The Nuclear Option

Was single payer ever really on the table? I don't remember any publicity about it, but I wasn't paying as much attention to politics in those days as I am now. I do remember that a lot of stuff was stripped out of Obamacare to get more Democrats to vote for it, and that some of that stuff was put back into the package after the bill was passed. One thing in particular was abortion funding. Our local congressman, Bart Stupak (D), refused to vote for Obamacare unless the abortion part was taken out, so they took it out. When they put it back in afterwards, old Bart was so upset by it that he retired from politics at the end of his term. Another thing was something called "the public option", which was taken out to pacify Joe Lieberman, a Democrat from some New England state like Connecticut. That one was never put back in, at least not yet. Pity, it was the only part of Obamacare that I liked. The idea of changing a law after it was passed was something that I never heard of before, and I believe it was challenged in the courts. To my knowledge, the courts have upheld it so far, but they may not be done hearing all the cases yet. Of course, once the precedent has been established, it means a Republican president could do it too, if we ever elect another Republican president.

I don't mind talking politics with you. Funny, the only two people with whom I am able to discuss politics intelligently are you and my daughter, and they are both liberals. Go figure! Be that as I may, I have been paying more attention lately, now that I have somebody with whom to discuss it. I only see my daughter a half dozen times a year, and she is too busy to join us here at the Institute, so you are it.

This evening there was something on the TV news about a conference being held on nuclear proliferation (they are against it). Trump, who was not invited to the conference, managed to get his two cents in during some kind of interview. He said that we should give nuclear weapons to Japan and South Korea so that they can defend themselves against North Korea. He also said that he wouldn't rule out the use of nuclear weapons in the fight against ISIS. Hillary, speaking in a different interview afterwards, said talk like that scares her. I don't know what to think about that, so I am submitting it to the Institute for further discussion.

From a tactical standpoint, nuclear weapons would be of little use against ISIS because they don't present any targets that are large enough. There is some concern, however, about ISIS or some other terrorist cult planting a small nuclear device in one of our major cities. They wouldn't be able to level the whole city, just demolish one neighborhood and make it uninhabitable for a few years. I understand one can make a "dirty bomb" like that out of small bits of nuclear material like they use in some medical procedures. Decades ago, there was some talk of the U.S. developing small "tactical nukes", but I don't know if they ever actually did it.

Trump over the transom

The subject of that brief shining moment when the dems controlled all three branches of government is often cited by republicans when they are accused of obstructionism.  If they couldn't pass something when they had that how can they accuse the reps of obstructionism?  The problem was blue dogs.  They had a few blue dogs that wouldn't go along for the ride, and every man jack of the reps was agin it.  If there were a few reps willing to cross the aisle we might have been able to get single payer.

Once single payer was off the table the insurance companies saw the opportunity to make quadrillions and put their mighty shoulders behind the wheel and got it passed. 

This is my general impression of what happened.  I don't remember the details. Was there one big vote or were there a series?  I think you will agree that it was fought every inch of the way by the reps.  They still vow to somehow repeal it though they have no plan as to what to replace it with.  And anymore they seem more interested in attacking each other's wives to even go after the big girl.

I think there are damn few whites who voted for Obama just because he was black.  The fact that he was black might have has some appeal to our rainbow inclinations, but I don't think any of the whites who voted for Obama would have voted for say, Herman Cain.

You know you can't have a decent political discussion these days without having something Trump said bounce in over the transom.  I refer of course to Donald wanting to punish women if they are caught getting abortions which would be illegal in a Trump regime.

The astonishing thing about this is that he walked it back just hours after saying it.  I don't believe he has ever done that before.  I was surprised to learn that the republicans are also against punishing the woman, it doesn't seem logically consistent if they consider abortion murder.  I've just done about five minutes of internet research but i couldn't find anything that Lyin' Ted said in response. 

Abortion hasn't been much of an issue in this primary.  I believe all the rep candidates have scorched earth policies.  There used to be a thing where this guy made an exception for rape and incest and maybe this one guy had an exception for rape but not incest, whereas the other guy had an exception for incest but not rape.  Opposition to Planned Parenthood has largely taken the place of that.  It's much easier to rant about defunding planned parenthood than to explain why a rapist's baby must be carried to birth. 

I'm probably talking about politics more than you would like, but it is on my mind almost all the time now, and I notice when I start talking to my friends the subject turns to politics in about five minutes.  Not much of a problem here in true blue Illinois where the only disagreement is between Bernie and the big girl and generally both are liked, and the conversation goes along the lines of it would be nice to have Bernie, but we can live with the big girl.

I would like to talk to a Trumpist.  I see them on the news shouting their inanities, but I would like to be able to actually question them, preferably over beers, an IPA would be nice but i suppose I could live with some yellow beer.

Play it Again Sam

Actually, Bogart never said "Play it again Sam" in that movie, he just said "Play it Sam.", but most people remember it as "Play it again Sam."

It made sense to me when you said that the insurance lobby prevented Congress from even considering the single payer plan, but now you are saying that the Republicans were responsible for blocking it. How was that possible when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress at the time? The Republicans did indeed try to prevent Obamacare from passing, but they were unsuccessful because they were in the minority. If they couldn't block Obamacare, how could they have been responsible for blocking the single payer plan?

Okay, some Blacks voted for Obama because he's Black, and some Whites voted against Obama because he's Black, but what about the Whites who voted for Obama because he's Black? What was that, liberal guilt?

At the time I moved here, Michigan auto insurance law was different from what they had in Illinois. If I remember correctly, you weren't actually required to have insurance in Illinois but, I you didn't and were in a wreck, your driver's license was suspended until all claims were settled. In Michigan you had to show proof of insurance or pay the $35 to get your license plate. The $35 went into a fund that covered the liability of uninsured motorists who were in a wreck. Then their driver's license was suspended until they repaid the fund for all expenses associate with the wreck. People used to call the $35 fee "state insurance", but it was not really insurance, it was a fee you paid for not having insurance. When no fault was passed, the Uninsured Motorist Fund was abolished. Since then, you have to show proof of insurance to get your plate, and also show it along with your driver's license and registration, to any police officer who stops you and asks for it. I don't think they can randomly stop people just to check those documents but, if they stop you for any other reason, the first thing they do is ask to see your driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance. You will be ticketed if you don't have any one of those documents in your possession.

The required no fault insurance only covers death and personal injury, along with property damage if you hit anything but another vehicle, it doesn't cover damages to your car. For that you need collision insurance, which is so expensive that most people don't carry it except when required by the bank that loaned them the money to buy the car. As soon as the car is paid off, they cancel their collision insurance because, by then, the car has depreciated to the point that it's not worth insuring anymore. Collision only covers you when you collide with another vehicle. If you want to hit a tree or a deer, you need comprehensive coverage, which also covers things like towing and cracked windows.

sleeping soundly like a democrat

I'm sure I've told you that in my misspent youth I was a republican.  i don't think that I was too crazy about Tricky Dick, who was?  Nobody liked the guy but he kept on getting elected.  But when Kennedy was nominated it seemed like every Catholic in Gage Park High was for him, that didn't seem quite right to me so I backed Tricky Dick.  Thankfully i was too young to vote so I don't have that memory keeping me awake at night. 

The votes from blacks who vote for Obama because he is black probably match the votes of white people who vote against him because he is black.  Black racism is kind of diffuse though.  I think that if somebody in a black crowd muttered "Fuck a bunch of white people," there would be a lot of nods, but they don't have armed organizations like the kkk and the neonazis and those identity groups.

Sometimes I will copy something and by the time I navigate to where I want to paste it that little box doesn't offer me that option.  If I do it again it usually works, maybe I didn't do it right the first time, and maybe it got lost in cyberspace, who knows?  In cyberspace sometimes things work and sometimes they don't and we just get used to it.

I don't get that $35 option in your pre no fault insurance.  If the state could track the guy down why didn't they just make him pay the insurance?  If they couldn't track the guy down then why would he even pay the $35?  The way I remember liability was that if you smashed some guys Caddy your insurance would pay for his damage, but not yours.  It was cheaper, but if you hit a tree you got nothing, on the other hand if your car wasn't worth much you were better off saving money on your insurance.  When I was young I couldn't wait to have a car, but after a few years of beaters and nothing but trouble as far as repairs and insurance and gas, i was glad to chuck the whole thing.  It's been forty-five years since I've owned a car and I haven't missed it a second.

The old Cook County hospital is still standing, it was a handsome building in its time and they are trying to find a use for it.  Before it was abandoned they built a new one.

Do we have to go over this again?  When Obama was doing Obamacare he wanted single payer which would have paved the way to the socialized medicine which seems to be what you crave, but maybe not under that name.  But your republicans, the guys you turn out to vote for every election, but refuse to accept responsibility for things that they do that you don't care for, would never let that happen.  So Obama had to cut that deal with the insurance companies to get a system which is not that hot, but still better than what we had before because unemployed and people with pre-existing conditions can now get insurance, and money is being saved.  So anyway I don't think you can blame Obama for faults in his program which are only there because the people you voted for obstructed him from getting a better plan.

No more debates but last night CNN had a town hall. I dropped in a bit between Modern Family reruns and saw Lyin' Ted who somehow manages to make evil boring.  When Trump was on of course he had my undivided attention.  You never know what he is going to say and things just spin around and around and i am memorized.  The arguments about the wives, you know neither of them really want to talk about it, but the other guy started it so they both go on and on.  I didn't stick around for Uncle Johnny Kasich because I can only take so much Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

The upshot was that neither of them will support the other if they lose.  We dems throughout the nation smiled smugly, turned off the tube and went to bed for the sleep of the just.

The Racist in the Wood Pile

I don't know if people are still saying this, but I seem to remember that, when Obama was first running for president, it was not uncommon for people who didn't like him to say, "It's not because he's Black, it's because he's a socialist".....or whatever. The fact that they felt it necessary to mention his race at all makes me think that it was at least part of the reason they didn't like him, they just didn't want to admit it, even to themselves. I also suspect that many of the people who voted for him were at least partially motivated by his race. Let's face it. we've never had a Black president before, and it was a big deal when Obama became the first. It was kind of like when JFK became our first Catholic president, only more so. It didn't take long after his election for people to forget that Kennedy was a Catholic, but I don't think anybody will ever forget that Obama was Black.

I couldn't make that link you gave me work. I tried to copy and paste it to my address bar, but it somehow fell off the clipboard between the "copy" and the "paste". I have had that problem before with my copy and paste function, but not always. I don't know if I do something wrong or if it's a glitch in my browser. Anyway, I suspected that it was some kind of joke, but I didn't know about the part where my ilk was signing it too. It just goes to show that, when you think you've seen it all, you find out that you ain't seen nothing yet.

Before we had no fault car insurance, everybody was required to have liability insurance or pay $35 into the Uninsured Motorist Fund. If an uninsured motorist was involved in an accident, his driving license would be suspended until all liability claims were settled, which might take years. In those days, you could get a liability policy for about a hundred dollars a year, but if people didn't want to pay that much, they could pay the $35 in lieu of insurance. When they passed no fault, which I believe was in the 70s, they abolished the $35 option and required all drivers to carry the new no fault insurance. With no fault, you collect from your own insurance company instead of the other guy's. This was supposed to save money for the insurance companies, and they were supposed to pass some of those savings down to us. The ink was barely dry on the no fault law when insurance premiums started going up, and they've been going up ever since.

I never did like the idea that the state could force you to buy insurance but, since the state owns the roads, I can see some justification for it. If the state owned the hospitals and clinics, I might agree with some kind of tax to support them. In that case, treatment should be free, since we've already paid for it with our taxes. I read some time ago that the Cook County Hospital was closing down, but the article didn't say if it was being replaced by a new one or not. Not all counties can afford to maintain a hospital, but I don't see why the federal government couldn't do it instead of passing that goofy Obamacare.

another fine spring morning wasted

Trump is the anti politician.  The rest of those guys, you know they are a bunch of liars, it's what they do for a living.  There is that nanosecond before they speak when you can almost hear the whir as they are considering what to say, what will have the best effect.  There is no nanosecond with Trump.  He doesn't care what will have the best effect, more to the point he is sure, supremely confident, that whatever he says will have the best effect.  He is the greatest guy on the stage and the rest of them are all a bunch of losers.

I read somewhere lately that Sarah Palin was the beginning of Trumpism.  Here was a clearly ignorant woman who didn't know much about anything, whose words didn't even make any sense when you tried to put them together, and yet here she was one election and one heartbeat away from the presidency,  And she was wildly popular.  Not all that popular since her and Cap'n Fogey went down like a leaky garbage scow before Obama's sleek clipper ship. 

But she was still wildly popular among the reps, or among a certain reps of the insurgent variety.  The old school politicians were never loath to bend a truth, but the new school, the Palinists, never gave the slightest attention to the truth, like the early launched satellites of the sixties that broke the surly bonds of Earth, the Palinists broke the surly bonds of truth.  The old school politicians, when confronted with something they said that wasn't true did a little fancy two step, obfuscating and redirecting, you had to admire their skill, but it was a little awkward, the Palinists, when caught in a lie, simply repeated it only louder and with even more conviction.

And I can't quite trace it from Palin to Trump. but the tea partiers adopted Palinism.  What you say doesn't have to be true or make sense, just say it long and loud.  If your heart is true, if you believe what you are saying, then it can't possibly be wrong. 

Trumpists like Trump because they are sick of all the lying liars, so they are backing the biggest liar of them all. 

Another perfectly fine spring morning and I've wasted an hour of it ranting about Trump.  He has the power.

I wonder about these people who were really upset that Obama got elected.  You know there is a common thread amongst my ilk that a lot of this tea party, Trump, stuff is racist.  Myself I don't really go with that because I think my ilk is too prone to cry racism, and as I recall the reps were awfully hard on Bill too.  But there are some unsavory racist things coming out of Trump, and there is the fact that all these kkk guys are coming out for him.  Well I don't know.

I learned a little more about that open carry convention petition.  Apparently it was started by some of my ilk as a satire, but then it got like 45,000 signatures from your ilk.  The thing is Ohio is an open carry state, but the arena is a no firearm place and the secret service just stepped in and said no to open carry in the Quicken Loans, so I guess that's it.

I suppose they could still carry knives though, that would make it more like the Roman senate.

As a non driver i know as little about no fault insurance as I do about how much it costs to park or what a parking ticket costs, but the little comment i wanted to make about that was I think you are against people being forced to pay for health insurance, but aren't you for people being forced to buy car insurance?  Of course they are two different things.

As long as nothing particularly bad happens to you your self financing health care plan works, but if you had something like a heart attack, even if your health came back fine, you would be in debt the rest of your life.  i think that's the main reason people want health insurance, for the catastrophic stuff. 

We still have a county hospital.

Action and Reaction

I asked my daughter yesterday if she knew any Trumpists. She told me that she had recently discovered some among her acquaintances, and she was surprised because they were the people that she would have least expected. Apparently there were some people who were really upset when Obama was elected president, and they haven't gotten over it yet. She thinks that the Trump movement grew out of the Tea Party movement, but has now taken on a life of its own. There are some others who have become disillusioned with politicians in general, and Trump is seen as sort of an anti politician. Not anti as in "against", but anti as in "alternative", like the anti popes that the Catholics had to deal with back in the day.

There are some things I do every day, but many of my activities are seasonal and weather dependent. One nice thing about the Weather Channel is that they don't pre-empt the news and weather with sports like our local network affiliates sometimes do on the weekends. Even when they are running a feature show, you can always click on the "local" icon and get the stats for your zip code.

My hypothetical wife does the grocery shopping, although I took it over for a year or so when she had health issues and couldn't do it herself. I used to buy my own groceries when I was single, so I thought I knew how, but it turns out there is way more to it than I realized. With my hypothetical wife's coaching, however, I eventually became quite a savvy shopper, if I do say so myself. Just when I was starting to get good at it, though, she got better and took the job back. I do go to town once a week or two for stuff that only I use, and I usually get the carry out meals like pizza or Chinese.

I'm running late tonight, so I won't look up your link about packing heat at the convention, maybe tomorrow. At this point I'm guessing that it's somebody's idea of a joke.

I don't know if the Catholics were worried about the fermenting youth of the 60s, I think they were just concerned with declining church attendance. Like a certain Methodist I know, kids were drifting away from the fold as soon as they were out of their parents' reach.

We have no-fault auto insurance in Michigan, and it sucks. It's like liability except that your insurance company pays for your own losses. They decided that it was cheaper than taking people to court to determine whose fault the accident was. They were supposed to pass some of the savings on to us with lower premiums but, of course, that never happened. The thing about home and auto insurance is that many people never have to make a claim in their lifetimes. With health insurance, you know you are going to need it someday, so what you're doing is pre-paying your medical expenses. I would rather keep the money in my own account drawing interest for me until I need it. I have always paid my medical bills in a timely manner, with the money I saved by not buying medical insurance. Poor people's healthcare has always been subsidized, before Medicaid they just charged their paying customers more to recover the losses they incurred treating poor people. Also, in some locations like your own, they used to have county hospitals where poor people could go for free. We never had that here, and I understand that yours closed down some time ago.

shoot out at the Cleveland Corral

I always look to the magnolia trees for my first sighting of spring.  On Sundays I eat pizza for lunch at Whole Foods and across the street are two magnolia trees which I have been watching like a hawk.  Last week the buds were looking fuzzy, and now they seem to have some green tendrils coming out of them and surely next week they will be in flower.  To me summer is like your true love who comes back into your life and promises that she will never leave again, but of course she does. 

I guess your watching the weather channel is lot like your watching the stock prices go by.  Well maybe it's a little different in that though you can't have any effect on the weather you can at least figure out how to dress.  But don't you do the same thing every day?  I think you told me once that if the weather is good you go fishing, and if it's not you putter around the freehold.

I'm a little curious about how often you go into town.  Do you have a grocery day?  Why else would you go into town, unless maybe to sneak into the old-timers coffee klatch, holding your hand over your cup so that nobody can see that it is actually tea and covering up that cub reporter (for the Institute, so you can find out what the Trumpists are saying) card in your fedora so that the loveable old characters don't find out that you are a member of the media and tear you limb from limb.

Speaking of which have you heard about the petition going around to have everybody at the republican convention packing heat?

http://madmikesamerica.com/2016/03/packing-for-peace-at-the-republican-national-convention/

I would guess that the cooler heads, if there are any left in the GOP, would not be in favor of this what with the recent exchanges between the Trumpists and the Cruz-ers, but dare any republican have photos of himself without a big iron on his hip sent back to his constituents?   Oh that Republican convention is looking to be more fun than ever.

I don't know if the Catholic church with it's fifteen hundred year history was worried about youth ferment in the 60s.  Which reminds me of the 18 year old vote, which actually was an amendment to the constitution.  Can you imagine anything like that taking place in these troubled times?  It gives the dems a little edge so you wonder why the reps did it.  Well the fermented youth at the time were pretty much against both parties, and Nixon actually might have done well with youth what with his promise of a secret solution to the Vietnam war.  Oh and that was another reason.  Some of the troops were complaining about having to fight a war and not being allowed to vote, so the gummint gave them a vote and then a rifle, and said ok, now quit complaining.

The hymn I remember most is The Old Rugged Cross, oh I hear it droning on in that dusty Elsdon church on a Sunday summer morning while outside the breezes brushed through the leafy bows of the trees, and inside the time just crawled, and i was wearing those itchy clothes, my throat strangled with a tie, and all i could think of was how great it would be to be an atheist when i got older.

I imagine you have car and home insurance, because if something bad should happen you could go bankrupt.  Probably not with the car, come to think of it, that is something more where you have it for the benefit of other drivers so that if it's your fault you get paid, but in turn you expect to get paid if it's their fault and you expect others to be carrying insurance, and the government enforces this.  I'm surprised that the tea party doesn't get upset about the government telling them to buy car insurance.

And it's kind of the same thing with health insurance because nobody, except some of those vocal Rand Paul backers, are going to let you just die from something, so if you have no insurance and get some bad disease we are all going to have to pay for it.  So isn't it better if we all have insurance so at least we are all paying into the pot? 

It would be better still if we cut the insurance companies off entirely.  But that's a battle for another day.

The Ghost In the Machine

The storm had passed in the night and the morning dawned cold, calm, and clear, just like they said it would. I thought that the scene out my window would make a nice picture, so I shot it through the window pane before the light changed or something. I didn't plan on making a selfie, but I kind of did by accident. I've shot lots of pictures through windows, but this is the only one to ever come out like that. The sun was off to my left, and the angle must have been just right.

We ended up with at least a foot of snow on the level, it was hard to tell for sure because of all the blowing and drifting. It was pretty warm during the storm, I don't think it ever got below 30. Friday and Saturday mornings started out at 20, and then quickly rose as the sun came up, 40s on Friday and 50s on Saturday. Bare patches of ground were starting to show by Saturday afternoon.

The only people who name winter storms are the people on The Weather Channel (214). They broadcast out of Atlanta, Georgia but they report the weather for the whole country and even go international at times. They have an interactive feature where you click on this icon and get a detailed report of current and future conditions for your own zip code. From 5:00 AM until sometime on the afternoon they just do the weather, for the rest of the time they have these feature shows that are more or less weather related. When there's a big storm going on, they pre-empt the feature shows and do the weather 24 hours a day. I never watch it for very long, but I will check it several times a day and watch it for 5-15 minutes. My hypothetical wife doesn't like it, especially late at night, so I keep the sound off most of the time. You really don't need the sound anyway because almost everything they are saying is backed up with graphics or text.

When the Catholics had their big uproar back in the 60s, I think they were catering to the young people who had been leaving the church in droves. I don't know if it helped them retain any young people, but my father in law quit going to church after they stopped speaking Latin. I don't think he was fluent in Latin himself, but he said that it just didn't seem like church when they did everything in English. He did go back to church for his funeral, but I don't think that counts because he was carried in. They had a new priest by that time, and he was a lot friendlier than the old priest. I talked with him afterwards and commented on one of the hymns they did during the service, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God", which was written  by Martin Luther. (No, not Martin Luther King, the original Martin Luther who started the Protestant Reformation.) I said that I was surprised to hear that hymn sung in a Catholic church. The priest chuckled and said "You know, I always did like that hymn, and I was pleased when they started letting us use it."

I don't know if I actually liked the health system the way it was. I think it's more like they shouldn't even have a health system at all. You should be able to just go to the doctor when you're sick. Why should that require a system? Just go there, get cured, and go on your way. That's how my dentist operates, and I've been going to him for 45 years. No follow up visits, no expensive prescription drugs giving you side effects that cause you to need even more expensive prescription drugs. Just get cured and pay the lady in the window on your way out. Why can't all doctors be like that?

If Willie Nelson was god

My friends all live south of me and they think I live in the frozen north, but you live in a whole nother country.  It was dark and cold and windy and rainy all day yesterday, and for less than an hour the rain turned to snow, the pie-eyed local weather folk gasped that it would be enough to turn the grass white.  But that was it, today it is supposed to reach 50. 

I've never heard of winter storms having names, maybe that's because we really don't have them here.  It gets cold enough I suppose, but we rarely have those paralyzing storms that leave the network weather guys gasping. 

Early winter storms can be kind of exciting, and middle winter storms are par for the course, but late winter storms are heartbreakers.  Oh fer Chrissake, enough is enough already.  Old man winter, who had gotten as far as the doorway, turns around and, well he has something more to say. Used to drive me nuts when I was a kid and got dragged off to some boring relative's house, and we were finally leaving, and maybe I was already in the car and I looked back and there were my folks and the boring relatives standing in the doorway, and talking, and talking, and talking.  Geez Louise.

Nice little story about the marriage of Beagles and Mz Hypothetical.  Nice of the congregants to bake you a cake, and they probably felt nice about themselves doing it.  The way a church should be in this atheist's opinion.

That was Pope John the Something, the liberal pope of the mid-sixties.  He made the priests speak in the local language and face their audiences.  The masses loved him, but the crusty types hated him.  If you know what the priest is saying how is that a religion?  After him, until this latest liberal pope that the masses love again, we have had a series of authoritarian, well dare I call them assholes?  Well I'm not catholic, and if I'm wrong about all this I am surely going to hell anyway, so they can hardly dig me in deeper,  Oh, thinking about it they probably can, but what the hell?

You know I had this vision once, where Willie Nelson was god.  Doesn't seem that far-fetched does it?  And when the time came for him to decide who gets to wear a halo and who goes into the fiery lake, he'd just say something like what the hell, some of you are assholes, but you are my assholes so you are all going to heaven.  And even then, I envisioned some of them, rising through the clouds, would be muttering that they weren't so sure that they wanted to go to heaven if those folks were going too.

You may be the only person in the country that liked the health system the way it was.  Trust me, almost everybody else hated it, for reasons i don't have time to get into now because it is Friday and my weekend awaits.  If the reps thought it was so great they should have campaigned on that.

This Weather Blows !

Politics, shmalitics, the big news today is Winter Storm Selene. A couple years ago, the Weather Channel started naming winter storms like they do hurricanes. I wish they wouldn't do that, it just encourages them. Call me "paranoid", but I think the storms have gotten more severe since they began naming them. Before that people would just say, "Oh we got some snow, and I hear they got some rain Down Below." but now, every time some butterfly flaps it's wings in Montana, the whole country is engulfed in a winter storm. This one actually started in Colorado, and they were predicting it days before it started showing up on the radar. It makes me wonder if it would have made such a spectacle of itself if they hadn't given it so much attention.

I went out in the teeth of the storm today and broke a track out to the road in case we needed to get out or somebody needed to get in, but I'm going to have to do the whole thing again tomorrow. We had a foot on the ground by this afternoon, and it ain't done yet. I wouldn't be surprised if we got another foot on top of that before it's done. Before this, almost all of our snow was gone and the swamp was dry enough for me to skid logs over bare ground. I was beginning to worry if the frogs were going to have enough water to raise a crop of tadpoles this year. A few frogs had been singing out there, but now they will be shut down for at least a couple weeks until all the snow melts and the water warms up a bit. The good news is that the little tadpoles won't need to worry about the marsh drying up before they turn into grown up froggies. Good for them!

Why do the Republicans have to come up with an alternate plan before repealing Obamacare? What was wrong with the way things were before? Nobody was ever left to die in the street because they didn't have the money to pay for health care. If you are in serious trouble, they have to take care of you, whether you have insurance or not. If you are not in serious trouble, you don't need to go to the doctor in the first place. All those tests and preventative care is just a scam to make you think you are sick when you are not. Almost all the people I have known who have died went to a doctor first, if they hadn't gone they might still be alive today. No doctor in history ever permanently saved the life of one of their patients, they all die sooner or later. Even after you're dead, they will hound your relatives for any unpaid bills. If you're dead, it means they didn't do their job, so why should they get paid?

As I remember it, the Catholic Church was in a big uproar at the time we got married. They had recently started doing their services in English instead of Latin, and changed some other stuff too. We both wanted to be married in a church, and we didn't care which one. My hypothetical wife hadn't been to church in awhile, and she didn't know if they had changed the part about promising to raise the kids Catholic, so we went to the local priest to find out. This priest was not very friendly, which is one reason my hypothetical wife hadn't been to church in awhile. He said that I should find a nice Protestant girl to marry, and she should find a nice Catholic boy to marry. She replied, "I don't know any nice Catholics." End of meeting. Then we went to a Protestant church that I had sometimes attended when it wasn't hunting season, and the minister was very friendly and helpful. We didn't want a big fancy wedding so we asked him to just marry us with a simple private ceremony. He suggested that we do it on Sunday morning right after church let out, which we did. The congregation must have gotten wind of it because they all stayed after church and watched us get married. Then we went down into the church basement, where the church ladies served coffee and doughnuts after the service. In addition to the usual doughnuts, they had made a flat cake with our names on it. We hadn't asked them to do that, they just did it out of the goodness of their hearts. After that, we went and picked up my hypothetical wife's parents and took them out to dinner at a local restaurant. It wasn't a traditional wedding, but we didn't care. We used the money we saved for a down payment on our first house.

Why the days of retirees are just packed.

Oh there are always wars going on, the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on cancer, the war on dangling participles.   Of course the word war is way overused, but you know what is worse these days is warrior.  Everybody is a warrior for something, except for those guys (and gals) who are just plain warriors, warriors for warriorism I guess.  The reason I used the term phony war was to liken the wars on Trump and Obamacare to the phony war after Hitler invaded Poland and England and France declared war and didn't do anything for a couple of months. 

The anti Trump war appears to be mostly among pundits, who come up with these schemes but the only ones the candidates like are the ones where everybody else but them drops out.  A more serious one is on the part of party apparatchiks who are trying to figure out how to set up the convention to avoid Trump taking it, but then of course there will be riots.  And of course the war on Obamacare was bogus from the get go because actually fighting it would mean having their own plan, which would mean coming to terms with each other, which would mean compromising which is a dirty word among republicans.  In short it would be hard work and the republicans hate hard work maybe more than they hate compromising.  It is much easier to just piss and moan about everything Obama does.

The people I know who like Obamacare are glad to pay to get it because the other option is to not pay and not have it.  I had a couple chest x-rays lately and the bill was $500 each.  $500, breathe in - click - breath out, $500.  Of course i didn't pay that, I have medicare and supplemental insurance.  And of course medicare and my supplemental didn't pay that.  They have already made a deal with the hospital about what they will pay and my guess is it's a good deal less than $500.  Joe Sixpack without insurance pays the $500.  That's why it's a good deal to have insurance.  I too spent a few years without insurance before medicare chipped in, but it was a risky move, any moderate health crisis and the both of us would have been in debt the rest of our lives.

Geez, why didn't you have your wedding in some kind of neutral place so your in laws could attend?  Well none of my business.  I remember now that that Catholic Protestant marriage used to be a big deal.  Don't both sides try to get the other side to convert, and failing that there is some kind of thing about how the kids should be raised?  Well your kid became a wiccan so I guess that all worked out.

You know homosexuality was big with the Greeks and the Romans didn't mind it all, it's gone back and forth over the years and across cultures.  Growing up on the southwest side of Chicago in the 50s it was certainly beyond the pale.  I get that icky feeling about gays too.  I am a good liberal and I believe they should have all the rights of us heteros but I flinch when i see guys kissing in movies.  Well I suppose they feel the same way about different sex couplings,  I wonder if they were in the majority if they'd let the heteros get married.

It is a well-documented fact retirees have less time than working people.  Every retiree I talk to says the same thing,  I think what happens is that when you are working and there is something to be done, you find the time and fit it into your working schedule and get it done.  But if you have no working schedule, why you can do it anytime, and there is no reason to rush and do it right now.  Procrastination is limitless and nothing gets done so we always have these things looming over us because we haven't done them, so we always have so much to do.

Last night I had a little party, the Eggstravaganza, where we had eggs and dye and candy and the little kids came early and egged it up, and later the grown ups showed up, and towards the end the beer showed up and we all had a good time. 

By the time we finished and cleaned up I hauled some bags of stuff back here, but I didn't unpack them because it was after ten for Chrissake and I had to get right to bed.  I still haven't unpacked this morning because i have to post in The Institute.  I may get to it later but we'll see.  It will take ten minutes to unpack, but i may not even get to that today because I can always do it tomorrow, so I will have that to do for most of today and perhaps tomorrow.  The days are just packed.

There Are Wars?

I wasn't aware that there were anti-Trump or anti-Obamacare wars, phony or otherwise. I know that some people must like Trump because they have been voting for him, and that others must not like him because they have been voting against him. I voted against him myself but, unfortunately, I've only got one vote. I plan to vote for him in the general election if he wins the nomination because he's not Bernie or Hillary. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any organized anti-Trump movement.

I know that I am not the only one who opposes Obamacare because, until recently, the news has been full of reports of congressional action and lawsuits against it. Now that you mention it, though, I haven't heard about anything like that lately, so maybe you're right about that one. I suppose the people who are getting their health insurance for free are in favor if it, but I would be surprised if anybody who has been forced to buy health insurance is happy about it. I remember that I was in favor of health insurance as long as my employer was paying for it but, when I was faced with the prospect of paying for it myself, I declined to do so. I suppose it might be a good deal for somebody who is sick a lot, but most people are going to pay more into it than they ever get out of it in the long run. All you are doing with health insurance is pre-paying your medical costs before you need them. If you run up a big medical bill and have no insurance, you will have to pay it off in installments. The difference is that you would be paying for medical services after the fact instead of before it, and only paying for the services that you actually received instead of services that you might need someday. Okay, when they put me on Medicare, I didn't opt out of Part "B" like I could have. My hypothetical wife and I talked it over and decided that the premiums weren't that bad and, at our age, there was a good chance we were going to use it someday if we lived long enough.

I got to thinking about that gay marriage thing after I signed off last night. Truth be known, there is no rational reason why anybody should get married before the age of 18 and, after 18, there is nothing the parents can do about it, so it's kind of a moot question. I said that I would never attend a gay wedding, and I still wouldn't, even if it was my own kid getting married. My hypothetical wife's parents didn't attend our wedding because they were Catholic, we were married in a Protestant church, and people cared about stuff like that in those days. It's not that they didn't approve of the marriage, they just didn't feel comfortable setting foot in a Protestant church, and we didn't hold that against them.

The only reason I mentioned the AMA is that I heard, some years after the fact, that it was they who decreed that homosexuality was no longer a medical condition. Before that, everybody I knew called it a sickness, and I just took it for granted that it was. Maybe it was the AMA who originally decreed that it was a sickness, in which case it would be reasonable for them to be the ones to un-decree it. I understand that, before it was considered a sickness, it was considered a crime in many jurisdictions. Since governments were the ones that made it a crime in the first place, it's reasonable that governments were the ones to un-make it a crime. For as long as I can remember, the idea of homosexuality has creeped we out, so I am the one who gets to decide that it doesn't creep me out, and I haven't decided that yet. It's possible that I might decide that someday, but it's not bloody likely.

It never ceases to amaze me that I seem to have less spare time now than when I was working for a living. I think it has something to do with Einstein's Theory of Relativity. As your speed approaches the speed of light, time begins to slow down, right? It seems logical, then, that time speeds up as you slow down in your old age. Be that as it may, I certainly don't have time for whittling and gabbing anymore. The only reason I have time for the internet is that I no longer watch television after supper. This is a good thing because too much isolation can make you funny in  the head, or so I've been told.

the phony anti-Trump and anti-Obamacare wars.

You know I don't know if it was ever thus, but back in the day, or in the movies anyway, the coots and geezers would gather in the morning in front of the courthouse, but i suppose it could be anywhere, and commence to whittling and gabbing till the sun came down.  Actually i remember looking forward to that when i was a tad, and I believe I even took a stab at whittling once or twice, without much success i admit, but then I don't think the aim of the gathering was to produce great art.  The one thing men hate to admit is that they love to gossip, well not towering intellects like ourselves, but maybe a little bit, and it's not gossip, it's discussion.

I think anymore it happens in McDonald's, or so their commercials seem to indicate, and I think i have observed such gatherings from time to time.  Surely there are a few McDonald's in Cheboygan where you could drop by, but then you don't drink coffee, and if they saw you drinking tea they would think you were a commie, or worse, a narc.  So I guess maybe we can't put that cub reporter card in your fedora.

I know a few people who like Obamacare, self-employed or out of work people who couldn't afford insurance before, and then there were all those people who were chained to jobs they hated because they were afraid to lose their insurance, and I don't know any offhand, but those with pre-existing conditions certainly like it.  Another reason the reps don't work seriously at dismantling Obamacare is that their constituents like it.

What do you care what the AMA thought then or now about homosexuality?  They are nothing but a bunch of establishment pin heads that your ilk has nothing but contempt for.  So are you saying that if your child was gay and wanted to marry their true love you would do everything you could to obstruct that?  Not a few fire-breathing right wingers have reversed their positions once they discovered that their kid was gay.

If it's all about not raising your taxes (like that awful Ronnie Reagan) or taking your guns, then why not vote for Trump?  He's not going do either.

Trump takes Arizona.  Bush wouldn't back Rubio when he dropped out.  Rubio hasn't backed Cruz since he dropped out, Kasich refuses to drop out.  Cruz won't hear of a deal where he is in a joint ticket with one of the other guys.  The anti Trump movement is like the anti Obamacare movement, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Meanwhile Bernie and the big girl huddle together chuckling and cackling thinking of raising your taxes and what the hell, prying Old Betsy out of your hands, and I hope that gay dog of yours is looking better every day.

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

I can't remember the last time I was in a bar, and I never was one to sit around drinking coffee. Since I don't go to work anymore either, I don't know who I might ask about Trump except you and Wikipedia. Well, maybe my daughter. She's a liberal, but she's kind of an anti-establishment liberal.  I'm sure she voted for your man Bernie and, last I heard, she was not a fan of Obamacare. She does know a lot of people, though, so she might be able to shed some light on this Trump thing. We are going to see her this Sunday so I will ask her.

When we were raising our daughter, homosexuality was still considered to be a sickness so, if she had told us that she was gay, we would have taken her to a doctor. I don't know what I would do about something like that today, and I'm glad I don't have to deal with it. Okay, I understand that it was sometime in the 70s when the AMA declared that homosexuality was not a sickness, but I never heard about it till years later, after my daughter was grown and gone.

I seem to remember reading that the Republicans in the House voted to repeal Obamacare a whole bunch of times, but the Democrats were in control of the Senate at the time, so you're right, it never went anywhere. Now that I think of it, I don't remember hearing about that since the Republicans took control of the Senate, but Obama would surely veto it if it got to his desk, so maybe they have quit trying. The Republicans sure have their share of goofballs, and I'm not going to defend anything they have said or done. Don't forget that I usually vote for the lesser of two evils. I have not heard in a long time that any Republicans want to raise my taxes or take my guns away, so that's all I need to know about them.

I don't know why we needed any kind of health care "reform" in the first place. Poor people were already getting free medical care, and the rich people didn't need it. It's the people in the middle who were getting squeezed, and that was mainly due to the insurance companies raising their rates to the point that many employers couldn't afford to pay for it anymore. If my boss can't afford it, you know damn well that I can't afford it either, so the solution is not to force me to buy health insurance. Well, I'm on Medicare so it doesn't affect me personally, but you get the point. I haven't been to a doctor since the time I stuck that fishhook in my hand, which was a few months before I became eligible for Medicare, but I have heard that health insurance costs more now than it ever has. That fishhook incident set me back a thousand dollars, which I easily paid with the money I saved by not buying health insurance. I wouldn't be surprised in it would still cost me a thousand dollars today, on top of whatever Medicare paid. That's how insurance works.

what do Trumpists really want?

I suppose I would still vote against concealed carry.  I feel less safe knowing people around me are packing heat.  If your son or daughter wanted to marry someone of the same sex, I think we can assume that they were gay.  You're refusing to allow the marriage wouldn't make them less gay, so wouldn't you rather that they were in a stable marriage rather than running around?  But maybe it's not the gayness that bothers you, maybe it's just the marriage part.  How about if at their nuptials they promised never to make a spectacle of themselves and never to try to take over? 

But the point is that I was wrong in thinking that concealed carry would result in mayhem in the streets and that you were wrong in thinking letting gays marry would ruin your marriage.  But what if we slashed taxes even more on the rich and the money trickled down and the poor peoples' boats all rose, and what if we had generous welfare programs that got the bums off their butts and back on the payroll? 

Off course there is no pure political system but I am using the reps and the dems as they are.  They roughly fit into a left/right, collectivist/individualist configuration. 

Correction, the republicans have been screaming and yelling about repealing Obamacare.  They have not done a damn thing to repeal it.  They hold votes that they know will have no effect, just to please the folks back home in their safe district.  They bring the government to a halt knowing that that will have no effect on Obamacare and that in the end they will have to cave and get nothing for it. 

If they really wanted to repeal Obamacare, wouldn't you think they would declare the current system is fine and dandy, which they haven't.  Or maybe they would have their own great plan (Trump has one, he has said so) to replace it, but the closest they get to that is to mumble something about health saving accounts and letting insurance policies go across state borders and then they clear their throats brusquely and move onto the next topic.

On the same subject they scream and yell, and I daresay, make spectacles of themselves, about the importance of choosing the next supreme court judge and yet everything they do, far more than anything the dems do, makes it a lead pipe cinch that they will never be appointing anybody.

You know I believe I could be sitting in the Ten Cat drinking a beer and if you walked in and saw me you would immediately think, why is Uncle Ken drinking beer?  He must be up to something.

Trump is not hard to believe.  There are a million big fucking assholes in the USA, some of them even richer than Trump.  The thing that is hard to believe is why so many people like him.  Well, the pundits ramble, times are tough, but times have been tougher in the past, and even if times were tougher than ever why would anybody believe that a character like Trump could or would help them out???  ????   ?????

I'll tell you, here in the true blue city of Chicago I can't say that I have come across a Trumpist this election season.  But I'll wager that there are plenty in your little hat on top of the other little hat on the top of Michigan, there are plenty.  I don't know how much you get out and about among the citizenry, but maybe you could track down a Trumpist or two and find out what they are thinking.

The Art of the Possible

 "Politics is the art of the possible." (Some famous guy said that) "All things are possible, but not all things are bloody likely."  (I said that.)

Hypothetically, I suppose I would change my political beliefs if they were proven wrong to my satisfaction. That's unlikely to happen in the real world, however, because, like I said, there is no pure political system. What happens is we change our minds, or don't, on one particular issue at a time. I'm still not in favor of gay marriage, I would vote against it again if it was on the ballot again, but it's unlikely to be on the ballot again in my lifetime, so there's no point in me worrying about it. It's a done deal, ipso facto case closed. That doesn't mean I have to attend a gay wedding if I were to be invited to one, which is also unlikely. If I had a son or daughter under the age of 18, and they asked my permission to marry someone of the same sex, I would refuse. If they were over 18, they wouldn't need my permission, so there would be nothing I could do about it. Would they still be welcome in my home for a holiday visit? I don't know, but that's also unlikely to happen, so no sense worrying about that either.

Republicans in Congress have been trying to repeal Obamacare since the day after it was passed. The only way that's going to happen is if we elect a Republican president while maintaining a Republican majority in both houses of Congress, or if we elect a veto proof 2/3 majority to Congress, in which case it wouldn't matter who was president. I think what will happen with Obamacare is they will keep tinkering with it until it evolves into something that both sides can live with but, by that time, it might have changed so much that they aren't even calling it "Obamacare" anymore. That's how politics works in the real world, the art of the possible.

I still have a hard time believing that Trump is for real, which is why I keep looking for some logical explanation of what he is really trying to do. If he gets the nomination, which now seems likely, I still plan to vote for him. Of course he's an asshole, or at least he plays one on TV, but I'd rather see an asshole in the White House than a Democrat. If I thought he had a snowball's chance in Hell of winning, I might have to think twice about it, but I don't think that's bloody likely, so no use worrying about that either.

The Trumpists' red glare

The democracy and the republic was a thought experiment, something i thought we could bat about on the playing fields of The Institute.  At some point we would have to share, we don't really want to build two roads to Beaglesonia.  Well I suppose you would choose the republican road, but once you saw all the benefits of the kumbaya singing democrats and wanted to join us, that would become the democratic road.  But what of, say, Kedzie Avenue, with reps and dems living on the same street?  Taxes and armies are fun to talk about, but once you get down to mending potholes it gets a little boring.

There are some ideological differences between the left and right.  It seems to me that the main one is that the right believes more strongly in the rights of the individuals, you guys are all islands, and the left believes more strongly in everybody getting along and helping out each other, we are all one big island I suppose.  I wonder if a individualist government that was running well would please a collectivist who would be whining about why aren't we helping the poor. or if a collectivist government that was running well would please an individualist who was pissed at having to help out a bunch of freeloaders.

But ideology aside I think that both sides also feel that their side would run the government more smoothly as far as say, peace and prosperity.  But what if it could be proved say, that trickle down worked, or that by helping the poor generously they could be raised into the middle class and work good jobs and pay more taxes?  Would either one of us agree that the other side was right?

I was pretty sure that concealed carry was going to have us shooting each other in the street, but that never happened.  You said that if gay marriage was legalized that it would hurt your marriage, but you have since said that it hasn't.  These are kind of peripheral issues on the grand scale of right and left and individual or collectivist, but they point to issues where we were both wrong, so maybe we are wrong about the big picture, so that's the question i am asking:  if we found out we were wrong would we change our plans or would we stick with what we originally believed, just because?

I don't like these anti Trumpists (this seems to be the word that is most commonly used to describe this vile tribe.  We even have to invent a new word for him.) trying to disrupt Trump rallies.  One, I don't like it in principle, let everyone speak, we are adults and can evaluate what they say.  Two, I think that it just helps the Trumpists' cause, they enjoy seeing these scraggly protesters getting the bum's rush.  You know it just occurs top me now, that if I was leading an anti Trump squad I would insist that they all dress up in business attire. 

On the other hand the way the Trumpists beat up on these guys and the way that Trump himself eggs them on probably hurts the Trump side.  Well maybe it helps him a bit in the primaries, but come the general election when he has to face the country this has got to hurt.

This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land

The more I think about it, your idea to divide the country politically, but not geographically, just wouldn't work. Yesterday I speculated about how nice it would be to have the roads all to myself, but that wouldn't happen. We are not going to have two parallel road systems, one for Democrats and one for Republicans. That would be too expensive and a lot of good land would have to be paved over. Same thing with commerce and trade, they are not going to build another Walmart right next door to the existing one just so we can each have our own store. Another flaw in your plan is that it seems to assume that each or our systems would be ideologically pure. Truth is that neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism has ever existed in the real world on a national scale for very long, and there is probably a reason for that. It appears, then, that we are stuck with each other whether we like it or not. Well, the whole idea was hypothetical right from the start, wasn't it?

"This is a big oversimplification, but do we want to live in a society that has the principles we believe in, or is it more important to live in a society that works well?" - To answer that, I would have to know what you mean by "works well". I think the reason we each have our political preferences in the first place is that we each believe that they are the best way to attain our goals. It's unlikely that we will ever agree on the best means of achieving our goals if we don't have the same goals. Maybe that's what's wrong with this country, everybody wants something different.

3/19/16 - I suppose you have heard about the big uproar that shut down the Trump rally in Chicago. What's your take on that? It didn't seem to hurt Trump locally because he took Cook County. Wiki reports that somebody took a poll afterwards and that 22% of the people said that the incident made them more inclined than ever to vote for Trump, 11% said that it made them less inclined, and 66% said that the incident had no effect on their voting plans. If I didn't know any better, I would say that the anti-Trumpers  were actually pro-Trumpers in disguise and knew full well that their actions would help Trump pick up a few more votes, but that would be just paranoid.

I saw on the TV news this evening that some anti-Trumpers briefly blocked off a major highway that people were using to get to a Trump rally down in Arizona, but they ran away before the police arrived to disperse them. What's up with that? Did they think they would actually prevent people from attending the rally and that, if they didn't attend the rally, they wouldn't vote for Trump? Again, maybe they were really pro-Trumpers and their intent was to inconvenience people, thus making them mad at the anti-Trumpers.

As some famous guy once said, "Politics makes strange bedfellows." 

elections in Beaglesonia

John Donne said that no man was an island, but he lived and died before the Beaglesonia of One.  I assume it is a democracy, but every time Beagles goes to the polls there is only one candidate.  He could write in himself but that wouldn't help anything. 

But what if the democracy, with its enlightened policies, turned out to be a worker's paradise, while the republic turned into a rich man's paradise with everybody not at the top suffering from a grinding tyranny?  Would Beagles still prefer to live a miserable life there just to prove he was right?  And what if the democracy turned into an anarchy with roving mobs, while the republic, based on solid free market principles, had a thriving economy with all the money trickling down so that even the boats of the poor were risen?  Would Uncle Ken still prefer to live there just to prove that he was right? 

We have both come to our different political views through our experiences and thinking about things.  But we have both been wrong about things in the past, what if we were wrong about our political views?

I had thoughts about that when I moved to Texas.  My true blue state of Illinois was going down the tubes while ruby red Texas was thriving.  Reagan was president, had everything I believed been wrong?  Not really as it turned out, but I had my moment of doubt.

This is a big oversimplification, but do we want to live in a society that has the principles we believe in, or is it more important to live in a society that works well?

New Orleans was great, but now I have four days of newspapers to catch up on.

The elections went well enough for me.  My man Bernie didn't do so hot, but I didn't expect him to and I can live with the big girl.  The reps have stumbled further into the abyss and of course that pleases me.

A Nation of One

I don't know whether or not you will be back in business tomorrow but, in case you are, here's my answer to your question:

 I think I would prefer living in the Republic to living in the Democracy, and would continue to do so even if I was living there all by myself. Indeed, it might be better that way. My defense budget would be low because I would only have to defend one person, me. I wouldn't have to spend much on law enforcement either, since I never do anything bad. I wouldn't mind paying taxes because I would be paying them to myself. The cost of road maintenance would be negligible because, with me being the only traffic, the roads would likely outlast me. There are probably more benefits than that to living in a nation of one, but these four immediately come to mind. We can talk about it some more when you get back.

a question for the silent week

I think TV was a factor in Trump's rise.  It kind of got people the idea that they knew him, like some crazy old uncle.  I watched the Apprentice a bit because it was so awful, you know how that is.  And he was an SOB, he was shitty to everybody.  Well except for his panel.  He had this panel of kin and employees that he consulted, and by consulting I mean they agreed with everything he said.  I think that is his concept of leadership.  I don't know why people liked such a mean guy, but when I was subbing the first thing I tuned in when I got home was Judge Judy because she was so mean like I could never allow myself to become in front of those awful kids.

And Fox liked him, he was always dropping into their shows.  I remember once they were talking about some national crisis and they talked about bringing in an expert and I thought it would be like some former diplomat or a guy who wrote a book, but instead it was Donald Trump.

The debate was on CNN.  It started at 7:30, well actually 8:00.  It was kind of a snooze.  The word on the street is that Trump's advisors had told him to act 'presidential,' so there he stood at the podium like some kid in church, all dressed up and not allowed to play in the mud.  He didn't look too happy.  Lil' Marco and Lyin' Ted (Trump's nicknames) came after him and he answered back, but he waited his turn to talk, and they waited for him to be done before they answered back.  I'd say your man, Lyin' Ted did the best, then Lil' Marco.  I suppose the guy from Ohio did ok to, but I was always out to the bathroom or to get a beer when he came on.

And there is yet another debate on the 21st, though I think the election will be settled or close to it on the primaries of the 15th.

No particular reason to go to New Orleans, though I have always wanted to see it because it is so exotic.  My friend Debbie, who lives in St Joseph Mo, just north of Kansas City, wanted to go somewhere warm towards the end of winter, and she wanted to leave from Kansas City and there aren't that many flights south out of there.  I don't expect we'll get caught up in any mad revelry, we'll probably just do arty and historical things.

When I got my new cable there was a TIVO option, but it cost more money so I didn't take it.  There are shows that I could record, but I prefer kind of crappy shows that I only have to watch with half an eye while I fiddle with the computer.  And I have enough problems just fiddling with the buttons on my DVD machine.  I pause it to go to the kitchen or the bathroom and when I get back I hit the wrong button and I am back at the beginning and then this and then that until I don't know where I am.  You'd think I was some old guy or something.

We never did go through all the details of the Republic and the Democracy of the USA, and I don't think we would ever be able to get through the details, things generally fall apart in the details and they are boring besides.

One of my assumptions though was that one side would do better than the other side and people would flock to it, and eventually there would be nobody left on the one side and that would prove that liberalism or conservatism was better.

Naturally I assumed my side would win and I wondered if, in the face of that, Beagles would become a liberal.  But the trouble with us liberals is we are always thinking and then the thought came to me, what if (not that this would ever happen in a million billion years), but what if the conservatives won?  Would I, believer in the crucible that I am, admit that conservatism is the proper path?  Ouch, it hurt just to type that.

I hate to admit it, but probably not.  Being a liberal is part of who I am.  It would be like a Cub fan, which I am, rooting for the White Sox, ugh. 

I'm sure I would come up with all kinds of ways that the contest wasn't fair, the game was rigged, 

But what does this do with my theory, and what I thought of as one of the founding beliefs of The Institute, that men of good will and common sense could get together and submit their issues to the crucible of logic and come up with an answer they both could agree with, if I, the ideal of logical thinking, would not admit I was wrong, even if it was proved right before my eyes?

Something to think about this long week of thinking and not writing.  In parting let me ask you, if the liberals won out in that Republic/Democracy thing, would you admit that you were wrong?

"All The World's a Stage" - Shakespeare

If Shakespeare was alive today, he would have to say "All the world's a TV screen". I think that, to a lot of people, what they see on TV is more real than what they see in real life. For the younger people, it might be their computers, but computers have screens like TVs, so it's the same only different. Then there's texting, which seems to be replacing both oral and pictorial formats like Skype. I don't know what that's all about, but it's still electronic communication. Be that as it may, TV is still a big part of many people's lives. Maybe the reason Trump is attracting so much attention is that he has been seen on TV by lots of people, even before he declared for the presidency. I remember that people used to make jokes about Reagan because he was a movie actor before he became a politician, but all that exposure certainly didn't hurt his chances of getting elected, first to the California governorship, and then to the presidency. When people who do not take much of an interest in politics go to vote, the mere fact that they recognize a candidate's name might be all that they have to go on. Well, not usually for the presidency, but certainly for all the other offices. This year, with some two dozen candidates to choose from on the Republican side, Trump's name was the only one that many people recognized, at least in the early stages.

I was going to check out the debate tonight, but I couldn't find it on any of the channels we get. Don't they usually put it on one of the major networks? If they had it on before 8:30 PM it wouldn't show up on my guide because it doesn't display past shows, just future ones, and I didn't go looking for it until after the Big Bang Theory.

Why are you going to Nawlins now, isn't Mardi Gras long over with? My daughter and grand daughter went there for Mardi Gras last year and they really liked it, although it's not something I or my hypothetical wife would enjoy, even in our younger days. I understand that much of Loosiana is under water right now, but I think the floods missed Nawlins this time. I wouldn't even know that if I didn't watch the Weather Channel so much. I don't watch it for very long, but I will check it out several times a day for 5-15 minutes. I don't know what the attraction is for me, I have gotten so that I will turn on the TV before I will look out the window to see what the current weather conditions are. I read somewhere that's what old people do, and you know that you're really over the hill if you TIVO the Weather Channel when you're not going to be home. I haven't gotten that bad yet, but that might just be because we don't have a TIVO machine.

democracy at work in Marina City

Although Trump does well with evangelicals Cruz seems to do even better.  Trump takes the more populated areas while Cruz takes the countryside.  I think a lot of Trump support comes from what you call wishy washers, or a subset of them.  People who are only loosely affiliated with a party, don't know much and don't vote much, and would be only vaguely aware that there is an election going on, but Trump stands out for them.

I don't believe any of those theories where Trump has plotted this out carefully or that there is some kind of mastermind inside the buffoon.  You know before Copernicus they had all these elaborate detailed calculations to account for the paths of the other planets in the sky, and Copernicus said geez wouldn't everything be simpler if we just decided that the earth circled the sun.  Wouldn't everything be simpler if we just decided that Trump was a big fucking asshole?  Again, Occam's Razor.

This whole theory, and I hear it trotted out again and again by conservative pundits, where the reps ran relatively moderate candidates in the last two elections and lost them both so maybe they would have a better chance running a fire-breathing conservative, is a logical fallacy.  The last two times they ran white straight guys, so maybe this time they should run a black guy (are you sure Carson wasn't just Cain on sedatives?), or a woman, or a gay guy, or a dog, or your very own gay dog, if you could be bear to be parted so soon before your wedding.

I bring up that subject because you asked what do you guys have to lose if you lose congress, which is very likely with Trump or Cruz at the top of the ticket, and the answer is Barack Hussein Obama fist-bumping the other guys on the supreme court, and I happen to know that his goal, from even way back when he was community organizing, has always been to see you marrying your gay dog.


Here's an item in local politics.  In the true blue state of Illinois the guy who runs the state house is Madigan.  He is actually from our own hood and he runs the state house with an iron hand, and I admit, is an SOB.  Our new gov, Rauner, is a guy like Walker in Wisconsin, hell-bent on breaking unions and getting rid of all regulations on business.  He's a rich guy, and has a lot of rich friends and has set up this slush fund for dems to dip into if they betray their party and do his bidding.  My local rep, Dunkin, has taken the bait and voted twice to foil Madigan and his dems. 

He is up for reelection and Madigan and the unions have funded this woman, Stratton, to run against him in the primaries.  She's no great shakes, never heard of her before, but she is not Dunkin, and Dunkin, I might add, was never any great shakes either, I would never have noticed that I was voting for him except for his going over to the dark side.

Rauner and all his rich pals, and that national conservative money that sloshes around are all funding Dunkin. Madigan and the unions, and that national democratic money that sloshes around, are all funding Stratton.

I suppose at this point we could have some ideological debate about oh, collectivism against noncollectivism or whatever, but what we are getting is dueling commercials tossing mud at each other so that you can hardly tell which one is for which.  And they are sending out these cards.  I don't know if you get them there, but they are popular here.  They are like a foot by six inches of glossy cardboard, because, I don't know, maybe they think something that big is harder to throw away.  They are the same as the commercials as far as tossing mud.

For the last couple weeks we have been getting one or two of them from each candidate every day.  Right next to the mailboxes are a couple garbage cans for junk mail, but during this political season they have put out an extra can just for these mailers.  Around five pm when the poor saps who have to work for a living come home, they pull handfuls of this junk out of their mailboxes and take them straight to the can where they have to wait in line to toss them out.

If they had spent that mailer money on bricks we could have sent them on to some kindly contractor and built several brand spanking new schools for the poor kids of the city.

Another republican debate tonight, and then after Friday's post I will be off to New Orleans and I won't get back till late that week, so we may go a week without posts.  And probably by then the candidates will have been decided.

No Wishy-Washers Need Apply

The good news is that your man Bern won big in Michigan in defiance of the polls, which had all predicted a victory for Hillary. It always pleases me when the polls are proven wrong, too bad it doesn't happen more often.

Wiki has a map that shows who won in which counties, but it doesn't give any numbers. Cruz took a couple of counties in the Western U.P. and four or five counties strung out between Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor. The rest of the state, including the Detroit area, went to Trump. The polls had predicted a big win for Trump, and that's what happened. Trump is still ahead on the total delegate count, but Cruz seems to be slowly closing the gap. If Rubio were to drop out and give his delegates to Cruz, he would have it in the bag.

Two guys on the Bloomberg Channel were talking about Trump when I was checking the stock market numbers, so I turned the sound on for awhile. They seemed to be saying that Trump might not be as bad as he appears. They think that a lot of the Trump bull shit is just theatrics and, now that he has everybody's attention, he might settle down and play nice. It makes sense when you think of it. The Reps started out with about two dozen candidates, most of whom were largely unknown to the general public. Any one who was serious about winning would need to find a way to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack. Trump already had a reputation for being a mean prick from his TV show, so maybe he decided to play that part in the debates. Of course the possibility exists that he really is a mean prick in real life, and that he was just playing himself on his show. I never watched it but, in every ad I saw for the show, Trump was telling somebody that they were fired, and he seemed to be enjoying it.

Be that as it may, it seems apparent that whoever wins the GOP nomination will be an extremist, and there's still a fair change that your man Bern will win the Dems. What do you suppose the wishy-washers will do if that happens? As I said before, the GOP ran moderate candidates the last two elections, and they both lost. How much worse could they do with Trump or Cruz bearing the standard? What have they got to lose, congress? The congress usually rides in on the president's coat tails but, two years later, all bets are off. Of course, if Hillary wins the Dem Nomination, the left wing nuts will combine with the wishy-washers to put her over the top, unless, they are so pissed that their man Bern got dumped that they stay home and pout. Yeah, why don't you guys do that?

the day after

I remember in election time in the hood every other house had a Daley poster in its window.  I looked on those people enviously, obviously they were all connected and so the man of the house probably had some good job with the city where he didn't have to do much work and he got good pay.  They were probably mostly all Irish, maybe a few Poles.  And here we were Bohunks, and just recently moved in (we moved in when I was four, and everybody else in the hood had been there probably since it had been built, sometime in the twenties), and we weren't even Catholic for Chrissake. 

I never met anybody who was connected, well they probably all went to St Galls, but then the neighborhood kids i knew who went to St Gall, none of them seemed to be connected. 

Garbage-wise I remember that the most important thing about your alderman is if he got you new shiny garbage cans.

Nobody understands Trump's appeal.  They say well in these troubled times.. but if you examine times closely they are all troubled, and even if these times were particularly troubled and we were in some kind of some mess out of the ordinary, why would anybody think that Trump could get us out of it?

I, living in this true blue city, don't know any Trumpists, but I imagine things are pretty red up in that hat on top of the hat on top of Michigan, maybe you could interview one or two for The Beaglesonian.

Trump took your state rather easily.  Cruz was behind by double digits and barely bested Uncle Johnny.  Two days after the election the Chicago papers print out a map showing which districts went which way,  I know you are not as interested in these mundane details as I am, but I wonder if those Trump votes came more from the Detroit area or the rest of the state.  I wonder what sort of people are Detroit area republicans.  I imagine there are still some fat suburbs in the Detroit area. 

We'll be having our primary this Wednesday.  In the last poll Trump was favored but I notice that in the latest nationwide polls he has been slipping to the point where he is almost equal with Cruz.  There are some recent polls that show any of the remaining three guys could beat Trump head to head, but none of them show any signs of dropping out.

Another Great Idea!

I remember one year when all the garbage trucks in Chicago displayed big signs that said "Support Mayor Daley's Campaign For a Cleaner Chicago". My mother thought that it was unethical to use city owned garbage trucks for political advertising, but that's not what it was at all. See, the mayor was proud of his efforts to clean up the city, and he was trying to encourage everybody to pitch in and get the job done. I'm sure the fact that it was an election year had nothing to do with it. I don't think they had PACs in those days, but there must have been some kind organizations that raised money for political campaigns. Wouldn't it have been a nice gesture for Daley's team to actually buy a new garbage truck and donate it to the city? I'm sure, since they were paying for the truck, nobody would have had a problem if they hung a sign on it giving credit where credit was due.

Nowadays people are always complaining about our crumbling infrastructure, but they don't want to raise taxes to fix it. We have a program in Michigan called, "Adopt a Highway", where local clubs or even families go out a few times a year and pick up litter along a stretch of road, and a sign is placed along that stretch giving them credit for it. Why not expand the program to include construction and maintenance projects? ---- "The construction of the next ten miles of road financed by the Committee to elect John Doe for Governor", or "Pot holes patched courtesy of the Smith for Congress Coalition".

Of course you may be right about Trump. I have no proof, I was just speculating. Here is this guy with no political experience running for President of the United States. His only claim to fame is that he is rich and used to fire his employees on national television. He gets up in front of millions of people, insults the other candidates, generally makes a fool of himself, and people actually vote for him. It's like some famous guy once said, "Nobody ever went broke under estimating the taste of the American People."

I haven't heard the results of today's primaries yet. I understand that three or four other states besides Michigan were voting. According to our local TV news, Trump was way ahead in the polls as of yesterday, but they didn't know that I was voting for Cruz.

a plan to restore the infrastructure

OR, or maybe Trump is just a big rich egotistic fucking asshole who thinks he is smarter than everybody else and is used to being surrounded by yes men and toadies who jump everytime he coughs, and looks at the presidency and it doesn't look that hard at all, and now that he is in it, it isn't hard, and the only people who don't like him are a bunch of losers who will be easily dealt with once he has the reins of power.   That seems much to easiest explanation, but I know how you hate Occam's Razor. 

I don't think Cruz would necessarily be ahead without Trump.  I don't think anybody has any idea what would have happened if Trump hadn't run.  The Florida Sentinel has recently come out endorsing None of the Above in the Republican primary.  It turns out they were Bushies. 

I think one thing we do know is that no matter what Bush never had a snowball's chance.  How could the RINOs not have known that?  Don't they have polls and research and all that jazz?  I think what they thought was that they had all the money and once they started running those ads of Bush in shirtsleeves, his jacket tossed carelessly over his shoulder, the breeze tousling a few stray hairs across his forehead as he strode into the sun, his gaze resolute, yet kindly, the electorate would swoon into line.

I have to kind of admit I have been wrong here.  I have railed in the past about the big PAC money, which you have pooh poohed as not being all that effective, and now I think that you were right, at least as far as upticket races like the presidency.  All these officials complaining about how they have to spend all their time fundraising and maybe they didn't have to.  You know it's a little like voodoo.  If everybody thinks big PACs rule the election then they do, but once everybody realizes that they don't, they don't have much power.  Maybe the candidates could suggest to the moneybags that instead of running all those commercials maybe they could like invest in the infrastructure.  Wouldn't the voter be more impressed driving down the recently refurbished John Kasich Bridge, than viewing a million commercials of the man walking in the sun as described previously?

I don't know what's to become of the RINOs.  Lil' Marco's commercials always end with the claim that a vote for him is sticking it to the establishment.  Normally sunny Uncle Johnny's smile turns dark when it is suggested that he is an establishment candidate.  They have a party but everybody in it hates them.  The best they can do is trot out Mittens to denounce Trump, and here is a guy who had nothing but praise for the guy four years ago.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the election, there has been a bit of a flap because Bernie told the big girl not to interrupt him in rather a brusque manner.  She had indeed interrupted him, and when he told her not to she stopped and waited her turn to speak.  Can you imagine if any republicans had wandered into the amphitheater by mistake and witnessed that exchange?  What the hell you call that a debate?

And there is yet another republican debate this Thursday.  I dare you to take a peek.

A Conspiracy of One

I think I've finally figured out what Trump is trying to do. He is trying to make the right wing nuts look bad by pretending to be one and then making a fool of himself. As you pointed out, Trump is too unreliable to be part of anybody's conspiracy, but that doesn't mean he can't be a whole conspiracy unto himself. I can only guess at his motivation. Maybe he is really a liberal at heart, some rich people are you know. Maybe he's got a thing for Hillary, or maybe he just doesn't like Cruz, who is the one he's hurting the most with his shenanigans. If Trump wasn't there, Cruz would be the solid front runner right now.

I don't care what They want me to do, I have decided to vote for Cruz because he has the best chance of beating Trump. As you have pointed out, all the Republican candidates have the same ideology, so the only difference is their personalities. Both Trump and Cruz have abrasive personalities, but that seems to be what is selling these days. Cruz at least is a true conservative, while Trump is a Trumpist pretending to be a conservative. Where was Trump for the last eight years while Cruz was in the trenches, stubbornly resisting everything that Obama was trying to accomplish? Trump harassed Obama about his birth certificate, but that's about it. I'm pretty sure that, if Cruz is elected, he will spend the first couple years of his term trying to undo all the damage that Obama has done. Trump, on the other hand, will be too busy building his wall and trying to round up all those illegals to bother with things like that.

I hear your man Bern is giving Hillary a run for her money. Good for him! I would like to see Bern run against Cruz. Then the voters would have a real choice for a change, and the wishy-washers would have no place to go.

I think all the candidates will still be on the ballot. The reason I say that is my man Rand has somehow gotten himself one delegate.While it is common to say a candidate has "dropped out of the race", the candidates themselves have been announcing that they "are suspending their campaign". If, by some miracle, they did win, I'm sure they wouldn't turn down the nomination.

I have never tried one of those e-cigarettes, but I don't remember why not. I think that, when they first came out, I wrote them off as some kind of gimmick, and now they're saying they're just as harmful to your health as the regular cigarettes. I smoke less than a pack a day and it doesn't seem to bother me. I suppose I would cough my lungs out if I tried to run a marathon, but that's never going to happen anyway.

voting

Oh you know, manners, like hemlines, go up and down, the sixties, which were really from 65 to 75, are forty years ago now.  I don't think our heyday is to blame for Donald bragging about his dick.  I blame the Republicans (of course), well actually I blame Fox news which used to be allied with the republicans, but anymore is allied with those who call the republicans of the Reagan (RIP Nancy) era RINOs.  All four of the remaining candidates (including Aw Shucks, I'm from Ohio, Uncle Johnny Kasich) regularly rail against the establishment, when they aren't railing at each other, and they have scarcely time anymore to mention the big girl antichrist.

But I think Fox started this new phase of incivility in politics.  Right from the start they were yelling and calling names.  When they had a liberal opinion guy they outnumbered him and didn't let him get a word edgewise.  Then they started inviting some of those hooligans into the very civil Sunday morning talk shows, where they continued to interrupt and outshout everybody else.  It's just terrible I tell you. 

I think your primary tomorrow will be a big one.  I think They want you to vote for Cruz who They expect is the only guy who can knock off Trump who They hate the most, but They aren't too nuts about Cruz, so maybe They want you to vote for Lil Marco.  You could vote for Uncle Johnny, I'm sure They don't want you to vote for him, but maybe Ron Paul is still on the ballot and you can vote your conscience. 

I have early voted for Bern (will be in New Orleans next week, a late winter vacation), and against my state rep who is taking money from the republican gov to betray his party, and against the Cook County States Attorney who has been behind a few police shooting coverups.

You sound pretty scheduled, as am I.  I like it because then I don't have to make any decisions, I just do whatever comes next, and the next thing I know I am going to bed, and when I wake up I am into the shower, and then coffee and The Beaglesonian, then the newspaper, then painting, then lunch
(a bowl of vegetables), then my nap, then the gym or a long walk, then supper and the crossword puzzle, and maybe fritter a bit until 8 when there is a Hill Street Blues rerun and I have my single beer of the day, and then off to bed.  Some might think that is rigid, but I think of it as optimizing my time.

I smoke a pack of cigs every other week.  Lately I have been falling off the wagon a bit.  I would get an urge for like just one cig on Friday or Saturday night of my cigless weekend, and I would tell myself I could buy a pack and just smoke one.  Of course I was lying to myself.  I was helpless in the face of that opened pack, little cylinders of death peeking out beneath the foil, smoke me, smoke me. 

So I bought myself an ecig and it has helped out a lot.  When I simply must have a cig I take a puff or two off the ecig.  When you light up a real cig, you are committed to smoking the whole damn thing, but the ecig you can just set it aside after one or two puffs, and it supplies just enough oomph to satisfy the craving, but not enough oomph that you want to go back for more.

The Uncivil Society

Trump was bragging about his dick? Man, they say almost anything on television nowadays! Remember when, if they used a word on TV, you knew it was alright to use it in polite company? Is there even such a thing as polite company anymore? I think my hypothetical wife is right, we did too much stuff in the 60s, and each generation since then thinks they have to top us. We shouldn't have set the bar so high, or so low, depending on your point of view.

I saw on the TV news this evening that Trump held a big rally in Cadillac today at the Wexford Civic Arena which, I understand, is a really big place, but not big enough to hold the estimated crowd of 10,000 that showed up, so they rigged speakers in the parking lot for the overflow. Yesterday they were clearing snow from a normally unused part of the lot because they figured they were going to need all the space they had. The doors opened at 10:00 AM, three hours before Trump was scheduled to speak, and lots of people were standing in line three hours before that. Some anti-Trump protesters were there, but they were vastly out numbered and barely noticed. Other candidates have been holding events in various Michigan towns, but nothing on that scale.

Most of the kids on the bus were more sedate in the morning than they were on the ride home, but not all of them. There were a few kids on every bus that were hyper right out their front doors. I don't think they even saw their parents in the morning, which might be part of the problem. They told us in our training that, with both parents working nowadays, we might be the first adult contact many kids had in the morning. Another thing might have been that they weren't getting enough sleep at night. If I could get a hyper kid to calm down for ten minutes, they would usually fall asleep. I understand that more than a few of them were given regular doses of Ritalin at school each day, but I don't know if they got it at home too. People were arguing about Ritalin in those days, with some swearing by it and others swearing at it. Are they still? 

I hear you about those drunk guys in the bar. When we were kids, guys usually were better behaved when girls were present, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore. I only remember one real fight on the bus in ten years, but there was a lot of what the kids called "play fighting". In our day it was called "horseplay" or "grab ass", and girls didn't do it, but now they do, both with each other and with boys.
It's not allowed on the bus because someone could get hurt, but I also suppressed it because it seemed like a device that they used to work themselves up into a frenzy. I thought there also was sexual component to it, not overt, but subliminal. Maybe it's what they do instead of sex.

I don't drink coffee. I mean, if I'm at somebody's house and they offer it to me, I'll drink it, but I don't make it for myself or order it in restaurants. I don't know why, I just never developed a taste for it. I drink tea in the morning with my breakfast, and then I'll refill my cup and take it into the garage to have with my cigarette, but I generally don't read out there. I drink two beers in the evening before supper, and I used to read the paper while I finished the first one and drank the second one in the garage after watching the evening news. We drink this diet pop from Walmart with out supper, and then I'll have another glass of it while I do my computer stuff. It's called "Twist Up" and it has no calories, no sugar, and no caffeine, I suppose they make it out of chemicals or something. I am curious about what's going on in the world, but not as much as you are. That's okay, if anything important happens, I'm sure you will bring it to my attention.