THE THREE STUPIDS

It seems that, for once, we are all in agreement. Yes, the three black basketball players who got locked up in China for stealing sun glasses were indeed stupid, there is no other way to explain this kind of bizarre behavior. That, however, is not the question we should be asking. The real unanswered question is "How the hell did they get within a thousand miles of an esteemed institution like UCLA" and "Why did The Donald lift a finger to bail their sorry asses out of that Chinese prison? The answer to the first question is simple. Our venerated centers of higher learning will do anything for money and these three buffoons represent money every time they set their size 18 shoes on a basketball court, at least when the TV cameras are running. To associate these three shop-lifters with any institution of higher learning is, of course, absurd, but that's the way it is at today's money grubbing Universities. Why Trump bothered to intervene is a more troubling question for which there is no good answer. Maybe the president wanted sweep this national embarrassment under the rug as soon as possible and believed this was the best way to cut our losses and move on, or maybe he had other motives that escape me. In any case, this decision was a major blunder on his part. These three dummies should have been left to rot in that Chinese prison and UCLA should be suspended from all collegiate sports for at least a year, maybe longer. Sorry, I don't suffer fools lightly. Now for this week's question, what is the difference between Red Wiggler composting earthworms and night crawlers? Basically there are two different types of earthworms. The small composing Red Wigglers are the same the world over. These creatures, which most commonly are found in manure piles, are surface dwellers who live in the top six or so inches of the soil. On the other hand, there are hundreds of different varieties of night-crawlers. These large worms are primarily used as fish bait and usually are named after the regions they inhabit. They live in holes deep in the ground and make their way to the surface in the fall after the first rains, where they forage for food and form characteristic piles of worm castings that look like miniature volcanoes. Although relatively small in volume, these piles of worm droppings are pure casting unlike the ones produced by composting earthworm which are mixed into the soil they inhabit. In any case, night-crawlers do little or nothing to enhance the soil in which they live, primarily because there are so few of them. The castings of composting Red Wigglers, on the other hand, are the richest organic fertilizer known to man and are a primary ingredient of any organic garden.

Can A Nation So Divided stand?

A year or so ago, my daughter and son-in-law took me to a new restaurant in San Jose. This was an extremely large establishment, seating around 350 people. The place was packed, with long lines of people waiting to get in. They served some type of oriental food, can't remember the type, but it was reasonably tasty. The novelty of the place for me, however, had little to do with the food or the fact the we were eating with our fingers off of sheets of wax paper. Rather, it was the mix of fellow dinners, who were packed like sardines at the tables surrounding ours, that fascinated me. They were speaking in several foreign tongues and it felt like I had been magically transported to some third world county. Then it struck me right between the eyes. The American melting pot had become some kind of a mixed stew. The ingredients in this stew were incompatible with each other and were concocted by a chef with no culinary skills whatsoever. The result was a third world country similar to the one from which most of them had come. Old timers like myself will never accept this transformation to the dark ages, but will we have a choice? It is not only the ethnicity of our nation that has changed so much over the past 50 to 60 years. The politics of today also are unrecognizable to those of us that were born and raised in the nineteenth century. Most of major cities have become liberal "hell holes" ran by the most imbecilic individuals imaginable. These creatures of the deep are elected over and over again by the illiterate masses who could not name the people who govern them if their lives depended on it. They have no idea of who our founding fathers were or what they stood for. It is becoming clearer with each passing day that it makes little or no difference which party is in power, the results are always the same; fewer and fewer people work and pay taxes and the middle class continues to shrink. We are rapidly becoming a third world country like Mexico, a land with the extreme wealthy at the top and the impoverished masses at the bottom, with nothing of note in between. Is there any way out of this socialist mess in which we find ourselves? A second revolution is one obvious option. We had the fortitude to fight our most deadly war to end slavery, but I doubt that we will do the same to rid ourselves of the liberals who live in our most populous states and run our nation's capital. The chances of this happening are slim to none. There is a simple solution (how many times have I told you that?) which will not require a single change in the constitution or any other law or mandate. To pull this off, we must return to the original intent of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as envisioned by our founders who never envisioned a powerful federal government that ran rough-shod over the rights of our individual states. The Federal Government should be responsible for protecting our country from foreign powers, regulating interstate commerce, and precious little more. Under this revitalization of States Rights the department of Education would be the first to go, followed the Endowment Of The Arts and thousands of other similar redistribution programs that are bankrupting our country. If a local school wants to provide meals on wheels for its citizens from cradle to grave, that decision should be made by local politicians and paid for with state or local funds not mandated by the federal government and paid for by members of a neighboring state or simply, as is most often the case, tacked on to our astronomical national debt. Several other changes should be made to weaken the Federal government and strengthen state control. Members of the congress and senate should be part time employees who meet only on alternate years for, at most, three to four months, the big decisions being made by the state and local governments who will control education, medical care and all other important decisions affecting the well being of their citizens. Under this system of state control, the role of the president will be greatly reduced. His main role will be to manage our foreign affairs and our military but he will not be involved in issues like medical care, education and welfare. Obviously, the role of the federal politicians will be greatly reduced when they are prevented from using the tax dollars of the American worker to buy the votes of underclass. To return to the original question, I am very skeptical with respect to the future of America. Most likely we will become increasingly more divided with each passing day. As things now stand, we are headed for third world status and in most of our big cities we are already there. Now for the answer to last week's quiz. How can one tell if he is gardening organically? The color of fruits and vegetables we grow has little to do with their nutritional value. In fact, plants grown in a sterile chemical soil devoid of organic material and beneficial microorganisms will still look green and healthy and even taste pretty good. In fact, chemically grown plants invariably will have fewer bugs and insects than those grown organically. Looks are not the answer! The key indication that you are "growing the organic way" is the quantity of earthworms in your growing medium. Composting earthworms will not survive in an environment rich in chemical fertilizers; rather, they can only survive in an organic rich medium. Thus, if your garden soil is full of Red wiggler composting earthworms you are doing things right, the more worms the better! This week's question. How can you differentiate between a Red Wiggler composting earthworm and a night-crawler (fishing worm)? Happy thanksgiving!

Salvaging What Is Left Of America. Step 6. Solving The Homeless Problem.

Strange as it may seem to the younger generation, when I was growing up in rural Northern California and attending college and medical school in the bay area and Los Angeles there was no homeless on the streets of America. Now they are everywhere. What happened? First, just who are the homeless? Approximately, 70 percent, give or take, are mentally disturbed individuals who are incapable of taking care of themselves (nut-jobs if you will) and around 30 percents are criminals who are attempting to evade the law. I thing we can agree that all of them, the criminals as well as the mentally ill, should be off the streets. In the good old days, when I was growing up in the greatest nation the world has ever known, there were no homeless because society locked up the bad guys and institutionalized those who were so mentally ill that they could not care for themselves. At that time, before the socialists took over, California had two large mental institutions Norwalk in the south (Los Angeles) and Napa State Hospital in the north. When I was rotating through Norwalk in 1962, during my third year psychiatry rotation, each of these institutions housed about 10,000 to 12,000 individuals. Let me tell you, these people were "nuttier than a fruit cake" as my mother used to say, and none of them could have managed on their own outside the institutions where they were confined (cared for). So what when so wrong? Just how did we get in our present predicament where our streets are literally crawling with the mentally ill? Well, the answer is quite simple, as so often is the case, government run amuck. It all began with Governor Brown Senior (Pat Brown) and was finalized during the first tern of Governor Regan. Let me tell you, this was not Governor Regan's finest hour! The psychiatrists convinced Brown and Regan that, because of the increased effectiveness of the newest psychiatric medications, most if not all, of the mentally ill housed in our large mental institutions could be managed as outpatients. At the time, I recall thinking that this was one of the most insane ideas I had ever heard of. In any case, I think Regan became convinced that the state of California could save a lot on money if we could just get the crazes out of the mental institutions and so he went along with the fool-hardy plan. Over the next 10 to 20 years the gates were opened and our streets were flooded with the mentally incompetent. I will not dwell further on the results of this ridiculous effort to save money because the results are obvious for all to see. So how do we solve the problem? First, the criminal element should be sought out and incarcerated. Don't tell me that this will be too expensive, the price we are paying in human misery by leaving them on the streets of California is far more costly. Second, we must reopen the mental institutions that were used, in the pre-Regan era, to house those who were, for whatever reason, mentally incompetent. While it is true, that some of these people could be managed as outpatients, if given the proper supervision, most will have to be permanently confined to a mental institution for their own good as well as for society as a whole. We have dug ourselves a very deep hole, with respect to the homeless problem, and reestablishing the mental institutions necessary to solve this dilemma, will be costly, of that there can be no doubt. However, a civilized nation does not allow criminals to roam its streets and the insane live in tents under its freeways eating dog food. Taking the necessary steps to free our streets of the homeless should be given one of our highest priorities. But first we have to recognize the challenge and realize that it is manmade and solvable. If we have the willingness to acknowledge our past mistakes and take appropriate measures to rectify them we can solve this problem. However, I'm not going to hold my breath until this happens. Today's quiz: how can you tell if you are gardening the organic way? A) my plants look green and healthy. B) There are composting earthworms in the soil. C) the stuff I grow tastes good. D) It's really impossible to tell, that's why I buy fruits and vegetables that are labeled organic.

Salvaging What Is Left Of America. Step 5. The minimum wage and the cost of a head of lettuce.

First let's get one thing straight from the get go. The minimum wage has always been the wage paid to part time employees who are just entering the work force. This entry level wage must not be confused with the wage paid to full time employees who have families to feed and children to cloth, I will deal with this thorny issue in the paragraphs below. I do not believe the government should be involved, in any way, with the wage an employer pays an entry level part time worker. My first summer job, at age 13, was for about 50 cents an hour. During my last year in high school a similar job was paying me $1.10 an hour. In either case, the government was not involved in my decision to work or my employers willingness to hire me. The pay received by a person who is just entering the work force will depend on a variety of issues including location (city vs. rural), personal relationships, and a variety of other factors, but the government should have nothing to do with it! Now let's deal with the full time employee and the head of a house hold. I believe these workers should be paid a wage that would provide them and their families a decent standard of living based on what goods and services cost if produced in America, not some third world country where the average person does not have indoor plumbing or sanitary drinking water. In a previous blog, using a farm worker as an example, I calculated what a head of lettuce would cost if the person who cultivated and harvested the lettuce were to earn $50,000 a year rather than the $22,000 he is now being paid. If all of the other costs that determine the retail cost of that head of lettuce remained constant (landowners profit, transportation costs, retail sales costs, etc.) it would only increase the price of a head of lettuce at Safeway about 50 cents if the farm worker were to be paid a decent living wage of around $50,000 a year. I, for one, am willing to pay an extra 50 cents for my lettuce if, by so doing, I raise the farm worker out of poverty and end his dependency on welfare. This is the point worth emphasizing. We have a large percentage of the population, probably about 30 to 40 percent, who cannot, because of mental capacity and a variety of other factors, become members of the educated class. Recognizing this fact, we have to do everything possible to make these people functional members of society. To accomplish this goal these people must have meaningful well paying jobs and we, as a society, must be willing to pay for our goods and services based on what it would cost to produce them in America, rather than what it would cost if they were made in some third world country where people work for near slave wages. This means that there will have to be tariffs on most of the goods and services that are produced in third world countries and imported to America. Of course, we already have tariffs on imported goods but, obviously they are not high enough. Along these same lines, I cannot understand why those $200 a pair tennis shoes that we buy at the sporting goods store could not be made in America, something is definitely wrong with this picture. In any case, the goal is to have more things we buy made by American workers even if they will cost a little more if they are manufactured here. Now this is only half the story. The Blacks were brought here to cultivate and pick cotton but now, 150 years after the end of slavery, they refuse to work in the fields thinking that it is somehow beneath them to do so. There are millions of Whites who have the same view of life. These people basically do nothing to contribute to society and survive on some form of welfare. At last count there were 52.2 million people on the government dole. A small percentage of these individuals are permanently disabled and cannot work, but most could work if there were an available job for them and an insensitive for them to take the jobs avaliable. As discussed above, the government has a responsibility to make jobs available to its citizens, especially those who do not have the intellect to benefit from some form of higher education. However, there also must be an insinuative for the chronically unemployed to take the jobs that are available to them, wherever that job may be. That insinuative for this back to work program is simple, you either work or you starve. No if ands or buts about it, welfare as we know it has to come to an end. I think Bill Clinton said something like this 20 or so years ago, but as with most of his policies, he was lying through his teeth. This time we must follow through with our policies. Now here's another point worth making. I have been walking on this earth for one month shy of 81 years. My observation has been that people who have a job are happier and more content than those who do not work. If our government has any role, beyond keeping us safe from foreign invaders, it is to provide meaningful jobs for its citizens rather, as now is so often the case, providing welfare checks for those who chose not to work. In my next blog I will discuss public employee unions, I believe we should eliminate them. Now, the answer to the question posed in my last blog. You have a choice of green, red or black grapes, which should you buy? Green grapes are the least nutritious, red grapes are second in nutritional value, while dark skin or black grapes are the most nutritious. I would also argue that black skinned grapes are more favorable. You may follow my blogs on The Conservative Pulpit by Daniel C. Merrill MD. There are over 200 posts to date covering a far ranging list of gardening and health related topics, as well as the political issues of the day.