The Woken Dead and Free Speech

I was told by a dear and near relative of mine that lunacy and idiocy have no bounds and are infinite in the individual mind as infinite as the number of particles, forces and mass-less particles in the universe. No I am not talking about the woman that ordered Chocolate Ice cream and when they did not have any, decided to take a baseball bat to the shop and break out all of the windows, nor am I talking about the fools at DuPont who want to start mass market selling breast milk to adult humans like bottle water or Gatorade. What I am referring to is the ultimate in hypocrisy and equally incoherent, laughable and ill-advised.

Recently, a TV opinion personality was asked by of all people, rappers to be removed and fired from the television show that they host. Fox news host Laura Ingraham has gained this attention from Snoop Dogg, T.I., and the Game, because of a comment made with regards to lyrics of a song he participated on with YG called “FDT.” FDT is short for “F— Donald Trump.” Now since I do not have TV or cable on my farm, I searched for the clip online to see what was the big fuss that had all of the tricks G-strings up their cracks.  After watching the segment, I found nothing disrespectful of or directed toward the death of the rapper. In addition, I did not see anything to suggest and validate she was making fun of his death. What I observed was a person intentionally making fun of the chorus of the song by saying “OK, that's a very creative refrain" and suggesting in jest that the person repeating the chorus was no Leonard Bernstein.

What gets me is the two-faced audacity of a group of people who continuously cite freedom of speech to record, promote and make money off of lyrics that advise to kill the police, kill other black men, sell other black people drugs and treat and call women thots, ho’s and bitches. Yet they want to prevent someone else from expressing and having the same right of free speech to make a living.  Snoop has the right to say what he says and so does Laura Ingraham. Regardless if you agree with it or not. Don’t watch, change the channel.  Just as I have the right to call out dumb-fcks proclaiming fake outrage when someone is critical of a so-called expletive-ridden protest song against President Donald Trump. If you support Trump, why not ridicule the lyrics of the song? The lyrics are not the person and since when has it been illegal to be critical of any work of art or music?

And the critics are people who sided with Pennsylvania rapper Jamal ‘Mayhem Mal’ Knox, who wrote a song about being arrested by the Pittsburgh police in which they not only rapped "Let's kill these cops cuz they don't do us no good," they also mentioned the arresting officer’s names and posted pictures of them in a music video.

I am tired of all the clout chasing, want to be famous in the vein of Martin Luther King and Malcom X, Jussie Smollett always on their period type cats. You need to fall back if you ever rapped about killing cops, pimping hoes, groupie’s, incessant misogyny and saying bitches ain’t shit but ho’s and tricks. Fall back if you so sensitive that it is okay for you rap about ‘I'll choke yo ass out like Dre did that bitch’ and ‘if a nigga pull upon me at the light and it's a choppa in site ‘but you don ran out of tampons because some rightly in their opinion, called a trash chorus trash. If you ever been ordered to pay for sexually assaulting a woman and singing about killing and calling black people n#### every other word, you need to fall back too.

This is truly the age of the BITICHIFICATION of black men in America. Stop complaining so much and direct your attention on real and serious issues.  Racism I hate to tell you isn’t that big a deal when you look at real concerns confronting the black community.  You need to cut off your TVs and stop getting histrionic when you hear something you don’t like. You do not have the right to tell or decide for others what they want to watch or see. This is the epitome of hypocrisy, rappers against free speech – this is truly the woken dead.

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Obamacare: A Farrago of a Mess

On Monday, I read the transcripts from the Sunday morning talk shows.  One comment that struck a tone with me that I read was from Laura Ingraham.  Now honestly, albeit an intelligent person, I rarely agree with her observations but this time I did. She gave an apt description of Obamacare as a “libertine mess of a piece of legislation.” I wanted to name this essay exactly this, however fearing copyright challenges, I came up with my own title of a similar nature

Regardless if you call it the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, the fact is that for the vast majority of Americans, in particular the ones that lost coverage and now have higher premiums and deductibles, the foul side effects and unplanned imports have not been received well. Admittedly, no new government program is going to be completely perfect and however laudable a desire as it is to provide health insurance to millions that do not have any coverage, the reality is that health benefit mandates and willy-nilly rating rules significantly increase health insurance costs, and as a result are passed on to consumers.

I don’t mind saying it, but I predicted all of this years ago. It began with, from the very start, when President Obama kept on saying that American families would experience an annual reduction of $2,500 in their health costs if his law was passed. This would be mathematically impossible unless some extreme assumptions could be made and they were. The biggest being one of structure given that the ACA doesn’t even address the cost of health coverage. It is easy to make sweeping statements when the direct object of a statement (cost of health insurance coverage) isn’t even spoken about in the legislation. Another and more problematic aspect of the law is that Obamacare can only work the manner stated if cats participate in the“individual mandate.” If you don’t then fear the tax and be fined either greater of 2.5 percent of your household’s taxable income or $695 per uninsured adult and $347.50 per uninsured child in your family. This flat fee rate will increase each year with inflation. The assumption here was that if employer and employee insurance costs were greatly reduced, then that would have a direct, outcome on citizens in the form of the aforementioned $2500 per year for the average family. Maybe this is why then President Obama stated that his law would “not burden people who make $250,000 a year or less,” or why he said that the ACA would not add “a dime” to the federal deficit. 

None of what has thus far been presented has occurred. What has is that it has been estimated that the ACA will cost about $1.34 trillion over the next decade and that Obamacare’s tax penalty connected with the individual mandate thus far falls more on lower-income and lower-middle-income individuals/families since subsidies for deductibles and other costs for income-eligible persons enrolled in the exchanges are available only to enrollees who select certain level health plans, which means that the plan must pay 70 percent of the average enrollee’stotal medical expenses for covered benefits. This in itself defeats the purpose of having insurance.

Economics side, another problem for many, myself included is that Obamacare abrogates individual and personal freedom not only by limiting choices but by allowing the government to make you to participate by buying insurance for not obeying the law. Almost every main decision in the health care sector of the American economy under the ACA is in the hands openly or ultimately, by federal officials – unelected federal officials.

But if you participate, you give up most of the liberty us as individuals connect with choice and medical freedom. Just take the Obamacare's Independent Advisory Board (IPAB) for example. This allows for the ACA to create a 15-member panel of experts that determining the type of care that Medicare pays for on behalf of the individual and consequently rations Medicare through price controls for that individual – whatever they decide you are stuck with. Why, because under Title I, federal officials define the content of health insurance coverage, including but not limited to obligatory medical actions, treatment and preventive health care services.  Then there is the large long-term care program called the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. As early as five years ago we knew many of the components of the legislation were not practical or affordable. The Obama Administration’s from the start knew that the CLASS act was not financially feasible, but wanted it and so kept the program anyway.

In summary, the ACA has increased costs for individuals,families, and businesses and unlike proponents of the bill claimed, instead the American people have come to hate the bill more and more. Not only is it worsening America's debt problem, federal spending on healthcare is also increasing which some believe will result in trillion-dollar deficits in seven years' time. The Congressional Budget Office has indicated that U.S. Federal debt could be as high as $30 trillion by 2030, as a consequence of Obamacare. Don’t even include the absence of insurance options under Obamacare or the failing co-ops. Large insurance providers like Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare and Aetna are all leaving the exchanges and several states have only one insurer providing insurance through Obamacare. Less competition in the exchanges only means higher premiums and deductibles cost and less consumer choice (this is the law of supply and demand).

But such should have been expected, I mean congress had not even read the bill or given the chance to read the bill before being forced to vote on it. But folk still stick up for Obama care.  But to me, a woman over 70 should not be forced to purchase prostate cancer or maternity coverage if she doesn’t have a prostate gland and can’t have a baby.  But folk like this cat seem to don’t get this. How would you feel if you paid the same price for auto insurance as a person with 3 DUI’s? The ACA is truly a hodgepodge, mishmash jumble of confusion - a  Farrago for lack of a better word.

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