Gadfly

Corky had a knee replaced in late December and she has been diligently doing the physical therapy connected with the rehab. Although the operation was done in Fargo, I imagine the procedure would have cost about the same if it had been done in Minnesota.

I haven’t asked, but I do wonder if it cost Medicare and our supplementary insurance $6,200 or $47,000. If we use free market principles at the grocery store, do we pay as little as 88 cents or as much as $7.04 for a head of…

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The homeless love those rich ZIP Code dumpsters full of goodies

The Grand Old Party of Predators, Pedophiles, and Parsimonious Pricks (GOPPPP) has finally reached its Nirvana, the perfect place of peace and happiness, by passing a tax bill that will enrich their owners in Bel Air and rich ZIP Codes scattered around the richest country in the world.

But the recent fire that burned many of those new mansions in Bel Air signaled that the homeless and the poor like to sleep near those wide…

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What will it take to change our gun laws? Twenty first graders torn apart by 100 Bushmaster rounds couldn’t do it.

Would 100 first graders torn apart by 500 bump stock rounds fired by an AR-15 do it? Would four senators and representatives from Congress torn apart by .45 caliber rounds from a 100-round drum magazine on an old Thompson do it?

So far we have had only two representatives in Congress wounded by shooters, Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Gabby Giffords of Arizona. What will…

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What the hell is happening to this country?

For a long time the United States has been considered to be the richest and most powerful country in the world. Our president has been the leader of the free world for decades because of the combined intellectual, philosophical, and economic power of the U.S. and European countries. Until now.

After ten months of trying to deal with a pathological liar and fulltime nutcase in our White House, European leaders have anointed Angela Merkel of…

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If men will be boys, will women be girls?

This sexual harassment thing is way beyond a minor kerfuffle, but it remains to be seen if it has finally reached the ultimate tipping point. Groping private parts, grabbing butts and breasts, the laying on of hands, sextexting, propositioning, and brute force have gone on for millennia. If Adam did not harass Eve in the Garden of Eden, then Cain and Abel must have started it a little later.

I believe in the long-held axiom…

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What happens when the eight richest men in the world possess wealth equal to the bottom half of the entire world population?

There I was, in a pew at Cormorant Lutheran Church on Sunday morning, when I got the Christian view of acquiring wealth in a Christian country. A quote from the gospel of Matthew makes the point: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in…

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The blonde guy with the “Comb-back” Will Make Everybody Rich

Practically everyone in the United States knows the essentials of the Brothers Grimm fairytale “Rumplestiltskin” where the poor miller’s daughter with the beautiful, long blonde hair, with the help of a mysterious imp, spins straw into gold. Her father has told the King his daughter is capable of this magnificent act. After the daughter and the imp spin straw into gold for the third time, the king asks her to be his…

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The thoughts and prayers of politicians will finally be answered

We have had 307 mass shootings (four kills or more) so far in 2017, including the last one in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where 26 mortals attending church, aged 18 months to 77 years, were blasted into Heaven and 20 were sent to hospitals by assault rifle fire.

I am pleased to learn from certain voices that God is going to celebrate a Firearm Resurrection Day, where the 33,000 mortals killed by firearms this year will…

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We might be entering the worst of times: the wackification of America

I listened to a fascinating National Public Radio interview the other night of a second tier comedian who plays small casinos, nightclubs, and theaters around the country trying to make a living.

He is totally frustrated by his present-day audiences because they are so politically and socially polarized. Telling jokes for a living is a very tough business even in good times.

He said audiences now are so polarized that…

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The Sacklers: America’s biggest and richest ‘legal’ drug pushers

The first record of humans using drugs to give themselves highs during their humdrum lives is a 7,000-year-old account of Babylonian Sumerians using opium. The Lake Dwellers of Switzerland ate poppy seeds 4,500 years ago according to historian Ashley Montagu in a book about gaining euphoria over the doldrums.

Records about the brewing of alcohol and its potency started about 2,350 years ago in Proverbs 31:6-7: “Give…

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