Thoughts About "Obamacare" and Whining White People

One of the first things that comes to mind is that I have, until recently, never heard anyone who uses the phrase "Obamacare" indicate that they have any idea what the Affordable Health Care Act actually does, or is. If you ask these folks what they are talking about you usually get a blank stare.  I say recently because the moniker "Obamacare" has made its way past the haters, yahoos, slack jawed yokels and political opportunists to the marginally better attuned general public.
Most of these folks used to flap their lips about the deficit, a topic laden with technicalities very remote from their cognitive abilities. Before that they hated the stimulus, about which they understood even less than the deficit. Before that it was abortion. And gun control. And immigration reform. And before that it was just about anything that could possibly move the country forward to the ranks of real first class societies. Always the same folks, from the same parts of the country.
So what is actually wrong about the Affordable Care Act? Is it the likelihood that we could possibly provide better health care to more people than, say Chile or Bulgaria?
Perhaps the problem is that the whiners are just sore losers that do not comprehend that they cannot always get everything they want. Like little brats that get a "no" from their mom and scoot over to  whine at dad, who, if he is really stupid, may just say "yes;"

Gin Gimlet Review Number One

One of our city's charms are the old building of past, or mostly past, financial houses and banks. These are very cool buildings and some of them have been cleared of stuffy geezers in straw hats and argyle socks to be refashioned into restaurants. They have high ceilings, fancy columns and some still have neat old furnishings. Founded in 1910 as Butcher & Co. by scion Howard Butcher Jr., the company could trace its lineage to Colonial days through its various acquisitions over the years. One of those acquisitions was of Yarnall, Biddle, which got its start in 1764 as Thomas A. Biddle & Sons.
One of them is Butcher & Singer, at 1500 Walnut Street.
But in 1988 away it went.
Now its a pretty fine place to eat. And the background music isn't too loud, and its not new stuff that is horrible. Also it lacks the sports TV so it has class.
While well presented in the proper glass and delivered perfectly by an excellent server, it had just a touch too much lime. Perfectly acceptable but not quite up to Dan's standard.
The Old Fashioned and the Sidecar were completely first rate.
And the food is excellent, if a bit pricy.

Best Way to Enjoy the NFL

As a rule, I have long thought that the frenzy accompanying professional football is wasted energy. I can't remember when I last watched a pro game, and the idea of paying a hundred bucks to attend one is beyond my pale.
But at half time during the recent Fildelfya Iggles loss to Kansas City (and the Iggles former coach Andy Reid) my Connie decided to follow the Live Chat on philly.com. I admit that I may be the last person to discover this, but the Live Chat, at least in the City of Brotherly Love, is top drawer entertainment. At half time the messages came in at a rate of about one every two seconds - the little beeps they make coming in made a music of sorts. The pace did not slow down when play resumed, but kept up steady as a drum beat in a march.
Each nuance of every play is reflected in comments, most dripping acidic criticism of players and coaches, regrets about team changes and simple phrases that for the most part included the word "suck." Even better, some of the commenters used names of past football greats as tags (I think that's what they are called) - so you get to hear from Roman Gabriel and Chuck Bednarik among others.
No ads or interruptions, no obnoxious fans - just a continuous stream of mostly hilarious venom. And its free!!
My favorite - "the birds are a field of geese."

Is It Greed? Innumeracy?? Hatred?? Lost Planet Airmen??

So now our Congress wants to take away food stamps from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of poor people in order to solve the non problem of "rampant fraud and abuse." They even have the standard "poster child"- some California jerk that uses food stamps to buy sushi when he is not surfing. Just like the so called "welfare queens" of the eighties. There actually was one then, like there is one now. So now we won't feed as many hungry people and too bad for the farmers that actually get money for this program (which is why it used to be part of the Farm Bill).

It reminds me how our legislature in Pennsylvania (the "Land of Giants") decided to require picture IDs to vote because of..."rampant fraud and abuse." When called out, the Republican spokeswoman - lip flapper actually  cited a single case in Philadelphia where some old man was registered twice. But did not bother voting. And spelled his name differently. And may have been two guys, neither of whom voted. So now we are spending millions to get everyone IDs and defend the idiotic statute in court.

What drives these small minded efforts? Are their backers innumerate (that's the same as illiterate, except it involves an ignorance of numbers)? Can we really be electing folks that stupid to Congress? Are these folks greedy?  Do they think their miserable constituents will get the money?

Or is it hatred of everyone not like them? Are all of their constituents rich? Mostly not; they may not be real bright but they are not of the one percent. But they mostly believe in high level abstractions that to simple minds are easier than pesky facts, history or numbers.

And perhaps therein is a clue. Relying on voters too dumb or lazy to learn reality, these legislators can assure themselves that they will never have to return to the crappy places they came from. They can stay in our glittering (well, relatively glittering, depends where you come from) state and national capitols, and stay there by spouting out stuff the yokels back home like to hear.

SUPPORT REAL PUBLIC EDUCATION

My view, taken from the Philadelphia Daily News...

GOING TO THE DOGS or Doing to them...

For no known reason, yesterday I took notice of an inordinate amount of discouraging information about dogs. Discouraging in the sense that people seem to have become too enamored with these creatures that eat cat shit whenever they get the chance. I have indeed loved dogs in my life but I never confused them with humans, or any other elevated being.

I do not sleep with them in my bed, as I learned awhile ago, more than fifty percent of dog owners do. Remember these are creatures that eagerly devour cat shit.
In the New York Times yesterday I read that we (Americans) spend over fifty billion a year caring and feeding pets. More than the entire budgets of a number of states. Since we feed and care for a cat I know that the bulk of this money goes to dogs. Here in Pennsylvania our legislature (the “Land of Giants”) spends more time worrying over puppy mills than about all other public needs combined (or so it seems). Perhaps that is because we let a guy that killed dogs for fun quarterback the Iggles
In yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer I learned that there are spas for dog owners that can bring their cherished cat shit eaters with them and learn how to make organic treats for their loved ones.
But these extravagances pale when compared to the service I saw promoted on the C line in New York yesterday-

A joke of course! But wait! It’s actually a spoof on something real. Or surreal. People do in fact get their dogs altered with plastic surgery. They can even install fake testicles so their poor mutts won’t lose their self esteem and have something to play with when there is no cat shit to gobble. I guess friction powered fake nuts that glow when the dog walks are coming soon....

 

Red Lines, Flapping Lips and History Doesn't Start Every Day

So now we all worked up about blasting a bunch of stuff in Syria, as if this is new. Its not. What IS new these days is our need to tell everybody what we are going to do if...
Then, when IF happens, we HAVE to do what we said we would do, no matter the results or logic. And since we flapped our lips, we have no surprise to deliver. Remember the generals announcing offensives in Iraq so the bad guys could beat feet out of town?
The real case to be made for blasting away at the Syrian gang is that not doing so may well lead to more use of toxic gas on more people. Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Iranians in the 80s (remember there was a long, bloody war between Iraq and Iran when Hussein was our pal?). Since he was killing folks that were not our pals, we had nothing to say about it, even though gassing people was as much against international law then as it is now. So when the Hussein regime decided to gas its own citizens (Kurds) for two years, that too was OK. Except that the news got out and folks got very upset and by then old Saddam wasn't so much our buddy. Even so, we and the world did nothing until we conjured up myths about "WMD"s and toppled his regime, to be replaced by a "beacon of democracy" - remember?
Now Mr. Assad and his gang gave it a go - gas the opposition and see if that scares them into submission; after all it worked next door earlier. These guys are fighting for their lives and their religion and the risk of retaliation by the "world community" is, to them, well worth it.