Ron Has Cancer

Dear Fans,

I have been diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive form of cancer. I have been fortunate to be accepted for treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. You can follow my progress on my Facebook Page or on Youtube under "Ron Shock: The Cancer Chronicles" (I start with Part I and progress from there.)

Due to the rarity of this cancer, most oncologists have never seen a case. Therefore, Rhonda and I felt that the best place for me to be was at MD Anderson, as it is among the best, if not the best Cancer Centers in the United States.

I have an exploratory assessment procedure on January 10th and from there it will be determined if surgery is an option. In the best case scenario, my treatment will require radical surgery, followed by radiation and chemo (the unholy trinity).

Please keep Rhonda, my kids and me in your thoughts and prayers as you find it appropriate. We are humbled and grateful for the donations you have made to help us afford this treatment and I will try not to let you down. It is my hope that I will, once again, walk on a stage and blow the room away.

Your friend and storyteller,
Ron Shock

they way we are and how we got here.

name recognition test: enron, raptor, condor, chewbacca, dennis kozlowski, tyco, worldcom, bernard ebbers, adelphia communications, martha stewart/merrill lynch, subprimes, cdo's and last, but certainly not least, standard and poors. they are the rougues gallery of the collapse of the american dream


m. stewart got included because she is a symbol of insider trader information, not because she brought anything or anyone down. all the others cost us trillions when added together, ruined tens of thousands of lifes, brought europe to ints knees and cost a gppd portion of the american public their life savings. nothing serious. and all these scams got great tiple AAA ratings from standard and poors, you know, the PRIVATE company that downgraded the usa's credit rating. repeat after me: we are so fucked.

if you don't know what or who these names represent then you are part of the problem. they are lessons in how we got to where we are, the facilitators of the collapse of the american dream. they are the scams and scammers of the past 15 years or so, look them up. read about the housing market collapse...nothing happens in a vacuum; anyone who stays silent is cupable,

i tried to warn people about the housing collapse way before it happened but no one listens to a drug addled comic in las vegas, everyone is smarter than i am, everyone knew that housing prices could go up 15-20% per year while wages stayed flat, why listen to me? everyone knew that giving loans to people with poor credit and a bad job resume was jut a hunky dory idea for public money (fannie mae and mac) and private banks (countrywide and bank of america to name two) why listen to me?

i said when bush II came into office that he was going to set up some kind of financial scam for his cohorts because that is what the bush family does....see neal bush and the savings and loans of the 80's. find out more about the brother the press NEVER mentions, marvin. see how exactly georgie boy became a "successful businessman" with his holdings in the texas rangers and the sudden infusion of PUBLIC money into that forlorn franchise. but no one listened, i was obviously just ranting and raving and what did i know anyway?

so, now here we are, no jobs, no credit, no manufucturing, europe staggering, the middle east still sucking lives and money out of the treasury and so who does the american public blame?...why, obviously it is barrack obama's fault. fuck me. fuck you. fuck us all. oh, and merry christmas.

occupy america

one of the good things that has come out of the OCCUPY WALL STREET protests and the police response to it (tear gas, pepper spray, beatings etc) is that the american public is finally seeing the dark underbelly of our capitalistic society, where the bankers who sold toxic mortgage securities and thus caused the financial meltdown are not arrested, not charged, not vilified but are given bonuses of millions of dollars while the average person on main street is left jobless with the strong possibilty of homelessness, occupy wall street people are beaten with batons in new york city, a iraq war veteran was hit with a tear gas canister fracturing his skull and sitting students are pepper sprayed in california. (incidently pepper spraying a prisoner who is sitting down even during a riot is not only forbidden if a guard does spray a sitting prisoner they are subject to dismissal...which means that murderers in prison have more rights than peaceful protesters on the uc davis campus) as pogo once said, "we have found the enemy and it is us."

our capitalistic economy has failed all but the ultra/uber rich and the people of this once great country are left holding the bag. i have said this before but it bears repeating....revolutions happen when the poor and the middle class unite because they are BOTH being fucked by the ruling class. the ruling class used to be the royalty but now it is the corporations and the ultra rich; we live in an oliarchy not a democracy. we are spoon fed candidates who are beholden to the monied people who support their campaigns so we get to choose not the lesser of two evils but the equal evils "running". citizens united is an insult to all of us who cherish our democracy; corporations are NOT PEOPLE.

i am so mad right now that i could spit. my words fail me and violent behavior is not in my make up but revolution is in the air and in my soul.

he Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.
- Patrick Henry -

I think almost all of us – from the most conservative to the most liberal – can agree that Congress sucks. Those people are losers and need to get with the program. So, I’m sending this along; it sounds like a great idea. Maybe if they had to live like the rest of us they’d get the picture and stop participating in their endless political masturbation.
I hope you all read this completely You will be glad you did.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it.

That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.

All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.

It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.

The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.


If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people, it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!!

If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete. You are one of my 20+. Please keep it going.
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."




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listen to the lion (inside of you)

don't know if there is a lion inside of everyone but you will never know if there is one in you until you look for it and if it is found... then you must listen. remember i walked away from more money than most people will ever make to do something that a. i had never thought of doing until i actually did it and b. even if mastered did not promise much financial rewards but it what i was supposed to do and i knew that when it was presented to me. i had something that a lot of people don't have and that is courage of my convictions. i AM a comic and will remain one until i die. i didn't get into this to "see if i could do it"; that is not what the lion would do; i got into it to be a comic. hell or high water, low pay, long travel, big expenses, etc never deterred me, never discouraged me, never got me down; not then, not now, not ever. i know lots of people who were in the business and called themselves comics but they were wantobes and i have proof...they are not doing comedy now. comedy is not a job it is a advocation. look for yours, listen to the lion inside of you and he/she will tell you what you are. then have the courage to follow that advice, cast aside your doubts, your fears, your worries and jump in whatever waters you have chosen. like the old army slogan went..be all you can be....you were created for something, find it, do it, be happy.

republicans and medicare...article for vegas voice

The Republicans are proposing a wide-ranging change to Medicare and they are all walking in lock-step to the same drummer; the drums of moving the cost of this recession onto the backs of the poor and the elderly, while at the same time, giving as much money as possible to large corporations, in this case, the giant insurance companies.

Under the Paul Ryan plan, Medicare as we know it today, would disappear from the American landscape and would be replaced by Federal subsidies to help pay for private insurance that would be issued by insurance companies. In some ways, it mirrors President Obama's health care plan, because both rely on private insurance companies to issue the actual insurance. I oppose both for that very reason; the involvement of private insurance companies in what, in the case of Medicare, has always been a government program that was paid for by everybody through payroll deductions. A real national healthcare plan, when one is finally put in place, should be a truly government program, and paid for in same way as medicare is paid for now.

Having worked as a consultant to several large insurance companies, I can tell you one thing for sure, and that is insurance companies are not in the business of paying claims; they are in the business of collecting premiums. You can rest assured as health care costs go up, the insurance companies will raise the premiums and not just by the % of the rising cost but the % plus a profit and not a small profit at that. Just like they have raised the premiums each and every year on almost every single kind of insurance they issue but, in particular, health care premiums. Overall, Insurance company profits were up 56% in 2009 (last year available) even though 2.7 million Americans lost their insurance that year and some companies, especially those involved in group health, did much better than that. To wit: Wellpoint increased profits in 09 over 08 by, are you ready?, 91%! United Healthcare was a real pauper, increasing only 28% in same period while , at the same time, losing 3.9% of enrollment. However, the real winner was Cigna, who dropped 5.5% in enrollment, but increased profits by 346%! A private insurance company must make a profit and, as figures show, they do a good job of that. Government insurance, on the other hand, is not required to meet a profit figure and is only obligated to pay the bills plus maybe a percentage to cover rising health care costs in the next year. In addition, if government stays in the medicare business (so to speak), they have a huge advantage over private companies because of their control of all the payments, which helps them negotiate costs for hospital stays, costs of surgery, cost of drugs, etc. etc. Whereas private companies can, and do negotiate, but to their advantage, not that of their customers. Plus, on the philosophical side, Medicare and Social Security were, and are, a promise made to the American People by the American government. To change it now, after people have paid in all their lives, would be unconscionable and the breaking of a sacred trust.

To anyone who is really, truly, serious about Social Security and Medicare reform, the answer is quite obvious...make everyone pay into the system on all income. For instance, how fair is it for a private person, in business for themselves, to pay 12.4% into social security with a max of $11,107.20 (this year but is going up next year), whereas someone making 100 million dollars per year would still pay the same $11,107.20 they and no more. Yet the very same multimillionaire is still eligible for medicare and social security.

To wrap this argument up, let me say that I trust the Social Security Administration a whole lot more than I trust any insurance company. Plus I can petition my government, but I cannot petition an insurance company. Social Security and Medicare are two of the most successful government programs of all time let's keep them that way.

here you go if you were wondering why

E.j. Frericks July 9 at 10:20am Report
Caught this on Andrew Tobias site:
Watch This 30-Second Spot
Published on July 07, 2011


Here it is in 30 seconds: “You can’t rebuild America if you tear down the middle class.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY1l9OOxtqo&feature=player_embedded


The Republicans have made it clear from the get-go – explicitly – that their number-one priority is Obama’s failure.

Why?

Is it because he wanted to start an educational race to the top? Or because he hoped to take out Bin laden?

No.

Is it because he wanted to reform the financial system and establish a consumer financial protection bureau?

No.

Was their concern that he wanted every American to have access to affordable health care, along the lines of the Mitt Romney model?

That he wanted to save the U.S. auto industry?

That he wanted to wind down combat operations in Iraq?

That he wanted to empanel a bipartisan budget deficit commission (their idea)? Or establish a free-market cap-and-trade system (their idea)?

Or modernize our decaying infrastructure?

Were they alarmed that a Nobel-prize winning physicist was named to head the Department of Energy or that investments were made to help the private sector fund potentially game-changing energy technologies?

Nope. None of that.

Could they have wanted his Presidency to fail because he would sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act or initiate an anti-bullying campaign or encourage potentially life-saving embryonic stem cell research or appoint non-white-male-conservatives to the Supreme Court? Or include gays and lesbians and transgender citizens in his vision of America?

Because he hoped to tighten tobacco regulation or check the sale of assault weapons at gun shows?

Well, we may be getting a little warmer, but still no.

They have wanted him to fail (remember their cheering when Chicago failed in its Olympic bid?) because they want their power back – an inclination natural to both parties – and because they want to protect the rich and powerful (an inclination natural only to one).

The rich must not be taxed.* Corporations must not be regulated. Government is bad, especially to the extent it gives power or rights to the non-wealthy.

That’s the nub of it. To win, they need unemployment to be high and the economy stalled.

And the rest of us are caught in the crossfire.

Have a nice day.


*Or at least be protected from the tax rates they suffered under Clinton (let alone Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter – or even Reagan, who set the tax on investment income at 28%, nearly double George W. Bush’s 15% rate.

this is something i wrote about how the workers are being fucked and someone wrote back and said that it was a perversion of capitalism and i answer:

well, actually it is capitalism taken to its logical conclusion. since i am one of the 16 americans (or so it seems) who read marx, who was a, for lack of better term, a financial philosopher, and he forsaw just what is happening here and in europe verily as we speak and that is that capitalism will eventually eat itself as the big get bigger and the small are swallowed up in the feeding frenzy. where profits take precendent over everything else which includes, of course, worker safety, worker wages, worker working enviroment and worker safety net such as pensions, retirement, health care etc. for years, unions stood in the way of capitalism running amok but since ronnie, i can't recall, reagan was in office there has been a concerted effort to break the unions and, for the most, that effort has succeeded and we all are paying the price. marx said that communism will only come to being in an industrialized country (which is why it didn't work in russia) because capitalism is necessary for the establishment of factories, roads, shipping, warehouses, etc etc etc etc but once that was accomplished, which it has been, then the inherent weakness of capitalism will become evident to all with the exception of the ultra rich. the computer age and robotic factories are hurrying the process along. see, the rich have a real problem and that is what are they going to do with all of us who are no longer necessary? communism is only a threat to the ultra rich and that is why for almost 100 years capitalistic countries have said what a horrible thing communism is. the very idea of equality is foriegn to a capitalist, the very idea of living wages and upward mobility is frowned upon by the rich. you may think otherwise but history is going to show that i am right. there will come a revolution of the people here and in europe and out of that revolution will come chaos and out of the chaos will come a new form of government which will be either a dictatorship or communism. i probably won't be alive to see the end result but many of you reading this will be. a strong leader here could push back the arrival time of said revolution but it is inevitable, we are seeing a forerunner of sorts all across the middle east where the common denominator in egypt, lybia, tunisia, syria, yeman, et al is the lack of work and the income disparity. hmmmm. all of the dictators of those countries and their cohorts stole billions from the people and now the people want an accounting. our wealth has been stolen as well but we had a middle class which acted as a buffer between the modern robber barons and the rest of us but that middle class is being battered on all sides and so now, who speaks for you and me? NO ONE.
about an hour ago · Like

cwp

it is early in the morning, rhonda still asleep and i find myself worrying more and more about the state of the union as i read the morning paper. in the last couple of days there have been articles about ceo's increasing their pay while at the same time cutting benefits for the workers. all of this while health care costs go up 48% as the insurance companies are trying to get every last dime they possibly can before a national health care system comes into play. (of course, the nhc that obama passed is so complex, so convoluted and still slanted towards the insurance companies as to be better than nothing but not by much.) unless something is done by the national government we are going to slide farther and farther down the ladder to depression. on the other hand, however, the national government is so tied up in partisan quibbling that we ought to give each and ever person in congress and obama himself a violin to play while america burns.

no one in washington seems to grasp the obvious...we need jobs. the republicans say that the government cannot create jobs only the private sector can do that but the fact of the matter is that american corporations are sitting on record amounts of cash while at the same time they are making the workers put in longer hours and do more tasks instead of hiring.

in the depths of the great depression fdr tried two things...first the cpa which put money into the hands of private contractors and they were supposed to create the jobs. what happened, of course, is that the contractors made off with the money and very few jobs were created and the situation got worse. finally harry hopkins convinced fdr to put people to work directly through the government and the cwp was created. FOUR MILLION JOBS WERE CREATED IN THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS. and depression was avoided. will we do the same here in 2011? not a fucking chance.

the president's speech...

ah jesus, even though i knew basically what obama was going to say actually hearing it made me feel ill to my stomach. what bullshit! what gall! what warmongering jingoistic bombast! i am amazed he was not booed by the camera people. so, as i said on face book here is the great peacemaker at work...he increases troop levels in the "surge" by 30,000 and now he is "withdrawing" 33,000 leaving "only" 67,000 (or thereabouts) which, oh fellow liberals, about twice the number of troops there when he took office. smoke and mirrors. and next year, he will consult with his "generals" to get their view on what to do then. (here is a prediction...generals are going to be in favor of war....what cha think?) and during the speech not nary a word about what to do about the troops in iraq.

now, not to be outdone in warmongering, rep. boehner was quick to beat the drums of war and death immediately after obama's litany of lies and pussyfooting by saying that we had to stay until the taliban is defeated...which, of course, would be like...oh let's say...never.

the only good thing i heard on tv today was on msnbc where rachael m. said that polls showed that 72% of the american people wanted us out of afghanistan ASAP. of course, the american people want jobs too but hey, fuck 'em, what do they know? i think that they may know that the large amounts of money we are spending (giving to the military industrial complex that is) in iraq and afghanistan would be put to better use and betterment of the american people if that same amount of money was spent here on say building bridges or repairing roads or even paying down the debt. but no, that ain't gonna happen. the war party has spoken and we will be in the middle east until we piss enough of them off to actually explode a nuclear weapon here. and they will get that weapon from pakistan. that is the end result if we don't get out. the people in afghanistan, pakistan, iraq, iran, yeman, saudi arabia et al see us as imperialistic invaders, which, of course, we are. and they will resort to the most desperate of means to get us out. and that is what is going to happen unless we, the people, demand that we stop these stupid, foolish, expensive, murderous wars that are being fought in our name.

in the meantime, republican candidate for president , john huntsman, has been running a commercial on tv that shows him riding a motorcycle through rough country. (set to music of course but no dialogue, just his name...huntsman for president.) ahhhh, but it is not huntsman on the bike. lol. unfuckingbelievable.

to quote the late great bill hicks WAKE UP AMERICA

back to blogging

for the last year or so, most of the 'blogs' i have posted have been on face book but rhonda wants me to start here again so that later she can edit some of these and put them in a book. matter of fact, now that i think about it, since i have been toying with the idea to do what hundreds, if not thousands, of you have asked me to do which is to write a book about my life and times, i may just write many of these with that exact thought in mind. the problem with facebook is that the comments and posts disappear and finding them again is a real time consuming process. anyway....

the republican field for president is filled with a. nuts,b. religious fanatics and c. people who just make shit up when they have nothing to say. in class a. we have michelle bachman and the undeclared favorite of the tea party, sarah (read my lips since i don't read anything) palin....just google up their statements on you tube, the examples of nuttiness are rampant. leading the pack for b. is gov. rick perry of texas who is having a big "prayer meeting" where only christians and right wing fundamentalist christians at that are welcome (apparently muslims, jews, hindus, unitarians, methodists, native americans, animists, buddhists et al are neither americans nor do they pray) plus it is co-sponsered by the american family association which is an anti-gay right wing group so gays don't count either in rick's america. my favorite little fact (and not little at that) is his belief that abstinance works to cut down on teenage pregnacies. with this belief firmly in mind, rick perry cut sex education in texas schools and guess what? teenage pregnancies in texas are now the largest in america. when this was pointed out to him, the good guv said, and i quote, "abstinace works." he also cut funding for schools across texas hoping, i guess, to grab that #50 spot in studnet achievements...presently the grand state of texas (republican to the core) is 48th in reading and 49th in science. of course, all of the republicans claim to be staunch christians and all will tell you that america was founded by christians but they neglect to say that a good number of our founding fathers were unitarians...including thomas jefferson. ah well, never let facts get in the way of a good campaign speech; which brings us to

b. tom pawlenty another favorite of the republican right. being a member of the war party, tommy boy said this past week that "iraq is a shining example for the entire middle east." man oh man. the week before the cia said that THE LARGEST CONCENTRATION OF AL QUAIDA FIGHTERS IS IN IRAQ!.. and in today's new york times 96-22-11) are these examples of that shining example. 1. suicide bombers detonated two car bombs on tues outside the governor's compound in baghdad killing at least 27 people, many of them police officers. 2. roadside bombs were detonated near american convoys in the cities of hilla, tikrit and samarra. 3.militants fired rockets into a u.s. military base in baghdad, where five soldiers were killed in a rocket attact two weeks earlier and a sixth soldier has died since then of wounds from that same attack. 4. a military convoy in basra was attacked on tuesday but no one died. and 5. "although villence in iraq has decreased significantly in recent YEARS, there is still a STEADY stream of attacks, particularly against government officials and security forces. last week, suicide bombers attacked a provincial council office in baquba, killing seven. (maybe tommy boy was referring to the movie..the shining...since the horror continues daily) and now for ...

c. the erstwhile, newt ginrich, (you know, the family values guy who left his dying wife for a helmet-headed bimbo) has been tauting himself as a professor. which he is not. but why quibble? and why question a man who has a million dollar line of credit at tiffany's? to buy baubles for his baby....

on the democratic side of the war party (the only party we have), though obama is highly unpopular, not a single democrat has said that they will oppose him. i guess they are just super happy with how things are going.

in final comment for today, we are building bridges and roads and providing job training not here in america where we so desperately need it but in afghanistan and iraq. can you say...."we are so fucked"?

rep. peter king for hypocrite of the year.

my nominee for hypocrite of the year: peter king. he supported the ira while they were in bed with...(drum roll please)...momar khadafi. now he is on his mc carthy type witch hunt against american muslims,who are, according to the fbi or main source of info about potential terrrorists.
14 minutes ago · · Like ·
Ron Shock if you don't think that this plays right into al quaida's propoganda then you don't think. proof that america is anti muslim is how bin laden is going to present this misguided, egotistical, racist idiot and his "fact finding mission."

instead of "investigating" our fellow citizens who just happen to have a different religion than mr. king we should be reaching out more and more to the american muslims. the press should devote more ink to all the anti-terrorism sermons being preached daily in the american mosques. more ink to all the contributions of the muslim community to the over all good of america. to the obvious numbers involved, 8 million muslims here and if only 1% were terrorists then there would be 80,000 terrorists and expodentially more attacks BUT THERE AREN'T. same for the world wide numbers, a billion muslims and 1% would be ten million terrorists and obviously there isn't anywhere near that number or there would be multiple attacks PER DAY all over the western world. most of the so-called terrorist attacks happen in iraq and afghanistan whereas the people involved there would call it resistance to a foriegn invader.

there is a terrorist in my shed
there is a terrorist under my bed
no wait,
there is a terrorist in my head.

mubarak and us. my feb 15th article for vegas voice.

In watching the coverage of the Egyptian revolution I could not help but notice that one thing that was, as far as I heard, not mentioned on any of the networks and that includes MSNBC was that Egypt was one of the countries the we, The United States of America, sent people to for them to be tortured. Others in that rather dubious list are Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Morrocco,Saudi Arabia, and Isreal. Now, if I know this and it is indeed public knowledge then surely the talking heads on tv must have known that as well and if they didn't, it is damn sure their bosses did but still no mention of a very, very salient point. Mubarak was a brutal dictator that used emergency powers (which were in effect for 30 years....if something exists for thirty years it is not an "emergency" it is a lifestyle) to not only imprison his own people and subject them to unspeakable horrors it did it to other people in OUR name. And you know who else knew that he tortured people in our name? Every single Muslim in the Middle East, that's who. When those same Muslims hear us giving our oh so pious platitudes about how much we love democracy and abhor torture, the see us as the world's biggest hypocrites.

Now the so-called "leaders" in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria and probably Turkey are pooing in their collective pants because they see the handwriting of liberty on the walls of their secret prisons, the murmers of revolution in their streets, the ringing of the bell of freedom in the cell phones and computers of their down-trodden subjects. So what are we to do? Continue to prop up these countries who kill, maim, torture and imprison their own people so that they, like Mubarak, can reap the rewards of American dollars and live in luxory while their subjects live in squalor? Or are we finally going to quit selling our soul for oil and pull out of the Middle East and expand our own oil industry here in our country?

Where do you think we get the majority of our oil from? Here is the list of the top nine countries from whom we get our oil. 1. Canada 2. Mexico. 3. Saudi Arabia. 4. Venezuela. 5. Nigeria. 6. Angola. 7. Iraq. 8. United Kingdom. 9. Brazil. Two countries in the Middle East and we are occupying one of them. We DON'T NEED MIDDLE EASTERN OIL. Save our country, save our souls, save our dignity, save our honor......get out of the middle east. Let them eat that damn oil if they don't want to make us a fair deal. Let freedom spread across that area of the world and if they choose radical Islam, so be it. They no bitch against us if we are out of there.

Hmmmmm....

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathe rs conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

~~~ Thomas Jefferson

on the tuscon shootings

Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.

This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting.

This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings.

G2geek's diary :: ::
Update: the mechanism spelled out.

(This update is to resolve some ambiguity.)

The person who actually plants the bomb or assassinates the public official is not the stochastic terrorist, they are the "missile" set in motion by the stochastic terrorist. The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media as their means of setting those "missiles" in motion.

Here's the mechanism spelled out concisely:

The stochastic terrorist is the person who uses mass media to broadcast memes that incite unstable people to commit violent acts.

One or more unstable people responds to the incitement by becoming a lone wolf and committing a violent act. While their action may have been statistically predictable (e.g. "given the provocation, someone will probably do such-and-such"), the specific person and the specific act are not predictable (yet).

The stochastic terrorist then has plausible deniability: "Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and I'm not responsible for what people in my audience do."

The lone wolf who was the "missile" gets captured and sentenced to life in prison, while the stochastic terrorist keeps his prime time slot and goes on to incite more lone wolves.

Further, the stochastic terrorist may be acting either negligently or deliberately, or may be in complete denial of their impact, just like a drunk driver who runs over a pedestrian without even realizing it.

Finally, there is no conspiracy here: merely the twisted acts of individuals who are promoting extremism, who get access to national media in which to do it, and the rest follows naturally just as an increase in violent storms follows from an increase in average global temperature.

And now we return to the rest of the original diary...
.
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The lone wolves.

The term "lone wolf" is used in law enforcement and intel to refer to an individual who is emotionally unstable, who lacks obvious ties to known criminal gangs or terrorist groups, and who pops up seemingly out of nowhere to commit a violent or terrorist act.

The three-letter agencies can keep an eye on organized groups, and do a damn good job at stopping violent actors associated with those groups. At least three intended car bombings were stopped last year by the FBI intercepting the bombers and substituting fake explosives in time to save hundreds of lives and arrest the would-be bombers.

Lone wolves don't have obvious connections through which they can be discovered. They don't communicate much if at all about their intentions. They keep their plans to themselves. And then, apparently at random, they pop up from obscurity and commit murder. They are law enforcement's and intel's worst nightmare, and on Saturday one of them became America's nightmare.
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Stirring the pot.

At any given time there are hundreds of thousands of Americans with combinations of personality characteristics (such as emotional instability, a paranoid ideology, and a propensity for violence) that put them at risk of going off the deep end and becoming lone wolves. All it takes is the right push, the right nudge at the right time, to dislodge a few of them and send them on their way to fifteen minutes of fame surrounded by dead bodies.

There's nothing mysterious about this process. It is not much different to other instances where a person is almost ready to make a decision, and the right combination of inputs makes them act. For example you have an old car and it begins to break down more often: now you're thinking about replacing it, and you might be swayed by something in an automobile advertisement. Anyone who is familiar with marketing and advertising knows how this works, and advertisers often target their messages to people who are "ready to buy" and just need a little persuading. Political candidates often target their ads to the undecideds, hoping that a little nudge will win them some votes. This is perfectly normal and hardly insidious.

It becomes insidious when these practices are used in such a manner as to deliberately or negligently stir up lone wolf violence.

So let's take Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly. There is no question that their emotional rhetoric appeals to people who are emotionally unstable. And, since their audiences are tracked and analyzed in detail, there is no question that they know it.

When they go on TV and shout and sputter, rant and rave, and weep and wail, they are not expecting to persuade liberals or even undecideds to change their votes. They are "playing to their base," that they know includes people who are emotionally unstable. In short they are "stirring the pot." And if you turn up the temperature and keep stirring, you know that the pot will boil. Little bubbles will come up from the depths and pop.
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Pop go the lone wolves.

Some lone wolves have no provable connection to the hate-talkers and pot-stirrers, other than memes in common. One example of this type is James Wenneker von Brunn who shot and killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Another is Andrew Joseph Stack III, who flew a Piper Dakota into the Austin Texas field office of the Internal Revenue Service, killing IRS manager Vernon Hunter and himself, and injuring thirteen others. At this point it appears as if Jared Loughner is one of these: all-over-the-map crazy, with an incoherent ideology that is mostly rightwing but difficult to trace to specific sources.

(UPDATE: to be very clear about this: at this point I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that Loughner falls under the definition of stochastic terrorism, because there is nothing yet to link him to being a fan of one of the mass media hate-talkers. However there are enough other cases out there to make this issue topical and relevant right now.)

On the other hand...

On 27 July 2008, lone wolf shooter Jim David Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and shot nine people, killing two and wounding seven. Adkisson said he was motivated by hatred of "Democrats, liberals, n-----s, and faggots." A police search of his home found books by Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly.

On 4 February 2009, he accepted a plea bargain: guilty on two counts of murder, in exchange for a life sentence w/o possibility of parole (LWOP).

On 4 April 2009, Richard Poplawski shot five Pittsburgh PA police officers, leaving three dead and two seriously wounded.

According to people who knew him, he was a birther and white supremacist, was paranoid that Obama was going to take away his guns, and was consumed with anti-semitic conspiracy theories. A police search of his computer found links to various groups and to a YouTube video of Glenn Beck talking about FEMA concentration camps.

Poplawski's trial has been delayed until 25 April 2011, where it is possible he will face the death penalty for the murder of police officers.

On 31 May 2009, lone wolf Scott Roeder shot and killed gynecologist Dr. George Tiller while Tiller was attending church services. At first it appeared that he acted alone, but research by some fellow Kossaks and I uncovered evidence that he had at least one accomplice. That issue is presently being investigated by a federal grand jury.

In the months leading up to the assassination, Bill O'Reilly had waged a "relentless campaign" against Tiller, a campaign of exactly the type that would be expected to stir up violence against the doctor. The details can be found here: http://www.salon.com/...

In January 2010 Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. At present his accomplices and enablers have not yet been indicted and charged.

On 18 July 2010, Byron Williams set out from his mother's home in Groveland CA, heading for San Francisco to shoot up the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, with the intention of "starting a revolution."

Williams, a convicted felon (two bank robberies), was stopped by the CHP (California Highway Patrol) for weaving in and out of traffic at high speed. When stopped, he immediately opened fire on the CHP officers, wounding two. They returned fire, wounding him in the leg, and then took him into custody. At first they thought they were dealing with a garden-variety cop shooter. Then they found the notebook in his car, with the details of his plans.

Quoting the Wikipedia article on Williams: http://en.wikipedia.org/...

Quote: Williams has identified Glenn Beck as his primary motivation for the shootings. According to Williams, Beck is "like a schoolteacher on TV... he's been breaking open some of the most hideous corruption." Continuing: "Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. He'll never do anything ... of this nature. But he'll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need." End quote.

Prior to Williams' planned attack, Beck had mentioned the obscure Tides Foundation 29 times on his program. He had drawn numerous charts on his infamous blackboard, showing how Tides is the funding source behind much of the "liberal conspiracy." He had stoked and fueled, turned up the heat on the pot, and stirred it real good. He devoted two of his broadcasts to Tides in the very week preceding the shooting.

Quoting the Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Quote: Beck has at times spoken against violence, but he more often forecasts it, warning that "it is only a matter of time before an actual crazy person really does something stupid." Most every broadcast has some violent imagery: "The clock is ticking. . . . The war is just beginning. . . . Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government. . . . You have to be prepared to take rocks to the head. . . . The other side is attacking. . . . There is a coup going on. . . . Grab a torch! . . . Drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers. . . . They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered. . . . They are putting a gun to America's head. . . . Hold these people responsible." Unquote.
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Every ounce of evidence you could possibly need.

One dead doctor.

Two dead churchgoers.

Seven wounded churchgoers.

Three dead police officers.

Four wounded police officers.

How many more that I couldn't remember while writing this?

Meanwhile the jury is still out on whether Loughner's victims belong on the list of people who "got Becked."

As someone on dKos wrote in a comment about this a few months ago, there was a saying among his buddies in the Air Force: "Once is a tragedy, twice is a terrible coincidence, three times is enemy action."

If you were a media personality known for rants & raves on the air, and it came out that some random killer had possibly been influenced by you or one of your colleagues, what would you do? Would you apologize? Would you tone it down?

If it happened again, what would you do? And if it happened yet again after that? What would you do?

It takes more than just a special type of sociopath to fail to be moved by the murders of doctors, churchgoers, and police officers in the line of duty, and the could-have-been-murders of more.

I submit to you that it takes something between callous disregard and deliberate intent.
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Pulling the trigger by remote control.

If you wanted certain people dead, but you wanted plausible deniability, you would have someone else do the deed for you at a distance, the greater the distance the better.

One way to do it would be to use your position on radio or TV to hurl emotional rhetoric that is calculated to appeal to people who are psychologically unstable. Some of them will go out and vote, some will go forth and spread your rant-memes, some will get into bar-room brawls over one issue or another.

But a few, who have already demonstrated a lack of respect for the law, will do more than that. Maybe they'll assault someone on the street who is black or gay or speaking Spanish in public or wearing traditional Islamic garb. Maybe they'll make a bomb and put it in the mail or plant it at a women's clinic.

Maybe they'll go out and shoot someone. Maybe they'll shoot someone who, in your heart of hearts, you want dead. If you have a list of targets in mind, such as Operation Rescue's website with crosshairs on doctors, or Palin's crosshairs on elected officials, it won't matter who gets killed first and who gets killed later: any hit will do.

This is stochastic terrorism: you heat up the waters and stir the pot, knowing full well that sooner or later a lone wolf will pop up and do the deed. The fact that it will happen is as predictable as the fact that a heated pot of water will eventually boil. But the exact time and place of each incident will remain as random as the appearance of the first bubbles in the boiling pot.

And so the unstable shooter, the sick kid or crazy grownup, will be taken into custody where they will rant a disconnected version of your own rants. The fact that they are clearly nuts will enable shifting the public discussion away from your hateful rhetoric and toward the overt insanity of the shooter or bomber.

After that, you get to go on the air and tut-tut along with everyone else, and say Oh So Sad, and all that crap. But behind the scenes you drink a toast and cheer: one down, a bunch more to go.

Or perhaps you're just crazy enough to truly believe that you really don't have anything to do with it. You collect your media star paycheck and tootle along to the next day in front of cameras and microphones, ready to do it again, as oblivious as the drunk driver who runs over a flock of schoolchildren and keeps driving, and then when the cops pull him over, says "Who, me??"
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The guilty-knowledge test.

Someone needs to corral Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage, and the rest of them, in front of a microphone and camera that are not of their own choosing.

For example think of Sixty Minutes and their famed unannounced appearances at the offices and even homes of various wrongdoers over the years. Or think of press conferences or other scheduled appearances, where someone pops up and asks the inconvenient question or two, and the question captures the headlines.

And someone needs to ask them: In light of this latest in a series of ideologically-motivated murders, are you willing to tone down your rhetoric even a little?

Listen very closely to their answers. They will duck and weave, evade and deny, or at most give the standard reply of "lone nuts, oh so sad." But they may also let slip a subtle hint of guilty knowledge.

The author of the aforementioned WaPo article says in passing, "It's not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show."

I say it damn well is fair to blame them when it happens again and again and predictably again.

Once is a tragedy, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action.

And now we know how it's done: stir the pot and wait for the inevitable, and then deny it and do it again. That's stochastic terrorism as surely as when Bin Laden does it. And Beck and his fellow hate-mongers are terrorists by remote control.

Tags: Tucson shooting, Giffords, terrorism, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly, Fox, hate speech, Recommended (all tags) :: Previous Tag Versions


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drug laws and sanity.

Missoula District Court: Jury pool in marijuana case stages ‘mutiny’
billingsgazette.com
A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court last week.
36 minutes ago · Like · Comment · Share
Jennifer Montz likes this.
We want Ron Shock back on Television!!! Please. ‎"In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.

Ron Shock ah, sanity rears its lovely head. of course it is a waste of time and money. all of you who have followed me over the years know my position on this: we should legalize marijuana and tax it. i will even go another step...we should legalize all drugs and instead of locking people up help people break any addictions they may have. i came to this conclusion based on the a certain reality and that is: YOU CAN GET ANY KIND OF DRUG THAT YOU WANT RIGHT NOW. i can go into a strange city and within three hours score, if i so desire, any drug known to man. and you know that is true.

the war on drugs is a miserable failure and they knew it would be one when they started. what it does is give the police untold powers over the populace. drug testing, for instance, is a direct violation of the 4th and 5th admendments to the constitution. it is an illegal search of one's person without a warrent and it is making someone testify against themselves. what ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? a drug test assumes you are guilty until you prove you are innocent.

i have read that the so-called war on drugs has cost us over one trillion dollars so far and i think that figure is grossly understated. we have tens of thousands of people in prison on drug related charges. what does that cost? their families are left, in many cases, destitute and therefore on some kind of assistance from state or federal governments. what does that cost? legalize them and spend only a tiny proportion of money already being spent on treatment instead of incarceration and you save billions upon billions upon billions.

the same goes for prostitution...legalize it and tax it. it is already everywhere (you know and i know and the police know that on certain corners in every city there are hookers standing waiting for customers) if we legalize it, put in red light districts, have brothels then you eliminate pimps and disease. the girls are safe, the customers are safe, the city and state and federal governments get tax revenues. and that would be a lot of fucking money....so to speak.

i was asked about wilileaks and this is what i said

et me preface this with i know a writer who is very progressive and he thinks that the wikileaks release of these memos, emails etc is the greatest thing since the pentagon papers. you must remember that the p.p. broke the truth about the "tonkin gulf episode" and proved that the government flat out lied to us and because of THAT LIE the majority of the 58,000 deaths in vietnam HAPPENED! a lie that cost tens of thousands of young american men their lives and also caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of vietnamnese. remember that.

when i looked at it from that prespective ...

now, what these new leaks show is that the government of afghanistan is corrupt to its very core and WE KNOW IT. hmmm does this start to have an erie feel to it? we also know that the so-called afghan army is a sham and probably won't fight (just like the south vietnamnese army was unreliable and we knew it) we plan on staying until the afghanistan army can control the countryside and the government is stable. right? yet we know that the afgan army is more a figment of our imagination and we also know the the current government, which we installed, is horribly corrupt and not trusted by the people of afghanistan. BUT WE ARE STILL STAYING. based on what we know IS BASICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO HAPPEN AND THEN WHEN IT DOESNT HAPPEN WE WILL HAVE TO STAY EVEN LONGER and longer and longer and longer and longer and longer.......

when the pentagon papers were leaked to the press, oh the horror cried the politicians and commentators not of the government lies mind you but the release of the papers. hmm just as we are seeing now. and the beat goes on.

the detractors are using the same arguments....it jepordizes people who sympathize with us. here is a clue, jack, they were in jepordy anyway...they sympathized with the invaded army and the people knew it. hmmmm. what would put them in real danger is when we finally leave.....ask some of the south vietnamnese who co-operated with us and then we abandoned them.

so, fuck a bunch of secrets. the government and the military industrial comples doesn't want us to know the truth about afghanistan and iraq. we are there to stay. that is the plan. and they are pissed that we, the people, might just actually figure that out.

health care and you..vegas voice article

The national health care system was ruled unconstitutional by a republican-appointed federal judge the other day because it required everyone to buy into the system but previously two other federal judges, both appointed by Clinton, ruled that it was constitutional so the eventually the decision will be made by the Supreme Court. We, the people, though need to really think this through and in this column today I am going to ask you to drop any preconceived ideas about it and read this with an open mind. Because it is such an important subject, this little screed may take two issues to complete but here is my main thrust and my reasoning behind it.

If we let the national health care program go down the costs to the country will be horrendous! Right now Americans pay more for health care than any other industrialized country and, by all measures such as obesity, child deaths, age expectancy etc, we get less. Not only that when the national inflation rate is practically nil, health care costs have gone up over 9% per year over the last four years and is expected to top 10% in 2010 when all the figures are in. Many people are covered by group health plans through their work but when the insurance companies raise the rates employers shift most, if not all, of the increase down to the workers. However since wages have been flat since George Bush took office in 2000 and continues so under Obama this increase to the workers is not balanced out by raises in wages so consequently these workers, instead of getting raises, are getting real money reductions in their pay checks so, logically speaking, they have less money to spend which hurts ALL other business and thus keeps the national economy from expanding at the rate we need. Not only that but the cost of health care for employees is factored into the cost of whatever product or service the company provides so that it becomes inflationary for the nation as a whole. Whenever you buy literally anything in America you are paying for some one else's health care plan and when you buy something big such as a car you are paying a dozen companies health care costs; the tire company provides health care, all of the suppliers such as batteries, cables, spark plugs, door handles, seats, dashboards etc etc etc all provide health care and each and EVERY one of them passes that cost onto the car company who then adds X percent to that and then includes their own health care outlay so the cost of the car goes up by hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Put in a NATIONAL health care plan and the cost of all things made in America goes down. Even the companies that outsource their manufacturing have to pay health care costs for the American companies that ship it, truck it, package it, stock it etc. And here, once again, you and I pay for it.

Under a NATIONAL health care plan we would be able to control costs much more efficiently at the doctor and hospital level. You must always remember this axiom: INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF PAYING CLAIMS, THEY ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF COLLECTING PREMIUMS! Every one of you reading this knows a horror story about an insurance company denying obvious legitimate claims or lowering what they will pay leaving the private person in deep financial straits. And here is a dirty little secret that most do not know, hospitals will not negotiate with private people over costs but have to negotiate these same costs if they are being paid by the insurance company so the hospitals and doctors don't get their full pay so what do they do? Why, guess what?, they pass those costs onto everybody else. Under a national health care plan costs would be negotiated and put into place for all people at all times. And if we put in some kind of tort reform, doctors would be freed from the ungodly costs of insurance against frivolous lawsuits thus being able to lower their costs to all of us. Not only that but hospitals are required by law to treat all people who come through their doors and this includes not only poor citizens but illegals as well and these people do NOT pay but payment is made by you and I. Having a requirement that ALL people have a national insurance card means that the hospitals will always be reimbursed for their costs and not have to pass them on to the general public.

Next month we will cover the tremendous cost of insurance fraud and how a national health care system will put a huge dent in that and we will cover how all the other industrialized countries handle their national health plans.

I leave you with this quote: "Let us put an end to the teachings and preaching of hate and evil and violence. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far let and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our nation's bloodstream." Lyndon Johnson.

why i am voting for senator reid.

rhonda and i both voted for sen. reid and here is why.

1. as a resident of nevada which is a very small state population wise, if senator reid were defeated we would have no stroke in washington. ms. angle could not even get the state legislature to back any of (well, she only had two) measures, and in washington she will be dead last on the pecking order which would put nevada dead last as well. if you think the republican establishment is going to let ms. angle have a voice you are delusional.

2. senator reid is against yucca mountain as a depository for nuclear waste until it can be shown, beyond any doubt that it is safe. ms. angle backs the republican side and wants yucca mountain to go forward.

3. senator reid has tried over and over again to "fix" social security and has presented good ideas on the subject. ms. angle wants to phase out ss and replace it with private accounts in the stock market, which is an absolutely horrible idea. the recent crash was bad enough but had bush managed to privatize ss it would have devasted the elderly in this country.

4. senator reid and the democrats realize that our schools are falling behind all other industrialized countries and has worked tirelessly to improve school performance and managed to get a big part of the stimulus for nevada which saved thousands of teachers jobs. ms. angle wants to do away with the dept. of education which would start a movement that ensures the rich kids have good schools and the poor (blacks and browns especially) would be stuck with the very worst if any at all.

5. senator reid is very knowledgeable in foreign affairs while ms. angle refuses to answer any question whatsoever about f.a.'s probably because she knows nothing about it. (what other reason could there be for her refusal?)

6. senator reid has reached out to all minorities while ms. angle has run a campaign based on fear. her latest tv ad which shows supposed "illegals" coming supposedly acrosss our borders shows them to all look like gang members in a blatant attempt to demonize all hispanics. look, if we were to actually fix our immigration policies and make it easier for people to achieve citizenship we would all be better off. and if corporations were not using illegals they wouldn't be coming. i repeat something i have said before, check out tyson foods or any of the meat packing plants and you will see that at least 50% of the workers are lillegals. senator reid has tried over and over to get reform through while the republicans use it as a campaign issue and offer no plans other than strict enforcement but that is just a smoke screen because of SEE CORPORATIONS USING ILLEGALS. the constitution which republicans so often want to quote leave the question of immigration to the federal government so, knowing that, the arizona bill is just pure politics and offers no long term solution.

7.ms. angles repeated use of the term "second ammendment solutions" reeks of treason. it is a thinly disquised call for assissination of public officals including senator reid. she said, "i hope we solve this by this election and that we won't have to use our second ammendment rights". WHAT THE FUCK!!! and she has said this OVER AND OVER. and will not answer any questions about it. my god, people, this woman is not only out of touch, she is flat out dangerous. there are some real kooks out there with hate in their hearts and guns in their homes who can be easily led to violence. (does timothy mcveight come to mind? he was motivated by rhetoric very similar to ms. angles.

8. senator reid worked for the passage of a national health care system, which is something we desperately need in this country. the one passed is only a step in the right direction and needs much more work but WE MUST HAVE A NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. we have millions of people without health care ins. and they are in daily risk of losing everything to medical costs. facts are facts and the fact of the matter is we spend more on health care and get less than any other industrialized nation. we are the only industrialized nation that has citizens going bankrupt because of medical bills. ithe insurance companies and the hospital cartels have increased costs way beyond the rate of inflation for the past two decades while they are swimming in profits and we are drowning in debt. ms. angle wants to overthrow the health care passed and go back to where we were.
unacceptable to me.

9. i believe the right wing of the republican party and ms angle is surely part of the RIGHT WING is so beholden to the corporations that support them that a republican senate would move our country backwards to the days of gwb with tax breaks for the rich and the corporations and the erosian of all social services to the poor and the needy.

it is our country, it is our state of nevada and it is our future and our children's future at stake here; a republican victory and god forbid a republican president in 2012 would destroy our country. reagan, bush and bush damn well tried and the next time they may succeed. however, i must also say that the democrats are not much better (but they are better) and we really do need a true THIRD PARTY. one that is not beholden to the monied interests, one that speaks for the majority of the people who are believe are IN THE MIDDLE AND NOT ON THE EXTREMES WHETHER THEY BE LEFT OR RIGHT...EXTREME IS EXTREME. but until then, i must put my hopes and my vote in the hands of the democrats who i believe are more in tune with the common man than the republican party which, i believe, are corporate hacks.

USA! USA! USA! WE'RE NUMBER 48!!!

USA TODAY united states is fattest among advanced countries.
USA TODAY united states students ranks 48th in math and science.
USA TODAY 49% of americans don't know how long it takes the earth to circle the sun.

‎"if the usa's students matched finland analysis suggests the us economy would grow 9-16 percent"

so, it turns out that our problems are what i have always feared: we are fat and stupid.

on cnn this morning they had a piece about farm workers in california's grape orchards, the workers, who are all mexicans, make 8 dollars per hour but they take taxes out though most of the workers are illegal. they asked the farm's labor manager how many 'americans' have ever applied for the work. answer.. NONE. so many we can add lazy to fat and stupid.

those statistics should stun and dismay all of you. we are going to end up a second rate country if we don't a. improve our educational system (and i don't have the slightest idea of how to do that since, i feel, the real problem lies with the parents who do not get involved in their childrens education .. oh the schools could be better, the teachers better trained but if parents aren't involved then kids will continue to fall way behind the rest of the world) and at the same time b. get americans off their fat asses and take some of the shit jobs that are out there. hey go pick some grapes for three months and you will lose some weight..

over the years on my blogs and in private letters to various people i have espoused the idea that americans don't really want to get rich because that requires way too much work, they just want to live like they are. during boom times, americans buy more and bigger STUFF. a bigger car, though they don't need it, a bigger house, though they don't need it, new furniture, though they don't need it, another tv, another gaget or gizmo and at the same time, save nothing. facts bear me out: during the bush years we went on a shopping spree but wages remained FLAT. so, we weren't earning more, we were just buying more. and, of course, eating more.

the jobs of the future are going to require specialized knowledge and our kids aren't getting that. you know where more people speak english than any other country? CHINA. how many of our kids are learning chinese? people in europe speak 5 or more languages and here we don't even speak english properly much less be fluent in others.

fat, stupid, lazy and poorly educated. dat's us.

life in city

Ron Shock according to a study by pbs there are somewhere between 2.3 and 3.5 homeless people in america. (3 million would be TEN PERCENT OF OUR TOTAL POPULATION!!!). according to a 2009 study on any given day 200,000 veterans are homeless. to think that 200k of men and women who served their country, risked their lives, left their families behing to go fight one of our non-stop wars in some far away place are now living in the streets is a national disgrace.

i have a very dear friend who is quite active in social work (especially battered women) and has a lot of contact with the homeless and the people who work with them. i asked her what percentage of the homeless are there because of mental problems and she said probably 75%. this is, of course, thanks to that great patriot, ronald reagan, who stopped funding for federal mental health hospitals which then put 3 quarters of million people on the streets back in 83 (i think) and the figure has risen with each passing year. now, even middle class people of untold numbers are facing homelessness because of the continuing recession.

we, and that includes me, have a tendency to overlook (or not look at all) the thousands of homeless in our cities. we see them, not as our fellow citizens or our brothers and sisters, but as bums or addicts and some of them surely are bums or addicts but the vast majority are not in those catagories and study after study shows that to be true. i, for one, cannot, in good conscious, continue to do that.

i know that what ever little i do will have only a tiny, tiny bit of difference or no difference at all but if i don't do it, who will?

so, now i am asking you to do a little something to help. volunteer one day a month at a shelter or at a food kitchen or as a driver to get people to medical care. if you can't do that, go to the store and buy a big bag of rice and a big bag of beans (cost, what? 5 dollars??) and donate them to some organization which feeds the hungry. buy some school clothes and donate them. take some of the clothes you no longer wear and donate them. if you won't do it..who will?

i, for one, have sat on my ass and not done what my christian upbringing commands me to do and i really don't want to meet my maker and have to explain how i was just too busy to help my fellow man.

state of the union (in my opinion)

it has been 234 years since our founding fathers published the declaration of independence and here in 2010 we live in a country that they would not, in many ways, recognize. we are mired in an economic slump of our own doing with no end in sight while our two major political parties spend their time casting verbal stones at each other. (john adams thought the "party" system was the greatest threat to our political process and i think he was right but that is for another blog) while millions are out of work here in america due to greed of corporations and stupidity of government while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and those of us in the middle watch our fortunes and futures slide farther and farther downward. karl marx said that the only true wealth of a country was the tangible goods that the country produced and if he was right, and i think he was, then america has made a horrible and possibly deadly mistake in letting our manufacturing to be allowed to be taken to third world countries in the name of greater profits for the rich and slightly lower prices for the public. now we have lost the greatest creator of jobs which is the manufacturing sector. even in hard times people need to buy shoes, shirts, underwear, sheets, towels, socks, etc and guess what? almost none of these is made in america. those "slightly" lower prices don't look so good when weighed against the millions unemployed because there are far fewer customers to buy those "slightly" lower priced (and often shabbily made) items and thus the spiral continues downward.

our founding fathers would be aghast at the following fact: we have troops stationed in 144 countries! so much for not getting involved in foreign affairs which was something that the fathers were very adamant about but because our military industrial complex now rules our foreign policy our young men and women in uniform find themselves spread out around the globe. not only does that cause economic drain on our resources it has a double whammy, we pay those troops and they then spend that money in foreign lands. we have to rent space to put house those troops and that money goes to foreign contractors (with the exception of course for haliburton which then pays no taxes on the money it makes overseas.) but all of that is not the real problem which is that those troops create more terrorists! no one wants the empire to have their storm troopers in their country and resentment against the empire grows and grows each day. (ask yourself, how would you like chinese troops in your home town?)

we have an enemy alright but we have mislabeled him (her) as "islamic terrorists" because the powers that be here don't you and i to recognize just why our "enemy" is fighting us. they are NOT islamic terrorists they are middle eastern/arab/persian/muslim people who resent and hate us for having our troops on what they consider to be holy land. they resent us for propping up brutal dictatorships in yemen, saudi arabia and egypt (whose secret police rivals anything that hitler had) and our blind and unyielding support for isreal regardless of what they do. we do not have an even handed approach to the middle east and you can rest assured that every single arab, persian and muslim inhabitant of those lands knows that. they resent us for turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Palestinian people trapped in refuge camps in their own land. ask yourself again, what do you think our founding fathers would think of this?

we refuse to accept the obvious and that is if we want peace in the middle east we must get out of there. period. albert einstein said "peace cannot be kept by force it can only be kept by understanding." but hey, what did he know?

after 9-11 almost the entire population of the middle east was on our side and they thought they attack but that disappeared when bush invaded for iraq based on either incredibly faulty intelligence (and i use that word lightly) or just plain old lies. (gee, i wonder why iran wants more weapons; they have american nuclear armed troops to the west in iraq, nuclear armed american forces on the east in afghanistan and a nuclear armed isreal to the south...make anyone paranoid wouldn't it?)

so, now we are involved in a war with no possible victory in afghanistan and thus each and every day creating more and more people who have valid reasons to hate us.

we demand greatness of our athletes but we accept mediocrity in our statesmen. we elect people based on what they say they will do but when they do the opposite we look the other way or continue playing our video games or reading about the latest scandal coming out of hollywood. we write trivia on face book and care about paris hilton but we don't hold our politician's feet to the fire for their lying. we remain uninvolved in politics and only 55-60% of our REGISTERED voters vote. for shame! but, here on the fourth of july, we wave our flags and shoot our fireworks and watch our ballgames and tell each other how great we are.

i have traveled the world and thus i know that the american people are, for the most part, friendly and kind. i also know they are woefully unaware of what is going on in the world and most couldn't find iraq or afghanistan on a globe is all the countries were un-named. they can't tell you the name of the president of iraq or afghanistan or pakistan or england or germany or italy or greece or spain and all of those countries have a vital role in our future.

and one thing we must become aware of is that we, as a people, are partially responsible for the mess we are in. we, as citizens, must become more involved in politics, we, as a people, must demand accountability of our political leaders (another word i use lightly). we must pay more attention to national affairs than we do to sports. we must demand of our schools that they actually teach the little monsters to read and write and do math. we must demand of the parents of the little monsters that they get involved in their children's education.

we have porous borders and scream about "illegals" but refuse to recognize that it is the corporations who are hiring them who are the real problems. (see tyson foods or any of the meat packing plants to see just how many illegals work there.) if no one was hiring these people they wouldn't come. and, by the way, how many times have we found some congressperson using an illegal for household work? if we were to go to all the rich people in this country who have a gardner or a maid or a cook or a butler or a pool boy or.....any menial laborer working for them and then arrested not the illegals but the rich who hire them we would need to build some more jails that is for sure. yet, it is these same rich people who are screaming about the illegals.

happy birthday america.

once upon a time, pogo said......

every thing that happens does so as the result of other things happening. back in the early part of the century when gw bush and (he's a) dick cheney the regulations pertaining to the oil business were relaxed across the board. not only that members of the mms were chummy with the oil companies and often went right to work for them after leaving the government. those still our the national payroll were, according to recent press releases, using drugs and watching porn while at work. they took bribes oh, excuse me, gifts, from the oil companies such as dinners, nights at the theaters and baseball tickets.

british petroleum has been one of the major culprits when it come to safety regulations and their two refineries in the united states accounted for 97% of all the complaints regarding that industry. 97%.!!!! their refinery in houston exploded killing 30 people and they paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines but they did not fix the problems and paid hundred of millions more. they paid the highest osha fine ever levied against an oil company.

so why are we surprised when a bp well blew up in the gulf and threatens to engulf the whole region in a disaster that may take decades upon decades to recover from? who would have thunk it??? an unregulated, greedy, accident prone, foreign oil company that has a history of safety violations, drilling for oil in an area that USED TO BE off limits, right off the gulf coast where the environment is especially fragile all at a mile below the sea where apparently no-one has a clue as to what to do if something goes wrong. WHAT DID WE EXPECT TO HAPPEN? with all of that, a disaster such as the one we have had to happen eventually. it had to; what else could have happened? if not this time, the next or the one after that...but it was going to happen. and now it has. and it may take us a hundred years, if ever, to recuperate from it.

we let bush deregulate the oil companies and then to really top it off, deregulate the financial markets as well. what could wrong with that? and then to make sure that every last dime was extracted from the unsuspecting american public, the whole propaganda system went into full tilt boogie and convinced the aforementioned public that the price of homes really did go up 20% or more per year (while wages remained stagnant) and would do so, why fucking forever..don't you know. FLIP THIS HOUSE! GET A SECOND MORTGAGE! it will keep going up. hey, here's and idea, let's let people with poor credit buy homes at inflated prices and then have their payments quintuple up in a couple of years. what could go wrong with that? sure they couldn't pay their bills before (hence the bad fucking credit) but somehow, miraculously (hey this is america..don't cha know, all things are possible..lol) they would find a way to pay the huge payment coming due. and then bundle up these toxic mortages together and sell them to someone else as, are you ready for the punchline???.......(drum roll please....)..an INVESTMENT!

we are in the shape we are as a country because we as a people weren't fucking paying attention or as pogo said, "we have met the enemy and it is us."

vegas comedy school.

i haven't put anything up here for quite some time mainly because i have become addicted to face book and do most of my ranting and raving there. however, since i am starting a comedy school here in vegas, hopefully in july, i thought it would behoove me to write something about the school and why i am doing it.

the school will be a 6 week course and is modeled after les mc curdy's comedy school in sarasota. it will consist of group and individual instruction and will cover things such as writing and telling jokes, how to write material out of your life or stories out of the newspapers, how to use the mic, stagecraft, finding work as comic and how to find agents and managers.

the course is not just for people who want to get into comedy or people who have already started in comedy but want to improve all their skills but also for anyone who does public speaking or has to give seminars or presentations in their work. just knowing how to tell a joke helps anyone who has to be in front of an audience. for instance; the average attention span during a seminar or presentation is about 5-7 minutes depending on subject and speaker but if you know 5 good jokes and how to tell them you can use that knowledge and skill to break up the presentation and get the audience back.

before i became a comic i was a hot shot sales trainer which led me to high office in the publishing business (macmillan, grolier, british printing) and later as a consultant to some huge companies, (itt, aig, general electric, john hancock life, among others). in all of my training sessions i used humor to get points across. as a comic, i have performed thousands upon thousands of shows and have appeared on 38 different television shows plus one really bad movie. my reviews have been to die for and some are listed here on my website.

i am now almost 68 years old and though i have left a legacy of sorts, 5 c.d.'s and 4 dvd's so far, i would also like to help people get into what i consider to be the best job in the whole world. is it easy? of course not. can i teach someone to be funny? no, i can't but if they have "funny" in them i can show them how to bring it out. i can help them get over "stage fright" if it is holding them back in their present job. and on top of that, the course will be fun and students will have a great time.

for anyone taking the course, they also get free tickets to several comedy shows here in town and i will always be available to them for any follow-up that they feel they need.

well, that is my little sales pitch for the school. anyone who is interested can write me at hrshock@cox.net.

creativity

one of the things i must start doing more of is hanging out with other people in the business. when i was in houston during the comedy workshop days i experienced my greatest burst of creativity and the reason was that i was around creative people every day i was in town. bill hicks, brett butler, sam kinison, carl falkenbury, jimmy pineapple, john farnetti, tshawn shannon and dozens of others were all there and you cannot be around those kind of people and not be at the top of your game menally because they sure as hell were.

i have two projects going on here in vegas, the hicks chronicles and the shock stories and am fortunate enough to have creative people working with me; todd paul in particular. we are going to put out some ART. the first little film is being edited right now and by the time i get back from texas we should be able to put it up on this site, face book and you tube. the hicks chronicles start filming again when i get back and we have found new locations.

when i started on this blog i thought i had much more to say but apparently...i was wrong.

odds and ends on a sunday morning.

in my routine which i call "the time i got caught in bed with the wife of a jealous hillbilly who carried a loaded 45 with him at all times", a rather cumbersome title, i must admit, i tell how one of my plans was to run out of the hall, jump on the bed and dive through the window because nobody could draw and fire that quick to hit me. i can, at times, feel skepticism in the audience. as proof of my contention, let me point out that in the gunfight here in vegas the other day where a man went into the federal building and opened fire with a shotgun; there was a running gun battle that went from the foyer of the building out into the street and 81 shots were fired by law enforcement people. the gunman was hit two or three times (the press reports only say that he was hit in stomach and head..but an earlier tv report, which could have been wrong, put the "hits" as two) and at least one of those happen inside the building. so, 78 (or so) of 81 shots fired by professionals missed. this is not unusual, it is VERY HARD to hit someone or something with a hand gun especially when under pressure. forget the fucking movies, forget john wayne, forget shooting the gun out the hand, those are fantasies, reality is much different.

the unlv running rebels were the only team in america to play two ranked teams on the road this past week. we barely lost to byu on their court, where they are 69-3 since david rose took over as bb coach and then last night we beat new mexico in the "pit" in alburquerque where they had won 29 straight. go rebels. we should be ranked again this coming week.

in retrospect, i should have voted for and campaigned for, hillary clinton; she would have done a better job than obama maily because she is MUCH tougher. it is almost ironic that i had not gotten involved in politics over all these years and then back the wrong guy. proving that i can be an idiot.

oh well, happy sunday to all.

blame game

all of last year, we kept hearing how this "great recession" would be over sometime this summer but today, in the paper, "experts" (lol) say that it will continue all the way into 2012 and that job growth will be meager at best. and, knowing the american public to be easily panicked and always eager to assign blame, obama and the democrats will pay a big price at the voting booths. oddly enough the american public never blames themselves. they were the ones who bought into the idea that home prices could go up EVERY YEAR by double digits while at the same time INCOMES WERE FLAT. they thought that though nobody was making more money (other than the rich, of course..but the rich aint buying those middle class homes) people would somehow or another be able to afford grossly inflated prices for new (and poorly built, i might add) cookie cutter homes ranging from small poorly built to rather massive poorly built mac mansions. the american public did not pay any attention to the ney Sayer's when we pointed out that deregulation of the financial markets would lead to horrendous consequences for the average american because it allowed insiders to rule the market even more than they did. the american public did not rise up in outrage when g.w. bush invaded iraq, a country WHO DIDN'T DO ANYTHING TO US AND HAD NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER TO AL QAIADA..MATTER OF FACT OBL HATED SADAAM HUSSIAN AND THE FEELING WAS MUTUAL. OSAMA THOUGHT HUSSIAN WAS WAY TOO LIBERAL (LOL)., the american public didn't complain when bush kept the costs of the wars OFF THE BOOKS. they didn't complain when bush gave tax cuts to the rich which cost over ONE TRILLION dollars (add that to the cost of the war in Iraq and you can see where our large national debt came from...and it didn't come from the job stimulus money...)
the american public didn't complain nearly loud enough when company after company after company closed their factories here and moved to third world countries and the result of that is that we (the people) got SLIGHTLY LOWER prices and the corporations made MUCH LARGER PROFITS BUT THEY MADE THEM IN OTHER COUNTRIES WHERE THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY TAX. and now they are going to blame obama and the democrats. in fact, our hens have come home to roost.

historically, manufacturing has been the engine that drove recoveries. but what manufacturing do we have left. the things that must be bought...shoes, socks, underwear, shirts, pants and coats and etc. are ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY MADE ELSEWHERE so we don't even get that little bit. but blame obama.

now we are ratcheting up for more involement in yeman (another muslim country led by an oppressive regime THAT WE BACK) and the "war" in afghanistan gets more costly in money and lives daily. for that we can blame obama.

anyway, fuck them all. is there an honest man with a plan for america in america? i am beginning to doubt it. fuck them all because they all are fucking us. vote socialistic. (that will rattle 'em...lol)

but you know what we are going to do? some, like liz, will stay home and not vote but the majority is going to elect some republicans and the beat will go on and nothing will change. the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer. the social safety net will have a million holes in it and the wars in the middle east will drag on and on and on and on and on....why do they hate us so?

back to bloggin

well, i am back blogging. i have been on facebook almost exclusively for quite a while but that venue is not proper for my rants and raves and extensive posts so here i am. once i figure out (or, more accurately put, once rhonda figures it out) how to post a link to this on that we will do so.

so on to other things:

as most of you know, i was an ardent supporter of senator obama in 08 but i must tell you i am extremely upset with what he has done so far. to wit:

the stimulus: it seemed to me that his first priority was bailing out the banks (who then went and gave out huge bonuses to the idiots who brought all of this down on us (well them and the extreme stupidity of the masses of people who thought that home prices would continue to go up double digits each and every year apparently forever even though wages WERE NOT GOING UP and the bankers who decided that they could loan money to people with bad credit to buy houses that were overvalued and, on top of all of that, think that they (the poor credit buyers) would be able to not only afford the original payment but would, somehow, miraculously come up with even more money to pay the higher payments two years down the line) instead of making THE PEOPLE, you know, the ones who elected his skinny ass to the highest office in the land. the stimulus that he did make for the people was way too little and did not include projects that were grand in scope nor any that would employ vast numbers of people for long periods of time. he repaired bridges but did not build new ones. he paved roads but did not build new ones. there was no really big projects such as the TVA in the roosevlt years; no projects such as desalination plants that could have employed thousands upon thousands and then when finished would have created thousands upon thousands more jobs as once arid lands became fertile.

then his appointments. my fucking god! timmy gaither and rubin in the cabinet??? their footprints are all over the deregulation of the financial markets that led to the derivatives that sank the world economy. foxes guarding the henhouse indeed.

obama told us that lobbyists would no longer have say so over national policies. bullshit.

he told us we would have a national health care system so instead they want to make it a law that citizens HAVE TO BUY INSURANCE FROM INSURANCE COMPANIES. (and the insurance companies, slimeballs that they be, immediately raised their rates by up to 40%).

anyway, cue up the WHO because we have been fooled again.

bill gates for president. no more republicans, no more democrats and, for god's sake, don't even think about the libertarians. what to do? how about someone who is not affliated with any party? maybe bill gates.

in the meantime i am stocking up on food and ammo and writing new jokes. all i can do.

into the night

a drive into the mojave, late at night, down a winding, hilly, very dark and totally deserted road at the wheel of a sports car is one of life's unique pleasures.
i went up over sunrise mountain and down into lake mead national park. nobody out there, and if they were, well then you could see their lights from 2 miles off, but tonight there was nobody. just me, putting the slk through its paces, listening to growl of the pipes and feeling the grip on the road, running north along the western edge of what used to be the colorado river but is now lake mead. in the great mojave desert, under a witches' moon in a hazy sky and 40 miles from anybody. the sky clears and the stars seem close enough to touch. the road winds and climbs and drops and twists and turns and the headlights are swallowed by the blackness ahead. It is a night for a drive.

the mojave, at night, in the winter, is beyond quiet and into the rhelm of the silent. during the summer, if you can turn off the conversation in your head and let yourself be aware of the great what-is, then you find you can hear the desert; what once seemed to be a special kind of quiet is, in fact, full of small but distinct sounds as the creatures of the night go about their business of life and death and food and reproduction. in the winter night, however, not a creature is stirring ( to borrow a phrase) nor doing anything else above ground and the silence is rather stunning. i stood there and let the night engulf me and draw me out of myself and into it.

they say that only prophets and madmen come out of the desert. in that silent darkness one sees what's coming and the other sees what is.
i had a very nice drive.

letter in response to jonah goldberg article 11-13 on attack at fort hood

mr. goldberg,

i read your column today on the killings at ft. hood, and you make some very good points about our reluctance to point out the obvious (i.e. that major hasan was a muslim and was, if the reports are true, in fact, a radical, terrorist muslim at that.

that being said, you did make a statement, that puts you into somewhat of a radical category yourself: "there is a powerful case to made that islamic extremism is not some fringe phenomenon but part of the mainstream of islamic life around the world."

what exactly is that "powerful case?" you don't back up that inflammatory statement with any proof or facts. there is no evidence whatsoever that islamic extremism is part of the muslim mainstream. indeed, there is ample evidence that it is not. to wit: there are 1.1 BILLION muslims in the world, and if even 10% of those people (110 million) were extremists then there would be thousands upon thousands of terrorist attacks against western targets, if not monthly, then yearly, and there are not. according to the united nations charter, resistance to an occupying army is NOT terrorism but something that is EXPECTED of the population of the occupied country. whether or not we americans think we are occupying afghanistan or iraq, you can rest assured that the citizens of those two countries do. in the early '60's, the CIA overthrew the duly elected government of iran, installed the shah and continued to meddle in their affairs for years. were the iranians who protested and took americans hostage (but did not harm them) terrorists? radicals? or were they iranian patriots?

here in the united states, there are millions of muslims. where are all the attacks? where are the bombs in the shopping malls? at the sporting events? in the vegas casinos? all of those are what the military would call "soft targets" and yet none of those millions of american muslims have planted a bomb in any of those. where is your case? where is your proof? what statistics can you quote?

and fyi, i am not muslim nor am i from the middle east. i'm just a catholic boy from oklahoma who happens to believe in fair play; who would rather the world live in peace than in constant conflict and would wish that respected writers such as yourself refrain from making broad, inflammatory, accusations against millions of our fellow citizens.

i surmise that you are jewish, based upon your name and, if so, shame on you. surely you must be sensitive to broad, racist, statements, directed against the people of the jewish faith or nationality and surely you would not want to be lumped in with the bigots and monsters who made those broad un-provable statements by making broad un-provable statements against people of the muslim faith.

i look forward to your follow-up article where you retract that statement...knowing you to be a generally fair-minded, intelligent and thinking man.

ron shock
las vegas



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ron Shock