Only the Republicans Could Even Ask

Medicare for All

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"Heck of a Job," Harry

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Oh, goody, the Senators are going on vacation while the country goes up in flames.

Members of the lofty "higher body" are going to take 3 weeks to go water skiing and play in their sandboxes--i.e., attend fund raisers. Really, Baucus (D-MT) actually "hosts" "Camp Baucus," a dude ranch experience (for a mere $5000 "donation" per PAC--$2500 per individual).

Well, over those three weeks in America:

• 143,250 people will lose their health insurance coverage [pdf]
  
• 53,507 people will file for bankruptcy because they can't pay their medical bills
• 1,265 people will die [pdf] because they lack coverage

These are real people. Us. Americans. Taxpayers. Voters. Why do we put up with this kind of crap?

The Senators all asked for their jobs, spent many hours seeking their jobs. So, now, why aren't they doing their jobs?

You can sign a petition asking them to stay.

Too bad the President can't require them to attend some kind of special session (as many state governors can their legislatures). Of course, that wouldn't be necessary if Harry Reid would just grow a pair and not allow the session to end.

Medicare for All.
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Gadgets

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Oh, my gentle snowflakes. I have a new toy!

After years and years and years of wine drinking, I bought myself a foil cutter. It is wonderful!

I would never have believed such a simple device could make such a measurable difference in the enjoyment of a bottle of wine.

Ever since I bought my first cork puller, I had convinced myself that a foil cutter was an extravagance in which I did not need to indulge. I was wrong. (Write that down. I won't say it very often--just ask my children, my first and second ex-husbands, even my own mother.)

Yes, I had struggled for years using my grandfathers old carbon steel butcher knife to score around the top of the bottle so that I could lift off (well, usually completely peel) the foil covering the cork. It always turned into a mess--at least it always looked like a mess.

This foil cutter cost less than $10. If you are a wine drinker, get yourself one--soon.

Ah, what am I drinking tonight? Why I am drinking a perennial favorite: Toad Hollow Eye of Toad. It is a nice dry rosé of pinot noir.

Now, all wines will go to screw tops. That's the way my life goes.
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Baby Boomer's & Their Parents

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I have spent the last 12-15 days moving my 90 year old mother from a rest/nursing home to a place called an independent living facility.

"What is the difference?" you might ask. Well, about $3000 per month as it turns out.

The nursing/rest home is slightly less than $4000 a month and the independent living facility is just under $1000 per month (and the room in the ILF is wa-a-a-y bigger than the room in the nursing/rest home). But what is the real difference?

Seems to be about 1 meal per week--the independent living facility [ILF] does not serve a meal on Sunday evening.

I feel I am really not being fair to the nursing/rest home. There, physical vitals are checked every day (maybe twice or thrice for all I know). Medication is doled out as prescribed. Residents are checked-on several times per day to make sure the resident is OK generally. And the one where my mother was living treated her like a queen. They were good and gentle and frequently sat and talked with her (they were "interested"--something she accuses me of not being).

At the ILF, Mother must remember to take her medications herself--with a little help from me. I fill those lovely plastic pill thingies that are labeled for each day of the week and have room for pills in the a.m. and the p.m. But she must take them. I do not go twice each day to see that she takes her meds.

Both housing alternatives offer many planned activities. A resident in either can be as involved or alone as they want to be. Well, actually, the nursing home did spend a lot more time urging Mother to "come" to whatever activity was about to commence. The ILF prints and hands out planned activities on a monthly basis. However, the friends that Mother has there already and the new ones she is making help make sure she gets to the activities in which she has chosen to participate.

To my mind, the ILF offers one big advantage (besides the cost): going to see Mother in her room is a much more pleasant experience. You see, the residents in the ILF are more self-reliant and do not tend to be sitting around in wheelchairs with their heads drooping as they are in the nursing home.

Also, there is scheduled, structured physical activity/exercise at the ILF and not any (that I am aware of) at the nursing home unless the resident is in need of physical therapy. This seems to be helping Mother's physicality, balance, motion, stepping out in a confident manner.

All in all, if I can just get everything moved that Mother wants in her room, I think this is going to be a really good thing.

And now the disclaimer, this particular ILF is owned by the small, small town in which we live. There is no buy-in, entrance, nor endowment fee (that is never refunded). One just signs a simple rental agreement, pays a very reasonable "cleaning/refurbishment" fee, pays the first month's rent, moves in. So if the ILFs where you live are structured differently financially, then your experience may not be the same as mine.

Life. Ain't it a kick in the head?
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Clean Water?

"One billion people on the planet don't have access to clean water. That's one in six of us." charity: water

If you are planning your charitable giving for the rest of the year, visit the charity: water site and consider giving.
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Playing Defense

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It's a strange, strange world.

We can defend ourselves from our enemies, and even from our friends.

But we can never defend ourselves from our family.
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60

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Hurray! ! Now we (Dems) have 60 votes in the Senate.

Al Franken (D-MN) was sworn in on Tuesday, 7 July 2009. That means, count 'em: 60.

OK, so now, Reid and Durbin need to very firmly remind Democratic members that when the Leader files cloture, you support him on that cloture. Afterall, it merely means, bring the issue to a vote.

Then, if you, for whatever weird political need, must have cover, vote against final passage. Fine.

But opposing cloture means you're supporting a filibuster of your party's agenda.

Stop the damn filibuster. Screw the Republicans if they want to throw up brick walls before the on-ward flow of progress for this country and its citizens.

Vote for cloture.
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Oh, My God!

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This re-enforces what we all knew from the beginning--even in the face of vast and numerous denials.

Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion

• Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.
• That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the US Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

• The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco.

• James Baker, the namesake for the public policy institute, was a prominent oil industry lawyer who also served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000.
• Ken Lay, then-chairman of the energy trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.

• The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."

• Ray Rodon, a former executive at Halliburton, the oil-service giant that Cheney once headed, said he was dispatched to Iraq in October 2002 to assess the country's oil infrastructure and map out plans for operating Iraq's oil industry.

What a terrible price this country has paid--soldiers lives and bodies and minds--for "the power and the glory" of BushCo! Sad, sad.

Will it never end?
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