It's the neat little things in life that make it so grand; those that give unbridled contentment.
I made one of those 'necessary' trips to the old hometown two days ago. We lost a classmate to cancer. I was very close to his wife's family so I attended the services and I'm pleased that I did. There were many from my Class of '64 in attendance and, regardless of the circumstances, funerals are for the living; mostly visiting with long forgotten friends and acquaintances.
Since I was only four hours away from the home of my son, his wife and two of my beautiful grandchildren I shot on down to Olathe, Kansas after the services. Evie, my four year old princess, came running out to greet me on my arrival. I loved it when she said, "Grandpa"! Her arms were open and her lips were puckered.
One of the very best of the little things is this. My daughter-in-law knows how to create my very favorite "special" pie. She's one of only two people I've ever known who can do it. It's a banana cream pie but it's more than that. It's "hot" banana cream pie. It congeals. It holds together. It's bananalicious. Oh Mama!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Free Health Care Paid By You
Hey! If you don't believe me how about the Houston Chronicle. This ISN'T an April Fools Day joke, either.
"Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report.
The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of health care providers who care for low-income and uninsured patients.
"What we're really trying to do is find out who's using our emergency rooms ... and find solutions," said Ann Kitchen, executive director of the group, which presented the report last week to the Travis County Healthcare District board.
The average emergency room visit costs $1,000. Hospitals and taxpayers paid the bill through government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Kitchen said.
Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues and three were homeless. Five are women whose average age is 40, and four are men whose average age is 50, the report said, the Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday.
"It's a pretty significant issue," said Dr. Christopher Ziebell, chief of the emergency department at University Medical Center at Brackenridge, which has the busiest ERs in the area.
Solutions include referring some frequent users to mental health programs or primary care doctors for future care, Ziebell said.
"They have a variety of complaints," he said. With mental illness, "a lot of anxiety manifests as chest pain."
"Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report.
The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of health care providers who care for low-income and uninsured patients.
"What we're really trying to do is find out who's using our emergency rooms ... and find solutions," said Ann Kitchen, executive director of the group, which presented the report last week to the Travis County Healthcare District board.
The average emergency room visit costs $1,000. Hospitals and taxpayers paid the bill through government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Kitchen said.
Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues and three were homeless. Five are women whose average age is 40, and four are men whose average age is 50, the report said, the Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday.
"It's a pretty significant issue," said Dr. Christopher Ziebell, chief of the emergency department at University Medical Center at Brackenridge, which has the busiest ERs in the area.
Solutions include referring some frequent users to mental health programs or primary care doctors for future care, Ziebell said.
"They have a variety of complaints," he said. With mental illness, "a lot of anxiety manifests as chest pain."
Auto Rebate: Thanks Americans
Lawdy, lawdy! Wish I had the resources to come up with this info. I was doin' my thing today; listen' to Rush Limbaugh. Surely, you've seen TV commercials touting a new plan from the auto dealers. There are some catches to it and some fine line writing but if you purchase a new car then lose your job the auto dealers will pay your payments. It started with Hyundai. They're Korean, right? Anyway, GM will make your payments up to $700.00 month for 9 months. Rush was reading from a news source but the gist is, if the auto companies, aka, General Motors are without cash how can they come up with these great offers? It's an easy answer. We are making the monthly car payments in the form of a stimulus. In other words, the American people are opening up our wallets, once again, to bail out those who don't have the $$$$$$$. It's the housing bailout all over again.
Obama's Pals
Have you had the opportunity to to watch tapes of the left wing crackpot commmies protesting the G20 meetings in Gt. Britain? These clowns break windows, throw rocks, harrass the police and create all varieties of general mayhem. Newspeople say they want to promote their cause of too much money for the haves and not enough for the have nots. They are anarchists; against government of any type and to be achieved by any means necessary.
This is classic. Their heroes would be, in no particular order, Fr. Michael Pflegger, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and, of course, Billy boy Ayers. Obama has yet to comment on his pals working the streets of London.
This is classic. Their heroes would be, in no particular order, Fr. Michael Pflegger, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and, of course, Billy boy Ayers. Obama has yet to comment on his pals working the streets of London.
When Is A Lie A Lie
One of my favorite sayings is: " a promise is a debt unpaid". Well, if you've been paying attention the tax on cigarettes went up in our state by a little over a dollar today. Smokes now cost $6.75 for the 'premium' brand. This tax money is supposed to be used to pay for health care for chilren. It's called the CHIPS program. When Clinton was in office the tobacco companies were sued and gave up somewhere around $300 billion to the states. This money was earmarked for education programs to stop kids from starting on the weed and to help smokers cease. To date less than 1% has gone to that cause. Everyone should than a smoker today because they, the great percentage of whom are the poor, are funding health care for kids. Read the column from my most favorite fun web site, Ace of Spades HQ and get used to paying taxes. It's going to hit you soon.
One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.
This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
To be sure, Obama's tax promises in last year's campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.
"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.
One of President Barack Obama's campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.
This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
To be sure, Obama's tax promises in last year's campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.
"I can make a firm pledge," he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
He repeatedly vowed "you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.
April Fool's Joke??????
This accompanying news piece comes from Amy Edwards and the Orlando Sentinel. Could it possible be an April Fool's joke? Was she blond?
A woman called Kissimmee police to say she was locked inside her car at the Walgreen's on John Young Parkway near Poinciana.
"My car will not start. I'm locked inside my car," the unidentified woman said.
"Nothing electrical works. And it's getting very hot in here, and I'm not feeling well."
The dispatcher asked the woman if she was able to manually pull the lock up on the door.
The woman said she would try, and then, she said, "Yes, I got the door open."
A woman called Kissimmee police to say she was locked inside her car at the Walgreen's on John Young Parkway near Poinciana.
"My car will not start. I'm locked inside my car," the unidentified woman said.
"Nothing electrical works. And it's getting very hot in here, and I'm not feeling well."
The dispatcher asked the woman if she was able to manually pull the lock up on the door.
The woman said she would try, and then, she said, "Yes, I got the door open."
Moralist, Elitist, Scum
The enclosed article in National Review online is just too rich to let go. Victor Hansen Davis, as is usually the case, has his proverbial finger on the pulse of what's going on with the "Cheating Administration".
Team Obama: The HHS nominee and tax-plagued Sebelius ($8,000 short) was the sequel to the mega-tax-plagued Tom Daschle ($140,000 short), who followed disclosures about Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner ($48,000 short), who was joined by Nancy Kelleher (who knows?), and Labor Sec. Hilda Solis ($6,400 short).
The real story is not just that our tax code is so complicated that even our supposedly best and brightest cannot fathom it, or that these problems allegedly derived from mere technicalities, or even that the corrections and repayment usually follow nomination, the subtext being that without the chance for the federal post, the fed does not collect their revenue.
No, the lesson is that all these nominees belong to precisely the class that we've heard over the last two years "made out like bandits," and should "spread the wealth," and need to "level the playing field," and "were the beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts" and should be "patriotic" in paying "their fair share."
So there is a real ethical crisis among the liberal elite who, we are learning for the nth time, suffer the additional wage of hypocrisy, by calling for higher taxes on the upper-middle-class (often punctuated by self-serving qualifiers that they themselves are willing to pay more in taxes), only to scheme to find ways to cut down their tax liability contrary to the law.
The tragedy is that moralists like Daschle, Geithner, Solis, etc. have far more access to tax lawyers and are far less likely to pay the consequences when caught than the putative "rich" that the liberal left, for the last year, has so cavalierly trashed.
Something larger and really weird is going on here. Liberal tax raisers are not paying taxes. The majority of big Wall Street money (cf. AIG, Fannie, Freddie, Goldman-Sachs, etc) is going to the Democratic Party. The J.P.Morgan-like tycoons such as Buffet, Gates, Soros, etc. are apparently strong supporters of these avatars of the new economics. Congessional liberal leaders are mulitmillionaires like Feinstein, Kennedy, Kerry, Kohl, Pelosi, Rockefellar, etc. All of this is superimposed on this pseudo-populist agenda, decrying the Wall Street culture and corporate America that enriched them, while calling for more and more taxes that some of them apparently so often find ways of avoiding.
A good novelist could not make this all up.
Team Obama: The HHS nominee and tax-plagued Sebelius ($8,000 short) was the sequel to the mega-tax-plagued Tom Daschle ($140,000 short), who followed disclosures about Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner ($48,000 short), who was joined by Nancy Kelleher (who knows?), and Labor Sec. Hilda Solis ($6,400 short).
The real story is not just that our tax code is so complicated that even our supposedly best and brightest cannot fathom it, or that these problems allegedly derived from mere technicalities, or even that the corrections and repayment usually follow nomination, the subtext being that without the chance for the federal post, the fed does not collect their revenue.
No, the lesson is that all these nominees belong to precisely the class that we've heard over the last two years "made out like bandits," and should "spread the wealth," and need to "level the playing field," and "were the beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts" and should be "patriotic" in paying "their fair share."
So there is a real ethical crisis among the liberal elite who, we are learning for the nth time, suffer the additional wage of hypocrisy, by calling for higher taxes on the upper-middle-class (often punctuated by self-serving qualifiers that they themselves are willing to pay more in taxes), only to scheme to find ways to cut down their tax liability contrary to the law.
The tragedy is that moralists like Daschle, Geithner, Solis, etc. have far more access to tax lawyers and are far less likely to pay the consequences when caught than the putative "rich" that the liberal left, for the last year, has so cavalierly trashed.
Something larger and really weird is going on here. Liberal tax raisers are not paying taxes. The majority of big Wall Street money (cf. AIG, Fannie, Freddie, Goldman-Sachs, etc) is going to the Democratic Party. The J.P.Morgan-like tycoons such as Buffet, Gates, Soros, etc. are apparently strong supporters of these avatars of the new economics. Congessional liberal leaders are mulitmillionaires like Feinstein, Kennedy, Kerry, Kohl, Pelosi, Rockefellar, etc. All of this is superimposed on this pseudo-populist agenda, decrying the Wall Street culture and corporate America that enriched them, while calling for more and more taxes that some of them apparently so often find ways of avoiding.
A good novelist could not make this all up.
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