A Little Bit Of This, A Little Bit Of That
Random thoughts on an overcast Friday morning with a special appearance by Dick Nixon to show in historical context that time has been kind to him Continue reading A Little Bit Of This, A Little Bit Of That
Category: Current Affairs
Vlad the Dissembler
Well here we are, the place we never thought we’d be at but the place we always knew deep down we’d get to. Russia, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has without reason, provocation, or seemingly sanity, has invaded the sovereign country of Ukraine because…well if I could figure out why I’d be on the Kremlin Desk at the Company and briefing the bigwigs in the White House. In other words, I can’t figure it out and anyone who says they KNOW why he did it is just blowing smoke up that proverbial backside. Some of the reasons expounded by the experts … Continue reading Vlad the Dissembler
Hire A Clown, Expect A Circus
Everything is pretty horrible right now. But there are some good things bubbling below the surface. Keep reading for a mid-week pick-me-up. There are little victories everywhere., Back in January I wrote about the issues the new governor of Virginia, Governor Fleece Vest, I mean Glenn Youngkin, was going to face and how they were rooted in his own deficiencies as a politician and as a human being. And, as I predicted, his executive order eliminating all mask mandates was overturned by the state supreme court because in Virginia governors do not have the power to undo legislation by fiat. … Continue reading Hire A Clown, Expect A Circus
Door Dash Dis
Last Friday the wife (Cruella) and I wanted to go out to dinner. We have a favorite Chinese restaurant we frequent and the desire for their Barbeque Pork Chow Fun combined with our desire to get out of the house neatly.
We have been to this restaurant numerous times, in point of fact we discovered it during the pandemic, both to dine in and to get take out (or take away if you are reading this in the UK). Never a hassle, good food, and most importantly a chance to get out of the house and eat at a different table and gaze at something other than, well, each other.
As has become custom during the pandemic I went to their website to make sure of their operating hours and if they were continuing to offer dine in service. Nothing had changed, so off we went.
Much to our surprise their doorway was blocked and a small sign taped to the glass window announced that since the previous Tuesday they had gone to “Take Out and Door Dash Only”.
While we probably should have gone in search of other eating arraignments, our appetites were craving that Chow Fun, so we scrapped our plans to dine in and ordered to go. While waiting for our order to be completed I counted four people coming to pick up orders they had placed online or via the phone and a stunning seven Door Dashers. That’s eleven total orders in the span of ten minutes.
The other thing I noticed is that the prices had gone up. The chow fun, an order of garlic shrimp, and an order of potstickers came to $36, about 30% higher than we would have been charged prior to the pandemic. Now there is inflation to factor in, plus trying to make back some of what was lost when the restaurant was closed early in the pandemic, but 30% higher? That’s when it hit me. Actually it was the woman from Door Dash who hit me because she was staring down at her phone and not looking where she was going.
I’m being asked to subsidize all of their Door Dash sales. And so are my fellow diners.
You can dash on to more by clicking the link
Excess and Access
.A warning before we start. This is going to be a sports essay. If you are not into sports, hang on till the end, I promise I’ll bring this around to current affairs.
You may have heard the gnashing of teeth and grinding of axes over the non-induction of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens to the baseball Hall of Fame. This was their tenth year of eligibility and I don’t have the time or desire to explain the ins and outs of HOF voting but suffice it to say the two most dominant players of their era were told by the voters “so sad, too bad, you juice you lose”.
The Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) are the folks who vote for or against induction into the Hall. Enough of them have taken the stand that anyone who used performance enhancing drugs is a cheater and should thus be banned from induction. So far major names from the steroid era, Bonds, Clemens, Sosa, McGwire, A-Rod, et al have failed to win election and either have or will soon fall from the ballot without induction.
Except for the guys they really liked and who, in the voters minds, might have used PEDs, might not, we’re not sure so we’re gonna just take a pass and pass them into the Hall or in other words, give them a hall pass. Like the one player who did get elected this year, David Ortiz. He was only tangentially mentioned in the Mitchell Report, MLB’s investigation into PED use that was released in 2007.
There are two things I think that are important to remember about the Steroid Era ™. The first is that it indeed was an era. It lasted from the late 1980’s or thereabouts until 2003 or thereabouts. In 1991 Major League Baseball banned the use of any PEDs, but they had no testing for it until 2003. Think about that for a moment. For twelve years players could use PEDs pretty much without fear of retribution because without testing there was no way to prove players were using. It was during that period that the record for most home runs in a season was broken twice and the Mark McGwire vs. Sammy Sosa “Long Gone Summer” took place.
While I think it’s absurd to think every major leaguer was using, I don’t think it’s absurd to think most major leaguers were using. In fact I think there were so many who were using that the level playing field moralists are always arguing steroids upended was actually level. If enough players were using then they were all back on even ground. Should they have been using? It’s easy now to say they shouldn’t have, but back in an age when there was no mechanism to see who was and who wasn’t, the pressure to use must have been acute. I’m not talking about pressure from teammates alone. I think the pressure to use came in subtle forms from managers, coaches, and even owners.
“Gee, we’re really looking for a shortstop who can give us 25-30 dingers a year and you’re only popping 10-15. What do you think you can do to get those numbers up? If you can’t, we’re gonna have to look elsewhere and we don’t want to do that since we’re gonna offer you a new multi-year, multi-million dollar contract”.
Money talks, the “pure” ballplayer walks on four pitches to first, down the foul line, and out the bullpen gate.
Bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, click below for more
The Senator From Sonoma
Yesterday El Grande Hefe de First Draft wrote about the early political obituaries for Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema. Today I come here, in the words of Shakespeare, not to praise her but to bury her.
In an American Oak wine barrel filled with Sonoma Chardonnay.
Sinema of course has gained fame and notoriety for basically telling all the folks who helped her get elected, both the political classes of the Democratic Party and the good citizens of Arizona who voted for her, that her idea of being a maverick is to do everything she can to prevent the implementation of laws designed to give people the certainty that elections will be held in fair and honorable means. She wants to muck up every chance her party has to turn the hatred of Trump into a solid watershed moment to beat down incipient fascism and create an America where all truly are created equal. She wants to in effect take a parliamentary procedure not mentioned in the Constitution, something not even codified till near 50 years after the Constitution was written, and make it a permanent fixture of congressional debate going forward.
In other words she just loves her some filibuster.
You shouldn’t be surprised. If you have followed her career in politics at all she is the winner of the “Most Likely To Say One Thing But Do Another” award. I mean this is the woman who ran as a moderate Democrat wanting to help the poor of her state then showed up on the floor of the Senate dressed like a teenager heading out to the mall to squash the $15 per hour minimum wage. Not that I have any statistics to back it up but I have a feeling many of the people who voted for her could have really used an upgrade in their minimum wages to help with things like, oh I don’t know, food, shelter, clothing. Especially in the middle of a global pandemic. But hey, she made all Gen Xers yearn for the good old days of Debbie Gibson.
Now I know it’s hard to believe, but we here in Sonoma have a tie to the peripatetic Ms. Sinema. One that is, to say the least, a bit strange. You see, back in the summer of 2020, the Senator from Arizona spent two weeks here in Sonoma as a paid intern at the Three Sticks Winery just a few blocks from my house. How I never ran into her I don’t know. It’s a small town and word of strangers with big names gets around quick.
Let that sink in for a moment. A United States Senator, making a salary of $170K a year, decided to take two weeks off and go learn how to scrub out wine barrels. Not only that, but she got paid $1117.40 per week for the privilege. A quick bit of math shows that means she was paid $28 per hour, nearly twice the minimum wage she voted against. She did it in the middle of a pandemic, five months before the rollout of the initial COVID vaccine, and in the middle of a presidential and congressional election that just might have been the most consequential in the history of the country. I’m sure some of her constituents would have liked her to have been working on programs to save their jobs or even their lives. I’m sure the Democratic Party would have liked her to have gone out stumping for congressional candidates to shore up their House majority or to swing into some swing states to help Joe Biden.
Instead with all that going on she decided to take a couple of weeks off to leave the humidity of Washington and the “but it’s a dry heat” of Arizona to come up to the warm during the day, cold at night temps of Sonoma to learn the ins and outs of winemaking. It shouldn’t be surprising though. Sinema had been called out before the pandemic for missing critical senate votes so she could compete in Ironman Triathlons in such nearby locales as New Zealand. At least the winery was in the US.
But she wore her Ironman garb even better than Tony Stark and that’s all that really matters in the end.
More on this rather strange story by clicking the link
Chinese Checkers
In two weeks the Winter Olympic Games ™ will begin in China.
I won’t be watching.
I will be boycotting these games. My physical attendance was never going to happen, so my boycott will be of the television kind. And I strongly urge you to join with me on this boycott journey.
First of all let’s face it, nobody really cares about winter sports unless they or a family member are playing them. Strapping boards on your feet and sliding down a mountain trying to be one tenth of a second faster than the other guy is not compelling sports viewing. Really, it is like auto racing, we’re just waiting for the crash. Don’t get me started on ice skating, a “sport” tailored to be a cesspool of corruption. Ice hockey? I have the NHL for that, if I really need it. Luge, bobsled, cross country skiing? Fine things to do, but a bore to watch. Now curling, that’s something I could get into, but until they let the curlers (don’t call them athletes) play it in their natural habitats, ie, with a beer can in their hands, I’ll pass.
But all that’s just my distaste for winter sports. That’s not the real reason I’ll be boycotting.
Did I mention these games are taking place in China? You remember China. The land that censorship loves so much it bought a timeshare there. The land of suppression and repression. Where surveilling leads to jailing. Where human rights are thrown into the back seat of a police car never to be heard from again. Yeah, that China.
China, or to be more correct the city of Beijing, was selected to host these Olympics through some pretty dubious means. Back in 2014 when the selection election was held, Oslo Norway was the leading candidate. That made perfect sense since, well, Oslo is well known for it’s winters, i.e., they have plenty of naturally occurring snow and ice. But at the last minute the International Olympic Committee (IOC) threw in demands such as:
“Diva-like demands for luxury treatment” for the IOC members themselves, such as special lanes on all roads only to be used by IOC members and cocktail reception at the Royal Palace with drinks paid for by the royal family. IOC also “demanded control over all advertising space throughout Oslo” to be used exclusively by IOC’s sponsors, something that is not possible in Norway because Norway is a liberal democracy where the government doesn’t own or control “all advertising space throughout Oslo” much of which is privately owned and has no authority to give a foreign private organization exclusive use of an entire city and private property within it.
Now the IOC is pretty well known for being a little footloose and fancy free when it comes to demanding things from potential host cities, but that was ridiculous. It actually sounds to me like the IOC made these requirements with the idea of gaming the election so that ONLY Beijing would be able to win. As it stands the only competitor for these games after Oslo pulled out was Almaty Kazakhstan, another Asian country with dubious credentials when it comes to human rights (but notably better than the Chinese).
So Beijing becomes the first city to ever host both a summer and a winter Olympics and they will have done both in the span of 14 years, far quicker than any other two time host city ever has. Then again, while once upon a time cities fought tooth and nail to get an Olympics now they mostly have an ambivalence about them, especially the winter games. Let’s face it, as a ski destination you only have a few months to make money and if those months have to be given over to preparing for and then hosting an event you don’t make money on, well thanks but no thanks.
But having the IOC game the system for them is the least of my problems with China hosting these games. Let’s talk about what they are requiring of those attending the games, both participants and partisans.
Conceding Is The Point
There was an election in Florida (why do these stories always come out of Florida?) last week. The winner, a Democrat named Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, won that election with 79% of the votes cast.
Back in the day, they used to call that a landslide victory.
It’s not surprising though. The district, Florida’s 20th, has a 5-1 Democrat to Repugnicant voter registration. Joe Biden won the district in 2020 with 77% of the vote, so Ms. McCormick actually outdid him. The Repugnicant candidate was perceived as a Boston carpetbagger. Third party candidates picked up enough of the vote so that he actually got less than 20% of the vote which means he couldn’t even get some of the registered Republicans to vote for him. In the past his status as a perceived carpetbagger would have been the attributing factor in his shellacking, but not in 2022 America.
Well you know where this is headed. The Repugnicant refuses to concede the election.
Now they called the race, I did not win, so they say, but that does not mean that they lost either, it does not mean that we lost
Forgetting for a moment his inability to speak the English language clearly, this has become the Repugnicant playbook with all elections. Never concede, send in lawyers, try to get the vote overturned. Use, I would say abuse, the system in any way you can. In a fractured political environment where most elections are decided by narrow margins, you just might get the right judge or the right secretary of state or the right governor to hand your candidate a victory the voters didn’t award to them.
Under those conditions the noted dumb play callers the Dallas Cowboys could petition Roger Goodell to just hand them the Lombardi Trophy as Super Bowl Champions every year.
What I really want to talk about is the importance of conceding; formally, graciously, and with a sense of tradition and humility that is entirely necessary for the idea of the peaceful transition of power to become a reality.
John McCain once said
I didn’t like the outcome of the 2008 election. But I had a duty to concede. A concession isn’t just an act of graciousness. It is an act of respect for the will of the American people, an act that is every American leader’s first responsibility.
Respect. Wow, there is a word you don’t hear in connection to politics much these days. Respect the process. Respect the institutions. Respect the history. Hell, respect your opponent and what he or she had to do in order to come out on top. Take your lumps, leave with your head held high, and make sure your election district, your state, or your country can come together to work on the great problems we face in this world.
One political party seems to do that pretty well. The other, not so much. The problem is we can’t even agree on which party is which in that scenario. Well I’ll tell you which one is in the wrong, it’s the Repugnicants. It’s always the Repugnicants. It’s always them because the only way they can win elections is to rig the game ahead of time. They gerrymander districts. They impose ridiculous voting restrictions (I want to be the first guy to go to jail for giving someone a bottle of water while they stand in line to vote in Georgia). In counties they control they make it easy for white voters to cast their ballots by having plenty of voting precincts in the areas where whites live and hardly any in areas where blacks live. In states where early voting is allowed (most of them) they have restricted when or how those early ballots can be dropped off.
Don’t concede, keep reading by clicking the link
It’s A Medical Mystery
So a couple of weeks ago the wife (Cruella) went to the doctor for her annual “well woman checkup”. If you are a woman you know what that means. If you are a man, ask a woman, and it would be best to ask a woman who understands your tolerance for the realities of the female anatomy, to explain it to you.
Cruella checked out just fine as she knew she would. She went out and had lunch with her friends, then tootled on home and thought nothing more of it. The next week an envelope arrived from Palo Alto Medical Foundation, the medical corporation that her doctor works for. In it was a bill for the “well woman checkup” to the tune of $493. Well that’s a surprise since our Blue Cross insurance should have covered the entire amount charged for the check up.
Here’s an important thing to know about my wife. Years ago she had a thought to get into a new line of work and decided medical billing would be an interesting application of her skills. Thus she took courses and bought text books on how to “code” as they say in the biz. Code refers to the various permutations of numbers and letters that are used to define the procedure a patient comes in for (in this case a well woman checkup) and the diagnosis the doctor comes up with (she’s fine, come back in a year). Those codes are the basis on which the doctor or the corporation he works for charge your insurance company and you. Suffice it to say that even though she never actually entered that field, the information never left her head. And the textbooks became fixtures in our bookcase.
It turns out that we got this bill because instead of the visit being coded as a well woman checkup, it was coded as a well woman checkup WITH a diagnosis that something was wrong. Z01.411 versus Z01.419. I am not making these code numbers up. Getting on the phone she called the doctor’s office and was told, no we in the office coded it properly, you’ll need to call the corporate billing department to see if they changed anything.
Ah yes, welcome to the third circle of hell. When you go to the doctor at Palo Alto Med, which by the way is actually owned by a larger corporation called Sutter Health, the doctor’s office is responsible to code the reason for and result of the visit. That information is sent on to the actual Sutter Health billing department, ostensibly to double check it was billed properly, before it is sent on to your health insurance company so they can pay the bill. In order to make sure the code is correct, or perhaps to justify their code, the doctor also sends on their notes from the visit.
Oh you thought your medical records were private. How quaint.
So now Millie in billing gets to read all the doctor’s notes on your visit and can decide, nope, we gotta change this code or add in another code here because in the notes there is a mention of maybe possibly kinda sorta if I squint real hard there might be a potential problem. Thus Z01.411 becomes Z01.419. Then she ships it all off to Blue Cross happy in the knowledge she has served her corporate masters well. She kicks back, puts her feet up on the desk, takes a long sip from her martini glass and pulls out a Kool Menthol to celebrate her achievement. That’s assuming she redid the coding in an honest attempt to be as correct as possible.
Thing is, Sutter Health is actually kinda known for not being the most reputable when it comes to doing honest coding. To the tune of a $90 million dollar fine by the federal government.
Does that have you intrigued? Click the link below to continue on
Ahh For The Good Old Days
In the last two years COVID has inspired lots of people to embrace nostalgia for the past. TV shows from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s are the “go-to” viewing for millions. Safe, warm, inviting, and you know how it all turns out anyway (Rachel doesn’t get on the plane). People are rereading or reading for the first time books from out of their past, even the ones you had to slog through in English Lit 101 and couldn’t understand why anyone ever thought this was any good (looking at you Jane Austen). Baking bread became a talisman for happier times when you came home from school to the tantalizing smell of something Mom just pulled out of the oven, a pleasant certainty in a time of complete uncertainty.
Even in politics there seems to be a desire to return to what we grew up with. A time when the President of the United States didn’t call Nazis “good people”. A time when Supreme Court nominees were distinguished legal scholars or experienced jurists who got a full and fair hearing in front of the Senate. A time when street protests were the province of the left and editorial handwringing was the province of the right. A time when the violent overthrow of the government of the United States was the stuff of political suspense novels. In other words, a time when you knew who the good guys were (us) and who the bad guys were (them).
So thanks Vladimir Putin for bringing back a remnant of an earlier time: Russia versus America in The Great Game. Just when you were thinking there would never again be a solidly black and white issue where we as a country stood together against the Evil Empire, Vlad decided it was time to sprinkle his troops along the border between his country and Ukraine and threaten to invade. All that’s missing is Brezhnev’s bushy brows, Nixon’s nattering nabobs, and Kissinger’s krafty kreepiness. Geo-politics is always better with alliteration.
Yes, Russia has it’s troops poised to invade Ukraine like so many plastic armies on a Risk game board. Meanwhile Russian and American diplomats hold talks in that citadel of diplomacy and spy craft called Geneva to try and hold off any sort of military confrontation. You can almost feel the strings being pulled by the various players and emissaries. In the meantime George Smiley is sending his people back into the cold. The main difference this time is that the ideological aspects of the Cold War are gone. This isn’t the Communists versus the Democracies, it actually harkens back to an even earlier version, the Fascists versus the Democracies.
And I hate to say it, but it’s a bit frightening to harken back to that earlier era of confrontation, mostly because we know very well how it played out and how it played out was not all that well. The similarities make it even more frightening.
Wanna see more? Click the link below
The Power Of The Dogs
The wife (Cruella) and I live in a 55 and older community that has its own set of rules and regulations regarding, well, just about anything that might happen in the community.
It’s one of the truisms of life that for whatever you want to have you have to give something in return. In this case, in order to live in a community where young families are not present (not that we have anything against them, it’s just past our time of life) and to have the amenities we want (clubhouse, pool, jacuzzi, etc.) we have to give up some of the freedoms we would have living elsewhere. No, we’re not constrained in any way from socializing with any others or anything so drastic. We just have to do the garbage a little differently, have a mailbox instead of having the mail delivered to the house, maintain our yard to a certain standard, in other words, typical homeowner association stuff.
Which brings us to dogs. The rules say you are perfectly fine having a dog, though they prefer the dogs not be too big or too mean. When on the public street dogs need to be on a leash and need to be picked up after. Those are the only rules about dogs.
We don’t have a dog. Three of our neighbors on our court, each a single woman living alone, do. While I understand a woman in that situation would want a dog, these dogs are not voice trained, won’t come when you call them or heed a warning from the owner. Those three neighbors love to let their dogs play together in the center of the court, unleashed, for a good amount of time each day. Many is the time I’ve had to slam on the brakes as I turn into the court because these dogs are right in the middle preventing me from getting to my driveway. I’ve politely told the owners they need to have their dogs on leashes, as per our HOA rules, but their response has been to accuse both myself and Cruella of not liking dogs.
Let me say this right up front. We like dogs. We have owned dogs in the past. My kids grew up with a dog. My younger son currently has a dog. Here’s a picture of her:
We love dogs so much that we don’t want to see them run over by cars. When I mentioned this to the three ladies their reply was “well everyone on the court knows they are here” to which my reply was “yes, but the UPS, USPS, FedEx, and Amazon vans that come in here nearly every day DON’T”.
The HOA has sent the three amigas the slap on the wrist, don’t do it again letter reminding them that our rules say dogs have to be on a leash when on the public street. By the way, that’s the county rules as well. It has of course engendered ill feelings between them and those of us on the court who don’t have dogs because, well, it sucks to be wrong and be called out on it.
But now it’s unlikely that any of those dogs will get run over by a van. And that’s the point of making rules, so that people and property don’t get harmed. Those who don’t want to follow the rules have to be upbraided, not only because of the harm they themselves might do, but as an example to those who might think it okay to also break the rules.
Which brings me to Novak Djokovic and Elizabeth Holmes.
Want more? Click the link:
Welcome to the New Normal
How’s your 2022 going so far?
I know it’s only a few days into the new year and you might still be recovering from your New Year’s Eve party/day.
On the other hand, maybe you’re not. That’s the point. After nearly two years (yes, that’s right, two years) of pandemic it’s time to admit we have entered a new normal. Large groupings of unrelated people milling about for hours, drinking, carousing, perhaps even exchanging bodily, um, connections, those days are over for the foreseeable future.
I’m here to say, don’t be afraid of the new normal. It’s just the latest in a long line of them.
Granted a new normal is usually after some kind of war has ravaged a country or several. Buildings stand, if they still stand at all, damaged to an extent ranging from a need for a good cleaning to a need for a good enema. Populations redistribute to areas where the damage is less (sometimes called being a refugee) alternately causing a need for more in one area and a need for less in another. Once stable supply systems are taxed and/or destabilized to the point of incompetency. Governments are changed either through the ballot or through the bullet. Niche groups rise up to take advantage of the power vacuum, usually niche groups on the far extremes of the political spectrum.
Does any of this sound familiar? Replace “war” with “COVID” and there you are.
If I may go off on a slight tangent, if the COVID pandemic is the equivalent of a war, wouldn’t those “soldiers” (aka citizens) who refuse to get vaccinated be guilty of dereliction of duty or perhaps even disobeying an order from a superior officer (AKA the president)? As such shouldn’t they be thrown into prison? I won’t go so far as to say shot, but a forced jab might be in order.
Make no mistake, the time will come when you are old and grey and your grandchild is sitting on your lap looking up and asking “What did you do in the great COVID pandemic Grands?” What do you want to tell them? That you did all that was asked of you? Or that you didn’t believe any of it was true which is why you’re tethered to the oxygen tank little Billie is idly playing with the valves on as you chat.
But I digress.
The need to mourn what was should be superseded by the excitement of what is to be.
Wanna know more about what the new world will look like? Click the link
What America Means To Me
The New York Times last Sunday ran an article about the city of Enid Oklahoma. It was very illuminating, insightful, and ultimately disturbing.
In summary the story told was ostensibly about an attempt to institute an indoor mask mandate in the midst of the pandemic we are about to “celebrate” the second anniversary of. The mandate was ultimately voted down when a group of Enid citizens, calling themselves the Enid Freedom Fighters, shouted down all attempts at institution at a city council meeting. While this group claimed to have logically and civilly presented their views on the mandate, what they really did was shout, yell, make unfounded claims about the US Constitution and the bible, invoke the names of discredited quack “doctors”, and in general parrot the talking points of the far right. That “victory” emboldened them to become a political force that forced out all those council members who voted for sanity…er…I mean the mandate, take over the city council and the school board and suddenly become a political arm of religious extremists and white supremacists.
The story asks more, though, about what it means to be an American these days. So as we slouch out of this old year (thank you Joan Didion for all you wrote) I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on what I think it means to be an American.
First of all, being an American is a choice (ooh, that’s a word full of contention these days). There is no ethnicity called American. This country was founded, it didn’t naturally evolve as a confederation of related and or conquered tribes like Anglos, Saxons, Gauls, Gaels, et al created Britain, France, Ireland, et al. The Founders (and that right there shows you a difference) made a conscious choice to disassociate from their former country and re-associate with the folks they were living around, mostly British, but also Dutch, German, French, and yes even Africans. Since then America has been a melting pot. Or a salad. Or a quilt. Or whatever analogy you want to use to signify that we aren’t all the same. And then of course in the last several decades we have all become hyphenated Americans, even the increasing number of citizens who are multi-hyphenated because their Australian-Chinese mother married their Belgian-French father making them so many shades of humanity about the only thing they CAN be called is American. We are the mutts of the world. And proud of it.
And I like that. I’d rather live in a land where who your parents were or where they came from makes no matter. Or at least a country that aspires to be that.
Being an American means you have an opportunity to make yourself into the best self you can be. It makes no matter if your desire in life is to have a house in a small town with 2.3 kids, a spouse, a pet, and just enough to retire comfortably on or if you want to have the mansion up on the hill and own all that you can see. The opportunity is open to all who wish to take advantage of it. Your background shouldn’t matter, your family shouldn’t matter, where you grew up or went to college or even if you went to college shouldn’t matter. As long as you are willing to do the work, and do it honestly, then you should be allowed to climb as high as you want. This is an asperation for our country as we have certainly gotten closer but never reached the nirvana of complete equality. Again, this country isn’t a finished product, it’s still in the rough drafts stage. The important thing is to believe we can get there and to have the strength to help get it there.
And if you do make it there, it is your responsibility to make sure the ladder you climbed up on is still there for the next person to use.
This Is A Fine Mess You’ve Gotten US Into
So there I was the other night sipping my pre-dinner cocktail and multitasking back and forth from my phone to the TV. Chris Hayes of MSNBC was interviewing Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence (no not that one, the other one), aka, the Bonnie and Clyde of the MAGA world, about their involvement in the January 6th attempted overthrow of the United States government. You can watch the entire interview right here:
Before I go any further, what is it with Trumper women and makeup? Is it their belief that if some is good, more is better, and using a spackling trough as an applicator is best?
But I digress.
Stockton and Lawrence were in the news because they had played a large part in organizing the January 6th so-called “Save America” rally that ended up with the attack on the Capital. Unlike so many others in that group, these two had decided to come clean to the congressional committee investigating the attack and have been handing over texts, emails, and all other kinds of juicy tidbits. A lot of people are worried about what they have said. A lot of congress type people.
Of course in typical Trumper fashion their claim is “we did nothing wrong”. They claim to only have been the organizers of the rally outside the White House that day and only found out the mob was going to march down to the Capital when their chief cook and bottle washer Herr Oberfuhrer Drumpf told them to from behind the cloak of White House and Secret Service safety.
So setting the table means you have nothing to do with serving the dinner. OK, gotcha.
They were shocked, shocked I tell you to discover that Donald Trump would throw them under the bus by pardoning everyone else and leaving them hung out to flutter in the winds of justice. This even after Lawrence says she’d known Trump for a decade.
You’ve known him for a decade and hadn’t figured out he does that to EVERYONE?! It’s just occurring to you that Donald Trump only cares about Donald Trump?! The rest of the non-Trumper world knew that was the case, but it was only after your failed attempt to keep him in power and his subsequently throwing you under a multi axle vehicle that you realized, “hey maybe he’s not such a nice guy”.
I shouldn’t be surprised. A con man is always gonna be a con man. And the biggest defenders a con man can have are the people he conned. It might be because they are still under the influence of the con or it might be because they are subconsciously attempting to justify to themselves the fact they were conned. Whatever the reason, and whatever the evidence mounted to prove the con, they will only under the most demanding of pressure admit to their folly.
So little Dusty, even while he attempts to throw Trump under that multi axle vehicle, also tries to do the “but what abouts” with Hayes over MSNBC’s coverage of the Trump/Russia investigation. Credit Hayes for not buying into that and keeping the interview on as even a keel as could be hoped for. He did what Chris Wallace at the first 2020 Presidential Debate should have done, but then again Wallace had to deal with a crazy person high on anti-COVID drugs (and whatever else he uses) while Hayes only had to deal with a disgruntled man child who had lost his reason for being.
Come to think of it, maybe they were both dealing with the same thing.
Press this little link to see what else these scamps were into
Continue reading “This Is A Fine Mess You’ve Gotten US Into”
Braking Bad
I’ve had a good week so far, even the post COVID booster jab couldn’t bring me down.
So I’ve decided it’s time to play with the third rail of American liberal politics — homelessness.
There is no issue in America today that blurs the liberal-conservative divide more than homelessness. I know liberals who sound like die hard Republicans when it comes to the homeless (“Whatever needs to be done to get them off the street”) and conservatives sounding like bleeding hearts (“They need to be cared for”). But it’s within the liberal community where I see the most heated arguments over the situation. Even here in deep blue liberal Sonoma there are heated arguments over solutions.
It’s hard to have a solution when you don’t understand the problem.
Of course here in Sonoma our homeless population is eight guys who hang around the plaza during the day and to be honest are as well behaved and clean as can be expected. Mostly they pull together enough money to get a coffee and a roll from the Basque Bakery, cross the street to the plaza, and spend the day being your basic old man coffee klatch. One thing we have done is create a collaboration between the police and a local church to offer rides starting at 6PM for anyone without shelter to stay in the church overnight. Two rules. Once you’re in, you’re in till 7AM the next morning. The second rule is that means no sleeping on the streets at night.
Not a bad solution.
But we have many who decry that this is the government working with a religious organization and that is not to be tolerated. And we have those who cry that it’s not enough and we need to build shelters. And we have those who declaim that allowing them to congregate (congregate? eight guys?) in the plaza is a hazard for families and a bad image for the tourists. And we have those, again very liberal people on all other issues, who just want them run out of town as a warning to others of the homeless community that Sonoma is to be avoided. Not to mention the church’s neighbors who worry about homeless people in their neighborhood.
The point is we don’t really have it that bad. These guys, yeah they’re not all mentally there, none of them. They are the portion of the homeless population that, in a sane world, would be looked after by the state in fully equipped, hygienic facilities where they could get the therapy and/or drugs they need to get themselves together.
And that brings up the point I really want to get to.
The homeless are not all of the same ilk. Yes, some of them are the victims of a brutal economic environment where housing is expensive even on the cheaper ends, but that’s not all of them. Some of them, like the guys in the plaza have mental issues. Some of them are just people who think it’s their right to camp out wherever they want.
But the vast majority of the homeless have serious addiction problems that have lead them to the streets. We’re not talking about “oh Daddy has a few too many martinis when he comes home from work” addiction. We’re talking about “I’d rather pay for that next hit then pay the rent on even the most cut-rate rathole” addiction.
That is the where the real trouble lies.
Click the link to read all about P2P and the hell it has created
Imagine If It Were You
Imagine.
You’re a Roaring Twenties flapper. You like your jazz hot and your hootch cold. One morning after you had a few too many the night before you wake up and find yourself in bed with a man whose name you don’t remember. Thankful you woke up before him so you’re able to sneak out of his hotel room. Two months later you realize you haven’t had your period in, well, two months. You also have a burning sensation when you urinate. Sure enough you are pregnant. And you have syphilis. Both are courtesy of the man who is long gone. You can be treated for the syphilis but not while you’re pregnant, but if you wait to have the baby it’s likely to be too late to treat the syphilis. You need an abortion. With no safe place to go you turn to the local neighborhood woman who knows how to handle these things. She handles it so well you end up with a staph infection that ultimately makes the syphilis moot because you’re dead.
You’re a 16 year old girl in 1944. You’re a good girl, get good grades, honor your mother and father. You’ve always looked up to your big brother as your protector, but he’s off fighting Nazis now. One night you babysit for a neighbor down the street. After the couple come home, because your brother isn’t there to do it the husband walks you back home. On the walk home he violently begins to maul you. He’s an authority figure, you don’t know what to do. Finally he ferociously forces your legs apart and in just seconds your virginity is gone. His parting words to you are that if you tell anyone he’ll deny it and you’ll be branded a whore. Two months later you realize you haven’t had your period in two months. You’re too ashamed to tell your parents. You believe what he said. A girlfriend tells you there is a woman in the next town who can take care of it for you. She takes care of it so well you end up with septic shock syndrome and die on the bench outside the hospital where she dumped you.
You’re a 35 year old suburban matron in 1958. You have a husband with a well paying job, two kids under the age of ten, a neat split level three bedroom house with a girl who comes in twice a week to clean, a full social calendar, friends galore, and you even use (shhh!) birth control because sometimes the husband gets a bit randy after that post dinner martini. One night the condom fails. Two months later you realize you haven’t had a period in two months. You go to your family doctor and when he congratulates you on being pregnant you burst into tears. Your life is where you want it to be. You don’t want another child. Your husband’s job is good, but not great and another mouth means having to downgrade your lifestyle, maybe even move out of your three bedroom split level house. The doctor takes you into his private office where he hands you a slip of paper with a name and address on it. “He’s a doctor, well, sort of. He lost his license a few years ago. Now he takes care of things like this. But he’s really safe.” You get your best girlfriend to drive you to the address which is on the shadier side of town. His “office” is the backroom of a skanky looking storefront. He’s gentle and soothing and when you awaken he tells you everything is taken care of and that the bleeding is normal. But the bleeding doesn’t stop, even after your husband rushes you to the hospital in the middle of the night. The surgeon tells your widower that he was too late, there had been too much blood loss.
To continue, click the link.
The Bastards Are Grinding Me Down
Our fearless leader discussed the oral argument at the Supreme Court about the Mississippi abortion law earlier, but I am not going to tackle any of the legal stuff. I’m not going to tackle it because I am so fucking … Continue reading The Bastards Are Grinding Me Down
Today on Tommy T’s obsession with the Freeperati – “The hits just keep on coming” edition
Short one this week, everyone – took a helluva fall in my studio, and right hand/arm are only semi-operational.
First up – Convicted of being white!
Jury reaches verdict in trial of three men in killing of Ahmaud Arbery [all 3 guilty of murder]
NBC ^Posted on 11/24/2021, 12:28:00 PM by janetjanet998
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Damnit, janetjanet!
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To: janetjanet998McMichael Sr knew Arbery and knew his record. Arbery wasn’t jogging in work boots and there had been a rash of thefts and break-ins, of cars AND houses. They knew a gun had been stolen from a car. The police WERE called and they intended to hold Arbery until the police got there. Arbery grabbed McMichael Jrs gun and fought him for it. Arbery lost. They aren’t guilty but may be convicted of being white.
48 posted on 11/24/2021, 12:42:24 PM by DJ MacWoW (The Fed Gov is not one ring to rule them all)
To: janetjanet998Regardless of the verdict, riots will ensue.
53 posted on 11/24/2021, 12:43:12 PM by gov_bean_ counter (Eccl10:2 – The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
(Tommy T looks around for riots – none in sight as of Thursday)
To: janetjanet998These verdicts go against the original intent of the Founders.
That must be the “Kill all the Negroes” clause in the Constitution, right?
There is no way this would have happened during the Founding era.
68 posted on 11/24/2021, 12:49:58 PM by PatriotarchyQ
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To: PatriotarchyQ
Well they didn’t have trucks (during the ‘founding era”). And the victim would have been a slave and they could have done whatever they wanted to him without fear of punishment. So you are correct.
83 posted on 11/24/2021, 1:01:30 PM by bigdaddy45
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To be fair, there are a few posts like this one :
To: bgill
But for every one of those, there are two of these :
This gets said over and over :
Arbery wasn’t jogging in work boots
Nice to know that choice of footwear is grounds for justifiable homicide.
To: DJ MacWoW
Oops
To: Az JoeFirst, I absolutely concur with this verdict but Trespassing? Being in Real Estate for thirty years, I have to say, I have “trespassed” hundreds of times into homes under construction, as have my clients and many other potential buyers. The builders love it because they want to sell it or get a prospective custom build. People love going into houses, under construction and open, I don’t know why but they do. But not once has a neighbor ever questioned me or called the police.
Gee.
I wonder why?
One more thread at the “read more”….
The 19th Avenue Solution
There is an avenue in the city of San Francisco that provides a shining example of confrontations old and new, not only in The City That Knows How but for the rest of the country.
It’s called 19th Avenue.
19th Avenue cuts through the west side of the city, what is sometimes called The Outside Lands, from the southern border to Golden Gate Park. Though you stay on the same street, it magically changes names to Park Presidio when you exit the park and until you get to the Golden Gate Bridge on ramp. Thus it is the main connector from San Mateo County (just south of San Francisco) via Highway 280 to Highway 101, the bridge and over to Marin County.
That’s right, there is no freeway between the south end of The City and the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s one big surface street. Not that they haven’t tried to build a freeway.
Back in the 1950’s when freeway construction was all the rage in California there were plans to build a connector freeway above 19th Avenue to make it simpler for those in the south to get to and across the bridge or vice versa. Those living in the neighborhood of 19th Avenue we firmly against it. Having seen what happened to the areas where freeways had intruded elsewhere in the city and the attendant lowering of not just home values but quality of life values they wanted no part of a freeway.
This was not a Democrat versus Republican thing or a liberal versus conservative thing or even a Downtown SF versus The Outside Lands thing. This was the people living in the area who were saying “Why is our home less important than moving people from outside the southern end of The City to outside the northern end?” versus the forces of progress saying “The state has a vested interest in moving people and goods as quickly and efficiently as possible”.
So what happened? You already know there is no freeway above 19th Avenue, so did the homeowners of the late 1950’s win? Well, sorta. Actually what they did was something so alien today that I sometimes have to convince kids (and by that I mean anyone under 40) that it was possible.
The two sides compromised.
The freeway wasn’t built. But 19th Avenue got a unique makeover of sorts. Just after the Golden Gate Bridge was built the street was widened to accommodate the greater flow of traffic heading to the bridge so it was ready to deal with the volume of traffic. But the state wanted traffic that didn’t get stopped for traffic lights and there are give or take about 25 cross streets, each with a traffic light, along the route.
The first part of the compromise was that the state had The City change the timing on the traffic lights. If you got onto 19th Avenue and maintained a 35mph pace all the way down it, you never got caught at a red light. Go too fast you have to stop. Go too slow you have to stop. Hit it just right, you zipped along without a stop. A freeway without building a freeway.
The second part of the compromise was that in order to accomplish this, the north and south bound lights had a longer than normal “green” section which of course meant that the lights for all the cross streets had longer than normal “red” sections. For the most part those living there didn’t care because they understood that sitting at a red light a bit longer was better than having a monster freeway drowning out the sun.
Don’t compromise yourself by not finishing what you started. Click below:
What’s In A Name?
Once again, conservatives have shown they are better at branding then liberals.
The Squad, the group of six progressive Congress people, Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, all voted against the Biden infrastructure bill because it didn’t include the climate change and social services upgrades that have been tossed over into another bill. Okay, it was a procedural move, made only because they knew the bill as amended would pass with or without their votes.
But I want to talk about the name they’ve given themselves. In particular because the eight Republicans (I’ll give them the real party name since they were good guys on this vote) who voted for the bill, Don Bacon of Nebraska, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Andrew Garbarino of New York, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, John Katko of New York, Tom Reed of New York, Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey and Fred Upton of Michigan, are calling themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus. Yes, I know there are moderate Democratic members of this caucus, making it somewhat bipartisan, but it’s the Republicans in the caucus that are getting the press while the Democrats are being seen as merely going along with their party’s president.
Let’s face facts. The Squad is what a bunch of urban hipsters would call themselves, a quasi super hero team name that implies something but I couldn’t tell you what. “Hey let’s get The Squad together and go out to that new Indian Mexican fusion spot over on Tenth Avenue”. The Problem Solvers Caucus tells you exactly what they are about. Are they really about problem solving? In the world of politics no title ever truly gives a clear picture as to what the group is about. Except CREEP, the Committee to Re-elect The President, the one that was intricately woven into the Watergate saga. Yeah they were a bunch of CREEPs.
It comes down to perception. The Squad voted against a bill that will give millions of people jobs. The Problem Solvers Caucus voted for giving all those people new jobs, i.e, they solved a problem. Now come later this month when the bill with all the climate change and social services stuff in it comes up for a vote and they vote against it their name might be mud, but for the moment (and in politics it’s all about the moment), it’s the Problem Solvers who solved a problem and the Squad who said we’re not even interested in getting some pork projects for our own home districts, but I’ll have a double whip, no foam half-caf Vente mocha to go. The only thing they gave their districts was the finger. At least that’s how it’s perceived.
And the Repugnicant Party will make sure all the campaign ads, even the ones for the 200 odd members of the House riding the magic Faux News bandwagon who voted against the bill, will tout how they are the party of the Problem Solvers. Those who oppose them, you know those Urban (nee Black), Greedy (nee Jewish), Intellectuals (nee anyone smarter than you), they don’t really have their constituents concerns at heart. It’s nothing but a dog whistle to this week’s flavor of the moment voting bloc, white women with no college education.
Good luck winning re-election or retaining the House running against that.
More after you clickety clickety clack the link below
The Great Redemption, Part II
Michael F., Adrastos, and Cassandra have all done a wonderful job of relitigating the mess that was this week’s election results. Scroll on down for more. Although I will add that the media is seemingly all-in on all sorts of misinformation, as shown by this CNN report: "A gallon of milk was $1.99. Now it's $2.79. When you buy 12 gallons a week times four weeks, that's a lot of money."@EvanMcS goes grocery shopping with the Stotlers and shows us how badly inflation is hitting the middle class. pic.twitter.com/39hPPRHLja — Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) November 4, 2021 Around 50 gallons of … Continue reading The Great Redemption, Part II
A Clarity Of The Current
This week, fellow First Drafter Cassandra wrote a piece about how angry people are right now – at the wrong stuff, due to being clueless about the current situation. This will continue that general theme. Americans tend to not be very good at knowing what’s really happening. The public tends to have completely wrong beliefs about crime, child abduction, and American exceptionalism. These false ideas are driven by prejudice, bad information sources, and American mythology. This is not good, because a shared, accurate sense of reality is vital for our democracy. We now, more than ever, need something that can … Continue reading A Clarity Of The Current
They Just Want Their Slaves Back
I hear people don’t want to work in America. At least that’s how the stories in the media are painting the picture.
Employers are claiming they can’t get people to even apply for work because unemployment benefits are so generous that people don’t NEED to work. Never mind that the federal unemployment add-ons ended in September and many states ended paying them out in June or July. According to many employers people are just too lazy to work when the federal government is handing out the cheese.
I’ll be nice and just say Bunk. And I’ll add in, I’m insulted.
Not that I’ve been looking for a job. I’m employed doing what I love to do, give tours. I will say that a lot of the companies that employ me to do tours are saying it’s hard getting tour guides right now. Well part of that is many of the guides who worked in the industry had to get into new industries when our industry collapsed because of COVID. I call that industrious. The employers understand that and are making adjustments to accommodate the fewer number of guides available. Some of the guests we are hosting though, well, they have that “nobody wants to work” attitude.
On the other hand, there are a few employers in the business who don’t want to pay the going rate for good tour guides. Never mind that it’s the same rate we all were charging in the before times, these employers were expecting us all to “just be grateful” for the employment we’d work at any price.
Guess again Sparky.
You may have seen a story from Business Insider that was making the rounds of the internet last week. In it a Florida man, tired of hearing how businesses couldn’t find people to work, applied for sixty (60) entry level jobs. Out of the sixty, he got one (1) interview. That interview was from a construction company that advertised a payrate of $10 per hour, but when he went to the interview he was told the pay was actually $8.65 per hour (the Florida minimum wage) and that “with seniority” it would rise to $10. He was qualified for all the jobs he applied for, in fact he made sure to only pick jobs he was qualified for and not over qualified for. He was trying to make the sample as pure as possible. I think he should apply for a job as a statistician.
What’s truly amazing is that all those companies were ones complaining they couldn’t get people to apply. If that was the case our friend should have been inundated with interviews since according to these companies he would have been practically the only one applying for the job. 20% sent back an email acknowledging the application and nothing else. 5% called him but did not invite him in for a face to face interview. Only the one actually had him in for an interview. See the graphic at the top.
His theory of why only the one interview?
Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Bitch at Mitch edition
All hail Mitch McConnell – the ruler of the Republican party, right?
I believe we’ll start with the present and work our way back – starting with:
Corned beef rehash!
McConnell: GOP should focus on future, not ‘rehash’ 2020
The Hill ^ | 10/19/2021 | JORDAIN CARNEYPosted on 10/19/2021, 2:38:59 PM by ChicagoConservative27
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) urged his party to focus on President Biden heading into 2022, and not relitigating the 2020 election that former President Trump still falsely claims was stolen.
McConnell, speaking to reporters during a weekly press conference, was asked if he was comfortable with the party embracing Trump. The former president was at a retreat over the weekend for Senate Republicans’ campaign arm and endorsed Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) for reelection in Iowa earlier this month.
“Well I do think we need to be talking about the future, not the past,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday.
**********************
Loser.
Why yes – he is!
.
Any comments?
Comment #3 Removed by Moderator
Do you kiss your Mom with that mouth?
To: ChicagoConservative27Some of us can chew gum and walk at the same time even if you can’t you turtle looking MF.
That’s better. A little.
To: ChicagoConservative27If Republicans refuse to correct the rampant voter fraud of the past, and instead turn away from protecting people’s ballots, and guaranteeing election integrity, there is no future…no future for our country, and no future for the Republican Party. I won’t be voting again until voter fraud is annihilated.
Works for me.
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Oh, look! Someone was nice enough to quote the above deleted post :
To: The Fop“Mitch McConnell and his CCP wife lying in a pool of blood on Bardstown Rd. would be a nice start for the future for the GOP.”AgreedI like the way you think!
Tell you what, you foolish fop – try it and let me know how it works for you.
To: ChicagoConservative27Somewhere in the rules of free republic there is a ‘no profanity’ tenet. Which is a good thing.
Free Republic moderators :
I have read other forums and do not do so any longer. The foul language is horrific.
Any time you get a bunch of chickens together in one place, you’re gonna get a lot of fowl language.
Nevertheless, I can’t write what I want to write here in response to the uttering of this fraction of a man the leader of the senate minority but I will say this. He always seemed to me to want the gop to be the minority party
To: ChicagoConservative27“,,,that former President Trump still falsely claims was stolen.”Every lying, lib media jerk adds this statement. That’s opinion, not fact.Starting to think “journalists “ should be licensed.68 posted on 10/19/2021, 4:05:29 PM by Fledermaus (I’ll wear a mask when Dr. Fraudchi shuts the hell up.)
By the state? By the feds? Interesting concept, especially if you’re not into totalitarian dictatorships.
To: ChicagoConservative27Will someone give this a$$ COVID-Delta!?
Um – he got vaccinated. He isn’t as stupid as you are. Besides – “it’s just like the flu”.
Isn’t it?
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More Mitch-bitching below the profanity-free fold….
Continue reading “Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Bitch at Mitch edition”
For The Rain It Raineth
The rainclouds are gathering and the word on the wire is to batten down the hatches and prepare for four days of deluge.
Here in NorCal, we couldn’t be happier.
I know in many areas of the country a warning of four days of rain will bring reactions ranging from ho-hum what else is new to not again make it stop. But here it only elicits smiles, happiness, and even a little dancing in the streets.
You always welcome that which you haven’t seen in so long.
And we haven’t seen significant rain for several years now. In the midst of pandemic, social upheaval, elections and claims of election fraud, through the Trump years and into the Biden years, the one constant has been that we have not had rain. Reservoirs are at lows never seen before. Lake Tahoe’s water level is so low boats are marooned in mud while algae rots their hulls. Trees are dying at such a rapid rate they can’t be chopped down fast enough to prevent them from becoming fuel for this week’s wildfire.
In fact wildfires have become so common now we’ve taken to naming them just like hurricanes. If only the hurricanes and the wildfires were just baseball team names. On a recent wine tour, the bus driver and I got into an argument over which fire caused the damage we were driving our group through. So many of them we can’t tell the players without a scorecard.
One of the big promises of this weather system is that there will be enough rain to put out all fires on the west coast. Now that’s the kind of rain I can get behind. We’re even ready for the probability of mudslides. During the drought California has been diligently shoring up problematic landscapes, especially the ones alongside our major highways. What can I say, we think ahead. Not all of the projects have been finished, but enough so that it appears (hopefully) when the rains come this week we will not have traded one problem for another.
So we have rain coming and the possibility that all wildfires will be put out. All is rosy once again in the Golden State.
Eh, no.
You see, we here in the land of baseball playoff games beginning in twilight like to be proactive about problems. We try to face them head on instead of running and hiding and hoping someone, anyone, else will fix them. That’s why we elect Democrats to leadership roles both in the state and in Congress. We also believe in science and in the scientists who actually do the science. Had we not the death rate from COVID would have been in the millions. At last check we were holding at 7 deaths per 100,000. Compare that with Louisiana where the rate is 17 per 100,000 or West Virginia where it’s 42 per 100,000.
And it’s that belief in science, in that refusal to allow politicians and media outlets to “but on the other hand” us that gives rise to our current concern over climate change. We understand that one state can’t stop climate change. The weather doesn’t recognize political boundaries, only people do.
And lately people have been disappointing us left and right.
It’s Election Day Dude!
As you read this Californians are going to the polls to decide the fate of the recall effort against Governor Gavin Newsom. Yeah who am I kidding? Statements like that are a thing of the past. Californians have been voting for almost a month by now on this insipid recall referendum. The days of standing in line to dutifully cast one’s ballot are as quaint and old fashioned as going to the malt shop with your high school sweetheart to sock hop with all the cool cool cats. I mean you could do it, but you’re gonna get some odd … Continue reading It’s Election Day Dude!
Random Thoughts on Labor Hashanah
It’s always fun when a corporal holiday collides with a religious one.
I write this on Monday which is Labor Day here in the States as well as Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, around the world. It feels like we ought to be throwing confetti so long as it is union made confetti from a factory that practices profit sharing, respect for labor, and a low highest paid employee to lowest paid differential.
Those would all be very Jewish ideals and after all, isn’t New Year’s when we think about the ideal way in which to live?
By the way, while it is certainly fine and acceptable to wish your Jewish friends a “Happy New Year” keep in mind that the holiday to follow in a week or so, Yom Kippur, is officially the Day of Atonement when you ask forgiveness from all you may have hurt in the recently ended year. Don’t wish those same friends a “Happy Yom Kippur”, it’s bad form. Kinda like sending your Catholic friends a sympathy card on Good Friday.
But speaking of Labor Day, Delta Airlines and many other companies have decided the cost of insuring employees against COVID has gotten to the point where they will be imposing at $200 per month surcharge on the health care plans of any unvaccinated employee. In addition
in compliance with state and local laws, COVID pay protection will only be provided to fully vaccinated individuals who are experiencing a breakthrough infection.” Unvaccinated employees who contract Covid, without exemptions, will have to use their sick days after that.
I’m usually not in favor of large corporations picking out a minority of employees and targeting them with lower wages (deducting $200 from their paycheck makes their wages lower) but there are two mitigating factors here.
- It’s already being done for other health related matters. For instance, smokers pay a higher premium than non-smokers.
- GET THE FREAKING VACCINE. It’s not just about you. This is an airborne communicable disease that has killed 4.5 Million people worldwide and in this instance your “rights” are not greater than anyone else’s right to not be infected. Those same rights you claim come with responsibilities, to your fellow workers, your customers, to the world at large. Just as I have a right to free speech I also have a responsibility to not yell “There’s a gremlin on the wing of the plane trying to make it crash”. (The only time I will go with Shatner over Lithgow)
Back to Rosh Hashanah. I am what is referred to as a “Eating and Gifts” Jew as in I only celebrate the holidays that involve a big feast or presents. Rosh Hashanah is a big feast holiday. Besides looking forward to the new year it is a celebration of the fall harvest. The table groans with the weight of beef brisket, potato kugel, late summer vegetables, and sweets for as far as the eye can see. Not a one of them pumpkin spice flavored for which I am eternally grateful.
If I Were King of the Forest
I’m going to cut to the chase: the Republican Supreme Court justices are cowards. Their order came out under the cover of night—and on a night where much of the country was riveted by the complete havoc the remnants of Hurricane Ida were wreaking on the East Coast—and it was unsigned. They didn’t hold a hearing or consult with legal and medical experts. They didn’t address the substance of the Texas law or even attempt to identify any constitutional issues. They gave an unsubstantiated and unrelated reason to deny the request to block the enforcement of the law, and then … Continue reading If I Were King of the Forest
Infinity Stones
About a month ago I tangentially mentioned in a post that I had an incident of kidney stones requiring an ER visit. Since then I have been trying to improve my health despite the best efforts of the American Medical Complex to complicate that.
I am no stranger to the formation of kidney stones. This is my fourth bout with them. And yes, I do all I can to prevent them from occurring. I cut down on salt, avoid oxalate foods, and drink lots of water. But my body just loves to remind me that, as the old adage goes, man plans and god says ha!
I belong to Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO organization in the country. I like the idea of an HMO. I like that it takes a simple concept, people are generally healthy and it’s good to keep them that way, and uses that idea as the basis for it’s coverage. I’ll put it in my own words: Be proactive not reactive.
Unfortunately despite my numerous times being told to (GROSS STUFF ALERT) pee in the same jar for 24 hours then give them a sample and the number of times I’ve gone into the lab for a spot test (I always feel like an Olympic athlete doing that), I still get those pesky conglomerations of calcium stuck in places where the sun don’t shine and cause a kind of pain that only a man would think was like giving birth and which women who have would say “oh please”. That’s when I have to go the extra 20 miles and get to the big hospital where the reactive doctors play.
And that is why I found myself in the emergency room last month. It’s also where one discovers the flip side of the HMO.
Because as good as Kaiser is at trying to keep you healthy they use the opportunity of your being unwell to trot out all the old American Medical Complex tricks to separate you from the money in your wallet. Oh and your sanity as well.
At the emergency room I had a doctor examine me, an X-Ray, a CT Scan, blood and urine workups, and was prescribed a few medications. Total cost with the medications was $275. Now depending on where you live that’s not a bad deal all said and done. I was also told that I would need to see a urologist for a more extensive exam. I fully expected that.
The next day I got a call from the urology department wanting to set up an appointment. I asked if it could be at the more local medical office and got a surprise when I was told the “exam” would be via phone. Well okay, COVID and all, I suppose this could be handled via telemedicine. A few days later I got an email from a urologist, we’ll call him Dr. Stone, who said he didn’t think there was anything to talk about until we waited a couple of weeks, did another CT Scan, and saw if the stones had moved. The ones in my kidney, not his family. That made sense to me so he set up another scan.
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The American Taliban is Ascendant
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