It's those liars again!

I frequently fall asleep with the TV on, and then wake up listening to something I would not normally want to hear. Why my local channel--owned by a very progressive reform Jewish woman--would run wrong-wing xian broadcasting is beyond me, but there was Pastor Arnold Murray one day telling us that he and his ilk were going to vote out all of these liberal judges and put conservative ones in their places!

Arnold, of course, has no idea that the Court System was included in our government specifically to enforce the rights of minorities, and to overrule the tyranny of the majority! That is why we have a tripartite system of government. This country is not, and was never intended to be, a pure democracy!The legislative, executive, and judicial branches serve as a system of checks and balances against each other, per the intentions of our founding fathers!!!! Not to mention, of course, that all of that hyperbole about judges legislating from the bench, works both ways! When you have a justice--overruled by every other member of his court, who tries to rule that Congress does not have the right to regulate the sale of machine guns, that is precisely legislating from the bench! It is the very definition of that term.

Then another day, I awoke to the 700 Club intoning that the people of Spain had the right idea when they instituted the Siesta! Those idiots don't even realize that the siesta originated in Mexico, where virtually everyone is infected with mononucleosis, aka the sleeping disease. That causes people to fall asleep, particularly in bright sunshine and extreme heat. That is why they have the siesta. With more vitamin B-12 in their diet, they would not need a siesta! This refusal to check their supposed facts is also common with wrong-wing conservatives, and so their listeners go along thinking that things are established fact, when they are not, which then becomes part of the whole darned problem!!!!

The FCC ought to regulate statements made as fact which are not true, just as they regulate the statements of people who use banned words, and for much the same reason.

More on advertising

I've already said that I blame the advertising industry--and more recently the whole information industry--for the fact that Johnny can't read, but now we are seeing some interesting new twists.

Have you seen Kraft's new ad for American Cheese? "Only one country" can have this cheese, they tell us, "and that country is America!"

Say WHAAAAATTT?????

America is not a country folks, it is two continents full of countries! Canadians and Mexicans, and yes, Venezuelans and many others, all have as much right as citizens of the United States of America, to refer to themselves as Americans.

This is the sort of overstatement common to wrong-wing bigots.

Our country is not called America, it is called the United States of America, frequently shortened to the United States. This idea of considering our country to be the only one in the Americas, is all too common these days, and is what got us into the position we are now in, where many citizens in South America hate our guts as much as the citizens of many countries in Europe and Asia. Hopefully this new President will take steps to cure this, not only among world leaders, but among our own citizens as well.

And have you seen the latest trend in advertising? I might like to try that Contour belt, or the Ab Circle, to see if there really is an easy way to perk up one's muscles without doing all of those nasty exercises. But they are saying that I can try it in my home for 30 days for only $14.95 or $14.99 or whatever, but they might actually want me to pay shipping and handling as well, which is often far more than they should be charging for that. Face it; when I owned a photo studio in the 1970s, I was told that I should sell my photos for FIVE TIMES the actual cost of the prints to me. That same markup is the traditional markup for mail order products like these. They are not telling me what my final cost will be if I choose to purchase their product. Or are they actually just leasing it for, say, $29.99 per month? That could get really expensive.... And the S&H charges now clearly pay for not only shipping and handling, but also for the product as well, which is how they get you when they offer those free bonuses, and say "Just pay seperate shipping and handling." The USPS is now offering fixed rate shipping up to 70 lbs anywhere in the country--and it is well under $20 in most cases, and if the weight is under two pounds, it gets down around $6 total cost including the box. So the initial price they are quoting you is pure profit, and the shipping and handling they quote you may well include some profit as well.

Just how stupid do these people think we are????

More on health care and other topics

One great benefit of my plan is that the startup costs would be considerable--buying up failed hospitals and updating them, or building new infrastructure always is. But it could be spread out over time, and it would put millions of Americans back to work in the meantime! The boost that gives to the economy would spurt other businesses, which could then continue employing the people who built the infrastructure, and so on. You cannot generate this kind of stimulus without spending money. A lot of people certainly criticized FDR when he did it, though few people now would try to propose that the country would be better off had he not done so....

I notice that the US Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring anti-health-reform advertising on TV. When I owned a computer store, I was a member of the local Chamber of Commerce and the Better Business Bureau, which is sponsored by the Chamber. Their current ads shock me! They do not speak for me. Were I to open another small business, I would want a public option so that I would not have to go broke offering health insurance to my employees. I dare say that the vast majority of Chamber members are small enough to agree with me on this, and that only the few very wealthy companies who belong to that organization would be in sync with the ads they are currently running!

When I go to the V.A. Medical Center these days, I see a whole lot of folks in power chairs, and a lot of new Escalades in the parking lots. They come there because they trust the Government when it comes to health care, even though they could afford private care. There are also people like myself who drive cars that are old enough to drink, (or drive us to it). We go there because we simply cannot afford any other choice in health care. I do have to admit that my new conveyance is a mere youngster of 14 years, and 106,000 miles plus a few.... But the last three-and-a-half years were spent driving a 1986 Volvo with about 350,000 miles on it, until I let some idiot do some welding on it, and he wound up tweaking the tranny out of line, and the rear wheels locked up between a forward and reverse gear on my way to work one day. I had very little more than my $250 economic stimulus payment to put down, though I wound up writing a check for more than $600--something I could not do today! Even at that rate, only one buy-here/pay-here dealer would talk to me, in part because I had already bought three cars from him, two of which were swapped for computers when I owned the computer store. I wound up paying about $1000 over Edmund's non-dealer-retail price for the car (their dealer price assumes not a buy-here/pay-here, but a new car dealer for the brand in question who can put a meaningful warranty on it), and it took the dealer three tries to get me into a decent car. I now have a 1995 Dodge Stratus. That and two of the Dodge Caravans I had a few years ago, (one of which had over 200,000 miles on it, and the other of which was over 190,000 when a shade tree mechanic stole it from me, though it still ran very well, and the only failed part was an AAMCO transmission rebuild) have convinced me that Chrysler builds the best cars made in the USA. I did a lot of hitch-hiking for a while, and I can tell you that GM rear suspensions have not been any good over the past couple of decades, and I just don't like Fords, never have, probably never will. Owned one of those things, a 1977 Pinto Cruising Wagon, only because nobody else came close to building something that fit my needs like that one did. But I was never happy with the car, and at some point, the dealer told me to bring it in for a "silent warranty" repair. That is, only people who had complained about engine noise, were getting new pistons, rods, rings, and bearings from Ford. I had not complained about noise particularly, but the dealer wanted to do the work to get service income, and I was complaining about rough running and other such problems, and he figured that was close enough. Seems some Ford engineer convinced them that they could save a nickel an engine by not drilling the holes in the top of the connecting rods, that lubricate the lower ends of the cylinder walls and pistons. The repairs, of course, cost Ford about $400 per engine back in those days! Some savings! Anyway, my new Dodge is a lot larger than the Nissan Sentra I started out with from this deal, and a whole lot more comfortable, it runs like a top with only the tachometer not functioning, and it has worked a couple of times, leading me to believe that it only needs a a connection cleaned. And it gets me 24-25 MPG, in spite of relatively hard driving. Much of its time is spent at 80mph on the cruise control, and even on back roads I frequently set the cruise control for 70 mph. And I'm a biker, so I am used to feeling decent acceleration. I always exceed half the redline when taking off from a stop sign or light, for instance, at well over half throttle--and it is not uncommon to hear the front tires chirp. One downside of this car is that I had bought a scanner that only read OBD2 cars, and this car is OBD1. So I had to return the Innova unit, which I really liked, and purchase a much more expensive Craftsman unit that came with cables for at least three OBD1 cars. It also supports live data, and has other advantages, and folks, it is on sale at Sears now for $199.99--a full hundred dollars below retail. Not sure when that sale is over, so if you want a bargain on a top-of-the-line unit, hurry to Sears, now!

Sears also has Craftsman Club, which gives you special deals on tools, and now includes Craftsman Rewards, which gives you back 2-4% on your Craftsman purchases toward other Craftsman products in the future. Even old Craftsman Club members have to sign up for this new Reward, so check it out. I should note that I work for Sears, although I am looking for full-time work, and they are not hiring full-timers now, at least not in any numbers, so we will have to see how long I stay there. Maybe I can get two part-time jobs or something.... I also collect Social Security, and I am about five years away from full retirement, when my new home is paid off....

I'm also looking for another motorcycle, preferably a Moto Guzzi Breva, for the ride to my 50th class reunion next year. I will ride approximately 4000 miles in two weeks. Can't say that I will be able to afford such luxury, and I might have to resurrect the same old Shadow that carried me 3500 miles in ten days nine years ago! I sure do like riding long distances! I'll hit everything from Deals Gap to Rip Van Winkle country along the way. Highway 209 runs from Scranton, PA up into upstate New York, and is another nifty road to ride. Even I-87 in PA is one of the most scenic interstates you could ever take on a bike. I'll need a new camera so that I can have digital photos of the journey, as well. Last time I bought a 3X Zoom film camera at Wally World for my photos, and it was very good, but very limited. Either that or I break out the Nikkormat EL or the Nikon F2, and a whole bunch of lenses, and that stuff does not travel well on a bike! A Kodak Z1015 would be my choice, I guess, among the stuff I have seen recently.... I currently have a Kodak Z712, which is fine except that the rubber eyepiece fell off, and I can't figure out how to get it back in place! And at 7 megapixels, not worth the cost of getting it fixed. I'd rather spend the money getting my old Contax repaired, if it came down to it! Okay, so I have an impressive camera collection, some bits of which may be older than I am! Oh, I know, I'll just load up the Mamiyaflex C220 and three or four lenses for that! (No way in hell would I do that!)

Well, I guess I got a bit far afield on this post, but now you know a lot more about me than I intended to publish when I started this. Of course, that was back in the GWB administration, when I did not want them to be able to find me.... Cheney is still saying scary stuff, isn't he? And Obama is not nearly far enough to the left to satisfy me, either!

The liars are at it again

Well, I still am represented in Congress by an idiot who claims to favor the military establishment and veterans, but will not support a single-payer solution to the health crisis. Why can't we simply give every American the same sort of health care that we give to our veterans? I would not want the VA to make live-or-die decisions for me when that time arrives, but until then I get first-rate health care at virtually no cost to me. Sure, they use interns, but these guys are hardly clueless, after all. Once I had a knife-happy surgeon anxious to try a new technique offer to do a second procedure while I was under general anesthesia, and he did one side better than the other, but it turned out okay, and I am less at risk for something I considered myself at high risk for previously. I can't complain about much at all, and when I did have a problem, someone directed me to the patient advocate's office, and they were able to arrange an overnight stay which averted the procedural complication. VA medical care is a lot better than what most uninsured people can obtain.

And the VA is very strong about checking on your insurance, and collecting from your insurer where appropriate. Since many Americans who would take advantage of this medical care DO carry insurance, the government could charge them at prevailing for-profit rates and thus pay a portion of the cost of caring for the uninsured.

This is a win-win situation, and too important for us to forego a single-payer solution that would guarantee uniform medical care for all Americans, at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayers. Remember, the name GEICO stands for Government Employees Insurance Company. This was a government-controlled private company that expanded their coverage in order to broaden the risk and reduce cost for their services to government employees. We can do the same thing with health care!

Long time no see....

Well, it's been a while since I logged in here. I've been working very hard at my job, and I got a new laptop, and did not save the web address for this site--I use Opera as a web browser, and had about 20 seperate tabs opened up on my old Dell laptop. Someone gave  me a Gateway because neither he nor the guy who had given it to him knew how to open it up to change the power jack, which had fallen apart. This thing has a Celery 1100, I think, compared to the C400 on the old Dell, and this has 512 MB of RAM, compared to 256, and a number of other advantages, including a decent battery, wide screen, and so on. Today I showed up at the library (no phone line at all at my house, and I can't afford to get wireless internet from Sprint yet) with both computers, and opened a tab in Opera and copied the URL from the Dell into this, so now I have an always-opened tab to this location, so I can spout off anytime I get to the library--even if it is after hours! Hopefully I'll have lots to say in the future. Meanwhile, the Dell is downloading the last 60 of more than 200 linux update packages!

I'm  not all that happy with Obama, either, and did not expect to be, but we need to be more open to his health plan. Remember, we already have one of the largest single-payer health plans in the world, and it's not that bad. It's almost totally funded by taxpayers, although they will collect insurance policy money whenever they can, and they get their wealthier clients to pay a copayment, so the taxpayers don't fund the entire amount. I refer, of course, to the VA!

There's been a move for years to get older cars off the road. This includes the legislation that permitted charities to offer tax deductions for older vehicles donated to them. Objections to that at the time came from antique car buffs who felt that a lot of cars with potential historic interest would be crushed, and this would prevent people from obtaining restoration parts in years and decades to come. That's a valid complaint against programs which specifically require vehicles to be crushed. There needs to be some leeway here. particularly since, like it or not, the worst gas guzzlers are the cars which tend to be the fastest, and thus will have the most historic interest to collectors. The latest cash for clunkers campaign is another example of the worst form of legislation you could expect to see in this area. It's simply another case of Congress going off half-cocked!

I think I could fall in love with Ken Burns. His series on the Civil War has had a lot of air time lately, and I like his viewpoints, and what he does with his material. As a longtime photojournalist, I am hard to please in that area, and he pleases me. Not to mention the fact that he is cute! Of course, I was once in love with another documentary producer, Nick Ursin (who I knew long before he became a cinematographer). He died years ago, presumably of HIV/AIDS. He and I sat next to each other for half an hour twice each week, while attending chapel sessions with Friar White, and I always thought he was as interested in me as I was in him--but I also thought he knew a lot more than I did about such matters at the time. I remember that he signed my yearbook "Here's the end of a year of comfortable chapel seats." So sad that we lost contact immediately after that.... I had my name in print pretty regularly before he died, but I don't know if he read the same magazines that I wrote for.... And I have never seen any of his work, either, but if anyone has any of it, I'd like to see it....

I work in retailing. My employer won't give me full-time status, because some pencil-pusher in Chicago thinks that our department should only have one full-time staffer. The economy is not doing all that badly, folks. Even in a college town, where nobody buys anything when the kids are home for summer, I'm selling a fair amount of merchandise, and while our month is about $1200 below goal, that's not really desperately bad, out of about $100K as a goal. We're down maybe 1%, in a very bad time of the year for us, historically, and there was one day recently where we had an extremely high target, because apparently someone made a very unusual large purchase this time last year. That makes our goal unrealistically high for the month. And I got a call recently from my former employer, a day-labor company, looking for a skilled carpenter to hang some doors, and someone told the new manager that I could do that. So in spite of the fact that a lot of construction is stalled, there is apparently still work going on in that field, too. I was selling appliances for a while, and there is business to be had even in that area, so either people are still building new homes, or they are remodeling their old ones and staying in them. If only the doom and gloom naysayers would open their eyes, and start spending their money, we'd see a prompt return to normal, and reduced unemployment!

Right to Life?

I saw a car the other day that had a "Choose Life" license plate on it--and it was from Kentucky! So now we know that there are at least two states with virtually identical tags. I still claim that these tags violate my first amendment rights, no matter what any court says to that effect (or against it). The first amendment gives us the right to stand on any street corner and spout out our views on any subject. It gives the same right to those whose views are opposite to ours. What the states have done here is to give a state-sponsored street corner to those whose beliefs are opposite to mine, while denying me that same street corner, and if that is not a first amendment violation, I don't know what is! I get physically ill when I see these plates, because I am so mad that I cannot express my views in the same manner. The best argument for abortion is that the unwanted babies become unwanted adults, and fill our prisons at our expense, after injuring our fellow citizens. Give me a break! Anyway, the next day I saw a car with a "pro-life" sticker on the rear liftgage of the SUV. No doubt this was a wrong-wing republican. As I stared at it I realized that these people are not really pro-life at all, they are simply anti-abortion. For one thing, most of the people who call themselves pro-life consistently vote for the death penalty. If they do that, they cannot call themselves pro-life at all in my opinion. So they are lying--which is nothing new for Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. Let's make them call a spade a spade, and refer to themselves as what they are! Hell, I am pro-life, I certainly don't want to die, and I oppose the death penalty, yet I still approve of abortion, because I don't consider a fetus to be a viable human being--at least not until he or she would survive on his or her own outside of the womb.... Those who call themselves pro-life are looking for a way to put a positive spin on their views in opposition to abortion.

Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, here is a guy who says we spend too much time molly-coddling our criminals. If we followed his logic, he himself would be in jail. He was found with illegal drugs, got put on probation (because of who he is) and then got caught with illegal drugs again, and STILL he is not in jail! If he were younger, and blacker, he would be in jail. He is not in jail, simply because of who he is, and who he knows, and that is a crime!