Quality of Life

 Living in Canada, as one wag put it, is like living with a meth head as a tenant in your basement. A tenant who is so out of touch with reality that he keeps screaming in your face at every opportunity that he is the best tenant ever and he has all these friends who will tell you the same thing.

Well let's start with quality of life.

Canada is, guess? 1.

Followed by Denmark, Sweden, Norway. and way down the list at #20, is the USA.

And then you get healthcare. The U.S. healthcare system only extends to those with money. Lots of it. If you are barely surviving economically, serious health issues can result in bankruptcy.

"Medical bills are reported to be the number-one cause of U.S. bankruptcies. One study has claimed that 62.1% of bankruptcies were Caused by medical issues.  Another claims that over two million people are adversely affected by their medical expenses."

The U.S. ranks last overall on the health care outcomes domain (Exhibit 1). On nine of the 10 component measures, U.S. performance is lowest among the countries (Appendix 8), including having the highest infant mortality rate (5.7 deaths per 1,000 live births) and lowest life expectancy at age 60 (23.1 years).

Best healthcare systems in the world are:

1. South Korea
2. Taiwan
3. Denmark
4. Austria
5. Japan
6. Australia
7. France
8. Spain
9. Belgium
10. United Kingdom

And gun deaths, so far  in the US in 2022. Those red dots? Use your imagination.

And then we have this travel advisory/warning from the Canadian government on going to the USA, as if one is entering a "third world" country:

"Gun violence

The rate of firearm possession in the US is high. It’s legal in many states for US citizens to openly carry firearms in public.

Incidences of mass shootings occur, resulting most often in casualties. Although tourists are rarely involved, there is a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Familiarize yourself on how to respond to an active shooter situation."

No other country in the world shoots its children in schools as they hide under desks. And the solution? Arm teachers, reduce number of doors to schools.

The louder one screams about being the very best, the greater the lie.

One Answer

My blog friend Ramana posted this on his Facebook page and I thought: This is the answer to the question I posed the other day.

I imagine that rightwing religious fanatics and gun-nutters will have trouble with the answer (what about the boogey-men and the terrorists and dark-skinned people and da gayz and extremism?), but I think this is a damn fine credo:

One Question

Everybody's throwing their two cents around on the Aurora, Co. killing. Have you noticed?

Here's a partial causation list:

NRA
Violent games (like the Christians and the lions never were at it not to mention WW 1 & 2 ?)
No more funding for care and feeding of the dyed red-haired lunatic fringe element of society.
Our compromised agri-businesses loaded with toxicity.
Big Pharma (have you noticed nearly everyone is medicated these days, h'm?)
Parental lack of discipline
Too much parental discipline
A.D.D.
Lack of porn.
Too much porn.
Liberalism
Conservatism.

And the winner is: blame the victims. Seriously. As in what were the audience doing sitting in a theatre watching a violent film. Can you believe the sick thinking process behind that? Something along the lines of: what was that girl doing walking down the street at midnight - she deserved to be raped.

That audience in Aurora, Colorado, deserved the violence for watching a violent film. Classic and appalling victim-blaming.

My one question is this:

Apart from killing people, what other uses does a powerful assault rifle like an AR-15 have and why would any run of the mill lunatic gain access to it?

Pink Me Stupid Redux

I previously wrote about that irritating Breast Cancer Campaign and its inherent pink-me-into-a-coma-but never-find-a-cure premise.

But Lawdy Mawdy, courtesy of the NRA, we present the following, shown recently at a gun show. Yes, they're real.



This sure takes the pink cake in the pink-me-stupid department.

Designed to blow that pesky cancer right out of you.

Along with everything else.

Runner-up prize would have to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken who have now introduced a Pink Bucket of chicken to further the pinkwash cause. Omitting to announce that their product of fat and hormones would more than likely cause the disease.

Bullying and the massacre at VT

See link in header above for a terrific post from Nick of the North on bullying.

And it appears that all these massacres are about bullying and the resulting isolation. As a victim myself, I recall feeling those murderous thoughts, feeling the isolation and slashing my own wrist at fourteen as the fear of facing my tormentors would overcome me and my pleading for another sick day at home fell on deaf years.

We need to understand the Chos of the USA to get a handle on how each and every citizen is responsible for this abhorrent and sickening catastrophe, from the happy gun-peddlars to the disdain of his co-students who laughed at his accent and told him to go back to China - a country he had never been to, incidentally. And all this in front of the teacher who condoned the abusive behaviour by not speaking up.

How isolated and lonely was this young man? We cannot even imagine his state of mind.

And here are the words of another troubled young man whose rage also built up into a murderous crescendo.

Luke Woodham, the high school killer in Pearl, Miss., whose murder spree preceded Carneal's by two months, was even more explicit in his rebellion. Minutes before starting his schoolyard rampage, Woodham handed his manifesto to a friend, along with a will. "I am not insane," he wrote. "I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I did this to show society, push us and we will push back. ... All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do? Yes, you will. ... It was not a cry for attention, it was not a cry for help. It was a scream in sheer agony saying that if you can't pry your eyes open, if I can't do it through pacifism, if I can't show you through the displaying of intelligence, then I will do it with a bullet."

But I expect the same lack of self-examination as from 9/11 - a true opportunity is presented to understand and reflect and will be ignored by an increasingly aggressive and isolationist culture.

In the very near future, I can foresee universities being re-invented as armed camps with the only true beneficiary being the giant military industrial complex which includes the Glock/AK 47 et al manufacturers.

We are all barking mad.

The idiotic cult of the cowboy

And the unfortunate victims.

My heart grieves for the devastated families of these talented students and professors.

I read that you have to be the wizened age of 12 before you can legally buy a gun at the corner mom-and-pop gunshop in Virginia. Thank heavens they're not standard issue for toddlers who might not have the fine hand/eye co-ordination to pick off their play-date buddies which could result in a lot of collateral damage.

What on earth is wrong with these cowboys and their right to bear arms?

Like there are still frontiers to crash and injuns to massacre?

The Shrub re-iterates his Through The Looking Glass World by manfully stating every American has the right to bear the assault weapon of their choice but will be charged if they use it to commit a crime.

I step back a bit from these lunatic ravings and can't imagine them issuing even from the mouth of the poorest president of the poorest third world country.

And then I follow the trail of the bullet casings, ah now let me see, all the way to the NRA!! One of the greatest lobbies of all time. Financing what? Oh wild guess here, the Bush campaign!

Silly me.