presidential greatness, the war on drugs, and Carl's Jr. chili dogs

I was reading an editorial by Thomas Friedman today. The gist of it being that every great president has overcome a large challenge. With the economic woes we are having, he asserts that Obama will have his shot at greatness. Of course, he can also be vilified I suppose.

Being a Taoist, I have to read such things and dismiss this as foolish. Allow me paraphrase and 'modernize' a parable that I've read. A prominent, physician, a cardiothoracic surgeon at a major teaching hospital, performed a pioneering procedure that saved the life of a critically ill patient. It was a marathon effort involing a large team of medical professionals and took the better part of a day. Soon thereafter, the governor of the state he lived in heard of his exploits. A special day was declared in the legislature. The lawmakers wished to send large amounts of money to continue his work. Finally an elaborate dinner ceremony with the good doctor as the guest of honor was arranged. The doctor not only declined the dinner ceremony, but asked that it be cancelled. He did ask to appear before the lawmakers to discuss what should happen with the money.

The day arrived for him to speak to the lawmakers. He explained that he was the youngest of three brothers. All of them were doctors. He explained how his middle brother was very good at diagnosing problems in patients while the problems were still small. He had prevented many people from becoming very sick. As such, he was only known as one the better physicians in his county. His oldest brother was able to diagnose problems before they even happened (i.e. preventative medicine) and had prevented an equal number of people from ever getting sick. As such, he wasn't recognized as being any good. The younger brother explained that he was not the greatest physician, rather it was his oldest brother. That is where the money should go towards. Preventing things before they happen. Where the most benefit can be realized for the least amount of money.

So what is my point? When we ask for the greatest presidents we hear Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt etc. Undeniably they presided over some of the darkest times in our country's history. My assertion is greatness is not necessarily found in overcoming mountains, but in stopping things and changing course while it is a molehill. The greatest President would therefore be one who presided over a calm, prosperous period devoid of strife, corruption, or international intrigue.

If Lincoln were "great" he would have been able to defuse Southern secession and put an end to slavery (as had the rest of the Western world at that time). If Lincoln were a "good" President he would have ended the war quickly to prevent the wholesale destruction of the South as well as a per capita casualty count that made all other wars this country has fought in look tame by comparison. Nope, Lincoln was a so-so President that gutted it out. I could make similar arguments against Washington and Roosevelt. The one major difference with Roosevelt being he inherited a huge damn economic mess from a Republican administration. Sound familiar? However, he should have started playing rough with the Fascists starting in '36 and '37. It's what a "great" president would have done.

I'm going to keep my comments about the war on drugs brief. Far all I know I might have discussed it earlier. Certain 'illegal' drugs need to be made legal or at least decriminalized. We as a nation need to have a rational examination about what drugs do and don't do. What is safe, what is not. What is safe to produce, distribute, etc. and what is not. What are the effects of long-term use? Casual use? Heavy use? And have it done by scientists that are armed with data. What we have is elected officials that still believe that only black jazz musicians smoke marijuana and that hippies are jumping off of cliffs, believing they can fly, after taking LSD. After they work themselves into a puritanical frenzy they go home and take some Xanax.

Ask yourself, what is more dangerous alcohol or marijuana? Before you answer, look up the LD50's on each.

People throughout history have always wanted to get high. Criminalizing it is new to the last 100 years or so. We have spent untold billions on the war on drugs. We've lost.

Finally, CJ's chili dogs. In a word........"DON"T".

Motivational Phrases

So I'm eating a can of Beefaroni this morning and reading yesterday's paper. On the cover of Parade is Liza Minelli. The combination of Beefaroni and Liza Minelli should have been enough to have me going for some more of the same promethazine I took last Friday (see previous blog). But since I am a glutton for punishment, I found the article and started reading. I got one sentence in and had had enough.

It started something to the effect, "If you got one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you aren't living for today". Nice sentiment Liza. I suppose that gives validation to those of your ilk that are impulsive and do whatever they feel like doing today with no regard for tomorrow.......or the past. But I'm going to stick with you analogy Liza. If one of my legs is in yesterday and one is in tomorrow that leaves my 'third leg' in today. That's exactly how I should think. Of course with your picture staring back at me it's pretty much impossible.

There's a whole slew of motivational phrases out there, many of them contradictory or just plain stupid. There is a company called 'Despair' that has a line of products that spoofs just such phrases. I have had calendars from them for the past three years. Check out their website at despair.com and I think you'll agree.

Ms. Minelli's little acorn of wisdom notwithstanding, the phrase I most loathe is "It's better to aim for the stars and miss, than aim for the mud and hit it". There's one thing I find wrong and even offensive about this one. Those of us who have more realistic goals bristle at the notion that they are aiming for the mud. Perhaps we could have NASA retool this phrase. You have to have sub-orbital missions, then orbital, before you attempt the moon. Why, because it is highly unlikely you will make the moon in one shot and billions will be wasted and the lives of the crew will be sacrificed. Of course, people that adhere to the always shoot for the stars philosophy probably wouldn't understand what I just wrote. So keep aiming for the starts children!

As a reference back to the previous blog. Apparently the last part of "The Wrestler" features Mickey Rourke going up against his former arch-nemesis called "The Ayotollah". In the movie he was a guy named Bob who owned a car dealership in Arizona. The reason I dredged this up again, is because there are some Hollywood types visiting Iran this week. And the Iranian government used it as an opportunity to rail against the portrayal of Iranians in movies. They didn't like the stereotypes in "the Wrestler". I suppose someone hadn't explained professional wrestling to these morons. It is a passion play FOR morons. It is about nothing but sterotypes. And this Bob guy probably wasn't named Rafsanjani.

The Iranian government also objected to Persian portrayal in the movie '300'. The Greeks were pious family men, while the Persians were oversexed degenerates. (The few Greeks and Persians I know are all relatively pious family men and women. Including one of the single pharmacists I work with that should try a little sexual debauchery before he marries). Fair enough I suppose, except this happened over 2000 years ago. It would be like me objecting to the portrayal of the Swiss in 'Gladiator'. My Aunt Babetta, if she were still alive, would correctly point out that those filthy barbarians were either Germans or Austrians. Not Swiss.

Hand held movie cameras and public health

In my entire life I 've only walked out of three movies. The first was Oh God Book II. I don't really remember much about it, except it had an interminably cute ten-year old girl and George Burns wasting my time. The second was Showgirls. I don't really remember much about it either, except that one chick with the overbite and Gina Gershon were topless for much of the movie. In hindsight, I'm not so sure what made that such a bad thing. I just remember getting up and leaving. Today was my third movie.

Now before I say what this movie was, I want people to know that I actually watched most of "The Blair Witch Project" (the rest I listened too in the aisle). You see, I get nauseated fairly easy by the shaky camera techniques. It doesn't add realism......or grit.......or integrity........or anything else good. It just makes me sick to watch. Blair Witch was the first movie I recall watching with this camera use. It was also a truly dreadful movie. But my new champ is "The Wrestler".

I like movies about redemption. Characters that realize the futility, or destructiveness of the path they have followed, who realize that they must change. Of course, the protagonist had screwed things up so badly I doubt he was going to make it. Even if the cameras had been mounted on a tripod this movie would have still sucked. With still cameras, I would have been physically able to view it without having to reach for my bucket of popcorn so I could fill it with puke. I don't know whether the movie ended well, poorly, or ambiguously. By the time I got up and left, I was convinced it just wasn't going to end!

The nausea that I felt was so severe, that I came right home and took a 25 mg Promethazine. I've feeling much better now. There were two good things about that movie though and Marisa Tomei had both of them. She's like my age I think. NICE!!

On to topic number two. I got some mail today reminding me that my daughter (who will be entering 7th grade) will need her immunizations to be current. It just two nausea-fueled (thanks to the movie) tangential leaps to think about the people that get incensed about young girls being immunized with Gardisil starting at twelve or so. For those not in the know, Gardisil is a vaccine against HPV which causes a large amount of cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is a huge killer of young women worldwide. The vaccine makes a huge reduction in the incidence of cervical cancer. The people that developed it should have won the Nobel Prize for medicine. At the very least, I hope they are making gobs of money. They deserve it.

Anyway, I digress. The point I wished to make was that Gardisil has to be given BEFORE a woman becomse sexually active. There are those who bristle at the idea of the implication that girls as young as my daughter are sexually active. Infact, the thought of my daughter being sexually active is repugnant to me also. However, this isn't about morality, or propriety, or anything else but public health.

Are kids aren't supposed to start drinking until they are 21. Does that mean we should withhold any discussion about the dangers of excess alcohol consumption or drunk driving until they are 20? Of course not! Even the puritanical blowhards would have to agree with me on this one. So my advice to all those with young daughters is this. Get her immunized on time. If your feeling nauseated, come by the house. I've got a few extra promethazine.

One more thing. I don't want anybody in my presence to misuse the word nauseous. People always say I feel nauseous. Some people are I suppose, but most are nauseated not nauseous. For example: If I eat an unidentified mushroom and get very sick it is because I was POISONED by a POISONOUS mushroom. If I eat a rancid 7-11 burrito it is because I became NAUSEATED by a NAUSEOUS item of food. I might also say I was nauseated after seeing that nauseaous movie. That's about it for now.

Fat Tony and the Nobel Peace Prize

There is a movement afoot in our state to put limits on the interest rates charged by payday lenders. I think the entire industry is unsavory. I also think that regulations are not needed.

People fall into the trap of being stuck with these loans every payday and cannot get out. These people are fools and need protection. But will it help? I've often heard the quote, "you can't fool an honest man". You can draw your own conclusions about what type of people I think are getting trapped in these schemes.

Back in the day, Fat Tony would make you a loan for a week and you'd him back an extra 10% in two weeks. Of course, Check City won't send their goons out to break you legs when you don't pay. They have to go to court. Nobody dared rob Fat Tony, because they'd end up dead. Check City needs the glass, the safes, the security etc. and all that stuff costs money. The cost of providing this microcredit is large, hence the large interest rates.

I'd like to see these payday lenders, as they exist now, all go out of business. HOWEVER, the need for rapid microcredit is very real, very large, and ignored. Let's assume that my furnace went out today. Say that I'd need $500 bucks to fix it. I could cover it with checking. If not, I could use my credit card. Not everyone can do that though. I think credit cards are foolish. I keep one with a 500 dollar line for making online hotel reservations, car rentals, etc. that I won't use my debit card on for security purposes. I could go the bank tomorrow and fill out the paperwork. And in a few days I'd have my answer. It's only because I have a job, a home, and a decent credit score. What about everyone else.

We need to find ways for the Regular Joes to get access to small loans. One suggestion is to pretty much make these types of loans to women. Women don't squander money like men do. When they say I want to borrow 500 dollars for a used sewing machine and start-up supplies they will use it for that purpose. Another example could be $1200 for a greenhouse and some drip irrigation equipment to grow organic vegetables. This is the type of stuff that is being done routinely in some countries in an effort to ease poverty. I think it can be done here. Microindsutries are viable, expecially in agricultural products.

Down's syndrome, parents that need their children's forgiveness, and memory loss

I'm going to start with the memory loss portion first.....before I forget. This morning I had wanted to rant about three different things. I went to church and came up with a fourth. But now I'm back down to two, because I forgot the other two. Either that or they weren't of any significance and should be relegated to the ravings of an overweigkt lunatic. Me.

Wait! I just remembered! In an earlier blog I mentioned that extreme political positions are to ignored. I'm still waiting for Obama to stick it to the far left. I wanted to sing the praises of our own Governor Huntsman who has come out in favor of civil unions. The far right took out a full page advertisement in the paper today. I started reading it. I got about a third the way through and went looking for some promethazine. Which helped me remember the other thing that I wanted to mention before I get to the actual topics mentioned in the title.

I am opposed to abortion, except in the case of rape, incest, or the life of the mother is in jeopardy. This is the mantra of the far right. They pretty much got it right on this issue. I am also in favor of abortion when the child will not enjoy a quality of life befitting a human. I'll get back to this later.

Naturally I support measures that reduce the numbers of abortions performed in this country. Whether it be better and more readily available prenatal care, age appropriate sex eduation in the schools, Planned Parenthood, and all the other things that the right wishes to do away with. Anybody care to venture a guess about whether there were more or less abortion during the Clinton years? Anybody want to guess what happened under W? The one thing that is most often ignored in the abortion debate is POVERTY. When people don't have jobs they are more likely to have abortions. Especially all the 'healthy white ones' that some adoptive parents clamor over. Poverty and jobs are a moral issue just like abortion. Anybody care to guess about the correlation between level of education and abortion rates? Education is a moral issue. So instead of passing more laws, placing more restrictions, let's deal with the reasons women have abortions to begin with.

I mentioned earlier that certain defects should be considered in deciding when to have an abortion. There was an op-ed piece in the Deseret News railing against the evils of a more reliable (and safer than amniocentesis) test for determining whether a fetus has Down's. Again the far right has things partially right when they say that Down's patients should not be aborted. Most should not be. Most in this country are. The test is not evil. What we as a nation are doing can be argued. Hopefully this test will lead to more reliable tests that can determine the severity of the what the child will have. Then better choices can be made, more Down's children will live and not be aborted.

Earlier I alluded to a quality of life befitting a human. Perhaps I should quickly clarify. One should be aware of one's environment. One should be able to continue to learn. One should be able to experience joy and sadness, pain and pleasure, loss and gain, and have some measure of perspective about what is right and wrong. One should have eventually have some measure of independence.

One of the tenets of my religious beliefs is not only a hereafter but familes persisting. My father died a few years back. I hope to be reunited with him someday. Yet I fear that my father will likely be angry at me for letting his life extend past the point where the previous paragraph would not define his existence. I should have liked to have done what he often told to do when I was younger, "John, if I ever get so bad that I'm not living any more you have to promise that you'll just shoot me". Sorry Dad. I am genuinely sorry I had to prolong things, but I would have gone to jail had I done what you wanted. Were it not Alzheimers, but some type of genetic conversion whereby people became progressively Down's, or spina bifida, or anencephalic there would be an outpouring of understanding for those who might want to prevent it from progressing past a certain point.

Finally, I wish to rail against a common attitude of supposedly adult children when a parent dies and the other remarries. It happened today in church. One of the speakers went on and on about her divine nature in 'forgiving' her father for remarrying after her mother passed. I take special exception to this being someone who has lost a spouse and remarried.

We don't need anyone's fortgiveness because we have done nothing wrong. I don't know the specifics of this particular couple, but I can't imagine a scenario whereby he shouldn't remarry. People have notions I suppose that one should 'grieve' for a certain period of time. And should stay single, alone, and unhappy after that. I encountered some of this when I started to piece together the lives of me and my boys. After Teresa's funeral, the boys and I drove her best friend to the burial. Her friend was living in the Bay area, for about a year previous, and had barely flown in. Imagine the sight of me getting out of the van with a blond with a spiky-haired blond, who had a loooooooong hug for me and a kiss for both boys. Some must have thought I brought a date!

Why did I remarry so soon? Not that it's anybody's business, but because my first wife had told me to. She must have had some premonition I suppose. Starting a few months before she died, she would tell me that if she died that she wanted me to remarry right away. Less than five months after it happened, I had remarried. Many were aghast. The one group that it could have been the most expected from was Teresa's family. In fact, they were the most supportive and understanding. They were all happy that the boys had a new mom (and two new brothers!). They went out of their way to make my new family their family. This act of true divine nature is one that I shall not forgive nor be able to repay.

symptoms

I can no longer hold my peace. I am going to complain about certain of the patients I try to help.

Patients ask what is the "best" thing for a cold. I ask the symptoms and invariably the first thing they say is I have 'sinus'.

Let me make this very simple. 'Sinus' is a body part NOT a symptom. Are your sinuses congested, running, dry, painful, dripping blood etc.?

What would happen if I went to the Instacare for a urinary tract infection and when I am asked the problem I answer, I have "penis". Instead of leaving with seven days of Cipro and/or Pyridium I'd be laughed at (or leave with an Rx for Levitra).

Politics, scholarship, suburban angst

I was asked recently if I had any political views. My answer was 'yes'.

Today my oldest son received a letter from the department of Education inviting him to apply for some Presidential this, that, or the other thing. He would get to go to Washington D.C. with about 140 other kids nationwide. They will get a medal, attend some 'functions', and get to meet the President. NO MONEY for school mind you, just the trip and the fun.

Well it turns out that he has to fill out an application. He's been filling out lots of applications lately. And assembling portfolios. He has promised that his latest portfolio will be like nothing anyone else has written. So here's my concerns: The kid has strong and mature political views. I have myself to blame I suppose. I am an economist. I analyze the world with this in mind. And warfare of course. I have studied both since I was sixteen. As I answered earlier, I have definite political views.

I told my son that he need not shrink from, nor modify his beliefs. He needs to be careful about what he says. Not for fear that it may offend, or alienate, but to make sure that what he states is clear, concise, and most importantly what he believes. I have always taught him to challenge others beliefs. I have taught him to recognize authority where it exists and to respect that which earns respect. I have failed in one key regard though. He has yet to challenge me. Not once has he said, "how can you believe that" or better yet "you're full of it old man!".

Our relationship has obviously been that of father/son. But it has at times taken on that of teacher/student. The student is always reluctant to challenge the master. He has already surpassed me on a few academic fronts. That is to be expected. His analyses and the styles he employs leave me anxious about the path he will be eventually drawn to. He wishes to study physics and mathematics. One day he wants to work at CERN. I don't see that happening for him unless he challenges me in a timely fashion. I see him clutching the Nobel Prize for economics. And maybe providing sage advice for some knucklehead President of the United States that he met back in the summer of 2009 at a conference for presidential scholars.

I fail to grasp why economics and human decency and compassion have to be politicized. Perhaps my son can make it possible. I certainly haven't. One of my views is summed up nicely from the closing lines of Brecht's 'Caucasian Chalk Circle'.

Take note of what men of old concluded:
That which there is shall to go those who are good for it.
Children to the motherly, that they prosper.
Carts to good drivers, that they might be driven well.
The valley to the waterers, that it yield fruit