal authorities and continued to obstruct their efforts for study and quarantine."


Ultimately, the plague--or rather, Gage's response to it--was his undoing.  Business interests appreciated the lies and censorship, but now that other states were beginning to boycott California exports--due to a runaway plague problem obvious to everyone but the governor--the bald-faced denials in the face of fact finally began to wear away at Gage's support among the monied class.

Say what you will about Henry Tifft Gage (and make it profane, I beg you), he was an incompetent and, one might argue, homicidal servant of the people. But he was also a loyal and effective servant of the railroads dating back to his earliest days as a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles, which makes what happened next all the funnier.

Because now Henry T. had a credibility gap, and the railroads had a fall guy. "At the state Republican convention that year, the Railroad Republican faction refused Gage renomination for the governorship. In his place, [they supported] former Mayor of Oakland George Pardee, a German-trained medical physician."

So after spending much of his term harassing the press, stifling the medical community, and stymying public health efforts to contain the outbreak, because the only Red Death he feared was scarlet ink in his patrons' ledgers, Gage was bumped from the ticket in favor of...a doctor. Which led--for me anyway--to a long, richly detailed, Designated Survivor-style fantasy in which our current government is decapitated by the disease, leaving the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as the highest ranking official.

Stay safe, guys.

World's Worst Toys R Us Spokesmodel

Updated below

So among the many jaw-dropping, gorge-raising articles I read today about the necro-decorative fun hunter (trophy, as opposed to subsistence) or "funter", Sabrina Corgatelli, was this Salon piece by Scott Eric Kaufman, which offered a wealth of tone-deaf quotations:

Corgatelli told Today’s Carson Daly that when she posted the image of her and the giraffe — which she captioned, “Such an amazing animal!! I couldn’t be any happier!! My emotion after getting him was a feeling I will never forget!!!” — 

Note: it's possible that Ms. Corgatelli didn't actually mean these astonishingly sociopathic and bone-headed vocalizations, but had a permit to cull the moron herd, and was simply blowing on her hand-carved Duck Dynasty-brand Idjit Call™ in order to bring the game into her crosshairs.

she never anticipated that the photograph would be commented on more than 13,000 times, or that she would become a flash-point in the discussion about the legitimacy of big game hunting. 

Because who could possibly gaze upon this anodyne image: 

...and feel anything but happy!! about this amazing animal!!

“To all the haters, stay tuned, you’re gonna have so much more to be p***ed about,” she wrote in response to some of those comments.

Oh oh...Sounds like she's already booked her next safari to the Most Dangerous Game Dude Ranch!

She was much more measured with Daly, saying that “everybody just thinks we’re cold-hearted killers, and it’s not that. There is a connection with the animal, and just because we hunt them doesn’t mean we don’t have a respect for them.”

You know who else feels a connection to the things they kill? Serial killers. And they also tend to take trophies from their victims, so maybe this giraffe murdering is just a phase she's going through, a chrysalis form as she transitions from John Wayne into John Wayne Gacy.

She added that she was, in effect, doing a public service, because despite being herbivores who mostly congregate in national parks, “giraffes are very dangerous animals” and “they could hurt you seriously very quickly.”

As opposed to a bow hunter, who can also hurt you seriously, but slowly and exquisitely over a two-day period. But Ms. Corgatelli is correct, giraffes can be dangerous. Between college and grad school my sister Katy worked at the Santa Barbara zoo, and her duties included tending to the giraffes. One day, an obnoxious African Crown Crane started hanging out in the exhibit and making vaguely mocking noises at the ungulates. The next day, Katy found the bird's headless body sprawled in the middle of the enclosure; forensic evidence suggested a giraffe had finally got fed up and decapitated it with a single kick, sending the crane's head tumbling into the next exhibit and scoring a badly needed extra point.  So, yes...Giraffes have evolved to become nature's perfect killing machine, assuming you're a douchebag bird.

But there's another part of this story that has received less scrutiny, and typically, it was Sheri who first noticed it, writing on Facebook:

This woman has Utah roots (from Portage, I believe) and she graduated from USU. Her boyfriend is reportedly from Logan. She works an accountant at an Idaho university. How does she afford her big game hunting "hobby"? ... [T]rips to Africa, guides, thousands of dollars in fees, etc.

That's a very good question. Dr. Walter Palmer, the Dentist of Death, paid $55,000 to kill Cecil the lion; do Idaho institutes of higher education really compensate their accountants that well? Because if so, this makes me think, for about the ten thousandth time, that I made a serious misjudgment at that high school Career Day Fair.

Update: And Sheri, as usual, breaks the case:

Well, the answer to the funding mystery is what you all thought: she hunts children and sells their hair to use as stuffing for Build-a-Bears. 

No, actually her new boyfriend is Aaron Nelson, professional lion killer. She goes along on the trophy hunts to add a woman's gentle touch to the slaughter. Here's Aaron's bio from his firm's web page:

"Since 1995 Aaron Neilson has specialized in hunting the African Lion. He has personally taken 11 trophy lions of his own. Not to mention, he has accompanied numerous clients and friends on some of their lion hunts around the African continent. He has personally hunted Lion in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia. Over the past 16 years he has spent over 350 days pursuing lion in Africa, an accomplishment not matched by any other hunting consultant. When trusting your highly expensive, and long-awaited trophy lion hunt to an agent. Look no further than Global Hunting Resources, we have the experience and knowledge to back it up!"

And when the game population is finally exhausted thanks to these assholes, Aaron and his high calibre helpmeet Sabrina can diversify into the business of guiding actual serial killers on safari. Imagine helping Richard Speck to hunt the wily student nurse -- notoriously difficult to track at night because of their noiseless crepe shoes --by teaching him how to build a "nurse blind" out of hospital modesty screens and then hunker down by the watering hole -- or at least the vending machines in the breakroom -- and wait.

Deep in the night shift, their white uniforms and caps are softly luminous in the faint glow from the Bun-O-Matic Coffee Maker light, making it obvious that you're performing a public service, and that nature wants you to take these girls and get their heads, because student nurses are "very dangerous" and "they could hurt you seriously very quickly," especially if they're taking a blood sample and happen to miss the vein four or five times.

Go Do That Doo Doo That You Do So Well

The recent news that Ann Coulter will be playing the U.S. Vice President in Sharknado 3: Jumping the Sharknado got me thinking about that other tigress of the right wing, Pam Geller, and how she really paved the way for Ann with her own forays into visual media.

Spasm of passion, or passing a kidney stone?

For many, Pam is the Atlas Shrugs blogger who likes to videotape herself delivering anti-Islam maledictions in a bikini, presumably to taunt orthodox Muslims with what they're missing. To others, she's probably best known as one of the stop motion Harpies who torment Phineas in Jason and the Argonauts. But Pam is vast, she contains multitudes of shit (horseshit, dogshit, bullshit, etc.) and this month she's the cover girl for Scat Fancy magazine.

The Poo Generation 

Every generation has unintentional icons – whether it’s Rosie the Riveter, the American flag, Elvis Presley, the motorcycle jacket – ideas that best express the zeitgeist of a time, a generation.

"It's weird, Bob. You know that Rosie the Riveter gal?"

"Oh, you mean the one we painted in heroic, three-point perspective, bannered with an inspirational phrase, then printed up millions of posters and plastered her image all over the country?"

"Yeah. Somehow -- don't ask me how -- she's become an icon."

"Well, I'm sure it was unintentional."

The emoticon found on phones today, of a happily smiling pile of excrement, is just that. 

 It best exemplifies the low state of the world, of the culture, and of America itself in the age of the primitive. It signifies America’s rapid decay in the wake of the left’s decades-long war on Americanism, freedom, and individual rights. The absence of morality – and by morality I mean a code of values – has led to an absence of the good. And an abundance of poo.

Granted, this probably wouldn't have made the women of the Greatest Generation want to tie on a do-rag and attack the nearest B-24 with a pneumatic rivet gun, but I bet the Germans would have been so charmed by our wide-spread scheiße imagery that they would have promptly called off the war and subscribed to our newsletter.

Ayn Rand wrote that a nation’s culture is the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men, which their fellow citizens have accepted in whole or in part, and which have influenced the nation’s way of life. Poo.

Well, sure, if there's one word that sums up Ayn Rand's writing...

Post-9/11 America, and especially America in the Obama presidency, is a different world from America as she was before Obama, and before the left started its long march to destroy this nation.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with an emoticon.

 America today is increasingly anti-freedom, anti-truth, anti-ideas, anti-capitalsim – anti-reason.

To be fair, anti-capitalsim is probably the best edition of the Sims yet (pro-tip: always build a photography studio early on, so you'll have someone to airbrush Trotsky out of your May Day photos).

 A nation built on a morality of reason has all but abandoned its foundational principles.

If there's one thing our Enlightenment Era Founders distrusted, it was Reason, which is why today we live in a country where you can text your own mother a turd.

  Public schools and academia produce zombies – goose-steppers like the Hitler Youth – who are militant and violent in their imposition of the leftist/Islamic agenda.

I can't help but feel that the best a zombie could produce would be a goose-shuffle; maybe a goose-shamble if they were going downhill.

And when they do it, they congratulate themselves about how they have stood up against “fascism” and “intolerance,” when the intolerant fascists are they themselves.

It's The Walking Dead meets Dead Poets Society (which actually kinda sounds like a zombie film, now that I think about it...)

 Intellectually, young Americans are the most docile conformists, no matter how vocally and self-righteously they declare themselves free. They have accepted as dogma all the philosophical beliefs of their elders of the hard left without question or exploration. A continuing negation of life and self.

Pam's right. You kids should really embrace life more, maybe think about yourselves once in awhile. Regardless, she seems to be believe that today's youth are all slaves to Maoist Muslims in mortarboards because so few Millennials show up at her rallies, leaving her with the Pre-Cambrian demographic.

The culture is ugly. The music is ugly, violent, and misogynistic. Every crime drama and suspense series is rife with the most unimaginable gore. Game of Thrones, Law and Order (Sex Crimes), American Horror Story – they’re all devoid of humanity and morality. Devoid of goodness. It’s a cultural rout. It’s not that the line between good and evil has been blurred – it’s nonexistent. We are living in a cultural free-for-all, or more accurately, a free fall.

Remember, Pam got all this from an emoji.  And she's not done yet. We get a paragraph of harrumphery about Pharrell's performance at the Grammys, and how it sucked because he delivered a dirge-like tune rather than a high-steppin' cakewalk or something, then she holds us down and recites John Galt's speech from Atlas Shrugged until we say "Uncle."

By this point, it seems like the poop emoticon has been completely forgotten, but Pam is being subtle, even oblique in her approach to the topic, and the careful reader will note that her writing is actually a metaphor for shit.

A culture that would love such a thing is incapable of true humanity and love. Hollywood is incapable of writing or producing a Casablanca. There are no adults anymore – just petulant children who know nothing but to scream that they know everything and to heap contempt on anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their liberal fascism. Logic and facts are scorned and derided; myths (global warning, “Islamophobia”) and feelings are held up as fact and science.

Just to sum up: "liberal fascism" is a fact, "global warning [sic]" is a myth.

I was watching a movie not long ago, a dated fifties musical short on Turner Classic Movies. It was bursting with life. The kids in the room wanted me to put on something gory, negative, dark, and I said, no, no, watch this, this is great stuff – this is America. 

America: We're Dated, But At Least We're Short.

 And one of the teens replied, no it’s not, that’s from when America was happy. And that struck me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. The left has worked so hard to make us miserable, and has succeeded.

Yeah, Pam? I'm sure part of this anecdote is true -- I have no trouble at all in believing that you monopolized the TV and succeeded in boring a roomful of children -- but as long as we're on the topic of shit, I'm going to call the Bull variety, and say you put those words into that kid's mouth. And he immediately spat them out and pursed his lips and refused to let you feed him anymore, even when you did that "Here comes the choo-choo!" thing with the spoon.

If you had to boil the culture down to its essential oils, it would be last Sunday’s Oscars – oh, how that once mighty American art genre has fallen.

I tried boiling Pam's column down to its essential oils, and found it's primarily composed of two: sebaceous and crude.

American traitor Edward Snowden got an Oscar; American hero Chris Kyle got the middle finger.

I didn't realize that when a bio-pic wins an Oscar, it's the subject of the biography who actually collects it -- even when he's dead. I guess that explains the hubbub at the 1936 Academy Awards, when Paul Muni won for The Story of Louis Pasteur and his acceptance speech was interrupted by a moldy skeleton in pince-nez and and a morning coat that charged on stage and tried to wrestle away his statuette.

Anyway, Pam bitches about Hollywood for another three paragraphs before finally remembering what it was that originally pissed her off way back at the beginning of the column.

The Oscar show was typical Hollywood, epitomized by Neil Patirck Harris going on stage in his underwear. What’s next? Poo on the floor? 

No, I think under the circumstances the worst we might get is a skidmark.

On the bright side, Pam declared Lady Gaga's medley from The Sound of Music a highlight, but couldn't enjoy it because "leftists seek to impose that evil upon us all."

Ayn Rand said, “There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.” Both of which have all but been extinguished in the era of amoralism – reflected in cultural rot and the exaltation of the crank. 

If The Exaltation of the Crank isn't the title of Pam's autobiography, it really should be. Who's with me?

The Benefits of a Classical Education

You may remember the PolitiChicks as "The Voice of the Conservative Woman," and also as a kind of collective wingman for the "Hottest Conservative Supermen in America," talking up the sexual prowess of ubermenschen such as Jonah Goldberg, Hugh Hewitt, and Louis Gohmert.

But it's not all about intensely blonde women catcalling intensely white men, because some of the Politichicks are actually PolitiDicks, such as Dr. J.P. Sloane, who takes a subject -- occasions and events appropriate for the National Cathedral -- which in lesser hands might prove rather bland, and spices it up for the holidays with a dry rub of parochial panic:

Our Nation's Cathedral-Mosque-the Abomination of Desecration Has Begun!

Judging by the title, Dr. Sloane appears to have a gift for light verse in the vein of Ogden Nash, if Nash had spent less time writing poems about baseball and animals and more time scribbling couplets about holy war.  Otherwise, his work is new to World O' Crap, so let's skip to the bottom of the article and check his c.v.:

Dr. Sloane graduated from: Purdue University, The Institute of Charismatic Studies at Oral Roberts University, The Moody Bible Institute, and The Institute of Jewish-Christian Studies.

Dr. Sloane is also the World's Leading Wayne Newton Impersonator...

...so you can see why he chose to take an advanced degree in Charisma.

He earned a B.A., Summa Cum Laude, from The Master’s College where he studied at their IBEX campus in Israel and earned an M.A. in Counseling.

The Master's College is not, surprisingly, where all those negligee-wearing co-eds in Manos, The Hands of Fate matriculated, but a Bible school in suburban L.A. County (with a satellite campus in Israel staffed by a faculty of wild goats). Their mission statement calls for "Intellectual growth, as evidenced by," among other things, "Willingness to defend the inerrancy, authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures."

Anyway, the sheer number of schools he's attended is Palinesque, and we're not even done, because Dr. (or should I say "Dr."? I probably should) Sloane "earned two doctorates" from Trinity Theological Seminary, which is an unaccredited correspondence school in Indiana.  And all this while cultivating a PTL-worthy pompadour and a pencil mustache!

So let's see what's caused "Dr." Sloane's consternation about the abomination desecration. I'm gonna guess it's religious desegregation, leading to Muslim indoctrination.

America was founded on the premise that we are the second Israel because—like Israel—we were founded to honor the God of the Bible and His Laws.

I guess I missed that Article in the Constitution, but I'll admit I started skimming about halfway through, and then just skipped to the end to see who did it.  However, assuming, arguendo, that we were founded to be the "second Israel," this raises the question of whether we're a good sequel, like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or a bad sequel, like Highlander II: The Quickening.  Or perhaps Israel is just a really crappy prequel, like Episode One: The Phantom Menace.

 In 1607 the very first act of the first English speaking settlers was to plant a huge Cross on Cape Henry at Virginia Beach dedicating America and the new continent to Christ. 

Their second act was to promptly begin starving to death.

This act was followed by the Pilgrims arrival in 1620 who made a covenant (Mayflower Compact) with God between themselves and their new land. Our Constitution is based on that covenant.

That explains why the Preamble to the Constitution spends so much ink kissing the king's ass. Anyway, I'm sure the Iroquois are relieved to be off the hook for an alleged compendium of civil rights that can't even manage to prohibit torture. At least not according to Justice Scalia.

The discoverer of this new land by Europeans was Christopher (means “Christ-bearer”) Columbus. One of the main purposes of his adventure was to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathens.

He did this primarily through slavery, disease, and murder, since televangelism hadn't been invented yet.

On 9/11 God sent a harbinger (sign of warning) to Israel in the form of attacks by Assyria when they began turning their backs on God and seeking other supernatural sources (Isaiah 8-9). 

Sadly, ancient Israel missed this sign of warning through a clerical error; since the Gregorian calendar hadn't been invented yet, they actually got the September 11 harbinger on 16 Elul. Also, let's face it, Isaiah is a pretty action-packed book, and they could easily have been distracted by all the satyrs and dragons in chapter 13 (h/t to Yastreblyansky)

In England the Muslims are buying up all the abandoned Christian churches and making them their mosques. By doing so, Muslims hope to establish in the minds of others the superiority of Islam.

Their actions makes a mockery of the Christian faith, whose strength is symbolized by its many abandoned churches!

In non-Muslim countries where they build mosques, the minarets are taller than the church steeples.

But "minaret" doesn't rhyme with "people," so muslims can't do that finger-wiggling thing to amuse bored kids on the way to Easter mass.

In the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., which took 83 years to build, the unthinkable has occurred in only 24 years after the cathedral’s completion. On November 14, 2014—two months after the anniversary of 9/11—on the Muslim Sabbath—the first of many planned Islamic worship services began on the eve of our nation’s day of Thanksgiving to the biblical God and the ushering in of the Christmas season. 

If you look to this paragraph to provide what most do -- thoughts, meaning, and impressions conveyed through the medium of the English language -- you're likely to be disappointed. But if you add up all those superfluous figures and dates you'll have enough numbers to play Lotto Pick Six.

America has murdered millions of its own sons and daughters in the womb—America has prevented prayers in school (except for Muslim prayers that are required by Shari Law)—America has sanctified homosexual marriage between men with men and women with women—and America has removed Crosses from our public view and nativity displays at Christmas from the public square in complete defiance of the First Amendment which clearly states: Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise of religion; or abridging the freedom of speech….

Ah, so "Dr." Sloane believes it's against the First Amendment to not have a creche on the courthouse steps.  KWillow was right.

The history of our National Cathedral began when the corner stone was laid under the supervision of President Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 and completed under President George W. Bush in 1990. 

Okay, it may have taken 83 years to build, which seems dilatory, but I think some credit should go to George W. Bush for bringing his Presidency in ten years ahead of schedule.

Now the powers that be in Washington—in compliance with the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church—committed the final ABOMINATION to the God of the Bible by having a Muslim offer up Islamic prayers—in that Christian Sanctuary—to the Moon God Allah, resulting in an unforgivable DESECRATION of that Christian altar. This action brings further shame to America in the face of God’s harbinger that warns of America of its impending doom if Americans don’t repent!

Anyway, Bingo at 7:30 PM on Wednesday. Bring a dish to pass.

If Yoda Had Trained Paul Blart, Mall Cop

As you know, J.J. Abrams is directing the first new Star Wars movie in nine years, heralding a renewed franchise that will not only continue the story of films IV through VI, but follow new and familiar Star Wars characters in a series of spin-offs. Naturally, with both Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi dead, and Luke busy with the Abrams film, a new mentor will have to be found for the next generation of Sith and Jedi.

I give you, D.W. Wilber of Townhall.  According to his bio, "Wilber is a former Intelligence and Counterterrorism Officer, and the owner of Secur-Intel-Solutions" (Our slogan: "We're so secure, we didn't even tell the letter "e" we exist!")  I checked their website, and it's charmingly home-made, with a logo that looks like his kid doodled it while playing World of Warcraft, and a motto that smacks of something Wilber scribbled on his PeeChee during Freshman Latin class. (As of press time, their sitemeter shows 883 visitors, although a couple of those are probably me, since I forgot to bookmark it the first time.)

Mr. Wilber's site would appreciate it if you'd mistake them for a sort of store brand Blackwater, and helps the illusion along with a picture of a riot copied from the Web, and a picture of a white guy in jeans standing in the middle of a road somewhere with some brown guys in camouflage and pointing at something off-camera. I feel more secure already.

But who pops up first in their list of clients?  Malls.  So rest easy, America. Secur-Intel-Solutions may skimp on vowels (probably 'cause they blew their budget on decorative dashes), but they spare no effort to ensure that there is a steely-eyed, cold-blooded killer between those rambunctious 12-year olds and Hotdog On a Stick.

In his spare time, Mr. Wilber would appreciate it if we'd preemptively bomb the restive minority neighborhoods in St. Louis County, Missouri.

Since August 9th when Michael Brown committed a strong arm robbery and was confronted by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, a confrontation which ultimately resulted in Wilson shooting and killing Brown...

Here's your first lesson, Future Mall Cops O' America: Juxtaposing unrelated events to create the illusion of causation; this skill comes in handy when writing up your report about why you tazed that kid who laughed at your "bike rack" when you bent over to tie your shoe, and who may have been the same kid who earlier stole a watermelon Jolly Rancher from Mr. Bulky's, although you didn't know anything about that at the time.  If later challenged, perhaps by an attorney hired by the kid's parents to sue the mall, concede that you did not, in fact, witness the kid committing a crime, or witness a crime at all, or even know one happened, but you felt a disturbance in the Force, as though millions of Plumber's Cracks cried out at once, and were suddenly snickered at.

We now join Obi-Wilber's previous sentence, already in progress.

...Ferguson and the entire St. Louis metropolitan region has been gripped by a constant tug of war between the police trying to restore order and peace and allow the criminal justice system to follow its’ course, and a disparate group bent on continuing the protests and violence. 

'These are not the violent, militarized police you're looking for."  Here's your second lesson, Stalwart Guardians of Baby Gap: the Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded. Which necessarily includes pretty much anyone who reads Townhall for the articles.

New Black Panther activists,

Oh, is that guy in town?

 black Missouri state senators allied with the protestors and rioters,

Remember, Junior G-Men, to always specify the race of bystanders, e.g., "the black witness claimed he saw me shoot an unarmed black teenager," because it subtly highlights their conflict of interest, i.e., they are too melanin-rich to give an unbiased account of events. (A word of caution: this doesn't work as well when using the word "white" -- e.g., "the white Missouri state senator allied with the white prosecutors and the white police chief of the all-white police department who support the white officer who shot the unarmed black teenager." In this case, substitute "brave" or "courageous" for "white" and maybe end the sentence with "who lives in the house that Jack built" just to lighten things up.)

 anarchists who show up anywhere that offers them an opportunity to destroy property,

Boy, I'll say. I worked in an auto dismantling yard in Azusa one summer, and the entire staff? All anarchists. Naturally, I was afraid it might be a closed shop situation, and I'd have to join their anarchists' union, but fortunately they destroy their own governing structures before they can sufficiently mature to organize a framework for collective bargaining.

and white useful idiots who have fallen for the old line of blacks being “oppressed”.

Uh...I didn't check the roll sheet today...None of you guys are black, right?  If you're black, raise your hand.  Huh...Okay, if you're black and feel you've ever been 'oppressed,' raise your hand, keeping in mind that this will count for half your grade..."

 All drawn together for one purpose, to throw out the Constitution of the United States and demand Officer Wilson be arrested, prosecuted, jailed, and executed, regardless of what the evidence shows. 

I see some of you who've watched Schoolhouse Rock are scratching your heads, but the Bill of Officer Wilson's Rights that allow white police officers to shoot 3/5s of a citizen before receiving a written warning is in really fine print at the bottom of the Constitution, and it doesn't show up that great on parchment so you probably just missed it.

Basically a modern day lynch mob. 

Since Republicans concerned about the existence of voting voter fraud have reached back into the Jim Crow toolbox for a remedy, they should have expected that other fads from that era would be swept along on this wave of retro fashions. However, the fact that blacks (and white useful idiots [but not anarchists, because lynch mobs are too hierarchical for them]) are the ones bringing back lynching is unfair, and probably illegal. It's like those cyber-squatters who register corporate domain names before a company can, and then demand payment or they'll turn JoAnnsFabrics.com into an amputee porn hub. For blacks to lead lynch mobs -- however "high-tech" -- is a clearcut case of intellectual property theft.

Or better yet an insurgency determined to force society to acquiesce to their demands, or else.

Given how well the U.S. has historically done against insurgencies, I'm afraid there aren't enough mall cops in America (even in the Mall of America) to save you now, Obi-Wilber.

After all, what does an insurgency do but riot and destroy property, attack the authorities, in this case the police, and threaten to spread their ‘revolution’. As the Ferguson insurgency has done, threatening next time to “burn down the white areas”.

"Next time"? So white people get one free shooting (presumably with their choice of sides) and will only get burned out of their homes if they ask for seconds? Well, it's not much, but it's more of a warning than Rosewood or Tulsa got.

Once Officer Wilson is exonerated of any wrongdoing in the shooting death of Michael Brown (and he will be) the evidence will show Officer Wilson was justified and acted within the law.

Beyond what the evidence will show the State of Missouri also still has a ‘Fleeing Felon’ law on the books, allowing the police to use deadly force to affect the arrest of any felony suspect attempting to flee arrest. 

(Raises hand) Sir? Even the not liberal RealClearPolitics thinks that isn't true, and hasn't been since Tennessee v. Garner in 1985.

Obi-Wilber: (Raises hand, Force chokes me)  I find your lack of faith-based legal reasoning disturbing.

Remember, Michael Brown had just committed a ‘strong-arm robbery’, by Missouri Statute, Robbery 2nd Degree. A felony.

This assumes facts not in evidence; but Officer Wilson is strong in the Force -- the Police Force  anyway, which explains why they're all so desperately covering his ass -- and anyway, we're trying Mr. Brown in the media, so the rules of evidence don't apply.  Say, while we're at it, we might as well clear up our backlog by pinning a few other things on him in order to justify his death:  I have it on good authority he also ate all the Früsen Gladje, secretly switched our coffee with Folgers Crystals, and surreptitiously put the ram in the ramma lamma ding dong.

And he definitely was trying to flee. The Ferguson insurgency has threatened to murder police officers and white people in general to achieve “justice” if Officer Wilson doesn’t receive the “justice” they deem appropriate. If we take them at their word, not only will the City of Ferguson burn, but many of the surrounding communities in St. Louis County will also fall victim to the insurgency.

According to witnesses he was stopped and had his hands up. Still, black people are demanding that a white cop face justice, so they should be treated, not as citizens gathering to petition the government for a redress of grievances, but as an insurgency, and promptly bombed back to the Stone Age. On the bright side, they'll finally be in sync with the Ferguson P.D.'s grasp of civil rights.

One hope for stemming the expected violence is that weather prognosticators in the mid-west are correct in that this winter will be as bad or worse than last winter was in the St. Louis region. Perhaps the Grand Jury will release their findings when there’s a foot of snow on the ground in St. Louis and the temperature is fourteen below zero.

And thus endeth the lesson. So let's review: Protestors objecting to the summary execution of Michael Brown by a cop are the moral equivalent of ISIS. Fortunately, they're mostly Blacks, and Blacks don't like cold weather because they're from Africa, so we should play it safe, file a motion for a change of venue, and hold Officer Wilson's trial on Hoth.

Ted Nugent Proves Love Not Necessary Ingredient For Love Child

Note From World O' Crap Headquarters:  The following article was submitted anonymously.  The author is known to the Wo'C Editorial Staff, but wishes to be identified to you, the blabber-mouthed public, only as "Wally."

Loving Parents — and Armed Patrols — Make Safe Neighborhoods. By Ted Nugent

Loving, caring parents who want to know what our kids are up to need to constantly probe, engage, examine and scrutinize not only our own children but also their friends.

“Ward, why is Lumpy tied to the dining room table with his boxers down? I have the girls from Chamber of Commerce over for lunch and canasta this afternoon!”

“June, please see if we don't have better flashlight batteries. I'm probing, engaging and examining this young man.” 

“Don't worry Lumpy. Come see me after Ward is finished with his scrutinizing. I have fresh chocolate chip cookies for you.”

Only a pathetically disconnected parent zombied [sic] to the television would fail to do so.

[N.B.] “Zombied” is Texas jive-speak for those who watch nothing on TV but their own “Fox News' Greatest Hits” on YouTube. (Will Norma Desmond pick up the white courtesy phone, please?)

Same holds true with neighbors and neighborhoods. Safe neighborhoods are those neighborhoods where caring neighbors have their radars finely tuned to identify things that don’t appear right. This should be especially true in neighborhoods that have a disproportionate occurrence of burglaries and other crime.

Neighborhood watch programs are a good and welcome start, but I prefer neighborhood patrols. Patrolling is different than merely “watching” for problems in that patrolling is a proven crime prevention pro-active defense posture. In business terms, neighborhood patrols are “management by walking around and observing."

Let's pause a moment and consider the author's authority or credentials for opinions expressed in this sincere and goofy “neighborly” advice column from Ted. 

Although the “Nuge” originally hails from the Motor City for some years he's been ranching on 640 acres in Crawford, Texas. He would perhaps be Crawford's celebrity citizen --- except that down the road a ways are George W. and Laura. Dollars to donuts, the Social Registry of Crawford, TX remains a closed book.

An active defense posture sends a message to various creeps, thugs, malcontents, parolees and dangerous delinquents that a neighborhood will not tolerate any type of degeneracy or crime. The presence of neighborhood patrols will ultimately cause subhuman scum to slither off to other less secure neighborhoods.

Come to Lebensraum Estates!  Secure, Covenant-restricted single family homes starting in the mid-300s.

In the best of circumstances, a neighborhood patrol should be comprised of two armed good guys who are also equipped with cell phones, cameras and powerful flashlights.

And perhaps in Ted's circumstances satellite phones, night-vision goggles, a portable crystal meth laboratory and a full detail of bodyguards vis a vis Blackwater (or whatever they call themselves these days). Don't forget to call Mrs. Cleaver for extra flashlight batteries, hon!

It's safe to conclude at this point that Mr. Nugent doesn't live in a “community” in the way community is commonly interpreted by civic-minded people. He is a wilderness-type, likes guns, likes to play with guns, fantasizes about killing people he doesn't like, etc. In addition, this ranch may be nothing more than a cottage industry for Ted, since “Sunrize Safaris” is nothing more than a high roller's day camp for those who would like to enjoy the social prestige of legitimate sport hunting but don't know or care how-to. Ted releases tame, domesticated & helpless critters into the wild to be blasted away by assault rifles and heavy artillery. It's sometimes referred to as a “canned hunt.” 

Here's Ted's concluding paragraph. But before signing off I believe it is important to pull sharp focus on my personal irritation with Mr. Nugent. On first inspection he seems to be a douche-bag deluxe. On second inspection he seems a threat to the social contract. But upon third inspection we find troubling and nightmarish examples of a socio-pathological personality with enough spit left to fellate the always-on erection of low-rent, low-maintenance right-wing opinion.

When I patrol my property, I’m constantly looking for things that don’t appear right such as gates that are open that should be closed, breached fences, and even the occasional trespasser. I don’t miss anything.

We are happy to nominate Ted Nugent as a candidate for “Miss Wingnut 2013.”

Put the Blame on McCain

WorldNetDaily's Mychal Massie is displeased with John McCain and John Boehner and other Johns to be named later for failing to support Michele Bachmann's National Association for the Advancement of Guilt by Association.  As you probably recall, Mychal is a soldier on the front lines of the war against Islamofascism, and when he's not depositing his thoughts at WND, he's "killing all the enemy radical Muslims I can."  In his mind.  Usually while sitting on the toilet, or standing under a steamy shower, slowly and luxuriously soaping himself while other members of the household pound on the bathroom door and shout complaints about him using up all the hot water.  But he ignores them, for his body is a machine -- hard, relentless, and precise -- and it must kept properly lubricated to ensure peak efficiency, because This Machine Kills Muslims.

In his mind.

Or at least, in the bathroom.

Anyway, let's crank up the Rita Hayworth...

Shame on McCain and Boehner!

We don’t expect leftist-liberals to be pro-national security, and they seldom if ever prove us wrong – but we do expect it from those claiming to be conservative Republicans, and conversely, they seldom if ever prove us right. 

The solution is obvious: we must start expecting left-liberals to be pro-national security so they will non-seldomly prove us unwrong, thus saving the Republic!  Q.E.D.

So-called conservative Republicans are excoriating Michele Bachmann, with John McCain and John Boehner leading the assault. She is under attack for daring to put the security of our country over political correctness. 

However, Bachmann isn't the only target of liberal opprobrium; some people are denouncing Frank Gaffney as well.  "Founder and President of the Center for Security Blankets Policy, and "the publisher and associate author of Shariah: The Threat to America (Center for Security Policy Press, 2010)," Gaffney also teaches  a video correspondence course in How to Weave a Massive Web of Muslim-Related Conspiracy, which I found interesting, but not terribly practical, since the course materials presuppose that the student, like Frank, comes equipped with spinnerets.   But most of the criticism seems to focus on Frank's use of Michele as a mouthpiece for his unsupported accusations against State Department employees, a form of ventriloquism known as "Charlie McCarthyism."

Bachmann, along with Reps. Trent Franks, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland sent letters to the State Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security that raised concerns pursuant to our national security.

Well, it was less of a letter and more of a slam book, but still, they did go to all the trouble of actually mailing it, which in these days of electronic correspondence shows a lot of dedication, until you remember they have franking privileges and a Post Office in the basement.

McCain, Boehner and their left-leaning minions are upset because Bachmann and the other signees wrote in part: “The [State] Department’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, has three family members – her late father, her mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position affords her routine access to the secretary and to policy making.”

Abedin is a key component of Hillary Clinton’s staff and the wife of the disgraced former congressman and online sexual deviant Anthony Weiner. 

I presume that when the Muslim Brotherhood needs to issue Ms. Abedin her marching orders, she travels to a secret base in the Arctic where they communicate with her through the floating, disembodied head of her late father.

"Live as one of them, Huma, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Huma, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. Or you could just bomb the crap out of them.  Whatever.  By the way, I've seen your husband's schmeckle on the Internet."

In response to McCain, Boehner and the vicious, bigoted, black Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison, Bachmann said: “Not once in the letter to the inspector general of the Department of State, as you summarize, was it stated that by extension (Ms. Abedin) may be working on the organization’s behalf. That her family members are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood has been reported and referenced widely in the Arab-language media, including Al-Hayat, The Arab Times and Al-Jazeera.”

 Ah-hah!  McCain, the orange guy, and the black bigot all claim that Bachmann's accusations were wholly unsubstantiated, but the truth is, they couldn't substantiate them either!  Bachmann, on the other hand, knows for a fact that Muslims are untrustworthy, because she believes everything she reads in their newspapers.

I can understand Ellison not condemning the political correctness that provided for Nidal Hasan’s terrorist act at Fort Hood

I thought he used a gun.

 – they’re brothers in the Muslim revolution to conquer the world.

You wouldn't think it, judging by the name, but that's actually one of the more boring fraternities on campus; mostly because they don't serve liquor, even during Pledge Week.

If McCain and Boehner have such concern about not painting everyone with the same brush, why do they sit silently as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and extreme racist bigots like Jehmu Greene publicly attack whites with racial pejoratives?

I had to look up Jehmu Greene.  According to Wikipedia she "served as the first African-American president of the Rock the Vote organization", "was appointed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to serve on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO" and now works as a talking head for Fox News.  As for the "attack[ing] whites with racial pejoratives"...

On the May 4, 2012 edition of America Live, [she] referred to fellow debater Tucker Carlson as a "bow-tying white boy", in a discussion about Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren's decision to list herself as...Cherokee. Carlson told Greene to stop name-calling, but Greene denied calling Carlson a name. Host Megyn Kelly later apologized to Carlson and her audience for the remark on behalf of the program, calling it "an inappropriate name" that was "not consistent with our standards". The "inappropriate name" was defined as a racial, or ethnic slur, since it refers to Tucker Carlson's race as being white.

As anyone with an ounce of sensitivity knows, people of Carlson's racial heritage prefer to be known as "crackers," or "Last Nations."

 If they care about justice and fairness, why have they not demanded Eric Holder and Obama’s Justice Department prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation and for deaths threats made against George Zimmerman?

So the State Department has been infiltrated by the New Black Panther Party too?  Who's next?  The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants?  The New Zoo Revue?

July 20 I received a lengthy letter from a professional person who had called McCain’s office to protest his condemnation of Bachmann.

I've been an amateur person for years now, and while I love the species, I freely admit that I lack the discipline, skill, and determination necessary to turn pro.

 The person who wrote me requested I not use his name. He spoke to a McCain staff person named Will (who refused to give his last name) 

I can't tell if that's supposed to be incriminating or ironic.

Following is part of that letter shared with the author’s permission – the person wrote: “I called chastising McCain for his comments chastising Michele Bachmann and four other [members of Congress].

"Unfortunately, he chastised me back, but I was wearing a chasuble, which chastened him.  We continued to chat, until I was suddenly distracted by un-chaste thoughts about Jessica Chastain, and chose to don my chastity belt."

 I said we are in dire times and that we don’t need attacks like this within the party. The person on the phone commented that Bachmann’s attack on Huma transcended politics and that she did not have evidence to smear Huma’s name in front of the whole world. The man said there was no evidence supporting what Bachmann wrote about. I said Bachmann only asked questions.

Questions like, "Why is her husband's schmeckle so big?  And why is it available in bold relief on the internet when I haven't seen Marcus's bashful aardvark since Clay Aiken lost on American Idol!"

The letter goes on (and on), so I'll just let Mychal sum up:

There you have it. McCain’s office believes Hitler was a Christian … and we wonder why and how the Republican Party has become what it is.

I knew there had to be a logical explanation.

Bryan Fischer: I Never Said I Didn't Believe in SOCIAL Darwininsm!

Reader Bob was kind enough to call our attention to this timely column by radio rant show host Bryan Fischer, who -- just this once! -- puts aside his usual anti-gay crusade to solve the problem of rising health care costs.  (I don't want to give away the ending, but it involves you making a series of spectacularly stupid and ultimately fatal choices, beginning with your decision to read a column by Bryan Fischer.)

Bryan Fischer: Bringing down health care costs so easy a caveman could do it.

Well, first off, it appears that Bryan has confused those politically correct Neanderthals offended by the use of troglodyte stereotypes to sell car insurance, with the lizards and domestic fowl which act as spokesmodels for life insurance companies.

Oetzi the Ice Age Mummy says, "In my day, we didn't have government mandated health care, and yet somehow I managed to climb nine thousand feet into the Alps, despite arthritis and a bad case of whipworm.  In fact, I used to be an adventurer like yourself, until I took an arrow in the knee."

If we want to bring down the cost of health care, it’s easy. What we lack is not the way but the will.

The way is simple.

The simplest solution is usually the correct one, and the nice part is, Occam's Razor can also be used to lance boils, shave off cancerous moles, and perform other money-saving forms of self-surgery!

First, eliminate the federal requirement that hospitals have to treat any patient who shows up. That’s the place to begin.

Well, if that's the solution, then we'll probably have to begin outside, since we'll need to clear a space where we can stack the bodies of untreated coronary and gunshot victims like cordwood.  I suggest we mark off a section of the parking lot with traffic cones (there'll be fewer visitors anyway) or maybe tear out those shrubs near the ER entrance.

Get government out of telling hospitals who they have to do business with.

Maybe this whole business model is flawed to begin with, and instead of dealing with sick people, hospitals should be doing business with Fiberglass insulation manufacturers, or novelty gearshift knob wholesalers.

There is simply no way to control the cost of health care if hospitals are obligated to provide healthcare to all regardless of their ability to pay.

It's Economics 101.  Taking a commodity and making it rare and something that only the rich can afford is the best way to drive down prices.

How long would a mechanic last if he was required to fix every automobile anybody brought to his shop, regardless of ability to pay? He’d be broke and out of business in a week, and pretty soon there would be no mechanics for anybody. We’d all be riding bikes to work.

Is the mechanic tax exempt, like a non-profit hospital?  Does he accept automobiles on Medicare or Medicaid?  Do our car insurance premiums go up if he performs an emergency water pump replacement on an indigent 1977 AMC Gremlin?  And if mechanics are treating cars like people, does that mean doctors get to start treating patients like cars?  ("I'm afraid your father has a faulty heart valve.  Now, we can replace it, and you might get a few more years out of him, but between the parts and labor, you're better off junking him for the scrap value.")

People need medical care, you will say. Right. People need to eat, too. How long would a grocer stay in business if he was required to offer food to everyone who walked in the door regardless of their ability to pay? He’d be broke in a week, and then nobody would have food.

Or the government could issue Food Stamps, thereby permitting poor people to feed their children, while simultaneously allowing Mr. Drucker to maintain his quaint corner grocery and continue to live the Hooterville Dream.

But I think I see where you're heading with this Bryan, and I have to admit, between the starvation and the withholding of medical care, you may have finally solved the problem of our permanent underclass.

There was no such emergency room law prior to the one Ronald Reagan - yes, that smaller government, government-is-not-the solution Ronald Reagan - signed in 1986. For the first 200 years of our life as a republic, hospitals through charity and charitable donations offered health care to the neediest among us, and did so without anybody having to order them to do it.

It's baffling that Congress would go to the trouble of drafting and passing a law -- let alone that Reagan of all people would sign it -- to solve a problem that didn't exist.  But then, I felt the same way about the Clean Water Act, since for the first 200 years of our republic, polluting industries were scrupulous about saving their noxious effluent in Mason jars in the basement, much like Howard Hughes' bowel movements.

Anyway, I don't remember anybody worrying about doctor bills prior to 1986, although that could just be the result of this untreated head injury.

Most hospitals were started by Christians or Christian organizations, and will find a way to offer care to the indigent whether the federal government is standing over them with a cudgel or not.

I always thought Community Health Systems, Inc. was a huge, for-profit corporation, but apparently it's an order of Carmelite nuns who rebranded.

The American people, because of the spirit of Christianity, are the most generous people on earth, which they prove time after time when disasters hit anywhere in the world. Let’s not insult our own people by saying they are not generous and compassionate enough to help the needy with medical care.

So if you need a couple thousand dollars to get that abscess taken care of before you die of blood poisoning, just organize a telethon for yourself, or persuade Bob Geldolf to write a song about you.

Health insurance should be for emergencies, not routine maintenance. We don’t expect auto insurance to cover oil changes and tire rotations.

And that analogy would work brilliantly, if people were born with warranties.  ("I'm sorry, Bill.  If we'd detected your cancer earlier, we could have done something, but now, well...it's 25 Years or 25,000 Miles and you're 26 and a half.  Your parents should've bought the Extended Warranty when you were zygote.")

 It’s there for accidents. And so health insurance should not be there for checkups but for major events.

This may come as a blow to insurance companies, who often prefer to pay for mammograms rather than mastectomies, and prescription birth control rather than pregnancies, because they're cheaper, but if we're going to make Bryan's plan work, we're all going to have share the pain.

If people paid out of pocket for all medical expenses up to a high deductible, they’d be much more careful about their use of medical services and they’d take better care of themselves in the meantime. The cost of medical services would come down as health care providers lowered prices to attract business.

Having a heart attack?  Master the Art of the Deal and meet the Hospital's fee schedule with a low-ball counteroffer, then watch 'em sweat!

In the meantime, I look forward to the day when Big Pharma, desperate for business, is forced to open the equivalent of those "day old" bakery outlets, where they'll sell stale and expired medication at marked down prices.

Consumers would have an incentive to take good care of their own health and use medical services sparingly, because every dollar they save they get to keep.

Well, "keep" in the sense that it'll go right into your health savings account.  "Sorry, son, I wanted to save for your college education, but I had to put that money away in case I needed a hip replacement.  But don't be mad -- the joke's on me, right, since the bank just failed.  Oh well, good thing I never had to do that Sophie's Choice thing like your uncle Jim did, when both his kids were in a car accident and he could only afford to save one.  I know that was a tough decision, but I still think he shouldn't have done it with a coin flip.  At least, not in the Gift Shop."

Right now, employees using employer-provided insurance have zero incentive to reduce the use of medical services. In fact, the incentive, perversely, is the other direction. Employees who make healthy lifestyle choices and rarely need medical care wind up with nothing to show for it, other than higher premiums to pay for other employees who don’t look after themselves.

No offense, Bryan, but wages are stagnant in this country, and if my employer isn't giving me a raise this year, then I'm gonna take it out in free colonoscopies.

Third, get rid of all government-mandated coverage requirements.

Honestly, you can probably get five, maybe six uses out of a good hypodermic needle before it's too dull to break the skin.

A huge driver of the cost of insurance is that government regulators, including Benito Obama with MussoliniCare

...have a policy of hanging all patients upside down by their heels, which is pricy, although admittedly effective for lower back problems and gout.

...require insurance companies to cover a host of treatments, whether the consumer has any interest in them or not. 

 Many people are under the misimpression that insurance companies routinely attempt to breach their contract with policyholders by denying coverage, because it pays off financially -- sick people often being too sick to fight back.  In truth, it's because insurers are the only entities in the health care industry who are willing to stand up and defend your leisure time hobbies and interests.  Sure, some doctor might think you need "emergency surgery" to repair your "ruptured femoral artery," but what if your insurance agent realized, during the ten minutes you spent together in his cubicle while you signed the paperwork, that your interests and aptitudes really ran more toward getting a pressure bandage and a quick trip in a wheelchair back to the loading zone?

 Let’s allow insurance companies to offer a range of packages and allow consumers, cafeteria style, to decide what kind of coverage they want.

Hey, we still can't do this with our cable channels, even though giving up ESPN or the Game Show Network isn't nearly as likely to kill you.

If they will never resort to acupuncture, why should they be forced to pay for it?

Exactly.  I'm pretty confident I can predict, with 100% accuracy, what kind of accidents and diseases I'm going to suffer, and the only thing I need to insurance against is having my soft palate impaled on a scale model of a church steeple, like Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz.

Highly paid lobbyists get state regulators to mandate coverage for all sorts of things, whether it’s psychiatric care or chiropractic care, that many consumers would not purchase if the choice was left up to them. 

I'd recommend that Bryan consider checking the "psychiatric care" box on his insurance coverage menu, but as D.Sidhe has pointed out in the past, there's a difference between being an asshole and being crazy, and like the common cold, there is no cure for being an asshole.

Let’s get employers out of the health-care-providing business and let them give the money they spend on premiums to their employees in the form of raises.

Or to themselves in the form of bonuses. Either way, it'll be a glorious blow to Big Chiropractic.

I flat out guarantee you that employees who are spending their own money will be more frugal about the choice of insurance products than their employers are.

Hell, I have insurance, of a sorts, through Mary, and I've still been putting off back surgery for the past three years because we can't make the deductible.  But imagine how much for frugal I could be, with the right disincentives!

If ObamaCare is shot down by the Supreme Court, as it certainly should be, the possibility of major health care reform will be sitting right in front of us. We can preserve the status quo, which nobody likes or should like, or we can make reforms that will reduce costs and improve access to health care for every American for decades to come. It will be time to choose. Let’s choose wisely.

I'm sure Bryan has heard the bad news by now, and, considering his passion for the subject, is undoubtedly taking it hard.  I'd like to help, and considered buying him a box of tissues (the nice soft ones, with Vitamin E and aloe), but alas, I also expected the Supreme Court to overrule the Affordable Care Act, so most of my money is tied up in Burial Insurance, and there are substantial penalties for early withdrawal.

 All in all, an elegant solution, Bryan...but as usual, Mystery Science Theater 3000 got there first.

Kyle-Anne Has a Freak-Out Up to Ten Years Later.

Hey guys, it's our old friend, Kyle-Anne Shiver (last seen here, giving Newt Gingrich a papal dispensation for adultery, and predicting he'd make a huge splash and zoom head-first into the White House like a kid on a Slip 'n Slide, assuming the kid was an ossified Troll doll, and the vinyl runner was lubricated with the effusions of female voters made moist by a genteel but dashing Southern cavalier who knows how to accept a parking lot hummer in a courtly fashion).

Today Kyle-Anne is getting estimates on America repairs, so let's listen in on her conversation with the Service Manager, then maybe enjoy a complimentary Styrofoam cup of overbrewed Yuban, and see if Judge Judy's on in the waiting room.

Is This Republic Worth Saving?

Now that Kyle-Anne has some free time, after her column was dropped by Creators Syndicate, I'm glad to see that she's bringing back the old "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" feature from the Ladies Home Journal, except with bitterness and tricorn hats.

There's been a great deal of talk lately on the likely demise of this Grand Republic of ours.

In fact, I was talking about it just yesterday with the clerk at the OTB (I took Collapse of the American Experiment in Self-Government to win, but bet the Grand Republic would cover the spread).

Very wise and scholarly Americans have taken to opining publicly on the dire state of things, all asking the basic question, "Can this Republic be saved"?

As long as we're reporting the opinions of mythical creatures, I'd like to know if the Loch Ness Monster agrees with Louisiana private schools that her existence debunks the theory of evolution, and if Sasquatch has volunteered a contrary opinion.

Some historians have compared our current plight to that of the Roman Empire in its fall-apart days.

Specifically, Edward Gibbon in his History of the Decline and Fall-Apart of the Roman Empire.

 Some Hollywood doomsayers point to the end date of the Mayan calendar: 2012.

But did we listen?  No.  For in Matthew Mark 6:4 we read:

"And Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country."
And Justus, that is Joseph, who is called Barshabbâ said, "Dost thou mean thyself, Lord?"
And Jesus said unto him, "Actually, no, I was just talking about Roland Emmerich."

Biblical prophecy experts see an apocalyptic climax forming.

That's what she said.  They also see a low-pressure system forming, so the Five Day Forecast calls for gusty winds and showers tapering off toward the weekend.

Sociologists study the decline in marriage, the tsunami of out-of-wedlock childbirth, the failed public education system, the rising disparity between rich and poor and come to the conclusion that without desperate measures, America cannot sustain herself.

Our Strategic Marriage Reserve is almost depleted, and with the panic buying of licenses and long lines forming at Vegas wedding chapels, local government officials and ordained Elvis impersonators are considering going back to that odd-even license plate system.  Worse still, insurance rates in California skyrocketed after the last major Pacific Rim earthquake, when low lying coastal regions were devastated by a massive rogue wave of Pampers-wearing bastards (even in places like Indonesia, where recovery is underway, you can still see the high baby mark on many of the buildings).

 Demographers point to drastically declined birth rates in every outpost of Western Civilization and remind us that demography is destiny; without new citizens civilization itself is unsustainable.

How do we combine a tsunami of out-of-wedlock childbirths with a drastic decline in birth rates?  Who cares?  All you need to know is that we're passing the savings on to you!  (Okay, okay, before the FDA gets on our back, we'll disclose that for the purposes of this bitchfest, declining white births are considered a social pathology, while increasing minority births are a natural disaster -- so the Secret Ingredient is Racism!  But don't tell the kids it's good for them.)

 Meanwhile, political polarization grows more and more heated and less restrained.

Kyle-Anne, we've had our differences, but I do appreciate your willingness to show restraint, lower the partisan temperature, and strive for a more calm and evenhanded approach.

 Things seem to be reaching fever pitch here at home while communists and Islamofascists join forces for war games in the Middle East.

And they never let poor America play in any communist/Islamofascist games -- now Uncle Sam knows how Rudolph felt.  This leaves us with only two possible responses: we can deploy overwhelming air power, or a peppy Gene Autry ballad.

Wise watchers see an ominous similarity between pre-WWII economic conditions and rising totalitarian political systems, warning that what happened then could be about to repeat itself -- this time, with nuclear weapons.

Instead of sending billions of Euros to Greece, the German Central Bank will send V-2 rockets tipped with Heisenberg-built atomic bombs.  Personally, I can't see it, but who am I to argue with brainy voyeurs?

In short, this looks scary as hell, foreboding in the extreme, and it would surely take a ninny of historic imbecility not to at least be quite angst-ridden over the future.

So, can this Republic be saved?

Well, of course, it can.

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting Kyle-Anne to join the Ninnies of Historic Imbecility for a Non-Angst-Ridden Future, but maybe they've got one of those spiffy K-cup coffee makers in the Break Room, or their Ladies Auxiliary is really active in League Bowling.

The real question for every American citizen ought to be: Is this Republic worth saving?

Well, it's got sentimental value, but when you add up all the parts and labor, you're probably better off just leasing a new 2012 Oligarchy. 

If the vast majority of us do not answer that question in the affirmative --with all the guts and gusto we've got -- then there isn't one chance in hell that this Republic can be saved.

And we'll slide into anarchy, knowing in our hearts that we didn't drink all the Schlitz we were capable of.

Kyle-Anne will now interrupt her Socratic dialogue on the viability of our system of Constitutional governance in order to have an acid flashback.

You see him -- whether you want to or not -- just about every single day on television, on the internet, standing at the teleprompter, jiving on late-night comedy hours, delivering his lines in the Rose Garden, yucking it up with brainless movie stars, leaking national security secrets, pontificating on his final-4 basketball picks, spinning tall tales about his "roots" narrative, throwing coming-out parties, juking onstage with Paul McCartney, playing golf, golf, golf, and more golf.

Bob Hope?  Billy Graham?  Sam Snead?

You've seen him at the Vineyard. You've seen him in the surf in Hawaii.

Bruce the Shark?  Kam Fong as Chin Ho?

You've seen him in flip-flops, sipping Slurpees, playing ping-pong on the Continent. You've seen him bowing to dictators and chatting it up with banana-republic warlords. You've seen him giving the "President of Cool" wink, nod and shout-out to adoring groupies. You've seen him on The View, yak-yak-ing with Whoopi and Barbara. You've seen him on Oprah. You've seen him singing the praises of Solyndra, even as owners prepare to shut it down and laugh all the way to the bank with your millions.

Waldo?  Is it Waldo?... No?  Carmen Sandiego?  The Travelocity Gnome?

You've see him in all his "Choom Gang" glory announcing this or that czar's plan (You thought he devised the plans? It's the czars stupid!) to ignore the rule of law and unilaterally bypass democratically-passed statutes.

Haile Selassie!

You've seen him pretending to get Bin Laden all by himself. You've seen this president pivot to jobs so many times that your head is spinning. You've seen him role-play a chief executive claiming executive privilege to cover for his Department of Injustice.

Art Fleming?  Art Linkletter?  Art Metrano?

And this now-going-on-four-long-years spectacle of an Eddie Haskell presidency is what it looks like, my fellow Americans -- wait for it -- when a Grand Republic does not want to save itself. This is what it looks like when a going-on-250-year-old Republic decides to elect a celebrity B.S. artist pretending to be a statesman.

Jerry Mathers?  Mike Lookinland?  That kid from The Courtship of Eddie's Father?

This governance by a committee of nitwits deemed czars, with an actor playing the role of Commander in Chief/Chief Executive of the U.S.A., is nothing but a poseur-presidency for the cosmic-joke record books.  You couldn't make a movie out of it because this truth is too strange to pass the "suspension of disbelief" test for good fiction.

No, doy, now I really feel stupid.  (Sigh)  Okay, let's flip over all the cards..

And there is not a single American who was eligible to vote in 2008, who does not bear at least some of the blame for it.

Oh, I can intuit what you patriotic, conservative, McCain/Palin voters are thinking right this minute.

You're probably thinking in terms of those tacky, childish bumper stickers that read: Don't Blame Me! I voted for the other guy!

And you call yourselves patriots?

Oh, please. That excruciating sound you just heard came from a heavenly realm, where all the millions of Americans who've died to make you free let out one unrestrained, in-perfect-concert, cosmic scream of utter disgust and frustration.

When did the the Heavenly Choir start doing a Philip Glass medley?  Anyway, if you truly respected the sacrifice of these Americans who died to ensure your right to vote, you'd admit it didn't work, and save them from having made a really stupid and futile gesture by putting down that ballot, picking up a gun, and shooting at any suspected Democrats or Independents who approached the polling place.

You want to call yourself an American patriot? Then, speak up now or prepare to perish.

President Barack Obama has the keys to your kingdom only because too many "patriots" sat on your hands and applied duct tape to your mouths in 2008.

The patriots apparently mistook me for Liam Neeson's daughter in Taken.

You went to family gatherings and listened politely to your liberal-ninny wives, daughters, nieces and nephews babble on incessantly about their "Obama crush."

Hey, if you're going to practice polygamy, you've got to allow for a broad spectrum of political opinion in the home -- take it from one who knows. And to be fair, some of the sister-wives are moderate-ninnies.

You paid for junior and junior-ette to go to those liberal indoctrination centers, euphemistically called "colleges," to imbibe the Obama Koolaid and you stood around with your mouths agape while they prepared to cast votes that would all-but-kill your own country. And you said nothing!

Well...not nothing. I did say, "You know, it's not easy these days, putting your kids through liberal indoctrination center, and you'd do your old dad a big favor if you could switch from Kool-Aid to a less expensive powdered drink mix, like Funny Face, or Alba 66."

Instead, you went home, got on your PC, went to some conservative chat-room and let off your steam with your flying fingers. For nothing.

C'mon, give me a little credit -- paysites can cost over 29.95 a month.  And Free Republic is not that easy to masturbate to.

You showed up at dinners and cocktail parties and social gatherings of all kinds

...passing myself off as Sally Quinn.

...with old friends, and allowed them to prattle on about Barack-this and Barack-that -- his alluring dark skin, his preacher-man voice, his GQ look, his exotic, B.S. "narrative," his cool, his posh -- every single thing about him but his sorry-as-good-for-nothing character and empty resume. And what did you say to those 52% about to give this poseur the keys to your kingdom? Nothing!

It was my first key party, and I was too shy to make small talk.

Instead, you put their 'ittle feelings above your freedom and went home to blast out an email of frustration to your favorite conservative columnist. Wow. That's surely the modern equivalent of Paul Revere's courageous ride and crossing the Delaware with dysentery and frost-bitten toes.

If, while sitting at your PC and letting off your steam with your flying fingers, you'd paused long enough to have diarrhea, it would have been a lot more patriotic.

Gotta run now. There's a neighbor lady two doors down who still thinks Barack is cool and that cool makes a country go, and I'm about to clue her in with the most calmly insulting tirade I can conjure -- over coffee.

Yeah, I'd recommend hitting Starbucks on the way, Kyle-Anne; you may be leaning on that doorbell for awhile.

Happy hunting, my fellow Americans.

It's sort of like if the League of Women Voters adopted Charles Whitman as their cartoon mascot.

Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequently ranting American commoner. And darned proud of it, too.

That's the way, Serfette, loud 'n proud. But once the feudal system has been completely restored, we'll see how much surplus breath you have free for rants when you're crotch-deep in His Lordship's cranberry bog.