Ayn Rand Disease

Most of my friends and contacts on Facebook lean to the left or way to the left .... so even though there is some good news, much of it is exposure of some totally insane plan from the Tea Party GOP.  Can't stand ObamaCare because it has his name on it, wanna sue Obama for Benghazi or some minor detail of ObamaCare for the 10th time.   Bitter unhappy people that are willing to bring the whole economy and government to a standstill rather than find solutions that work.

Since the GOP won't move beyond "get rid of Obama" it's really hard to tell what agenda they would try to follow if elected. The closest I can come is they are afflicted by the Ayn Rand Disease,  at least GOP up-and-comer Paul Ryan is hooked.  Problem is he didn't see the complete person and her view of Religion as Evil is not go well with the Christian Right.  The me-first, trickle down economics may have been what he had in mind.

These me-first, anti-socialism sad examples of humanity are still everywhere but I'm always hoping there will be less and less. One of these jerks really got to me yesterday on a friends blog about a Andrés Manuel López Obrador visit to Melaque.  This jerk's reply was -- AMLO is a semi-literate demagogue. I do so wish something unpleasant would happen to him.  It's not anti Obama but it's just his ever present nasty negativism that he displays on his Blog as well.   This YoYo has been off my Blog Roll for a long time.

I'm the only one who challenged the jerk including the Blog owner so had to have my say here. I hope pier review or a popularity contest wasn't why something wasn't said.  So here are a couple of ant-GOP and anti-Rand videos you should enjoy.

The Ayn Rand Disease on America - Paul Ryan's hero

Stephen Colbert vs Ayn Rand?
 

Mayate

Every morning I find bugs floating in the pool. They range from flies, gnats, bees, wasps, dragon flies and various types of flying small beetles. One small beetle will swim to the bottom if he thinks you are after him. So suddenly in the last few days I've been finding these large black beetles and I asked neighbors what they are.

They call them Mayates and they bite and can make you real sick. Most of my neighbors generalize about creatures and are fearful of a number of things that are not harmful like snakes and spiders. One neighbor told me about a person that was bitten by a Mayate of a different color, became very sick for years and the medicine to treat it was very expensive.

I started to search and mostly found Mayate to be a negative racial slur but somewhere in there linked it with a Vinchuca who is a carrier of whatever results in Chagas disease. Chagas sounded exactly what my neighbor described. So I ended up unsure if this beetle could transmit the disease or just a similar one. Anyway an interesting search adventure with some Chagas info below and a YouTube video song which shows the importance.  It may be a problem here.

In Chagas-endemic areas, the main mode of transmission is through an insect vector called a triatomine bug. A triatomine becomes infected with T. cruzi by feeding on the blood of an infected person or animal. During the day, triatomines hide in crevices in the walls and roofs. The bugs emerge at night, when the inhabitants are sleeping. Because they tend to feed on people's faces, triatomine bugs are also known as "kissing bugs". After they bite and ingest blood, they defecate on the person. Triatomines pass T. cruzi parasites (called trypomastigotes) in feces left near the site of the bite wound.

Scratching the site of the bite causes the trypomastigotes to enter the host through the wound, or through intact mucous membranes, such as the conjunctiva. Once inside the host, the trypomastigotes invade cells, where they differentiate into intracellular amastigotes. The amastigotes multiply by binary fission and differentiate into trypomastigotes, which are then released into the bloodstream. This cycle is repeated in each newly infected cell. Replication resumes only when the parasites enter another cell or are ingested by another vector. (See also: Life cycle and transmission of T. cruzi)