So yesterday rained ice and turned into snow. Very slowly and about one we left to pick up Ayana from daycare and did our Costco run.

On the way there there were two accidents. Funny because at that point it was raining very lightly and the roads weren't slick. Even when we got to Costco it wasn't slick except if you walked on the paint.

So headed back west on Dodge street, the two lanes were merging to one and we were in the left (knowing it merges I always plan ahead to be in a lane that requires little to no lane changes. Keeping a safe following distance to the car in front of me with respect to the truck in the lane next to me anticipating his merge. His merge was sudden. As if he just realized he had to merge and yanked his wheel left becoming perpendicular to us. I slowly stopped because of the road surface and the car behind me was close. As we watched this truck spin around one way then to the next (obviously trying to counter steer each time, thus making him spin further and further out of control) I made sure we were a good distance back and hope he wouldn't flip because (1) I don't want to witness something like that and (2) I would have to stop in the cold, windy weather to stop and try to help this person out of his truck. So we're just watching him spin this way and that and flying up the median and I thought about me,Jeff, and, I think, Tory and Spencer, spinning out on the freeway back home near the Mililani off ramp and ending in the median and being able to drive away from it.

This guy did the same and, miraculously, drove away. His car was driveable after all that thrashin around. He drove very slowly away.

This is the shit I talk about how accidents are preventable and people are very arrogant and selfish in the way they drive. Truck drivers are the worst. There's a reason for following distances which vary according to driving conditions. Just because it's a posted 45 mph, doesn't mean you have to. if it's high traffic or inclement weather, you adjust. That post I did about Papillion, if they do put a traffic light, since people are unwilling to adjust their driving habits, they should do a toll road or tax so the people using that road pay it. If they are so insistent they don't change and need a traffic light, have them fund it. Jesse Ventura did that with the stadium tax. Why have people not using the stadium have to help foot the bill.

I also noticed I made a mistake in saying the 5% affected by the Obamacare deal were rich people. It was mostly policies that didn't meet the raised standards.

It's Not Me, It's You

Chris Rock once did a bit about making all drugs illegal and kids will go in their basements and becomes scientists finding new ways to get high. Well, that's what they did. I have a former co-workers' friend who became a pharmacist because he liked taking ecstasy and found a way, minus a component or two, to make a psuedo-version.

Then there were bath salts and the proliferation of synthetic marijuana. The synthetic marijuana once had 15 versions within a few years has exponentially increased to about 3,000 and deaths to go along with it. Recently, an 18 year old had died from using K2 and another got sentenced for killing his roommate and deemed mentally unstable because of prolonged use of K2. The immediate - and only - outcry from this is to make these illegal.

There is also a big intersection here in Papillion at 204th and Harrison where it's very busy and dangerous and several fatalities and there's been an outcry for a traffic light there. The main street has a 55 mph speed limit, though they all say, "it's common for drivers to exceed that." So there's this big push to spend all this money to get a traffic light there.

The selfishness in recent political thinking where it's like, "I don't have children so why do I have to pay property taxes to fund the schools?," is the selfishness that people think like these days. Anthony Weiner rebutted a comment like that saying that if you buy a car, they have hooks in the back to attach a carseat to; we do all sorts of things like these where we do things together to help out all people. It's like me asking my money back for the Iraq war or for traffic lights and roundabouts and stop signs because people don't know how to become better, safer drivers.

Illegalizing drugs is not the solution. Chris Rock was right! We need better solutions like understanding and legalizing and regulating. If pot (which do not have deaths and destruction attached to its use) were legal, this synthetic version would not exist. On that same note, instead of spending all this time, money, and lives on this intersection, people should learn to drive better. All these accidents are preventable. If people drive the speed limit, leave an appropriate following distance, avoid left turns (finding a better intersection to do it from, maybe another with a light), scanning ahead at intersections, not running yellow and red lights, not texting, not pulling into a crosswalk at a stop sign or red light at 30 mph without even checking for other pedestrians or cyclists, turning at a green light without even checking for other pedestrians or cyclists. All these things people do without realizing their vehicles are destructive weapons. They're so selfish and arrogant with their driving abilities when they've just been lucky. So why are my tax dollars and safety being compromised by this type of mentality? How are we to teach our (statistically proven to be bad and dangerous drivers) teenagers to be safe drivers when we, ourselves as parents, are unwilling to set an example? There are such easy solutions to problems but people can't get away from politics, ignorance, and arrogance and it's another factors to our society's deterioration.

The Five-Percenters

So President Obama lied about the people getting to keep their insurance if they wanted to. First off, we need to remember that upon election night in 2008, the Republican reaction was that they were to make Obama a one-term president and they way to do that was to veto anything proposed and isolate. His first three years was trying way too hard to reach across the aisle and basically going against some of his own policies (using federal government to shut down dispensaries in California) to reach out. Everything he did was stepped away from. Republican ideas and programs were not theirs anymore and rejected (like Simpson-Bowles, Syria). Even while Obamacare was being put together he said that if anyone had any suggestions, he's open to it. No one did a fucking thing.

Granted, it would be better with a single-payer system, especially without employers having to foot the bill, but he even said that if we could start from scratch we'd do it differently, but he's giving consessions to the hugely, fuckhead insurance industry. Last week's NY Times had an article about rural areas not having options for competition in their areas. Well, with a public option that would be resolved. It's the same idea of how a country as a whole helps out each other, the same way rural counties can afford to survive with help from big-city tax dollars, the same way in which Deb Fischer (sp) is a Tea Party idiot for leave-it-to-the-states mentality, though before becoming a senator, she used aggressive tactics to get Omaha and Lincoln tax money to help her rural district.

So people who are against any changes or Obamacare, to me, are either selfish,greedy, misinformed, underinformed, or all of them. This recent event last week where people were getting notices in the mail that their policies are being cancelled will affect 5% of the US population, mainly wealthier people with great insurance. That's nothing compared to the rest of the population it will benefit and the surplus it will bring to the economy and other myriad positive impacts such as saving lives and not ruining lives financially and evening the playing field - that evil mindset that corporate dickheads are so adamantly against.

So why is their such an uproar for just a small minority of a population? This coming from the people who use welfare abuse and voter fraud as rampant ideological strong-points forming their devout beliefs when, in actuality, less than 2% (a number that could not affect anything) do those things. It seems silly that us as a people can go to this level of intellect and not understand politics. Most people in this country are not directly affected by things (or don't think they are) so they are complacent enough to watch a newsbroadcast or a pundits opinion to inform them. A basic level of understanding and knowledge will show people that when corporations get breaks like corporate welfare and tax breaks, low minimum wages, less regulation, no universal health care, they are footing the bills. Not the wealthy or corporations. Hidden in medical insurance payments are footing the bill for non-insured Emergency Room visits which tax payers (meaning non-wealthy, mostly middle class people) are also paying for.

And I'm glad someone mentioned it, because I've been using it as my argument for years. But the minimum wage should be a wage that you can work full time and make a living on. If you don't pay employees a living wage, they have to die or depend on the government. So then again, it's us paying their wages (in essence) or the million-billion dollar industry corporations paying them a decent wage. But if places like Wal-Mart don't, the taxpayers are left to help these individuals and their employees are forced to shop at Wal-Mart. And the arguments against raising the minimum wage, or servers' wages, or any argument from the top have all been debunked by economists and real-life examples. So assholes like John Schnatter from that shitty pizza chain saying from his mansion with a full-fucking golf course that he doesn't want to give his employees benefits or pay them more is just a fucking asshole. Having that much wealth and saying you can't cut into his profits a little (still would be in the millions) so the people who are allowing him this lifestyle of success can get-by decently, how do you live with yourself? And I'm going on a limb here to say he's probably a Christian.

Americans need to put down the fucking technology for a minute and self-reflect and see itself changing directions to make this place the actual ideal place they keep referring to. We keep shouting slogans and holding to our ideological beliefs but not realizing the greed and selfishness we're teaching our children. We hold up ideals of stature and properness and holiness yet our culture is so fucking deteriorated because we ignore what we don't know or understand, mostly willingly.

Phil Hendrie's show would have his characters portray controversial viewpoints on an array of subjects like racism, child molestation, vigilante citizen patrol watches, etc. The point was humor with some informational aspects, but mostly humor and twisted reality in order to get people mad and call to argue. Calls would be like people asking why he would let someone like this on the air, or that they had never listened to his show before and never will again. This always struck me as odd. The characters are fictional, but there is a level of reality to it all and, if there is, I would like to know about it. Why would you not want to know about something you disagree with? Then when something big happens, they all start looking at who to blame. Our society has created a plethora of examples of this, especially in recent years, especially with the proliferation of technology and the ability to self-isolate and still survive.

We demonize socialism (which I'm not for or against, but you take the good things from some and work towards a better one) yet in places such as Denmark, where people are mostly equal, they are happy. Everyone is taken care of and thriving. The picture there is what ideological people on the far-right, conservative, Tea Party type of mentality is portraying on the surface level. But below it is decaying and imploding to a point where people being affected by it do not even realize it, and if we don't realize it sooner than later it may be too late.