William K. Wolfrum

HELL — Despite a commitment to “Faith-Based” programs, a new report from St. John’s University shows that there are more Americans going to hell than ever before. In a retroactive study, the report shows that new U.S. entries into Hell have shot up more than 2,000 percent over the past seven years alone.

“This is just fucking awesome,” said Satan in a telephone interview.

The report breaks down the reasons for those being spent to Hades, with Pride and Greed ranking as the top two. The report also takes a look at personality types who have been sent straight to Hell over the past seven years, with “Dittoheads” and “Torture Apologists” being the most popular new members. Satan said it’s been a boom time in Hades.

“We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds,” said Satan, taking a brief respite from gorging on the entrails of Milton Friedman. “We’ve been expanding like never before.”

Satan went on to add that Halliburton has received the majority of the expansion contracts, most coming through a no-bid process.

“They really know what their doing and are the only company I can see that has the ability to make the changes we need,” said Satan.

Many believed that the emergence of “Faith-Based” programs, as instituted by U.S. President George W. Bush, would eventually slow entrances to Hell to a crawl. Instead, it’s been a virtual stampede. Some experts have claimed, however, that such a result was easy to predict.

“Let’s see, No Child Left Behind leaves behind children, the $6-billion Reading First program has left more children unable to read, abstinence-only programs have led to higher teen pregnancy rates, etc., etc.,” said a despondent Jesus Christ from a bar in Sacramento, Calif. “I’m pretty sure if the Bush Administration started a ‘Nipple Protection’ program, the U.S. would be a nipple-less society inside of six months.”

Still, while more and more Americans face up to an eternity of Hellfire, there have been some positive results. Notably, shares of Infernus Industries have risen more than 300 percent over the past quarter alone.

“Seriously, this has just been fucking fantastic,” said Satan.

–WKW

Truth and right-wing talking points generally go together like oil and water. Especially when the talking points are actually about oil. Because like most other right-wing talking points, the most common ones simply are not true.

Americans are getting gouged by high gas prices.

False.

From CNNMoney:

Relatively low taxes have kept pump prices far below most other developed nations, which some say is precisely why the current runup is so painful.
Despite daily headlines bemoaning record gas prices, the U.S. is actually one of the cheaper places to fill up in the world.

Out of 155 countries surveyed, U.S. gas prices were the 45th cheapest, according to a recent study from AIRINC, a research firm that tracks cost of living data.

The difference is staggering. As of late March, U.S. gas prices averaged $3.45 a gallon. That compares to over $8 a gallon across much of Europe.

So why does a price rise at the pump hurt Americans? Because we use more.

On a per capita basis, Americans use three times more oil than Europeans, he said. That means Americans are more exposed to rising gas prices than their counterparts across the Atlantic.

“There has not been a single new refinery built in America since 1976.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Oscar De La Hoya cruised to a unanimous decision over Stevie Forbes in Los Angeles on Saturday night. For De La Hoya, that’s the good news. The bad news is this - if he steps in against anyone less limited than Forbes, he could be in big trouble.

Showing little more than aggression, a good work pace and a strong left jab, De La Hoya cruised past Forbes in a fight he should have won by knockout. Forbes, a former Contender titlist, is a decent enough fighter,but has very little power. Still, De La Hoya ended the fight with bruises under both eyes.

De La Hoya has been good for boxing, and will continue to be, both with his rematch with Floyd Mayweather, and with his Golden Boy Promotions. But his time as a top fighter is over. Mayweather has boasted he’ll stop De La Hoya next time around, and it’s likely he will.

De La Hoya deserves respect for his career. He’s by no means an all-time great, but anyone who has fought the level of fighters he has deserves respect. Nonetheless, against Forbes, De La Hoya looked, and fought like an older fighter. His power is negligible and he was accurate with only his jab.

–WKW

Dear 48-year-old Man,

I’m writing to you to say thank you. I know nothing about you. Not where you live, not your name, not anything. But you are my hero and someone I’ll always be thankful to. Because you are my Mom’s bone marrow donor and because you are saving the life of a woman you’ve never met and maybe never will.

When we were told my Mom had Acute Myleoid Leukemia, we were told that a bone marrow transplant may be my Mom’s best hope. It seems so scary at the time. Getting chemo to go into remission, finding a matching donor, going through all the tests to find out if my Mom was ready for the procedure.

But now, my Mom is undergoing chemo and radiation treatment in order to prepare for the transplant. She’s at City of Hope Hospital, where she’s staying with my Dad in a bungalow on hospital grounds. Tomorrow, they will go home for a night, even.

My Dad asked the doctor in charge of my Mom’s marrow transplant if he felt confident about the procedure. “We wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t confident,” the doctor said. And right now, with my Mom feeling strong and the transplant day soon approaching, we’re all feeling that confidence. This marrow transplant is going to work, and the reward for my Mom will be years of life that she never would have gotten without the transplant.

So, my friend, thank you. Wherever you are and whoever you are, you are my hero. You are a perfect match with my Mom, and it seems you never hesitated when you learned you could save a stranger’s life. And by doing that, you are helping an entire family, their friends and loved ones. You are truly giving the gift of life, and we are all more touched and happy and confident than we imagined we could be. With the date of the transplant still a week away, your gift has already given us so much, and will give us so much more in the very near future.

Thank you, 48-year-old Man. Thank you so, so much.

Bill Wolfrum and Family

[If anyone wants to join the bone marrow donor registry or would like to find out how to help people in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant, please click here.]

On Costas Now, H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger, author of the book Friday Night Lights, made it very clear that sports blogs are an obscene atrocity. And did it all while repeatedly swearing.

In the segment, Will Leitch of Deadspin does a fine job at making Bissinger - who’s really not that old and is actually a perfect example of the modern print sportswriter - look like a man desperately trying to hang on to a dying media - the newspapers. And Leitch did it with class, unlike Bissinger.

“I’m not the future,” Bissinger said.

Which is really all that need to be said.

Take a look at the video at Deadspin here.

–WKW

This is just pathetic.

“McCain blames Minnesota bridge collapse on earmarks”

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.

Federal investigators cite undersize steel plates as the “critical factor” in the collapse of the bridge. Heavy loads of construction materials on the bridge also contributed to the disaster that injured 145 people on Aug. 1, according to preliminary findings by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“The bridge in Minneapolis didn’t collapse because there wasn’t enough money,” McCain told reporters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.”

Something tells me the lunatic right-wing “conservatives” in the U.S. are going to start liking McCain more and more. Using the death of 13, the misery of their families and the 145 people that were injured in the bridge collapse in order to push his pandering, unrealistic and stupid “Earmarks, never again” platform? He’s proven his point. He’s as sick and demented as the rest of the “conservatives” that never met a death they wouldn’t exploit.

–WKW

My friends, it is time I admit to a hidden truth. I am 62 percent Muslim.

I’m not sure how it happened. Deep in my heart, I believe Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all quite similar to Scientology - as cults. The “Big Three” just has the advantage of having been around so long that people accept them as respectable. But they’re all the same to me.

Nonetheless, it turns out I am 62 percent Muslim. Which makes me 62 percent more likely to be enslaved and tortured in a U.S. internment camp like Guantanamo Bay, or somewhere in the hills of Romania. Hopefully, I’ll catch a break as despite being 62 percent Muslim, I am really, really a crappy Muslim. Hell, I’m eating a pork sandwich as I type this.

But I respect the fact that 62 percent of me is a non-believing, non-practicing Muslim. I’m not sure what the rest of me is, but my latest trip to the doctor leads me to believe a good portion of the other 38 percent is pure cholesterol.

Anyway, I just wanted to be open and honest about how I break down on a percentile basis when it comes to being a Muslim. Feel free to find out how Muslim you are at Are You a Muslim?

–WKW

From the year 2015, an excerpt from the Wikipedia biography of President John W. McCain:

“When McCain won the U.S. Presidency (controversially winning nine states by one vote each), the United States had reached lows it had not seen since the Great Depression era. With the nation at war on four fronts as he took office (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Alabama), McCain quickly responded by taking an 87-day holiday and changing his middle initial to “Dubya.”

Upon returning to office, McCain continued to do little but show old movies of himself to people visiting the White House. It was under these circumstances that the U.S. reached full recovery.

It was Sept. 2009 when the “American Miracle,” as many have taken to calling it, began. First, the dollar strengthened based on absolutely nothing. Job creation also skyrocketed, as business owners around the nation decided that hiring people could be a way for their companies to stop hemorrhaging money. Acting on this news, oil prices plummeted to $42 a barrel, and the price of gas at U.S. pumps averaged $1.28 a gallon.

Health insurance rates plummeted based on the “well, everyone else is doing it,” economic theory. Wealth inequality closed dramatically as the poor were not anywhere near as poor and the rich were just slightly less rich. All U.S. infrastructure simultaneously strengthened in 2010, based on what McCain called the “successful privatization of the U.S. infrastructure.” Critics pointed out that no private companies had done anything, and that it had all just sort of “happened.”

Not long after the American Economic Miracle came the American Military Miracle. Basically, based on the news of the strengthened dollar, radical Islamicists all spontaneously gave up and supported a democratic system with a Freidman-inspired economy in Iraq, Iran, and Syria and promised never to do terrorism again. Alabama chose to continue to its Civil War battle, however, albeit it peacefully.

McCain never admitted to knowing how it all occurred, instead lavishing praise on the Conservative Ideology. “I’m a Conservative, so I knew along everything would come together,” said McCain in 2014. McCain also pointed to conservatism for the victory in the drug war, as everyone stopped doing any type of non-legal drug, all stating that they were too high on life to get high on anything else.

Former President George W. Bush was quick to take credit for most everything, however.

“I always knew my legacy would show my greatness. Now, as I live my legacy, I only look forward to an even better legacy in the years to come,” Bush told the New York Times in 2014 from his compound in Paraguay. Still, Bush was unable to exactly explain how the “American Miracle” took place. “First off, I think by sheer force of personality, I created a better world. Secondly, God.”

The McCain Presidency has been called the “Second Camelot” by many, as the public enjoyed peace and prosperity. McCain’s vibrant personality and jovial personality gave Americans a standard bearer for how to react during bad times. And by just thinking more positively as a nation, as some government officials stated, everything just magically got better.

Whether a critic or a fan, few can doubt that John McCain was the greatest U.S. President of the 21st century. Without having a plan, without actually doing anything, McCain saved the United States of America.”

–WKW

Today, I spent some time on a farm in Brazil and even enjoyed some horseback riding. It was truly enjoyable. While a group of us rode our horses, the farmer siddle up by me and made some conversation. I’m not the best conversationalist in Portuguese, but we did ok.

“You’re from the United States?”

“Yeah, California.”

“Is that as big as Texas?”

“They are both pretty big.”

“A lot of nice beaches in California, right.”

“Yep, lots.”

“Do you like Bush?”

When you’re American “Do you like Bush?” means this: “Do I like you?”

–wkw

When I recovered from the shock of learning that my Mom had acute myeloid Leukemia, I set to work on learning more about it, and trying to find what part I could play.

It was evident early on that my Mom would need a bone marrow transplant to survive more than one or two years. AML is a vicious disease that can only be repressed by intense chemotherapy. It comes back, and the chemo treatments quickly lose potency. So I saw the part I would play, and knew it would be a lifetime endeavor.

With the help of Pat Conlee of the National Marrow Donor Program, I began to learn about the bone marrow registry. I worked with Conlee, my Father and friends and family to put together a bone marrow drive for my mother in Victorville, Calif. But I knew that was not to be a one-time effort, and that the NMDP needed help from wherever it could find it.

As I learned about the NMDP, one fact struck me extremely hard. For Caucasians in need of a bone marrow transplant, 88 percent find a suitable donor. For African-Americans, that number tumbles to 60 percent.

While any person of any race can be a suitable person for anyone in need, the simple fact is this: ethnicity matters when it comes to bone marrow. A Caucasian person has a much better chance of getting a match from another Caucasian. An Asian person has a much better chance of being matched with another Asian. An African-American has a better chance of being matched with another of African descent.

According to the NMDP, there are just 11 million people on the bone marrow donor registry. And that’s not in the U.S. That’s in the world. In the U.S., there are five million white people on the registry. There are 500,000 blacks. There lies the difference between the 88 percent and 60 percent figures.

This is a call to the black community. The National Marrow Donor Program needs you. And those of African descent need you even more. They are literally dying for a better representation of blacks on the bone marrow registry.

To put a face to issue, let me point to my friend Emru Townsend. In December, Townsend - of Montreal - was told that he had AML, as well as a disorder called monosomy 7. He was told he needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. He was also told that due to his African-Caribbean heritage, his chances of finding a donor were much less than if he were white.

But Townsend did not waste his time with self-pity. He immediately began to champion the cause, and his efforts to get more blacks on Canada’s bone marrow registry have been covered in newspapers, radio and on television. He is a true inspiration, going so far as spending days working to get his message out while he is receiving chemotherapy. And he is still without a matching donor. His site - HealEmru.com - tells his story and has valuable information on how one can get on the bone marrow registry.

“After everything I’ve learned, I just can’t believe that everyone is not on the registry,” said Townsend. “It’s just such an easy thing and it’s so important to so many families.”

In the U.S., one of the reasons for the lack of donors of all races is likely the cost. It costs $52 to get on the registry, but that amount falls to $25 for African-Americans due to the need. But even if an African-American doesn’t have a dime to spare, if they want to get on the registry, they will not be turned away. But this is why donations are always eagerly accepted by the NMDP to help defray the costs of the tissue typing necessary.

The process for donating is simple - all it takes is a few swaps from a person’s inner cheek, filling out some paperwork, and it’s done. If you are called as a potential match, you will be given a battery of tests (free of charge) that will see if you are in good health and able to donate. The donating process consists of taking some marrow from your spine (under local anesthesia) and does not entail an overnight stay in a hospital. Generally, some minor discomfort for a day or two is the full price that has to be paid for saving a life.

For my allies in the POC blogosphere, and anyone else interested in helping, I humbly request that you write about this issue in any way you deem fit. Discuss your thoughts on why blacks are so underrepresented if you like. Discuss the issue from any angle you wish. But please discuss it. And register. And try to get more people of African descent onto the registry. Lives are literally in the balance.

Helpful Links

- The National Marrow Donor Program: Here you will find a plethora of information on the bone marrow registry, including how and where you can register. They can also be reached at 1(800) 627-7692.

- Jes Us For Jackie: Rapper Nelly’s ongoing effort to get African-Americans involved in the bone marrow donor registry. Nelly’s sister died from Leukemia, unable to find a donor.

- Emru Townsend’s site: Townsend has worked tirelessly to create a site that has information on his plight, as well as information on bone marrow drives throughout the U.S. and Canada.

- The Caitlin Raymond International Registry: An International bone marrow and cord blood search and donor recruitment center.

- African-American Community Health Advisory Committee: More information on the need for African-American marrow donors and information on how the process takes place.

– Asians for Miracle Matches: Non-Japanese Asians, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders are also underrepresented on the marrow donor registry. A3M is trying to change that.

If you have any other questions, such as how to put together a bone marrow drive in your community or anything else, feel free to contact me at wkwolfrum(at)gmail(dot)com.

–WKW