Planting seeds... for death panels

Citizens, hear this: it is your duty to end your life on the day of your 76th birthday. Failure to comply will be met with harsh and painful action. 

- Minister of Death Ezekiel Emanuel 

Right out of the movies, sci-fi is spooky isn't it? Yes, yes it is spooky, but this isn't sci-fi. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argued that living to be 75 years old was long enough for anyone. After 75, Emanuel suggests, “We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”
 

Now the good doctor is not just anybody, he was a chief adviser for President Obama during the run-up to the passing of the ACA, also known as ObamaCare. So why is this even news? The ACA is law, it's done. Not really. Much of the specifics is yet to be written, by design. This is planting seeds of euthanasia in the public discourse. Planting seeds... for death panels. Cry foul all you want - but what else could it be? 


This is the way the leftists do everything. 

Want a minimum wage increase. Plant the seed in a NYT article. Want to unionize day care workers, plant a seed with a public demonstration in the city so the news vans roll. Want to declare amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, plant a seed by fomenting a border crisis involving innocent children. Each seed slowly grows as the initial shock and inevitable condemnation wears thin. Water the seed with armies of minions appearing on cable news shows and articles in the op-ed sections of hundreds of newspapers to normalize the conversation. Prune the growing idea to make it palatable to the fringe of your right-wing enemies. That way their opposition makes it seem like they are the radicals. 

It's a winning strategy. Been working since the 1930's - why stop now?

There are a thousand reasons to condemn Dr. Emanuel's thinly veiled proclamation. I'm sure you can find plenty of  them with a simple Google search. It's simply preposterous to toss this out there from the position this man holds officially and unofficially and not extrapolate the implications. As if age is a barometer of anything. Plenty of young people cost society a lot of money while contributing absolutely nothing - shouldn't we be looking at a extermination policy for them as well? 

This my friends is the real devolution of America in a nutshell. It makes me sick. Good thing I'm not 75...


Ugh 

Short Hiatus...

I'll be tied up with personal matters for a short time.

Please stop by soon for my semi-regular super, super important messages.

Take care my friends,
Ugh

Sinner: Am I the worst?

The tag line of this blog is Surviving the American Devolution, with devolution meaning the picking apart of everything that made this country successful. Picking apart may be too mild, what I mean is the utter destruction of the good in favor of the wicked.

How interesting that I get such inspiration from a blogger from across the ocean. Regular readers (all 16 of you) might be familiar with the name Prof. Bruce Charlton.  He's an educator and scholar with a lot of wisdom to impart. His recent piece called Advocacy of sin is the worst evil: worse than actually sinning really struck a nerve with me. The implications are deep, but the evidence of its truth is so in your face as to be overwhelming.

Where does tolerance end and advocacy begin. Will simply watching the spectacle of evil in my midst as it swirls through my life make me an advocate? Am I supposed to do something? Do I cast judgement on those who do evil, advocate evil? Am I not the worst of sinners if I do?

We are told not to judge, that God is the only judge. We are supposed assign unsurpassable worth to our friends and enemies alike, to acknowledge that we are the worst of sinners and have no right to look down on or feign righteousness over others. This of course is very hard to do. We have an innate sense of right and wrong, good and evil, we know we are "better" than real evil doers. But are we?

Charlton pins a lot of the evil in this world on the mass media - and rightly so. Since the media is not one person but a collective it is safe to pass judgement - or practice discernment if you will.

To Charlton's point it's a class of elites and intellectuals that stay above fray of debauchery, crime and violence while advocating the same from their ivory towers or media empire boardrooms. The devolution of America and the West is a deliberate act with a deliberate cause, but always couched in the language of fairness, equality and tolerance. Not to go along is to be targeted, labeled and intolerant bigot and destroyed - if necessary.

The two passages from the article that bring it home for me are here:

"The creed of the modern intellectual is implied-despair. Not the direct preaching of despair as a principle - but rather preaching of a set of non-beliefs that must lead to despair - because there is nowhere else for them to lead..."

"Having demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective validity of God; the intellectual elites have recently demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective good of marriage and family - and they are left only with a life based-on 'work and leisure'..."

We live in a society that calls advocating for fetuses and adoption a war on women. A world that has devalued men and boys, especially black men, to the point where many have checked out, preferring to be neither a husband nor a provider. A culture where white men choose to remain in a state of perpetual adolescence. Today a man can't say an innocuous word like honey or sweetheart in the presence of a woman, but a powerful female politician gets no push back when accusing a male politician of "showing women the back of his hand" and "grabbing her hair and dragging her back to the stone-age" with no evidence that any of it is true. Seems more like a war on men to me.

We see in this country the race baiters, who foment discord at every opportunity, never attempting to build on the tremendous societal progress made over the last 50 years. They support politicians who through destructive policies have done far more damage to minorities that the white majority ever did. The intact black family is a rarity in the United States. It's the intellectuals who have prescribed the replacement of the husband with a welfare check and food stamps. It was the intellectuals and the elites that destroyed public education in the inner city and removed any semblance of God from public discourse. In the process they destroy the hope of millions.

Do we need to ask where this is being driven from? Do we not know how the brainwashing happens? The enemy works through the mass media. In recent decades the facade has been removed. No longer is there any veil over the inversion of good and evil. In fact the inversion is celebrated, the anti-hero reigns.

The news media lies by omission, ignoring any story that belies the narrative they prefer. Good men, decent men like Mitt Romney are sullied by far less evidence than is proven against the media's own political darlings. Any media source that even slightly bucks the trend like Fox News or talk show hosts or certain Internet websites, find themselves slandered and marginalized in every possible discourse whether deserved or not - to the point that most the hatred comes from people who have never watched, listened or read them. Television and movies glorify graphic violence while the stars themselves decry guns and the scary redneck conservatives that venerate them. Family friendly (God friendly) movies often can't get funding, or distribution. If they do make mass distribution they are savaged by media critics while Quentin Tarantino movies are fawned over. Inversion anyone???

The mass media dominates the distribution of information, fads and fashion, it's ubiquitous and overwhelming - and enticing!

Getting to the point (finally) I am just as enticed, dazzled and susceptible to the mass media and cultural proclivities as anyone. I am human and a sinner after all. But am I an advocate for evil? I don't think so - I hope not. I have watched violent and overtly sexual movies and TV shows and enjoyed some of them. I have refused to watch others because they offend me. Does that balance it out? Are their areas in my life where I am inadvertently, unconsciously advocating evil? I work in an industry that many have called evil - I don't necessarily see it that way, but who is to say? It's confusing.

I understand we live life in the fog of war, a cosmic war, a battle of good and evil where the players can be disguised. All we can do in the world awash in evil is to try to not consciously aid it. I don't know what else to do. I can only hope that my loved ones will point out those times I go astray.



Ugh

The Science is Settled: Part II The COLD facts

In a previous post I talked about the phenomenon of how entrenched scientific concepts literally damage science and learning (and truth) by crowding out or holding back new lines of inquiry that potentially contradict established beliefs. If simple prudence and careful vetting of wild supposition was at the root of the scientific community's reticence it might be somewhat understandable. But it's not.

Actually it's usually reputation, money or a political agenda that drives science and its conclusions. It's not just science, but also education, financial systems and even the prevailing entertainment industry that have succumbed to special interest entrenchment.

Quite often in science prevailing "truths" cement all subsequent thought and theories. These facts so fervently celebrated even as their conjurors express doubt -  Einstein and his space-time, Hubble and his redshift and Darwin and his evolution. Each of these men had doubts about the conclusions that were spun out of their theories - theories that are now treated as indisputable fact. Anyone who dares challenge these and many more facts are either treated as charlatans or destroyed.

In the previous article I introduced the notion the the governing force of the universe is not, as it is believed in proper scientific circles, gravity but rather electro-magnatism. When examined this simple theory starts to make sense as it answers the conundrums created by unverifiable convolutions of the gravity-based model. As more and more observable data comes in to validate the Electric Universe theory over the pure speculation and mathematical gymnastics of the relativity/space-time model you would think minds would open to new possibilities. No, in fact the entrenchment and the money grab only intensifies.

As well, in the "Climate Change" "Global Warming" debate the data is turning away from man-caused, CO2 caused global warming to a Solar Minimum caused global cooling. The entrenched scientific community ignores these inconvenient truths because they must follow the money. The money flows out of a political agenda. The danger here is that unlike scientific theory and  the pure knowledge of the Electric Universe model versus the Standard Space/Time model the Climate Change agenda has the potential to ruin industries, societies, the livelihoods and the lives of the least among us while doing absolutely nothing to change the climate one way or the other.

The massive amount of money - billions and billions - could be spent preparing an adaptation strategy that could mean the difference between thriving or societal collapse. As more evidence pours in that cooling, not warming is what's in store for planet Earth the more entrenched and hysterical the Global Warming sirens are wailing.

The SSRC (Space and Science Research Corporation) and its President, Mr. John L. Casey -  a former White House space program advisor, consultant to NASA Headquarters, and space shuttle engineer - sent a letter to the President warning of the coming climate change. So far he has been ignored.

==========================================

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, D.C.  20500
April 28, 2014
SUBJECT: Request to Prepare the USA for Dangerous Cold Climate.
Dear Mr. President,
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Good morning.
            
This letter is sent to you as a heartfelt request that you take immediate action to ensure that the United States of America is fully prepared for the historic, potentially dangerous, new cold climate that has begun.

This request is backed up by research over the past decades into the causes of climate change along with the real status of the Earth’s climate. Key findings of that research are provided here in a partial list of what is either widely accepted or can be easily validated:

1. The past period of global warming, a natural phenomenon produced primarily by the Sun, has ended. We have now had over seventeen years without any effective growth in global atmospheric temperatures in the troposphere. Ironically, this means that for the majority of the time the international community has been dealing with global warming, there wasn’t any! It is therefore important to accept that global warming has ended. There is no global warming!

2. The Earth is actually cooling and has been for years.The world’s oceans have been cooling for eleven years as has the atmosphere for most of that time. Of the twenty-four climate parameters monitored by the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) and recorded in its quarterly Global Climate Status Report (GCSR), eighteen of them show global cooling as the dominant trend. The remaining six are expected to convert to ‘cooling’ status within the next five years. Sea levels have already started to drop where some ocean areas are getting colder. The SSRC has predicted a global sea level reduction lasting thirty years to begin at any time between this year and the 2020’s. If these trends change, the SSRC will be the first to report it. However, based on actual global temperatures and the most reliable climate models, there is only one conclusion to be made about the Earth’s current climate status – a new cold climate has arrived!

3. If this new cold epoch proceeds as past episodes (roughly 200 and 400 years ago), we should expect to see substantial global crop damage, social and political upheaval, and loss of life. These ill-effects are expected to start soon and last at least three decades. We have little time left to prepare. Respected Russian scientists have even gone so far as to say a new “Little Ice Age” will start this year! This means the advancing cold climate is a serious threat to our people!

4. The new cold climate is being brought to the Earth by a repeating 206 year cycle of the Sun. I independently discovered this cycle and announced it in 2007. Though many other researchers have discovered this cycle or predicted a coming cold climate, they have been ignored. The cold phase of this two-century-long cycle is produced by the Sun making dramatic reductions in the energy by which it warms the planet. This Sun-driven cold period is called a “solar hibernation,” by the SSRC. It is important to note that NASA, the US Air Force, and the National Solar Observatory have confirmed the on-going decline in solar activity. This has happened as I predicted. It is also necessary to know that this natural, repeating, and ominous change in the Sun is unstoppable!

5. Research related to these solar hibernations, also shows they occur concurrently with the most destructive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the latter of which can add dramatically to an already colder climate.

In addition, I believe African Americans, other minorities, and the poor will suffer the most because of the new cold era and your climate policies. This assertion is supported by the fact that a large percentage of these citizens are largely dependent on the US government for food, which we will start to run short of as the cold starts to damage crops. This means as a result of your climate policies, they may be both unprepared and unable to get food routinely during the worst years of the coming cold climate. Further, your climate policies include making energy costs “skyrocket” to quote you. These energy cost increases will hit minorities and the poor the most.

In summary, the lives of many Americans may be in jeopardy as a consequence of the arrival of the new cold climate, your continued support for the flawed, unreliable manmade global warming theory, and your lack of action to prepare the United States for the next climate change.
Regardless of your stated belief in “accelerating” global warming, (something that does not exist), as President of the United States, you still remain fully responsible and accountable for the welfare of our approximately 317 million citizens.

You therefore deserve to receive this genuine warning about the new cold climate if nothing else, for the record.

Sincerely,
John L. Casey
President

=============================

The age of reality over special interest is long over due. Money trumps everything or so it seems. Curiosity, skepticism and a quest for knowledge - even uncomfortable knowledge - should be driving force behind science. A term like "the science is settled" should never be taken so seriously that doors are slammed and questions never get asked.

Ugh

The Final End of the British Empire: Vile, Disgusting PCism

hat tip Mangan

I call your attention the a BBC article that should shock you, but sadly it probably won't. If any of you have followed what has become of the once proud British Empire you'll find no surprise the depths of the self loathing in the UK. They hate themselves so much that they can't even be bothered to protect their young girls from systematic rape an exploitation.

Rotherham, a city of 260,000 people has had up to 1400 lower class girls, some as young as 11, systematically raped and exploited by Muslim men for well over ten years - with the knowledge of police and other authorities. The reason the authorities said they didn't press the matter is because they didn't want to be accused of racism.

Oh my God, are you kidding me!!!

The Muslims have so deeply entrenched the notion that they are victims in British society that the people of Rotherham were willing to give up their young girls to brutal rapists. Muslim arrogance considers these girls as sub-human because the are white and non-Muslim - and the British authorities apparently agreed.

FTA
The report found: "Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so." 

Failures by those charged with protecting children happened despite three reports between 2002 and 2006 which both the council and police were aware of, and "which could not have been clearer in the description of the situation in Rotherham".

Prof Jay said the first of these reports was "effectively suppressed" because senior officers did not believe the data. The other two were ignored, she said.

The inquiry team found that in the early-2000s when a group of professionals attempted to monitor a number of children believed to be at risk, "managers gave little help or support to their efforts".

The report revealed some people at a senior level in the police and children's social care thought the extent of the problem was being "exaggerated".

Prof Jay said: "The authorities involved have a great deal to answer for."

I'll say. I can't even imagine something like that happening here. I live in a city roughly the same size as Rotherham and can't imagine it would be anything less than a major scandal if 4 young girls were treated like this. What is wrong with the people across the pond? Political Correctness that's what.

These Muslim men should be jailed for their crimes and the authorities should be charged or at least fired and publically shamed. The caste system in Britain is not a thing of the past when the upper class ruling elites can't be bothered to protect the most vulnerable innocents because they simply don't count as worthy.

Lastly - why are we not hearing about this in the U.S.? This is another appalling thing about this story. They've got plenty of time to go on and on about hacked nude photos of a few self centered celebrities, but none for a thousand young girls being raped by Muslim men. The PC crowd in charge of what is news in America is positively ludicrous. I doubt the police, the authorities and especially the people of America would stand for this vile sickness happening here, but our own news media couldn't be bothered if one of their protected classes are the perpetrators and not the victims.


Ugh

The Harvest of Liberalism:Part 2

According to the author and thinker George Gilder knowledge is wealth. What does that mean? It means that someone like me who has the knowledge to architect computer networks has literal wealth at my keyboard worn fingertips. I turn my knowledge into monetary gain by building networks for those who need them. Simple as that.

So, when I have a toothache I seek the person who has the knowledge to extract it (safely) and he or she trades that knowledge for some of my wealth. Econ 101.

Gilder, a capitalism proponent, dismisses the well worn notion that capitalism is an economic system based on incentives and greed. It's not to say these are not part of capitalism, they are, but not unique to capitalism in any way. The communist system had its incentives - in some cases they were do what your told or die. Now that's an incentive. The farmer in the communist collective greedily took the best crops for his family and sold what he could on the black market before the "party" came and took the product of his labor for the greater good. The socialist citizen gladly "sells" his services or expertise off book to avoid paying exorbitant taxes - this is also incentive (and greed) at work.

The heart of capitalism is creativity, competition and the arc of the learning curve. The entrepreneur with the better mouse trap goes through the learning curve process as he perfects the manufacturing of  his product, slowly bringing the unit costs down as his knowledge increases. The material costs, marketing costs and transportation costs are mostly fixed and out of his control, but the knowledge of how to create efficiencies and streamline processes is the difference that gives the him the edge over his competition, therefore turning his knowledge into wealth.

It's a beautiful thing.

For Gilder the true essence of capitalism is surprise. Again, what does that mean? Take the Internet itself. What started as a method for the Defense Department to share knowledge (there's that word again) electronically across the vast expanse of the nation has evolved into the surprising economic engine of the 21st century. In my industry the Internet was at first dismissed and then viewed with suspicion before it was completely embraced as an integral part of the business. A surprising outcome to say the least. Look at the Apple iPod and how this marvel of engineering has transformed music delivery - clearly surprising the entire entertainment industry. We could go on by citing Netflix and Facebook and Amazon.com each through the process of creativity and the arc of the learning curve have transformed entire economies and cultures. These are all fantastic, surprising things, mind blowing really. These things and countless other surprises of the twentieth century were brought forth on a capitalist foundation, not a state controlled economy.

So why would we want to tear this down and install liberalism's system of choice, socialism? I have my theories and all of them boil down to one word - control. The intellectual class with its entitled desire to wield power wants to control everything, including your life and mine. Couldn't the same thing be said of the capitalist oligarchs? Talk about controlling society... I venture to say that the oligarchs are where they are precisely because of the unintended consequences of socialist controlling intervention. They are the byproduct of a kept ruling class.

Control is the goal of liberalism. Platitudes like fairness, equality of outcomes, and my favorite, tolerance are their buzz words, the salve soothing the aggrieved be they real or not. Leftist politicians who spew this rhetoric while guaranteeing economic growth by installing artificial controls via regulations, tax codes, bailouts and stimulus deliver just the opposite. This approach may work for a while, but it is unsustainable without the spontaneous surprise of creativity.

It should come as no surprise then knowing all this that the socialist based countries in Europe and Eurasia are dying. They have lost faith in the future - they have lost faith period. So many have stopped having children, the ultimate expression of hope for the future, that entire ethnic identities risk disappearing by the turn of the next century. They only grow in population and economically by importing millions of young immigrants. Further, by culturally turning being female into a slightly softer version of being male they have effectively killed the family. A man without family reverts to being a brutish thug or a lazy lout and a woman is forced to turn to the government to support her and any children she does have.

Try to deny this happening right here in our own country.

The collapse of the family is a result both continuing socialist welfare policies and and the globalization of the labor force. The two are linked. The social welfare state costs a lot of money. It keeps taxes high which in turn forces wages up. Couple this with failing schools and drive for companies to move low skilled high wage jobs to cheaper labor pools and you see the collapsing of the middle class and with it the destruction of the family.

The liberal stands on his soapbox promoting the very policies that lead to this dire situation, to the point that we have an entrenched and growing welfare state to take care of the women and children and a police state to take care of the young men. The society now exalts independent, self-sufficient women and jails its unwanted, useless men. Unfortunately it will take decades to unwind this. This is the harvest of liberalism.

In America we still see twinkles of creativity and economic growth. We still see new families, new houses and all the economic activity that surrounds a growing family. We still see new companies being born through the haze, but they struggle and often fail needlessly. Everything is being choked. The confluence of a maze of the regulatory rules of government encroachment along with the cronyism of the big business/government cabal is robbing the young of their futures and killing creativity. The cost of participation is becoming prohibitive so that many refuse to even try.

The sad thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. Creativity, knowledge and wealth creation is the American way. The powers that be in government, the environmental crowd, foreign interests and big business refuse to unshackle the dynamo that is America.



Ugh

The Harvest of Liberalism

It was on the radio that I heard a woman named Phyllis Kahn, a Minnesota state representative since 1972, declare that it was the Democrats that offered the best solution for new immigrants concerned about education. The talk show host pointed out that the Democrats have had a monopoly on education in this state for more than 4 decades. The largest district in the heart of liberal land - Minneapolis public schools -  has an embarrassing 50% graduation rate for all students and the worst graduation rate for African-American boys in the nation. The irony of her conjecture was lost on her, she simply wouldn't concede that the Democratic party was anything but "right" on education.

It made me consider the acute blindness of the left. In their closed minds their solutions for everything are simply right, there is no other way. Certainly nothing the right-wing or the libertarians believe should even be considered. Looking at the near total control leftist thought has over various institutions in American society and the condition of said institutions one would think there has to be a better way.

Taking education as previously mentioned, the left has total control over public schools and almost all public universities and colleges. Even private universities and colleges toe the liberal PC line in word and deed. Education is a massive slice of the American economy and vital to the well being of the society. By all accounts it's failing miserably. Public schools are one thing - there is still a small token of local control, but that too is waning under Common Core and Federal carrot and stick funding, but it's the college and university system that has turned into a near criminal enterprise.

Young people are herded into college with a promise of a good career and leave with a mountain of debt and a society that struggles produce a job for them let alone launch a career. The cost of a college education is out of reach for most families and is a direct result of government meddling in the funding. Public universities are nearly as expensive as private. A whole new category of for profit colleges have popped up to exploit the poor to get their hands on government tuition money which is then laid on the backs of those least likely to succeed. Our young - the next generation - are now serfs, beholden to the Federal government by virtue of debt wholly owned by Washington DC. What has happened to college education in the United States is shameful, if not criminal. None of this even speaks to the quality of the education - a whole different story.

None of it can be laid at the feet of conservatives or libertarians, none.

What else in this society is completely controlled by liberals and their leftist agenda's?

• the welfare legacy - poverty is now a higher % than in the 1960's when the war on poverty started
• the Federal bureaucracy - bloated, unaccountable, corrupt - need I go on?
• entertainment/Hollywood - producing one assault on the culture after another, representing America to the rest of the world while it dumbs down (or lies) to itself
• the mainstream news media - other than Fox News and talk radio (both parodies of conservative thought) the left owns all other media narratives
• health insurance - the newly minted ACA brought to you by the Democratic party is driving one nail into the coffin after another of 1/7th of the economy
• the art world - pure trash in art and music is held up as high art, those offended are the ones with the problem
• the race debate - race baiting and false hype drive the debate toward a full scale culture war, promoting victim-hood  instead of building on the real progress
• the environmental debate - a corrupt EPA and external forces conspire with environmental groups to stop American progress and development of its abundant natural resources
• the feminist debate - ditto the race debate
• and most importantly the language - Politically Correct speech stifles free the exchange of thought and ideas, everybody claims to hate PCism but everyone is forced to toe the line or be destroyed by it

None of these are controlled by right-wing or libertarian thought, none. Almost all of these are corrupt, mismanaged or divisive.

You can say then that big business, the banksters and corporate America is controlled by a right-wing agenda, but that's a mighty stretch. The biggest crony capitalists of the past 40 years have been Democrats, it's not even close. There is no truth to the lie that the Democrats are for the little guy and the Republicans are for big business. There isn't a dimes worth of difference any more. Big Business loves Big Government and its regulation and the stacking of the deck in their favor - who wouldn't? It keeps internal competition down. Neither has been bigger than it is today.

Every honest survey taken shows that the public thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction, that America is in decline. Education, culture and increasingly our finances are controlled by a leftist agenda bent on denuding America. In all its manifestations this is the harvest of liberalism. Seems pretty clear to me it's a rotten crop.

Who is to blame? I blame the conservatives, right-wingers and the libertarians. They offer nothing but leftism-lite. They can't articulate the virtues of freedom and liberty in a way that counters falsifiable nanny-state promises. Either they don't actually believe in individual liberty and self-determination or they are so beholden to their own cronies that they can only say so much, go so far before the lies are trotted out.

The truth is the elites on either side don't care what the public thinks or wants. The right-wingers can survive by pretending to stand up to the leftist agenda, fighting the good fight. The way things stand they have a pretty sweet life too. The left, whether they can or will admit it, are destroyers - destroyers of goodness and beauty in favor of ugliness and corruption.

Obviously America can be great and strong and thriving again. All the parts are in place. We have to be almost  ready to break free from leftist smiling liars and right-wing lying panty-waists. We have to be almost ready to crush political correctness and corporate cronyism. We have to be almost ready to scale back government intrusion into every nook and cranny of our lives.

We have to be that camel that can hold no more straw on its back.


Ugh