Off The Grid News Better Ideas For Off The Grid Living
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Perfection can have deadly consequences. A society that insists on a no-risk guarantee for all its citizens can only achieve that demand through brute force, a lack of compassion, and a slavery of the mind and will of its subjects.
Perfection has a cost, and that cost is the stifling and strangulation of innovation, creativity, compassion, empathy, and a sense of responsibility not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors as well. Perfection degrades our humanity.
Please join Bill Heid and Brian Brawdy for today’s episode of Off the Grid Radio as they discuss this unsustainable upside down world that we live in, and how we may not be able to afford the deadly price and effects of the perfection that we seek.
Off The Grid Radio
Ep 148
Release Date March 14, 2013
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Off The Grid News—the radio version of OffTheGridNews.com. I’m Brian Brawdy, here with a show today… Bill, I have to tell you I’ve never missed an opening but I’m reading the email that you sent me. I’m listening.
Bill: Was that that hesitation there?
Brian: I’m just stupefied. I just can’t believe it. So ladies and gentlemen, I’ll take it from the top. Welcome to Off The Grid News. I’m Brian Brawdy, here as always with Mr. Bill Heid. Bill, you’ve known me a lot of years. I’m just speechless. You want to go ahead and fill everybody else in?
Bill: Well, it… I think we’ve reached the point in our society… We have two little things that we want to talk about and I think we were talking about the economic thing and then we wanted to talk about this do not resuscitate thing and I think we’ve reached the point in our society where we’re so entangled by oppressive regulation, fear of lawsuits that we’re immobilized as a people and I think that we’ve lost our way in the sense that we’re not sure who we are. We’ve lost our past. And of course when you lose your past, you’re going to lose your future. So this incident that happened at this retirement home is really, I think, a more important issue than what the press that it got. We wanted to take a second and listen to the actual 911 call.
Brian: It’s chilling.
Bill: It’s chilling because we… Are we human beings or are we sort of all slaves of some big bureaucracy? That’s the question everybody has to ask themselves at some point. Are you going to take action? If you see somebody fall down are you going to take action? Are you going to do something? And I know you could get sued and I know someone could hit their head and there’s a lot of things that can happen but this is part of that risk-free society that everyone wants, right? We have to have… There can’t be any risks. So what’s the endgame for no risks whatsoever? The endgame is walking past people that are dying. The endgame is never helping anyone else because why? There is a risk attached to that. So we just have a society now where you can’t risk anything.
Brian: And you know what I think? Instead of… We haven’t kind of really said exactly what we’re talking about so why don’t we listen to a recording of the 911 call and then we’ll bring everyone into this to the particulars—where it was and that kind of thing—because I’m reading over the LA Times Local report on it and I just can’t believe it. So you want to have Jeremy bring it in?
Bill: Yeah, go ahead. Jeremy, can you play that for us?
[911 Recording Plays]
911: …get CPR started. That’s not enough. Okay? Let me…
Colleen: Yeah, we can’t do CPR…
911: Okay, then hand the phone… Hand the phone to the passerby. If you can’t do it I need… Hand it to the passerby. I’ll have her do it. Or if you’ve got any citizens there, I’ll have them…
Colleen: No. No.
911: Anybody there can do CPR. Give them the phone, please. I understand if you… if your facility is not willing to do that. Give the phone to that passerby, that stranger that [inaudible 0:03:39.8]. I need… This woman is not breathing enough. She’s going to die if we don’t get this started. Do you understand?
Colleen: I understand.
911: Okay.
Colleen: I am a nurse. But I cannot have our other senior citizens who don’t know CPR…
911: I will instruct them in it.
Colleen: …to do it. We’re in a dining room.
911: I will instruct them. If there is anyone there who is…?
Colleen: I can’t do that.
911: Okay. I don’t understand why you’re not willing to help this patient.
Colleen: I am but…
911: Okay, great. Then I’ll walk you through it all. We… EMS takes the liability for this, Colleen. I’m happy to help you. Okay? This is… This is EMS protocol. Okay?
Colleen: [inaudible 0:04:12.8] I don’t know where he is but she’s yelling at me and saying that we have to have one of our other residents perform CPR and she’ll instruct and I’m not going to do that and make that call.
911: Colleen, is there anybody that works there that’s willing to do it?
Colleen: We can’t do that.
911: Are we just going to wait…? We’re going to let this lady die?
Colleen: Well, that’s why we’re calling 911. I’m sorry.
911: We can’t wait. She can’t wait right now. She is stopping breathing. She can’t wait for them to get there.
Colleen: She’s taken three breaths.
911: It’s not enough. We need to get CPR started.
Colleen: I know. He’s saying we don’t so you can talk to my boss and I’m…
911: Okay.
Colleen: I don’t know what…
911: They’re refusing CPR. They’re going to let her die. By the facility—yeah.
Colleen: When will the fire department be here? When will the…?
911: They’re coming as quick… They’ve been on the way all this time but we can’t wait. This lady is going to die.
Colleen: Yeah.
911: Okay. Well, then if… If you get anybody—any stranger—that happens to walk by that’s willing to help… I understand if your boss is telling you you can’t do it but if there is any… If a human being… I don’t… You know is there anybody there that’s willing to help this lady and not let her die?
Colleen: Not at this time.
911: No. They won’t… They won’t touch her at all. I can’t get them to touch her at all.
Colleen: Well, we have… We have residents that are… that are her age or older.
911: Any guests? Any guests that are there that are willing to help?
Colleen: No, I don’t have any.
911: Is there a gardener or any staff… anybody that doesn’t work for you anywhere? Can we flag someone down in the street and get them to help this lady? Can we flag a stranger down? I bet a stranger will help her. I’m pretty good at talking them into it. If you can flag a stranger down, I will help. I will help tell them how to help her.
Colleen: I don’t know if [inaudible 0:06:15.7]. Well, it’d be good not to move her. Yeah. Okay.
911: Has anyone gone to look for a stranger?
Colleen: They’re here right now.
911: All right.
Colleen: Okay.
911: 12067.
[End of 911 Recording]
Bill: Well, there you go, Brian. We’ve reached that point where there is so much fear of what can happen and the nurse is obviously so desensitized to it that there is nothing that anyone can do. The patients there, the other residents there are trying to save this person’s life but the nurses are walking past the body. Now you hear of that in New York City, right? Somebody gets shot and they’re down and sort of New Yorkers are, as everyone knows… So they’re sort of calloused and off to work and have things to do and so occasionally you hear a story about something like that in the city, although not… There are a lot of New Yorkers, to be candid, that would have helped this lady, you know? So what in the world?
Brian: Well, we’re talking about a story, Bill, last week out of Los Angeles. The LA Times Local gives it the headline “Refusing CPR to a Dying Woman, Local Police Have Concluded, Is Not a Crime.” But as Jeremy was throwing this into the open, I was reading this email that you sent me and as I’m sure you know but our listeners may not, at least as of the time of this printing, when they talked to the parent company, the parent company released a statement Tuesday saying that “The staff member”—Colleen, who you hear, that refused—“The staff member handled the situation incorrectly.” So it’s not that… I haven’t been able to find a do not resuscitate order—at least a copy of it—I’ve been looking at it while we’ve been listening. But it says here even the parent company out of… I think it was Tennessee said she handled it inappropriately.
So I guess my question to you is that… The first line of the Hippocratic Oath—“I will cause no harm or injustice to come to a person in my care”—I pulled it up here—“I will use my abilities. I will keep them from harm and injustice.” So if the parent company says that this nurse handled it inappropriately… And I think what was so shocking to me is Colleen’s voice was void of any kind of compassion. It was… It was void of any kind of humanity and I feel bad for all the jokes I’ve made about 911 operators not handling a “Hey, I drove up to the burger joint and got the wrong… I got a chicken sandwich instead of a double cheeseburger” because this 911 operator seemed absolutely compassionate and the nurse just said, “Well, my boss…” You know what I thought of? Who was the guy in Vietnam? The My Lai? That went where they said, “Oh, well my boss gave me the order.” Calley or whoever the guy’s name was?
Bill: Lieutenant Calley.
Brian: Yeah, Calley, who said, “Okay great.” And because he gave the order… This lady’s superior gave her the order and this poor woman died.
Bill: Well, and then I mean… It works on a couple different levels. There is that calloused, desensitized, denatured humanity that you heard with her but I think there are a lot of nurses that would have reacted differently so we’re not painting a broad brush here against nurses because we know that that would have been handled differently. I was thinking, Brian, she seemed almost like she was sedated herself.
Brian: Yes.
Bill: And then I started thinking, “How could she get through nursing school or was she taking something?” The first thing I thought of was “Was she taking something?” because she just seemed out of it—not… And then here’s someone on the other line pleading with her to try to help and… I mean we’ve been in the… My wife has been in the nursing home business for a long time and so I can tell you I understand do not resuscitates. That’s something that’s just part of the deal. But what the deal here is someone falls on the floor. Even if they have a do not resuscitate, you pick them up and comfort them and if they have to die, they have to die. So we’re not saying that we… that there is no such thing as that and at any cost… I personally feel like a person ought to have the dignity to die but if you fall facedown or whatever it is on the concrete… on the linoleum, you ought to be given comfort. Someone should come and hold your hand and say, “You know what? It’s going to be okay. God loves you”—whatever it is that we say. We’re going to do our best to try to make sure that someone dies with dignity, dies holding my hand or something—not someone walking past.
Brian: Well, according to the article, Bill, it says here from the executive director… It says here “In the event of a health emergency at this independent…” Boy, I guess it really means “independent living facility.” You can’t even depend on someone to give you CPR…
Bill: Now that’s independent living.
Brian: Now that’s independent… Well, you know what…?
Bill: Or independent dying, maybe.
Brian: Hey look, well we put the… We put the “I” in “independent” here at Glenwood Gardens. “In the event of a health emergency at this independent living community, our practice is to immediately call emergency personnel for assistance and then to wait with the individual needing attention until such personnel arrives.” But then you later see in the report that the nurse handled the situation incorrectly, as according to their home office—their parent company or the like. So I’m with you. I mean I don’t think you and I are splitting hairs. I think if this woman said, of a sound mind, “If something happens to me do not resuscitate me…” But I’ve not been able to find that actual language in a couple of the different reports that I’ve read. It basically says that it’s because the independent facility’s position is to call emergency personnel to respond to the scene.
I’m like you. I think do not resuscitate—and maybe this is just my mind—you’re lying in bed, you’ve had an illness that’s slowly draining life from you. They come in and they find you. But if you slip and fall in the hallway and hit your head, does it…? And I’m not an attorney, obviously. Does it apply to that as well? And where does karma come in? Where does the sense of the Hippocratic Oath? And it’s not just doctors. Nursing personnel, I’m told, take that same oath. Where does that enter in? I mean how can you work at a facility that says, “Great. We know you took an oath that says, ‘I’ll not harm or cause injustice’ but we want you to set that oath aside”? You know we scream and holler all the time here about politicians that take the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and we’re accustomed to them going, “Oh well, we didn’t really mean ‘preserve it.’ We mean kind of molding it the way we see…” How does it work where you could leave a woman on the floor? I just don’t get it.
Bill: This is not the first time in history, of course, this has happened. The Egyptians found themselves in bureaucratic nightmares; layer upon layer of bureaucracies and what it does is immobilize the culture. In the Soviet Union, for example, during Stalin’s day it was against the law to give charity because only the state gave charity. So if you saw someone in need and tried to help them, you were fighting against God because only God gives grace and grace comes from the government. And so you were circumventing that process and everyone knows what went on in the Soviet Union. You couldn’t get anything accomplished because of all the politburos. And I think what we have is the sort of a more democratized version of all of this but the strangling of our society… It’s the same nonetheless. And you have nurses being trained in our medical fields because of this separation of church and state; ostensibly, you have people being trained with no ethical side.
I remember, Brian, sitting on a plane one time with a young woman who was in medical school and we were talking about just what it was like to be in medical school and I brought up some ethical questions to her and she was just taken back that… She had never thought of those things before. So—on the terms that I was presenting them—I mean she… She had been trained in this sort of clinical, bureaucratic, “How do you keep from being sued?” world and no one had given her ever the other side of it and I’ll never forget that conversation because I felt like that was chilling. And she was a bright young, attractive, beautiful girl that I hope is a good doctor today but just the fact that she had no training… I mean no “I want to be a doctor and help people kind of.”
Brian: Kind of. Well, let me ask you this then. Let’s take the opposite of this. Suppose this woman, being of sound mind, signed a do not resuscitate. Who are you or I or this nurse to interfere with a decision, right? Now people will be screaming, going, “Well, Brian, you’re all for euthanasia.” Well, if you can sign a do not resuscitate and you’re of sound mind when you do it, who are you and I to decide we should violate… Which if she signed the document—if there truly is a do not resuscitate—that either she signed or her kids, being their legal guardians, right? If they can… If they are her legal guardians, if they signed it, who are you and I to get involved?
Bill: Well, I think it’s a social statement in some sense and I think that a culture… I think the reason for involvement is you can have a do not resuscitate. I would make the case for that and I think if you, being of sound mind and body, want to sign something you certainly should be able to die with dignity. I myself am not afraid of death so I don’t want a bunch of tubes hooked up to me if I’m 87 years old. I don’t want to be a burden to my kids, to my family, to society. And I don’t… There’s nothing wrong with dying. I mean we have to admit that that’s okay. I guess the part that most concerns me is if you have a do not resuscitate, turn the lady over and hold her hand and give her some comfort as she’s dying.
Brian: Oh absolutely.
Bill: Right? That’s all that I’m saying here. Don’t be so callous… Have we come this far that even with a do not resuscitate, that we just play this cold, dead, clinical game where everyone is a number and is treated in a way that we’ve lost our humanity?
Brian: I would… You know what, my friend? I would… See, now I’m going to go back to the opposite side, which is why I’m so stupefied by this. Nothing in the bureaucratic behemoth compels me to believe that I have to check my empathy at the door—that I have to check my compassion at the door. And I could see a position with this nurse—and we know her name is Colleen because you hear it in the tape—go, “Look, fire me then. I’m not going to let another human being die.”
Bill: “I’ll just collect unemployment.”
Brian: “I’ll collect…” Well, there you go. But you know what I’m saying? What is…?
Bill: There’s no way I can lose.
Brian: I don’t see… I don’t see me letting the lady die and I know this is going to infuriate a lot of people. People will be calling in going, “Well, you know what, Brian? She signed a”—if that’s the case—“She signed a legal document. She had the right to decide she didn’t want to be interfered with and who are you, just because your sense of compassion says you’re going to ride in on a white horse to save her?” and I guess I’d have to look at that person taking that argument and go, “Maybe you’re right.” I’m saying as a human being I could not have let the lady… I don’t think I… I don’t think I could do it. And I have stopped and helped people in the street.
Bill: I don’t think I could do it. But here’s… Let me throw another thing at you. We sort of think that we’ve evolved into some sort of superior beings and we look back at the folks that lived during the Middle Ages and said, “You fools. You don’t know much.” But let me just tell you a simple thing that people, in many ways, I think people were much smarter. Now they didn’t have iPads and computers and stuff and the idea of how we do functions as our specialty with the Division of Labor was not developed. We just have to say that that’s the case. So no argument there.
But with respect to thinking who we are, you know the old joke about someone saying, “You’re of no earthly good. You would argue about something like how many angels could dance on the head of a pin”? Well, that was not a foolish argument. It’s a foolish argument today because we’re uneducated people but the idea was “What necessitates the essence of something? What is the essence of something?” So is an angel…? Is mass required for something? And so they were asking sort of metaphysical and ontological questions about what reality was. So those people who had that perspective—those philosophers, those thinkers—would certainly understand “Who is that lady?” Right? Do you see? So there is… We have to get back to studying philosophy and theology and we have to be able to say, “Well, what makes up the essence of something?” And this is a human being.
So I think who are you as a human being? And then so we have to pull that camera back. In my case, I’m a Christian first and then I’m a father, an employee, an owner of a business, I’m a taxpayer—I’m a bunch of things—but if the leaven of my persona says something like, “Wow. I need to be compassionate” and that’s not sort of a suggestion by the Bible, that’s a command, then that would leaven my job. So again, I’m just talking about turning her over, getting a pillow, putting something over her and holding her hand and looking her in the eye and saying, “Help is on the way.”
Brian: Yeah, I… I absolutely see it. I absolutely see it and I think if nothing else, for folks that are in the position to put their parents in homes like this, maybe this whole incident will spark a wake-up call or at least a discussion to go, “Look, know where it is you’re going to put your mom or your dad or your significant other,” you know what I mean? Know where you’re going to put them because if… I can’t imagine this is the only place that would have this rule that if something happens you’ve got to call emergency personnel.
My question would be why have nurses there then? Why not hire the same people that take tickets at a Chicago Blackhawks hockey game? Why not get Andy Frain over there? If you’re not going to be a nurse, if you’re not going to perform some type of emergency service, why not have… I’ve got an idea. Let’s open it up to… You can pick anyone you want—anyone you want—anyone you want. If you’re a nurse and you’re not going to be a nurse when someone falls on the floor and dies, then why the heck are you there? Go park cars. Go wash dishes at a restaurant.
Bill: Stepping over another human being while they’re lying there… just to me… It’s just… I don’t know of too many cultures that ever have really done that. I mean that’s just quite a thing. Even if it’s your enemies, right? Even if it’s your enemies. You can go on the battlefield and even in the battlefield, you go look at the Civil War, man. You shoot somebody and yeah, the Red was your enemy but you… If he was still alive, in many cases people tried to help each other even. There was kind of a code that you could live by, like the song, right? “A code that you could live by.” That shouldn’t be such a strange thing to people today. And what happens if you raise up a generation of people that have no code to live by? “Teach your children well”—just like the song says, right?
Brian: Right. Well, let’s do this then. Let’s just—to give both of us a chance to look at it at a slightly different… Suppose that Colleen does CPR. The lady is revived. But we are assuming that she fell, right? I mean I don’t think she laid down on the middle of the floor and then stopped breathing. Assuming she fell. Colleen performed CPR and brings her back but she doesn’t get her all the way back. Now for the next six years she’s on life support, she’s in a coma because of the trauma—the subdural hematoma—that was suffered during the fall. Would people be screaming, “How did you torture that poor woman? You were told there was a do not resuscitate. You were told not to bring her back to life and because you have some holier than thou attitude…”
Bill: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would never violate a do not resuscitate. I’m saying even under a do not resuscitate there is care that you can give as someone is going into the next world. I mean there are just things that you can do to make them more comfortable and more assured. How can it be? How could…? Would we want our parents and grandparents to not have… to die facedown on the concrete, even if they had a do not resuscitate? Would we want them to die facedown on the concrete? I’m just saying no.
Brian: And I’m with you. I’m with you. So I… I guess I see both parts and when you have a chance to look back… What is it, the armchair quarterback or hindsight is 20/20? I guess this is one of the stories where if you’re being honest with yourself you can, I suspect, see both sides of the story but for me, I’m going to walk away from this story going, “Look, if you’re going to put your mom and dad in a facility like this, you should find out if it’s being staffed by parking lot attendants or whether they’re being staffed…
Bill: Well, in this case a parking…
Brian: See, but then I get…
Bill: Now see, I’m going to turn it on you. A parking lot attendant would have probably helped her, at least on some level, so… But… But the case for… I’m just… We’re just making the case for “Is this the world…? Is this Grandpa Walton’s world?”
Brian: Right.
Bill: And the answer is “What would Grandpa Walton…? What would the Walton family have done?” and I don’t think it… I think just your natural response as one human being to another is to say, “I’m going to help you.” And I hope that never changes. If that changes we’re doomed as a culture, as a society, as a race, species—whatever it is we are as humans—we’re doomed.
Brian: I get that and I think the other thing that we’re discussing is don’t send me an email link two minutes before we go on here.
Bill: Well, I got you…
Brian: I mean I saw Jeremy’s cue and Jeremy’s looking at me like, “Hi Brian. Nice to see you. We’re doing a radio show now” and I’m looking at the screen going, “How did they let this poor lady die?”
Bill: So let’s segue into another thing and let’s talk about some more upside down world. Let’s look a little bit at just the numbers that came out that are being issued according to the Bureau of Labor statistics about the economy. So I’m making the case today, for the sake of this show that we’re living in an upside down world. It’s not sustainable. It’s not sustainable on the street with 87 year old ladies falling and people walking over bodies to use the restroom or whatever it is and it’s not sustainable at the macro level where we start talking about the economy because as you know, these numbers come out and the latest numbers—there were 48,000 in new jobs created in construction, which is really sort of possible because there is work to be done someplace in the country. They have little booms and busts and… But just… and about 10,000 in accounting—you would expect 10,000 in accounting during tax season, right?
Brian: Tax season? Sure.
Bill: But look at how big the tax season is. It’s a huge deal. Every American has to pay taxes. Now just keep this in your head. 10,000 people or maybe 11,000 got jobs in that field. Now you’d think that would be the biggest field in the world. Now so they say that. Then you go to some of the other things where they’re saying that… How many thousand people got jobs—new jobs—were 21,000 people… new jobs were created in the motion picture and sound recording industries—twice the number of tax helpers. Now that just seems lame to me. I just don’t think that that’s true.
Brian: Well, you know my friend, I don’t know if it’s a help or not—I gave up a long time ago believing there is gold in Fort Knox.
Bill: Well, you and other people.
Brian: I don’t believe anything I hear anymore about those numbers. I’d like to know how many people tapped out.
Bill: I’m glad Brando left.
Brian: How many people tapped out and said, “Look, I’m just not going to look anymore”? How many people have voluntary removed themselves from the workforce?
Bill: That’s it. That’s the thing right there too. We’re now—here’s another thing—this is like stepping over an 87-year-old lady. We now—and I know we’ve mentioned this on the show before—but we now count people… We—just the opposite of that, Brian—we don’t count people who are discouraged.
Brian: Right.
Bill: So can you imagine people during the Depression being discouraged? Everyone was discouraged. So we don’t count them anymore now because they’re discouraged, because they’ve tried and so they’re now… it’s not part of our unemployment rate? Well, what the heck category do you have for them? Where do they go?
Brian: I… I don’t believe a word of it.
Bill: These people are just lying through their teeth to us, trying to make that everything is okay. So it becomes politicized in the same way that sort of the lady gets… I mean this is kind of the same… As far as I’m concerned, it’s the same story—a world that doesn’t have any reality—a dream world.
Brian: Well, you know what I thought of when you said that—remember “Animal House”—the movie back from the day, when one of his first starring roles, Kevin Bacon is the ROTC guy and he’s screaming towards the end during the riots? He’s got his hands up—“All is well! All is well!” Camera cuts away, cuts back and he gets trampled. He’s like a flat, cardboard cutout of himself. Here is the authority screaming, “All is well! All is well!” Guess what—wasn‘t so much well, was it? Didn’t work out good for Kevin Bacon in the Animal House—flat as a pancake.
Bill: Flat as a pancake.
Brian: So I look at it and go, “I’m done with the “All is well! All is well!” because on the opposite side of the spectrum, Bill, you have the “Chicken Littles,” right? So you have “All is well! All is well!” That pulled you the one end of the reality spectrum. And on the other end you’ve got “Well, the sequester.” I read the one day last week that the sequester was going to cause an increase in solar sunspots. You know what I mean? So what do you believe?
Bill: What’s the lady…? What’s the lady that said that we would lose 180 million jobs?
Brian: I don’t know. Janet Napolitano said she was going to let 180 million of the criminals out of jails on the border. I don’t know… But it would have had to have been… Well, it wouldn’t be Susan Rice. She was the one saying that we lost everybody—we lost an ambassador—because a movie release went bad. So it wouldn’t… She’s already taken.
Bill: Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit about… I’m going to look the lady up that said that. I mean which… just…
Brian: Oh, how about Arnie Duncan saying the schools were going to close? How about Janet Napolitano also—while you’re looking that up, Bill—the other one said, “Oh, there will be long, long, long, long lines at TSA”? There was another one.
Bill: That’s the same thing that they do… You know what they do at local… like at the local schools around here? The first thing they do to parents when we’re running out of money is say, “Well, it looks like there is no boys’ football or basketball. We’ve run out of money.” So because what do they want to do? They want to take the thing that the community is most attached to and they want to sort of use the “Chicken Little” strategy and say, “We’re going to hit you right…” Just the same way Obama did saying, “Well, you can’t come and see the White House now. We’ll show you.”
Brian: Yeah. Yeah.
Bill: Go to something superficial and make a big deal out of it. Boys’ basketball and boys’ football—not that I’m a big fan of the public school systems—but those things make money for the school systems and it’s the first thing they do is go for the throat and threaten you.
Brian: And I said last week that the White House is still considered to be “our house,” you know what I mean? It’s still going to be something… and now you can’t get tours on it but everyone can travel in high style, everybody can… Bill, I think Jeremy’s got something for you. Everyone can travel in high style. Everybody…
Bill: Who is Maxine Water?
Brian: Oh, Maxine—our good friend, Maxine.
Bill: I forgot all about… yeah.
Brian: I’m sorry.
Bill: Now there is a politician you’d want that… someone that probably couldn’t clean… couldn’t really get a job anywhere. She’s making statements about… There we are, Brian—back to reality again.
Brian: How about the guy in Georgia—the politician from Georgia—that said Guam was going to tip over if we put the military base…? Remember him?
Bill: Yeah. Oh, there’s a scientist.
Brian: Well, can I ask you…? Kind of like while you’re typing up there, can I ask you an unrelated question?
Bill: He’s not going to be on that… What’s the show that I joke about all the time, Jeremy—the new show?
Brian: Splash—Dancing with Splash.
Bill: No, no, no, no. What’s the new show?
Jeremy: Big Bang.
Bill: Big Bang.
Brian: Oh, you like the Big Bang?
Bill: Maxine is not going to be on Big Bang Theory. She doesn’t have a slide rule.
Brian: Now she could do… Now there are people that could very well end up being a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory with Jenny? I think is the girl’s name—Jenny? I don’t know. I watch Duck Dynasty all the time now so that’s about… I really dig that. But can I ask you a question somewhat off the topic?
Bill: Yeah, sure.
Brian: Okay, groovy. So here’s the thing. Everyone is anti-drone, anti-drone, anti-drone, right? We can’t have these drones. And then you hear that “Well, if you’re an Al-Qaida member, you’ve sworn to attack the United States, you’ve done this or that—we can take you out with a drone,” right? I mean so a lot of people believe that that’s the case. What infuriates me is you’ve this Kim Jong Younger running around going… He’s going to launch nuclear weapons against the United States. He’s going to turn it into a Lake of Fire. He’s going to do all the rest of this. Then for all of you that are fans of the drones—go drone him. “Ooh, but wait, Brian. We’re politicians. We don’t kill each other. We just look for regular folks to drone.” But if you’re going to drone someone that’s over… Right? Running around outside in the sands out of Saudi Arabia—“Well, I swear allegiance to Al-Qaida,” well, that bought you a drone, right? Purposely, because you took up arms against the United States. Here is the leader of North Korea saying he’s testing nuclear weapons, he’s going to start a war, he’s nullifying what’s going on with South Korea? Then if you’re such a fan of drones, drone the boy, right?
Bill: Well, I think… I would make an exception. I would say… I would add him and Dennis Rodman to the list dronable people. I’m just kidding. I’m not a big fan of that. I realize our military needs some sort of drones but to have drones in our country… I mean that’s just… That’s another one of those Orwellian things that will end up killing us because we… We want not to have any risks, right?
Brian: Sure.
Bill: All of these things are risk deals and there has to be zero risk of terrorism. So around here we… Here’s a… This may seem off topic, Brian—again, like we’re looping back around—but people say, “Well”—to these farmers—“Your milk has to have these sort of characteristics” and we want perfect milk from farmers, which I’m for good milk. We need to have good milk, which means really you can’t feed that cow anything that has sort of… even the grass where sometimes you have residue of pesticides and so forth. So you want perfect milk. People don’t realize perfect milk will cost $20 a gallon and who would be punished? You know? You can’t have perfect milk. The poor get hit the worst with these… when these socialists want perfect milk. I think we should have $20 milk available for people that want to buy it. That’s the free market. That’s a beautiful thing and maybe prices would come down and people would figure out how to have all that.
But again, just… Perfect milk has a cost. Perfect safety and security has a cost and it’s stifling and strangling, right? You can’t have 100% security. You can’t know inside someone’s brain if they’re going to think about maybe doing something. You can’t know that. And so these guys, if you watch these generals on TV—that’s been on C-SPAN lately—talk about how many drones they need and how much more information they need on every citizen in this country—all of your Facebook data, everything you have—and they build a dossier because they want to see if there is the potential to manage you and the cost associated with potentially managing someone who gets mad once in a while is past what a nature can endure. Russia lost their Afghanistani war because they couldn’t even keep that going. This is monstrous and there is no way. So in addition to the freedom issue, Brian, what you’ve got is a terrible, terrible financial cost associated with making us a slave state.
Brian: Absolutely.
Bill: It’s just… It’s off the charts too expensive.
Brian: Well, that’s why… You and I have talked about it forever—about just what the future looks like—and you’ve got to live every day. You’ve got to live full of life. You’ve got to be passionate. You’ve got to defend what you believe in because every week it goes on I keep thinking to myself “How is this going to turn out?” How is this going to turn out? We can’t keep going the way it is—not if you use history, right? Not if you use history as a good slide rule. You said “slide rules” earlier. Not if you use history. You can’t keep going the way it is. And you look at the headlines and you just go… You can’t make this stuff up. You can’t make this stuff up.
Bill: Well, can I throw you another curveball?
Brian: Please do.
Bill: We’re almost done. I wanted to mention the consumer price index as a function of this too and then I wanted to kind of turn to another little bit of a story. They say there is no inflation. I think the official number is 1.6 and what they do there—how they lie—is they change the basket of commodities that they measure. So they start with milk and eggs and the kind of things that we all buy and we need every day and then they switch the basket to things that are made in China and that China is actually dumping here and so you have a reduction in a lot of the costs of… You just change the basket of items… of goods and the item and you do it until there is no inflation in the basket. So you pull this item out and you add this item and you sort of… another way to lie about the reality of what’s happening in the world. And I just wanted to throw that in there lastly because I think a lot of people are getting sort of… what’s the right word? Especially precious metal owners who think that there is a large manipulation—and there is—but it won’t last… I think Emerson said once that “You can’t stand up in a parade for long” and what’s he mean? Everybody else stands up.
And so you can mess with currencies for a while but trust me when I say this is a short-term thing. And it’s… If they can do it for a couple more years, bully for them but it’s a tremendous time to sort of be thinking about what life under inflation is like. China has got a lot of money. They can buy the world’s gold reserves a couple times over. They’re not engaged in any wars. They’re savers. Their citizens are net savers and that will come and haunt us—not because they’re communists—but because they’re net savers and because they buy gold. So you’ve got an upside down world.
Here’s the curveball I want to throw you—and this isn’t really fun for me to talk about—it sounds like a joke. But I want to read you a headline that was on my friend Gary DeMar’s site that I think it really about says in an upside down world, anything goes. So Yale just had an event on March 2, Brian, and Yale is a school whose motto originally is “Light and Truth From God’s Word”—that was how Yale… That was the presuppositions that started Yale. So with that, the light and truth folks are now… have now hosted a “Sex With Anything” event on March 2. They had a sensitivity training where students were asked to consider topics as bestiality, incest and accepting money for sex. And it gets worse and worse and worse. And so this is part of the curriculum, part of the sort of “How to desensitize”—we talked about being desensitized with respect to stepping over a body—and now we’re being desensitized… or the students who will… a lot of them be our leaders… Remember Yale and Harvard, the Clintons and everybody—they go to those two schools. I don’t know what it costs to go there. I think it’s in this article someplace–$60,000-70,000—so parents, don’t send your kid to Yale.
Brian: You know what? I think…
Bill: Anything goes day.
Brian: I think I need to take a shower. From our opening…
Bill: This is a special radio episode where everyone needs to go shower when… Ladies and gentlemen, go shower when you’re done with this.
Brian: Yeah, I’m going to ask Jeremy to squirt me off with the hose when we get out of the studio.
Bill: Go pray…
Brian: Jeremy’s shaking his head “no.” Will you squirt me off with the hose, Bill? But that’s… Ay, ay, ay. I don’t know, my friend. And my question to you on all that—in terms of the Yale study—is then where do you draw the line about interactions with children? Where do you draw the line—if you’re doing this whole thing…?
Bill: Well, I know exactly where the North American Man-Boy Love Association would draw that line. I know exactly where they would draw that line. And it wouldn’t be a pleasant episode to talk about. So there are people… And I’ll tell you where this is really a decadent, deranged… If there are manuals of what’s normative in psychology, Brian, being written… And here’s where the real action is behind the scenes that most people don’t see. These manuals are written by bureaucrats as well—secularist bureaucrats, for the most part—and in these manuals what’s written now is “Is someone mentally ill if they want to do X?” Fill in the blank. And so that has to be decided as a culture and we have to decide who we prosecute and mental illness specialists have to decide “What is a mental illness?” So now you get crazy, weird sex deviant things being taken off the books. In other words, the fight where the battle is right now is in these books… is in these regs.
And then what’s being added to it? Who is mentally ill? Well, the people with the Constitution… It’s just like the state troopers in Missouri want the people that have the Constitution, the members of the Constitutionalist Party, people with… Rand Paul, I guess. It used to be Ron. Now it’ll be Rand Paul stickers. And on and on. So what’s mental illness? Well, that’s sort of floating out there too for being… You mentioned earlier… This is like idolatry, right? We make these idols with our own hands and we make these laws in a sort of idolatrous sense with our own hands. We fashion them like they’re clay… fashion them like they’re clay and that’s what you’ve got.
Brian: Like I said, my friend…
Bill: I’ve never seen you speechless before.
Brian: Well, I guess this is as good a time as any to start thanking everyone and begin to wrap up the show. I was speechless to start the show. I’m going to be speechless here as we end it. Any final thoughts? I’m thinking of asking our listeners just to send me soap. I’m going to take a hot shower. You know that guy that says…? Remember a couple years back, Bill? “Buy me a beer”? He was asking people to donate money to buy him a beer and he traveled all over the world on those proceeds, drinking a beer? I’m going to start a campaign—“Buy me a bar of Ivory or Dove soap or Irish Spring.” It’s almost… Irish Spring would work.
Bill: It’s almost… Why don’t you say, “Manly, yes, but I like it too.”
Brian: I’m Irish and I have…
Bill: You’re day is coming up soon. Your day is coming up Sunday so Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you. Here’s how we close. We close it a couple different ways. St. Patrick—a guy… We should have done a section on him but a tremendous, Christian missionary, somebody that Protestants think they don’t need to care about because they think he’s Catholic and so many Catholics probably don’t pay any attention too. So whether you’re Protestant or Catholic or just don’t know, go read a little bit. Do some research. Read a little bit about who St. Patrick was—a tremendous man, a great hero, a fearless guy. So there is that and then how do you end a show where we talked about sort of “The world is getting crazy”? Do you end it by saying, “Here’s how the world could be more sane”?
The world, from my view, Brian, the world is more sane if you… if we look at God’s law and we say, “You know what? This is the Creator’s manual and the further we stray from it, the further we stray, the further we stray.” So what’s our foundational presuppositions? How do we get along in life? Well, if we go our… everyone gets to decide for themselves, as we’ve demonstrated today, you’ve got a kind of crazy society. But I think if we’re all on the same page because we all have the same basic faith convictions, then I think you’ve got a society that prospers, that works, where there is community and harmony and that’s what we’ve got to shoot for.
Brian: And you know, my friend, I’ll end with this then. I like the term from the Hindu community that—the Namaste—that says, “I worship that portion in you where you and God are one.” So I’d say to the young lady that left the older lady on the floor and not provide CPR, I would remind her that it’s always a good idea to look for that portion in a person where that person and the Divine are one. That’ll be it for me.
Bill: Great point.
Brian: That’ll be it for me. And now—to the showers. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my good friend, Mr. Bill Heid, everyone here at Off The Grid Radio and our parent company, Solutions From Science, I really want to thank you. As crazy as this show has been, remember who you are, love your kids, love your parents as they get older and I’m sure, as Bill is, you’re going to do just fine. Thank you so very much for hanging out with us here at Off The Grid News.
