Five Times Katrina

It is amazing (and disheartening) to see how little attention Americans have paid to Typhoon Morakot.

This storm stretched from the Philippines to Taiwan.

The Taiwanese government just raised their death estimate to 500. This is in a country of 23M people. That'd be the equivalent of about 6,700 American deaths, or about 5 times Hurricane Katrina, or more than twice the 9/11 World Trade Center attack.

More than a million people have been displaced. Morakot is the wettest typhoon in recorded history -- by a large amount.

Yet Americans are too busy to notice because they're concentrating on death panels soon to be introduced by our government. Idiots. Dupes.

And Sarah Palin -- the exact kind of insipid but beautiful demogogue the devil would offer up if he is real and serious, won't even admit she was wrong. In fact, she boasts that she was right -- she fucking boasts about it!

I am seriously thinking of moving to Canada or Europe, because it's clear that there will be no significant health reforms here (and, as a self-employed person who cannot buy insurance at any price because of pre-existing conditions, I think my existence just might depend on it), and certainly not anytime soon (even Obama's plan wouldn't start until 2013).

So many Americans are just... stupid. The middle class in this country is being devastated, and deep down they all know it, but they have been so brainwashed to think that capitalism and free-markets are the solution they can't get out of their own way. Their incomes have remained flat for 30 years, while the rich keep getting richer. They know, but don't seem able to admit, that corporations control this country -- whether it's health, or defense, or financial -- and their donations and lobbyist's influence have a huge control over what Congress does.

They are losing benefits year-by-year, slowly and steadily. And they know it. They know employers are dropping health insurance because no one can possible keep up when health insurance inflation is 8x overall income inflation. They know that citizens in other countries have far fewer health worries, and pay less for better care. (They also get a lot more vacation.) But, my God, no, we can't possibly do anything like the French -- we've been taught they're nothing but wimps. (Funny, my travels in France revealed nothing but decent, charming, civilized people.) They know that American's are losing their houses and having to declare bankruptcy at huge rates. And yet they have been so brainwashed by Fox news that they do not even see it, let alone care.

How many Medicare-receiving idiots must stand up at a Congressional town hall and tell the government to keep its hands entirely out of health care?

This will surely be one of the most significant chapters in the upcoming book, "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire."

Frankly, I think the real rage being displayed at these town halls is that American's know they have lost their country to corporations, and that "government of the people and by the people" is a now-comical acronysm in a time when the typical Representative represents over 700,000 people.

That is to say, your Congressman doesn't care what you say. You Senator doesn't care what you say or think. Your contribution of $100 doesn't matter at all. You can't be in their face all the time in Washington, like a corporate lobbyist.

Americans know they have lost their country and that the American experiment is over -- and has failed. Sure, we're not nearly as bad as the early experiments in Russian Bolshevism or Marxism. But neither are we any longer thriving. A few of us are. Many, many are not. Too many/most are just on the edge of keeping it together -- with respect to housing, health care, education, leisure, etc. They see the Europeans getting six weeks of vacation a year and wonder why they can't get the same, and so their only alternative, besides admitting their country is failing, is to pretend that the Europeans are wimps, hopeless socialists, unfree citizens whose governments come along and tell them when to die.

It is all so depressing.