let a thousand flowers bloom

The article is here: https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/428958-poll-voters-want-the-government-to-provide-healthcare-for 

So what to make to make of this?  Only 13% want to eliminate insurance companies, roughly the same amount as wants to eliminate govt in healthcare, and about the same amount wants to keep things the way they are.  The two other, meatier slices of the pie want some kind of combo of medicare for all and/or single payer and insurance companies, which doesn't make any sense to me.  If you had Medicare why would you want to have to pay for your insurance?   I think the American people are confused, as I admit so am I.

But now (pre election) is the time for big ideas.  Let a thousand flowers bloom.  I am surprised to see Old Dog, normally open to new ideas, scoff so stridently at the tender shoots from the fertile loam of the new dems.  Buildings can be constructed greenly and end up using a lot less energy in their construction and in their maintenance, and isn't that laudable?  How that's accomplished, through carrots or sticks, and how it is regulated are thorny problems, but isn't that what discussion is for?

I've not heard of anybody talking about eliminating air travel.  What I think Old Dog is talking about is high speed rail.  No train is ever going to travel as quickly as a plane so cross country high speed rail is unlikely, but for shorter trips, the lower speed of the train is more than made up by the fact that you travel from downtown to downtown and you don't have to travel from your house to one airport and from another airport to your destination.

I think blackface falls outside of the realm of young adult hi-jinks like swallowing goldfish.  Even in the seventies I remember hearing reports of fraternities and sororities doing blackface and that being met with revulsion, and it's not like it's a lot of fun like sex, drugs, and rock and roll, it's just well, stupid.

But I am with Old Dog on this PC crap.  The Oriental Theater downtown has been renamed The Nederlander (after some old timey theater magnate), and it's not so much that this fellow was a great fellow as it is that the term oriental is offensive.  I read an opinion piece on how glad the author was that the term oriental was now in the rearview mirror (growing fond of that phrase, have you noticed?) of history, because you know, it was that word that resulted in mistreatment of Asians.  Fer fucks sake.

And speaking of fer fucks sake, I was reading another opinion piece and it was about Black and LGBT and Lantinx people.  Latinx?  I had to look it up.  Latina and Latino are now verboten because they are disgustingly gender specific, so now Latinx is preferred, though it's not clear if it's singular or plural, probably both because you don't want to be disgustingly number specific.

I loved sick jokes.  I remember a time when the paperback racks were loaded with sick joke books.  Some of the jokes were pretty stupid, but that was part of the fun.  I guess they are in the rearview mirror now, and I agree with Old Dog that it's too bad.


Watched three Otava Yo videos, and they are quite clever with their videos, but they didn't make that deep an impression on me. 

Beagles' mention of how the wall (or something) should have been built a hundred years ago, brings to my mind an event a hundred and seventy years ago by which we brought California, Arizona, New Mexico and a lot of territory and a whole lot of Mexicans into this country.