Existing in New York City in a Transcendent State

Foto by tgw, New York City, June 2012
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Act Four...Approaching the Finale
I love being around artists: painters, musicians, writers. I'm lucky that my friends are mostly these people. I find my friends have through their arts transcended the mundane, the everyday bullshit that passes for reality. My friends live in worlds that break out of reality to forage around in imaginational fields that compel them to experiment in both norms and abnorms.

As a musician, I find the totally improvisational aspects of all music the most elevating. When I compose, I start from nothing and evolve into something. In my writing adventures, I find my most fun comes in writing improvisational verse. Short verses some of which I can eventually put music to and turn into songs. Starting from a blank surface. A blank sheet of paper. A blank canvas. A blank music score sheet. Even this post I'm writing now comes straight off the top of my head. Like "head arrangements" in jazz--and I still find jazz the most wonderful music ever conceived because of its improvisational aspects, though all music can certainly be conceived from an improvisational standpoint.

Breaking boundaries. Breaking parameters. Breaking meters. Breaking tradition. Breaking norms. You could easily say I sound crazy. Though I'm like Henry Miller said he was, too sane to be insane. Like a truly insane person can take a razor blade and cut his or her own throat. Me, no, I couldn't cut my throat. I could maybe like Van Gogh cut an ear off given a trying situation, like being rejected by a lover. But, I can pretend to cut my throat in a verse. Or in a short story I can feel what it's like and have a character cut his or her throat.

I call this Act Four...Approaching the Finale because my cardiologist who isn't improvisational at all says given the damage my heart suffered in my February heart attack, I could go at any moment. My heart could just suddenly quit thumping. Later this year my doctor is going to implant a defibrillator in me so if my damaged heart does just stop beating, this device will electrically shock it back to life. Sounds like an Unka Dick Cheney adventure of the heart doesn't it? And that old bastard got a heart transplant at 71 years old. My doctor tells me that he's amazed how my brother got a heart transplant at 63. He considers that too old for so serious a procedure. I didn't mention Unka Dick getting one at 71. Screw a heart transplant for me. Even if I'm healthy enough for it, I don't want that; besides, I couldn't afford so expensive a procedure. Did you know Unka Dick is worth almost as much as Slick Willie Clinton? Hundreds of millions of dollars! A little jerk from Nebraska and Wyoming who has lived off We the People's tax dollars most of his Neo-Conservative career--he started as a young aid to a politician during the Nixon-Ford administrations.

Being a politician is one way to get rich in this country, but I couldn't do it.  Politics is so beneath me.  Oh, I could lie like a dog--and I was a great little liar as a kid--so I could easily get in front of a bunch of local yokels and lie like a dog to them--"Yes, we can."  And do you know I heard Obama using that trite by now phrase in a speech the other day--he did, he said, "Yes, we can."  Originality?  No, politicians have no originality.  Originality is what I'm writing about now.  To get up and be original--"My feller Amuricans, let me be honest with you.  I'm crooked as a snake at night.  Why, you should see the line of lobbyists always welcomed into my office.  You should see my bank accounts.  I got nothing to hide, my feller freaks.  Hey, we should have a national healthcare policy.  No doubt about that; I mean even Cuba has free healthcare; even Costa Rica, folks.  But, let me lay it on the line, there's no Capitalist profits in a national healthcare policy.  You know how many under-the-table bucks come my way from the pharmaceutical companies?  From the pay-or-die healthcare insurance business?  It would make your head spin...why just yesterday, a Pfizer lobbyist handed me a check for two million bucks for my campaign coffers...and, hey, folks, let me level with you, my accountant, a creative fellow I went to Harvard with, makes sure I can skim several hundred thousand off the top of that Pfizer money...you know, for my personal expenses in the campaign.  Boy howdy, folks, being a politician is a good life.  So, hey, come on now, yes, we can, we can elect me, an honest politician, as your president and I guarantee, folks, I'll spill the beans on just how you folks are getting fucked."

Lies are easy for a good writer--and that includes a good speech writer.  As Ernest Hemingway said when he was accused of being a liar, "I'm not a liar, I'm a fiction writer."

In the time I have left on this wonderful earth, I want to feast on the good things of life.  I want to sail off into the wild blue yonder of creativeness--write verse, write stories, write novels, write essays--let it all pour out from my depths--reading those who came before me.  Like now I'm reading Henry Miller's Nexus, and Erskine Caldwell's short stories, and I just got H.L. Mencken's autobiography in three long volumes and am already delving into it.  And I'm writing on a novel; and I'm compiling my short verses into a book; and I'm still working on my Lester Young stage play; plus now I'm working on some tunes I'm going to be performing at my friends's Flamenco Latino theater here in New York City in August--rock and blues arranged by my guitarist friend and choreographed by one of the great Flamenco dancers...that's the excitement that I'm demanding now of my final days or years or whatever on this globe.

I'm refusing to waste my final act on the mundane.  On the stupid.  In the wastelands of politics or television or home buying or car buying or taking out insurance policies.  So I may die in the gutter totally stone-ass broke.  What will I care?  I'll die clutching a fistful of my accomplishments.  I will probably die an unknown, but again I say I don't give a damn; at least I'll die knowing myself.

thegrowlingwolf   
for The Daily Growler 


 

Existing in New York City: On a Brain-dead Saturday

Foto by tgw, New York City, June, 2012
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Check Out Nicholas Egon Jainschigg, a The Daily Growler Hall of Fame Artist, Over in Rhode Island, Doing a Painting: Nicholas Egon Jainschigg Paintings
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Trip to Hell and Back Over
I find it interesting how suddenly out of nowhere Samsung is emerging as a maker of computers and cell phones and iPods and refrigerators...I mean, Samsung? I always considered them like Sharp, a maker of cheap electronics out of Malaysia or somewhere Pacific Rim like that. But boy are they advertising like hell all over the media, especially on teevee.

Also, where do car companies come up with their names? Like the Toyota Venza. What the hell does Venza signify to Japanese marketers? I recall the old American car companies came up with names like the Dodge Ram (the Ram's head was their hood ornament), Chevrolet BelAir, Buick Custom or Roadmaster, Oldsmobile Rocket 88 (a rocket was their hood ornament), the Jeep 4x4, Lincoln Continental, Cadillac Sedan de Ville and Coupe de Ville, etc. I understood those names...but the Toyota Venza. And I ask myself, are Japanese cars now radiated?

The commercial media, including Yahoo news, are trashing President Obama daily, this week intimating that he's losing popularity due to the economy and that Romney is slowly gaining on him in the polls. What polls? I ask. Those Catholic college polls? Polls are so full of bullshit. Who in his or her right mind is considering voting for such a fool as Mitt "the Mormon" Romney? Of course, the good people of Massachusetts elected him governor. That includes Harvard professors and MIT professors...I mean, don't we usually consider Massachusetts a kind of progressive state? Nope, folks, Massachusetts is a dumb-ass state. Look at their current governor. Besides, they sainted the Kennedy boys, though most of the Kennedy worthless sons and daughters had to carpetbag to other states to get their cushy political jobs. Living off the taxpayers money. Totally worthless human beings; yet sanctified--why? Like the Kennedys--hey, We the Taxpayers of the US have totally supported this bunch of privileged fops since the days of Bootlegger Joe when he, a Nazi sympathizer, was made ambassador to Great Britain. And the Bush family (at one time Hitler's bankers); this bunch of worthless human beings have also lived off the taxpayers most of their worthless careers. Old Pappy Bush and his worthless worst-president-ever son are still living off the taxpayers.

I promised myself I wouldn't start railing on our Power Elite and that politics was so beneath me, but, dammit, it just makes me so god-damn mad to see our commercial media going after every progressive voice insinuating that the worst and sorriest candidates are the people's real choices. The dumbest people in the world, that's how I view my "feller Amuricans."

Everything I read in the commercial newspapers is lies; everything I hear on commercial teevee is lies. Like I'm reading how the recently released CIA papers on 9/11 prove that G.W. "Georgie Porgie" Bush lied us into this endless War on Terror. I already knew that. Yet, We the People of the USA don't seem to be pissed about what this clown did to us. Obama hasn't picked up on it and trashed our past worst-ever president and his administration for getting us involved in these endless wars we are currently involved in around the world. Remember, we have 150 military bases all over the globe. Remember, too, that the largest user and abuser of both fossil fuel and nuclear energies is the U.S. military!

Did you ever ask yourself how many millions of dollars these G-20 meetings cost We the People of the USA? Did you ever wonder how many millions of dollars we blow on Hillbilly Hillary's many State Department adventures she seems constantly to be on all around the world? Or how much these Congressional committee hearings like the one the Senate Banking boys just had with Prince Jamie Dimond cost We the People of the USA?

I was just reading on Little Timmy Geithner's Treasury Department Website that it is true that George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the USA did work to spur the economy, create jobs, and shoot the stock market back up to astronomical record highs and that Timmy and the Treasury are recommending to President Obama that he keep G.W.'s tax cuts in place. Turns out, our Treasury Department says, poor people don't pay dick shit when it comes to taxes. Low-life bastards. Of course these jealous fools, our out-of-work hicks and heathen or if they have jobs they're cleaning shit cans or working at Walmart of China as greeters, are confused by thinking the rich don't pay their fair share. According to our Treasury, the rich pay the bulk of our taxes. Then, I ask, why are We the People in such debt and the wealthy and wealthiest corporations (who are people don't forget) are making bucks head over heels?

We are fed so many lies our heads are spinning. A fool and his money are soon parted...who said that?...and we are a nation of fools. We truly believe there is a God. We truly believe that Osama Bin Laden planned the action that brought down the World Trade Center. We truly believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone killed President Kennedy. We truly believe that if you are rich you are wise. We truly no longer see anything wrong with Communist China owning our debt and manufacturing most of the products we buy, including U.S. flags. We don't even see anything wrong with countries like China, Indonesia, and India using child labor or in some instances slave labor. We don't see anything wrong with Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland buying up food supplies all over the world. We don't see anything wrong with the Federal Reserve still giving trillions of interest-free dollars to our crooked banking and financial industry. President Obama says absolutely nothing about Moody's (Warren Buffett owns it) downrating most of our big too-big-to-fail banks, including Prince Jamie Dimond's J.P. Morgan-Chase gang of pirate bankers.

I'll bet you, Mitt Romney (and he's going to pick this dumbass Paul Ryan for his running mate) gathers close to 50% of the vote come November. Half of this country are White racists, wild-eyed patriotic hypocrites, USA-home-bred terrorists, feeding at the money troughs like the pigs they are. Karl Rove, that criminal, is still on the loose getting his filthy hands on millions upon millions of dollars, still free to steal elections--and, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, he's an American citizen called Capitalist corporations. If you ain't got no money, then you are fucked. Get ready to get in line at your nearest Walmart of China store to try and get a job as a greeter. Also, you'd better stay healthy or else you should get ready to die since you'll be too poor to afford pay-or-die for-profit health insurance and you won't be cared for at our many coming-on-line for-profit hospitals--either that or gather up your clan and move to Canada--Montreal's suppose to be a nice place to live--though you should learn French before you move up there.
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A Reader's Comment From the economicpopulist.org--a person who thinks like The Daily Growler wants people to think:

These assclowns pull a going "Galt," well payback's a b*tch

Submitted by It's time for the average man+woman to also pull a strike (not verified) on Sat, 06/23/2012 - 18:39.

BOA [Bank of America] robosigns foreclosures leading to personal tragedies, suicides, homelessness, well screw them, pull your funds and go to your local credit union. Who would have the balls to enter into a 30 year mortgage (assuming one could find a job in 2012) with a known criminal organization like BOA or Wells Fargo or Chase or someone else? Who could ever trust them?
Same with Well Fargo killing thousands of jobs and moving them to Bangalore (or New Delhi) and Manila, fraudulent foreclosures, etc. Same with Chase that had massive security breaches because they don't care about customers' information, but only care about raping them financially. What, outsourcing data has implications to customers' security? Shocking!
Companies like American Express, GE, Boeing, Gulfstream in GA., FTI Consulting, state and federal govt. post fake jobs, f' them, post the information so the 30 million Americans unemployed in 2012 can pull this "GOING GALT" crap on them - payback. Bloomberg hired his sister for a city job and has his daughter working for him, but nepotism is bad, so my elementary school teacher told me.
USA Jobs posts fake ads to be filled by some dolt, well write to every single HR person involved and your US Senator and Rep. and bug them until they have no choice but to listen.
These scoundrels are blaming fellow Americans for massive unemployment, they are calling them lazy, uneducated, drug addicted losers who don't deserve to live the American dream while these criminals pull a "capital strike" while most certainly continuing to collect $20 million paydays (just look at JC Penney's recent failure of a CEO - scorch and burn management).
Your pension invests in hedge funds that pay the managers 2% of all assets under management in addition to 20% of all profits?! Guess what? That's a losing proposition that merely robs the public servants who have no choice. Write to your AG and Governor and pension administrator and demand to know who decided to invest in hedge funds, how the decision was made, and why the Hell 2% + 20% is a fair deal to public servants who are being fired left and right. FOIA, it's there for a reason.
Capital strike? Yeah, Ayn Rand, there's a role model for morons. Same as Gingrich is a model for being loyal and a man of the people or Obama is someone who knows life as a factory worker or Romney knows how to pull himself by his bootstraps (if your father was a Governor). D & R, equally useless, equally corrupt, equally beholden to the 1%.
These are all clowns so let's treat them as such. Payback, Bozo, payback.

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And, yes, I am brain dead on this Saturday...unable to think straight...watching teevee like a dumb ass...watching all the millionaire teevee personalities giddy with inane glee...watching Lisa Quinn redesigning frumpy California rooms...watching millionaire Charlie Rose interviewing millionaire (and crook) Henry Kissinger (can you believe this old bastard is still alive and well?--Henry's PR firm has an office in Beijing)...or watching millionaire David Letterman not being funny...or watching a program on Oprah Winfrey, how her multimillion-dollar income has declined since she retired from her television show and is becoming fatter and fatter as she wallows in the good life...or watching millionaire basketball players finishing up their season so they can retire to their Florida or Texas mansions...or watching millionaire baseball players like the highest paid dude in sports, Alex Rodriguez, hitting under .300 but still collecting multimillions of dollars for playing an average game of baseball--I still love the sport, but I'm seeing players making millions who don't deserve it--and it pains me to watch my once beloved Yankees playing in a ballpark paid for by the taxpayers of New York City honoring with a big splashy memorial wall George Steinbrenner, that big asshole, with his image wiping out those of the Babe, Lou Gehrig, even the Mick and Roger Maris...you see how brain dead I am?

I apologize for this brain-dead post.

A big fat dirty mouse just jumped over a mouse trap and ran across my floor right in front of my brain-dead ass.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Saturday Evening Daily Growler Post

Francisco Goya, "The Witches Sabbath"
(As the Spanish banks are getting bailed out of their collapse by the Goldman-Sachs pirates, the IMF, and the World Bank (controlled by We the People of the USA))

Note: California artist Geoff Greene (a The Daily Growler Hall of Fame Artist) is showing in Palm Springs coming up in August:
just to lygk I'm putting a piece in a show in Palm Springs in August, honoring B movie goddess Tura Satana (Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! among others) Just one painting but it's a biggie and i've been wanting to show in this gallery for a couple of years now so if ya happen to be in CA around August 15th drop by...geoff

Existing in New York City: Preparing for a Trip to Hell

Foto by tgw, New York City, June 2012
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Say Goodbye to: Andrew Sarris --All I can say is I used to find his Village Voice film criticism about as boring as it got; Pauline Kael was much more understandable. But then I'm not one to talk about film criticism except to say most films bore me. Andrew Sarris, 83, American film critic, complications from a fall.
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My Second Day in Hell
So far so good. My fans have kept me cool--outside in the street today (Thor's Day), it is hotter than the Holiest of the depths of Holy Hell, but in my apartment--NO PROBLEM--"Bring it on," as our great worst-president-ever once said.
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Readying for My Trip to Hell
Temperature is supposed to hit 100 here in Gotham tomorrow. Three days of Holy Hell predicted, 100 tomorrow, then 96 (which means 98) on Thor's Day, then 93 on FryDay with rain predicted that will hopefully cool the night down back into the 60s. New York City in 100 degree weather ain't no fun, folks, that I guarantee you. And without air conditioning, Death is your constant companion. And guess who doesn't have air conditioning? And guess who has a huge southern-exposed bay window in through which the sun blazes starting around 1 o'clock in the afternoon?

All around me, my Republican neighbors will sit in their air-conditioned multimillion-dollar condos planning to vote for Mitt "the Mormon" Romney and continue denying that there's global warming going on--in the meantime if the Con-Ed substation just a building away from me blows up, folks will be seeing Jesus walking on the water of the mirages that will be prevalent all over town no matter how much rent you pay or how many millions your condo is worth.

How about those stupid Greeks voting for their own demise by putting the Conservatives into power, which means they want to owe their souls to Goldman-Sachs by accepting the austerity measures the rest of the Euro Union will put on their dumb asses. The Socialists came in a close second but the pot-bellied big shot politicians are already talking caving in to the god-damn bankers, the IMF, and the World Bank (the last two controlled by the USA). Next comes Spain, but I don't think the Spaniards will fall into line as easily as the stupid Greeks.

Here in New York, it was announced yesterday that our state politicians are voting themselves a big raise come fall. These sorry bastards are raising their salaries to average over $100,000 a year. How dare these cheap chislers do this while at the same time the rest of us are heading for the nearest poor house. Amazin', amazin', amazin'!

A Summer of Discontent is heading the world's way methinks.

Of course, as a recent heart-attack survivor, I've got a huge survival test ahead of me. I've got to stay cool. Drink tons of water. One thing about New York City's tap water, it stays cold during heat waves since it comes down from the Catskills far underground in the cooler parts of the earth. During the height of the heat I soak towels in it and drape them over my shoulder and that keeps me cool. But there's never a dull moment during an NYC heat wave, especially at night--night's the worst time--night time's when Virgil has to keep that boat sailing as we travel through the Holiest parts of Holy Hell.

Reminds me of Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter's "Too Darn Hot":

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhs3Qklz5a0

Bad news, too, for the people of Egypt who thought they were going to get a democratic form of government after they ran Mubarak out of office and into his prison sick bed. Seems the Egyptian military--and they just got a new supply of weapons and ammunition and rockets from We the People of the USA--has decided they're taking the country over in spite of yesterday's election results that gave power to the Muslim Brotherhood. So the poor Egyptian Arab Springers have to get off their asses and amass in the streets again. Thousands of poor impoverished Egyptians will have to die. Militaries love POWER and they ain't gonna give it up no matter what. Look at the Syrian situation right now--Ass(hole)ad will wipe out as many of his countrymen as it takes to keep POWER. It's all about POWER and the POWER ELITE. Killing off thousands of a nation's citizens means nothing to the POWERFUL.

Again I quote my hero, C. Wright Mills, from his book The Power Elite:

In this military world, debate is no more at a premium than persuasion: one obeys and one commands, and matters, even unimportant matters, are not to be decided by voting. Life in the military world accordingly influences the military mind's outlook on other institutions as well as on its own. The warlord often sees economic institutions as means for military production and the huge corporation as a sort of ill-run military establishment. In his world, wages are fixed, unions impossible to conceive. He sees political institutions as often corrupt and usually inefficient obstacles, full of undisciplined and cantankerous creatures. And is he very unhappy to hear of civilians and politicians making fools of themselves?

It is men with minds and outlooks formed by such conditions who in postwar America have come to occupy positions of great decision. It cannot be said that they have necessarily sought these new positions; much of their increased stature has come to them by virtue of a default on the part of civilian political men. But perhaps it can be said, as C. S. Forester has remarked in a similar connection, that men without lively imagination are needed to execute policies without imagination devised by an elite without imagination.

thegrowlingwolf(on his way to Hell)
for The Daily Growler (Hell's Own Journal)

Existing in New York City While Jamie Dimond Mocks Us All for the Idiots We Really Are

Foto by tgw, "Penn Terminal Building," New York City, June, 2012
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Say Goodbye to Margie Hyams, vibraphonist: Margie played with the best of them, George Shearing for instance and led her own trios and quartets on 52nd Street during the heyday of jazz in New York City: Margie Hyams, 91, American jazz musician.
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The Young Prince Before His Lackeys
Jamie Dimond was standing proudly before his worshipers on the Senate Banking Committee yesterday. Sweet, precious Prince Jamie. Yes, Jamie is a corporation prince. A member of our new royalty; our new ruling class. Jamie owns Congress; he especially owns the Senate Banking Committee. Some young punk in attendance at the hearings had the nerve to stand up and accuse Prince Jamie of being a crook. Arrest that fool, came the reply from Prince Jamie's pals (his paid staffers) on the Banking Committee--most of whom the Little Prince and his cronies have contributed millions to their campaigns, like New York State's own charmin' crooked Senator Chuck Schumer, who when he questioned the Little Prince was all praise and no condemnation. The disruptive audience member was a threat to our national security. He's an enemy combatant. He's hand in hand with Al-Queda! How dare he accuse Prince Jamie of being a crook.

Prince Jamie's explanation of how his too big to fail bank had blown 3 billion bucks was honest. Jamie said they just didn't know how it had happened. It was something to do with the system. Jamie apologized for it--he almost broke his back apologizing, you know, straining by having to bend around and apologize to all those noses and lips up his filthy ass, sniffing that ass for more millions of dollars coming their way and kissing that ass as lackeys have to do if they wanna keep getting those million-dollar handouts from their ruling princes. Prince Jamie's apology was so sincere. Why, Prince Jamie had no idea any shenanigans were going on--he was too busy counting the profits, 8 billion in profits, his too big to fail bank had made off other crooked derivative schemes and foreclosures and stuff.

In the meantime, it seems our two-faced president is scheming to turn our country over to the international corporate crooks, carrying on where Big Dog Willie "I Did Not Have Sex With That Woman" Clinton left off in terms of foreign trade giveaways like NAFTA, giving the international corporate giants powers over We the People of the USA through deals that give them the power to shaft us good on trade deals and if we try to bring them to bear for their crimes--WHOAAA, President Obama has forgiven them any faults--like if they pollute our air, we have to pay them for the pollution. Does all of this sound like a fairy tale? Well, it ain't no fairy tale, it's a matter of fact. Nations are selling their souls to these global corporations that respect no national boundaries; that disrespect national laws and charters; that ruthlessly go about the world buying up the land, the food supplies, the natural resources, human lives (to put into slavery), etc. Taking us all over lock, stock, and barrel.

If the economies of the nations crash, no problem for good folks like Prince Jamie Dimond; no problem for that grubby Warren "Junk Bond" Buffett; or that asshole George Soros; or New York City's billionaire mayor Mikey Bloomberg; or Little Billy and Melinda Gates; or Little Timmy Geithner; or Dishonest Ben Bernancke; or Mayor Emanuel "Protesters Are Terrorists" Rahm the stupid citizens of Chicago made their mayor; or even President Barack Obama who invests his newly gained millions with Prince Jamie Dimond. These billionaire cowboys could care less if we all go down the toilet--it'll just mean they've got their grubby little hands on all our wealth--so we're all in the street--so what? That just means Cheap Labor to them. Which is what all this Neo-Con economics--the economics of Milton Friedman--is all about. CHEAP LABOR. Just think, Prince Jamie Dimond's private jet pilot makes more than you do. The guy that drives his limos makes more than you do. The guy that wipes Jamie's filthy ass after he's taken a huge dump makes more than you do.

Is anyone in this country interested in revolting against these bastards? How about first of all withdrawing all your money from Prince Jamie's bank or the extracrooked Bank of America or the Old West Bandit Wells Fargo bank. How 'bout you stop shopping at Walmart of China. How 'bout you stop going to Disney's Broadway shows or all these British Broadway shows or these stupid revival shows. Or how 'bout stop watching television. Or stop buying every new updated Apple China-made crap that comes along. Or stop buying the latest Windows operating system that comes out. Or throw your cell phones in the garbage and go back to land lines. Or keep the car you've got right now for another 5 or 10 years. Or how 'bout voting for one of the minor candidates like Rocky Anderson in the upcoming presidential election.

I know, nobody's gonna do anything revolutionary. We Americans are the stupidest people on earth--we're getting shafted and we seem to love it. Like that little asshole Jamie Dimond. Why not citizens arrest that creep? Are we afraid of being zapped by a drone on President Barack "James Bond" Obama's orders? Are we afraid of being shipped off to Guantanamo for life? Are we afraid of being waterboarded (it ain't torture, you know)? Are we afraid of perhaps being blown away by one of those stand your ground clowns? What are we gonna do when one of those crazed soldiers just back from Afghanistan goes berserk while we're buying some cheap Chinese child-made goods at our local Walmart of China store? Or while we're in a long line to get first dibs on that latest iPod at the Apple of China store?

Naw, hell no, we'll go on electing the same old jack offs; we'll go on believing Obama's gonna turn back to being on our side (Yes, We Can); we'll go on trusting our lives to these spoiled brat rich boys and handing them our money--Jamie Dimond and his crooked bank cronies took We the Stupid People of the USA for 18 trillion dollars. Stop and think about how much money that is. Stop and ask yourself where in the Holiest of Hells did Little Timmy Geithner and Gentle Ben Bernanke come up with that much money to bail these chislers out? Where?

I know, you'd rather I write optimistically...but I can't. I've lived too long...I've seen too much history repeated...I was born during a war and every 10 years I've had to live through another war...I've seen crooked politicians come and go...and I've seen rich men rule...and I've had to work my ass off for any dollar I've ever gotten. The problem is Capitalism, a British concept. Might as well go out and buy a lottery ticket and depend on that 1 in 20 billion chance of hitting the damn thing to bail me out.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Existing in New York City: Sitting on the Razor's Edge

Foto by tgw, "Penn Terminal Building," New York City, 2012
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Trying to Rise Above My Situation
Politics is so beneath me. Fools! Ignorant fools! I'm floating in the transcendent clouds.
All around the world just plain folks are being massacred. For what? For Power, that's what. Like Ass(hole)ad in Syria. He's just holding on to Power. He's willing to die in order to hold on to Power. And if he's gonna die, then dammit so are thousands of Syrians, too. Those Power Elites We the People of the USA prop up around the world. It's the Power that they are willing to die for. That's beneath me. Killing. What manner of human being is willing to massacre gobs of humans? Just aim weapons of mass destruction at people and, BOOM, blow them away or burn them alive or bomb the bejesus out of them. I think of a group of weapons designers sitting in a conference room: "Hey, I've got this great idea for a weapon! It seeks out children...children only...to kill. Can you imagine the grief it would cause? Damn, that gives me a thrill to think I have the Power to invent such a mean weapon."

I'm dealing with my body that is trying to kill me. Perhaps I should grab a gun and go to war. What a way to die, eh? "I'm killing myself so I may as well take some of you bastards with me." Like cops blowing away unarmed children. What thrill is there in that? What thrill does Obama get picking human beings off his death list to be killed on any given day? Can you imagine the Power in being able to designate human beings to kill as a day's sport?

I'm back to writing poetry. You know I'm transcendent when I'm writing poetry. Short verse. I've no time for epics. And while I'm writing these verses that nobody but me will ever read some poor slob and his family are getting their brains blown out because they are suspects. Like in Iraq yesterday a car bomb blew a bunch of people away because they were on the wrong side of Islam. Stupid religions. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Backwards believing. Killing each other over religious beliefs. Dumb ass faithful. God. How stupid to have no faith in yourself but to have faith unto death in a make believe Big Daddy up in a celestial place somewhere that is nowhere. Dumb. And in the middle of this poetic flying, I ask you, how dumb, utterly dumb, is it being a Mormon?

Somerset Maugham wrote in The Summing Up, "We are the playthings of nature." He wrote a few paragraphs down from that, "So long as men are cursed with the sense of possession, and that I presume is as long as they exist, they will wrest what they can from those who are powerless to hold it."

Man is an animal. No different from a low-life monkey. No different from a gorilla. Monkeys and gorillas are smarter because they have stayed put in the jungle and have rejected civilization, except for the ones we human animals have captured and put in zoos or put in labs to torture them beyond belief in order to keep ourselves believing we are civilized.

We are idiots. We still live in jungles. Concrete jungles. Look at the skyline of New York City. Why more and more and higher and higher buildings? A huge 60-story monstrosity office building sits mostly empty up the street from me. It is architecturally tacky. A glass box. Waste. Wasted space. Wasted talent. Wasted existence. It replaced a low-level group of businesses that provided the common man with cheap foods, reading glasses, iPods, teevee sets, CD players, soaps, towels, sheets, pillow cases, jeans, purses, underwear, hats, luggage, shoes.

I'm just reading where there are on last count 43,000 homeless in New York City. And our billionaire mayor just cut back on aid to the homeless. This little spoiled brat rich bastard hates the poor. He wants to see them flee New York City, especially Manhattan, an island he wants to make available as an exclusive playground for his rich friends, Arab and Israeli speculators, Japanese businessmen with bags of money to burn, prissy junior jumpshooters who use daddy's money to open chi-chi little restaurants with sky-high prices on foods that are high in fats and oils and greed, pretentious little restaurants and bistros that probably are money laundering affairs. Who the hell knows. They pop up one day and stay a season then are suddenly gone.

I have to lower my thoughts to write about this; yet this is the reality I have to live within. I have to exist within. I have to strive within. "Eight million people living on the brink," Mose Allison wrote (in "A Foolkiller's Comin'"), "Got no time to stop and think."

I had a chance over the past weekend to see a Sunday (it was delivered Saturday morning) New York Times and I tried reading its hundreds of thousands of words but I would get down a paragraph or two and suddenly realize I was reading pulp. Worthless crap. And yet the writers of this pulp-crap were the most respected writers in the business. But what they were writing was repeated bullshit. Bullshit that has been around since I was conceived. The same old bullshit rehashing old bullshit, analyzing world events as though they were all just happening. Like war. When have we not had wars? All White writers, too. I noticed that. The White perspective. And the White perspective has given us slavery, Capitalism, Neo-Cons, fundamentalist Christians, Libertarians who find Ayn Rand credible, and a presidential candidate who is a Mormon. White hypocrisy in total bloom.

"There's a foolkiller coming," Mose Allison wrote, "he's gettin' closer every day. There's a foolkiller coming, I've got to try and make my getaway."

How do you getaway from all this bullshit? All this hypocrisy? A President who says he's gonna do this if elected and then when elected he goes on taking us backwards the same way his predecessor did, a little spoiled rich brat who even the idiots of this country admit was our worst-ever president. Yet this little spoiled brat now sits safe and sound down in Dallas living the good life. And President Obama never brings this little worthless bastard up to accuse him of getting We the People in all the messes we're in. Obama never blaming this the worst-ever president for his own presidential woes. Never pushing this little asshole back into the faces of his Repugnican opponents. Obama's an idiot, too. Being an idiot doesn't mean he's not smart. But what good is being smart if you are making dumb decisions and thinking backwards?

Mose Allison wrote, "If you've never been a fool then you don't have to worry, no need to go and get in a hurry, but just to be on the safe side, better get yourself a place to hide...'cause a foolkiller's comin'...."

Lies Becoming Truths
Lies are given as truths
Truths that are reversed
Truths that lie
Lies that will one day
Blow up in their faces
Yet even with their lips gone
They will continue to lie

So I sit here an opposition to the continuous Fascist directions those who are supposed to be in my corner are taking me. Corruption rules from our president on down to the local government goons.

I sit on the razor's edge. Like I'm stuck taking 7 meds a day, some of which obviously do more bad than they do good; yet these drugs are established in the protocols all cardiologists adhere to. I take Plavix, a drug that has been proven to be a cause of heart attacks and strokes; yet my cardiologist pooh-poohs any objections to the drug I bring up--Bristol-Myer, the drug's manufacturer, it is well known lied about the efficacy of the drug; yet, my cardiologist says I must keep taking it in order to keep plaque from building up on my stent, the stent that for the time being is saving my life. If I say, "Well, doc, Omega 3s do the same job as Plavix...." He will interrupt me and say he believes Omega 3s (found in either fish oil or flax seed oil) are drugs, blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I'm left sitting on the fence. What do I do? Do I stop taking Plavix and go whole hog with Omega 3s or do I go along with my cardiologist and risk having another heart attack or having my brain start bleeding, a happening that if it occurs sends me immediately back to the ER for another emergency procedure? I'm playing a game of chicken with my life.

In the meantime, get ready for us backing Israel in an attack on Iran. It's coming. War. War and more war. We the People of the USA have to pay for these wars. Using Israel to head up this war isn't saving us money. Israel could not exist without our aid. Israel's army couldn't practice ruthless tactics without our military aid.

The rebels in Syria. Where do you think they are getting their weapons and the ammunition they need to fight a military that is well heeled due to its being supplied weapons by Russia and China? This civil war in Syria was started and had its fires fueled by our CIA. The CIA is our little asshole group that goes about the globe prying into governments and instigating conflicts. Our current problems with Pakistan--and The Daily Growler has said for years now that our imperialist government has wanted all along to invade and occupy Pakistan--were originally caused by the CIA, the outfit that was originally in charge of those drone strikes that President Obama like a child with toys is so jumping-for-joy employing daily against the Pakistani people. A drone crashed just today (June 12th) in Maryland. The Pentagon said it was on a test flight when the remote operator lost control of it. It crashed in a swamp and set half the swamp on fire; of course, it's only logical that one of these sorry-ass weapons of mass destruction will crash over say New York City one of these days.

I mean I could go on and on and on, but, like I said at the beginning of this, politics is so beneath me now. It's so corrupt it ain't funny anymore. We have rich asshole clowns running for president and running for Congress. We have idiots making laws against us. Our own president is working against us. We no longer have any representation in our Congress.

I give up. I'm going to write another poem.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Existing Existentially in New York City: WAR Driving Our Economy Over the Brink

Foto by tgw, "Penn Terminal Building," New York City, 2003
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NOTE: The Daily Growler has warned you that the rightwing (Whites) are determined to take this country back from our first Black president in the name of White supremacy and the Christian (or Mormon) God--a NeoCon move, folks--the backward state of Wisconsin (cheese heads for real) have just sent shivers through the spine of the Democrats by backing the whacky nutjob Scott Walker by a 54 to 45% margin in the stupid recall vote--thus so much for public worker unions and so much for any kind of progressive movement in that backward state.  Let 'em eat cheese.  President Obama avoided going to Wisconsin and sent Slick Willie out there instead.  The Slick One's still considered a lying bastard in Wisconsin due to his dilly-dallying in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky--and, yes, the Slick One is a lying bastard alright, one Obama should throw to the dogs and reverse himself on all his power moves by his being in bed with and getting joyfully fucked by all the corporate criminals who are his heroes.  He'd better watch his back and start bringing about some YES WE CAN change or else the White Power Elite will finally take total rule of this country.  But, of course, when you've got those corporate-fascist hands squeezing your balls and up your ass it's hard to do anything but be scared and continue to try compromising with these rightwing assholes.  Progressives have to stop preaching to the choir and get off their asses in masses and bring about true change in this already fascist nation.
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Exceptionalism
This past Memorial Day--it was once called Decoration Day--I watched President Obama and his sidekick Joe Biden traipsing about the globe praising our "brave" fighting men and women. In their manufactured speeches of high praise, these two basic liars promoted our soldiers as heroes, as men and women who are protecting our nation while also bringing freedom and democracy to the nations in which they are killing millions of people as they march across the Georgias of the world. In my cynical mind, I'm hollering, "But wait a minute, Fearless Leader and his Sancho Panza sidekick, where have these poor workingclass soldiers brought democracy and freedom? In Afghanistan? In Iraq? In Pakistan? In Yemen? In Bahrain? In Libya? In Somalia? In the Sudan? Where?"

The rightwing Yahoos (all Whites) and the Barack Obama Democrats speak loudly and single-mindedly of America's exceptionalism (ironically a term first proclaimed in 1929 by Uncle Joe Stalin in criticizing the American Communist Party for declaring that Marxist revolutionary tactics wouldn't work in this country), of our being the STRONGEST and greatest REPUBLIC in the world with a right to neglect world laws and do as we please wherever we please. Newtie Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House said American exceptionalism was a gift to us from the Christian God, Jehovah, or whatever the hell name he's going by these days. The NeoCons through the ignorant voice of G.W. Bush gave American exceptionalism as an excuse for our invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan--preemptive striking is what they really called it. All Obama and his loyal Brutuses are doing is continuing this NeoCon definition of the word. In Strasbourg when asked about it, Obama, in his backpeddling way, said, yes he believed in America's exceptionalism while at the same time he also believed in Britain's exceptionalism...er ah, also Greece's exceptionalism.

This idea that America is the strongest and most powerful nation on earth and we invade and occupy your country in order to bring you freedom and democracy started after World War II; actually it started during World War II. In order to prove this idea, especially after we developed the atomic bomb and demonstrated it by blowing away 300,000 Japanese civilians (men, women, and children), we needed a New Devil after Hitler. And that New Devil became the Soviet Union even though they had been our ally in World War II and in fact had probably more to do with our winning that war (in our minds) than we give them credit. Without the Soviets holding off the Nazi forces in the Western Soviet Union, it's doubtful whether the US alone could have won that war. The Soviets were the first into Germany from the east while the US and British forces advanced on it from the west.

As a matter of fact, most of any country's exceptionalism is a myth. That our men and women in the armed forces are exceptional is also a myth. What wars have we won since WWII? G.W.H. "Pappy" Bush claimed, during his exceptional reign as a budget devastating and deceiving president, that his Gulf War against Saddam Hussein was our only won war since WWII, a war, by the way, in which We the Exceptional People of the USA used a Muslim nation, Saudi-Arabia, as our base of operations against another Muslim nation, Iraq, an incident that really fired up a Saudi bad boy named Osama bin Laudin and started him, while working for our CIA in Afghanistan, slinging exceptional vile statements against our exceptional self-righteousness, that which he claimed was exceptionally symbolized by the architecturally tacky World Trade Center.

Since WWII, we haven't really won any of the wars we started (all started based on lies). The Korean War is still going on. Our exceptional feat in that war was dividing a nation in half. In Vietnam...well, hey, though we riddled that country with exceptionally ruthless bombing, our exceptional troops had to high-tale it out of there during the Tet Offensive; as a result, We the People of the USA didn't get to divide that nation in half and it survives whole today no thanks to us.

Was Pappy's Gulf War a victory? I don't know if you'd call it a victory; otherwise, why did his worthless son, Georgie Porgie, have to invade and occupy Iraq a few years later?

I view our US troops as exceptionally dumb. And I say that in sympathetic tones. I was a soldier once. I had no choice. I was conscripted. And believe me, nobody I knew was really exceptionally eager to become soldiers and go off thousands of miles to countries we knew nothing about and take them our form of democracy (there is evidence that we invaded Indo-China because Michael Rockefeller, a geologist, told his old worthless daddy, Nelson, there was abundant oil under the Indo-China shelf). When I was a soldier, I couldn't imagine going to Vietnam and having to kill or be killed--and I wasn't a coward; I could take care of myself in exceptionally dangerous situations, though after being a child during World War II and living in a West Texas city that lost so many of its young men in our South Pacific theater of action, especially on the Bataan Death March and seeing members of my own family losing their minds due to their being in combat during that war, no sir, I wanted no part of war. [Note: during the Korean War, We the People of the US were horrified by Chinese torture practices we called Psychological Warfare--check out a movie called "The Manchurian Candidate" for Hollywood's version of that horrible torture! We are such hypocrites.]

Here's a horror list of the monetary costs and the horrible losses in human life our exceptional forces have suffered in WAR since the beginning of the Korean War--like I said, a war that ain't over yet. Check this list out:

1950-1953	Korean War	54246	103284	$50 bil
1954	Matsu and Quemoy	3	0	--
1957-1975	Vietnam War	58219 (4)	153356	$111 bil
1958-1984	Lebanon	268	169	--
1962	Cuba	9	0	--
1964	Panama Canal Riots	4	85	--
1965-1966	Dominican Republic	59	174	--
1966-1969	South Korea	89	131	--
1967	Israel Attack/USS Liberty	34	171	--
1968	Tet (Vietnam)	7040	0	--
1980	Iran Operation Desert One	8	0	--
1980-1991	Terrorism	28	0	--
1983	Grenada	19	100	$76 mil
1983 23 Oct	Beirut Lebanon	241	--	--
1983-1991	El Salvador	20	0	--
1984-1989	Honduras	1	28	--
1986	Libya	2	0	--
1987 (3)	Persian Gulf	148	467	--
1989-1990	Panama	40	240	$163 mil
1990-1991	Persian Gulf, Op Desert Shield/Storm	363	357	$61 bil
1991-1992	Somalia, Op Restore Hope	8	--	$.52 bil
1993, Feb 26	Terrorism, World Trade Center	6	1000+	-
1995	Terrorism Oklahoma City	168	400+	--
1995, Nov 13	Terrorism Riyadh, Saudi Arabia	7	42	--
1995-2000	Terrorism	77	--	--
1996, Jun 25	Terroism Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia	19	500	--
2000	Yemen, USS Cole	17	651	--
2001, Sept 11	Flight 93	44	--	--
2001, Sept 11	World Trade Center	2,974 Total 19 Hijackers 2,603 New York City 125 Pentagon 24 Missing All civilians except 55 military 1,366 at or above floors attacked 600 killed instantly 200 jumped to deaths 341 firefighters 2 paramedics 23 police officers 37 Port Authority	--	--
2001	Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan	89	33 (U.S.) (Friendly Fire)	--
2002	Operation Enduring Freedom, Filipines	12	--	--
2002	Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan Theater	30	28	--
2003 2004	Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan Theater	34	--	--
Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan Theater	Total to date	1,474	--	--
2003-2008	Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq 4,452	COMBAT/ATTACKS United States 4397 Australia 2 Britain (UK) 179 Bulgaria 13 Denmark 7 El Salvador 5 Estonia 2 Georgia 3 Hungary 1 Italy 33 Latvia 3 Netherlands 3 Poland 21 Romania 3 Slovakia 4 Spain 12 Thailand 2 Ukraine 18 POW 7 Other Iraq War Casualty Resources: I-Casualties Iraq Body Count IRAQIS KILLED Military 19,217 American Est: Civilians and Military British Est: Civilians and Military 21,700 to 55,000 INJURIES US: 8,004 hostile US: --- non-hostile	US: 11,413 [f1]	--

Figure up those totals. And we haven't WON any of the above WARS. An exceptional waste of human life--and in terms of our exceptional troops, VERY YOUNG HUMAN LIVES!

NOTE: In the last war we won, World War II, it is estimated that as a result of that war, over 60 million human beings lost their lives! 60 million!!! 60 million!!!

Our military, according to the now totally aborted Constitution are supposed to protect our borders from invasion--a job they failed to do when 22 drunk-the-night-before Saudis wielding boxcutters as weapons successfully invaded and blew down the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, in which an estimated 3,000, not all of them Americans, were killed.

Our troops are scattered around the world on over 150 bases; President Obama is now not bringing our troops home where they belong, but extending their presence now along the Pacific Rim and for the first time on a base in Australia. For what is he doing this? Surely he and his G.W. Bush military advisors aren't seriously considering a war with China. Though remember, these fools truly believe we are exceptional and under the watchful eye of the Christian God who's out for vengeance against the Muslim God who is the same God. How utterly insane are We the People of the USA? We are the dumbest and most sheep-like people (read A Nation of Sheep) in the world; and yet we foolishly think we are the superiors--at least that's what White people in the US think.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Goya The Colossis

Existing Existentionally in New York City: Drugged Up a Coin-Toss Away From Dying

Foto by tgw, "Penn Terminal Building," New York City, 2003
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What Happened to Loving-Kindness?
Have you noticed these ads showing ex-US soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan who've had their legs and arms blown off being idolized? Then you notice the ads are actually advertising the "loving-kindness" of CitiBank or Bank of America [a scumbag bank of crooks who just fired thousands of Americans and to move those jobs to the Philippines], two financial pirates who less than five years ago were both going under--going bankrupt. The nerve of these criminal organizations. The nerve of the people in their PR departments who create these commercials. What kind of human being can use these poor stupid kids as proof that their criminal outfits "care"? These poor stupid kids who not being able to find any work in the US economy found their only hope of surviving was by joining the US Army to become cannon fodder--to go to these endless illegal never-declared wars of invasion and occupation of countries that were never one iota of a threat to our national security. One of these CitiBank commercials shows a young Black lady's US Army photos where she's smiling and still whole and then they show her now--and you see she's had her legs blown off in these senseless wars--blown off by friendly fire? I'm asking, wondering how a female soldier gets her legs blown off in these sorry worthless for-profit wars. Next they show her taking off her prosthesis legs and playing a game of some freaky kind (like volleyball) on a wooden gym floor--and next thing you know, CitiBank is bragging about how they are proud sponsors of the ParaOlympics. Oh that somebody would blow the legs off every sorry bastard that works for CitiBank. CitiBank, with a New York City baseball park named after it, also brags that they are proud sponsors the US Olympic team and I'm wondering, where does CitiBank, remember they were going bankrupt only 4 years ago, get the extra bucks to sponsor any Olympics teams, whether para or regular Olympics? It's also screwy to me why these Olympic athletes don't pay their own way to the Olympics since most of them are millionaires, aren't they? I remember when the Olympics were for amateur athletes only--and they were for individuals winning gold medals and not based on team gold medals. Check out the US Olympic basketball team: all millionaires coached by a millionaire coach.

I worked for years in pharmaceutical advertising. I used to cuss myself out every day I went to work for making my money promoting drugs that I knew from reading the results of the clinical trials that get them approved by the FDA (run by ex-pharmaceutical giant goons) were toxic, one or two of them (warfarin for one) being just a lower-dosage form of rat poison. In most of these clinical trials, and I kid you not, the placebos (sugar pills) showed almost the same results in terms of efficacy as the drugs being promoted. I heard many of my fellow cohorts in the office exclaim, "Why not take the god-damn placebo, it did just as good as the drug in this trial!"

I worked on the statin drugs when they were first being promoted in the early 2000s. All the trials showed statins were more dangerous than they were effective as cholesterol lowerers. I was there when these pharma promoters came up with "good" and "bad" cholesterol (HDL and LDL), invented cholesterol designations just to give reason for prescribing these new statin drugs (Lipitor being the most prescribed drug in the world).

I was on the scene when the COX-2 inhibitors were created. I was there when Pfizer and Merck started clinical trial wars trying to get their particular COX-2 inhibitor on the market before the other. To hell with the fact that clinical trials showed these two competing drugs did more harm than good--their efficacy based simply on their dosages being merely high dosages of ibuprofin, high dosages that perhaps caused gastrointestinal bleeding and anaphalactic shock and oedema and heart attacks and strokes. Merck's COX-2 inhibitor, Vioxx, turned out to be so deadly, Merck had to pull it off the market after they admitted 60,000 people died while taking this deadly poison--now, there are revealed sources that have raised that number of deaths up near 500,000. And no one at Merck has suffered one damn bit from the Vioxx charade. Just think if you or I killed 60,000 people with poison what would happen to us. Instead of going to jail or the gas chamber, Merck's stock went up and their big shots gleaned huge wonderful bonuses.

From www.infowars.com

Raymond Gilmartin’s landing was a soft one after leaving behind an embattled Merck. The one-time top executive of the leading pharmaceutical company, which was engulfed in the Vioxx controversy last decade, splits his time these days between teaching part-time at Harvard and serving on the boards of major corporations.

Gilmartin served as Merck’s president and CEO for 12 years (1994-2006) during troubles that stemmed from the company’s anti-arthritis medicine Vioxx. Despite knowing that Vioxx was potentially lethal, Merck put it on the market in 1999. Although a Food and Drug Administration study showed that perhaps 55,000 Americans died from heart attacks and strokes after using Vioxx, other sources indicated that upwards of 500,000 people—almost all of them older adults—may have died from the drug, which produced lawsuit after lawsuit against Merck. The company wound up settling for $4.85 billion.

From www.alternet.org

100,000 Americans Die Each Year from Prescription Drugs, While Pharma Companies Get Rich

Prescription drugs taken as directed kill 100,000 Americans a year. That's one person every five minutes. How did we get here? How many people do you know who regularly use a prescription medication? If your social group is like most Americans', the answer is most. Sixty-five percent of the country takes a prescription drug these days. In 2005 alone, we spent $250 billion on them.

I am now taking 5 different prescription drugs a day, one of which, Plavix, is a known killer.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler