Easter is a whole week, folks.  It’s called an Octave.  Every day in Easter Week is a First Class Feast.

I, for one, have been sacrificing myself for science, attempting to answer definitively that age-old question, is it possible to overdose on maple syrup and mustard glazed ham?

Alas, I do not yet have sufficient data, and thus experiments will need to continue.

For science.

I can report that I have emerged from the Porkabetic Coma, am now once again able to stand upright and even walk, so back to work.

Happy Easter to one and all!

The most anticipated liturgical event of the year for me personally is here again: Tenebrae, the Offices of Matins and Lauds, generally anticipated to the night before. Enter into Our Lord’s suffering, betrayal, heartbreak and agony as He speaks to us through the Psalms, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah.  Go tonight, Thursday and Friday if you possibly can.

It is traditional and befitting to depart from the church after Tenebrae maintaining silence.  There will be plenty of time for chatting after the Easter Vigil, or on Easter Sunday. Take Tenebrae home with you. Keep it with you all year.

I have received a few “You were right about Trump” emails since the Syrian bombing.  I get the sense that at least some people are shaking off this insane Trumpolatry, and are willing to perhaps listen.  As Trump folds and capitulates to the Washington DC Soros NewWorldOrder machine on item after item, and has now, with the Syria thing, pretty much gone full prostrate before them, and people are seriously talking about the outbreak of hot, nuclear war with Russia, are we ready to turn off the pseudo-professional wrestling kayfabe show and return to dealing with reality?  If so read on.

I have been struck all along by the prominence of Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, as not just a public relations face, but as a policy driver.  It was reported widely in the hours after the Syria bombing that Trump was very heavily influenced to sign off on the Washington NWO/Soros/Pentagon plan of escalation in the Levant theater by Ivanka – in a situation in which we know, and Trump first among them should know, ALL intelligence from the (former) U.S. intelligence agencies, including that supplied to the Commander-in-Chief is riddled with outright lies, and that the use of false flag attacks meant to disorient with double, triple and quadruple crosses is now the order of the day.  In this environment, Trump relies heavily on the sentimental mewings of… Ivanka?

Do you realize that in the Arab world, Trump is now being referred to as “Abu Ivanka”?  Abu means father, so they are now insulting him by calling him not by his own name, but as “The Father of Ivanka”.

Let’s talk about Ivanka.

We, who bothered to read up on things, knew from the very outset of this farce that Ivanka is a hard-leftist and that her husband, Jared Kushner, is tied up with Soros.  Well, shock!  She was, after all, a member of the Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian social set for years.  Do you honestly think that anyone of any wisdom or integrity would associate with scum like that?  Now granted, Ivanka Trump has probably 20 IQ points on Paris Hilton, and at least 30 IQ points on the Kardashian slimesses, but folks, that is the definition of damning with faint praise.  Ivanka is particularly keen on the global warming fraud, and has already brought “global warming” communist front groups to the White House.

Now, let’s talk about Ivanka personally.

Ivanka Trump is a FORMAL APOSTATE from Christianity.  Yep.  She formally apostasized, that is, she renounced her baptism and denied that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is God Incarnate who died for the sins of the world, so that she could marry her husband, Jared Kushner, who, did I mention, has Soros connections up to his eyebrows?  Kushner is now one of Trump’s senior advisors, and even was sent to Iraq last week. This Kushner kid is a snot-nosed hedge fund punk, and something quite rare, a practicing Talmudic Jew.  So, Ivanka had to formally renounce Jesus Christ in order to marry Kushner, and they are now raising their children as “observant” Talmudic Jews.

Ivanka Trump’s children are not baptized.

Three of Donald Trump’s grandchildren are not baptized. And his apostate daughter and son-in-law who are responsible for this horror are his two top advisors.

Tell me again about Donald Trump’s deep Christian faith. I’m all ears.

Might I suggest that a campaign of Rosaries and Masses for the conversion of Jared, Arabella, Joseph and Theodore Kushner, and the reversion from aspostasy of Ivanka Trump be organized and undertaken?

I mean, if Ivanka Trump is your de facto “president”, who will possibly lead you into global nuclear conflagration, don’t you owe it to her pray for her and her family?

Man, you simply could not make this stuff up.  I hesitate to joke about next Bruce Jenner being named Secretary of Defense, because at this rate, it could totally happen.

I am reminded of Isaiah chapter 3, verse 12…

As for my people, their oppressors have stripped them, and women have ruled over them.
Populum meum exactores sui spoliaverunt, et mulieres dominatae sunt eis.

Left to right: Senior White House Advisor Jared Kushner, de facto chief executive and commander-in-chief of the former United States Ivanka Trump, and Abu Ivanka

Christ, have mercy on us.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Christ’s Entry Into Jerusalem, Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, ARSH 1842-48, Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris

Zoom in on this fresco of Christ entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Look at the faces.  Look at the people in the crowd.  Look at the slack-jawed awe, and for some of them, fear – for example the man whose head is immediately to the right of the she-ass’ forehead – that dude is SCARED. And so should we all be.

For the Lord is high, terrible: a great king over all the earth.
Quoniam Dominus excelsus, terribilis, rex magnus super omnem terram.

-Psalm 46: 3

Insurance is RISK POOLING.

A group of people get together, generally under the organization of a for-profit entity, and each person or unit pays into a pool.  The purpose of the pool is to pay out to any paying member of the risk pool SHOULD AN ADVERSE EVENT HAPPEN TO THEM.  In a sane world, these adverse events are rare, unforeseen and catastrophic or potentially catastrophic.

The more people that pay into the pool, the lower the premiums can be – to a point.  Why?  Because across large groups, analysts and statisticians within the for-profit company can estimate, with greater and greater precision, the number of adverse incidents that will probably occur within the risk pool group. This is called ACTUARIAL SCIENCE, and a person who studies the frequency or risk of certain events across large groups or populations is called an ACTUARY.  So, the larger the risk pool, the more precise and accurate the actuarial studies can be.  It is impossible to predict what will happen to one individual person over the course of, say, the next year.  HOWEVER, it is possible, and morally licit, to say that over the course of the next year, within a group of, say, 100,000 people, how many can reasonably be expected to be diagnosed with cancer, get in a serious car wreck, have a heart attack, be run over by a Zamboni machine, etc.

Insurance companies can also factor into their premiums activities that individuals engage in that increase the risk of an adverse, or “risk event” occurring, such as smoking, heavy drinking, OBESITY, aberrosexual activity, participation in so-called “extreme sports”, and so on.

What makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and what indicates to me that a person is completely intellectually unserious and should be utterly disqualified from any adult discussion about health insurance is the notion that insurance can and should cover pre-existing conditions.  You know, like Donald J. Trump.  Sorry, folks, but Trump has been not just a stalwart advocate of single-payer, aka universal government “insurance”, but has and continues to beat the drum on coverage for people with “pre-existing conditions”.

Read this over and over again until you understand:

“Health insurance” that “covers” pre-existing conditions IS NOT HEALTH INSURANCE.  It is a fraudulent asset-shifting racket.  This is a mathematical fact, not a matter of opinion. It is not debatable. Now if you are sitting there reading this, falling for the brain-dead agitprop that has been spewed from the government-financial-media complex for the past fifteen years or so, thinking what a horrible, cruel, mean-spirited person I am, listen up and listen good.  YOU ARE OPERATING ON THE FALSE PREMISE THAT INSURANCE IS 100% NECESSARY TO COVER MEDICAL EXPENSES.  It is not.  It is precisely because of the evil perversion of the entire concept of insurance that healthcare costs are what they are, and continue to inflate on an exponential curve – right now 9% per year, which puts the doubling period at EIGHT YEARS.  (Remember the Rule of 72.  Divide the annual percent rate of increase in costs into 72 and you will get a very close approximation of the time it takes for the cost structure to double in price.)

Do you understand that most people should be able to pay, and pay fairly easily, for even fairly serious healthcare costs?  Do you understand that the indigent poor should be EASILY provided for by, first and foremost THE CHUCH (have you not noticed that almost all hospitals USED to be named “Saint So-and-so’s Hospital”?), along with secular charitable healthcare providers?  Do you know why healthcare costs are INFLATING AT ALL, much less at NINE PERCENT PER YEAR?  One reason.  Insurance – more precisely, the criminal asset-shifting racket that is commonly called “insurance”.  If it weren’t for that, not only would healthcare prices NOT INFLATE AT ALL, they would DEFLATE exactly as the example of LASIK Vision Correction, which has deflated in price by 95% while simultaneously seeing massive advances in the technology involved.

The entire question of “pre-existing conditions” IS ONLY GERMANE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF INSURANCE, WHICH SHOULD BE UNNECESSARY AND PURELY OPTIONAL ANYWAY. All insurance should be is a purely optional risk-management product that protects ONLY against catastrophic events, and thus is relatively inexpensive just by virtue of what it is.

No one should NEED health insurance.
No one should NEED health insurance.
No one should NEED health insurance.

As an aside, it bears mentioning the difference between health and car insurance. Car insurance, specifically LIABILITY insurance, should be required of drivers because driving is an OPTIONAL activity.  Health insurance revolves around simply living and being alive.  Living and being alive is not an “optional” activity the way driving a car is.  If you freely choose to drive a car, it is perfectly just for the society to pass a law requiring you to carry LIABILITY insurance – that is, insurance that covers damage that YOU MIGHT CAUSE TO OTHER PEOPLE AND/OR THEIR PERSONAL PROPERTY (VEHICLES) ON THE ROAD.  It is wholly unjust for a government to DEMAND that citizens purchase a service commodity (i.e. health insurance) as a condition of waking up breathing.  The fact that the service commodity in question is also a criminal asset-shifting racket just adds icing to the cake.

Now let’s go back to discussing the mathematics of this.  Insurance is only insurance if it is covering something that either HAS NOT YET HAPPENED or is NOT LIKELY TO HAPPEN.

Again, that statement is a fact.  It is not debatable, and has nothing to do the anyone’s FEEWINGS, or what the wretched antipope in Rome, or his butt-kissing hangers-on bleat.  Remember what we discussed in yesterday’s post about the post-Christian west being an anti-meritocracy?  Remember what we discussed about the higher the office, generally the more ignorant and more inept the officeholder?  Yeah.  The college of bishops is right there with the academia and high-level politics as the poster boys for this sad truth. FUNCTIONAL RETARDATION.

So, if insurance can only be risk-pooling for an event that has NOT YET HAPPENED, right off the bat anyone with two brain cells to rub together will intuitively understand that one CANNOT buy insurance for something that has ALREADY HAPPENED.  The entire notion in completely nonsensical.  I can’t call an auto insurance company and buy a policy as I am standing on the side of the road having just wrecked my car two minutes before.  The PROBABILITY of the adverse risk event (a wreck) occurring is 100%, or in actuarial parlance 1.0.

Now let’s think even harder about this.  The ONLY WAY an insurance company could stay afloat given the insane premise of being REQUIRED to insure adverse risk events that have ALREADY HAPPENED is if the insurance company charges as its premium the FULL COST of repairing/replacing the already-wrecked car PLUS the costs and overhead of the insurance company itself, plus a profit. (My cattle marketing students will remember well that since breaking even is unsustainable, it is thus a species of failure.  In order to not fail, a business must be profitable. Therefore, profit is itself a cost.  In order to stay in business, a business must be profitable, therefore profit is itself a cost.)

So, now think this through. If the MINIMUM the insurance company can sanely charge as a premium on an event that has already occurred is the cost of the repair/replacement PLUS all operating/overhead costs of the insurance company PLUS a profit, WHY IN THE BLUE FIRELY BLAZES WOULD A PERSON NOT JUST PAY FOR THE REPAIR/REPLACEMENT HIMSELF, MINUS THE OVERHEAD COSTS MINUS THE PROFIT MARGIN?

If you are struggling to understand this, it is because you have been brainwashed into thinking that insurance is a “free lunch” – you have been conditioned to believe that insurance is simply when you give people a small amount of money, and they give you back a very large sum of money – apparently for absolutely no good reason at all. If you think that it is morally licit to have the premiums paid by the other members of a risk pool who paid their premiums IN GOOD FAITH to protect them against the POSSIBILITY that something COULD HAPPEN, while you demand a payout having put in the same premium or no premium at all AFTER the adverse event has already happened, then you need to sit down and think long and hard until this becomes clear, or you acknowledge to yourself that you do not believe in the Seventh and Tenth Commandments, which, you know, will make for a pretty awkward Particular Judgment.

The next concept is the idea that insurance should pay out on “risk events” that are GUARANTEED to happen.  So what are payout events that are “guaranteed” to happen?  Annual physicals, check-ups, tests, etc.  THESE ARE NOT INSURABLE EVENTS, BECAUSE THEY ARE “GUARANTEED TO HAPPEN” BY VIRTUE OF WHAT THEY ARE: PREVENTION.  So, again, the only sane way for this to work within the context of insurance is for the cost to the insured person to be the total cost of the service, plus the overhead and operating costs of the insurance company, PLUS a profit margin.

If we were to write this as a formula, it would be:

(Service Cost + Insurance Overhead Cost + Insurance Company Profit) X Probability of Adverse Risk Event = Premium

The reason why real insurance premiums are a fraction of the Cost Term is because the Probability coefficient is less than 1.0.  Let’s say the odds of getting a brain tumor over the broad populace is 1 in 500,000.  That is to say, in the total population, it can be reasonably expected that 1 in every 500,000 people will develop a brain tumor.  So, the insurance company turns that into a coefficient that they then plug into the formula.  If the total current average cost to treat a brain tumor plus insurance company overhead costs plus insurance company profit margin is $300,000 (I made that up), and the brain tumor probability coefficient is 0.000003622 (I just made that up too):

$300,000 multiplied by 0.000003622 = $1.0866.

Divide that by twelve to get it to a monthly figure and you get $0.0955.  Let’s say your total monthly premium is $100.  So, we could think of it as nine and a half cents per month out of your $100 premium is your “brain tumor” risk premium. The nine and a half cents per month pays into the “brain tumor risk pool” and insurance company costs plus profit.

Now, let’s walk through this if the risk of brain tumor is 100%, which is to say, it has already happened that you have been diagnosed with a brain tumor, aka a PRE-EXISTING CONDITION, so the Probability coefficient is 1.

$300,000 X 1 = $300,000

If the insurance company charges ANYTHING LESS than $300,000, they will go out of business, guaranteed.

This applies in exactly the same way to events that are GUARANTEED to happen, or even mandated in some cases, such as annual physicals.  If the insurance company charges anything less than the total cost plus overhead plus profit, then they will go out of business. The notion that insurance policies should cover guaranteed-to-occur events with even ZERO CO-PAY is so jaw-droppingly stupid that it can’t even be described.

The insurance company will go out of business UNLESS they embezzle funds from their actual, legitimate risk pooling customers to the person with the pre-existing condition, or to cover “guaranteed-to-occur” events, that is, events with a probability coefficient of 1.

Which is exactly what happens.  What is called today “health insurance” is no such thing.  It is a criminal asset-shifting scheme, which the insurance companies, in total cooperation with the government, broker and execute.

Now, you have to ask yourself with regards to Trump and all of these other politicians, do these people not understand this, OR do they understand it and are dishonest, and WANT the entire health insurance, and ultimately healthcare delivery paradigm to implode?  Because it is one or the other, folks.

This is why whenever ANYONE starts talking about “insurance for pre-existing conditions”, I immediately write them off as either galactically stupid, or nefarious. Without exception.

Not only does this issue require serious adults, it requires honest people.  Barring supernatural intervention, there will be no turning any of this around until serious adults that are also people of integrity occupy the halls of power.

In other words, we’re screwed.

I am continually shocked by how many people seem to have absolutely no understanding of the concept of insurance.  To most people today, insurance is simply the “necessary” mechanism by which all medical expenses are paid.  I truly believe that most people no longer understand or believe that insurance is a purely elective means of risk-pooling against catastrophic events, i.e. getting greased in a car wreck, or being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, nor that its widespread use is a phenomenon of only the past few decades. It boggles the mind, because I get the sense that people understand insurance in the context of their homes (no one calls the home insurance carrier demanding that their policy pay-out for remodeling their house, or paying for their housekeepers or gardeners), but when it comes to health insurance in particular, it is just jaw-dropping stupidity all around.

There are two categories that we can sort politicians into when it comes to insurance: the galactically stupid, and the criminally dishonest.  We shall look at examples of both, namely Barack Hussein Barry Obama Soetoro, and Donald J. Trump.

First, the galactically stupid.

Quite a few of us knew that Barack Obama the man was a complete fraud from well before he and his cadre usurped the Executive Branch of the (former) U.S. government.  Obama was clearly placed into the Ivy League academia on track for high political office, despite the fact that he was not only a slack-jawed imbecile, but also a hard drug user.  Obama was, very simply, a black guy with straight teeth who could (mostly) read a TelePrompTer with a diction that was not tainted with the American black ebonic corruption. And it isn’t an accent – it is a corruption. Forming vowels slightly differently is an accent (think Wisconsin). Butchering a language grammatically and in every other conceivable sense is a corruption.  Jesse Jackson, for example, was always unelectable because you can’t understand a damn word he says.  Even the most brainwashed white American will still, deep down, blanch at the thought of voting for someone who cannot speak even ONE LANGUAGE, their MOTHER TONGUE.  Barack Obama Soetoro was raised by white mid-westerners, and thus, despite his stupidity, learned to speak American English. But it was clear from the beginning that the guy was dumber than a box of hair.

To wit: February of ARSH 2010.  It is the heat of the ObamaCare campaign. Obama, going off TelePrompTer, spins the following anecdote.  Now, bear in mind, it makes no difference if this story is true or not for the purposes of this discussion.  What we need to focus on is the logic and sense (or lack thereof) of what he said:

When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.

When I first saw this, I realized to what extent Obama really was just a puppet of the Soros New World Order cadre behind him.  Obama had and has ZERO understanding of insurance.  None.

First, if Obama were insuring a “beat-up old car”, then it is clear that he had the minimum legal required coverage – LIABILITY.  Liability coverage, the minimum coverage, which is required to lawfully drive a car on the roads of the (former) United States, covers only damage to others that is YOUR FAULT.  It does not cover any damage to your own vehicle that YOU CAUSE.  For many people, this is the ONLY sensible level of coverage.  For example, when I was in my last year of college, I bought a 1985 Ford LTD Crown Victoria for $700.  It started and ran, but the electrical system was sketchy and the dash and all the gauges were totally non-functional.  It made one learn to keep the gas tank topped-off and to pace traffic on the interstate.  I knew that within a few years, I would be making enough money to buy new cars, so all I needed was a car to last a couple of years.  What possible sense would it make for me to vastly increase my insurance cost by buying collision coverage for a car whose TOTAL PURCHASE PRICE TO ME would have been LESS than the standard DEDUCTIBLE (generally $1000) on a collision policy?!

So, right off the bat we see that Obama had no understanding of insurance because a liability policy NEVER covers any damage to your own car – only damage that YOU CAUSE to others.

But, as you surely noticed, in Obama’s story, he was REAR-ENDED.  Almost always, a person who rear-ends another car is found to be at fault.  Therefore, the OTHER PERSON’S insurance should have covered the damage to Obama’s car.  If the car was sufficiently old and beat-up, the car would have been totaled.  I was once in a fairly mild accident when I was sixteen or seventeen wherein a drunk woman pulled out of a parking lot into my passenger side door and dented the door.  The door still opened and closed, and I don’t think the car was ever repaired, because the car was so old and devoid of market value (it was a ’79 Chrysler, come on) that the woman’s insurance company happily cut a check for $750 – the TOTAL VALUE of the car.  The notion that I would have called MY insurance company and demanded that THEY pay out for repairs on MY CAR on a liability policy for an accident in which I WAS NOT AT FAULT, is simply laughable.  IF what Obama says is true, and he was LAUGHED AT by the insurance company, it was for very, very good reason.

I have tried to communicate over the years how spectacularly stupid people in high positions of power in the post-Christian west tend to be.  People still don’t want to believe that their “leaders”, “bosses” and “teachers” are teetering on the precipice of functional retardation, but they are.  Oh, they are.  We live in an anti-meritocracy.  The higher the office, the more grandiose the title, the more advanced the degree, the more ignorant and inept the person will likely be.  Get this through your mind and everything will become much clearer and easier to understand.

And all the imbeciles sat there and nodded their heads when Obama calumniated the auto insurance industry by saying that they fraudulently and feloniously denied him coverage, and then used this calumny as some sort of analogue to the health insurance paradigm.

In the next post, I will discuss the abject dishonesty of politicians when talking about insurance, specifically the notion of having insurance coverage for “pre-existing conditions”. The term “Insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions” makes absolutely ZERO SENSE.  When I hear ANY politician start talking in those terms, I know that the person is either terminally stupid, as with Obama, or fundamentally dishonest, like… all the rest of them.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple, Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, ARSH 1305

Our Lord is leaning into it, and the Forex Traders on the right look really scared for a good reason.

1. I have returned from my pilgrimage, which was absolutely lovely.  I was able to consult with very important people, and have high-level discussions.  Or, at least, I talked, they listened patiently, and they will pray for me.  But, it is always good to make in-person visits, when one can.

2. I was happy to get out of the house for a while after the burgling. Thanks be to God, and to you all, not only has the loss been restored and all costs covered, but there is an excess, which shall go to additional rent payment.  Once again, your munificence is stunning.  I like this parking spot, but am not attached to it, so if I get the sense that the event was anything more than a one-off event, I’ll move on down the track.  But, as you all know, moving is not the “funnest” thing in the world, and I’m not keen to do it for a while.  And no, I’m not traumatized or anything like that.  I’m not the kind of person to be traumatized.  You have to get up pretty early in the morning to traumatize me, or be evil on a scale that defies quantification. These thieves were not evil on that level. And I’m certainly not the type to caterwaul, navel gaze, wallow in self-pity, or otherwise act like a damn woman.  Go to Mass, pray for your enemies, trust in God, and move on.

3. For those of you who are following this “Fra Cristoforo” blog, I have smelled a rat for quite some time now.  My bee-ess meter pegged when the post went up saying “I have a bombshell document about Ratzinger’s abdication…but I won’t release it now.  I’ll release it in a month or so.”

Folks, 999 times out of 1000, when someone starts in with that “I have a secret, but I won’t tell you now – I’ll tell you later” crap, the person is dishonest, doesn’t have anything, and is trolling for attention.  Honest people don’t operate like that.  If I had a document of such vital importance, I would either release it as fast as I could, or, if there was some genuine moral impediment, I’d keep my yap shut.  But I wouldn’t attention whore.  I saw this quite a lot with the Obama birth certificate investigation, namely Sherriff Joe Arpaio and company, and it REALLY pissed me off.  If you call a press conference and say “I have blockbuster evidence…” and then don’t deliver, you’re nothing more than a damn carney. PUT UP OR SHUT UP. Karl Denninger proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Obama’s “birth certificate” was a truly amateur, obvious forgery, documented everything in detail, posted the videos immediately, and then said, “Here it is.  Take it or leave it.” And, as we all know, everyone left it. Because objective reality sometimes gets in the way of our social life.  My, we’d hate to be looked down upon by … people on FACEBOOK! BIRFER!

4. On an unrelated tangent, it occurred to me today that the (former) U.S. has no extradition treaty with Indonesia.  Just sayin’.

On a tangent to the tangent, the noun “warga negara” means “citizen” or “national” in Indonesian.  Could come in handy for an Indonesian national operating in the (former) U.S. Just sayin’.

5.  Folks, even the most cursory research shows immediately that Trump is and always has been fully in favor of so-called “universal” or “single-payer” healthcare.  These psychopathic fools have no intention of ever undoing Obamacare – only making it worse. The problem with healthcare in the U.S. is the fact that felony price-fixing and felony anti-competitive practices are not only overlooked, but fully supported by your kleptocratic oligarchy.  The insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, in particular, engage in price-fixing, price gauging and collusion so severe that it is literally a capital-level crime against humanity.  The solution to the healthcare mess is to make non-catastrophic insurance ILLEGAL, and enforce US Code 15, Chapter 1.  Quoting Denninger now:

“You need just one simple requirement to be enforced against every medical provider of any kind: Everyone must post a price and everyone pays the same price; any sort of hiding, collusion, cost-shifting or similar is met with indictments, prosecution and prison for consumer fraud and racketeering along with violations of the Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman acts.”

Prices for all healthcare and healthcare commodities would immediately fall an average of 90%, maybe more, within a matter of months, and maybe weeks.  Do you understand that this means that health insurance would be UNNECESSARY, just as it has been for the entire history of the world up until just a few short years ago?  Has this thought never occurred to you? How could something go from being completely unnecessary and even illegal, to “necessary”, required by “law”, and being a larger cost than most people’s rent or mortgage payment?  Doesn’t this seem very, very, very wrong?  Of course. It is one of the biggest scams in monetary terms ever executed, and as you all have just witnessed, none of the psychopaths in your kleptocracy has any intention of doing anything about it except to grow it and protect it.

But, but, but… the quality and sophistication of care and technology justifies the increase in price, you say?

Three words:

LASIK Vision Correction.

Free market, not covered by insurance, all prices posted and advertised.

MASSIVE price deflation with simultaneous technological advancement.

It’s down to $250 per eye now, I see.  20 years ago it was $5000 per eye. I’m no math genius, but that appears to be a 95% reduction.

This would be exactly the case with heart bypass, cancer treatments, childbirth, and pretty much everything else.  EVERYTHING.  Except for the collusion, price fixing and price gauging that the current healthcare racket is built upon. Almost everyone could pay cash for their own healthcare expenses, and the indigent poor could be easily covered by, oh, I dunno… THE CHURCH (imagine that!!) and other secular charitable groups.

I’m sorry, but if you were dumb enough to think that Trump or the congress would ever, ever, ever unwind the biggest racketeering matrix in human history, you deserve what you get.  Keep writin’ those quarterly tax checks! I’m sure if the Republicans can just pick up a few more seats… OH. WAIT.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

The Annunciation, Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, ARSH 1472-1475, Uffizi Gallery

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation.  Pious tradition holds that March 25th is also the day of creation (Let there be light) and the proper day on which Our Lord died.  For this reason, up until not too long ago, March 25th was a widely-used New Year’s Day in Christendom.

Above is one of my favorite images.  In particular, the archangel Gabriel on the left, whose countenance is the most perfectly ferocious look of love I have ever seen depicted.  I find it moving and inspirational, and look at it often.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

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A priest friend who is also friends with St. Philip Neri sent me the following excerpt from a biography of St. Philip:

“It happened once that a thief entered his room and stole his money – the amount was small, but for his state it was a big loss. But whenever he spoke about it, with a big smile he would say that whoever stole it needed it more than he did, and that in that person’s hand that money would be better allocated than in his own, and he did not want to start an investigation.”

-From The Life of Saint Philip Neri, Bacci, ARSH 1745

But it was also mentioned to me that two other saints are particularly good at interceding for thieves:  St. Anthony of Padua, and, of course, The Penitent Thief from Calvary, St. Dismas.  The backstory of St. Dismas is fascinating and instructive.  He was an Egyptian pagan, the son of a career criminal, who followed in and exceeded his father’s wickedness.  Dismas spent his entire life robbing people, and was also a murderer.  What is not widely known is that Dismas attempted to rob the Holy Family thirty-plus years earlier as they made their flight into Egypt.  They had nothing to steal, but beyond that, Dismas was… affected by the Infant Christ. Dismas continued his life of crime, and was caught and due to his litany of crimes and infamy, was put to the most horrific death possible: crucifixion.  By grace, he repented, confessed Christ, died, and was one of the very first, if not the first person to enter Heaven.  In fact, many images of the Harrowing of Hell show St. Dismas, carrying his cross, directly behind and with Christ.  How instructive this is.

If you would like to read a more detailed account of St. Dismas the Penitent Thief, THIS IS A GREAT START.

St. Philip Neri, pray for us.
St. Anthony, pray for us.
St. Dismas, pray for us.

Christ, have mercy on us.

The Harrowing of Hell. Christ on the right, St. Dismas with his cross, on the left.