Month: July 2026

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One of the continuing irritations with the present medical system is the administrative confusion that arises when it is time to pay the bill. For some reason, the provider and the insurance company make me the middle man in their struggle for payment or for non-payment as it were. Now the only value, to use corporate speak, that I bring to the argument is I don’t want to pay the bill.

Nonetheless I am continually being dragged into these discussions where my growing irritation is the only clear relevance I am bringing to the debate.

My participation usually begins when the provider, after numerous attempts, has failed to get payment from the insurance companies. They then decide to bill the patient which seems fair and reasonable as the patient ultimately received the service.

Let’s stop here for just a moment. I thought that this was a service that was paid for by my insurance company. I never expected to be billed more than the co-pay. All I can add to the discussion is I didn’t expect to be billed. The provider, rather cleverly, has pulled me into the argument.

But why? I don’t know the arrangement between the provider and the insurance companies. I don’t know how the provider is supposed to code their bills in order to get payment. All I can do is complain to the provider for billing me which is where the provider explains their dilemma — the insurance company won’t pay.

Apparently the ire of the patient helps the insurance company to do the right thing. I grudgingly can accept this tactic although I am baffled why the provider can’t just work it out with the insurance company without involving me. I suspect it is based in confrontation avoidance of the young office workers tasked with resolving these matters. For some reason, they would rather piss off me over pissing off the insurance companies.

Any way, this is where things get truly irritating. The provider wants me to contact the insurance company in order to get payment. WTF. Why am I the one calling the insurance company? Why can’t the provider call them? I am embarrassed to say I fell for this little gambit numerous times mostly because I fear having to pay a large dollar amount bill.

So, I would call the insurance company who then tries to explain to me what the provider needs to do in order to get payment. I am not the one who needs this information. I am not billing them. I don’t care what the provider needs to do, the provider does. At this point I suggest that the insurance company calls the provider to explain. This is usually greeted with mumbles and vague promises to contact the provider. Speaking from personal experience this rarely happens.

Because the insurance company has provided me with some useful information that might help the provider get their money, I try to pass that on to the provider the best I can with the suggestion that they themselves might themselves call the insurance company to ensure I have my information straight. More mumbles and more promises. Speaking from personal experience this rarely happens. I know I repeat myself.

The good news is I have came up with a new strategy that sometimes works. I don’t pay the bill and you know the provider and the insurance company seem to find a resolution without involving me. It sometimes takes awhile but they eventually work it out without me paying a thing or becoming the middle man.

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I avoid talking about Donald Trump because, him being a narcissist, it doesn’t matter if it is good or bad — as long as you are talking about him. So anytime anyone talks about him — it is a win in his eyes.

Sometimes, however, I must comment on the antics of our president. This is one of them.

Let’s stop for a moment and review what is going on in the world — there are wars in the Ukraine, Iran and Gaza. These wars have affected gas prices which creates a cascading effect on all prices which use transportation — which is everything — so inflation on the horizon for the whole damn world. The President’s party will be standing for election in November which, if the present polls are correct, they are running significantly behind. Not to mention the wading pool and the chaos on the White House lawn.

This would seem like a fairly full plate for the President to be dealing with it. He must be working tirelessly to address all of this. Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem much bothered by any of this because he spent the weekend creating silly memes attacking his “enemies” and making himself heroic.

Now, in a way, as someone who worries about how Trump acts as president, I actually prefer him spending his time on silly memes as this way he will have less time to start an unnecessary war or spouting off about something he knows nothing about which, in turn, unintentionally irritates our allies. Let him cut and paste like a kindergartner at playtime. Very interesting Donald, a good use of the cut and paste feature, lets see if you can make one about Kaitlin Collins’ looks.

But really. I mean really, the most powerful man in the world spending his precious time figuring out how to put George Washington into a meme seems like a waste of his precious time. Doesn’t he have better things to do with his time? I mean like lead the Western World or something that, at least, falls into his job description.

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Elon Musk is pissed off about Christoper Nolan’s version of the Odyssey. From what I can tell, it boils down to casting a Black woman, Lupita Nyong’o, as a Ancient Greek woman in a fictional story. He is so pissed off about it that he is willing to give $100 million to Mel Gibson to remake the film that is more faithful to Homer’s original.

So much here to consider.

Let me start with the thing that pisses off Musk so much that he is willing to pay $100 million to remake another version. It is a fucking movie Elon. Get a grip. He is free to criticize the movie and because he is a trillionaire people actually will give him media space to vent his spleen. A remake to a more pleasing version seems like a bit of an over reaction.

Next, and more importantly, a disagreeable version of a movie has made him so mad that he is willing to drop $100 million to correct it. A movie. Wars in the Ukraine, Iran, and Gaza, people starving all over the world and what really moves him to shell out his hard earned cash is a Black Helen of Troy.

If he really wanted to make the world a better place, donate the $100 million to bring down the prices of oil. It would do two things — help real people with an actual problem and it would make him a hero for doing it.

But no a Black Helen of Troy is to big of a problem for Musk which, lets face it, makes him look like an asshole. I know, I know, he already looks like an asshole but now he looks like a racist asshole. He is only making himself look worse.

Taking that $100 million and spending it on anything else, and I am talking drunken orgies on Skid Row, would be better spent and it would do wonder for his damaged image. I mean if you can’t bring yourself to think about actual poor people, think of poor Elon Musk. He needs all the image repair he can find. I call that a win/win.

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The Guardian headline reads: Most people arrested during Henry Nowak protests had been reported for domestic abuse.

Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh man, murdered Henry Nowak, a White man, in Southampton. Some people in the UK believe the police’s behavior shows an anti-White bias among the British cops. As with any controversial issue, people used their right to peaceful assembly to make their position on the matter known. Thirty-seven people were arrested due to their violent behavior.

Unsurprisingly many of the people arrested also have a history of violent behavior. It makes sense to me that people who have had trouble in the past controlling their violent impulses might again lose control of themselves and behave badly. The Guardian article even admits as much “two out of every five arrested for participating in riots in 2024 had been the subject of a domestic abuse report before their involvement, with one in five subsequently being reported for domestic abuse.”

The phrase “participating in riots in 2024” is both interesting and vague. Does the Guardian mean only anti-immigrant rioters or all rioters? They don’t clarify who they mean by rioters. It could mean any violent behavior — say the anger from the losing fans of a football team. Although I don’t advise the Guardian doing this, a better use of their time (although not great) might be to compare the rioters from different groups say anti-Israel demonstrations, losing football fans and anti-immigrant demonstrations and stack them up against each other.

I am betting that past violent arrests might match up significantly for each group. But how is this helpful? The Guardian article leaves me with the impression that people who are concerned about Henry Nowak are actually prone to violence while providing absolutely no evidence about the rest of the crowd and thus pointless.

People prone to past violent behavior are more likely act violently when given an opportunity to do so again. This says nothing, though, about all the people who didn’t get arrested — which is a much better measurement of the character of the people who attended the demonstration.

So what was the point of this screaming headline? What an utter waste of time. The Guardian sent out reporters to find out the obvious — people with a violent past continue to behave badly? So what?

It is a surreptitious way of painting all of the Henry Nowak demonstrators as violent instead of the few who were actually arrested for violence. There is a difference which the Guardian failed utterly to point out.

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And I mean it.

I still am pretty worked up over this post from Katharine Birbalsingh — Britain’s strictest Head Mistress. I wrote a post yesterday but I am still mad about it because she is so irritatingly wrong. Her basic premise is that people used to be better because they taught their kids traditional values. My point was that maybe traditional values also supported a Racist, Sexist, and Homophobic society. So really how good were these traditional values? They certainly didn’t stop people from being mean-spirited to the people they didn’t like.

After thinking about it more, I am inclined to say that Birbalsingh should fold it four ways and stick it where the sun don’t shine. Pardon my untraditional approach here. She uncritically praises the past while dumping on, to me, the much better world of today. How can she praise traditional values when they so clearly failed so many people. The pregnant teenager sent to a horrible workhouse where her baby was stolen. The gay people forced out of their jobs because they were caught in a police raid. The People of Color who were denied entry into jobs and education because they were the wrong color.

The past wasn’t so sunny as she makes out and a lot of it was due to strict enforcement of these traditional values. I ask her would she rather live in the modern world in which Racism, Sexism and Homophobia is seen as wrong or in a traditional society where they are tolerated and supported? I would hope that she would embrace the progress we made and work to make this new foundation a better arrangement. Nothing is perfect.

But until then fie on traditional values.

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Katharine Birbalsingh, Britain’s strictest Head Mistress bemoans the missing morality lessons of the good old days. Parents raised their kids to take personal responsibility. Things were so much better than they are today.

I am not sure what planet Birbalsingh is visiting from but she certainly missed Earth for the past 10,000 years where human beings have been pretty beastly towards one another. If people were so damned good in the past, why do we have to teach children about Hitler, Slavery and Civil Rights. Well, because people in the past weren’t so good and moral. We wouldn’t have to teach children about racism if society had not been racist in the past. Is this the morality she misses?

She talks about the man who was so proud of his 50 years at one company. Bully for him but his moral purity might be overshadowed by also teaching his grandchildren that Blacks are inferior and you shouldn’t live next door to them. Or women should be paid less than men. Or Gay men are perverts and deserve social ostracism. He may have also beaten his grandson from time to time if he felt the child was out of line. If the man was a man of his times, would it be surprising that he would hold those views as well and, I might add, a far cry from being morally superior man.

Hence why people are now teaching about Hitler, Slavery and Civil Rights.

People held much more horrible beliefs in the past than they do today and we are all better for being free from them. Can we be better people? Of course, we can. The answer to our problems will not be found in the past but in incorporating the lessons from our past failures and moving forward from there.

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Palm Beach recently renamed their airport after Donald Trump. In response, some travelers are opting to reroute their trips so they don’t have to use the airport with the president’s name so brazenly displayed.

The thing is Palm Beach seems like a niche airport. I never even heard of it before this and, I am guessing, will hear about the same amount now that it has been renamed. I doubt very many travelers have to suffer the journey to it. So me joining the boycott will have absolutely no effect on anything.

This is kind of a silly protest that will have absolutely no effect on Trump and will only inconvenience the people who need to use the airport. For what? It is virtue signalling at it’s worst. I hate Trump so much that I won’t even allow myself to use an airport with his name on it. That is how important my hatred is.

Well, bully for you. I am so proud of you making this very important, and surely difficult, decision.

But, I for one, am not making my life more difficult for this bull shit. If I ever have the misfortune to have to travel through Palm Beach Airport I will do a quick sign of the cross and hope for the best.

Since I rarely go to Florida and, for the life of me, can’t ever recall go through this airport, I can safely join in solidarity with those who are boycotting. That will teach him.

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Mean Girls and Bullies are a reoccurring theme in any depiction of American adolescence. They always seem to pop up as a potent, almost dictatorial, presence in high schools. They also seem to land at the top of the school hierarchy which, given their nastiness, seems odd. It baffles me.

Think about it. On the first day of school the teacher doesn’t announce to the class that you are going to start dividing yourself into people you like and people you don’t like. Some of you will get invited to all the birthday parties, others will not. Suzy will be the chief mean girl and Bill is the big bully. Let the school year begin.

It is a hierarchy created by the kids. It is cruel. It is pervasive and it is has an effect on a child’s life.

Adults can try to mitigate the social hierarchy but it happens regardless of their best efforts. Adults can tell kids to be respectful but how does a school control the in crowd and the out crowd. The creation of these groups, be it — Jocks, Nerds, Cool Kids, Stoners — is an act of group self-creation. Adults don’t make the decision.

How the hierarchy all sorts out is a mystery to everyone but, perhaps, the group itself. In reality, there may not be any rational explanation other than this is the chemical reaction of this particular group of kids.

The two things that interest me here is why does it happen at all and why do the same type of kids (jocks and cheerleaders) end up at the top and others (nerds and goths) end up near the bottom. The story, the one you see in the movies and read in books, always is the same. Mean Girls and Jocks take over and end up at the top of the teenage hierarchy.

This would seem like an unimportant detail. Who cares why some kids rise to the top and other kids don’t. It is just school but I am afraid it is very important because mean girls and bullies continue their reign of terror throughout their lives.

Explain Trump. He is a bully. Why is he tolerated? Why are people still willing to work for such an asshole even though he has made everyone perfectly aware that he has no loyalty to anyone except himself?

Maybe the whole problem with Trump, particularly for the people who are immune to Trump’s charm, is trying to find a rational reason for people putting their faith in such an asshole when it is more of an instinctual thing — irrational and subconscious.

He is the silverback who beats his chest in the most convincing manner and to our ape selves that is all that matters.

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I am annoyed at the mean spirited memes going around about Lindsey Graham. This is my question. A man is dead. There are people who loved him. Give them a moment to mourn. What good does it do to dance on his grave?

He deserves every sarcastic comment made about him because he was a terrible man and the world needs to see that. There are people who disagree with this assessment. His legacy can be debated and should be. He was a public figure. I am fine with that but now is the time to put these disagreements on hold. A moment of silence doesn’t say you liked the man. It is an acknowledgement of the sadness of all of our impending deaths.

Trump talks ill of the dead why can’t I. This is an argument of a child who’s hand is caught in the cookie jar. So what? It deserves the perfect parental response to such a lame defense of personal behavior — if Donald Trump jumped off the Empire State Building, would you jump? Trump is hardly a role model for good behavior. Just because he is awful when people he dislikes dies, doesn’t make it right for anyone else to do the same.

It is one of the very worst things that Donald Trump has done to our politics. He has destroyed the little level of civility that existed in public discourse. Anything goes. Talk about a woman’s looks or her weight. Fair game. Talk about your opponent’s dick size. No problem. So why should any one’s death stop the fun back and forth of malicious commentary that permeates modern political life?

Because it is sad. Any time anyone dies, this is a moment to reflect on the fragility of life itself. It can be taken from us all in a moment. Life is sacred and it is terrible when someone loses this precious gift. It doesn’t matter if I like the guy or not. It is still sad no matter who it happens to.

But Hitler, what about Hitler? What about him? Lindsey Graham is not Hitler and there is nothing you can say to make me believe that he is. There is only one Hitler and just maybe Hitler is the one of the few people who have died when it was OK to dance on his grave. But Lindsey Graham Hitler? This is a disservice to true monsters everywhere. Hitler is rolling in his grave.

Which leads me back to my original question. What good comes to the world from dancing on Lindsey Graham’s grave? I can’t really see any. It only worsens the political divide that threatens to rip this country apart. And if we keep tearing and ripping, the country eventually will come apart. Is that what we want? I certainly don’t.

And doing the right thing is so incredibly easy in this case — all you have to do is keep your trap shut.

Try it.

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Slavery isn’t the primary problem, I have with the founding fathers. As apologists for the founding fathers have pointed out numerous times, slavery has been around since the dawn of civilization. They behaved just like every other winning civilization when given the opportunity to take advantage of free labor. They took it.

And if we could stop here with the Founding Fathers, I would be OK with that. But there is more to the story.

The African slave traders who sold their fellow Africans into slavery didn’t say that all men were created equal. The Founding Fathers did. This created a number of problems for them. First, how do you explain taking land from a native population and African slavery. I mean, if all men are created equal. There has to be a good explanation and that explanation was racism. These people were less than the European settlers. The African and the Native American were robbed of their humanity — their equality with their fellow men.

The African slave trader was involved in a money making operation with no regards to the humans they captured. They didn’t write the Declaration of Independence. They didn’t write of noble ideas about how men should behave and what the future would look like when men could elect their own government and thus determine their fates. The Founding Fathers, however, did.

This difference caused an expository problem. If all men were created equal, what of the Native American and the African slave. How can all men be equal given the treatment of these non-European peoples. The answer was they are savages. They are less than the White European, that Whites were superior to everyone else. The superior race deserved to run the show.

This sentiment is a much more damaging idea. It turns an unfortunate prisoner of war into less than a human. It poisoned the White population into believing they were better than everyone else so that when the Civil War ended — the slaves might be free but an ideology of racism still existed. Many Whites still believed they were better than Blacks and Native Americans. Treating them differently was OK because they were inferior beings.

But why do we have to dwell on that. Why not just look at the noble ideas and forget the racism. The noble ideas, after all, are what is important. Well, yes, to a degree this is true but we are also teaching children about the past. The Civil War, Civil Rights and the Settlers expansion into Native American Territories are very much a part of this history.

If you don’t give the context of racism, how do those events make any sense?

Noble ideas are starting points in history. This is what we want the world to look like. But, as with all human institutions, the Founding Fathers failed to live up to all of these noble ideas. We do not live in a perfect world and never will. Indeed, we all, even to this day, could do better and this isn’t such a bad idea to leave children with – we can do better.