just a slow feb monday

Well that Canadian system sounds alright.  As long as the public care is ok, and I think it is, you don't hear a lot of Canadians complaining.  I guess if insurance companies want to work outside of the public sector that is ok as long as they are not taking a slice out of everybody's insurance bill.  Well what is the point of being rich if you can't toss your money around?

Have you guys noted that airlines are refitting their planes to add more and better first class service.  Kind of a disturbing trend, like when they redo ballparks and the main reason is to put in more luxury boxes, and most of those gleaming new skyscrapers they are putting up here in Chicago are luxury condos for people who have five or six which is why the new towers have a lot of dark windows.  Meanwhile  SROs are being rehabbed into nicer apartments, kicking out the former inhabitants.  Why aren't they building new SROs, can't they turn a profit, and what about just plain old middle class housing?  Nobody seems to be building much of that. 

That green thing was never very specific, just a general mandate. Maybe not every window in every hot dog stand needs to be triple glazed.  It is something to be talked about, and I think it is a good thing to talk rather than shoot it in the cradle for being nutty.  The only high speed trains we have in the USA is the Acela between DC and New York and the last I looked it was turning a profit.  It's not all that fast though.  Nobody complains about building airports or highways, but the cost of building the high speed rail is always part of the cost of the bullet trains. 

I used to ride the Greyhound and then it got pretty crappy and when the Megabus appeared I was on it.  But then the Megabus got increasingly crappy and I went back to the Greyhound and was pleased to discover they had cleaned up their act.  But the old Greyhound used to make 5 stops between Chicago and Champaign and now it only makes 2,  I think there is an informal network among the carless in towns like Traverse City and Cheboygan, where they know somebody who has a car and that person has a steady income from people who don't have cars.

Pitchers and catchers, and Valentine's Day coming up this week.  And perhaps another gummint shutdown.  I thought the reps and dems together without Trump could hammer something out, and apparently they were but then they hit a snag, and the last I heard it hadn't been worked out, 

Trump heading down to El Paso today, I think he is going to talk about how dangerous El Paso was before they built a snippet of wall in that location, except that El Paso was never dangerous.  The mayor of El Paso (a republican) wants to make that point, but I wonder if that word will get to Trump.  Well there he is again, ready to ruin another Monday.