"Fifteen Presidential Things I Wish I Would Have Tweeted" - Donald J. Trump

...that is, instead of what I actually tweeted.

1. It was a close race and I am happy to have won. This is my last reference to the election. Now, on with the people's business.
2. I thought I might have had some good cabinet candidates out of Goldman-Sachs but in the end I chose none.
3. Provisions of the Affordable Care Act will remain in full force. They will not be altered until and unless we have a thoughtful replacement.
4. I am disappointed in the activities of General Flynn and am thankful we discovered the irregularities before they became a more serious problem.
5. The press does the best they can given the information available to them...just like me. Together, we can hopefully share well vetted truths with the public.
6. I have decided to avoid the use of first person references. Henceforth I will use "we" in all references to my team and to the people of the United States.
7. I do not consider major donors and professional wrestling executives experienced cabinet candidates. They need not apply.
8. Sure I used to be a Democrat.  Now I am Republican. Therefore, my views will be accordingly moderate. That is where the people want and need me.
9. I know we came out of the gate with a few gaffes. We are fast studies though and it won't be long before we are functioning like a fine tuned machine.
10. My inclination was to take full advantage of tax breaks. Now I intend to pay a fair share of my income to help our country fix it's infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
11. It is my responsibility to set the example for all in government by avoiding any appearance of a conflict of interest. I have divested or placed in trust all of my business interests and here is proof.
12. All my cabinet nominees will have a verifiable history of service to the public and experience in their respective positions.
13. I will meet daily with a dozen congressional members equally divided among the parties. We will use a set agenda that promotes discussion and I will do my best to arbitrate.
14. The living arrangements Melania and I have present significant cost for taxpayers. We will set a budget based on historical presidential expenses and we will pay for anything beyond that.
15. "Quiet, Quiet, QUIET!  I'm really not a bad person." But yes, I am batshit crazy.

No wait!  Here's #16: Fuhgetabout #'s 1-15...its all fake news.  And its real information all right but the media coverage of it is fake.

The Bitch...Is On

Nah, we are not using the gender specific form here
Rather, we are setting up a whiney soapbox
To foster ventilation...as in "bitching"

I am
Airman Third Class Thomas R. Campbell 
and
 I approve this message.

So let's get started

The Rust Belt got taken for a ride
But it is understandable
As their options
Were muddied at best

On the one hand, an elitist
Who said most of the right things
But whose unfortunate history and public persona
Made her seem untrustworthy - right or wrong

They just called her "Killary"
Even though the best investigative team
The Senate had to offer
Spent three years and millions
And found nothing

I suspect its existence was only to cast a shadow on her character thus a burr under her potential presidential saddle.

Turned out "Killary" was more than supported
By an antiquated party leadership that was tone-deaf
To the electorate it was supposed to serve
To the point of cheating on the Bern(ie)

On the other hand, another obvious elitist
Who claimed the anti-establishment throne
A swamp draining (read filling)
Gropenfuhrer Cheeto who offered....different

Yes Vern, "Different" has turned out to be a Goldman-Sachs cabinet, among other bizarre things.

All in all
A confused America
Threw the popular vote to her
Threw the electoral vote to him
And put itself on the precipice

A desperate public
Looking for affirmation of their beliefs
Rather than confirmation of facts
Ignored their tired, their poor, their huddled masses
Ignored their neighbors with no health insurance
Ignored a tax plan that made the wealthy...wealthier
Ignored the literal melt down of the earth
Ignored respect in favor of "locker room banter"

"All you gotta' do is grab'em by the pussy."

A confused America
A desperate public.
A desperate public..
A desperate public...

Note: I hold my fellow OWGs responsible for this entire mess - both parties. Period. Hopefully a new generation will soon cast us aside in favor of, sanity and a balanced democracy...

Fear The Aging Boomer

There are over 70 million baby boomers in the US at the moment. And yes, we are starting to drop like flies but still...

I am on the very leading edge of the gang, having been born the month before official 1946 "boomer status" kicks in.

Aging boomer (yours truly) contemplates
computer keyboard and next smart-ass, 
vitriolic, sage, humorous, dark, prophetic, 
sarcastic (can never get enough sarcastic) 
post to blog, Facebook and Twitter. 

I also don't exactly know where I am going with this point other than to sort of qualify the observations that follow here:

Over most of the past twenty years I have been fortunate to serve as a consultant to well over half the nation's four dozen (give or take) health care Quality Improvement Organizations.

For those who don't know, these are typically non-profit companies that for the past 30 to 35 years have served as government designated watchdogs over the quality of Medicare in one or more states. They have also taken on a lot of Medicaid contracts and typically have a variety of functions like fielding complaints, patient and provider education, outcomes measurement, promoting adoption of electronic health care records, utilization review and a bunch more.

For those who don't care, I am going to move on by pointing out that I have had ample professional and personal reasons to reflect on the evolving characteristics of the average Medicare recipient, in addition to just flat getting sicker as they age that is.  Here are two of the biggest reasons why we are getting more annoying to the general population:

• The adoption of computers and the internet.  Boomers have been following right along with this, often at the encouragement (read teasing) of their savvy children.  The results?...more demand for medical information, for internet access to providers and complaint avenues and the ability to organize groups with common goals.  All this means more input from patients and the general population... all at risk for more and more infirmities as they age.
• Google - yep, Google knows everything, including a lot of things that are dead wrong. Nevertheless, boomers love to Google stuff...right from their cell phones, during parties when a subject comes up that needs an answer and, at any moment.

I'm not going to beat this horse until its dead... I'm just pointing this out so the millions who follow this blog (okay, one or two who follow - you know who you are) will better understand the photo here and its accompanying caption.

Now there you have it...along with this note of caution: There are more than 70 million boomers (yes, I am repeating myself, its something we do you know) right behind me, ready to wield their "mightier than sword" pens and wreak havoc among those who would overlook an important point about democracy, or about race, or about gender, or about religion, or about health care needs (yes we like run-on sentences too). Stay tuned America.  We are just getting started. 

   

The Shovel

I was swapping texts with son Tyler about Christmas this afternoon. We starting joking around about gifts like the old "lump of coal" thing. I recalled when I as 8 or so my Grandma gave me a robe for a gift and I thought of that as my "lump."  My Grandpa had retired from Pontiac Motor Company. From what I saw I thought they were rich and I was hungry for one thing and one thing only... toys. The bigger the better.  That sure didn't work out.

On further thought, I recalled about the same time when my brother David Claud William, our folks and I lived at 35 1/2 Taylor Street in Pontiac, Michigan for a while in the mid to late 50's.  My Uncle Everett, Dad's brother and his family lived in front of the house and we were in the back. Our address was "35 1/2 Taylor Street."  My Aunt Alma, Dad's sister and her family lived in the home offset behind us. Dad's other brother Earl and his family lived a couple of miles away. All the Dad's were factory workers at Pontiac Motors or General Motors. All the Moms were stay at home Moms.

(Dirt pile is where our home was.  Boarded home
in back is where Aunt Alma and her family lived)

Here is a recent picture of the set up there courtesy of Google Maps. Among the 5 kids in our three families on Taylor, three of us were boys around the same age, Alma's son Dennis, Everett's son Phillip and me.  We had recently arrived from living in Willow City, North Dakota, dirt poor with every earthly possession and the four of us piled in and on top of a '49 Pontiac.

It was blue collar all the way except for Alma's husband Joe who was a white collar something with General Motors. Dennis happened to be their only surviving child after a few earlier miscarriages.  He was spoiled, Phil was doing okay and I was down the ladder somewhere, harboring all the bad feelings of the outsider.  I mean I was jealous, hyper critical and probably some other stuff I don't recall at the moment... all the pettiness a little kid is capable of.

One day, the three of us were playing in the basement of the front house.  We had a coal furnace down there that served both families. Dennis said something whiny (at least in my recollection) and I picked up the broad based coal shovel and smacked him with the flat side it.  Of course, there was much commotion but that thoughtless act established me as an equal member of the pack and from then on, Dennis paid attention when I said something.  He also let me play with all those great toys he had. Thanks Dennis.

Beware The Velcro Shoes

I was slipping on my sneakers to head the gym this morning.
I keep them tied loosely so they will slide on and off just like a pair of loafers.  I learned this from watching my kids do it (no idea where they learned it) some years ago and it works great, especially if your work involves a lot of air travel. You can just pop those puppies on and off in seconds at both ends of that old airport security line while others are mostly looking for places to sit and tie their laces.

Anyway, I was slipping them on and my pitiful mind briefly flashed on sneakers that close using velcro straps. When I have seen these on others over the years I have felt sorry for those wearing them.  Sort of like; "OK, I am getting so old now I will just buy these things so I won't have to spend all that time bent over trying to tie a damn lace that doesn't want to cooperate with my arthritic (enter "knees, fingers, back" or whatever here)."  I suspect other infirmities of aging apply as well.

So, if you feel this coming on, be advised you can take a pair of regular shoes or sneakers and tie them in your lap, leaving them loose enough to slip on your foot.  You might want to try a few different levels of tightness to get it just right but then you are set. You can just leave the knot in place to slide them off or on anytime you please.  That way, you won't have to wear that velcro badge that says you have some limiting infirmity.  After all, we aging boomers have enough to deal with without that too right?!

I'm sneaky that way and you can be too.

Trump TV

He has already got his fellow sexual predator, Roger Aisles and that Breitbart creep, Bannon lined up.  He also has Sean Hannity in his pocket and will likely bring him on early.

His son-in-law has made inquiries into setting up a network.

He will gladly lose the election so he can focus on his media objective.

He has won enough followers to make his own network a slam dunk.

He will launch and it will make Fox News look like the new liberal front in comparison.

His network will specialize in the spread of fear and hatred that flourishes within unverified internet posts. Fanatics feeling righteous indignation will come crawling out of the woodwork. The result will not be pretty. It will not be a "win-win," just a win and fuhgetabout the other side.

Plug "Trump TV" into your browser and you will get over 50 million hits.

Parasite - "The Road To Hell...

...is paved with good intentions." - This common quote is often attributed to the Cistercian abbot Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153), or at least so says phrases.org.

All right, old Saint Ben probably could not have foreseen just how lasting and applicable that quote could be. For example; moving forward eight hundred and fifty years or so we find ourselves in the late 1960's good old USA when people were deeply concerned about the rapidly rising cost of health care.

Somehow they were able to get the attention of doctors and other providers who promised "voluntary cost containment." That quickly turned out to be totally ineffective so Health Maintenance Organizations surfaced and were made legit by the HMO Act of 1973...signed by none other than Tricky Dick Nixon himself.

The whole premise behind HMO's was based on expert professionals who would use the purchasing power of large numbers of potential patients (enrollees they had signed for health insurance) to negotiate reduced rates from health care providers. Of course, the pro's would retain a certain portion of enrollee payments (premiums) for administrative costs and profits. HMO's caught on fast and, seeing potential for shit-tons of profit, large old indemnity companies like Aetna, Prudential and Blue Cross/Blue Shield bought in big time.

Moving forward again about 13 years to around 1987...I was just finishing a career with the Air Force and had spent half of it as a health care administrator. I was a proud product of a contained (military) health care model and deeply ingrained in a not-for-profit, common ground system that included no distinguishable greed or avarice. It was a great experience but I was ready to move on to new challenges. So, I was interviewing to work in a for-profit hospital system (Hospital Corporation of America), a non profit HMO system (Kaiser Permanente) and a for-profit HMO (Foundation Health then HealthNet now Centene).

I ended up signing with Foundation Health. I was intrigued by the notion of health care cost containment, believing that at some point Americans would demand it, maybe when they were paying say...25 cents of every dollar they earned.

Around that time, I attended a meeting of the American College of Health Care Executives and was in discussion with one of my old pals from grad school, Ron Terry. I asked him his general opinion of HMO's and his response; "I think they are a parasite on the health care system." It turned out Ron was absolutely correct in his assessment but at the time it seemed to be the only viable means to keep health care providers from jacking up costs to the moon. (Yes Vern, I was pretty naive and uninformed.)

Today, HMO administrative salaries drain billions of dollars from the common man's pockets and HMO's are loaded with spikes to impale consumers...spikes such as adverse selection, denial due to pre-existing conditions, over and under utilization, limits on allowable procedures, regular premium hikes that exceed rising provider costs and so on.

Here is what it seems to boil down to...if we let insurers drive the bus, they will take us where they want for whatever price they would like to charge. If we let providers to the driving, they will do the same. It's only human nature folks. So, we need a single-payer system, like Medicare, with full authority to negotiate prices, particularly with big pharmaceutical companies. This means administrative overhead at less than 5% (with no profit) as opposed to HMO overhead that ranges from 20-30% (with profit).  It lets the passengers tell the bus drivers where they want to go and how much they are willing to pay to get there.

Would there be problems with such a system? Of course there will... so we will need a strong consumer watchdog entity but we already have a bunch of those so we would just need to change their mission. Also, all these countries are doing it (single payer that is, or as some would say, "National Health Insurance") and I am sure we can do it better than them if we really want to:

Austria, Belarus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

After all, we are master innovators right (?) and we can cherry pick their best practices!



   

Take A Knee

Last week I replaced the flag that waves
In front of our home
The old one had faded is all
It still had a useful life
But to Julieann and I
It looks better clean and bright
So we did it

Old (New) Glory at the
Nor-Cal Campbell family ranch.

At the same time many in our country were and are upset over Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the playing of our national anthem. Many see it as lack of respect for the flag and our country.

Yet, as he has explained, it is his way of demonstrating his concern over our continuing "oppression of black people and people of color." I would add we are also guilty of oppressing people of different persuasions or cultures and religions. To give more substance to his position, he has agreed to donate a million dollars to communities in need.

In a way I understand and do not quite see his position as disrespectful. I see it instead as a way of respectfully showing concern:

That our country is not whole 
That we are not one people joined by a common cause 
For freedom without oppression 
That we have a lot of work to do

Yes we have a lot of work ahead of us and we have had it since the beginning. We are not born with prejudice and hatred. We are taught... and I believe for many of us it becomes instinctive.

When I was a kid, I believed we would grow up do a better job of governing ourselves, individually and collectively, than our parents. But now I have seen that is not true. We have carried on the traits we were taught. We have passed them on to our children and we need to stop it.

The true correction lies in what we teach our children:

If we do not stop teaching them to hate
If we do not teach them to overcome their fears
If we do not stop preaching prejudice
If we do not teach them the simple "Golden Rule"...

...then all these attitudes will continue as they have since the very first stars and stripes were sewn together in the flag.

So that's my position on it. I spent 24 years in the Air Force to earn that position and I am happy to pass that on to Collin in support of his endeavor.  Take a knee Collin.  I am behind you.

The big PBJ Question

Here is another proverbial 'fork in the road' life often brings and I am asking for your help in choosing.

First; do you put butter on your peanut butter and jelly sandwich? If not...go no further as this question is not applicable to you.

If you do, do you put the butter on one slice of bread, then peanut butter on the other slice and finally, the jelly in the middle? Of course you realize this will cause the jelly to ooze out the sides of the sandwich as you eat it.  But then again, lots of folks consider licking the ooze up a big part of the fun right?  Kind of like controlling a melting ice cream cone.

Got this image off the 'Interweb'
Note excellent ooze factor.

Or, do you prefer putting the butter on one slice and spreading peanut butter right over the top of that?  This leaves you a bare slice for your jelly and the slice absorbs much of it thereby reducing the ooze factor considerably...unless of course you just keep loading it up with jelly so the bread can no longer absorb the excess. Then you have your ooze factor plus a jelly-impregnated slice right?

So, which do you prefer?

(I know, I know...we are deeply immersed in a presidential political cycle so who has time for this trivia right?  But hey, you gotta' 'preserve' your energy so you can make intelligent decisions and what better way to do it than with oozing preserves from a PBJ?!)

Mirror Mirror

Thoughtless people...

Often encountered in numbers including those...

fully mobile yet parking in handicapped spots
(Yes, they have the tag hanging from their visor)

spreading in seats to deny equal space to others

focused on cell phones while ignoring others

who hate; condemning their stereotypes
of race, religion, and persuasion

driving slowly in the hammer lane
(Some just don't know any better)

condemning all on welfare as drug addicted slackers
(Hmmmm...does that also apply to corporate welfare/government subsidies?)

denying equal rights to those
of different gender, race, religion and persuasions

who believe only what they want to believe
without investigating or searching for the truth

I wonder how they really feel about who they see
When they look in the mirror in the morning?
No wait...of course, they don't think about it.

Journeys

"TC's Hog," outrunning the rain on the highway
between Rapid City and Sturgis...

There are chapters in life,
that are much like journeys.
Minor and major.
Depending on your view,
I have two.
Majors that is...

Is there yet another to begin and end?
Airman, consultant and _____?
Or is this the beginning of the end of the road?
Time will tell.
But now sooner rather than later.
Time will not permit another long run.
I'm okay with that.