Help, Help! The Paranoids Are After Me!

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PARANOIA:  People with paranoid personality disorder are generally characterized by having a long-standing pattern of pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others.  A person with paranoid personality disorder will nearly always believe that other people’s motives are suspect or even malevolent.
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Individuals with this disorder assume that other people will exploit, harm, or deceive them, even if no evidence exists to support this expectation. While it is fairly normal for everyone to have some degree of paranoia about certain situations in their lives (such as worry about an impending set of layoffs at work), people with paranoid personality disorder take this to an extreme — it pervades virtually every professional and  personal relationship they have...
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Definition provided courtesy of PsychCentral.com
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And then came 2013...
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The year in which Paranoia got REAL.  
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Remember kids, Paranoia isn't a mental-health destination, it's a J-o-u-r-n-e-y!

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For years...
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• 'Paranoids' told you that the government is monitoring your electronic communications, your telephone calls, your e-mails, your tweets, your 'friends' on Facebook, your blog posts (OOPS!), and your text messages. 

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• 'Paranoids' told you that the government is 'keeping tabs' on your travel - tracking where you go, how much time you spend there, and, possibly even, who you are spending time with. 

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• 'Paranoids' told you that they are concerned about privacy within their own home - as they constantly glance up at the blank, all-seeing camera lens in their laptop, wondering if it is 'ON' or not.  Then, in a moment of frozen panic, they wonder aloud, "If the camera is watching me, might the microphone be ON too?  And if so, who's listening?"

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• 'Paranoids' told you that once the government 'got its hooks' into Health Care that someone other than your doctor may be the disembodied third-party making the life / death medical decisions for you and your family members.  

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• 'Paranoids' told you that the government nourishes itself by creating classes of citizens which depend upon it for their most basic needs - ones which used to be the citizen's responsibility.

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Yes 2013, is the year in which the Majority of Americans took that short leap from Mental Health to...  full-onset Mental Illness.
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The year, in which, so, so, so many of US became Paranoid.
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Oh, sure, right, so you think I'm KIDDING???
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Let's look at each of the above 'Paranoid' assumptions and YOU tell ME who's a nut-job and who's not...
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• Following the NSA WikiLeaks scandal, America discovered that it's 'metadata' is being tracked by the government.  Depending upon which District Judge you listen to, this is most certainly, (or is most certainly not) an Orwellian breach of our privacy rights.  Whether anyone is actually monitoring the context of the calls, I don't know, but when I sold AT&T, and Lucent Technologies voice processing gear back in the mid-1990's, software existed then that allowed computer programs to do key-word spotting in spoken language conversations.  Yes, this was almost two decades ago.  But no one has probably taken the time to make this code better over the past 20 years - right?  Yeah, you're right, that's crazy talk...

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• Getting much less press (because it was released by the ACLU and as everyone knows, those people are LOONS) many cities have license plate scanners in place to scan, read, and track automobiles to determine where people are.  Originally designed to track and identify 'bad people', the system is now pretty much in the ON position 24 x 7.  This information collected is then stored for anywhere from 15 days to 'forever'.  And the last time I looked, forever is a very long time.  Unless of course, you are a common Mayfly, in which case 'forever' is something like 24 hours...

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• That unblinking eye in the top of your laptop screen that stares at you while you type your blog posts?  That one lifeless eye that is ALWAYS looking at you and you KNOW someone is at the other end somewhere tracking what you are doing because you feel that you are never alone in your own home?  And sometimes you think you're crazy and then again...  Maybe you are not so crazy after all?  The FBI has been doing this for years, and those friendly hackers who swiped your credit information this month at Target?  Oh, no problem, they've figured it out too.  But you don't have to believe me, it's on the Washington Post online - you can read about it there...  But before you start reading the article, you might want to put a Post-It note over that dang lens - you know, just so no one sees you reading, or writing naked at your PC.  Some things are better left to the imagination than others...

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• I'm not going to re-live the whole Sarah Palin 'Death Panel' thing since I don't want any one thinking that I boarded that particular Crazy Train (an excellent song concept by the way), instead, I'll allow the ACA verbiage to speak on its on behalf: 

• Paragraph (1) shall not be construed as preventing the Secretary from using evidence or findings from such comparative clinical effectiveness research in determining coverage, reimbursement, or incentive programs under title XVIII based upon a comparison of the difference in the effectiveness of alternative treatments in extending an individual’s life due to the individual’s age, disability, or terminal illness.  Details here 

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•  Am I saying that the above-mentioned Paranoids are also correct when they assume that the government is attempting to enhance / expand its power by accumulating the NEEDY?  Perhaps a visual aid will go a long way in refuting this lunatic claim?

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Oh.  My.  This IS a surprise now isn't it?  It appears that members of BOTH political parties have been busily recruiting to fill the roles of the 'needy' in our society in an effort to buy entire classes, and generations, of American Citizens (well, I'm hoping they are citizens, but I'm sure an illegal few have 'snuck in' under the fence over the past 50 years).
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Wow, who saw THAT coming?

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Back in the day the National Enquirer would run predictions by Jeanne Dixon.  I'm pretty sure that she had a life cycle LONGER than a Mayfly, but she has also moved on to predict the future from the 'other side'.  If you want to find out what's going to happen to America in 2014 and beyond?  
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FIND A PARANOID AND ASK HIM or HER  
(Yeah, they got crazy-mad-prediction skills lately)
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They appear to be quite adept at predicting what will happen to US in the not-to-distant future.  
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And, luckily for US...  Mental Illness, I believe, WILL be covered under ObamaCare! 
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Code Name:  Con Man

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Although, if you are just REALLY FREAKING CRAZY (i.e.:  typing almost-naked at your laptop), Kathleen Sebelius may have to put you down, for the 'greater good' - so sorry about that...
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So, um, you know, you've got to feel PRETTY GOOD about the ObamaCare health coverage - right?
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But hey, the Kinks were Paranoid long before the rest of us...  
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Shoot, they even set the words to music - they called it "Destroyer".  
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I find this odd as it is also happens to be my 'code name' for the President... 
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