Wood-Crock 2020 - AIER Played Covid-19 Numbers In An Orange Haze

By Mel Carriere


Allright, time to dust off this old blog, which has had a long hiatus, but needs to be resuscitated. There are things that have to be said but just can't be covered within the restrictive confines of my postal blogs. Universal truths, in other words, that apply to everyone, essential or non-essential. So we're checking the detonators and verifying the cordite content of the old Truth Bomb, and getting ready to lob one.

Of course the topic that revived this blog off of its life support ventilator had to be the Coronavirus pandemic. What other subject is loud enough to wake the dead? Specifically, it was some observations from The American Institute of Economic Research that made me pull this blog out of cold storage. The AIER recently disseminated an article about the Hong Kong flu epidemic during the dog days of 1968,  the sequel to the summer of love, that might seem credible for those understandably frustrated by months of house arrest, but doesn't hold up to closer scrutiny. 

The article proudly declares that the Hong Kong flu of that year killed 100,000 people in the US without anybody doing anything about it, holding up this lack of response as an object of emulation. The disease was allowed to merrily run its course, unimpeded by government interference. No masks, no sheltering in place, no shuttered bars and dining establishments. We even went ahead and held the Woodstock music festival during the height of the infection! Fancy that - 200,000 people defying social distancing, wallowing together in the August mud. 

This Woodstock example is exhibited as proof of why we should do nothing now, during the current pandemic. Let nature run its course, it's only weeding out the old and the "pre-existing" conditions anyway. Phooey on them. If you can't keep up with the tribe, you're expendable. The author didn't explicitly say that, by the way, I am just describing a popular pandemic mindset, one that allows such conjecture to go viral on Facebook feeds.

But what the author winds up doing in this piece is contradicting the article's assertions with its own statistics. It hangs itself using its own noose. Think about it - By admission of this journalist, the Hong Kong flu was responsible for 100,000 deaths. In disturbing contrast, the Coronavirus death tally the day I wrote this was up to 92,000.

Of course, some pundits argue that most of these people were on death's door anyway, and the real number of Covid-19 deaths is only somewhere around 6. Assuming, 
however, that we really do have 92,000 Covid-19 deaths, not 6, we're still only 8,000 deaths shy of the 1968 pandemic, 8,000 sandwiches short of a picnic spread out at that Woodstock peace and love festival, served up in blissful ignorance of the culling of the herd taking place all around, the old and feeble dropping like flies while up on stage Jimmy plays an electrified star-spangled banner, the distorted soundtrack of acceptable Darwinism.


In other words - in spite of masks, excessively washing and sanitizing the skin right off our tainted digits, social distancing, sheltering in place, ghost town shopping malls, no sports, no movies, no parties, certainly no music festivals, we're still at 92,000 deaths, and will definitely overtake the 100,000 tabulated by the Hong Kong flu before this is over with.  By the time I push the "Publish" button here, in fact, when I bear down on that old Truth Bomb plunger, we will have probably already caught up to, or beaten 1968.

Therefore, instead of making the point that Covid-19 is all been there done that chill out, the article indicates just how completely contagious and deadly the Coronavirus is, and why it is way too early to stop taking preventive measures against it.

I understand the economic damage is devastating for those who have been laid off and cannot get a billionaire bailout, those who will go broke before the unemployment office finally mails that check. And although it won't solve anybody's problems, in fact it serves no purpose except I told you so, I feel compelled to add that if we had a president smart enough to listen to science over the sound of his over hyperactive vocal chords, we could have nailed this down early with minimal damage. We could have guillotined the virus' crowned head before it sprouted. If the administration had searched for solutions instead of scapegoats, we would really be over the top of the curve by now, instead of pretending we are.


Yet it's definitely too late to cry about it, and only hard options will keep this thing from going into a Chernobyl-esque meltdown. There is no easy way anymore to stop that 92,000 from multiplying exponentially, because it will be fruitful and multiply. That is what that evil left-leaning cabal of conspiratorial scientists has been saying since the batty bug first jumped from winged mammals to people, via some Wuhan China taco truck.


Hard options will not be easy to implement, because certain people are criticizing the government for getting too rough, for trampling on our freedoms. These are the same people, by the way, who said the government couldn't get rough enough after the 9-11 crisis, and were willing to waterboard and detain without trial and round up whistleblowers warning you the feds were tapping into your computer. All this in the name of preserving freedom, they said. But you try to get these same folks to wear a face mask in a supermarket and they yell out "Don't tread on me," then start gunning down security guards that are there to enforce the rules of private businesses.


I guess  your Covid-19 reaction all depends on what flavor Kool-aid you prefer. Personally, I stay away from that cyanide-laced orange variety, the kind being peddled from the bully pulpit by the roaring mouth hydroxychloroquine salesman, the guy who has no plan, no clue really, and changes his mind every day. I am more trusting of the batch being stirred by the scientists, unflavored by politics, not watered down by flat earth conspiracy cooks, the not-so-strange brew that cautions us to stay home, to get this pandemic under control before it all explodes in an orange haze on that Wood-crock 2020 stage. 



Photo by James M. Shelley via Wikimedia Commons

Have the Dems Banished Bernie? Or: How to Commit Political Party Suicide

By Mel Carriere

I have to admit I wasn't much of a Bernie Sanders supporter at first.  Yes, I will confess that the ugly "socialist" tag did scare me away, I suppose because we Americans are programmed since grade school to shudder, cringe, and run to our Mommies every time we hear that ugly 'S' word.  But then I saw the way that Hillary was ducking and dodging the public and the media, acting like the mighty Queen Bee that has an inalienable right to the nomination simply because it is "her turn."  Meanwhile, over there among the sweating masses I beheld Bernie mingling with the little guy, putting his own luggage into the overhead bin compartment as he flew coach, going down into the heartland of America where he harangued against the evils of trade agreements and generally became a thorn in the side of the political establishment.  I enjoy thorns; I have a somewhat sadomasochistic fetish for them when it comes to my personal politics.  And now that I see Bernie's own party trying to reduce him to irrelevance I like the guy double, because whenever media establishments marching in lock step with established political party agendas try to force feed me a candidate I always spew that candidate back up and make a really ugly mess over that nanny bib they are trying to put around me.

The good news is that the world has moved on from the days when media conglomerates were King and Queen makers.  Now we have social media, which admittedly has turned a lot of us into narcissistic zombies who can't separate our smart phones from our anatomy, but has also given us the power to choose our own leaders, if we choose to accept it.  We can either use Facebook and Twitter exclusively for our cat photos and drunken semi-nude selfies, which I don't necessarily object to unless you are a 300 pound flabby dude in a thong, or else take a break from this unhealthy self-absorption to let our political views be expressed there as well.  For the first time in American History, I contend, we the working stiffs have the power to nominate the people we think we will serve us, not the people that the corporate controlled establishment is trying to convince us will defend our interests.

There is no better example of this powerful sociological tectonic force reshaping the political landscape than Bernie Sanders.  This even though the mainstream media still treats the guy like a fringe candidate, essentially ignoring the polls that show he has 30 percent of the vote in Iowa.  Being in the heart of the conservative Bible belt, I think these Iowa results are significant, and I would bet Bernie is polling even better in places where heretical socialism is not regularly denounced on Sunday mornings by pulpit pounding toadies for the conservative agenda.  But that kind of news about Bernie is hard to come by, because even so-called progressive-friendly media outlets are doing their best to reduce him to insignificance.

For instance, Friday afternoon I was listening to National Public Radio drone on about Hillary ad nauseam, until for fairness and balance they threw in some news about Joe Biden too.  The Democrats are so desperate to appease their squirming corporate backers who wake up with soaking night sweats after "feel the Bern" nightmares that they are making a frenzied effort to get more acceptable Joe Biden to run so he can deflect votes away from Bernie.  Finally, at the itchy ass end of the show, Bernie got about a ten second mention in the wacko slot usually reserved for Deez Nuts and Rick Perry, who actually trails Mr. Nuts in the polls, I believe.  30 percent of the vote in Iowa, breathing down Hillary's neck harder and more insistently than William Jefferson ever did or would, and Bernie still gets dismissed as an afterthought by the self-appointed King and Queen making pundits.

That's okay though, because now we have Facebook, and I think its a gimme that these days people spend more time scrolling through their Facebook feeds than they do listening to their Moms and Dads' boring news talk radio shows.  The good news is that on Facebook Hillary is virtually non existent.  She got off to a good start early in the campaigning season, but slowly began to fizzle into irrelevance as Bernie made his impact felt, not through slick focus group prepared media ads but by actually going down into the sweltering summers in the heartland of America and greeting people face to face with sweaty handshakes.  Yes, campaigns can still be won by the stump speeches of yesterday, and when these stump speeches ignite a social media frenzy it starts a fire that cannot be contained no matter how hard Hillary tries to incorporate Bernie's platform into her own platform, which up until now has basically been "vote for Hillary because I'm smarter and better than you and it's my turn."

The question is, when does the Bernie smear campaign begin in earnest?  When are the reports about unpaid parking tickets and all the times he didn't tip the waiter or farted in an elevator going to start to roll in?  The ruling oligarchy does not want this man to be elected, because he says too many things we like to hear, and they will move heaven and earth to keep him from the nomination.  And I'm not talking about Republican side of the oligarchy - the Republicans are ignoring Bernie right now as they focus on ways to get their own thorn in the side Donald Trump out of the public favor.  I'm talking about the party faithful Democrats, who even right now are bugging Bernie's hotel room to see if he lets any offensive Gentile jokes slip.

By the way, I really hope that Trump gets the Republican nomination, because Bernie will smoke him.


Check out Mel's latest on Hub Pages about "Gilded State" California Corruption


 The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other evil corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and below completely annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors there have to say.

Image attributed to:   "Bernie Sanders 1991" by US Government Printing Office - Congressional Pictorial Directory, 104th US Congress, p. 137. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bernie_Sanders_1991.jpg#/media/File:Bernie_Sanders_1991.jpg

What does it Matter if I Matter? A Perfect Storm of #Hashtags

 By Mel Carriere

The dictionary says that matter is something that occupies space.  If I occupy space, and I do occupy a lot of space, that means I am composed of matter, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I matter. Nowadays trying to convince people that you matter requires putting mind over matter, and this can get you shouted down in a crowded room, especially if you put a smug hashtag in front of your matter.  Lately, people think that slapping a hashtag in front of a word or group of words gives them exclusive ownership to it, so you have to tread lightly, as matter of form.  Hashtags are no trivial matter.

I don't think it's a matter of life or death that we settle this controversy about whose lives really matter, whether all lives matter or just the lives of a select few, but it's important just the same.  No matter how much we argue about it, no matter how much logic, philosophy, or dogma we apply to the situation there are still some of you who are going to say, sure you matter, but you just don't matter enough to get a hashtag attached to your matter.  I was a little glum about this, so my wife asked me "what's the matter?"  I thought it was a trick question, and because I was tired and frustrated from getting shouted down in packed town hall meetings, no matter what I say, I declined to respond.

Hashtags are no laughing matter, and they are not just a matter of taste either, according to some.  If you say #alllivesmatter, for instance, that is considered an inflammatory statement that you better apologize for, and real quickly.  I think it's a matter of public record that, despite all of these belligerent hashtags flying around, all of us matter very little to our elected overlords, but they whip up these hashtag wars into a frenzy to very cleverly get us to unfocus on the real matter at hand, which is that we have crappy jobs, no real democracy, and for that matter, no much hope on the horizon for getting any of those things.  It boggles my gray matter.

As a matter of fact, last night I had a dream that I was trapped in one of these perfect storms of hashtags.  The hashtags from #mylifematters drifted languidly but heavily across the plains from the humid south, and violently clashed with the hashtags from #yourlifematters that were pushing down fiercely from the polar north.  Of course, #yourmatter and #mymatter cannot coexist peacefully, so there were particles of matter swirling dangerously about everywhere.  Hashtags have hazardous pointed edges, in case you have not noticed, and when they get sucked up in a powerful vortex like this it becomes a matter of survival to get yourself to a storm shelter as quickly as possible.

Off to one side of my dream, safely away from the deadly effects of the storm, of course, I saw Scott Walker and Mike Huckabee high-fiving each other, as if it didn't matter to them at all who lived or died after the #hashtag storm came raging through.  A few minutes later the entire GOP caucus then came out and held a giant group hug, on the same spot where all of us little people had been swept away by the horrible hashtag vortex in a matter of seconds.

Maybe part of the problem why we can't agree if you matter or I matter is that scientists cannot even agree on the definition of matter.  There is observable matter, then there is dark matter, and we even have anti-matter, for that matter.  All these forms of matter go straight to the root of the matter and do not claim any proprietary rights to hashtags, from what I have read.  On the other side of the matter, some lady on the radio the other day was complaining that they hijacked her hashtag.  In matters of public policy hashtag hijacking has become a far worse crime than taking your high paying job in the hashtag factory away and giving it to some wage slave guy in Vietnam, or bombing a village of mud huts into microscopic bits of matter because a fellow wearing a turban rode through on a camel a week ago, or exposing the insidious exploits of corporate lobbyists who, as a matter of course, pay off Congressmen and women to keep your wages low.

But still we sit here, incessantly debating the matter of whether I matter more or you matter more, which does not get to the crux of the matter.  Perhaps the only possible solution is to consult the nihilist philosophers, who insist that nothing matters.  Or maybe let's take matters into our own hands and talk about the real matter at hand, which is why the 1% up there matter while we 99% toiling away down here do not matter.  In the meantime, I think we just better put this whole my #hashtag is better than your #hashtag matter to rest, as a matter of principle.


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Make Your Voice Matter - Read About the Wonders of Civil Disobedience here 


 The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other evil corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and below completely annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors have to say.

Political WIndow Dressing - Distractions from the Trump Confederacy

By Mel Carriere

Before you go into your usual self righteous snit let me just start off by reassuring you that the Confederate battle flag is a racist emblem, and Donald Trump is a douche bag.  I got into a lively discussion on Facebook recently over the proper spelling of the term "douche bag," by the way.  Someone spelled it "dusch," which set off the sirens at spelling police headquarters immediately, because even if a word is not acceptable in polite society you still better darn well spell it right.  Somebody else spelled it "deutsch" bag, which might be something your sweet German Großmutter carries her groceries home in, but is definitely not a feminine hygienic device.  Crap - I'm already doing what I'm trying to warn you about here, which is creating a distraction.  No matter how you spell it, Donald Trump is a douche bag, and let's leave it at that.

I've decided to join these two popular distractions together and just refer to it collectively as the Trump Confederacy. I know it's pathetically laughable, but I'm sure there is an army of deluded devotees of an incoherently babbling billionaire that call themselves something like the "Trump Nation," and another doltish assemblage of tobacco-chewing, white hood wearing, third grade dropouts who like to get together and pretend that the Confederacy was something other than a desperate attempt to preserve the institution of slavery in this country (no offense to tobacco chewers, I've found that some of them are actually really smart).  So why not just save time, join the two groups together, and call this unholy alliance of mentally deficient misfits and girlfriendless neckbeards The Trump Confederacy?  What the hell - they've got a lot of the same people in both groups anyway.

Now that I've settled your self righteous fury down with my smug disclaimer, here's the part that you are probably not going to like, because I know you have been wearing yourself out carrying signs and climbing flagpoles outside of the South Carolina statehouse and shouting out basta! at the foot of Trump Towers.  The fact is I'm really truly proud of you for getting out there, not being complacent, and protesting something.  But in reality you are only protesting the distractions, the window dressing, and in doing so you are playing right into the hands of the corporate elite that, whether they deliberately create these distractions or whether just take advantage of them after they happen, are quite pleased that you do so because, in focusing on the distractions you ignore the real issues.

Some Latino advocate I heard on NPR was just full of self righteous piss and vinegar about how Latinos have been insulted by Donald Trump, a billionaire tycoon who, in case you live in your Mom's basement and there's no TV or Internet connection down there, in a recent speech referred to Mexican immigrants as "criminals, rapists, and drug dealers," just to sum it up.  Yes this was most definitely an egregious insult, but since I'm referee of the entire Universe here on this blog I throw the sticks and stones flag.  The sticks and stones rule states that words are not supposed to hurt us, but there are definitely sticks and stones being launched against the Latino community that can most definitely hurt these fine people, and have been hurting them, mostly in quiet secrecy, while they gather impressively there at the foot of Trump Tower in Manhattan, shouting out colorful bilingual epitaphs in hope that the sequestered, pampered billionaire can actually hear them dozens of stories up.

Here's something that NPR Latino activist should really be up in arms about.  While the national unemployment rate stands at about 5.3 percent, the Latino unemployment rate is 6.6 percent.  Census data for the year 2012 shows that the median income for Hispanic households was roughly $39,000, which is roughly $12,000 under the national average.  This gross, unjustifiable disparity is something that the NPR Latino activist should really be getting upset about, instead of wasting time rattling sabers at Donald Trump - who is, at best, just a loathsome billionaire moron who unfortunately has the best soap box money can buy to spew his idiotic diatribes from.

If you are one of the South Carolina flagpole climbers, the numbers are even worse.  In that same distressing 2012 year the median income for African American families was $31,000, a full $20,000 under the national average.  The current unemployment rate for African Americans is an abysmal 9.4%.  Instead of climbing flagpoles and sending the Duke Boys down to Earl Scheibs to get that nasty ornament on the hood of the General Lee painted over, maybe you should be gathering in front of Capitol Hill and shaking your fist angrily at Congressmen, demanding to know why, when nearly 10% of your brothers and sisters are unemployed they are sending even more jobs out of the country with the TPP trade agreement.

The Trump Confederacy is just window dressing people, and it is window dressing that Congress finds very convenient during a time when they seek to enrich their corporate backers behind your back while you get to keep working at McDonalds and Wal Mart for $9 dollars an hour, if you "lucky" enough to even get that.  Good news on the economic front by the way - while your nice manufacturing job is about to be outsourced to Vietnam, I heard a news update today that Wal Mart is getting ready to hire thousands of new greeters!

Corporations feel very relieved when you get mad at the window dressing and not at the store in general, because window dressing is very easy to take out of the window.  Amazon can ban the sale of products bearing the image of the Confederate flag, Univision can cancel the Miss Universe beauty pageant that Trump owns, Macys can abolish its Donald Trump menswear line, and Ricky Martin can go play golf at a course not owned by Donald. It actually turns out to be a positive PR spin for these corporations, which ultimately helps the bottom line that you don't get to share.

Here's another thing about all this Trump Confederacy window dressing.  While you were standing out there on the sidewalk, being angrily distracted by that distasteful window dressing, the store owner snuck up behind you and picked your pocket.


Kendrick has something to say that's not just window dressing: 


Desperation on the Doorstep - More on the Unholy Alliance Between Government and Corporations, on Hub Pages

The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other evil corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and below completely annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors have to say.






Image composite by carlofabyss

Magic Kindom Mischief and Melodies - Songs to Celebrate Disney H1-B Layoffs

By Mel Carriere

Oh the joys of the Magic Kingdom!  Oh to be a child again and marvel at the wonders of Mainstreet, USA; to absorb the awe inspiring sights, sounds and smells brought to us by the immortal Walt Disney and his successors that so enrich and invigorate our otherwise colorless lives.

Wait a minute, there is a catch.  In order to keep life interesting for the rest of us pathetic street urchins; to make sure that the parks, the movies, and the toys continue to enhance our dull existences and keep the stodgy, overstuffed members of the Disney board room fat and happy at the same time, certain sacrifices have to be made.  Perish the thought that Disney employees expecting reasonable wages should get in the way of your Magic Kingdom Miracles, so every now and then the bottom line must be swept clean of pricey American employees and replaced by less demanding, more desperate foreign workers imported into the country via H-1B visas.

 In 2014 approximately 250 Disney employees were laid off and replaced by foreign H-1B workers, who, to add insult to injury, were forced to train these newbies before being given the heave-ho.  Disney made this tough move so that you can continue to high five and hug Mickey Mouse and Goofy as they make annoyed faces at you behind their stuffy costumes - and so that sweet Disney-dedicated mothers who wish they had given birth to girls can continue to traumatize their male offspring by having their pictures made with virtual Tinkerbells landing in their unwilling hands while Cinderella's girlish castle looms in the background; photos these boys pray their friends will never see but Mom will make sure to hang in a prominent place in the living room forever.

In honor of Disney's executives making these terrible, hand-wringing decisions so that you and the oversized goons on your Rugby team can continue to try and sink the tiny Small World boat on an annual basis, I have rewritten the words of a few legendary Disney songs for the occasion.  I hope my tribute will linger as sweetly in your memories as the originals did.  Here's hopin'!:

Sing this one to the tune of When you Wish Upon a Star as you think lovingly back upon that day when Rishi first appeared in your cubicle and told you to shove off - Oh, but could you please teach him everything you knew first, in slow, broken English please.

When you wish upon a star

You will soon live in your car

When you wish upon a star

Your dreams get screwed

Indians on H-1B

Have turned up with your office key

Your next stop is the EDD

Just train them first

Hindus, Sikhs in funny hats

Punjabi with prayer mats

Make room for our cricket bats!

Get out, you're through!

When you wish upon a star

Your replacement comes from lands afar

When you wish upon a star

You'll eat cat food!

Remember those jolly old seven dwarfs?  They certainly never griped about low wages and bad working conditions.  Here's a rendition of the jaunty "Heigh-ho" from Snow White that honors their commitment to toil away in the tunnels so that already filthy rich people can play golf all day.  Note:  I have replaced the dwarf whistles with words so adjust the tune accordingly.

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho

It's off to work we go

Got a H-1B, I work practically free

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho

Heigh-ho

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho

American workers move too slow

They want crazy pay to sit on their butts all day

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho

Heigh-ho

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho

My pay is scary low

But in a hole I live with 6 cute relatives

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho

Heigh-ho 


I think you get the point now - if you don't I'm not sure I really want you to, so I will spare you any more of my sophmoric attempts at verse.  If you are one of those unfortunate former Disney employees replaced by an H-1B, however, I will offer a few comforting words in closing, if that's any consolation.  Maybe all you really need is just a Mary Poppins "Spoonful of Sugar" to help that bitter medicine go down; you should probably get used to living on the "Bear Necessities," and if you do have a complaint you feel you really need to voice, thinking your Congressman might care, perhaps you are better off to do like Elsa did and just "Let it Go."

More on unsavory Disney practices at Amazon:

The Latest by Mel on Hub Pages About the Denver Airport Conspiracy

The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other evil corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and below completely annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors have to say.

Photo by:  Veryhuman, licensed under  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  Located at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Disney_Orlando_castle_at_night.JPG

More Ayn Rand Rants - Who are the Real "Second Handers?"

 By Mel Carriere


Sometimes when I am bathing I achieve some real epiphanies of inspiration.  I actually wrote an article on Hub Pages explaining the theoretical mechanics of brainstorming in the shower, which is an appropriate term for it, don't you think, because there really is water falling down all around you, as in a real storm.  I get my best ideas in the shower, and with soap dripping from my shaggy mane and puddles accumulating on the carpet I have to rush out so I can tell somebody quickly.  That last part is not exactly true; I always finish my shower first, but significant thinkers throughout history sometimes did not.  The Greek Philosopher and Mathematician Archimedes, for example, came up with his best idea in the bath and emerged from the water naked, running and shouting "Eureka!" through the streets of Syracuse (Sicily, not New York). This probably did not prevent his wife from whacking him with a broom and herding him back into the bathroom to dry off, like mine would.

Archimedes was constantly getting badgered by a tyrannical king named King Hiero, who bullied Archimedes into putting his considerable mathematical and engineering talents to some whimsical use that was way beneath him, like the construction of a bigger and better pleasure barge, or inventing a giant grappling hook for destroying the ships of Hiero's enemies.  Of course, nobody remembers King Hiero.  This talentless thug died in obscurity as he should have, while Archimedes is remembered affectionately by everyone.

This example of Archimedes in ancient Greece has some appropriate analogies in the modern world, but instead of fat, talentless tyrants wearing crowns we now have fat, talentless tyrants wearing silk suits sitting in corporate boardrooms.  But just like the clueless tyrants Archimedes contended with, the modern corporate tyrants are also fond of stealing the ideas of geniuses and expropriating these innovations in order to enrich themselves.  Meanwhile, the brilliant inventor, engineer, or mathematician might make a decent living, but doesn't accumulate the double digit millions in his bank account that the incompetent corporate boardroom thief did by stealing his idea.

What the hell does this have to do with Ayn Rand, you are already asking yourself.  I apologize profusely, but somehow Archimedes sidetracked me from Ayn Rand, and I will now get back on task.

As a youth I remained brainwashed by the ideas of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy for many years, and even now I have a hard time shaking them off.  On March 21st I wrote another article in this venue on the subject, and I will post a link to it here so you can go take a gander.  This Objectivist crap is still embedded deeply in my mental framework, and I realize now (now meaning these days, not literally now - I don't take my laptop into the bath), as I meditate on such ideas in shower, that on some fundamental level some of what Ayn Rand said made sense.  She just had the villains wrong.

In Ayn Rand's most famous work, a cumbersome, interminable novel entitled Atlas Shrugged, the rather humdrum, cookie cutter protagonists were a group of towering intellects she referred to as "The Men of the Mind."  These heroes basically got tired of being pushed around by tyrants, like Archimedes did, so they basically say screw the world, withdraw their considerable talents from the service of the human race, and go off to live in a hidden mountain valley deep in the Rockies, from where they smugly watch civilization degenerate into chaos without them around to fix stuff.

In Atlas Shrugged, the villains who become parasites on the accomplishments of these Men of the Mind are described as the left wing agents of the proletariat; hired goons of the working class who set out to steal the ideas of the brilliant individualists for the benefit of people who are incapable of producing them for themselves. These working stiffs expecting a fair cut of the wealth their labor helped to produce are portrayed as selfish and greedy "looters," for whom justice would be served by having them go back to 17 hour working days and living in squalid, crowded tenement houses.  Ayn Rand never actually says the last part, but she suggests openly that the enlightened entrepreneurs who are the Men of the Mind will pay the working classes a fair wage out of the goodness of their hearts, an assumption which almost every student of history and human nature realizes is either pure science fiction or straight out fantasy.

 Despite Rand's false assertion that laissez-faire capitalism will correct all of society's ills, she is correct in her fundamental notion that there is a class of parasites preying upon the ideas of the brilliant intellects throughout history.  Like King Hiero buggering Archimedes in the solitude of his bath to get the philosopher to hurry up and figure out if his golden crown is a forgery, there are parasites robbing the life's blood of the modern, so-called Men of the Mind.  Since we no longer have kings, these blood suckers have been replaced by the inept boardroom thugs of Corporate America.

An example of this in modern life occurred to me while thinking about the founding of the mighty Apple Inc. corporation.  Apple was started by the legendary two Steves, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.  Steve Wozniak was a brilliant engineer who designed the Apple I and Apple II computers that revolutionized the information industry and our lives in the process.  The very fact that I am writing this blog on my personal computer has a whole lot to do with Steve Wozniak.  On the other hand Apple's second Steve, Steve Jobs, was pretty much just a slick snake oil salesman.  He did not have the skill or ingenuity to produce a revolutionary computer, his abilities lay in bullying people into accepting his ideas, and in shamelessly stealing from others; as he did in the case of robbing the idea of desktop icons from Xerox.

There is no doubt that snake oil selling jerks like Steve Jobs are needed to succeed in corporate America, but do they deserve to be ridiculously overpaid and overly revered, while true geniuses like Steve Wozniak get pushed into relative obscurity on the sidelines during their own lifetimes? From these neglected shadows the Wozniaks of the world often serve as the voice of the voiceless, fighting for things like free Internet for the masses, while stockholder-serving fat cats like Jobs fight to keep the price of their products beyond the reach of the average working man.

So Ayn Rand had her villains mixed up.  She pegged the working people as being the parasites that feast upon the talents of the Men of the Mind, while it is truly the scheming, thieving, cigar smoking, double chinned, silk suited corporate chair polishers that do this.  It is downright criminal that uninspired suits too often get credit for things that they did not, and could not make.  This happens because the real geniuses of the world do not lust after the limelight, but choose to toil away behind the scenes, working on the ideas that they love; most of the time shunning public attention.  Sometimes the true genius's lack of narcissistic tendencies is a good thing, especially in the case of Steve Wozniak.  He is a pretty hefty dude now, and certainly nobody wants to see him running naked through the streets, shouting "Eureka!"

Read about Ayn Rand's influence on American society:


The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other evil corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and below completely annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors have to say.

Thoughts on shower-time inspiration on Mel's Hub Pages account

Find out how I let Ayn Rand f*** up my life




Image from: http://align4profit.com/2013/08/26/eureka-stop-trying-so-hard/

The "Smart" Bush Speaks - Malaprops, Freudian Slips, or Comedy Hi Jinx?





By Mel Carriere

For years now we have been told that Jeb Bush is actually the smart Bush.  The two Georges were basically elected by accident. Party animal W wasn't even supposed to be allowed on the White House lawn, much less inside the oval office, but through some crazy electoral glitch involving the unforeseen intervention of hanging chads, in what was probably the biggest frat boy practical joke ever perpetrated George Jr arose woke up from a hangover to find himself president of the United States of America.

Even George Sr. had to laugh and throw his hands up in amazement when he saw the poll returns. Like some twisted, zany episode of The Brady Bunch where Jan gets elected homecoming queen over the ever more popular and beautiful Marsha after their dog Tiger eats the contents of the ballot box, we all sat at home in our living rooms and laughed until the day after the election,  when with somber,  sunken faces we read the newspaper and realuzed that it was not just some bad sitcom rerun we had been watching,  but the truth!

So now here comes Jeb finally riding down the presidential trail to claim his due, his birthright, his legitimate inheritance as the superior member of the Bush dynasty.  And what happens?  Almost right out of the gate the comedy hi jinx start all over again.

I guess Jeb forgot that he was supposed to be the smart one.  Either that or his Daddy neglected to remind him that presidential candidates are supposed to lie through their teeth about their real intentions. Remember read my lips, no new taxes?  But I suppose since Jeb is assumed to be the best Bush, Daddy never coached him up.  No hitting grounders to him in the back yard, no changing the spark plugs in the old Chevy, and no lessons about doublespeak. W was the dumb one, so W got all the attention, and Daddy made damn sure there was already somebody there to whisper in W's ear whenever he forgot his lines.

 Big mistake, letting Jeb speak for himself just because he's supposed to be the smart one. The first lesson, well actually the second lesson of fathering is make sure your boy knows exactly what to say when you send him to the teacher to lie about the sick uncle in Albuquerque so you can sneak off to Vegas on Friday morning and beat the traffic.  The first lesson, of course, is to belittle your child's every achievement great and small to keep them humble, but that's a bit of a digression.  These are the lessons I have learned in a quarter century of fathering, at least.  George Sr. slipped.  He forgot the rules.

So Daddy sends Jeb to the teacher with strict orders to say that he would not have gone into Iraq knowing what we know now, but Jeb makes a fatal gaffe and leaves out the word not.  Could have been just an innocent slip of the tongue, or could have been a nice gesture on his part to let the rest of the GOP pack catch up, just to make the coronation party appear legitimate.  He is a Bush, after all, and there are powerful puppet masters pulling the strings.  W committed a blooper reel of verbal faux pas during his two terms as President and kept getting reelected.  There's no amount of screwing up you can do and still get elected, if you are lucky enough to be born with the last name of Bush.

Still, Daddy should have been more careful...

One thing George Sr. did do correctly was to teach young Jeb how to ride a bike.  Taught the kid how to ride it forwards and backwards too, because now this so called "smart" Bush is backpeddling like crazy.





More by Mel about W and other villainous politicians on Hub Pages

The combustible mixture used in The Truth Bomb includes a generous portion of java from Starbucks and other evil corporate coffee conglomerates, and none of this is cheap.  Therefore, unless the ads to the right and below completely annoy and offend you, please investigate what my sponsors have to say.

Image courtesy of Twitchy.com