Marijuana is My Friend

Tags

marijuana, medicine, The Contrarian

The following comes with all the normal provisos: I am not a doctor. I don’t portray one on television. As in all things that have to do with your health, consult with whomever you esteem as having expertise in the area you are concerned about. This is just information you might want to research yourself and decide whether it’s a good idea for you.

My husband is a Vietnam Vet. He came away from that war with PTSD. He was probably on the cusp of when the military was starting to take “shell shock” or “battle fatigue”  and other various appellations for PTSD seriously. He attended the PTSD clinic in Kansas City back in the seventies for some weeks.

In addition, he suffers from COPD, and a very strange and intermittent lack of balance which makes mobility difficult for him sometimes. The latter is usually attributed to several concussions suffered in youth and in a helicopter crash in Vietnam.

We live in New Mexico, a state that has a “medical marijuana” law. My husband is candidly, no stranger to pot. After all, we are from the 60’s generation and it would be expected that we had dabbled with cannabis and perhaps more over the decades.

In any event, my husband decided to pursue the issue in New Mexico. The process was easy for him. A quick trip to a psychiatrist for an evaluation, and the securing of his rather large PTSD file at the VA was essentially all that was required. My spouse was lucky in that a few years ago, the VA re-evaluated his PTSD pursuant to a renewed request for VA disability status.

His PTSD was diagnosed as active and ongoing, which, as I said, made the process with New Mexico fairly much a no-brainer.

Within a few weeks of his evaluation and submission of application, he received his card. We live in Las Cruces, which has several “drugstores” that cater exclusively to medical marijuana users, so my husband soon was purchasing weed legally for the first time in his life.

We were concerned that whatever relief he might garner from the marijuana vis-a-vis his PTSD might be overwhelmed by a turn for the worse in his COPD status. We expected that he might have to use it in the form of food or as a vape. But he started out in the traditional way: the joint.

After a week, an amazing thing happened. His breathing improved dramatically. Not just dramatically as far as he was concerned, but it was astoundingly obvious to me. I had long grown used to the fact that even walking from the car to the house left his breathing hard. The focus of walking straight seemed to add to his burdened lungs even more difficulty.

Yet, here he was almost NEVER breathing hard no matter what he was doing. Surely he was still taking his inhalers as required, but he was no longer waiting for his next dosage–he often forgot.

So much better did he feel in fact that he has started to ride the recumbent bicycle each morning, taking Diego for a good ride through the neighborhood. He returns in fine fetter and for a while at least, even his mobility improves.

I’ve done some cursory research. What I have learned is that a couple of very long term studies seem to have put to bed the argument that marijuana is even worse than cigarettes for the lungs. In fact, for “light users” there seemed no long term damage to the lungs at all. Even with heavy usage (daily) there seemed to be little change.

Beyond that, there seems to be an increasingly large anecdotal collection of data that suggests that contrary to expectations, use of marijuana seems to help COPD patients. A number of theories are advanced: the normal coughing that might bring up more phlegm and thus open the lungs, the deeper inhaling customary to pot smokers, or just the general relaxation of the body’s systems which allow for greater oxygen intake.

For whatever reason, some COPD patients have reported that they are doing much much better using marijuana. One person has gotten off inhalers completely.

While my husband has not experienced quite that dramatic an improvement, it has been significant. He has been much more active, which explains the bike riding. He sleeps very much better, the best in years. His balance issues come and go, but he feels that that is a worthwhile tradeoff for breathing so much easier.

I wondered whether I should talk about this, but it seems to me that the tide has turned on the issue of marijuana in this country. Colorado and Washington State have led the way, as well as a number of states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. People on Facebook, for instance, now talk openly, supporting further legalization.

I thought therefore that I had some obligation to speak out as well. If you have a medical condition and live in a state that allows medical marijuana, you might be surprised at the range of diseases or conditions that can be improved. Who would have thought that smoking a joint would help COPD?

As I said, I’m no doctor. I’m sure a boatload of them will still say it’s a bad idea. A boatload of marijuana supports will say otherwise. As far as I can find, most of the supposed dangers of marijuana are way overblown, and it seems certainly to be less of a health risk than alcohol.

I have no interest in talking you into anything. I just offer one story, one anecdote among others that suggest that some really good stuff can come from pot. I can’t speak to what that might mean five years down the road or twenty. It’s just more information for you to use as YOU see fit in determining your own care.

Anti-Vaxxers and Their Troubled Logic

Tags

anti-vaxxers

I’m not one to shrink from controversy and when I weighed in on this issue, I did it knowing full well that it would probably go exactly where it did.

Anti-vaxxers as they have become known introduce yet another instance of retrograde civilization at work. The group it hails from is a shocking one in some respects–the upper middle, and supposedly well-educated.

While those on the liberal left have a healthy dose of scepticism when it comes to big Pharma, the anti-vaxxers have as Keegan Michael Key would say, have “taken it to a whole ‘nuther level”.

I don’t intend to debate here. As the Chicago Tribune said yesterday “There is no other side to the vaccine debate.” It is like evolution and climate change. There is only one side, the plain truth.

Let me set the stage:

A person on Facebook posted something about her conclusion that vaccinations ought to be a matter of choice. I’d reproduce that statement accurately, but she’s taken down the entire thing as best I can tell, so I cannot. She expounded in at least one or two additional comments.

I suggested that if she had a right to choose then of course schools had the right to choose not to allow her kids in the building which would force her to homeschool. Additionally this could also lead to groups (I would suggest organized sports and artistic groups) to banning children who could not provide vaccination records as well. Other parents might well determine that their children were unsafe in her children’s company.

All told, I argued, that such restrictions as might reasonably be placed upon her children might so segregate her children from the rest of society that some people might suggest that that amounted to child abuse.

She responded by private message, telling me this:

I deleted your comment. Child abuse? My kids have had some vaccinations, but I’m done with the bs of infecting others and fear. It DOES need to remain a choice. If vaccines become forced, what’s next? I’ve worked with too many vaccine injured children/people to know otherwise. No human life is above another. I’m all for a good debate/conversation, but have no more patience for inflammatory responses.

I was not permitted to answer the message. I tried to go to her page and was advised “no such person can be found” the telltale sign of being “unfriended.”

I wrote this on my Facebook wall:

hahaha, unfriended by a woman who took offense that I indicated that her “choice” not to vaccinate her children impinged on the choice of other children who came in contact with hers. She sent me a message saying she deleted my comment as “inflammatory” and then of course unfriended me in revenge. As I expected she would…..How can some people be so incredibly selfish…She seemed offended that anyone might suggest that she would have to homeschool her kids and keep them from others to protect other children and that some people might call that child abuse…Beware of (name omitted)

I received the following messages from her during the evening:

Really?

Your post about me was both inaccurate and untrue. Sorry you feel that way.

Why would you post that? Most of it is not even true.

Expected no answer. . Meaningful discussion is too scary? You’d rather slam me on Facebook? Maturity? I considered responding, but why? I’m not angry.? I’m not against vaccines. I’m for choice. I’m not the one who is offended. What you choose is fine.

The last is rich indeed. Is it I too scared to confront? I did not delete your comment lady, nor block you from replying any way you wished.

But let’s get to the meat of your argument.

“I’m not against vaccines” Apparently you are, since you said “my kids have had some [emphasis added] vaccinations.

“I’m for choice.”

Have you even spent once single moment examining that? I mean, yes, choice just sounds right doesn’t it? Choice is always a better word than “required, compelled, ordered. So I do get it. A lazy mind would always prefer choice to any of those.

What does it mean in actuality?

It means you can make a meaningful decision that is rational and based on objective facts. You can evaluate all the information and come to a logic-based conclusion.

What does that mean here?

1. There is an actual debate as to whether vaccines are safe and whether they should be given to all but a few situations which involve compromised health that are known. THERE IS NO SUCH DEBATE. Go to the CDC vaccine page and read all you want. The Mayo Clinic has a full discussion as well. Or go to Parents. The fact is that the Internet provides the ability of every crackpot in the world to set up a bunch of “sciency-sounded arguments” and claim that vaccines are both dangerous and unnecessary. The autism connection has been well proved to be a complete lie, and the doctor in question has been stripped of his license.
2. You as the average parent have no expertise in this area and cannot begin to “evaluate” the evidence and the websites that try to tell you there is a debate out there. You must trust, as we all do, those who have expertise. Those are scientists around the world who are telling you that there is no responsible study that justifies your avoiding protecting your child from all these nearly eradicated diseases. Vaccines are the reason why we don’t have polio any more and children don’t live in iron lungs.
3. There is no test that I am aware of to determine whether your child is that one in 50,000 or 1,000,000 who will have a seriously adverse effect from immunization. All states allow exemptions for children with known allergies or known medical conditions that would put them at risk. There is no “general” test to take. Therefore, there is no “choice” to make here.
4. You do not therefore have the right to unilaterally decide that you are not going to take this small risk on behalf of your child. That is not the bargain you made.

Bargain?

What am I talking about?

Sister, you are not living in isolation, you live in community. Our country was founded in part upon the concept of social compact. We deliberately then, and by inference now, agree that in return for certain agreed upon protections, we give up certain individual rights.

One of them, it seems to me is this: we do not have the right to make a choice of personal freedom that involves not being immunized when to do so threatens the herd. Whether you accept it or not, your “choice” to selfishly go your own way does exactly that.

Society has an absolute right to deny you that right or to explain that you will have to segregate yourself from the benefits of society if you insist. You may be “done with the bs about infecting others” but that is neither an answer or true. It merely suggests that you no longer care since it impinges on some right to do as you please regardless of how it affects other.

The record of immunization is very long and very successful worldwide.

Frankly, I do not think that simply by being a biological component of another life you have the right to make decisions that can so deeply affect their health and well-being. That’s the subject of another post entirely.

Your “choice” is no choice at all. It is simple an  appearance of “taking charge” over an issue you are utterly ill-equipped to decide upon. It makes you feel like a “good” parent when in fact you are arguably the very opposite.

Is that confrontational enough for you?

 

 

 

Another Angle

Tags

EBOLA, Media, unions

I think it’s the Boomers fault.

If like me, you grew up under the specter of the ATOM BOMB and “duck and cover” exercises in school, you can see that we are at fault.

Since us Boomers all feel that we grew up pretty much okay, except for the one quarter of us who are certifiably insane right wing ranters who think denial of the obvious will some how insulate them from extinction at the hands of an angry god, we figure that we best instill a large chunk of panic in the national diet so that upcoming generations will grow strong like us.

This explains, I think, why media grand viziers seem determined to make each and every “event” one in which we should all be checkin’ our survival rations and “bug out” plans.

It should be, therefore, clear why  ALL the media is in a panic about EBOLA. The fear of God requires it ya see, for only after learning to hold one’s bladder and sphincter in the face of impending death can we come out the other side as well-rounded happy and content people that most of us Boomers actually are.

Of course on the far-far-right in a galaxy too stupid to find it’s way in orbit, the media has all sorts of unusual if not predictable explanations. WorldnetDaily which is peopled by a class of subhumans intractable in their level of stupid, it’s all a deliberate plot by the dark guy Barack Hussain to rid the planet (Amerika that is) of white people. Secretly of course all black people have been issued hazmat suits. (The fist bump signals, “I got mine, you got yours?)

Every Republican running for office is pondering whether we should close the beaches or just nuke the hell out of the continent of Africa and make the world safe for white people. The media, meanwhile is busy asking questions like, ” are we prepared, should people fly, should they poop, and WHO THE HELL IS IN CHARGE?” Which is all quite funny since the Surgeon General would be the obvious person to be in charge but we don’t have one, because the NRA doesn’t like the choice, and the CDC functions with a slashed budget, again because the NRA is afraid that somebody might suggest that gun deaths are a national epidemic and where the hell are guns sales going then?

There is a story, but of course, not one that anybody bothers with, because gosh and darn it, one might have to think a bit, and actually go out in the FIELD and ask questions rather than simple vomit (yikes, where’s the HAZMAT suit?) out trite talking points?

A few days ago, just after the nurse was confirmed as a patient, a bunch of nurses representing some nurses association started talking. And at first it seemed weird and rather silly. Ya see, at first the only question was “how could this nurse contract EBOLA? After all, we had been assured that all them medical folks knew the “protocols” and so it must be this damn African thing was a lot more dangerous than we had been led to believe (enter cries of “it’s Obama’s fault”).

My first reaction was that this was just a bunch of nurses arguing that they were not to blame (the CDC insisting that for a caregiver to come down with the virus meant that there had been a break in established protocols). I kind of laughed it off.

But it was more than that. It turns out the National Nurses Union was giving the country information that was not forthcoming from the people in charge. Certainly nobody at Texas Health Presbyterian was making these admissions. The information the NNU was providing came directly (so they claim) from nursing personnel at THP, information that they were afraid to share openly out of fear.

Why you ask?

Because like most of the South, and increasingly almost everywhere, Texas is a right-to-work state, and the massive THP is not unionized. Nurses there had a story and they were afraid for their jobs to relate it. The NNU received their reports and relayed the information anonymously to protect them from retaliation from the corporate heads.

The reality is that the first patient with Ebola was left in a common area (with other patients and medical personnel) for “hours” after being brought in by ambulance before he was transferred to secure isolation. Senior nursing supervisors complained of this to no avail apparently. Further, nurses were not given proper hazmat suits but used fairly flimsy “contagious disease” coverings that left parts of their bodies exposed. Protocals were “not in place” and the required equipment was not there. Higher ups in the administration of the hospital apparently would not ask for help.

What does this all mean?

It’s hard to say, but surely it should be looked at. The fact is that it is hard to believe that in a unionized business, workers would be afraid to speak out against dangerous conditions. Unions are there for that reason, to protect them against being fired. Further, unions themselves put their foot down and insist on corrections or threaten a strike. It is entirely possible that the the secondary infections could have been avoided.  Of course it may not have been either, and we make no blanket assertion because it is an unknowable.

However, we do know that unions are in place for just these sorts of things–to give workers the ability and protection needed to speak out about issues that often they know much better than suits far removed from the scene do.

It continues to be appalling that our apparently poorly educated folks never learned how much their good life today was due to the unions that are quickly becoming a quaint history notation. Many of these people grew up in union homes and should know this without more. Yet, they have so readily been misdirected to blaming unions for their present financial woes whatever they might be. Surely unions are not perfect, but without them, the worker is left to the devices we see in play at DHP–proper actions being taken too late to be effective.

Just something to think about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putting “Bob” in a Search Engine

Tags

critical reading, critical thinking, Louis Gohmert, Media, PPH, right wing extremists, sex education, Texas

You know, everybody says they “don’t believe everything” they hear. Everybody likes to think of themselves as discerning individuals who eyes can’t be covered with wool. But the truth is, most people aren’t educated, or have not taken the time to really work at what can only be termed a skill set.

Being a critical reader doesn’t come naturally. A Facebook friend of mine is busy trying to educate a few people about how to tell the questionable from the reliable. He makes a good point. You might want to ignore a source that gives you salacious or wild headlines without a corresponding story. In other words, if the headlines don’t turn out to match the actual verifiable facts in the story, well, you might want to look elsewhere.

A case in point was a recent Rachel Maddow show wherein Ms. Maddow referred to the town hall meeting that John McCain had. A woman referred to her son as having been the victim of gun violence. She wanted to know about what laws Congress might pass. McCain first expressed his condolences for the loss of the woman’s son, and then remarked that “Congress was not going to ban assault weapons.”

Now Rachel indicated that the tape of this had been edited by a local news operation, and that “it might unfairly portray Senator McCain as lacking in compassion. (the tape omitted the sentence regarding McCain’s sympathies). The tape was offered for the news that McCain was saying that the GOP was not going for any ban on assault weapons and this was before there had even been any hearings on Feinstein’s bill.

Yet, the headline from a right-wing shrill machine was something like “Rachel Maddow gleefully admits she edited tape to make GOP look bad.”

I assume you get the point.

The Daily Caller has been pushing the Melendez story. You have obviously heard about it. Melendez is accused of cavorting with paid prostitutes at a friend’s home in the Dominican Republic. The story was apparently “leaked” by GOP operatives and offered to ABC news. They declined.

The right-wingers would say, “see, the MSM is in the pocket of the Democrats. They don’t report on misconduct of one of their own.” Is that what happened? No. Not at all.

The fact is that ABC interviewed one of the “prostitutes”. When asked how she knew that the man she had only known as “Bob” was a US senator, she replied that “I put his name in a search engine and Melendez’ picture came up.”

Why, I invite you to try that and see what you get.

ABC news declined the offer as “unreliable”, which of course The Daily Caller jumped all over it. Which one do you want to use as a source of information? (And I’m not pushing ABC news since I don’t find them all that good either.)

Which brings me full circle, since yesterday I unfairly maligned a nurse quite possibly, for failing to render CPR assistance to an elderly assisted-living woman. Apparently the woman had signed a DNR and I can presume that the nurse was aware of it. Or I would expect that was possible. In any case, I admittedly relied on only what I heard on news broadcasts from MSM and failed to delve any deeper into better sources. Mea Culpa. Live and learn. Hoisted on my own petard. (please insert any another euphemism that seems appropriate)

†

I’m inclined at this point to urge the government to just put a big ole fence around the state of Texas. Now granted, they are a big state, and they have a big population, but for Jimminy Cricket’s sake, they can’t have THAT many idiots can they?

Louis the Loon Gohmert is wasting your tax dollars once again with his amendment rider to a budget bill that would prevent any “federal funds” being used to transport the President to any golf outing until “White House tours are resumed”. Louis woke up from a drug-induced dream and thought he was in Lilliputian land again. The White House suspended tours to save money ala the sequester. Louis takes up space on the planet. I vote to suspend him from a hot air balloon, attached to the capital dome.

Another dim bulb in the state Senate wants to suspend operations like Planned Parenthood from submitted sex education materials to schools that teach sex education. Although all such materials are already subject to public availability and parental veto, Ken Paxton thinks (I know, a crazy word to apply to many in Texas), that present law doesn’t go far enough.

Places like PPH should not be allowed to offer health care information because of course they have a “conflict” of interests. Being that they provide abortions, they most surely would be promoting sex by unmarried teens as a way to, you know, keep business up.  While no example of any information that does that was offered as proof, insiders believe that if you put the brochures in water with a teaspoon of sugar, the words “HAVE SEX NOW!” will appear across the top of each page.

Okay, I added that last part.

And people talk about the misuse of taxes.

Related articles

• Daily Caller sticks with Menendez claims; ABC News discredits them (dailykos.com)
• MSNBC Uses Selectively Edited Video to Smear McCain (freebeacon.com)

Food, Huh! What Is It Good For?

Tags

crap I learned, diets, food, life in the foothills, lifestyle

Okay, you caught me. I’m avoiding politics. Just for a bit. I’m tired of reporting on idiots. Tired up to the tippy-top of my noggin with fools and dopes, and all manner of misanthropes who permeate our political landscape. The last was the isolated butt-stupid “law enforcement” personnel across the country who have determined that “they will not enforce unconstitutional gun laws”. These missing-links to humanity are nothing but assholes with inverted mouths. To suggest that they haven’t thought this through would be to suggest that they can think in the first place.

So.

What ya wanna talk about today?

Food? I thought so.

I been reading about food lately. I read The China Study, and now I’m reading, Healthy at Every Size. I won’t bore you with long drawn out descriptions except to say that the first does an excellent job of proving that for health reasons, a plant-based diet is probably the very best any person could choose. Of course only a tiny segment of the population is or ever will be prepared to never eat a hamburger, a glorious slice of Vermont Cheddar, or a gnaw upon a spicy rib bone. The second, fairly echoes my conclusion but goes ever so much further stating once and for all, that diets don’t work, except again for a tiny segment of the population.

I tend to agree with both. I cannot do a plant-based diet. I’m not that tiny segment. I have tried every manner of diet, and been successful on most all. Until I had lost the weight and tried to eat NORMALLY again. I do mean normally too. I put the weight back on faster than a nearing 40-year-old says “I do”, and as then some. It’s all quite predictable, for diets interfere with the bodies own dynamics, and as soon as the diet is done, the body starts to repair the damage at it sees things. It does little good by the by to try to tell it otherwise. It has a mind of its own.

You see this has to do with systems that are evolutionarily developed over millions of years to care for the body (itself) when the brain sitting atop all this mass of flesh was not smart enough to make the right decisions. A whole mass of interconnected “stuff” in our brains, bloodstreams, and so forth released chemicals, slowed them down, pushed them about, all to regulate what we ate and when. For a lot of millions of years, we did just fine.

Then the mirror was developed. And we saw that fat butt, and that round tummy, and well we became insane. We started to artificially alter our size. And our inborn systems have been rebelling ever since. You diet, the brain says, “we’re starving–quick slow systems down!” So our metabolisms fall making our calorie output slower than normal. We become hungrier, and  the normal level of our satiety is thrown off kilter. So when we stop starving ourselves, we eat more, more often.

Then the food industry comes into play. They want to make money. They don’t care about our natural mechanisms for maintaining a healthy body. They use high fructose corn syrup because it is cheap. It goes into everything now. It messes up the “satiety” bells and whistles. So we eat more and more often. They use all kinds of additives that affect the proper release of various chemicals and so forth into our bloodstream that help us to decide what to eat and when. They mess it up. So we eat Cheetos, instead of an apple.

The government is complicit. They subsidize farmers who grow corn. It stays cheap so it can be the favored supplier of sweeteners. In Europe, by the by, you can hardly find soda pop that uses HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), because it’s BANNED as UNHEALTHY. Here you can’t find any without it. It’s in bread and almost all boxed and pre-made foods.

The government promotes the use of milk, although studies suggest it plays a part in breast and prostate cancer, onset juvenile diabetes, and cant’ be digested properly by tons of people. There are no good studies that say its a good way to avoid osteoporosis either.

Fast food places supersize foods because the french fries are so damn cheap that they can double the size at about only 40% of the cost. And over time, the consumer becomes used to the larger size, and considers it the “normal” portion. The more we eat, the more we crave it. We mess up our internal systems. Go into a McDonald’s and ask for a “small” fry. They will not have a clue what you are talking about. There is no such thing as “small” any more.

We don’t eat because we are hungry. And we don’t eat what our body needs, we eat what our drunken brains have been taught to crave. We eat because it is noon, and we eat a salad because we want to be “good” until evening when we are starved and we devour a bag of chips and a twenty-ounce coke.

Now, I’m not trying to talk you into anything here. But these two books are worth your attention before you start yet another weight-loss scheme. If only to alert you that you can’t depend on the government to keep you safe, nor frankly even a lot of the various medical associations. You cannot believe how many of the things like Pediatric Doctors Associations (and similar things) are heavily contributed to by all the “bad” food makers to get a nod. These associations have a maddeningly bad habit of altering their “advice” to include “reasonable” portions of soda, chocolate, and all the other things we know are not real food in return for those hefty “donations”.

I’m simply trying to make better food choices, and exercise because I find it fun, and because it makes me feel better. I’m trying to make most of my diet from real foods, and meals created from whole ingredients.  Being healthy is, at my age, increasingly much more important than whether I can pop my buns into a pair of sexy jeans. Way more.

Related articles

• High fructose corn syrup linked with diabetes (thenaturopathicnutritionist.com)
• Soybean Oil: One of the most harmful ingredients in processed foods (sott.net)
• Dr. Mercola: Why Americans Are Less Healthy, and Die Sooner Than People In Other Developed Nations (consciouslifenews.com)
• This is how the food industry makes Americans fat and hungry (rt.com)
• Fructose Sugar Tells the Brain To Keep Eating (livescience.com)
• Imaging study examines effect of fructose on brain regions that regulate appetite (esciencenews.com)
• Diabetes Rates Higher in Countries Using Lots of High Fructose Corn Syrup (nlm.nih.gov)

And You Thought Things Would Be Different?

Tags

Barack Obama, editorial, extreme rightwing, government, liberalism, Mitch McConnell

One of the best things of a second term, is that the President is no longer looking over his shoulder to a second term, and tempering his remarks accordingly. That this is so, is perhaps a fact of life that is regrettable, but it would be a lie to suggest that first-term presidents don’t.

That said, there is much disagreement depending on whose ox is being gored. From the left, and I think fairly from the middle one hears that the Inaugural speech was masterful, and depending on his success, it may go down as one of the best given. Mr. Obama painted a picture that surely speaks to the heart of most of us. We have problems, indeed we do, but the solutions should never be placed upon the backs of any one segment of the population. The poor, the old, and the suffering should not bear the burden of our answers to grave problems, at least no more so than those who shoulders are sturdier, broader, and relatively unburdened.

For many of us, the President’s call for real efforts to help cure our environmental ills comes woefully late, but still is welcomed. The naysayers, propped up by the coal and oil industry “think tanks”, will squawk that this is all a hoax, and the Christianists will point to self-servingly-interpreted vague pieces of scripture and suggest that it would be an affront to God to presume to be causally involved in the destruction of our planet, but the evidence is strong and uniformly speaks with one voice–humans have seriously compromised the health of this planet.

On the Right, of course one hears the laments of the loser–“I heard no statement of wanting to reach across the aisle,” whines Senator John McCain. One might respond, “well Senator, tell us once in the last four years when you have done one thing other than complain that WHATEVER was contemplated by the Administration was wrong.” Yes do tell us Senator.

The Right found themselves shut out and they are pouting. Well, they have shut themselves out and it is clear that whatever is done at this point will be done by revising the filibuster rules so that a majority can once again actually pass legislation in the Senate. It will be done if at all, by the House, if Representative Boehner has the moral fortitude to begin bringing legislation to the floor absent the Hastert Rule, an arbitrary rule which says, “thou shalt not bring before the chamber a bill for which you don’t have a majority approval of your own caucus.” In other words, we will pass no legislation with bipartisan support, but only if we, the majority agree as a majority.

Beyond this, the President will have to come to us, the public and impress upon us the need to push our own representatives in government, to get off pot and actually govern as we elected them to. That is what the Address suggested to me at least.

No minds were changed I would hazard a guess.

Mitch McConnell, cries tears, lamenting, “the age of liberalism” has returned.

Well, yes, damn it it has. We, the left are unabashed in our efforts to bring liberalism back. We glory in the liberalism of Abraham Lincoln who had that liberal idea way back when that no country could continue to exist while enslaving a portion of its people. We glory in the liberalism of Theodore Roosevelt who curbed the power of big corporations by breaking them up. We glory in the liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt who ended a depression by putting people back to work improving our infrastructure and instituting social security so that people had the piece of mind of knowing their last years were not going to be spent in grinding poverty.

We glory in the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson who finished the work started by Abraham Lincoln, giving all citizens the same ACTUAL rights previously entombed only on paper in some states.

We glory in the liberalism of Barack Obama who began what for many of us was a long quest to secure access to medical care as a basic HUMAN right, not a privilege for only those who could pay the price of ever greedy medical conglomerates and doctors.

We await the big issue of immigration where we seek to invite our Latino brothers and sisters to join us in citizenship. We await the full rights of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters coming to be across the land. We await fair wages for all. We await fair wages for women doing the same work as their male counterparts.

Yes, we are unabashed in our liberalism.

But has anything changed for the extremists and those who kneel before them? No I suspect nothing at all. If the following is any example, the Right will continue to fawn and bow before the tiny but vocal hysteria that is the howling extremism of nuttery:

Mitch McConnell sent out this frightening e-mail to his supporters near or on Inauguration day:

My friend, our freedom is under direct assault.

From those who want take your guns. From those who want to shred our Constitution, and as our good in friend Rand Paul from Kentucky says, from those who want to be King.

Let me tell you, Mitch McConnell is ready to lead the fight to protect your rights.

Nobody’s freedom is under assault Mr. McConnell, and to continue this sort of sordid partisanship is beneath the office you hold. Nobody is shredding the Constitution, and given your utter disdain for the President, if there was one single piece of information that he was, you would be moving heaven and earth to encourage a House vote of impeachment. No one is trying to take anyone’s guns Mr. McConnell, only perhaps trying to remove from the public domain weapons that have no legitimate purpose other than to kill as many PEOPLE as possible, as quickly as possible. Nobody is trying to be a King, and I would suggest that you might read up on your British history since you and Mr. Paul might be a bit limited in your understanding of  what a monarchy is. Perhaps you might read Plato and get a firmer grasp of the various sorts of governments. Just a thought.

So, no nothing is changing. Because stupid men continue to act stupidly and in their own singular interests rather than for the common good.

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I Have a Cold and I’m Sooo Happy!

Tags

Common cold, health, Humor, Influenza, life in the foothills

Call me crazy. No please don’t. Enough people are already saying that. They whisper. I can hear them. “She’s crazy you know,” they nod knowingly at each other.

But I do have a cold. And I’m relieved. Because I don’t have the flu! The flu is way worth, attacking the tummy, and making you not sure whether you should sit or hang your head in the toilet, and frankly, sticking my head where I place my butt is not a comforting thought. It makes the flu worse just thinking about it.

Flu saps you of every will to live, and makes you swear off pizza and jalapeños for life, a promise you are surely going to break and that leads to being a sinner, and that leads to confession, and well, it’s all downhill with the flu.

Colds are noble. Truly they are. They are straightforward. They start with a dry cough, a bunch of sneezing, and that feeling that something is dripping softly at the back of the throat. You have time to prepare. You still have hours before you will feel really bad–time to get that cold medicine, run to the grocery store to stock up on good stuff to comfort you. Time for kleenex purchases!

Flu? It sneaks up like a thief in the night. You are sitting there, just fine and enjoying your favorite TV show, and suddenly, your tummy doesn’t feel quite right. Then in mere seconds, it feels really really not quite right. Then there is that haunting moment when your mouth fills with spit, and you find yourself projectile racing for the bathroom, Which end is going to erupt first? And then you can do nothing but drag yourself to the bed and moan, awaiting the next attack.

Flu is a mean sucker.

Colds are comforting. You get all snuggly warm in your jammies and robe and drink some nice tea with honey. You take some cold meds and get all drowsy and get that luscious nap that you usually forgo because you feel guilty wasting the time. You feel entitled for at least a day to just do nothing.

So I’m happy. Given the choices, I’m doing okay. I’m writing this, which I definitely would not be doing if I had the flu.

Diego? Not so happy. He noticed the slippers instead of the sneakers. He is not getting a walk today, and he’s stoic but sad. He gives me lots of encouraging kisses.

We’ve gone around the bend where he is concerned. I can’t tell you how much we have spent on him so far, in attempts to make him happy. Some of it is the usual stuff, collars and leads, but then there is the kennel which he now loves and runs into at the first sign that we are heading out together. But then there was the dog door which he adores and uses a hundred and seventy-two times every day. Now we are talking about putting up a wrought iron fence around the front because he just adores laying out and watching the activities of the neighborhood.

He’s a show off. I have to tell you. He likes to chase his ball down the street and we go out a good six times a day or more to throw it. He scampers after it, and then stands there, waiting for the backyard dogs to start to howling. Then he is happy. He just loves to lord it over them that he is free and they are not. Except for Rosie. Rosie is a big honking dog from the end of the street, two doors down. She gets out of her backyard and visits around. Diego is in love with Rosie, and she seems to feel the same way. She tries to walk into the house.

Well, we have reached the crazy when it comes to the boy. You see, we have taught him to retrieve the morning paper. It is sometimes there before we go on his walk at about 6:20 a.m. Sometimes he has to wait until we are back, and I unleash him at the corner. He runs over the paper every time and then picks it up, and runs it into the Contrarian, who praises him lavishly and then fights to get the paper. (If you ever wish to send Diego a present know that a subscription to the WSJ would be perfect!)

So today, given that I’m staying in, I suggested in jest mind you, that the Contrarian after finishing his paper, wrap it back up and sneak it out. Diego thinks there is a paper fairy and he’s quite sure that there will be more during the day. And, well, the paper is out there again, waiting for Diego to find it.

We have gone around the bend I tell ya.

Well, happy day to you, and if you come down with something, let it be a cold!

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