Yes to both questions. Remember "2001" when the ape decides to pick up a bone and use it as a club? Psychiatry reminds me of that scene -- it's been used to control people since it was a new idea.

How about: "Are psychiatrists mentally ill?" Most of the mental health care professionals I've met have been... a bit off. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Right, it only LOOKS like a huge black dick... psychiatrists ought to be required to dress like witch doctors out of 1940s Tarzan movies.

"Oh," they said, "We MUST begin chemotherapy!"

Why is that, exactly? Would that not be a decision made by the kid and his family? Rather than the f'ing AMA?

And the courts got involved? INSISTING that the witch doctors apply whatever the leech du jour might be? In our FREE country? This sounds like US military strategy in Iraq applied to some kid with a disease.

"Oh, my." They said, "We INSIST upon chemotherapy!"

What was that saying? Live free or die? Probably unimportant. The point is that I sure wouldn't want any AMA-sanctioned doctor or the miserable bastards that inhabit every courthouse on this planet telling me what I "had" to do in the name of corporate medicine. I don't want ANYONE from ANY government telling me what I "have" to do.

There IS no valid argument for keeping innocent people locked up, especially in the legal never-never land of "Gitmo". This is starkly un-American.

CLEAN HOUSE. Tell the hardest truths first. Turn over the rock and let the sunlight bleach it clean. Bush43 and Cheney (and Yoo, and the PNACers, and the rest of them) made BAD MISTAKES.

If someone went insane and smeared their shit on your walls, you wouldn't be talking about changing your upholstery to match the stains, would you? No, you'd clean it up, every bit of it, and thoroughly. That is what needs to happen here.

to overwhelm with shock, surprise, or wonder : dumbfound

This is "change we can believe in"?! This is Bush43 all over again; Obama is not getting it.

We need an iron-clad, signed-in-blood contract with the next Presidential candidate not to f us over as soon as they are sworn in. Change and hope is dangled in front of us and we salivate as we have been trained to do, then this. This is worse than Bush43. This is betrayal right out of the gate.

That anyone would choose a Sony laptop or any OS from Microsoft when there are better choices available. It's like watching the faithful crawl through broken glass to display their devotion, you know, virtual self-flagellation... that kind of thing.

From http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/big-banks-have-already-killed-reform-of.html

As Newsweek noted April 10th, the big boys were using bailout money to aggressively lobby against the regulation of credit default swaps:

Major Wall Street players are digging in against fundamental changes. And while it clearly wants to install serious supervision, the Obama administration—along with other key authorities like the New York Fed—appears willing to stand back while Wall Street resurrects much of the ultracomplex global trading system that helped lead to the worst financial collapse since the Depression.

A lot of people don't seem to be drinking the Kool-Aid on the whole "global warming" thing.

Aside from infomercials.

Employing (term used loosely) eastern European women who are held as virtual prisoners in Israel while being forced to work as prostitutes?

And contemplate with what little wisdom the world is ruled. We couldn't see this coming? When my house, purchased for $115K in 1995, was supposedly worth $450K in 2005, was it not apparent that something ugly was afoot?

Did everyone decide who owns what and how little it's actually worth? The other shoe has yet to drop -- all these months later. Remember that NYC Mayor Bloomberg sued under the FOIA to find out where the first, Bush43 wheelbarrow of money went... and that he was stonewalled?

Has Dr. Paul yet succeeded with his demand for an audit of the Federal Reserve?

Did you recover from the 30-40% hit your net worth took last year, yet?

What does that tell us?

Aye, matey, there's subterfuge aplenty afoot, ar. Did any high-paying jobs return to the US from overseas yet? Because all we manufacture in this country are rich executives any more.

Did we end our war(s) yet? The ones in which we're fighting for peace, apparently?

You are a cheerful little fellow. You on some kind of happy pill that you feel comfortable talking about in public?

Oh well, live and learn.

I'd rather not have a pack of Inquisitors on the bench. How about the Flying Spaghetti Monster faction? Should they not also be represented?

>Is there any reason left not to just declare the US Congress invalid for dereliction of duty? It is stupefying to watch the public continue to just sit there and take this.

Well put. If this is a Democratic President, is there any point in continuing to work within the existing framework? Could what is now Federal power not be returned to the states? No revolution necessary, but take up the slack and essentially turn the Feds out to pasture by 2012. The Federal government is broken and I don't see how it can possibly be fixed.

Hmm.

Amurcuh is now OFFICIALLY dumbed-down.

"Ha. I'm going to go right through that storm."

Machismo has led to more than one disaster in the past.

"Fly-by-wire" sounds neat until the damn wire breaks, eh? Then what?

In spite of the odds, some poor souls may have found themselves with their terrified children asking them "will we be ok?" just as the f'ing fuselage splits open several miles above the open ocean in a huge thunderstorm in the middle of the night. At that moment, they did not console themselves with how statistically unlikely it all was.

I remain blissfully earthbound. I climbed a ladder to change a porch light this morning. That's it. No higher. Ever again.