Kevin Pezzi, MD

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“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

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The Biden-Ryan debate: a harbinger of more lost freedoms
What do you get when you mix a crusty politician with a spineless opponent and a moderator happy to reveal her bias?

I'm no Joe Biden fan, but after watching him debate Paul Ryan, I can't help but wonder if he is more qualified to be Vice President and hence one heartbeat away from the presidency. As a doctor, I am intrigued by Biden's brain, which as I wrote before “seems to be a strange amalgamation of islands of genius mixed in with a few islands of idiocy. All smart people do dumb things now and then, but Biden sometimes does things that are conspicuously odd for someone who is generally very smart.”

Biden said “jobs” is a three-letter word.

Biden spoke of a “website number” instead of its address or URL. (What planet is he on? Speaking of a website address is such a basic part of our language and culture that even young children know it.)

Biden thought Franklin Roosevelt was President when the stock market crashed in 1929.

Biden didn't know when televisions went from the lab to the living room.

Biden described Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”—thus implying that most blacks aren't articulate, bright, clean, or nice-looking.

Biden said “the middle class has been buried the last four years,” but Obama was President the last four years.

Biden told an Indian-American that “You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,” then added, “I'm not joking.” OK, Archie Bunker.

Biden puts his foot in his mouth so often that his party must cringe whenever he speaks, not knowing what ignorance or idiocy might come out.

And yet Ryan couldn't beat him.

Presidential and vice-presidential debates are usually moderated by blatant liberals, never blatant conservatives. Fair?

I can't help but like Biden in spite of his many flaws, but last night I couldn't help but loathe his rudeness and juvenile behavior as he repeatedly interrupted Ryan and derisively laughed at him while baring his teeth in a manner befitting a lunatic high on euphoriant drugs—no doubt after reading the Alinsky playbook for mocking opponents who have too many facts on their side to substantively assail. Biden was such a mean jackass that the pathetically helpless Ryan should have had an easy time thinking of a way to truncate his deliberate abrasiveness while pointing out the obvious: that the favoritism exhibited to Biden by moderator Martha Raddatz was predictable given that President Obama attended her wedding. She returned the favor by repeatedly cutting off Ryan and challenging him in conspicuously more forceful ways than she did Biden, who appeared to be her teammate.

And she is, and everyone knows it. Ryan missed one golden opportunity after another to point out blatant liberal bias, yet he blew it. Ryan seemed out of his league and in dire need of help from anyone with a brain and enough spine to use it. If Ryan can't handle Biden, could he handle ruthless dictators around the world who have brilliantly Machiavellian minds?

If so, please tell me about it.

I'm skeptical. Ryan has been touted as a “conservative visionary,” but during the debate he lacked The Right Stuff to earn a Boy Scout merit badge. Sure, Ryan's brain has a few islands of genius, but they seemed lost in a sea of idiocy during the debate. He proved to be a pusillanimous wing man to Romney and an utter disappointment to conservatives and everyone else who hoped that competition would force President Obama to come up with better ideas for stimulating economic growth and moving more people from food stamps and welfare to jobs that paid well enough they could join the 53% of Americans who pay federal income tax. President Obama has done a surprisingly good job for some of his supporters, but they constitute too small a percentage of our population to explain why he now appears likely to beat Romney in the 2012 election, or come very close to it. Considering our economic problems, Romney and Ryan should be cleaning his clock.

The official unemployment rate doesn't reveal the true extent of misery in the United States. The rate doesn't take into account countless people who've given up looking for work, nor does it adequately factor in people who want to work more than part-time or folks who once were well-paid but now work for peanuts. I've met people who went from owning prosperous businesses and living in homes that doctors would envy to working for less than minimum wage and living in flophouses. But hey, they're employed, and someone Obama points to as evidence of his success.

I'm not a Democrat or Republican. Though I agree with conservatives on some positions and liberals on others, I think both groups are too busy fighting one another to realize there is a much better solution that gives both sides more of what they want than they now have. Cooperation is clearly better, yet most political partisans equate it with compromise, and hence a partial defeat they'll vigorously oppose. That's the beauty of my plan: everyone wins, and no one loses.

I understand system justification theory and thus know why sheeple too stupid or spineless to think for themselves reflexively disparage alternatives to the status quo, but leaders smart enough to know better should instantly realize that my plan is preferable to the perpetual partisan bickering that obviously isn't solving our problems.

The most notable accomplishment of our politicians has been to take the United States, seemingly destined to be the world's indomitable economic superpower, and inflict considerably more damage upon its future than all of our past and present enemies combined, including Germany and Japan in World War II, the USSR during the Cold War, Islamic terrorists, and everyone convicted of treason in U.S. history. All of those enemies combined couldn't begin to deliver the KO blow that our liberal and conservative politicians have given to present and future Americans.

The Left wants to blame the Right, and the Right wants to blame the Left, but neither side could have done it alone. They've both screwed us and our children in ways that will surely have future generations loathing us as the Brainless and Spineless Generation that ruined the United States, in contrast to the Greatest Generation whose hard work and sacrifices once saved our freedom and prosperity.

As Americans are fighting to survive, Ryan anointed himself as a warrior qualified to vanquish seemingly insurmountable odds and deliver a KO blow to our economic problems, but he was pummeled by a man who thinks “jobs” is a three-letter word.

Sad.

Mr. Conservative Visionary Paul Ryan turned out to be Mr. Conservative Disappointment unable to dispel the gloom enveloping our nation. Obama at least gave hope, and Biden has repeatedly given us laughs. Ryan just makes me want to cry. If he is the best we can do, we should all be crying.

No sensible Republican could be pleased with Ryan's debate performance, nor should any sensible American be happy with what Obama has done. He turned out to be a superb crony capitalist, not a socialist, and he was more mainstream than what his opponents feared—but that's the problem.

In the United States, mainstream politics is a synonym for adhering to hidebound ideas that are crushing us with wacky domestic spending (such as research to see if female co-eds go all the way after drinking beer) and the endless wars we cannot afford. Obama, to his credit, understands that we must scale back our military if we hope to have any military without draconian domestic cuts that would infuriate even most Republicans, but as he wisely points to the need to economize there, he spent money as if there were no tomorrow on things that gave depressingly little bang for the buck. He claimed that spending saved the United States from sliding into a Great Depression. There's a chance he's right about that, but there is a much greater chance he's dead wrong, and that spending had no net positive long-term effect but did burden us and our children with national debt that is mathematically impossible to repay without pixie dust or a miracle invented by an Einstein.

Fox News predictably trotted out Republican strategists who put the spin on Ryan's performance, but the purportedly “fair and balanced” news channel didn't ask the obvious question, which is why Mr. Conservative Visionary couldn't go toe-to-toe with a man who is often ridiculed as being an intellectual lightweight and something of a national joke.

From my vantage point as a doctor, I understand how Biden can be both brilliant and bumbling. He had surgery in 1988 to repair two brain aneurysms and his condition was so grave at one point that a priest read him his last rites in a Wilmington hospital. Perhaps some of the daffy things Biden says result from associated brain damage. He's now almost 70 years old—an age when most people have lost some of their sharpness. And yet he pounded a visionary in the prime of his life.

Hoping to dupe their audience, Fox News buried its head in the sand once more, but that's what I've come to expect from them. After listening to them for years, it took an independent news source to inform me that a recent White House inhabitant is a killer. Fox News never misses an opportunity to blast President Obama and his wife—sometimes fairly and sometimes not—so they should be equally critical of Republicans who earned a black eye but got off scot-free, thanks to an ingrained culture of favoritism that rolls out the red carpet for some while throwing stumbling blocks into the paths of others.

We have a right to expect more from our leaders. They are spending money we don't have on things we can't afford, and thus making it all but inevitable that we won't survive as a prosperous nation. The 70,000-plus pages of new federal laws and regulations per year are added to millions of existing federal, state, and local laws that were written long after virtually all commonsensical laws (prohibiting murder, rape, theft, etc.) were enacted. This excess of legislation is reducing what America is supposed to stand for: freedom.

Our out-of-control, freedom-hating government has made me afraid to give away free chicken eggs, free firewood, free microhomes, free medical care, a free ER cookie and Jell-O mold, and other free goods and services. I wanted to give my mail lady a present, but I learned that it substantially exceeded the maximal allowable federal limit. And what might she do to thank me if I gave more? Bring me more bills and unsolicited credit card offers? (see sidebar)

Our leaders refuse to stop “Rachel from Cardholder Services” (the National Do Not Call Registry is intentionally toothless legislation, with telemarketers frequently flouting it with impunity), but if you sell an item at a garage sale that wasn't manufactured to be perfectly safe, heaven help you if the feds get ahold of you!

Nor will our government stop China from perennially selling us products that are often junk and not infrequently toxic. Nor will it stop processed food companies from selling us food that no one would give to their dogs unless they had rocks in their heads. Nor will it stop the Federal Reserve from running a scheme that is robbing us blind and will ultimately lead to our economic collapse. Our government won't stop these miscreants, but it will stop you from enjoying the freedom you're constitutionally guaranteed.

The Supreme Court will soon decide if Americans have the right to resell items that were manufactured abroad in whole or part. Since most everything we purchase is made in part from one or more components made in other countries, if the Supreme Court upholds this ruling, you lose your right to sell your home, car, TV, computer, iPod, snowmobile, boat, and most everything else—unless you get permission from big corporations who think the best consumers are ones on their knees (see notes). The United States abolished slavery in 1865, but powerful special interests are now trying to make economic enslavement a big part of our lives. Surely Obama and Biden would protect us, right?

Who sided with the big business?
OBAMA

Who sided with the little guy (Kirtsaeng)?

• 25 Intellectual Property Law Professors
• The American Library Association
• American Association of Law Libraries
• The Association of College and Research Libraries
• The Association of Research Libraries
• Special Libraries Association
• American Free Trade Association
• Goodwill Industries International, Inc.
• Association of Art Museum Directors
• eBay, Inc.
• Google, Inc.
• Costco Wholesale Corporation
• Center for Democracy & Technology
• Public Knowledge
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• U.S. Public Interest Research Group
• Internet Commerce Coalition
• Netcoalition
• Netchoice
• Techamerica
• National Assoc. of Recording Merchandisers
• Computer & Communications Industry Association
• Powell's Books, Inc.
• Harvard Book Store Inc.
• Entertainment Merchants Association
• Retail Industry Leaders Association
• The Art Institute of Chicago
• The J. Paul Getty Trust
• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
• The Museum of Modern Art
• The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• The Whitney Museum of American Art
• Quality King Distributors, Inc.
• International Imaging Technology Council
• National Association of Chain Drug Stores
• Retail Litigation Center, Inc.
• Association of Service and Computer Dealers
• … and several others

---

If Obama favors middle-class Americans, why did he appoint a Treasury Secretary (Timothy Geithner) who was described by a major bank CEO as 'our man in Washington'? Obama gives lip service to Main Street but gold to Wall Street bankers.

Remember Peggy Joseph? Based on what she said in 2008, she seemed to think Obama would shower money on folks like her. I bet she is still waiting. I hope she's patient.

PS to Peggy: Did you hear Obama's 2012 promises about helping Main Street, not Wall Street? Are ya buying it this time?


Poor Main Streeter giving money to rich Wall Streeter—because he wants to? No, because he will be put in prison if he doesn't.

Isn't it funny that Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner underpaid his taxes by $34,000 but got off scot-free? It's so funny that he and Obama are laughing at Main Street people who can't do anything about this double standard because there are too many dumbbells who fall for Obama's “I'm for the little guy” BS.

UPDATE: Siding with Kirtsaeng, the Supreme Court ruled that publishers do NOT have the right to gouge American students. Why didn't Obama agree?

Wrong. The Obama administration ordered their Solicitor General to file “a legal brief … allowing big businesses to sue people for reselling their” property.

Ryan could have pointed that out and hammered the Obama administration for daring to have Biden pretend to be a friend of middle class Americans when they are instead eagerly trying to place yet another noose around our necks, but Ryan and most other Republicans give only lip service to freedom. That's one reason why I'm less conservative and more fed up with Fox News (and others of their ilk) for selling us fantasies of freedom and lower taxation. Throughout my life, Republicans have sworn up and down that they want smaller government, but when they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, they didn't shrink government, they expanded it.

If Americans paid more attention to what politicians do as opposed to what they say, we would all be alarmed and none of us would be surprised that the Supreme Court might drive another nail into the coffin of freedom. The question of whether Americans have the right to resell any property would never have been asked if our freedoms were not in serious jeopardy. Many of them vanished long ago, and Republicans never used their power to restore them. I had enough of their empty promises. I still think they are marginally less of a threat to freedom and prosperity than Democrats, but that's not saying much; it is like choosing between being punched in the face or in the gut.

We deserve better, but I predict we won't get it. If Romney and Ryan win, will they restore the freedoms we've lost? Will they consider my plan or something comparable (good luck trying to find one) that helps all Americans financially? My plan could bring Americans together and replace partisan bickering with a new focus on solving problems together, now. But will we get that? No, we'll get reality that once again doesn't live up to the lofty campaign promises of seven million new jobs. Obama promised that in 2008, and in 2012, we're still waiting and wondering if Romney and Ryan, who promise 12 million new jobs, seriously expect us to believe them.

Or should we take a cue from Biden and keep laughing at all politicians until they do what we elected them to do? Help us, not screw us. That would be real change, but as freedom increasingly becomes nothing but a quaint memory, expecting to get it is unrealistic. We can't keep pinning our hopes on empty promises from politicians who pat themselves on the back for pulling the wool over our eyes; we must do something about it.

But what? The first step is for Americans to understand how system justification turns them into sheeple who reflexively disparage alternatives to the status quo and thus actively resist the change we need if we are to have any realistic hope for recovery and a brighter future. Mindlessly acquiescing to mindless authorities (including clueless politicians) has decimated our prosperity and freedom.

The old way of doing things is causing America to fail. When Plan A didn't work and then Plan B failed, most Americans think that it is time to switch back to Plan A without considering Plan C. It's not that Democrats or Republicans are screwing us; it is both of them, endlessly, with most of their solutions proving to be nothing more than more problems. We need real change, not rhetoric of it.

As powerful as our government seems to be, we could make everyone in it—from the President to Supreme Court justices—pee their pants if we unleashed our collective might. We're being screwed in unconscionable ways, but we could quickly end this highway robbery and loss of liberty without breaking any laws or principles of ethics. In fact, we could give the Golden Rule ethic of reciprocity a new luster. We wouldn't need Republicans or Democrats with insultingly empty promises to give us more false hope; we could get the freedom we deserve this week.

Just one big problem: Americans can't figure out how to get something that's really very easy to figure out. When faced with comparable unfairness, some animals instinctively know how to best respond in a way that penalizes the perpetrator of that unfairness without violence. If animals can figure that out, why can't a critical mass of Americans?

Democrats use ridicule against opponents with good ideas to camouflage their lack of realistic plans to rapidly restore our economy. (If they're hiding their ideas, why? What are they waiting for?) Biden's pugnacity proved to be a formidable weapon against the pusillanimous Ryan, but Biden didn't really win, because the American people lost, once again.

Democrats are probably breathing a sigh of relief that Biden didn't unleash a particularly damaging gaffe, but he did. Discussing abortion, he said that he didn't believe in it because of his personal opinions, but he did not want to impose his beliefs on other Americans. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Biden and other Democrats were happy to impose their healthcare plan on a nation that overwhelming said “NO!” Our government has morphed into a monster deaf to our wishes, but they pay rapt attention to wealthy special interests who essentially bribe politicians so they impose their plans on us even when, as in the case of ObamaCare, a majority of voters were dead set against it.

Ryan could have flummoxed Biden by saying, “You think I have no right to impose my abortion beliefs on others, but you and your party, including President Obama, think you have the right to impose your healthcare and many other beliefs on Americans. Your position is logically inconsistent; explain why I don't have that right but you do.”

Ryan wouldn't say that even if he were bright enough to think of it because most Republicans are not committed to preserving our freedoms. Instead, in cahoots with Democrats, we've lost so much freedom that we may soon lose one of the most fundamental ones: the right to sell our property.

In 2008, Obama ridiculed a healthcare mandate or any similar mandate. Ryan could have wiped the smile off Biden's face by asking him which Obama he supported, and why: the one who blasted a healthcare mandate or the one who imposed it.

Ryan could have also said what P. J. O'Rourke did in An Alternative Inaugural Speech:

Go to hell as in buzz off, and go to hell literally for violating one of the Tenth Commandments. As an erstwhile atheist and later an agnostic who once thought religion was so preposterous I skewered it better than anyone, ever (IMHO), I later found proof of the existence of God. I'll define proof: Beyond a reasonable doubt? A million times more certain than that? No, even stronger proof based on statistical evidence and science.

Funny, isn't it? The science I once used to ridicule the possibility of God later changed my mind once I learned more, but I still have zero faith. Instead, I have something better: facts.

Too bad Ryan didn't.

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