Duh-duh-duh-death panels.

American politics resembles British politics about as much as their take on wrestling does. In both cases, it's a case of distance from the classical Greek system, which is rather neat if you need a pithy introduction to an otherwise content-light blog post.

The current Bete noir of the howling vortex of wrongheadedness that currently constitutes the American Right is a move towards socialised healthcare. Living in Britain, as most of the people reading this most likely do, we take a system by which people are treated as best they can with a grain of salt. It's a monolithic enterprise, employing an integer percentage of the population. It's failings are many, manifest, sometimes amusing, frequently frightening. It is however, all considered, really rather good, and certainly better than many people could pay for themselves. Private healthcare can be rather nifty, but I'm sure few people who live under a socialised system would imagine medical insurance companies to be friendly, trustworthy institutions.

Which leads me to this. If you don't fancy clicking through, it's a business-orientated breakdown of how healthcare in this country works. Not too exciting, particularly as it's written in a bizarrely hostile tone from someone from a nation with lower life expectancy than ours. Still, the pertinent sentence is this:

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

FUCK.

Amazingly, these people actually stand a chance of derailing the process to set up a government alternative to private insurance. This is an example of a literate one. A slightly less literate one is described here:



Yeah. Death Panels. This is why I can't follow British politics any more. I'm gorged on the artificial flavourings over the pond.

Fuck.

Need any more reason to think the Catholic Church is an increasingly irrelevant, monolithic and misogynistic organisation, here you go.

Bullshit Parade.

It is a proven scientific fact that thinking about something often causes it to happen. Some call this quantum physics. Others simply call it "faith." We ask that you open your mind to joining in with a unique psychic force that will change our lives through the power of thought.

Do you know what makes things happen? Doing things. I know, I too was amazed that there is often, frequently and sometimes observed link between cause and effect. It's spooky! When you do stuff, stuff will happen! Try making some toast - you will get delicious buttered toast! Try thinking about toast - you will almost certainly get hungry. It's science! It's full of scientifically-proven science! Oh, it's so scientific, you could rub yourself in it and people would mistake you for Alan Turing!

There is nothing like the faintest hint of a crisis to bring the charlatans hurtling out from under their stones. One effect I will guarantee from this gibberish - they will find some sort of vague market wobble, and attribute it to positive thinking. Then they will start asking for money.

Charlatans, quacks and crooks typically thrive in times of upheaval. We are suckers for miracle cures and quick fixes. These people aggravate me more than your common or garden buffoon, because their crookedness is so frequently dressed as piety. There is a cultishness to quackery, evinced recently with the MMR scare and similar nonsensical medical squeamishness. Now we have kids dying from easily preventable diseases, more and more people are getting illnesses that were almost extinct a decade ago, and there is still not one documented link between MMR and autism.

If you imagine positive thinking is going to save the world, try imagining what actual contribution might achieve. If you think that Jenny McCarthy knows more about medicine than your doctor, then I feel very sorry for your children. And if you thought that it would be cute to play on the terms 'herd immunity' and 'following the herd' then congratulations, because you have directly contributed to the deaths of several children, an increase in the rates of communicable disease in Europe and the US. And since the anti-MMR movement is so intrisically linked to new-age "medicine", I feel that I should point out that positive thinking will have all the effect that it always has - fuck all.

I sense a theme coming on.

Rant.

Maybe I'm oversimplifying here, but a courier's job is not particularly taxing on the brain. You pick something up in one place, put it down in another, traversing the intervening distance as you please.

Except that it seems not to be. The last three things I've had delivered have turned up damaged. The one we at the Little House That Could are waiting for at the moment has had a hefty surcharge applied to it to ensure it's delivered in the evening, when it's vaguely possible to be in to collect it.

So they tried to deliver during the day. Imagine my surprise.



The contents of the Amtrak vending machine, yesterday.

So I'll say it here. Amtrak (for 'tis they) are cretinous weasels. Typing 'Amtrak + Useless' into Google brings up a lot of results. One that was in the top ten seemed to assert that their drivers involved themselves in exceptionally complicated acts of congress with farmyard animals. I am in no position (you'll be relieved to hear) to confirm or deny this, though I am strongly inclined to agree.



After a hard day breaking and losing people's stuff, Amtrak employees like nothing more than to relax with a delicious glass of lead-based paint. You can taste the lead!

The bottom line is, if someone cannot tell day from night, I certainly do not fucking want them to be driving.

Doubledonkeyspamtasticelastic

Or, Spam then.

Today's winner by a country mile:

I hasten to add that the potential problem lies not with the raft but with the valve itself.

Why? I'm honestly not sure that a water-borne vessel needs a device that exists solely to let liquid through, but that could just be me.