Prostate Cancer-To screen or not to screen, that is the question!

First, let me be crystal clear on this issue of screening for prostate cancer. There have been a lot of advances in the field of Urology since I entered the field 56 years ago. None, however, were as important as the development of the PSA test for the early detection of prostate cancer. This simple blood test greatly increased the chances that we could detect the cancer while it was still confined to the prostate gland and remove it before it had metastasized and become incurable. A recent article in the New England Journal Of Medicine, the PIVIT study, suggests that males treated by surgery for the prostate cancer fair no better than those who forgo treatment. The authors of this 16 year study also stress the complications that result from radical prostatectomy. There are several aspects of this study that raise serious questions as to its validity. I expect the first thing to emphasize is that the lead author, Timothy J. Wilt, is an internist. Internists have a very superficial understanding of prostate cancer and the vast majority of them have never treated a patient with the malignancy. Urologists treat patients with prostate cancer, not internists, family physicians or nurse practitioners. Look at it this way. Would you believe anything I, an urologist, wrote about the survival rates of people who had surgery for brain tumors. I certainly hope not! Even if you would, please keep this in mind. This study was performed by physicians who have no firsthand experience with the disease they are writing about. If they did have experience treating men with prostate cancer they would not have made so many glairing errors in their article, a few of which I will point out below. Also remember that this VA study was funded by the federal government which is doing everything it can to reduce the cost of health care. Just think of the monies that can be saved if the Feds can convince males that they have nothing to gain by being treated for early prostate cancer. This goes way beyond death panels since it suggests that we, as a society, ignore from the get-go a malignancy that kills over 28,000 American males every single year, more than any malignancy other than lung cancer. How is it possible that we should ignore a disease that kills so many people! Doesn't pass the smell test does it? The authors claim that this was a study of males with early prostate cancer yet the PSAs in the group who were randomized for surgery had a mean PSA value of 10.1. Thus, for every male in the treatment arm of the study who had a PSA around 5 or 6, which would have made him an ideal candidate for surgery, there was someone with a PSA of 15 to 16 which would make him a questionable candidate for curative surgery. In fact, men were entered into the study as long as their PSAs were less than 50. I have never heard of a man with prostate cancer being a candidate for surgery with a PSA approaching 50 or, for that matter, even in the 15 to 20 range! Such men invariably have metastatic disease and can't be cured by surgery, or anything else for that matter. Although the title of the article, Radical Prostatectomy versus Observation for Localized Prostate Cancer, implies that this is a study designed to compare the results of surgery with watchful waiting (doing nothing) in men with prostate cancer, it is not! In fact, of the 364 men randomized to have surgery, only 281 actually had surgery and of the 367 males who were assigned to the observation wing of the study, only 292 were, in fact, observed! When all was said and done, 53 of the males who were assigned to have surgery ended up being observed and 36 of those who were initially assigned to be observed underwent radical prostatectomy. The authors of the paper completely ignore this important fly in the ointment and apparently so did the journal's reviewers. Why were these men allowed to change horses in mid stream? Well, most likely because they became aware of the bill of goods they had been sold when they agreed to enter the study and changed their minds as they watched their PSAs climb to higher and higher levels during the observation period. The question is how long did they wait before insisting on surgery and how high were their PSAs when they finally had surgery. We have no idea because the internists that wrote this paper do not understand the importance of early detection and rapid intervention in this deadly malignancy, as such, they simply ignored the issue. What should have been obvious to them, however, was the fact that they had muddied the waters in a significant way when they allowed men who had been observed for a period of time to be added to the radical prostatectomy arm of the study. This is so because the chances of curing these men decreased significantly with each passing day as their PSAs continued to climb to higher and higher levels. This gave the study a strong bias against radical prostatectomy. Obviously, these patients should have been dropped from the study. So why weren't they? Well, there are several possibilities. It seems clear that the authors had a pre-study bias towards watchful waiting and did not buy into the concept that, with respect to prostate cancer, treatment delayed is often treatment denied. To them it made no difference when a man had surgery. After all, with a few very limited exceptions, surgery wasn't going to accomplish anything anyway, except, of course, to make their lives more miserable as a result of the complications of the prostatectomy. Second, and equally likely, is the fact that they were obviously having difficulty recruiting men who were foolish enough to enter the study. The authors originally had set a goal of 2000 men for their study. After 8 years of trying they could only recruit 731 individuals who were willing to put their lives at risk for the sake of humanity. This study was based on statistics, it was a numbers game. As such, the authors could not afford to lose a single person from the study, let alone 12.3% from the observation arm and 18.8% of the radical prostatectomy side of the study. In any case, the paper should have been rejected because of the large number of switchovers between the two components of the study and it was not! Shame on you New England Journal of Medicine. But the tangled web the authors weave doesn't end there. No not by a long shot! Although the authors of the PIVIT study do not address the issue in the text of their paper, Figure 1 ( Study Enrollment and Treatment) reveals that the males in this study were not treated solely with radical prostatectomy. Nor were the men in the observation arm simply observed! To the contrary, men in both arms of the study were treated with everything but the kitchen sink! In fact, in addition to the 36 men in the observation group who ended up having radical prostatectomies; 29 received external beam radiation; 8 were treated with radioactive seeds; and one even underwent the barbaric cryotherapy (freezing). The statistics from the radical prostatectomy arm of the study were equally messed up as, 76 of the 281 males in this group were either observed or treated with some form of irradiation. The authors do not tell us who got what or for what reason. Apparently, they relied on their statistical analysis to sort out the mess that resulted from their poorly randomized study which got progressively more convoluted as time went on. The newspaper reports of the PIVIOT study have been baffling to say the least. It seemed impossible, as the reports claimed, that 12.2% of the men who had radical prostatectomy had some form of bowel dysfunction or, for that matter, that 11.3 of those that were selected for observation complained of the same. I also had difficulty swallowing the claim that 17.1% of those treated by surgery had significant urinary incontinence. The incontinence rate following radical prostatectomy should be around 1 to 2%, not 17%. If the true incontinence rate after radical prostatectomy was a whopping 17% no man in his right mind would agree to have the procedure and no surgeon worth his salt would perform the operation, except maybe on his worst enemy. Certainly, I thought, Rosie Mestel of the Los Angeles Times and the other columnists writing articles on the PIVIT study had got this wrong. But that was not the case, the journalists had reported exactly what was written in the article. Under the section titled Surgical morbidity the reader is referred to table 2 which lists the complications for males treated by surgery or observation. No mention is made of the fact that large numbers of men in both arms of the study had also received various forms of irradiation, all if which are associated with significant side effects including urinary incontinence and bowel dysfunction. The author's base their claim that men with early prostate cancer do not benefit from surgery on statistics assuming a median survival of 10 years. Well, the men with prostate cancer were entered into the study between 1994 and 2002 and the study ended in 2010. Thus, men who entered the study in 2001 and 2002 could not have been followed for 10 years! The authors admit this discrepancy but dismiss it as unimportant, stating that their use of Kaplan-Meir survival plots overcome this discrepancy. And to some extent they due. However, the data used to calculate the Kaplin-Meier plots was so flawed that the survival pots are meaningless. This statistical methodology was not designed to be used in a study such as this where men were switched willy-nilly from one arm of the study to another and received a multitude of different treatment modalities other than radical prostatectomy, any one of which could have affected the Kaplin-Meier survival plots. There is an old saying in medical statistics, shit in shit out, and that's what we have here! Finally, not a word is said about the local complications associated with the do nothing approach to prostate cancer. I expect this is so because Dr Wilt and most of his co-authors do not have a clue as to the quality of life issues that a man faces when he has an uncontrolled cancer in his prostate gland. Many of these men's lives are a living hell because of the urinary obstruction and bleeding caused by their cancerous prostates. Men with locally advance prostate cancer commonly require repeated transurethral resections of the prostate to relieve their urethral obstruction and when the cancer invades the external urethral sphincter, as it often does, these operations commonly result in total urinary incontinence. More troublesome, and difficult for the patient and his urologist to manage, is the bleeding associated with a rapidly growing cancerous prostate gland. The bleeding prostate gland not only causes clot retention but the blood clots also invariably obstruct the catheters that are used bypass the obstructing and bleeding prostates. Some of these unfortunate men end up spending more time in the emergency rooms than they do at home. It is extremely important to address the morbidity associated with watchful waiting for prostate cancer because these local complications of prostatic cancer do not occur in men who are treated by radical prostatectomy. Men who have the gland surgically removed may die from metastatic disease if the malignancy has already spread before surgery, but they do not suffer the ravages of a bleeding obstructing prostate during the last years of their lives. Thus, there are significant quality of life benefits to the procedure, even if it does not cure them. It is well known in academic medicine that statistics can be made to show almost anything and there is a great deal wrong with the way the authors employ statistics in this study. The PIVIT study is so flawed that it never should have been accepted for publication, certainly not it the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Is this esteemed medical journal going the way of the New York Times? I write this blog in the hopes that any male, of appropriate age, who reads it will think twice before forgoing their PSA tests. I also hope that the reader will consider his options very carefully before letting himself be talked into some silly none-treatment plan involving watchful waiting, if he is unfortunate enough to be one of the 17% of American males who will develop the cancer during their lifetime. It's really quite simple. If your prostate cancer can be detected while it is still confined to the prostate gland, you can be cured by surgery 100% of the time. No if ands or buts about it! If, on the other hand, you chose to ignore the cancer it will ultimately kill you if you live long enough, of that there can be no doubt! I can't cover all important aspects pertaining to the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer in this blog. If you would like to learn more including when to start being screened for prostate cancer; when to stop being screened for the disease; and what to do if you are unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with the malignancy, read my e-book What You Should Know About Prostate Cancer- Get it before it gets you!

Release Those Tax Records Now Mitt!

Our dear leader Barack Husain Obama is making a big deal about Mitt Romney's refusal to release his tax records for the past 30 or 40 years. I have no idea why Mr. Romney is so reluctant to comply with this simple request. Undoubtedly, his tax forms will confirm what we already know. Mr. Romney has made gobs of money over the years and has paid gobs and gobs in taxes. After all, that's what successful business men and women do, make money and pay taxes. So release those tax records Mitt, as soon as possible, and end this meaningless distraction from the real issues we face in the coming election. But here's the deal. Release them only after our first black president has agreed to release his college and law school transcripts, and not a day sooner! Why has our president refused to release his school records? That is the $64,000 question. Nope, it's not that his grades were so poor, after all grades do not mean a thing to the liberal idiots that vote for demorats like Obama, Gore, Pelosi, Reed, Boxer and the like. After all, Gore flunked out of both Law School and Divinity School and he still came within a gnat's eyelash of becoming president. Think of that Mable, how in the hell do you flunk out of Divinity School? That must take some doing! No, our community organizer America hating president has a far more sinister secret that he is trying to hide from the public and it is this. Release of his college and law school transcripts will reveal that he registered as a foreign student, probably from Kenai where he was born. Yup, that's the dirty little secret that Reverend Wright's favorite son is trying to hide from us. I'll bet my life on it.

The Tax The Rich Scheme- A Meaningless Exercise in Futility

Let's see if I have this right. The people who work the hardest in this country we call America, are not paying their fair share in taxes. As the liberal pundits are quick to point out, the one percenters, those who earn $380,354 or more pay only 38% percent of the taxes collected by the federal government. Clearly they should be paying more, a lot more! Similarly, it is unconscionable that the five percenters, those households with a yearly taxable income of $159,619 or more pay only 58.72 % of the federal tax burden. Clearly these scoundrels, which include most of the small businesses in the country, should be paying more, a lot more. After all, how can we provide tax rebates to the 50 percenters who pay no federal or state income taxes if we don't force the rich to pay their fair share? Can't be done, even I can see that. There is one small problem with this tax the rich scheme though, and it is this. If we confiscated every last penny of those making over $250,000 a year it wouldn't be enough to run the government for even one single year, no not even 365 days. Now, I am not talking about a 100% tax on the income of the rich here, no I'm talking about confiscating, stealing if you will, everything they own- houses, cars, cloths, boats, kids shoes, everything of any material value at all! Well, you might argue, it's not all that bad an idea, after all it is enough to fund the government for nearly a year, that's a lot better than a sharp stick in the eye! The problem with this kill off the rich scheme, of course, results from the fact that if you steal everything the productive members of society have there will be no one to tax next year, or the year after. You can only kill the goose that lays the golden eggs once. Dead geese are incapable of laying eggs, let alone golden ones. The point of all this rhetoric is this. All discussions pertaining to tax rates are meaningless. Political discussions on tax rates only severe to distract us from the fundamental problem we face in this country, we are spending too much and we have been spending too much for at least 75 to 100 years. As of this moment, 8:19 a.m. on 6/2/2012, our national debt is $15,777,499,714,009.83 give or take a billion or so. It is, of course, impossible for any of us to comprehend such a figure, but we should be able to understand the implications of such a horrendous liability. The most important thing to understand is that our national debt is so large that it never can be paid off, not in a billion years, no matter how much we reduce federal spending or how much we tax the rich. We have been spending like drunken sailors for nearly a century and, at this point in time we have, for practical purposes, spent our way into bankruptcy. It's really as simple as that! Yes we are bankrupt as a nation, we just don't know it yet. Think, for a moment, of the implications of the financial mess we find ourselves in. The interest we pay on the national debt consumes about 20% of all the federal government collects each year in taxes. Small potatoes the liberals say; not a big deal, the republican politicians agree. Only the libertarians seem to get it. Big deal or not, here is the problem. Interest on the national debt is, at least for the present, manageable for only one reason. The Federal Reserve has kept the interest rates artificially low. Interest rates of 1% or less have had an extremely adverse effect on the economy as a whole, but low rates has made it possible for us to pay the interest on our national debt without having to declare a national state of emergency and bankruptcy. But, no one in his or her right mind can believe that the Federal reserve can continue to maintain the present low interest rates indefinitely. No, interest rates will have to rise eventually and when they do, it's Katy bar the door! Just think of it. If interest rates increase to their historically normal levels of 3 to 4 %, the interest on the national debt will consume every dollar the federal government collects in taxes. There will not be a single dollar left for, national defense, Medicare, education, aid to the homeless or any other of the endless federal programs. When that happens the Feds will have no choice but to deflate the value of the dollar so that the massive debt we have accumulated will be less burdensome. Will this kind of manipulation of the dollar solve the problem? In truth, I have no idea. One thing seems sure though, when that happens, gold and silver will be king! Well, I've wondered a little off the path here. The point of the essay was not to point out how hopeless our national financial situation is. Rather my goal was to argue that any discussion involving tax rates is a red herring designed to distract us from the real problem, our addiction to deficit spending. The problem, as Regan so apply pointed out, is not that we do not tax enough, it is that be spend too much and, I might add, have been doing so for nearly 100 years. As Reverend Wright said, "our chickens have come home to roost," and at this point there is precious little we can do about it.

Excerpt #1 from Escape From Chaos

Jim Hipkins, the oldest member of the gang, was a 75 year old retired Air Force Colonel. Uncle Jim, as Max called him, had flown 25 missions in the Vietnam war. Jim despised the government who, he rightly believed, had refused to recognize the contribution he and his fellow combatants had made during the Vietnam debacle. Jim had been badly injured when his plane was shot down on his 25th and last mission over Nam 45 years before. Sam, who was in his Urology residency at the University of Minnesota Health Sciences Center at the time, helped patch him up. The two had been best friends ever since and Jim had followed Sam when he and his young family had returned to California in the early 1970's. Jim opened a private security agency in Walnut Creek and had done quite well providing his services to Nordstrom's Department Store and several other high end retailers in the area. All had gone well until the east bay shoplifters decided to shift their focus from the impoverished cities of Oakland and Richmond to the more prosperous retail outlets in Walnut Creek. This, of course, was good for the private security guard business, at least initially. All went reasonably well until Jim and his employees busted three inner city blacks who were caught red handed while leaving Nordstrom's with several shopping bags full of expensive merchandise, including a $5,000 ladies hand bag, they had not paid for. The arrest was routine but what followed was not. The defendants pleaded no contest to grand theft and were sentenced to two years probation. The prosecutor for Contra Costa County had agreed to the defendants proposed plea bargain because there was no room to house the petty thieves in the Martinez County jail. The local jails in California were bursting at the seams because Governor moonbeam decided to return all prisoners, who were deemed to be nonviolent, to the local lockups in the cities and towns where they had committed their crimes. So far so good, Nordstrom's got their expensive merchandise back and the shoplifters got a slap on the wrist, business as usual in twenty-first century America. Jim's rent-a-cops got a high five for stopping another heist and, with the good publicity the episode generated in the local press, Jim picked up two more clients. Then things took an unexpected twist to the left, the hard left. It was a quite Sunday afternoon and, as was their usual custom on Sundays during the spring of each year, Sam and Uncle Jim were sitting on the deck overlooking the serine valley below the house while consuming a couple of adult beverages. Sam knew something was afoot when his dog Dukie, who was always by his side, gave a low growl deep in his throat. This was Dukie's way of telling Sam that someone was coming down the road towards the house. The next thing they knew federal agents were at the front door with a warrant for Jim's arrest. The warrant stated that Jim and his private police force had violated the inner city black's civil rights when they arrested them for shoplifting. The rest is history, the trial was held in the Federal Court House in San Francisco before Federal Judge Susan Puling. Trials by one's peers, in none homicide cases, had been abandoned several years before because of the cost involved in running traditional jury trials. The federal prosecutor produced court records showing that over the past 5 years Jim's private police force had made 562 arrests for shoplifting related offences. Prosecutor Gonzales went on to demonstrate that the vast majority of those arrested, 96% to be exact, were residents from the minority communities of Oakland, Richmond and Bay Point. Prosecutor Gonzales argued that the large number of people of color being arrested was evidence per se that the defendant and his colleagues were relying on racial profiling to make their illegal arrests. Jim's high priced lawyer, Samuel Kline, tried to object, contending that there was no evidence, what so ever, that any innocent person, irrespective of race, had ever been arrested by Jim or any member of his team of security guards. Without a second thought, Judge Puling ruled that Kline was out of order and fined him $500 for, what she said, was his trivial attempt to disrupt the proceedings. The trial was short, if not so sweet, lasting less than an hour. Judge Puling ultimately ruled that, irrespective of the guilt or innocence of the shoplifters Jim and his staff had arrested, they had been illegally detained because he had used racial profiling to select them from a crowd of other prospective shoplifters. Defense lawyer Kline made one last feeble attempt to defend his client by pointing out that the level of shoplifting by the white residents who lived in Walnut Creek and its surrounding suburbs was too low to be statistically significant. Thus, Kline argued, with respect to the crime of shoplifting, the whole concept of racial profiling was meaningless. After all, how could his client be expected to arrest locals who lived in these communities if they weren't inclined to break this particular aspect of the law? By this time Judge Puling had had enough, she found Kline in contempt of court and sentenced him to 5 days in the county jail. As they handcuffed lawyer Kline and led him to the bus that would take him to the Martinez Jail, the good Judge fined Jim $100,000 and sentenced him to 600 hours of community service. With that, she slammed down her gavel bringing the proceeding to an end and called for the next case on her calendar. The verdict in the case, which was ultimately upheld by the Ninth District Circus Court of Appeals in San Francisco as well as the United States Supreme Court, changed the law forever. Before the Puling ruling, it was unlawful to use racial profiling to apprehend suspected law breakers. After the Puling ruling it became illegal to arrest individuals of a minority group for a crime if the overall percentage arrested for the offence exceeded their rank in the population as a whole. This was interpreted to mean that, in California, where minorities make up 50% of the population, it was evidence per se of racial profiling if more than 50% of those arrested for a specific crime were from the minority community. The states of Washington and Oregon adapted similar anti-discriminatory racial profiling legislation shortly thereafter as did most of the Northeastern states. Once again California had lead the way, taking judicial lunacy to an entirely new level, and a large segment of the clueless nation, had followed. Six months later Judge Puling disappeared after she left her home on Russian Hill one foggy Monday morning to drive to the San Francisco Federal Courthouse. No trace of her or her shinny new black Mercedes SUV was ever found, it was like she and her vehicle had disappeared from the face of the earth. Jim swore that he had no idea what had happened to the judge, but couldn't vouch for the innocence of several of his former employees who had been extremely pissed off when Jim was forced closed his security guard business and they lost their jobs. Sam later came to the conclusion that it was, more likely than not, Judge Puling had become the first casualty of the Second American Revolution. Well, she might have been the first, but she certainly was not be the last. Uncle Jim paid the 100 grand fine but never served an hour of community service. Once the feds got their hands on his money, they seemed to lose interest in him. Within a week he had closed the doors of his thriving private security business and discharged his entire work force of 22 employees. Nordstrom's also stopped doing business in Walnut Creek two months later, after several more robberies convinced management that they could not continue to operate a successful high end retail outlet in the Walnut Creek area. The department store's closure added an additional 225 people to the unemployment lines in Contra Costa county. Tiffanies followed suit shortly thereafter as did Davidson and Licht, a high-end jewelry store that had been a fixture in Walnut Creek since 1916. If you wanted to buy a Christmas present for your wife or girlfriend in Walnut Creek that year it wasn't going to be anything very fancy, more than likely it was going to be of the dime store variety. Go to my web site to learn more about Escape From Chaos at www.boobsbymerrill.com

America's First Black President

The people of Oz had lived for thousands of years in a land of milk and honey. It always had been their practice to work hard and save their money, putting it away for a rainy day. During the past 50 to 60 years, however, the industrious nature of the citizens of Oz slowly had changed, possibly due to something some evil demon had put in their drinking water. Or, Maybe, someone had cast a spell over them. No one knew for sure what had brought about the change. It was similar to a hive of honey bees that had been infected by a deadly virus that turned worker bees into drones, whose only purpose was to mate with the queen and consume the hives increasingly meager recourses. A hive like this, of course, was doomed to failure. But the Ozian's couldn't see what was happening to them, and like lemmings blindly running to their deaths over the side of a cliff, continued in their self destructive ways, hoping to beat France and Greece in the race to national irrelevance. And so it came to be, the people of Oz became increasingly fat and lazy as they sat back and watched their once prosperous nation deteriorate before their very eyes. But this tendency to slothfulness was not what ultimately did them in. No, it was their tendency to elect unworthy leaders that led to their ultimate demise. It began when they sent the socialist Woodrow Wilson to the White House and the folly continued when they elected Presidents Roosevelt, Johnson and the peanut farmer Carter. The leadership of these ultra liberal politicians, supported by the leftist dimwits and dingbats in the House and Senate, left the land of Oz swimming in a sea of red ink before you could say Jack Robison. But then, when things could hardly have gotten any worse, they made the biggest mistake of all, they elected their first black president. The sheeple of Oz ignored the fact that Senator Obama had been raised by a radical liberal mother and a Muslin communist father. Just as they overlooked his ties to the leaders of the cop killing Weather Underground's William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. It made even less difference to them, that president to be Obama, had sat in the pews of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, while soaking up every word of the black leaders anti-Oz rhetoric. No, all that seemed to matter to the naive citizens of Oz was that the man they hoped to elect president was black. The fact that he was somewhat of a comical figure with his large misshapen and mismatched ears seemed only to endear him to the masses, the majority of whom would not rest until they had made him president. So, Obama became president of Oz and immediately began to change it into a country of his own liking. He took over General Electric and General Motors, demanded that the latter make electric golf carts disguised to look like actual cars, except that they didn't have real motors and wouldn't go very far on a charge of electricity. When it was determined that no one would buy the electric go-carts, their dear black leader insisted that GM give the fake cars away. The banks were the next to go. The former community organizer from Chicago's eastside, now the President of Oz, forced the banks to make home loans to anyone who wished to purchase a home, irrespective of whether or not they had a job or the means to pay for the dwelling. This led to the collapse of the housing market and sent the country into the worst recession since Oz's great depression 150 years before. The President's wife Mooch-chelle, who had thighs the size of medium sized redwood trees and liked barbecued ribs better than anything in the world, spent most of her time flying all over the world on Air force two at taxpayers' expense. She was accompanied by an entourage of camp followers, the likes of which had not been seen since the reign of England's King Henry the Eighth. When not on vacation the first lady grew vegetables in the White House garden and led the campaign to reform the school lunch programs in the land of Oz. This crusade was a miserable failure since most of the children, including their child President, preferred pizza and hotdogs too turnip greens and raw carrots. As time went on, the first black President's appearance began to take a turn for the worse. His face, the main feature of which had always been his lopsided elephant like ears, began, because of his incessant lying, to resemble that of the cartoon character Pinocchio. His big ears were no longer such a big deal, as his nose continued to lengthen with each passing day. This, of course, was an emperor's clothes situation and no one in his staff of advisors, or any member of the press, dared to mention the first black President's ever-enlarging Pinocchio like nose. Things came to a head, when the President's snoozle became so long that it interfered with his ability to read a teleprompter. His inability to use the teleprompter was a disaster because Oz's first black president didn't have the ability to form meaningful words, much less sentences, if left to his own devices. So ended, the reign of Oz's first black president. He left office in disgrace and returned to Chicago where he became the city's second black mayor. The first one, of course, was in prison with most of the state's previous liberal goveners. Proving once again, that you didn't have to know how to form words or meaningful sentences to be the mayor of a large city in the land of Oz.

The Dingbat Twins

THE DINGBAT TWINS The luxurious 230 seat passenger plane was sitting first in line to take off at the runway reserved for government dignitaries and other members of the elite class at the Dulles International Airport in Washington DC. The planes 12 person crew included a master chef, a wine steward, two serving people dressed in tuxedos, as well as speaker Pelosi's personal masseuse, Philip. Mary, the speakers $250 an hour hair stylist had fell ill at the last moment and couldn't make the trip. The airplanes co-pilot knocked politely on the door to the passenger compartment and was ushered to the plush black leather seats where Speaker Pelosi and Senator Boxer were sitting. Each had a large glass of $438 a bottle aged single malt scotch whiskey in their hands, Pelosi's was already half empty and she appeared to be a bit tipsy. "Permission to take off Speaker Pelosi," the Air force colonel said. He kept his eyes on the floor as he spoke, as a show of deference to his prestigious passengers. Everyone knew that the two liberal politicians hated the military and the speaker's response was not entirely unexpected. "Well, of course you can take off, you moron, what have you been waiting for?" she snapped. "Do I have to tell you everything? Now get back in the cockpit and get this thing off the ground! I've a good mind to have you court-martialed, and I will if you don't smarten up." The colonel bowed slightly and turned to walk away. "And you tell the captain that I expect a smooth ride this time. I won't tolerate any more of that turbulence you subjected us to last time! My nieces and nephews were sick for a week after what you put us through." "Don't you just hate those military types Babs? Lord knows I do, with their stupid uniforms and better than thou attitudes." "Yes, and I can hardly stand it, Nancy, when they come to testify before the senate, with their condescending attitudes and all. One of those fools even had the nerve to call me ma'am at one of the hearing last year. Who do they think they are treating elected public officials like us in such a disrespectful manner? Just who do they think pays their salaries anyway. Well, his career in the military is over, I saw to that! "Good for you Babs' low-lives like that need to be kept in their place, that's for sure." I don't know how this country could survive without your steadfast leadership in the Senate." "Oh Nancy, aren't you just so kind, but you're the brilliant one! Just think, convincing those morons that they should vote for Obama's Health Care Bill before they had even read it. Now that was a stroke of pure genius. You will go down as the greatest speaker ever for pulling off that one, no doubt about that, none at all." "Oh, it was nothing really Babs, anyone could have done it." "Anyway, its nearly time for dinner. I hope you like Maine lobster, that's what we are having. I just know you are going to love the champagne, its Perrier-Jouet 1945. It costs $5,000 a bottle," she giggled, "but, of course you have to buy a case to get it at that price." "Pretty expensive," Nancy, "must be nice to have a rich husband." "Heavens to Betsy, Babs, if it wasn't for the business I sent his way, we wouldn't have a pot to piss in, I can assure you of that! Anyway, I would never spend that kind of money on anything, let alone a bottle of overpriced French wine. I hate the damned French almost as much as I despise the military. No, the sheeple that contribute their hard earned dollars to my campaign fund paid for the wine as well as the lobster. Hell, they pay for damn near everything. That's if I can't find a way to wheezel it out of the government." "Well, traveling with you certainly is a treat, Nancy, I just hate flying commercial these days. I fly first class, of course, and buy up all the first cabin seats so I don't have to mingle with the other passengers, Lord knows what you might catch from those peasants. But it's still such a hassle, getting to the airport and going through security and all." "God, I know what you mean, Babs. As you know, I had to give up most of my perks, including the plane, when we lost control of the house in 2010. I thought having to go commercial again would be the end of me, I really did!" "That must have been awful, Nancy, the least that meany Boehner could have done was let you keep the plane! Just think of it, and after all you have given to this country, where would we be now without your insightful leadership all these years. I tell you, there just no justice in this world anymore, none at all!" "Well, I begged him to let me keep the plane, I even shed a few tears. But he, being the SOB he is, wouldn't hear of it, said it didn't look right to have someone in a leadership position flying around in a 230 seat private jet at taxpayers expense, especially with so many out of work and surviving on food stamps. There was just no reasoning with the guy. Oh, he did offer me let me use a smaller plane, but I refused his offensive jester, recognizing it for the slight that it was. The very idea of having to downsizing to a 20 seat aircraft, the nerve of the guy." "I admire your courage and steadfast resolve, Nancy, I think you have been very brave about the whole thing. It must have been very hard on you and your family too." "Yes it was, looking back on it now, I'm kind of surprised that I was able to make it through those dark days as minority leader. I still have nightmares about the weekly flights on those awful commercial airplanes. Having to wait in those endless lines at the airports and being screened as if I were a common farm hand. I tell you it was downright humiliating, that's what it was. Fortunately, I wasn't subjected to as many personal searches or pat downs as I was in my younger days, but it still was a terrible experience being herded around like a bunch of cattle." "Yes, public figures like us pay a heavy price for the indispensible service we provide our country, but that's our lot in life and we just have to make the best of it Nancy." At that point the head waiter approached the two dingbats and announced that their lobsters were about to be served in the planes lavish main cabin. They staggered to the dining room chattering away like magpies who had gorged themselves on to many fermented Christmas berries and were oblivious of the world around them.

Who really killed Oscar Grant 111?

What can we learn from the verdict in the Mehserle trial? Who really killed Oscar Grant 111?
Well we didn’t learn much, but it sure reinforces a lot about what we already know about society in general and specifically about a large segment of the black population in this country.
First, let’s review the facts. Low life Oscar Grant gets in a fight on a Bart train on New Year’s Day 2009. The Bart Cops somehow get Grant and a couple of his buds off the train and try to arrest them. Good citizen Grant gets into a scuffle with the cops and he is shot in the back by officer Mehserle. Grant dies on the spot and is immediately granted sainthood by the liberal press and the Afro-American community. Mesherle subsequently is arrested and tried for murder. After a lengthy trial the jury finds, after only two hours of deliberation, that Mehserle is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Last but not least, as expected, the blacks in Oakland (one of the major crime capitals in America), riot as soon as the sun sets that evening.
That’s the way this thing was portrayed in the Contra Costa Rag-Times earlier this week. Probably the most glaring omission in their various articles on the subject was the fact that they failed to point out, or even mention, that Saint Grant was vigorously resisting arrest at the time he was shot. They do begrudgingly admit that racist white cop Mehserle, in the heat of battle, became confused and pulled his police revolver rather than his Taser when he shot the Sainted black man in the back while trying to subdue him. The Rag-Times maintains that it was a small splinter group that caused the post verdict havoc in Oakland but the pictures of the riot tell a much different story. This was a major riot involving thousands of lawless blacks with a sprinkling of poor white trash and other minorities thrown in the mix for good measure.
I agree with the verdict of involuntary manslaughter, it was the only verdict possible given the circumstances. If the Oakland polls and their black supporters had got their way and the jury had brought in a verdict of second degree murder, it certainly would have been reversed on appeal. However, to show how screwed up our system of justice is in Lala land, the Los Angeles jury also found Mehserle guilty of a gun enhancement which could add about 10 years to his sentence. This, undoubtedly, was a sop to the black community. In any case, it was an irrational decision since, if the jury had thought that Mehsele knew he had a gun in his hand when he shot the Saint, they should have convicted him of second degree murder or, at the least, voluntary manslaughter. I believe this aspect of the verdict will be reversed on appeal.
But I digress as usual! The real question to be asked is this. Who is responsible for the death of Oscar the now Saint Grant? First, to put things in perspective, realize that we are dealing with a typical black family from Oakland. The Saint’s mother Wanda Johnson never married his father, Oscar James 11, who is presently serving a life sentence, with enhancements, in the big house for murder. His Uncle Cephus also has a criminal record. Can you imagine what families like this cost the tax payers?
Anyway, I maintain that Officer Mehserle, while the one who pulled the trigger, was not the one responsible for the death of Oscar Grant 111. Rather, I believe today’s black culture killed Saint Grant; they might as well have shot him between the eyes with a 30-30 rifle. This screwed up culture teaches their gullible children that white men who lived hundreds of years ago are responsible for all of the ills the black man faces in society today, 150 years after Lincoln freed the slaves, 50 years after affirmative action and after all the trillions of dollars wasted on Johnson’s great black society. This, of course is irrational, but, thanks in no small part to our liberal politicians and the liberal press, this is what they believe.
To make things worse, these people have been molly coddled to the point that they believe that they are above the law. In fact, many of them refuse to abide by the laws that have evolved in this and other civilized countries over the past 5 or 6 centuries. These laws are the primary thing that differentiate the civilized western world from the primitive African tribes from which the blacks originally came.
As a result of this wanton disrespect for the law, if a black man today is caught committing a crime he is likely to do anything in his power to resist arrest and will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming racial slurs all the way, to the police station. If he kills a cop or two in the process of resisting arrest, no problem. After all they haven’t executed a black man in California in 30 years even though they have murdered several police officers and thousands of other blacks since we exempted them from the death penalty. Well, in this case it did not work out so well for the Sainted Oscar Grant or, for that matter, officer Mehserle who is the real victim of this fiasco.
But there is more to the story than this. With his father in prison, it seems that Saint Grant was raised by his mother. If so, she more than anyone else is responsible for his death! Preposterous you say! Well not really, if Mrs. Grant had raised her son to respect the law he would never have confronted the police officers that were trying to arrest him. No, Saint Grant would be alive today if his mother had raised him, as most of us were raised, to have respect for those in authority in general and especially to respect the police. Unfortunately, black children today are raised with a giant chip on their shoulder and that chip killed Oscar Grant 111.
Finally, a word or two about the Oakland riots that followed the verdict. As everyone knew there was going to be a riot in Oakland, irrespective of the jury’s verdict! Lawless inner city blacks will riot at the drop of a hat. In fact inner city blacks have even been known to riot even after good news. As I recall, a lawless crowd of blacks tried to burn down the city of Philadelphia after 76ers won the NBA Championship a few years ago (or was it Los Angles after the Lakers won a title, doesn’t make any difference the situation is the same in all large cities run by democrats). In truth, these people do not riot as a protest to something. Rather, they use the pretense of a riot to justify the destruction of someone else’s property and to justify their theft of someone else’s goods. Of course, if these lawless mobs cannot carry it off they will burn it. The fact that they are destroying and steeling the goods of other minorities and blacks doesn’t faze the rioters in the slightest. By the way, where are all the black preachers when this type of thing is going on?
Well, that’s the way it is! I guess we should be thankful that they didn’t burn the city of Oakland to the ground. Or should we?