May God bless and keep you and yours this Christmas Day.
Dec 252009
Dec 242009
- I had to call a Christmas Eve moratorium on those godforsaken kidcoms. See, the bottom line is it’s my TV, and I can do mean shit like that. Instead, we’re enjoying the strains of “Good King Wenceslas,” and Aaron is directing the unseen orchestra. We’ll just have to see what that zany Zack & Cody are up to later.
- It’s going to be a wild ride for Santa, Rudolph, Blitzen, Jenkins, and the boys tonight in my part of the world. They’re up to 55 mph on forecasted wind gusts. Yipes.
- This is definitely Nathan’s last year to believe. He’s begun sustainedly chewing on several serious problems with the Santa narrative. I always said that when he started asking such questions, that I wouldn’t lie to him to perpetuate his belief (and I haven’t, but it’s getting very challenging to have a conversation with him about it!).
- I smell Chex Mix baking. To me, that’s as Christmasy a smell as cookies or ham.
- It was so delightful to see my high school friend Chanda yesterday. It was the first time in person in 21 years. She’s had about as tough a year as a person can have, and her spirit is intact. Inspiring.
- Finally got a bowl pick right last night when Utah beat Cal. Now I’m 1-4.
- I have a couple of things to wrap, and we’re going to church this afternoon, and I’m on the hook for dinner tonight. That’s as complicated as my Christmas Eve is. I hope yours is similarly pleasant.
Dec 242009
Remember, though, it was critical for the Senate to vote at 1 in the morning, stay until Christmas Eve, and so forth to get this “historic reform” that no one has read passed.
What a bunch of fucking morons.
But hey, I don’t mean that in a bad way.
Folks, it’s definitely too early for despair. Chin up. Tick, tock, tick, tock…
Dec 222009
I did something almost unthinkable today, given the calendar. I went to the mall.
One of my colleagues with whom I had just dined required Christmas presents for his wife, and being in no particular hurry to get back to work, I accompanied him. Probably that I wasn’t driving sealed the deal. Plus, I got excited about the possibility of being accosted by a security guard for taking photographs, which I understand they’re all pissy about anymore.
(Probably good that I wasn’t approached, ’cause I’d already planned to make trouble. I was planning to say—dismissively, and with a hand wave for good measure—that these photos were “for my records.”)
You know, the crowd really wasn’t so bad. The mall was perhaps two-thirds as full as I expected.
I did get an olfactory blast from the past. You know that persistent stench of sandalwood-not-really-covering-B.O. on that hippie earth mother in college who didn’t believe in aluminum or some shit, and that’s why she didn’t wear deodorant? Yeah, she walked by today, and it was instantly 1990 again for me.
Once I wondered if I could ever Be with an otherwise appealing woman who smelled like that, but it didn’t take long to occur to me that I never ran into such a woman who I would want to Be with even if she smelled like punkin pie.
Yeah. So.
It was actually a pleasant junket. I think that I was under no shopping pressure contributed tremendously to that feeling.
Dec 212009
It is the only major piece of social policy legislation in American history that has no bipartisan support, and no popular support. Even the hard Left hates it. The Senate bill was crafted in secret, behind closed doors, where it remains. It required defacto bribes of two Democrats in exchange for their votes. Only a handful in the Senate have read it, but 60 vote for it.
And yet, this corrupt piece of legislation, jammed down the throats of Americans who don’t want it, may well become the law of the land by January. Amazing.
Hail Pyrrhus. – J.D. Mullane
Oh, and thanks to Daniel Foster over at Doctor! Doctor!, here are the purchase prices of the yes votes of 20 whores senators on “health care reform.” Folks, this is my money and your money, casually tossed about as bargaining chips in a massive boondoggle to take over one seventh of the United States economy, with a bill no one has read. Got me? OK:
Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.):
- $1.2 billion over ten years for a permanent exemption from Nebraska’s share of the Medicaid expansion. The only state so exempted under the bill.
- Exemption for Nebraska from an excise tax on non-profit insurers.
Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.)
- Exemption from the non-profit excise tax for Michigan insurers. Michigan and Nebraska were the only two states so exempted.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.)
- $10 billion for “community health centers”.
- Protections from cuts to Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in Vermont.
- $250 million over six years in expanded federal Medicaid funding.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.)
- $300 million increase in Medicaid funding in Louisiana.
Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), Sen. Paul Kirk (D., Mass).
- Three years of expanded federal Medicaid funding.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.), Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.), Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.)
- Special treatment for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii), Sen. Daniel Akaka (D., Hawaii)
- Billions in new funding for something called “Disproportionate Share Hospital” (DSH) payments (financed, in large part, by $18.5 billion in cuts to DSH payments in other states).
Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.), Sen. Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.), Sen. Tim Johnson (D., S.D.)
- Higher federal Medicare reimbursement rates for low-population “frontier” states (also qualifying under the bill’s definition of frontier states are Utah and Wyoming, represented in the Senate by Republicans).