Category Archives: angry rant

June 26, 2022 · 9:40 pm

The Writer’s Own Opinions

Every writer, especially a fiction writer, has an opinion about what his or her work really means.

Of course, their readers have their own opinions of what it means. And the two different flavors of opinion, author sauce or reader ragu, rarely are the same flavor, and often work at cross purposes to spoil the whole stew. Look at how the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird went over with readers for Harper Lee. Or how J. K. Rowling’s opinions about trans people have affected the most recent movie trilogy made from her works of fiction.

So, maybe I should clarify where I stand on certain issues before anybody threatens to make a movie from, or ban and burn any of my books.

(As if either of those things are ever going to happen.)

Trans People

In Texas now, it is generally agreed because of laws passed and pronouncements made by Fox-News-influenced Republican leaders, that trans people are 20-or-30-year-old male perverts putting on dresses and trying to get into middle school girls’ locker rooms, or worse, trying to play and win female sports with the advantages that come with testosterone and male aggressiveness.

My opinion on this issue is… you don’t get to have an opinion on this gol danged issue unless you yourself are a trans person. This is based on knowing two trans people in the entirety of my thirty-one-year teaching career. Not enough to make me qualified to open my stupid mouth about it, but more than any Texas Republican knows about it despite the large amount of foul-smelling opinion-gas they fill their speech balloons with in public.

One of these two people whose real names I will never utter was a confident and highly competent young lady whose sexual identity you could never doubt. I only knew about it because I was the teacher tasked with sitting in on her ARD meeting (a Special Education status update that she needed only because her situation qualified her as a Special Education student under the Emotionally Disturbed category.) She was at the meeting, so she knew that I knew. She would later warn me not to tell anybody, because it was no one else’s business what shape of genitals she was born with, and her hormone therapy and entire life experience made her a girl. Other teachers had leaked her secret in the past, and that was unfair to her. She was definitely a female in mind and personality. She was sweet, intelligent, witty, and capable of laughing at my classroom jokes… if they were funny. I suspect only a few if any of her classmates knew she was actually trans. She was all girl. I never told anyone. I never heard another student bad-mouth her. Although she did tell me that bad things had happened to her previously in elementary school. Nothing she was forced to endure was in any way deserved. And I am confident she is doing fine now.

The other trans student I was aware of, didn’t have it so good. I will call him a “he” because he never transitioned. But he was actually a girl. He had a penis, but it was only on the outside. His interior plumbing included a uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. His hormones were, judging by what puberty did to his body and behavior, mostly feminine. But he didn’t have the other girl’s advantages of being from a wealthier, big-city family with relevant health services available to him. He was a member of a poor, Hispanic family that lived in a small rural Texas town. He was not treated as a trans person. He was considered a homosexual. And Hispanic culture in South Texas is not kind to homosexuals. He had serious mental problems. He tried to talk to me about his problems late one Saturday night. But the conversation ended when he tried to proposition me, and I rejected his advances. I was not a homosexual either. Months later I found him crying in the hallway and bashing his forehead against a metal doorpost. I got help from the Reading teacher to get him to the nurse. He wasn’t in class very often after that. He did not pass any of his classes that year. And he didn’t come to school at all the next year. I heard rumors that he went to Laredo and became a drug dealer and a prostitute. I also heard from one of his relatives that he had attempted suicide more than once. At this point, I feel sadly certain that he never got the help he needed and is probably now dead.

I have now told you everything I actually know about the subject of trans people. And I can safely say I had no measureable effect on either one. I still cry about one of them. I still feel a small bit of pride about the other one. As a teacher I loved both of them, but not the kind of love he asked me for on that late Saturday night when I probably should not have opened the door to him. But I am not entitled to have an opinion. It is not my business no matter how much I care.

One of my favorite characters that I have used in multiple stories, Blueberry Bates, is a trans girl. How realistic she is as a character is probably still up in the air. I have revealed what I know about trans people that she is based on. But I love her, just as I loved the two of them. I think people like that are worthy of love and whatever you have to invest in them to be of help to them. I do not think they need to be legislated against. Their lives are hard enough as it is.

My glitchy computer published this before I got to write the conclusion. But having opinions is a matter of glitchiness anyway. And if you find you need to cancel me for my terrible opinions, you don’t need my permission to do it. I doubt you would even think about asking anyway. I hope I have made what I think clear. These are my writer’s opinions. And it is obvious from this essay that this is probably not the last one I will inflict on you.

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Filed under angry rant, autobiography, education, kids

June 19, 2022 · 8:38 pm

Moving to Mars

Apparently the plan is, “Let’s use up everything on the Planet Earth to make ourselves excessively rich and possibly even happy, because the more you have, the more you are likely to be able to buy happiness. And if it destroys the Earth and all life on it, we will just move to Mars.”

That, of course, is a laughable solution to a problem that really isn’t funny. If we have the scientific knowledge and technology to transform Mars into a new home, why don’t we simply use that knowledge to fix what’s wrong with the planet we already live on?

Of course, I know the answer. Because it will cut into Koch Industries’ profit margins and provide less money and power to the shareholders that will survive Earth-death to live on the new Mars.

Cute rat, huh? Cute enough to merit space on the spacecraft to Mars?

Profit margins for shareholders are the whole reason for life on Earth. We can’t have the life and deaths of millions of the mere peasants and working poor to interfere with Ivanka Trump and Jared having chocolate cake with dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Right? Vermin don’t have rights.

I recently started a whole new life in a whole new world myself. I finished paying off my Chapter 13 Bankruptcy caused by medical debts and Bancko Merricka’s lawsuit. It gave me enough money to put in savings, and afford not only to pay off the incredibly high fees for Medicare Part B, but also to see an eye doctor and a glaucoma specialist. With treatment for my glaucoma, I see things more clearly, and with more vivid color than I have seen it all in a decade. And, although both of my parents passed away during the pandemic (but from health issues other than Covid,) I have inherited a third of the family farm along with my two sisters, actual wealth to leave to my own heirs. It would be nice to live in and enjoy the new world for a little while.

Of course, there is the problem that people like me aren’t really allowed to have wealth and keep it. Wealth is intended to get scooped up to benefit only the elite class of shareholders for whom the system is really designed to benefit. It has always been a tilted playing field.

I have paid off massive debts twice now where more than 75 % of the debt was created by compound interest. Bancko Merricka is full of pirates and cutthroats who are paid to make the money off the backs of those who really do the work and funnel it to the investors and shareholders who get to make lots of money because they already have money. I have sworn off credit cards from predatory banks, but life gets more expensive by the day, and there are limits to how much you can save on a teacher’s pension. Passive income is another thing tipped toward the people who own everything whether they worked for it or not.

The January 6th hearing is bringing out more and more of the criminal behavior of President Pumpkinhead and his MAGA Minions. These people who control whether or not we can mitigate climate change or protect ourselves from predatory banks are obviously never going to accept the good guys overcoming them and restoring democracy. Instead, we appear to be headed for the bad guys getting away with heinous crimes and instituting a minority ruling class by cheating, making us as bad as the German or Italian fascists of the 1930s and 40s. The Pumpkinhead will probably be President again in 2025. And we would be better off on Mars.

But the Mars solution won’t work for you and me. The vermin won’t be welcome like they were back when Noah built the Ark. Elon’s Ark will be for the rich and powerful only.

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Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney

June 16, 2022 · 7:49 pm

Don’t Do What I Say…

If you tell a middle-school child not to do something, do you know what the only thing they are thinking about doing is? Yes, you know it. The thing you told them not to do is the only thing they desire to do. Republicans in general, old white guys with lots of money, and everybody who follows their lead will be exactly the same. If you want to see middle-school kids try coming to school naked, tell them the dress code specifically requires them to wear clothes. And it won’t be the pretty ones, the smart ones, or the poor ones who try to become in-school nudists. It will be the fat, ugly, wealthy ones. In fact, it is the reason private schools for the rich concentrate on telling them what they must wear, like ascots, diamond cufflinks, and polo shirts in school colors. And they never have a rule that states, “You must wear clothes.”

So, let’s see if we can really confuse the disobedient and contrary masses of the world by telling them not to do what we really want them to do. But don’t tell them we want them to do what we are telling them not to do. Make them figure it out for themselves. It’s the only way to get them to do what you want. Make them think it’s not what you want and forbid it.

(Is the king wearing his new clothes? Not if you can see them, peasant!)

Let’s start with the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSaniflush. Do not vote him out of office. Only support those ideas that benefit his political career no matter how badly they will hurt the people of Florida. Happily pay the extra tax burden he has laid on Florida residents because he rescinded the special deal Disney has as a major employer and corporate entity in the Orlando area. The Disney corporation is guilty of a terrible thing, not wishing to demean any of its LGBTQ employees by following his “Don’t Say Gay” law, and don’t deserve to have the special deal where they have the right to maintain their own roads and county services in the Disney World region of Florida. Those Floridians need to assert their rights by paying for those same maintenance and service issues with their own tax burden. That will show those Mickey-on-Pluto-going-at-it perverts.

Get what I really mean? Listen very carefully. Some of those words are dog-whistles and bell-ringers, and Floridians are too stupid to figure out what we really want them to do. They will never prove us wrong. Am I right?

This honorable gentleman, current Emperor of Texas, Greg “Gunslinger” Abbott, also should never be voted out of office. After all, he is the anointed successor to the former Emperor of Texas, Rick “I’m Smarter With My Glasses On” Perry. You don’t become Emperor of Texas by being voted in, but, rather, by preventing certain people from possibly voting against you.

You see, what Emperor Abbott wants to protect us from is something called Critical Race Theory. This is an evil cloud of educational ideas intended to make innocent white children, specifically rich innocent white children, feel guilty and ashamed by knowing about things like civil rights abuses, inequality, slavery, racially-motivated lynchings, the South losing the Civil War, and Jim Crow laws not being about birds. This will be achieved by accusing and firing teachers and principals, especially teachers and principals of color, for promoting CRT through books like the ones about Ruby Bridges.

Here are the kinds of books CRT police want to ban;

For the good of white children in America, regardless of how children of color will feel about it, you should not buy these books to read them and risk liking the story of how young Ruby passed the test as a kindergartner in 1959 that allowed her to integrate William Franz Elementary as a first-grader, the only black child in her first-grade class in the previously all-white school, escorted to and from school every day by four U.S. Marshals and her mother, running a gauntlet of foul-mouthed racist protesters that threatened her, and attended an empty classroom where white children had been removed by their white parents in order to break the color barrier in Southern schools as a sort of heroine for the ages at seven years old. No, you should only buy these books to use as evidence against teachers or to burn them in a public display of CRT contempt.

So, here are the things you should not be doing. (And remember, you are not supposed to do what I say in this article.)

  1. Do not develop tolerance for people and cultures that are different than your own. We are not stronger when we are diverse. That is a lie the bad guys tell.
  2. Conservative and Republican are words that mean, “the good guys.”
  3. Democrats, liberals, progressives, fascists, communists, socialists, and terrorists are all the same thing. They are all “bad guys” and all the same.
  4. It is more important to hate the “bad guys” than it is even to love the “good guys.” After all you never know when a “good guy” will develop a conscience and become a RINO, socialist, or some other kind of “bad guy.”
  5. “Bad guys” never have ideas worth listening to. What you don’t learn about can’t hurt you. So just ignore them… or better yet, hurt them.
  6. Loving one another without conditions only works for perfect people like Republican Jesus. Don’t try it. Hating everyone works better.

So, these are the things I am saying when I say, “Don’t Do What I Say.” So, now you should go out and NOT do them.

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Filed under angry rant, commentary, Disney, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Paffooney, politics

June 8, 2022 · 8:01 pm

The Darkest of the Coming Darkness

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Egghead  might be slightly batty.

I do not claim to be prescient.  But like any overly smart and perceptive person, I often see what’s going to happen before it happens.  Sometimes it is almost as eerie as a Vincent Price movie.  Sometimes eerier.  After all, on the 60’s Batman TV show, Price played the ridiculous villain Egghead, and was completely creepy while doing it, but still, you know… Egghead.

One thing that I have to predict about the coming darkness is about politics.  I mean, the current Republican administration, where it is decisions by all Republicans all the time, has become nothing more than a monster movie.  Not merely a bad monster movie, but a super-creepy-bad monster movie with a gigantic orange rubber rooster as the main monster.

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This is what the great orange rooster looks like in black and white.

The reason it is bad is because, basically, to become a member of the Republican Party’s elected elite, you basically have to have your heart removed.  Heartless, soulless monsters have a tendency to do things like take away Meals on Wheels for invalid seniors, health-care services from Planned Parenthood, and any hope of ever having affordable health insurance that actually pays for health care.

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                                                                          Senator Ted Cruz grinning about taking away Obamacare

And now, the monsters who have taken control of the theater are pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement because… well, apparently clean air isn’t good for decaying, desiccated monster skin and shriveled monster lungs that don’t breathe air anyway.

So here are my predictions for the coming darkness.

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What people like me will look like in the future.  That’s me in the middle.

I won’t live to see it.  My body is breaking down at age 60. My lungs are compromised by years of bronchitis and flu.  I am diabetic, so my very body chemistry is betraying me.  There is a family history of heart disease.  And I have already gone broke once on health care bills that the health insurance people really don’t pay for.  (They are in the business of collecting premiums, after all, not making people well.)

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What a lovely oxygen-free environment we will have!

As the climate changes take away large parts of our food production and resources, and the sea rises to take away land and major cities, people will be at war increasingly over diminishing resources vital to a population of seven billion souls.  Graveyards and unburied bodies will become a part of every monster-movie scene.

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Kiss me, Baby!

Love will become more complicated, because people who are selfless and put others before even their own life will die out first.  The heartless, selfish, and often stupid ones will have the best chance for survival because they put themselves ahead of everyone else, and so have an unfair advantage over those who are not content with mere survival and exhibit self-sacrificing love.

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You’ve never had a friend like me.  And I can always eat you later if need be.

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So, if you find my black-and-white monster movie post upsetting with the darknesses I am sincerely predicting, please remember, this is a satire post in a humor blog.  The way it is supposed to work is that you wake up to the factors that make it upsetting and decide to do something for yourself to change them.  Everybody doing a lot of the same little thing to make the world better can move mountains and fly to the moon.  Big things don’t happen without everybody taking a hand.  Maybe we can dream dreams once again and make some good things come true.

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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, horror movie, humor, monsters

June 6, 2022 · 7:32 pm

Try Again, Mickey, Get it Right

Trying and making mistakes is how we learn. Trial and error built empires, created revolutions, and changed the very nature of reality. How do I know this? I tried. I failed. I tried again.

If I am not satisfied with the way things are, I must take steps to change the way things are.

Small steps at first.

But bigger things come along in time.

For today, I try again to get the tall grass cut in the yard. I walk the dog. I plan what I am going to do about the sorry state of air conditioning in the house. Every problem has a solution if only you can find it.

Right now, the world around me is direly concerned with mass shootings and how to control them. Especially after Uvalde lost 19 kids and two teachers to bullets from an AR-15.

Gun laws would help. But a Republican-controlled government refuses to regulate them sensibly.

Voting the morons and the evil, corrupt bastards out of office would be a good start. Men like Representative Louie Gohmert, Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Greg Abbot, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, one moron and three bastards, have to no longer be in control. And voting in good, capable people like Beto O’Rourke would help. But too many idiots, fools, racists, and evil people have the privilege of voting, while minorities and people of good conscience face increased barriers to voting.

My privileged white friends and relatives I knew well in my school years long ago, have developed powerfully potent hate glands from listening to racist fears and hate-filled propaganda from FOX News and various elected leaders who’ve duped them into buying the bull-puckie.

So, what do I do about it?

Remind them who they used to be. Remind them they don’t want school children to die from bullets in their classroom on the next-to-last day of school anymore than I do. Remind them that I am a friend and a relative of some of them who will continue to listen, continue to care, and continue to point out where they are allowing their preferences to become prejudices and their fears to foster cruelty to certain groups of “others.”

Even though I have been retired for eight years now, I am still a teacher. I believe every kid and every adult who was once a kid has value and needs to be treated as an equal and worthy individual. I also believe in responsibility, and holding people responsible, but not in punishing someone for failing to live up to a responsibility… rather, letting them pick themselves up to try again to do it better.

We are not without hope for the future.

We trust that a leap of faith is worth taking.

And though we may fall…

We will live to get up and try again.

Until we don’t.

But at least we are trying to do it better.

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Filed under angry rant, Liberal ideas, Paffooney, philosophy, soliloquy, strange and wonderful ideas about life

June 1, 2022 · 7:37 pm

Recover Undercover

There isn’t a great deal of actual meaning in this title. It is kinda nonsense.

Looking at it through a magnifying glass, I can see a really big capital “R” and a really large, small “eco.” The rest of it looks ordinary, but I am probably looking at it with the other eye. See what I mean about nonsense?

It’s like a Republican telling you the election was stolen and Biden has ruined the economy. The truth is… the Pumpkinhead President failed to steal it, though he tried. And the Republicans ruined the economy by botching the pandemic response, and Biden has been slowly trying to fix it even though the Republicans and Joe Manchin have been throwing monkey wrenches into the efforts.

It doesn’t help anything to start shouting at Republicans and other sheep-like Fox News viewers, coloring the inside of my mind with a fiery red anger color. That color, if kept hot and intense enough, can cause scar tissue on the inside of my thought processes.

It is better by far to realize you cannot move stupid people to let go of tightly held beliefs. Maintain, rather a cool blue, but factual, color in the quiet part of your mind.

If you are going to effectively regather your energy for the next fight over solving the world’s problems, you need to think in many colors and puzzle them together in a way in which no single color dominates overmuch. Being a liberal means being open to new ideas, but only accepting them if they are actually workable and useful. Leaving it to the conservatives to throw monkey poo and accusations of being a pedophile into the process means liberals don’t get their hands dirty, and, hopefully, there will be enough non-stupid people coming along to recognize which side of the argument stinks.

So, I am actually advocating you deal with the Evil Empire the way Obi-Wan did, by laying low, going by another name, and eventually helping Luke Skywalker to rid the galaxy of the evil old Spider Emperor while helping blow up the Death Star.

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May 9, 2022 · 5:12 pm

Naked Opinions, Hot Answers

Twitter is a place where trolls live. It is a bull-puckie paradise where trolls can poop on things to their hearts’ content. It is toxic. Not a safe place to go naked. But many trolls do. They tell you exactly how ugly they are, not just in their skin, but all the way down to their bones.

I am not a troll myself. I am a nudist at heart, like the girl in the picture. I think it would be nice to walk in nature nude. But like the girl whose parents are hippies, but law-abiding hippies who would never send their daughter to school without clothing as long as that is an illegal act, I myself don’t put naked pictures of myself on Twitter. Some nudists do that. But trolls throw poo and links to porn if you do that. And being publicly naked physically is not my goal. Only naked ideas publicly.

But I put a lot of opinions on Twitter that are totally naked. They have no clothes on to cover up how I really feel underneath, the way a lot of so-called conservatives do to get their racist points across without being accused of having racist opinions. They dress them up nice.

I have a naked opinion about the impending repeal of Roe Vs Wade beginning the roll-back of safe abortion-services and the right for women to control what happens to their own bodies. I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice. And that is how I will vote. But I also believe it is the wrong approach to have this issue before considering some other very important things.

You need to be providing a better life for the majority of children brought into this world than you do now. Not just the Republican answer to abortion being adoption. You need to do something about all the unloved and disadvantaged children that already exist. Too many die of starvation. Too many die of abuse. And far too many are abused by the adults in their lives to the point that they grow up into monsters, abusing their own children, the children of others, and sometimes becoming sexual predators.

Why don’t we make a law where all parents must undergo intensive training and get a license to be a parent? You need to earn a license to drive a car. Why don’t we pass a law that corporations have to make certain that all children in their assigned districts are well-fed before they can do stock buy-backs to increase their value? If they want a healthier, more-capable work-force, they should invest in one. Why are we not passing laws to ensure that the planet’s environment is protected and children’s future is guaranteed? And all of these things should come before we worry about all people who are conceived actually getting born.

And why are we putting up with places like Florida punishing teachers for teaching tolerance to people who are different, not only by color of skin and culture, but by the sexual preferences and gender identity God made them with? If you truly want to do away with the need for abortion services, then you need more and better sex education rather than gag-orders against teachers to be punished by parents suing to get them fired and pilloried.

There will be less abortions needed if you teach kids what they need to know about how babies are made, how to use contraceptives safely, and how to talk to others about the facts of life so that everyone can know more about it and proceed with procreation properly, according to whatever version of God’s plan (including science-based secular beliefs) that you choose to believe in.

These are naked opinions. Saying flat out what I believe. Open to the poo-flinging of trolls and those conservatives who are easily offended if an opinion contradicts their self-proclaimed truths wearing the clothing of rather twisted and misrepresented Christian beliefs.

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Filed under angry rant, education, family, Liberal ideas, Paffooney

May 5, 2022 · 7:53 pm

The Sum of All my Fears

Let me be clear. I am not afraid to die. I am not afraid of the end of life on Earth. Even though I am just atheist enough that I don’t believe in an afterlife or rewards for being good after I am dead. I am also not afraid of turning evil in old age. My life is centered, peaceful, and grounded in a positive, life-affirming moral philosophy. So, why would I choose to write about fear if I am not afraid of anything?

But, that’s just it. I am not immune to fear.

I am sometimes afraid to watch Cardinals’ baseball games. It seems like, during playoffs and playoff runs, if I watch the ballgame, the Cardinals lose. I am afraid of being the cause of them losing important games, as if they would’ve won if I was not watching.

Of course, I listened on the radio the night Bob Gibson pitched a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 70’s . I watched the day Mark McGuire broke Roger Maris’s single-season home-run record. I watched the Cardinals win the World Series in 1982, 2006, and 2011. I followed the series in the newspaper in 1967. So, my fear is really a matter of being determined to overcome superstition. 1985, 2004, and all the other lost playoff series were really not my fault.

But a more real fear is my fear of stupid people winning the War on Ignorance that I have been fighting all my life, especially from 1981 to 2014, my teaching career. I am concerned that our education system is intentionally being driven into a dogma of only producing docile, controllable adults that will work hard and not demand a living wage, fair treatment, and equal rights with the privileged and wealthy minority. I labored for years to promote creativity, critical thinking, research skills, and reading-and-writing skills in students who come from poverty, Spanish-speaking homes, and who sometimes misbehave because they are not treated as well as their white, wealthy peers. Those are the hardest things that a teacher needs to teach. But the stupid people are demanding that we ban books and eliminate any idea or literature that might make privileged white kids feel the least bit guilty about racial attitudes, historical treatment of Native Americans, Slaves, and their descendants that their own ancestors might have had something to do with. And the feelings of those kids descended from those same oppressed peoples are disregarded. Stupid people would prefer that events like lynchings. the actions of the KKK, and other outrages committed in the name of racial hatred just be completely ignored and forgotten about. That is not how culture flows in a positive direction in a free democratic society.

As a retired teacher, I wish this meme had better spelling and was less true.

Stupid people are not only enacting racist book-banning crusades against straw men like CRT, Pro-Gay and Antifa terrorists, and liberal pedophiles, thus succeeding in firing black educators. banning the books of Alice Walker, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, and preventing teachers from answering questions about sex. But also in getting stupid and violent radicals elected to offices they have no ability to handle only so they can do hateful things to the people their voters hate… mostly the poor minorities and marginalized immigrants, LGBTQ people, and even liberal educators like me that FOX News and Mark Levin tell them to hate.

I definitely fear having to live the final years of my long life under the rule of Trumpists, racists, narrow-minded stupid people, and Ted Cruz.

Oh, and I am afraid of being watched by ducks. Beady-eyed, soulless mallards, pintails, mergansers, Muscovies, and other kinds of ducks. Even though it was actually a goose that caused my preschool trauma and current phobia, it is a mallard with teeth that haunts my nightmares.

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Filed under angry rant, humor, inspiration, irony, Paffooney

May 3, 2022 · 3:39 pm

Pirates Sell Insurance as an Act of Evil

Raygun RonnyIt is now official.  I hate health insurance companies more than I hate the high cost of health care.  I appreciate the emergency room that saved my son’s life a year ago in February.  But I am still trying to pay for it.  I am practically bankrupted by five ER visits in the last four years.  Only one of those was mine.  Health insurance does not approve ER costs for a whole list of health problems.  And that was a better insurance than we have this school year.

In order to get my son out of the Health Facility that the ER sent him to, I had to arrange a doctor and a therapist before they would even discuss releasing him.  I did that.  My son reached a level of recovery that they could have authorized his release after one three-day weekend, but of course, the kept him for ten days… all of which I had to pay for out of pocket at hospital rates.  The doctor I arranged for saw my son every three months after that to maintain his recovery and prescribe the best possible medicine.  He was one of the best doctors in his field and he helped immensely.  The therapist was even more helpful, being able to teach my son how to handle the symptoms and complications of his condition.  He was also worth his weight in gold.

But then the State of Texas decided the health insurance that teachers got through their school districts on State funding’s dime was much too good.  The wise and noble Emperor Perry of Texas decided to hand State employee health care over to Faetna ( a fake name that rhymes precisely with the corporation’s real name if you just drop the letter F).  Wonderful doctor does not even deal with the pirates of Faetna.  They swing into any and all health care situations on boarding ropes and slash at anything that moves with their cutlasses of problem-making.  So I had to get a new doctor.  The doctors in this particular field of medicine are not abundant to begin with.  Aetna… er, I mean Faetna, decided that we could only use doctors that were associated with the same hospital where we visited the ER.  Well, I asked them to give me names of the doctors who qualified.  I got three names.  I made an appointment.  We were filling out the paperwork in the doctor’s office twenty minutes before seeing the doctor.  The receptionist interrupted after I had half-way finished the mountainous paperwork to tell me the insurance had rejected payment.  This doctor that THEY had recommended to me was not a part of the approved network.  They took Faetna insurance, but Faetna refused to pay.  The same day I called the other doctors on the list.  No doctor recommended to me by the insurance company was part of the required plan.  There were no doctors in the city who did qualify.

Okay.  It can’t get worse.  We still had the therapist who was working miracles for my son.  He took Faetna insurance.  There was no problem there, right?  But wait.  The pirate captains of Faetna took another look.  They started rejecting his claims too.  Soon there was a huge yellow envelope full of demands for clinical records to justify the need for the therapist.  I went to the ER, to the wonderful doctor, to the hospital in Denton where they were still taking my money away from me, and to the therapist himself.  We gathered documents.  The lovely hospital charged me $50 for paperwork and made me drive all the way there to Denton twice to accomplish it.  I got all the materials compiled, overnighted them to the insurance company’s disapproval department, and everything should’ve been fine.  But. of course, it wasn’t.   The claims for services were denied.  I am expected to pay out of pocket.  They found no clinical evidence that the services were essential and they insisted I pay the bills without help from them.

So, I am left marveling at the ingenuity of the insurance-pirate racket.  Every month we pay for all five us, hefty premiums because we have health issues that need to be prepared for, and when the problems arise, and we ask them to pay their promised share…  we have issues, and we get denied.  I have been shanghaied by the pirates of Aetna… er, I mean Faetna.

pirates of insurance

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May 2, 2022 · 7:46 pm

The Straw Man

In debate and discourse the “Straw Man” is the character the debater draws up in his narrative that he will use to represent his opponent which he will then be able to knock down as easily as if he were a scarecrow made of straw.

So, Mickey will make a straw man to represent Republicans. He is looking forward to knocking that straw man down to the ground or below.

And Mickey will make the scarecrow out of Iowa Senator Charles Grassley. Made out of corn husks is almost the same as made out of straw, right? And Grassley is around nine hundred years old, so if there is any of the old iron left in his soul, it has long since dissolved into rust. Mickey’s verbal fists will not get broken bones in them.

I once shook Charles Grassley’s hand back in the 1970’s at the Wright County Fair in Eagle Grove, Iowa. He asked me to vote for him because I lived in his district, and he meant to do the right thing in Washington for the average hard-working farm family. So, I voted for him in 1976. And I did not regret that vote. Of course, that was the real Grassley. Not the corn-husk man Mickey is making for this essay.

I used to respect Republicans. Certain Republicans, anyway. The ones that still stood for something good. The ones who supported the Eisenhower Administration’s platform.

This was the Republican Party in the year that I was born. These were some of the principles that Mickey’s corn-husk man promised to uphold.

But then came Ronny Ray-Gun.

And the Republican Party got remade. They became the party of rich people. Ronny Ray-Gun introduced Voodoo Economics (a theory given its name by George HW Bush.)

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” said Ronny.

Of course, he meant, “If you’re not rich enough to own a boat, you can drown and we won’t care.”

And the corn-husk man, Mickey’s Straw Man in this argument, could’ve objected, and insisted Congress did not go down the yellow-brick road that Ronny laid out for the GOP. Instead, he said Ray-Gun was a truly great President, and he proceeded to make himself rich enough to buy a boat, something his average farmer-constituents did not have.

And when the conservatives on the Supreme Court handed an election victory to Lonesome George the Rodeo Clown that he probably didn’t actually win, Mickey’s corn-husk-filled Straw Man thought, “Isn’t it wonderful that we get to be in power without winning an election first!”

And the Straw Man went on to help the GOP faithful (now less the Grand Old Party, and more the Greedy Old Poopheads) put a justice on the Supreme Court who sexually harassed a black woman and never apologized for it, and a justice who likes beer enough to not remember trying to rape a teenage girl at a party when he was also a teen and caused Mickey’s Straw Man to be outraged… not at the Justice’s attempted crime, but at the fact that Democrats wanted to investigate the crime he committed.

And then came the years of The Donald, allegedly born of an orangutan and allegedly the winner of the 2016 election, and all the monkey poo that the king of all monkeys could fling. And Mickey’s Straw Man failed to remove him after he was impeached…. twice in fact.

Such is the nature of Straw Men. All of the Republican Straw Men are pretty much the same. I have a grudging respect for Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowsky, Jeff Flake, and Liz Cheney. And I haven’t made up my mind about Susan Collins… because she, like any Straw Man, can’t make up her own mind. But even those few believe in Ronny Ray-Gun’s boat theory.

So, now Mickey should deliver a haymaker or two on the corn-husk-filled Straw Man. He should be easy to knock down. But all the Iowa voters… and Texas voters too… have straw where their brains ought to be. This is why the party of the farmers was once-upon-a-time known as the Know-Nothing Party. So, knocking down the Straw Man has no visible effect on the votes of any of them. Oh, well… Mickey tried.

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