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Reaction to Health Care

It is simply crazy. The GOP is couching it in terms of freedom, liberty, patriotism. It has NOTHING to do with any of that, but it affirms what Samuel Johnson said famously, "the last refuge of a soundrel is patriotism."  Or the US Constitution. The GOP relies on the fact that their receptive audience doesn't read, relies on FOX news, and wouldn't know the Constitution if it hit them in the head. The GOP is only interested in protecting the profits of a pernicious, heartless insurance system.  When you cut desperate people off from their insurance to keep your profits over a certain average to please Wallstreet, there is only one description for that. Evil.  Whether AETNA or Blue Cross makes 45 percent on their investment or 30 percent has nothing to do with my liberty, or my identity has an American.  I think making sure my neighbor has the care they need, in their time of need is a higher value.
What's sad is how successful the GOP was for 8 years of the Bush administration, when the fear of homosexuals and then Qaida boogie men kept them in office, despite the majority of the people that voted for them, were voting against their economic self interest.  Karl Rove and Dick Cheney had better hope there's nothing to Karma.  Now we see their new talking heads Boehner and McConnel bleating on their fear mongering nonsense.  The sheep are avidly listening and posting their BS.  Retweet. It's a word.  LOL
Health care reform is such a no brainer if you have a smidgen of humanity and compassion. The GOP keeps saying the Democrats will get punished in the next election, I think they are underestimating the number of people the insurance industry abandonned and the number of families they condemned to bankruptcy or worse.  It's a farce.

I'm sure it just kills the right that Obama, a black man accomplished something that no other president since Teddy Roosevelt could.

This does so much good, let the GOP run on the platform of repealing it. That's a sales pitch I want to see them attempt to deliver. LMAO.  Make my progressive day.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/nightlinedailyline/2010/03/david-frum-on-gop-now-we-work-for-fox.html

the haul from the washer

While I was at work googling, my intrepid wife Julie and stepson Jason made the repair. They took the catch out and it was clogged with 3.65 in change, cable ties, I recognize a few of my ear plugs, a purple Hersey kiss, some sticks that may or may not be parts of laundry baskets.  So if anyone reads this internet message in a bottle, F 21 failure code, go get your change out of the washer, it will require a small hex wrench, and a phillips head screw driver

Rough start

I could not sleep so I didn't turn in till 11 pm, so getting up at 4 am was TOUGH. The front end loading clothes washer is on the fritz. I emptied the washer thinking maybe the weight of the load, heavy towels was the problem. The lint filter was used up, so I took that off.  Draining seemed to be the issue.  I put in some bleach and ran the "Clean Washer" cycle thinking that might resolve it.  Nope.  When I got to work I googled and found dozens of links to do-it-yourselfers who took off the drain catch, and found all manner of things. Chemical handwarmers, hairpins, nails, bullets, foam earplugs, rubber bands.............so it should be interesting.  This was frustrating enough. I wasn't going to make a smoothie but I'd soaked some flaxseeds, so rather than have them go to waste, I fired up the Vitamix.  Julie's making onion bread in the dehydrater, so I'm looking forward to that tonight, but I brought a piece of pork roast with me to work, with an Indian dinner.  So I stumble out of the house frustrated by the washer and mid winter frost is covering all the cars.  Julie's car's dome light was on, and the frost made it appear that the windshield was smashed.  I told myself to take a deep breath. It was just frost, but I started her car to make sure it would start, and turned off the dome light.  Scraping this late in the year is a bit much.

On being Irish

I'm married to a redhead. She's not Irish. She's very fair, and freckled she definately could pass. My son's are mixed race. They could not be confused as Irish.  On their black side of the family there is an Irish great grandfather. So, that means my boys, while there appearance wouldn't suggest it, they are MORE Irish than me.

My family includes a great grandmother Bridgette Hoy, and names like Delaney, and Higgins are in that family line. I have Irish bonifides. My father's side was mostly Scottish, from the Orkney Island of Westray, and his mom it gets kind of murky. They spoke German, or was that Yiddish?  There last name was changed at Ellis Island. My paternal great grandmother had a Jewish maiden name. Oh well.  America's a salad bowl.

But there's no denying the Irish, the lyrical ethnicity. The scrappers, survivors, bar room brawlers, coffin jumpers, guilt soaked fiercely loyal maudlin drunken saps....but both sides of my family were Celts. What do they say about the Celts?  From Chesterton's poem "Ballad of the White Horse"

For the great Gaels of Ireland


Are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry,

And all their songs are sad.

My mother use to complain when there was a funeral, that the Chicago relatives would demand an open coffin. My mother was all about appearances, and felt sorry for the corpse, and believed the coffins should be screwed tight out of respect. I'm sure this was a golden rule thing. When I die, and I can't control how I look, close the lid and don't open it.  My mother was definately a lace curtain variety of Irish.  She referred to the other end of the gene pool as "those shanty louts."

About the most Irish thing we did as a kid was made a pilgrimage to South Bend to drive around the campus of Notre Dame.  This is the American Irish equivalent to a Hadj.  We drove for several hours and got lost on the black side of town, where the recently closed Studebaker plant had gone off like an economic hydrogen bomb.  The lasting image was of a very tall black man past out on the side walk, and people stepping over him confident he was not going to stand up.  "This is the home of Notre Dame" I asked increduously.  My mother seethed, "Do something Bruce!"  In retrospect this is funny to me.  Looking at it from an adults perspective, I feel for my dad. Ultimately we found the campus and got out of the car to behold "Touchdown Jesus" looming over everything.

We had brown eyes except for my sister Beth, and my mother explained this as black Irish. The survivors of the Spanish Armada who ill winds deposited on the shore of the emerald isle, and quickly deposted their Moorish seed there amongst the red headed, freckled, pale people.  Hundreds of years before sun screen.

Happy St Patricks day to all.

Spring ahead

Sunday was the first day of my workweek. It was Daylight saving time, so after experiencing this as a night shift worker for 20 years, I got to experience it as someone who had to adjust as a dayshifter. Thank god I live in a time where the clocks, and my phone adjusted themselves. All I had to do was wake to the alarm. The rooster cock-a-doodle do on my phone.

As those who know me can tell you, one of my peculiar obsessions is that clocks reflect the actual time. I'm also a punctuality nut. Part of this continuum is being judgmental of people who hit the snooze button. Like a dire Calvanist minister, if you set an alarm for a specific time, get up.
If you hit snooze you are fundementally flawed and weak, and predestined to a fiery finale.

Back in the day when my wife thought my peculiarities were amusing, rather than just annoying, she gifted me an atomic clock.
"What does it do?" I asked. "Isn't it just a clock?" I said suspiciously.
"It sets itself from a sattelite." She smiled knowing how this would make me glow.
"ooooooooooo" I said. "So the time is always accurate?"
"Yes, to the second."
"So no one can set it ahead, or behind?" I cooed.
"No, the clock sets itself to the exact time." she beamed. It's rare when a gift can match a persons oddness so perfectly.
I hugged her, feeling technology had saved me from a cold dark inconsiderate universe. If the clocks were accurate how could anything go wrong?

So today, while my body said it was 3:46 am, I was confident it was 4:46 when I got up and intercepted the phone before the rooster crowed. Then I looked at the atomic clock that was illuminated above my sleeping wife. My phone and the clock were showing the same time, and it was good. As awful as I felt, I was comforted that I was synchronized with a satellite.

crazy people in the news, spring thaw, I'm a weather wimp

The news has a couple of items that are just stunning. Rep. Eric Massa's playing out the end of his political career. Eric buddy, just don't slink off the stage quietly. Lindsay Lohan's lawsuite against E-trade, and last but not least, Jihad Jane, the suburban Philadelphia woman who was recruited by Qaida via the internet, to murder a Swedish Cartoonist.
Remember a simpler time when loons like the PA woman would content themselves to marrying someone on death row? Oh the perils of a wired
world. A world where your's truly is blogging. EEEEK!

The weather is very wet, drippy, and there's just one patch of ice on the shadowy strip outside my garage door. A place that has witnessed many spectacular "stepping on a banana peel" falls by your author over the years. Brain to Andrew,"your feet are over your head, and this is going to hurt...." I've perfected the dancing bear shuffle. No falls this year, and its been a real challenge.

The forecast predicts rain for several days in a row. Melt, drip, melt, drip.

Unfortunately living here, you can't just assume April showers will bring May flowers. a) its still March b) March is when the High School sports tournaments happen, and in many Minnesota minds, that means the potential for major blizzards that dump dozens of inches of wet heavy snow. Reminding us that we are specks in the grand scheme, and God is in charge.
A March snow is Weather Whack-a-mo. Do not put the snowblower away till June.

So far so good, God, please keep the temps up, I'm ready to get in the yard and start digging. Need a week of sun though, or I'm afraid I'd lose a pair of shoes to the mud. Whenever it rains several days in a row I think of the novel by Ken Kesey, "Sometimes A Great Notion" It's set in Oregon, and it rains so much in the story, the wet becomes a character in the novel. Read this and you swear you hear dripping.

One of the aspects of being more conscious of getting older is the danger of walking outdoors. Driving along Golden Valley Road, and monitoring the icy sidewalks that I use to walk my dog Rescue (RIP Sept 2007) I really would not feel safe walking yet. This winter has been especially bad for ice. I'm really understanding why people move to AZ from Minnesota, more and more.

Let's see: Scorpions vs falling on icy sidewalks? Dry desert heat vs scraping ice off windshields.... I think I get it. I'm not saying I would do that, I'm just saying I get it more and more.

Julie suggested we start hiking as a recreation. It's a great idea, I pine for warm sunny dry paths to do that. I guess I've turned into a weather wimp.

TV News

KSTP Channel Five, they are the one channel when pursuing a perp, they can't tell the story without showing their reporter knocking on the door of the suspect. Why can't they just say, "efforts to contact Mr/Ms so and so were unsuccessful" Another thing, every time they interview a regular citizen/neighbor, they find the worst example/sample of the populace they can find. While its amusing and empowering, ultimately its disturbing to realize I am surrounded by so many Carnies. Yes its all about me.

CPAP

Had to go get the CPAP machine tuned up. I got a new water reservoir, tubing, mask. I told the tech what Julie said about my reservoir was growing things. She concurred with Julie, and said she'd have to get a glove to handle it. In fact her reaction, demeanor, horror, dismay at the fungi growing in the reservoir was exactly like Julie's. It's kind of sad that health care pros have to nip all my lazy short cuts with SCIENCE. Sigh.... I thought about a full mask, but with my beard there were too many leaks. I asked the tech if she ever saw the Soprano episode where Junior was being fit with a CPAP mask, and Tony scoffed, "How many Meschershmidts have you shot down today?" Anyhow, we'll see if it works, I have two overtime shifts this weekend, sleep will be a premium.