Jose Ochoa, Famed Medical Turd, Has Doppelgänger in Metro Atlanta

dop·pel·gäng·er

ˈdäpəlˌgaNGər/

noun

1. an apparition or double of a living person.

   "he has a doppelgänger named Donald, his invented twin brother"

*******************************************************************

I am beyond upset.  As is Heinrich, er, um, I mean, of course, Fred.  Let me start over.

You must be wondering about the title of this post: "Jose Ochoa, Famed Medical Turd, Has Doppelgänger in Metro Atlanta."  Please do not take the opening lines of this already gooberish bit of writing as an insult to your intelligence.  I know you know what or whom a doppelgänger is, and that the example Google chose to offer for correct usage -- that hilarious bit about the invented Donald -- is Gooberism at its most extreme.

First, Jose Ochoa.  If you don't know His High Turdishness, feel free to enter "Ochoa" in the upper left search box on this page.  Actually, I believe there is also search capacity on the right side of this page, as well.  We aim to enable here at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle. Here is the short version, in case you're getting so hot under the collar that me asking you to do something so small and [ultimately] time-saving as reading a bunch of old posts about The High Turd Ochoa has caused you to develop a rash on your poor overworked neck:  He's a doctor, or so people believe, who has made a large fortune testifying in workers' compensation hearings, or performing sadistic forensic "independent medical exams" for workers' comp or other large insurance agencies.  He specializes in making sure CRPS patients never receive appropriate medical care or desperately needed funds with which to buy food and pay rent.  His specialty is thus refined because inherent to his qualifications are numerous humorous articles which refute the very EXISTENCE of CRPS.  Unfortunately for His Turdishness, Big Science, Big Workers' Comp, and virtually all Big Insurance Companies, have left him in the dust, especially now that he can only use citations of his own "work" to bolster his baseless and hilarious claims.

Now, I've no desire to be sued by Jose Ochoa, and from the number of "hits" that articles about him receive that originate within 5 miles of his home base, he and his misled associates are constantly checking on his "turd" status here in Marlinspike Hall.  

"Hmm, I wonder if I am still a Turd.  Better check that helpful blog again..." [logs on to elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle via a well-traveled link to his favorite laudatory post, "Three Months Later: José Ochoa, *Still* A Big, Fat Turd."]

There's an excellent unbiased summation of the non-board certified (in *any* medical specialty) Doctor Ochoa by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in the State of Louisiana HERE. 

While I'm ranting, and I'll stick with that verb choice, despite its inaccuracies, I'd like to dispute the ugly rumors that I am just angry at being stuck raising an Ochoa Love Child with no support from my Baby-Daddy.  Doctor Ochoa and I have never had the opportunity to meet, speak, exchange emails or psychically teleport (in terms of matter, as well as thought, including his submicroscopic, sluggish spermatozoa and my plump, beautiful ova).  I know nothing of his personal life, beyond logical deductions of habits groomed by greed, and assume that he's happily married, and probably the head of some dynastic empire. I don't really know.  There is NO LOVE CHILD, so just stop repeating that. And if there were, you can be darned sure that Jose Ochoa would pay support for the poor thing... or my name isn't Retired Educator!  er, Profderien!  um, Channeller/Medium of Bianca Castafiore! oof, Definitely not that "L. Ryan" person!

Okay, so now you have the broad outline of my personal opinion of Jose Ocho, as well as that of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in the State of Louisiana, that bastion of liberality. 

*** I just dropped by the general web site of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and was RUDELY escorted out.  Let me share with you what I learned through ignorance, which, when of the law, is no excuse.  They have a freaking DRESS CODE: "All counsel appearing before the court shall be appropriately dressed in business attire. Men shall wear a coat and tie. No denim is allowed." Despite my assurances that my advanced and highly hoity-toity degrees were all related to French, literary criticism, and linguistics (though I might have blubbered "linguini," which would explain a few things) and that, as channeller of the Milanese Nightingale, Bianca Castafiore, my neon yellow beret and 1859 hot pink silk ball gown over red hightop, stiletto-heeled, punk tenny pumps were perfectly appropriate...

The next thing you might be curious about is how Fred and I got to Metro Atlanta from our usual location West of the Lone Alp in the land of Tête de Hergé.  Well, that's easy!  We "borrowed" one of Captain Haddock's miniature submarines and used the wormhole extending from the bottom of Our Algae-Plagued Moat to get to Atlanta's very creepy northern suburbs.  Since that's where my new ACA-provided MarketPlace HMO health insurance wanted me to go for my first neurological appointment for the accursèd CRPS spasms and CRPS-induced hypertension... who was I to complain about the minor inconvenience of hitching a ride through [?] a wormhole in a miniature submarine belonging to my cartoonish boss?

Captain Haddock.  Hey, is YOUR boss on Wikipedia?

Now, having resolved any possible qualms my more habitual readers might entertain about this post -- fear that the Turd Ochoa will breach the defenses of Marlinspike Hall with a warrant for libel or slander or false paternity claims, concern that we had to travel to the center of backward fake conservatism for medical care -- I can finally proceed to an explanation of Dr. Ochoa's doppelgänger.

Because I am Honest-to-God afraid of Dr. Ochoa's doppelgänger, I shall not name him.  Okay, his initials are RJW.  Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman.  Yeah, that'll do.  Dr. Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman, it is!

Roald Dahl (/ˈroʊ.ɑːl ˈdɑːl/;[1] Norwegian: [ˈɾuːɑl dɑl]; 13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot, and screenwriter.
Joseph Michael "Joe Cargo" Valachi (September 22, 1903 – April 3, 1971), Italian American, also known as "Charles Charbano" and "Anthony Sorge" was the first Mafia member to publicly acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. He is also the person who made Cosa Nostra (meaning "Our Thing") a household name.
The Wassermann test or Wassermann reaction (WR)[1] is an antibody test for syphilis, named after the bacteriologist August Paul von Wassermann, based on complement-fixation.

Because I believe in sharing as many spontaneous "excited utterances" as possible, I will now resort to copying-and-pasting a recent electronic wormhole transmission, because Fred and I are safely back at home in Captain Haddock's ancestral manor.  It may be slightly redacted.  But whose blog is it, anyway?

An Anonymous and Amazing Friend (I have a few!) wrote, having intercepted some rabid but innocent, off-the-cuff, breezy allusion to "NEUROLOGICAL RAPE":

Okay, what's going on with you????
Are you in HIGH pain????

You'd like her.  I sure do.  We are, in fact, sending a drone miniature Haddock Corporation submarine to her secret location as you and I "speak," Beloveds.  Why?  She's bringing PIE, a known curative for all that ails one.

It's a Marlinspike Hall rule, cross-stitched on a pillow even:  "You must answer all Anonymous and Amazing Friends' electronic or cross-dimensional communiqués, no matter how freaking painful it is to type or twitch your nose à la Bewitched."  What is not mentioned on the pillow is our true motivation 
-- "Keep your friends happy and they might bring you pie!"

Actual Official eDocument concerning the Doppelgänger of 

Famed Medical Turd, Jose Ochoa, in Metro Atlanta

Official Seal

hey.  i had made an appt yesterday that i was actually looking forward to, with a neurologist through my new insurance..  this guy does research at emory on movement disorders, and was a perfect match for my spasms and other CRPS weirdness.  

i made sure to send fred an email from the computer turret with the directions, as we have gone to this location once before and GOT LOST. we are sooooooo used to Tête de Hergé, and the miniature submarine trip through the wormhole is sooooooo disorienting! 

i also made sure we left a half-hour earlier than necessary, as we had to transfer from the captain's sub to a rental car and atlanta traffic is infamous. we got in the car, i asked fred if he had the directions, and he said, "don't need 'em, i know exactly where it is." of course, his eyes were spinning like lemons on a slot machine.  bless his bones!

first, there was a wreck on I-285, and I-285 is already a wreck!  look what wikipedia says about it, even:

Interstate 285 (I-285) is an Interstate Highway loop encircling Atlanta, Georgia, for 63.98 miles (102.97 km). I-285 is also un-signed State Route 407, and is colloquially referred to as the Perimeter. Suburban sprawl has made it one of the most heavily traveled roadways in the United States, and portions of the highway slow, sometimes to a crawl, during rush hour. It is also signed as Atlanta Bypass on Interstate 75 and Interstate 85.It is estimated that more than two million people use the highway each day, making it by far the busiest Interstate in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

but that was okay, we allowed for the time!  then we got lost, got confused, started screaming at the rest of the millions of drivers, who all screamed back at us, the nerve of those atlantans! 

we did not get there on time.  i was, they told me, 21 minutes late.  i tried to call them but due to the noise in the lamentable excuse for a car, that was not possible. they called the doctor to see if he would still see me and he said "no." we felt like dorothy and friends during their initial attempt to see the wizard of oz.

"Fred, I don't think we're in Tête de Hergé anymore."

Dang it!  Another secret photograph of me, Fred, and Sven Feingold going about our Daily Labors
 at Marlinspike Hall.  We have an Instagraph stalker.  Yes, I know I CLAIM to be a bedridden,
wheelchair-riding GIMP.  It's all a lie.  Read on!

i burst into tears, having been up all night for 3 nights in a row with spasms.  they get worse when the infection in my left shoulder flares and when i am under STRESS (worrying about brothers, nephews, mother-units, and my little buddies brayden and nolan -- and my big buddy, the outrageously large maine coon with separation anxiety!).  they said they would work me in with another doctor: Dr. Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman. 

"my big buddy, the outrageously large maine coon with separation anxiety"

they don't accept faxes at this neurological clinic (the building is under construction, the wiring hanging through plastic sheeting), so i had been told to bring my records from my former WONDERFUL neurologist. you remember him? the hawaiian-shirted, birkenstocked dude who diagnosed me in 2003, some 19 months out from CRPS onset? he had carefully selected the important parts of my long, well-documented records, studded with studies and exam/treatment results --  and also had written a wonderful summary for whomever the new neurologist turned out to be. 

Dr. Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman is whom it turned out to be.

diana, it felt like i was being RAPED.  (not literally, just neurologically!)  dr. m, my former neuro, NEVER touched me without permission or without warning me to do stuff like pulling up my pant leg or moving my arm.  yes, in the beginning, he HAD to do nerve conduction studies (EMGs) but even then, he was as gentle as humanly possible -- because he understood CRPS, he diagnosed it, he saved my freaking life!

well, no. he did not save my freaking life.  he told me, and this is something one never, ever forgets: "retired educator, you've been dealt a shitty hand."

to which i replied:  "aces over eights?"

at which he snorted coffee up his nose, and did not answer, eyes aglitter.  dr. m has cried in my presence a couple o'times through the years.  when i did clinical drug trials, when i did subanesthetic ketamine treatments for three months, to no avail.  oh, okay -- and when i told one of my patently bad knock-knock jokes...

Dr. Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman did not read the records, or even the summary.  for an hour and a half, he poked pins up and down both legs, my back, both arms, my face.  repeatedly.  then he used the effing reflex hammer, and did not believe that i had no shoulder on the left, and bone infection in both shoulders.  i have to hold up my left arm with my right to have it examined, and he would push my right hand off my left arm, making it fall.  repeatedly. (i just saw my beloved dr. shoulderman last week, the orthopedic surgeon who has seen me since 2005 and operated over 10 times -- and he saw infection in the SOFT TISSUE as well as the bone on the left side... and we decided to just pray for the next 6 weeks!  and i was to "rest that arm" after he injected it with anesthetics and steroids! 

so the bleeping ex-shoulder area HURTS even more than usual... and the CRPS in the lower arm is, consequently, flaring, and twitching.  twitchtwitchtwitch!) 

Dr. Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman kept asking about a damned "rash" and demanding, "why is this so painful?" 

like the fool that i really am, i kept repeating, "i've had CRPS for 12 years, that's why, and avascular necrosis, and infected bones/joints..."  and he would go, "yes, but i am barely touching you!" 

like the fool that i really am, when it got to the point where i could barely speak, i tried spitting out one-word important bits of information, like "ALLODYNIA" and "fgaweorjaoneonbyvwyqq"!

maybe it would have been more fruitful to save up one last bit of verbal heroics, and spit out an entire sentence, probably something from the Great Physician HimSelf: "Sometimes I am quite certain there's a Jertain in the curtain."

excuse me, all this one-handed typing is getting to me... let's take a Great Physician break and watch a short bit of YouTube entertainment.

okay... returning to the neurological assault.

so i stopped talking and basically tried to meditate my way through Dr. Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman's "examination." 

he deliberately ran into my right leg, that was extended over the edge of the exam table.  not once but several times.  he dragged his highly starched long white coat over both legs, again demanding: "how can that hurt so much?  why are you crying?" i asked for tissues, as i'm not fond of my mascara ruining my blotchy foundation, and snot running down to the chin is simply not fine. each time, i would transfer the tissue to my now claw-like left hand (handy for clutching things!), as there was a sneaking suspicion in my mind that i'd need tissue again in thirty seconds.  he would then pry the dirty tissue out of my left claw, throw it away, and then we would replay that little scene when next the snot reached my dimples. 

finally, because i had a bit of a fever (that would be the INFECTION!), high blood pressure (that would be the PAIN!), and his insistence that i see infectious disease specialists, orthopedic surgeons, and have a brain MRI (all of which has been done and done and done, by much better than RJW!), this highly organized Unsub began to insist that i needed to be admitted PRONTO.  
do not pass go, go directly to the hospital.  

and yes, i've been watching too many Criminal Minds ION Television marathons. fred and i can profile unsubs with amazing alacrity.  here, i'll prove it to ya!

UNSUB

• 27-35 year old white male
• enucleator (removes eyes) -> Usually enucleators are males with a diagnosed mental disorder, lack social skills, disorganized, sloppy, repeat offenders. They don't usually take the eyes. It's usually not about the eyes, but about what the unsub sees in them (delusional!)
• This unsub however is quite organized and strategic, and does take the eyes with him. (Possibility: trophy/consumption)
• Apart from the first victim he's very precise with taking the eyes -> might have some medical training (but will not have made a career out of it)
• Blitz attack - he lacks the social skills to charm his victims.
• Very likely to have been institutionalized/ halfway house/ treatment facility.
• Less than 48 hours between kills (he is escalating) No cooling off period will make it hard to get ahead of him.
• Area of 22miles between locations (usually the kill area is smaller)
• Leaves body in somewhat public area where he could have easily hidden it there - he is not afraid to get caught
• Used a trip wire -> game hunter. He may have applied for a hunting license.
• He waits until he is alone with his victims -> patient
• Killers usually get more sloppy when they escalate, this unsub only gets better.
• Drives a van or pickup that's easy to clean (his dad's)

heh heh.  i ripped that off from a fellow rabid unsub, i mean, FAN... of Criminal Minds. i ain't no freakin' enucleator, and i shore as shit ain't lackin' in any social skills.

there's more to tell about RJW but that's more than enough (i am SORRY to be dumping on you again, again, again, when you've got more than enough troubles of your own).

he did increase the dose of one of my meds.  he printed out my "discharge notes" and told me he wanted to see me again in 3 months (but expected me to end up in the emergency room by evening).  
i said, exiting my meditation silence, "thank you, doctor," revved up my power chair and found my sweet fred in the waiting room, snoring.

we went to the pharmacy on the ground floor.  then we thought to look at my paperwork and... we blew up. like balloons, pretty much.

the guy had diagnosed me with SHINGLES. "postherpetic neuralgia"! that's why Dr. Roald Joseph "Joe Cargo" Wasserman was asking about a rash, and was obsessed with my allodynia symptoms, which are just standard fare with CRPS neuropathic pain, but "present" in a much different way. oh, let's just cut to the freaking chase. shingles very rarely ends up creating gorgeous gams such as these:

this was.labelled "summer legs 2013" -- ha! 

aha, here's a video from 2011! the neuro rapist wouldn't accept that my "condition" was an old one, and not a recent attack of "postherpetic neuralgia."  and oh lordy, please don't think i am underestimating the pain and suffering shingles patients must go through, 'cause i am not!

sweet dobby still sniffs my feet, full of suspicion!  "where did my hooman get these butt-ugly thangs?"

so... we were in the pharmacy, so close to the parking lot and the car that would take us back to the miniature submarine dock, adjacent to the wormhole entrance that would return us to calm domesticity... i told fred to calm down, let it go, let's get the medication, and just GO HOME, where i could climb back into this blessed hospital bed, curl up, and recover.  with sweet dobby probably sniffing RJW's scent from my bed head to my gnarled tippy toes.

"no, we are going back up there, RIGHT NOW." 

the workmen putting up dry wall were all staring at him, but one of them proceeded to help us get on the right elevator!  even held the door as it started closing on the wheelchair! yet another hero to add to my hero collection!

we get to the 4th floor.  to the reception desk.  she says we cannot see the doctor, "he is out to lunch." [i start LAUGHING].  fred demands that she get him on the phone.  she finds a nurse, instead. i end up speaking to her after fred has finished the first detailed and footnoted explanation of the differences between shingles and CRPS.  she claims it was "a computer error." 

yeah, typing out "postherpetic neuralgia" just HAPPENED -- that's how computers operate, they just do whatever they feel like doing, those darned computers. 

surrounded by artificial intelligence.  

like a noose closing around a proffered neck, AI was tightening its grip... mwa ha ha!

there's more. the story continues into today, tuesday. RJW ends up calling my primary care doctor (not dear go-to-guy, but the HMO woman who, at our first meeting, said "our 17 minutes are up!").

her nurses are calling, telling me i MUST go to urgent care, i MUST check into the hospital, i MUST be seen, and yaddayadda. but the last nurse was GREAT.  she listened.  and she let me lie and say i was considerably improved and would come in tomorrow "if i wasn't completely better." 

mwahahahahaaaaaaa!

poor fred had a tooth pulled this afternoon, just got home. but at least he could have it done by one of the Haddock family servants, one of the stable workers who got his DDS in his down time.  so he is completely unable to run through the fruit orchard, vault the rock wall, and retrieve the BP medication that go-to-guy called in to the monastery infirmary.  such is life.

but writing YOU, a true friend, has likely lowered my sky high CRPS-induced hypertension just as well. 

plus, now you are sure to send pie.  cherry, please. deep dish? 

and i dearly want fred to sleep, rest, relax.  he woke me up this morning because he was yelling in his sleep.  gladly, when i asked if he had bad dreams, he could not remember any, just noted that he woke up "already tired." that breaks mine heart. 

i'd turn off the phone, but i want to be available for grader boob in the highly unlikely event that he might call. or that other shifty-eyed brother-unit!  how odd is it that we all detest the telephone so much?  ah, genetics!  no, that's not it.  ah, darwin!

that's about it. did i neatly tie up every loose end?  be sure to put that pie in a sturdy, waterproof box. the wormhole can be squirrely and ends, of course, in our algae-afflicted moat. we will post sven feingold's son, cabana boy, on Moat Pie Watch Duty.

god, i love you!

***** ***** ****** ***** ***** ****** ***** ***** ****** ***** ***** ******

THUS CONCLUDES THE EXPLANATION OF THE TITLE OF THIS LONG AND WINDING POST: "Jose Ochoa, Famed Medical Turd, Has Doppelgänger in Metro Atlanta." 

Any detail is fair game for the Final Exam!

Smile.

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh!

Several things:  Does covering the CRPS-induced craters on my face with flesh-colored bandaids really hide the problem?  Why is Fred opening canned vegetables for chop suey rather than using the beautiful fresh vegetables in the fridge?  About what kind of things am I likely to hallucinate when under the influence of subanesthetic ketamine?  Should I turn myself in to the authorities for having caused the Blue Devils (60) to fall to the Hokies (64) -- though I want it to be clear I had *nothing* to do with Pittsburgh or Texas screwing up? 

Yes, I felt the skittling * weight of NCAA basketball descend upon The Manor over the weekend.  In case I proved unresponsive to its skittling weight, out of the corners of my increasingly blind eyes there were repeated hints that La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, The Milanese Nightingale, herself, had embarked upon the annual costuming for the collegiate tournaments.  Dragging her trunks of operatic stage finery into the light cast by the wide stone hearth in the Medieval Kitchen (the gathering spot for our wing within Marlinspike Hall), Bianca descended into a frenzied madness as she developed the governing rules for the Fashionable Viewer.

Unfortunately, she put most of her stylistic tenets in aggravated slavic Syldavian, a language that neither Fred nor I speak, and even less understand.  A Slovak lifer who married into the Manor Domestic Dynasty Staff, Klára Králová, claims fluency -- but even so, she and The Castafiore have nearly come to blows over the translation of the Syldavian motto, Eih bennek, eih blavek.  Such a disagreement among speakers wouldn't normally be a big deal (Remember:  Native speakers disagree!), except that it was added, in 1234 AD, to the Haddock Family crest.   As one of those annoying word ribbons draped over ancient crossed swords, believed to be the first illustrated pair of Damascus blades, Captain Haddock asserts its meaning to be: "If you gather thistles, expect prickles."    (Never forget:  Those who lack fluency assert!)

Some linguistic experts, and you know how they are, insist that the best approach to Syldavian is via the intricately fine grammar of the Marollien dialect, according to which Eih bennek, eih blavek means nothing less than:  "Here I am, here I stay."

Marols or Marollien (also known as Brusselse Sproek, brusseler, brusseleir, brusselair or brusseleer [1]) was a dialect spoken in Brussels. Essentially it is a Dutch dialect incorporating many words of French origin as well as a sprinkling of Spanish dating back to the rule of the Low Countries by the Habsburgs (1519-1713). Its name refers to a district of Brussels called Marollen (Marolles), a neighborhood in the central municipality of Brussels, not far from the Palace of Justice. The district takes its name from the former abbey of the nuns Maria Colentes (Marikollen). It was a working-class neighborhood, though now it has become a fashionable part of the city. Marols is described as "totally indecipherable to the foreigner (which covers everyone not born in the Marolles) which is probably a good thing as it is richly abusive."[1]


The Théâtre Royal de Toone in Brussels puts on puppet plays in Marols.[1]

Yeah, so... anyway... collegiate basketball is entering the richness of tournament season, and we're feeling it here at The Manor.  Duke will fall, no doubt, from its number one ranking today, but not to worry:  That's exactly what we want;  That's exactly what we planned on.  We are peaking, in our own inimitable way, precisely when a reintroduction to humility does the greatest good.

Everyone knows Duke would have won easily if I had not ignored My Jinx Impact.  I don't feel like explaining -- yet again -- my deleterious effect on various sporting empires.  You can get the essence of the situation in this former post:    Mala Fortuna -- Stanford Stops the Streak.

By the leavings of her search, it looks like La Bonne et Belle Bianca will be wearing a cross-section of jewel-toned satins.  Oh... my.

Like the drums of Khazad Dum, rolling upward from the depths of our saline moat, we hear the beginnings of that diverse call to action, that urge to tap the toe:

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]

* A made-up word; A "skittling weight" is what I imagine as the tactile impact of a frenetic crab climbing a human thigh -- under water. Under ocean water. [NOT a reference to cough syrup abuse.

REPOST in the wake of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting: Pollyanna's Glad Game

When a Congressperson is shot at point blank range in the head, it is time to examine the atmosphere that is informing our political and social makeup.


It is time to talk about these things, it is time to put up our "Polyanna Glad Games," and to pull our collective head out of the sand. Discourse, and its level of civility, matters.


Words matter.


There are desperately angry people who are desperately searching for leadership. The desperation has been increasingly palpable since President Obama took office -- his election having tapped into the barely suppressed rage of racists whose racism has heretofore managed to adequately explain their racist world. They feel intimately violated by the sweeping changes in the United States, no matter how intelligent or necessary that change has been.


It's been all "Don't tread on me" with neverending references to some abstract "Truth" and fantastical "Liberties" that our "Forefathers" apparently secreted from their very pores. 

Already I am reading things like "[t]here aren't many details yet, but whatever they turn out to be, they will be spun hard, and not in favor of liberty," that from Moonbattery on today's shooting. 


It's been nothing but racist, ignorant bullshit for way too long. And there has grown alongside of it a fluorishing political economy of wagging radio tongues and malevolent talking heads.


The sad thing is that those with real points to make on the conservative side of politics and governing have been drowned out, their thoughts and considered points trammeled by demagoguery.


There is a place for the right, the left, and the moderate.


There is no place, or, at least, there ought not be a place, for mindless followers spurred on by meanspirited Machiavellis.


Anyway, I lay the blame for Congress Woman Giffords death squarely on the shoulders of FOX News and those who put gun targets on the backs of public servants.


It will be a while before I play The Glad Game. How about you?

***************************************************************

The editorial below is one of the best, most thought-and-discussion provoking pieces I've come across in a good while. It's reproduced here in its entirety -- please forgive me for that and be sure to follow the link, because the comments are also well worth a read.

I am a Frank Rich fan. He is meticulous. He is candid.

And I usually agree with him -- there's that!

I haven't yet scoped out the responses to this editorial -- I am sure they're mounting -- but will post links to them. Maybe tomorrow! I am having a few days of... I don't know exactly how to characterize it... carefully crafted peace? It took me a week but I managed to trace the source of my acid stomach to all this mess.

We've been laid bare. I've been laid bare. Flailed, thrashed. My mind is bleeding.

And in other, more important news? Fred installed a birdhouse in the huge oak sheltering our suite in the northeast wing of Marlinspike Hall, where we have been living for a decade or so, rent-free but burdened by incredible maintenance cares -- all courtesy of Captain Haddock. Five minutes after hanging the For Rent sign, a robin moved in and began building!

Yes, I am playing the Pollyanna Glad Game, however did you know?

For a moment there was silence. The sky was darkening fast. Pollyanna took a firmer hold of her friend's arm.

"I reckon I'm glad, after all, that you did get scared -- a little, 'cause then you came after me," she shivered.

"Poor little lamb! And you must be hungry, too. I -- I'm afraid you'll have ter have bread and milk in the kitchen with me. Yer aunt didn't like it -- because you didn't come down ter supper, ye know."

"But I couldn't. I was up here."

"Yes; but -- she didn't know that, you see!" observed Nancy, dryly, stifling a chuckle. "I'm sorry about the bread and milk; I am, I am."

"Oh, I'm not. I'm glad."

"Glad! Why?"

"Why, I like bread and milk, and I'd like to eat with you. I don't see any trouble about being glad about that."

"You don't seem ter see any trouble bein' glad about everythin'," retorted Nancy, choking a little over her remembrance of Pollyanna's brave attempts to like the bare little attic room.

Pollyanna laughed softly.

"Well, that's the game, you know, anyway."

"The -- game?"

"Yes; the 'just being glad' game."

"Whatever in the world are you talkin' about?"

"Why, it's a game. Father told it to me, and it's lovely," rejoined Pollyanna. "We've played it always, ever since I was a little, little girl. I told the Ladies' Aid, and they played it -- some of them."

"What is it? I ain't much on games, though."

Pollyanna laughed again, but she sighed, too; and in the gathering twilight her face looked thin and wistful.

"Why, we began it on some crutches that came in a missionary barrel."

"Crutches!"

"Yes. You see I'd wanted a doll, and father had written them so; but when the barrel came the lady wrote that there hadn't any dolls come in, but the little crutches had. So she sent 'em along as they might come in handy for some child, sometime. And that's when we began it."

"Well, I must say I can't see any game about that, about that," declared Nancy, almost irritably.

"Oh, yes; the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about -- no matter what 'twas," rejoined Pollyanna, earnestly. "And we began right then -- on the crutches."

"Well, goodness me! I can't see anythin' ter be glad about -- gettin' a pair of crutches when you wanted a doll!"

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

"There is -- there is," she crowed. "But I couldn't see it, either, Nancy, at first," she added, with quick honesty. "Father had to tell it to me."

"Well, then, suppose you tell me," almost snapped Nancy.

"Goosey! Why, just be glad because you don't - need -- 'em!" exulted Pollyanna, triumphantly. "You see it's just as easy -- when you know how!"

"Well, of all the queer doin's!" breathed Nancy, regarding Pollyanna with almost fearful eyes.

"Oh, but it isn't queer -- it's lovely," maintained Pollyanna enthusiastically. "And we've played it ever since. And the harder 'tis, the more fun 'tis to get 'em out; only -- only sometimes it's almost too hard -- like when your father goes to Heaven, and there isn't anybody but a Ladies' Aid left."

The Rage Is Not About Health Care

By FRANK RICH
Published: March 27, 2010

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.

Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill!” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.

When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post, Alf Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign on a call for repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only pray that the G.O.P. will “go for it” again in 2010, as Obama goaded them on Thursday, and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by September will shower benefits on the elderly and children alike.) When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association.

But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

Repost: War and Peace: I Have the Power When I'm in the Shower

originally posted 11/15/2009

Good morning, Fearless and Beloved Readers! I've missed you, I really have. Give yourselves a hug.

Have a seat on the red horsehair loveseat over yonder. It's one of the few Victorian Pieces in The Manor. {guffawandsnicker} Go figure, huh? Captain Haddock's more recent ancestors were a wily people, a sang froid of common sense running in their blue, blue veins.

The space that we are in today served them as Reception Hall during the American Civil War, and for roughly 60 years afterward. Back then, it was worth their Snooty While to allow a more plebian sort of individual to attend the legendary Marlinspike Hall Afternoon Teas.

But a few changes were necessary, so as to honor their actual intent.

Horsehair furniture. Horsehair as stuffing, horsehair as "fabric." *Small* furniture of unwieldy proportion, shape, and style. American furniture! To provide the necessary Provenance of Snoot, most of it was purchased from a small dealer specializing in the paraphernalia and artefacts of Abraham Lincoln.

We're talking austere. And sturdy.

But mostly? We're talking un-freaking-comfortable! Somehow, some way, the earthier visitors to The Manor found that the rich folks' furniture variously pinched their derrières, squeezed their oversized working class thighs, and often made them break out in an itchy rash. Slowly but surely, word spread, and the afternoon receptions thinned out, freeing up The Haddocks for their beloved Tea Time Mahjongg Tournaments.

Oh, yeah. They also switched from what most people in this region of Tête de Hergé (Très Décédée, D'ailleurs) prefer to drink, a strong polyvalant coffee, to thinly brewed and overly sweetened English teas.

That's the succinct version of why there is such a massive collection of Bone China Coffee Cups, Mugs, and Saucers -- and of why it is hidden from Common View. It must be said, doggone it, that must also be the reason for the chintzy, stained tea cups and the dented, tarnished silver tea sets.

It's not that Haddock Stock disapproved of tea, per se. There are over three dozen delightful tea pots in the working kitchens in the East Wing, alone.

But today, we chose to greet you here in La Recepción! Yes, we are planning a surprise renovation for this space -- from Lincolnesque austerity to teeming, busy Spanish Colonial. Coffee reigns supreme again! I know, it will be a striking change, yes? From itty-bitty loveseats to massive, in-your-face stuff!

My! I do go on. The words seems to have built up over the past few weeks. Explosive posting.

Anyway, please pour yourself a cup of this fine, winey yirgacheffe. It is Fred's favorite from the years he lived in Ethiopia. And why not, let's use the Imported Fine English Bone China Coffee Accoutrements!

Here, look in the bottom of the china cabinet -- note the paw foot, the curved glass -- no, the bottom, there you go! Smart Reader!

If you're a strict, unyielding traditionalist, use one of those Royal Crown Derby Posies-patterned coffee cups and saucers -- a very fine bone china, with both gilded rims and handle bands! Stop! Right there! Very good, Sweet Reader.

It's part of Captain Haddock's extensive Imported Post War Bone China Collection.

Now that everyone is seated, all comfy (how is that horsehair treating your various tushes?),

the inmates here at Marlinspike Hall would also like to extend a Warm Welcome to My Two Cyber Stalkers. I think I spotted them sprinting between haystacks earlier this morning, as dew lay on the Manor Holdings. I'm unclear as to how the Second Cyber Stalker came to be on scene, but I surmise that she is basically an unbalanced woman fallen under The Spell of The Primary Cyber Stalker. Maybe, if I am good, one of them will leave a comment explaining the exponential growth of my fan base. But until such time as the two of you begin to focus on each other -- the absolutely predictable ending to your saga -- please, make yourselves at home.

Just don't touch anything.

This morning, for the first time in about two months, I woke up feeling pretty darned okay (I don't want to jinx it with excessive exuberance).

The cows are giving sweet frothy warm milk again, sparing us another morning of nasty "non-dairy creamer," and providing The Castafiore and Her Denizens with the raw material for yogurts, various creams, and cheeses. We are thinking of reopening The Manor Dairy.

Marmy and her Fluffy Butt has made peace with Sam-I-Am, thereby helping Uncle Kitty Big Balls to de-escalate his frenetic efforts at a military-style feline coup d'état. Sammy is finally able to doze with both eyes shut. In other Cat ChitChat News, Dobby has learned how to wink when prompted. As we tell him with great frequency, Dobby is a very good boy.

La Bonne et Belle Bianca and Fred have had several run-on and amorphous spats, but today? Both have tweeted at me asking for my version of how and why their internescine battle began. I pretended to have a broken tweeter, thereby encouraging them to give up their fruitless efforts to justify the Recent Unpleasantness. Last I saw? They were off to town in Ruby the Honda CRV, laughing and carefree.

I gotta say, if you will permit me to wander just a little from my tight prose, that this household tweeting has become a real thorn in my imaginary side. How much trouble is it to get off one's lazy arse, leave one's quarters, cross over to the Central Ballroom, and take the Checkered Spiral Staircase to the Former Cloak Room, recently converted into My Reference Room Slash Office?

Exercise your stubby legs, get some bloodflow to that congested brain, enjoy some energizing endorphins!

Fill your lungs with bracing fresh air! [We have ongoing draft issues in that Manor Sector... but that is a Tale of Frustration better suited to another time.] If you absolutely cannot make the trip and the message is of real import? Go low tech and give Dobby a note (on letterhead, of course, for verification of authenticity). He always knows where I am. He is a very good boy.

Well, darn. I seem to be the only Responsible Adult left in The Manor at the moment and some children from a neighboring village have asked to tour The Petting Zoo. Now I've no time to edit, to spellcheck, to render the dull, lackluster phrase more witty.

I had planned for this clear but slightly chatty introduction to lead into a wickedly clever, oh-so-subtle excoriation of right wing conservative assholes. Remember, please, that that is just a stream of adjectives so as to particularize "assholes." In and of themselves, those who are "right wing" or "conservative," let's even add "republican" and the slightly deceptive "libertarian" -- those good folk are not necessarily also nominative assholes.

Now I've only time for a rough esquisse and pompous use of easily translated foreign words.

It seems that some of the less able assholes referenced above have chosen to claim a certain photo of President Obama, his family, and some military officials -- situated on a dais -- to be a snap taken on Veterans Day, reflective of the President's lack of respect for the military, even for the war dead. This, because while everyone else in the photo has either hand to heart or arm raised in salute, the President is just standing there, presumably like an ignorant, superior, snotty dolt.

Something, praise Heaven, made me go to Snopes.com in hopes of a thorough debunking of this obviously manipulated photograph -- I thought perhaps it had been PhotoShopped.

It turns out to be something more insidious. In a way, I am glad to not have time to reproduce the hateful email and blog posts written as illustrative introductions to the photo, which turns out to be an unretouched one, taken not on Veterans Day or at the recent Fort Hood memorial, but considerably earlier, on Memorial Day, at Arlington's Memorial Amphitheatre. It was a ceremony held as adjunct to one held at the Tomb of the Unknowns -- this one honoring blacks who fought in the Civil War.

So President Obama had to travel from one honored site to another. He was slipping into the amphitheatre... Well, I guess presidents don't really get to "slip in" -- quiet and unnoticed -- anywhere. No, they are introduced by that pesky toe-tapper, Hail to the Chief.

The deference being displayed was intended to honor him, as required by Department of Defense bylaws, which dictate that the same gesticulations and do-da shown during The Star-Spangled Banner, another American masterpiece, are to be gesticulated and do-da-ed during Hail to the Chief. Therefore, I am a little glad he is not sticking out his tongue, jumping up and down, beating his chest, and acting the insolent fool that the aforementioned assholes apparently envisioned.

He looks, to me, a mite embarrassed and shy.

No. That's not right.

I just momentarily forgot, is all, in the midst of renewing my relationship with my Beloved Readers, wallowing like a happy pig in the squishy mud of what looks to be a great day.

I know that look. So do you.

That's the look of sad. A weary-to-the-bone sadness that, at one time or another, can be seen on all leaders of good heart. Clearer than a precision-tooled 140-charactered tweet. More expressive than the best of mots justes.

It's nice to be back with you, Reader. Thank you for waiting for me to catch back up.

Shit. Now I can't get that "alternate" version of Hail to the Chief from the movie Dave out of my pointy head.

"Hail to the chief, he's the one we all say hail to! I have the power when I am in the shower!"

I gotta get down to the zoo. Y'all feel free to roam around. Someone keep an eye on the two reprobates, would you?

Life as an acronym

It's been a crazy time lately, here at Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé.

A little known factoid: My darling Fred, Life Partner Extraordinaire©, was diagnosed with ADHD eight years ago, eight long and interesting years, but not as long, or as disturbing, as the eleven years before that! Bless his everlovin' bones, he has struggled all his life to achieve emotional balance, and now seems to have done it, as much as one can.

Even on what might seem a superficial level, he had to struggle with life's little things, things others may take for granted.

But what I love the most is the return, or rather, the preeminence, of his wonderful sense of humor.

He came roaring into the room last night, laughing.

"I've reached a new ADHD low! Not only can I not remember where I put the thing that I am looking for, I cannot remember what the thing I am looking for... IS!"

On a purely selfish level? I also love that it is now safe for me to laugh, and luxuriously, too. Once upon a time, I never knew the reaction that might be coming my way. Even when I knew that he was lashing out at the world because of the pain he was in, that was no protection against the extreme energy of his anger.

He now has his own social outlets, outlets and people that go beyond me. I mean, face it, living with CRPS/RSD, not to mention the problems of unresolved bone infections, lupus, avascular necrosis, adrenal insufficiency... face it, I have lost my world. At first, I thought it was issues of access -- for the longest time, I was stuck in a manual chair that I could not maneuver (you try it without shoulders, 'kay?). Then, when my own tenacity solved that problem -- a new car, a wheelchair lift, a new wheelchair -- I had to face the truth. I simply can't go out all that much. I can't do much, period.

PITY PARTY ALERT! RUN, SAVE YOURSELVES!

Okay, I'm over it. All problems, solved. All issues, resolved. All difficulties? Scoffed at! I am, afterall, the *real* Bionic Woman.

Back to darling Fred, Life Partner Extraordinaire©. I am trying to reduce his role as my caretaker, as who wants to see that reflected in their lover's eyes? He does not need to be greeted daily with a laundry list of complaints -- nor does he need to be greeted with laundry!

There are little tricks, things I have learned late but hopefully not so late that all is lost.

Such as -- pausing before I speak. That one thing, alone, has salvaged our relationship. Asking myself whether what I am about to say really needs saying. Is it about pain, discomfort? He knows I am in pain, he knows I am uncomfortable. He knows I don't sleep. He knows I can't do x, y, and z. It is caving into the seductiveness of "sick behavior" to point it all out as if he had not a clue. And I don't have enough Official Pity Party Paraphernalia to host a soirée all that often.

What else? Keeping in mind his struggles with ADHD. That means not deluging him with too many details. He rudely calls this manner of mine "babbling." You may know it as run-on sentences and too many posts titled "potpourri"! Remembering his ADHD also means trying to complete an entire cycle of thought or subject-matter before moving on to a new idea. I am, cough, exceedingly tangential. Okay, I babble. There! I said it. Are you happy now, Faithful Reader?

Harrumph.

Honoring him includes being proactive around The Manor. I do more than I think I am able to do, and, occasionally, more than I ought. But it is key that he not feel that the welfare of Marlinspike Hall falls on his shoulders, alone. We are honor-bound to maintain this place in as pristine a condition as possible, else we are poor friends to Captain Haddock, and his trust means a great deal to us.

I mean... think of what Captain Haddock might say, based just on the things he's said before:

Pachyrhizus-eses-eses! Parasites! Patagonians! Pestilential Pachyderms! Phylloxerae! Pickled herrings! Pirates! Pithecanthropic montebanks! Pithecanthropic pickpockets! Pithecanthropuses! Pockmarks! Politicans! Poltroons! Polygraphs! Polynesians! Profiteers! Psychopaths! Purple profiteering jellyfishes! Pyrographers! Pyromaniacs!

And that is just the letter P.

But perhaps the most helpful thing to Fred is that I shield him from the vagaries of La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore.

That woman can drive him to distraction.

Tintinologists the world over understand.

*Photo credit: The Hero Construction Company

Oh, No, You Don't, You ScuzBags, You!

When I shake open the NYT of a morning, delighting in the fresh creases, scanning what's above the line, and what's below, it's doggone rare for me to start the day by reading the business section.

Good thing that I read the free, online version -- where this alluring headline jumped off the computer screen and down my throat. I *despise* these people with a passion, apparently. Who knew? Which people, exactly? Well, I have tended to cast the net wide.

Okay, so it took pastoral counseling and several exorcisms for me to be able to wish well all the folks who took out ridiculous, unaffordable mortgages, thinking... thinking? Thinking what? I've never gotten a good handle on what these people were thinking, if they were thinking at all.

The Fredster is more open than I am in laying the primary blame at the feet of The Scuzbags who brokered all those fraudulent mortgages. I mean, if they hadn't come along, we never would have found out about the various lacunae threatening to bring down our entire economy, as well as negatively impacting global financial health. Right?

I have fond memories of my investment account...

Chhhoooooooooooooooo!

Still, after having my head do a few 360s, and spewing what might have been creamed peas, I came to accept that good people do stupid things, and I managed to be truly glad that they were being assisted in keeping their homes and reestablishing their credit. (Yes, even as we struggle to make the payments on Our Manor, Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé -- not that we claim ownership, no -- we simply have lost touch with Captain Haddock, last seen at Bongi's place). The Captain mortgaged The Manor to fund his latest swashbuckling adventures on the High Seas, and to keep him in his cups. We're positive that he'll be sending us some money very soon.

Back to the lesson of gladness. I don't mean to beat you over the head with it, I mean to beat myself over the head with it! Because I have a hard time, sadly, being glad that someone else is being helped, when I am not. That's an embarrassing admission. The first thing to realize? It's not about you, it's about someone else, and this someone else is in need.

Still, I had hoped that this would be game over and lesson learned, and that we'd not see such financial irresponsibility again, at least not on such a scale.

Cashing In, Again, on Risky Mortgages

By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: July 19, 2009

LOS ANGELES — From the ninth floor of a downtown office building on Wilshire Boulevard, Jack Soussana delivered staggering numbers of mortgages to homeowners during the real estate boom, amassing a fortune.

By Mr. Soussana’s own account, his customers fared less happily. He specialized in the exotic mortgages that have proved most prone to sliding into foreclosure, leaving many now scrambling to save their homes.

Yet the dangers assailing Mr. Soussana’s clients have yielded fresh business for him: Late last year, he and his team — ensconced in the same office where they used to broker mortgages — began working for a loan modification company. For fees reaching $3,495, with most of the money collected upfront, they promised to negotiate with lenders to lower payments on the now-delinquent mortgages they and their counterparts had sprinkled liberally across Southern California.

“We just changed the script and changed the product we were selling,” said Mr. Soussana, who ran the Los Angeles sales office of Federal Loan Modification Law Center. The new script: You got a raw deal, and “Now, we’re able to help you out because we understand your lender.”

Mr. Soussana’s partners at FedMod, as the company is known, were also products of the formerly lucrative world of high-risk lending. The managing partner, Nabile Anz, known as Bill, previously co-owned Mortgage Link, a California subprime lender, now defunct, that once sold $30 million worth of loans a month.

Jeffrey Broughton, one of FedMod’s initial partners, served as director of business development at Pacific First Mortgage, a lender that extended so-called Alt-A mortgages for borrowers with tarnished credit for Countrywide Financial, which lost billions of dollars on bad mortgages before being rescued in an acquisition.

FedMod is but one example of how many of the same people who dispensed risky mortgages during the real estate bubble have reconstituted themselves into a new industry focused on selling loan modifications.

Despite making promises of relief to homeowners desperate to keep their homes, FedMod and other profit making loan modification firms often fail to deliver, according to a New York Times investigation based on interviews with scores of former employees and customers, more than 650 complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau, and documents filed by the Federal Trade Commission in a lawsuit against the company...

Read the rest here. I think there will be more to come.