Images For 31 August 2020

 

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Paris: Views Of Pont Neuf

 

FLOTUS Or FLOATIE?

 I hear that one or the other spoke at the RNC last night.

I didn't watch, but couldn't make out from descriptions of the event which one it was.

FLOTUS:

This paramilitarily togged individual is said to be whatever FLOTUS is.

I wonder what it is that it is? 

FLOATIE:

This is a mascot sort of creature who works for the Victoria British Columbia water department.

The Department wanted to humanize the detritus that their lack of a sewage treatment plant causes to be discharged into the Salish Sea.

So they got together with some ad agency and, voila, we have Floatie.

Looks a lot like FLOTUS, non?

So which one was at the RNC?

Just Because You Have Health Care Don't Expect health Care

 I do have health care.

It costs a lot each year, but I don't have any co pays and any doctor that I have considered has been happy to accept what I have.

It's interesting to see what that means in practice, however.

My right hip has become a real problem, my right foot has a toe that has resisted any amelioration from three surgeries over 14 years, and my left foot has just recently flared up with a burning pain spot, probably somehow related to a tendon - I would guess.

But since I am not a doctor and therefore know that guessing is a waste of time, I recently visited a consulting orthopedic surgeon about all three of these irritating maladies.

She referred me to two specialists who are other members of the practice of which she is a part.

My daughter was interested in what came of those appointments.

Here is the email I sent her answering that question.

"I went to the foot orthhopod on Monday.

His assessment is that I need another operation on my right foot - an operation much like two of the three I have already had - but that I couldn't have it, because of the reason for my appointment - and for the subsequent assessment for the need for another operation - the sore toe, precludes any surgery.  

"No surgeries if you have a sore toe".

I had already told him that I was coming to him even though I was going to need hip replacement surgery prior to any foot surgery - and that I had an appointment in a week or so with another surgeon in his practice to talk about that; "no surgeries if you have a sore toe" said he, with the grim look of satisfaction that Nurse Ratched made famous in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest .

So we moved on.

He didn't want to talk about my left foot because he only does one thing per appointment.

When I resisted, pointing out that every appointment for me involves a day getting to Seattle from Lopez Island, and a day for the appointment itself, he relented and prescribed stiff soled shoes.

So I guess I am going to have to learn to live with the left foot pain (although I am not at all convinced that I am going to go through another foot surgery, either).

I am hoping to finesse the sore toe when I talk to the hip guy, because I really do need to get the current one replaced (in the appointment with the the consulting orthopod  who referred me to these two other members of her practice, she said as a starting point 'has no one told you that you have bone on bone arthritis in your right hip?'  I just hung my head like a guilty prankster caught in some heinous act: I didn't think it appropriate to say 'no, but when I brought up my belief in my annual 2017 physical that I needed to begin planning for hip replacement my PCP told me I needed to see a physical therapist; which I did; and the hip got worse; so I went to Italy for a month, and while limping around Venice, it went away; until it came back in March 2020').

So having ostensible health care is really not all it's cracked up to be. 

It seems to me.

I'll regale you with whatever comes of my hip appointment after it happens.

Oh, and the foot guy gave me three antibiotic gel toe separators.

Growing old is becoming an increasingly ridiculous enterprise".

trump As An Ecological Statement

 It is difficult not to see a similarity between donnie and the neither plant nor animal kingdom: he draws energy from the potpourri of morons who support him much as a toadstool draws energy from a cow pie.

Or from a rotten log in the forest. 

How Long? How Long? How Long?

 How long are we going to continue to have a chief executive who is a rapist, a grifter, a criminal, a liar, an incestuous father and a traitor - to name a few of his crimes - to continue in office?

How long are we going to continue to allow elected officials who aid and abet this chief executive to remain in office?

How long can the oldest Modern Era democratic republic in the world continue to sink into thuggism?

I don't know.

But the answer that question will drastically effect all your progeny.

(The real problem is not the problem, but, instead, the people who endorse this sad state of affairs.)

"Christians" Cretins and republicans. 

A Young And Fragile Democracy?!

 I was just having a glass of wine, stirring my pasta sauce (shallots, olive oil, garlic and Pomi tomatoes) and watching the PBS Newshour.

Things with the Newshour had been going predictably including the fact that Judy Woodruff had just commenced an interview with Kelly Anne Conway.

I was half paying attention: Kelly Anne is a dose too far for me.

But I thought I heard her say something.

I was SURE that I had heard her say it.

But to be sure, I rolled back my You Tube video of the Newshour to hear it again.

She really said it.

She said "we have a young and fragile democracy...".

I don't think she is that stupid.

I don't think she is that uninformed: the United States is the oldest, and - we all have thought - most durable democratic republic in the world.

1787 was Constitution adoption.

And being sure I am correct in not thinking that Kelly Anne is stupid, I have chills: donnie, Mitch and the boys are actually planning a coup d'état.

They are going to say we are too new to self rule and our institutions of self rule are so "fragile" that we need to have caretakers to take care of us.

Please read The Invention of Russia.

That aside, please, please, please don't think that just because donnie is plug stupid, that donnie isn't cunning.

He has created a situation in which Covid 19 can rage unchecked because he wants to keep people from the voting booth.

He has his fat faced, toothy factotum in USPS so that the Postal Service can't be a back up to the voting booth.

Now that we know that his closest advisors - probably Larry Kudlow - are going to try to sell that we are young and fragile on the world stage, we MUST ALL VOTE NO MATTER THE COST.

That is such unmitigated bullshit that even the cretins and the christians ought to be too smart to swallow that we are a "young and fragile democracy".

But, now we know: Kelly Anne has spilled the beans.

donnie and the farce factory

A while back Congress passed a bill subsequently signed into law that granted a $600 a week uplift to unemployed workers across the nation, to their weekly unemployment benefits. 

As of 31 July a lot of people were still feeding their families and paying the rent 

As of that date the republicans declared that to be an unacceptable situation. 

Remember this: the republicans have only one goal in mind. 

They want serfs, lots of serfs. 

You can’t have serfs if your population can pay the bills. 

So it should be no surprise that Ol’ Mitch and the Boys don’t want to extend that $600 lifeboat to millions and millions of Americans. 

So the Senate being what it isn’t, nobody rational would expect that those millions and millions will be succored anytime soon. 

But we’ve got donnie: he’s gonna excercise his heretofore never seen magical powers and declare a “payroll tax cut”. 

So if you are EMPLOYED making fifteen dollars an hour for forty hours a week you will get $87.30 a month extra. 

If you are one of the millions and millions of UNEMPLOYED losing $600 A WEEK you get to take your family onto the street. 

If this makes any sense to you, you probably have chosen the best career path: serfdom. 

Some Paris Images For 080320