Commonwealth Fund

Health care report shows US care quality deteriorating

From My FDL...

Look at the data and tell me why we should allow the republicans to further deteriorate 'The world's Best Health Care'.

In the dark

Another free idea...a real money maker! (unless someone else thought of it) Our new home has a nice master bedroom except for one 'glaring' fault. There is only one light switch and it's located by the door that enters into the bedroom from the hall. There is no light switch by the door that enters from the bathroom. This sometimes causes me to traverse the width of the room, in the dark, to find the switch. Occasionally tripping and banging my shins on the furniture! Now, we could ask an electrician to climb into the attic and using a very long drill, bore a hole in the top plate of the framing and then feed a wire down the wall cavity and attach a new switch. We could do that...and spend a lot of money doing it. Or, what if there were a way to attach a wireless communication between the existing switch and a new 'wireless' switch that would easily install within a hole cut into the drywall? I think there's a real possibility there. Just remember where you got the idea. I could use the money...

Another useless fact...

"The top 1 percent of earners in the United States saw their average household incomes grow a whopping 279 percent from 1979 to 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study (PDF) published this week.

For the lowest earners, what the CBO described as the poorest fifth of America, average incomes grew just 18 percent in that same period. The middle class — comprised of about three-fifths of Americans — saw incomes grow about 40 percent."

Useless? Sure. These facts are published time after time and still the ignorant want to vote for republicans. Remember the 'Trickle down effect' that was promised in exchange for lower taxes on the wealthy? You can see by the numbers above just how much of a trickle we got. And they want to do it again! Unbelievable!

How the Potato Changed the World

From History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine:

I just finished reading this same story while reading 1493, the fascinating book by Charles Mann. I read his book 1491 and simply had to read 1493. Now that I'm close to the end of that book I'm sad that there isn't another book like this on the horizon. What shall I read?

From life on peach eater creek:

Class Warfare:

Wally's discourse is well thought out and should be read. I've said much the same thing before but not as well.

I was that union carpenter that Wally speaks of, back in the 60's...we raised a family and bought a starter house. We owned two cars but only because my wife worked a second job at a drive-in theater. (remember those? She was an assistant manager which meant she had to stay and clean up after everyone else was gone) We had affordable health insurance and never spent any undue time worrying about whether or not we might become sick or injured. We never became rich. I would say that we were solidly middle class, paying our bills, our taxes and CONTRIBUTING to the good of the economy.

We're retired now and still not rich. We're still middle class and contributing...less every day as we see our savings and retirement plan losing value because of corporate greed.

This is the point where my personality type betrays me...I become so incensed that I have a hard time being logical and I end up shouting. So I will end this. But, please read what Wally wrote and think about it

Of course...

It had to be a trick! Mr. Cain couldn't have been serious about his 999 tax plan and now it's revealed that he stole the plan from SimCity and was trying to trick us all into believing that he was somehow smarter than the average rock when it came to financial planning for a nation of over 300 million. Could it be that 999 is simply 666 in disguise? Let's turn Herman upside down and see...

Life goes on

. As it always does. With hiccups. We are solidly in the new house. The garage is slowly losing its load of cardboard boxes but it is quickly becoming apparent that we moved here with far too many 'things' and we may have to refill some of those boxes. For instance; our new kitchen is a delight to look at with roll out shelves in the cupboards and large drawers beneath the range and the oven...but they don't hold as many pots and pans as we own. Something has to give. We are going to have to simplify our kitchen; get back to the basics and let the thrift store benefit. It's the same story in each room. We moved without a real plan as to where we were going to put all of our stuff. When you are house hunting, do you really take along a tape measure and a folder listing all of your possessions and their sizes? I didn't think so...and neither did we.
Back to the kitchen; we do have a gas range for the first time in many years and I'm loving it! But gas ranges do have some drawbacks, one of them being the electronic ignition. I'm from the generation that used a pilot light to light the burners and it was a silent and efficient method. The other day I turned on a burner to heat the water for vegetables and although I heard the clicking of the ignition for a second, I turned the control knob right past it and settled it on 'Low' without looking to see if it had lit the burner. Noise equals ignition in my mind. A few minutes later, closer to five minutes, my wife noted the gas odor. Lucky for us!.A quick airing out and the cooking resumed with a lesson learned.
We finally straightened out all of our phone problems and our DSL service was allowing for uninterrupted streaming of movies from Netflix and Amazon. The internet was spread all through the house...except on my computer. Well, the computer guy left with my PC yesterday and will attempt to cure it. It needs a new hard drive and it will be upgraded to the Windows 7 OS. He sold us on buying a three user license for the Windows 7 so that all of our computers will be upgraded at the same time. And we will have to learn something new...and that's good!
In the meantime, I'm stuck with a (reliable) netbook with a tiny keyboard. I have backspaced and deleted two dozen times so far in his post. But it does connect to the internet.
All of the irritations I just mentioned fade to nothing when I compare them to the joy we feel at being at home in this small city. A small city with a University and all of the attendant benefits that it brings. I can drive to the Art Center. I can go and have coffee with my middle daughter. I can visit my eldest daughter at her nursery and gift shop. We can see our grandchildren more often...well, some of them. The others live not too far away, up in the mountains of Lassen County.  There are so many benefits to this move of ours! We've done 'country' and now we're city folks. Again.

Doctor Grumpy

Sunday reruns:

The good Doctor has said it all! This is good stuff to send to those friends of yours that hate Medicare and think that the private health care folks do so much better at providing that care...