Politics – Miscellaneous – Page 2 – education and deconstruction.com

The Calling

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Book of the Week is “The Calling, A Memoir of Family, Faith and the Future of Healthcare” by Dr. Chris Chen and Dr. Gordon Chen, published in 2022. In this wordy, redundant volume, the brother-authors recounted their family’s history.

The Chen brothers, their wives, and their parents have built a successful medical practice of value-based care. They began in South Florida, serving low-income senior citizens in poor health. Their primary-care physicians (formerly called “general practitioners”) are truly passionate about treating their patients as though the patients are their own loved ones.

The family’s business, ChenMed, gets a flat fee from health-insurance companies, rather than a fee per patient. It is up to the practice’s bean-counters to do preventive care to make the business profitable. Arrogant and greedy doctors need not apply to ChenMed.

The doctors do quality over quantity, seeing a maximum of four hundred fifty patients per month. They have maximized the efficiency in their business so that they can spend a lot more time with each individual patient. Initially, they see cardiac patients daily until they get to know them. Of course, there is an emotional toll on the medical personnel when there are inexplicable complications or deaths.

It appears ChenMed has bragging rights– in the last forty years, it has established an impressive presence in the United States. And its monster-sized competition has copied the concept of their business model.

The Chens practice not only medicine, but also Christianity. The family’s patriarch thinks that one who does not believe in a supreme being, does not have a moral compass. Yes, people who have a bible that’s falling apart, usually aren’t. But that doesn’t mean that people who don’t have a bible usually are falling apart. There are plenty of ways other than religion for people to relieve the stresses of daily life, and still behave ethically.

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about the family’s and ChenMed’s backgrounds.

Scenes From an Orwellian Juggernaut – BONUS POST

A question for the ages:

How can Americans lower the likelihood of having to suffer through another sucky administration in the future? Stemming the propaganda would help a lot.

It will take decades to reverse the “fake news” trend, but it’s possible. The ways to do it involve lots of learning:

The American education system must teach critical thinking— in order to raise awareness of debating, public-speaking and propaganda techniques. In 1914, Oxford professor John Alexander Smith told his students the following: “…if you work hard and intelligently, you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole purpose of education.”
Americans must read or listen to a vast quantity of entire books of nonfiction personal accounts written by all different stakeholders with different perspectives of the same historical incident or person or place or institution– and note which information is common to most or all accounts– making that information more likely to be true.
Americans must travel to get exposed to the rest of the world– get life-experience in true deprivation and trauma and learn gratitude for their living standards.

In sum, critical thinking, books and exposure to the world are a start. Everyone must reconcile science with religion in their own way, but keep in mind the philosophy, “Better to have unanswered questions than unquestioned answers.”

There are still an infinite number of unanswered questions about the second Trump administration, due to secrecy. However, the following song is a snapshot of the state of affairs in spring 2026.

SCENES FROM AN ORWELLIAN JUGGERNAUT

sung to the tune of “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” with apologies to Billy Joel and to whomever else the rights may concern. Please note: The lyrics in the beginning and end have been omitted because Prez T does not drink alcohol, and he is no longer a teenager. Only the “Brenda and Eddie” segment is relevant.

whoa whoa whoa oh oh oh whoa whoa whoa oh oh

Billionaires and Prez T are the populist steadies and the prez is drama queen of Iran, flying around with their GOP crowd, with their fancy PR on.

No one has more power. Fox is rewriting history by the hour.

We never knew they would take control of our lives.

We’re stuck now, with the prez’s scapegoating, profiteering spies.

whoa whoa whoa oh oh oh whoa whoa whoa oh oh

Billionaires and Prez T are still going steady with their Project 2025.

They’re a mean, greedy bunch of frat boys, still committing crimes.

They smear their foes like crazy.

AI software will make us ridiculously lazy.

Apparently GOP can afford to live that kind of life.

Oh, and the little people can’t wait to bid Prez T goodbye.

oh oh oh oh oh oh

Well the GOP’s losing ground and down for the count but they constantly play on our fears.

Need it be said we’re being led by chuckleheads who waste our tax dollars every year.

Internally they fight against threats to the Right.

They’re nervous as the midterms near.

whoa whoa whoa whoa Spouting cock-and-bull!

whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa

They got the MAGA minds. Voters missed the strongman signs.

Politics is always the same in the end.

They rule by fear and force as a matter of course, and Americans see Big Brother trends.

Billionaires and Prez T stay on the green but YOU might never go there again.

oh oh oh oh

Billionaires and Prez T are getting a last squeeze of Project 2025.

They’re stooping so low at the end of their show. They’ve messed up our lives.

Dems will no longer be appeasers. Dems have got fewer reactionary geezers.

We’re sure they’ll rise again, by the by.

Oh, and that’s all I’ll say about billionaires and Prez T.

Do expect midterm lies and hypocrisy.

And here we are wishing Prez T would bleep bleep bleep bleep.

whoa whoa whoa oh oh oh whoa whoa whoa oh oh…

Walter Ralegh

The Book of the Week is “Walter Ralegh, Architect of Empire” by Alan Gallay, published in 2019. There are alternate spellings of “Ralegh” but the author used this spelling.

In this hodgepodge of a tome, the author recounted the tenor of the times and exploits of the explorer, colonizer and treasure-seeker Walter Ralegh. Around the time Ralegh (born circa 1554), men originally from Spain owned most of the riches of the world. Humphrey Gilbert, Ralegh’s older brother by seventeen years, got permission from Queen Elizabeth of England to go on expeditions in order to steal those riches.

International voyages were dangerous, and use of multi-disciplinary expertise (of mathematics, ship-building and maintenance, cartography, alchemy and medicine, etc.) somewhat reduced the risks involved.

Queen Elizabeth believed she was (the Anglican Church) God’s representative on earth. England had an anti-Catholic bent. So when she funded Ralegh’s trips sailing across the Atlantic to colonize the Eastern Seaboard of North America, he recruited dissidents (who tended to be Catholic) to help him, to get them to leave England and become some other territory’s problem.

The voyages were made at intervals of several years, as they involved planning (data collection of the location of enemies whose ships could be pirated for their cargo), fund-raising, provisioning, recruiting of crew, etc.

Ralegh truly wanted to civilize the natives of foreign shores, but pirating of ships was so much more lucrative. He had thousands of men including his cousin, under his command. Through the decades, they encountered Native Americans when they hit land after their transatlantic voyages. Some expedition leaders ruled by fear and force and provoked violent incidents with them. The land was richly endowed with resources such as seafood and timber, and crops such as maize and tobacco could be grown for a profit. In his thirties, Ralegh named the territory now known as Virginia.

Read the book to learn much, much, much more about Ralegh’s adventures at sea, on land along the coast of North America, southeastern Ireland, and Guiana in South America.

Shady Donald – BONUS POST

As is well known, the United States is in a holding pattern. The billionaires still have yet to get together with the media to schedule Trump’s ousting. Here’s a song about that.

SHADY DONALD

sung to the tune of “Lady Madonna” with apologies to The Beatles and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Shady Donald, billionaires at your feet.

Wonder how you manage to keep your seat.

Who finds the money, when on war, you’re-hellbent.

Do you think your power is heaven-sent?

The far Right has trouble keeping a straight-face.

Sunday morning news shows aren’t fun.

Your messengers are counting down your last days.

Your reign is so done.

Shady Donald, Fox is doing its best, to express phony outrage at your behest.

Your reign is so done.

Shady Donald, lying with no cred.

We all wonder, what’s kicking around in your head.

Tuesday’s backtracking tune is never ending.

Wednesday morning papers leave you numb.

Thursday night your talking-points need amending.

Your reign is so done.

Shady Donald, billionaires at your feet.

Wonder how you manage to keep your seat.

The Lords of Strategy

The Book of the Week is “The Lords of Strategy, The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World” by Walter Kiechel III, published in 2010. This wordy, redundant volume showed how: times have changed; capitalism has become leaner and meaner; and in one way, American society has stayed the same since the Era after WWII.

In the 1950’s, the major reasons American companies began to acquire other companies included:

Dividends paid by public companies were highly taxed, so instead of paying dividends to shareholders, a growing company that was sitting on a pile of cash would reinvest it by acquiring other companies.
There were antitrust laws prohibiting companies from acquiring others in their same industry, so the companies bought others in industries unrelated to their core competencies, or snapped up companies in their supply chain.

By the end of the 1960’s, companies were going bust because, blinded by greed and ego, the stupid corporate executives had no experience in industries unrelated to their own.

In the early 1970’s, management-consultants began to counsel their clients (who mostly manufactured physical products) on strategy. Also, Boston Consulting Group began to advise their consumer-goods clients to engage in deficit financing to grow their businesses. Corporate executives began to adopt an even more greedy mentality. Maximizing shareholder value became their main goal.

The author listed four game-changers of recent decades:

deregulation;
new technologies including computers, the internet, the maximization of computing power and simultaneous minimization of costs in connection therewith;
the way target-companies wised up after the hostile takeover-mania of the 1980’s; and
globalization.

As America has switched to a service-oriented economy in the last fifty years or so, the consultants have been forced to pivot to advise clients on human-resources, public-relations and technology. In the early 1980’s, a Harvard Business School professor did a study of senior executives at major U.S. corporations, and found that their game-changing stemmed not from bossing people around or speechifying, but rather, from infinite interactions with their social networks whose relationships they’d been developing over the course of years.

The author commented that when internet use was becoming widespread, there was a brief flirtation with socialistic entities arising from the open-source movement, including but not limited to: the Linux operating system, wikis, BitTorrent, and Napster. But the inclination of the American powers-that-be, to monetize everything, has largely put the kibosh on those.

Generation X and the Millennials have picked up the cudgel of capitalism and it remains to be seen how Gen Z is going to make a living. Having evolved rapidly in the last thirty years, the internet is currently plagued by creative destruction. But not to worry. There will be jobs in national healthcare, geriatrics, building charging-stations for hybrid vehicles, and harnessing renewable energy. Lying politicians (a redundant phrase) will say they “created” those jobs. Don’t vote for those politicians.

On the other hand, it’s deja vu all over again in American society. Nowadays, AI software is replacing consultants because: American management-consultants were mostly elitist, sexist, racist alpha-males in the “old boy network,” and AI software is created mostly by elitist, sexist, racist greedy alpha-males, still in the “old boy network” (but that network is slowly shrinking).

And the stereotypes about the consultants (and now AI software creators) are still true: They’re like seagulls– they fly in, leave a mess, and fly out; they show their clients a line graph that looks like a hockey-stick– that represents how their services will do financial miracles for the clients’ business, but the line graph has no correlation with reality.

Read the book to learn the details.

Knocking Previous Prezzes – BONUS POST

As is well known, Trump’s goal is to surpass all previous American presidents– in terms of political retaliation, profiteering and power accumulation. Here’s a song about that.

KNOCKING PREVIOUS PREZZES

sung to the tune of “Takin’ Care of Business” with apologies to Bachman Turner Overdrive, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Trump’s reversing all before him and ignoring global warming

and has great, great plans for his Party.

He’s supreme in his fakin’. In-that, he’s surpassed Obama and Reagan

in the world, he made topsy-turvy.

He’s committed numerous crimes but never done jail time.

He’s got a heartless, shameless mob to fill his needs.

He’s got his loyal envoys and his militaries deployed,

to exceed his predecessors’ deeds.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

With some Middle Eastern putsches, he’s exceeding the warring Bush’s,

in his vengeful blood-for-oil guile.

Alleged sexual predator, he had whores at his resort. He and Clinton are in the Epstein file.

While the deficit balloons, Trump’s going to the moon.

He showed us he had to outdo JFK.

It’s serious issues he avoids. Like Nixon, he’s paranoid

in his quest to immortalize his name.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

Trump’s reversing all before him and ignoring global warming

and has great, great plans for his Party.

He’s supreme in his fakin’. In-that, he’s surpassed Obama and Reagan

in the world, he made topsy-turvy.

He’s committed numerous crimes but never done jail time.

He’s got a heartless, shameless mob to fill his needs.

He’s got his loyal envoys and his militaries deployed,

to exceed his predecessors’ deeds.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

Knocking previous prezzes.

And Trump’s knocking previous prezzes. Every day.

Knocking previous prezzes. In-evil ways.

He’s been knocking previous prezzes. It’s all his.

Knocking previous prezzes, and making billions for his biz. (Kick him out!)

Knocking previous prezzes.

Knocking previous prezzes…

It’s an Uncertain World – BONUS POST

BREAKING NEWS: “America Spring” will continue until the media schedules the “Trump Is Out [he’s fired]” show via the 25th Amendment. Until then, here’s a song listing just a few of the people Trump has fired.

UNCERTAIN WORLD

sung to the tune of “End of the World” with apologies to R.E.M. and to whomever else the rights may concern.

What’s great? Trump parts with experts, truth-speakers and do-gooders, and his loyal cult is not afraid.

He fired: Streater, Hayden, Tillerson, Bunnell, Slaughter, Wilcox, Kruse, Grisham, Bolton, Geer, Doherty, Musk, Haugh, Kelly, Priebus, McEntarfer, Primus, Niceta, Matthews, Monarez, Chatfield, Salehi, Brown, down with a fight.

Flynn, Yachnin, Ramaswamy, Yates, and a government to fire, and Comey, Price, Krause, Linick, team by team, Richards, Samuels, trumped, Sessions cropped. Long, Atkinson, Fagan, Fine, then uh-oh O’Donnell, Noem, Perlmutter, Scaramucci, but it won’t do.

Save your wealth. Serve your stealth. Disturbed, and the world bleeds. Grim, Abruzzo, Martin, Bondi, chummy with the enraptured and the smeared and then gone. Right? Right!

ooh Hilton, patriotic Hanson slam fired blight Right. Feeling very iced.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And it’s on our dime.

Dellinger, Bharara. Don’t get caught in TV hearing slash and burn. Return. This is like a Stalin purge. Who cares about a uniform, Cook burning, bloodletting. Every move escalate. Ulterior motives. Insist it’s secret. Gaslight Bannon. Lewandowski. Low down. Low down. Watch your deals. crush crush uh-oh Be mean with no fear. Cavalier. Renegade. Deteriorating clear. A plethora, a plethora of lies, Pekoske. No solutions. Offers no alternatives. In droves, resign.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

The Right has defended ICE, gone mental. Krebs, Bedoya, Burrows. Frat boys tow the line. Leading billionaires. Letting go Shogan. Cutting loose thousands. Bloodbath Party. Shapley. Hellish scheme boom ooh argh hate riot, slam like heck. Right? Right!

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline.

It’s an uncertain world and you should know it.

And we’re in decline…

Iran’s Fighting Back – BONUS POST

Here’s a little ditty about what’s unsurprisingly going on.

IRAN’S FIGHTING BACK

sung to the tune of “My Boyfriend’s Back” with apologies to The Angels and to whomever else the rights may concern.

spoken:

After 2020, Trump never went away. He hung around and distracts us with radical actions every day and night. And when we don’t agree with him, he says and does things that aren’t very nice.

Iran’s fighting back and threatening more trouble.