Thursday, August 30, 2012
Thoughts on the RNC Convention so far
I'm a heavy channel-surfer not one of those political nerds like Hannity who can name all the various Congresspeople on Jeopardy so what you're gonna get is my take on various snippets more to my liking like KY Senator Rand Paul's speech which was a good one even if he did milk Obama's "you didn't build that" remarks a little too much. Condi Rice I thought was excellent, superb even especially in her comments on our entitlement and grievance culture and I saw John McCain on the floor telling the PBS interviewer that yeah there needs to be more of a discussion on Obama's foreign policy here. I'm mainly sampling PBS' Newshour coverage beginning around 7 with Mark Shields and David Brooks and their generic political commentary and various guests like Newt and Rick Santorum and pollster Andy Kohut who said in his research some of the negative words folks used to describe Paul Ryan were "extremist" and "scary." Funny but I tend to agree with soapster here, Ryan ain't no real constitutionalist radical he merely wants to give the federal budget a haircut, wants to streamline Medicare and Medicaid not get rid of them entirely. He's not exactly gonna slay Leviathan but I like him more than soapster does what can I say? Let's see what else? Santorum talked movingly about his disabled daughter Bella probably offensive only to a pro-choicer and yeah the RNC paid homage to none other than Ron Paul but once they started showing that film about Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. I reflexively changed the remote to Sanford and Son. I don't know how you can watch this stuff gavel-to-gavel, I guess you have to if you wanna churn out some nerdy blog. They keep saying Romney has to open up to the country more as a person, discuss his Mormonism a little and Ann has already laid the groundwork with her charm offensive but that's the wisdom anyway. The upcoming DNC Convention in September? that's gonna take a cast-iron stomach to sit through but if I'm to be taken seriously as a blogger than I have to sample at least. My guess is that Obama is not gonna be talking alot about Bashar al-Assad even though his militias are killing women and children on an almost daily basis now. That's not what they mean by a War on Women and it's gonna be kinda weird to see Dolan give the blessing at that thing:)
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I agree Z-man, only a real junkie
ReplyDeletecould watch a whole convention. My first taste was the 1948 GOP one:
we were vacationing at a resort
cabin in N Wisconsin and there was no fishing because of the thunderstorm. So we sat and listened to one of those old wooden radios. Only the names have changed in the process..we heard
Thomas Dewey beat out Harold Stassen and General Douglas MacArthur. Robert Taft and Earl
Warren continued fighting until
the Dewey people let him run as
vice president. (Actually they
were more businesslike and less
flashy in those days)
...you ever seen a wooden radio?
Loved the Clint Eastwood segment, .. His message was spot on!
ReplyDeleteYou watched much more than I did, I caught the end of the night speeches, but I commend you for being willing to watch some of the DNC one, I don't think my stomach would handle it well.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I think, not only will Obama be responding directly to many of the themes raised at the GOP Convention he's going to co-opt some of those themes. I mean who can be against industry and self-reliance and taking risks and the frontier spirit and taking responsibility etc. etc. It's hard to argue against those things on the level of values alone. The Dems are gonna echo those themes and values and say we're better at 'em and I wouldn't even be surprised if they throw in a good dose of the Creator too. Even if you don't agree with them you have to say the Republicans struck all the right notes.
ReplyDeleteI thought Dirty Harry was good and my favorite line was when he said when Obama was elected everyone was crying, Oprah was crying but the empty chair thing didn't work for me. Fla. Senator Marco Rubio's speech was so good and rather long it annoyed me in the sense that he was supposed to be introducing Romney not eclipsing him with his own well-delivered speech. It's like after that speech how can Romney be as good?
ReplyDeleteI think Romney did an overall good job giving us a personal glimpse into where he came from, as did his wife, Ann. It's refreshing to see a pro-American person wanting to be our President.
ReplyDeleteYup... nothing says 'pro-America' like putting your money in tax havens like Cayman and buying factories in China while managing a company that eliminated thousands of American jobs.
ReplyDeleteGo Romney, red white and blue all the way! /sarcasm
"refreshing to see a pro-American person" ..must have missed him
ReplyDeletewhen I was serving in uniform.
Z-man, you keep your finger on
ReplyDeletecurrent culture: what's up with
more viewers watching 'Honey Boo Boo' than the convention?
Well for starters Saty Romney's Bain Capital helped get Staples off the ground and other places like Sports Authority of whom you may have heard. By my math that's adding jobs. Who's Honey Boo Boo BB? As for the RNC seems Eastwood got more press than Romney, Ebert even called him sad and pathetic. For the life of me I don't know why he went with the empty chair thing, it wasn't even funny.
ReplyDeleteAnd when we figure in all the jobs that got lost when they closed factories, and when we figure in the jobs they sent overseas to those factories in China, and when we figure in all the tax revenue that wasn't considered because it's in tax havens.... right, that's pro-American all the way.
ReplyDeleteWho's Honey boo-boo ? ..the latest in a line of what the business terms 'redneck
ReplyDeleteTV'. Quite popular apparently. Speaking of TV, Z-Man, even out here in the frontier wilderness we get EWTN, the Catholic channel. Sad to say, one of the progams is
Fr. Brian Mullady, OP, a brilliant
Dominican, who looks exactly like a kid I knew in Jr. High that fenced stolen packs of cigarettes.
Most unfortunate...
Jobs are going overseas while who is our President? Oh yeah, Obama is. And his oppressive corporate tax rates and mandated health insurances are driving many companies overseas. Meanwhile, he is apologizing all over the place for American Exceptionalism. That is disgraceful, and un-American.
ReplyDeleteFeb 22 2012:
ReplyDeleteThe Obama administration will propose today reducing the U.S. corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent along with removing tax breaks for companies to help offset lost revenue, an administration official said.
The plan would eliminate dozens of tax breaks and reshape the current manufacturing deduction to reduce the tax rate on manufacturing to 25 percent, according to the official, who outlined the proposal on condition of anonymity because it hadn’t been released. The restructured tax code would still include incentives for research and development and renewable energy.
_______________________
Of course, the GOP ensured this went nowhere. But not for lack of trying on the President's part.
Beth, for Christmas sake, do your homework, or at least shut off Beck for a while.
Homework?
ReplyDeleteLike actual charts ?
Like actualfacts ?
Like how Bush's 'trickle down' added 1 million jobs in 8 years,
while Obama, in spite of stonewalling by the GOP house, added overthree million ?
..naw homework is too hard, best to go with vague, insubstantial
uninformed opinion....
Well Clint Eastwood made my day!
ReplyDeleteIn fact I'm thoroughly convinced that Clint Eastwood's empty chair routine got under Jugears' skin more than anything the republicans have done or said in the last 4 years. The hypocritical left has been mocking sitting Republican Presidents since Nixon.
How fast people forget when Whoopi Goldberg gave that speech at a fund-raiser for John Kerry and made those off-color sexual synonyms for President George W. Bush's last name. grabbing her crotch and comparing her genitals to President Bush.
You lily livered liberals were laughing our heads off. Waaa happened? Loose your sense of humor?
Did Whoopi Goldberg care about the “ disrespect” to our President when she was doing it to Pres. Bush? No, she was participating in it.
Where was the outcry then Mr. and Mrs. Liberal?
I wonder who would win in a contest of Most Obnoxious, Joy Behar or Whoopi Goldberg.
And I guess the filth and slander they piled on Sarah Palin, and her family was all in good fun?
Wow, Radical's comment is on a SECOND thread and doesn't add any more to the discussion than it did on the first one!
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you do your homework?
ReplyDeleteFrom the Wall Street Journal:
The Obama administration will propose lowering the top income-tax rate for corporations to 28% from 35% but would raise overall tax revenue by eliminating dozens of popular deductions in an effort to restructure the corporate tax code.
Not to mention Obamacare which is a tax increase also. Plus he wants more regulations, and you wonder why jobs are going overseas.
ReplyDeleteHow do you account for the high unemployment BB if he added that many jobs?
ReplyDeleteSo are you saying, Beth, that the GOP refused to cut taxes by 7% (that would apply to ALL companies) because of eliminating some deductions (that would only apply to CERTAIN companies)?
ReplyDeleteWow. You'd think they'd be all for cutting taxes.
Of course, you DO realize that even with the tax rate the way it is, many companies are paying as low as 9%....
...you DID know that, didn't you? Of course you did.
You did your homework.
Redneck TV like all those shows showing hillbillies catching channel cats with their bare hands? I'm not in a good mood right now, just got caught in a traffic jam on the Saw Mill, happening alot there lately, dunno what's going on and my bowels were gonna explode. I'm trying to make sense of Life lately, it's like it's too scripted. Bad karma?
ReplyDeleteHey, why is it that Fox ("the family channel") shows all those cartoons that are SO not family oriented? Unless you think Stewie is a good role model for kids. And 2 1/2 Men? At 7PM? I must be getting old... it makes me cringe thinking of all the second graders whose bedtime isn't until 8.
ReplyDeleteMy friend who is a conservative btw says Rupert Murdoch is behind the dumbing down of America. What is it Family Guy? and Stewie the dog was dating some woman, in my book that's bestiality. 2 1/2 Men, I remember one episode where they were all sitting around and one of the actors btw was the big guy from the Green Mile and anyway they were all rapping about when they got their first orals. Honest to God is there some reason basic to the Republic why the f'ng Simpsons are still on???
ReplyDeleteBack in the late 80's/90 I was a professional radio DJ. (My last job was at K104!!) Of course there were lots of things we couldn't say. When we got satellite radio I was horrified at the way the DJs cuss. (I still am horrified by it.) I just don't understand how Fox calls itself a family channel and has this stuff on tv.
ReplyDeleteWe watch MeTv instead.
Best thing cartoonwise Fox had was King of the Hill, a kind of gentle humor. I gave New Girl with Zooey Deschanel (love the name) a chance when it first came out 'cause of all the hype but it's mostly stuff about getting laid which to me shows inferior writing. The King of Queens only occasionally had a sexual-type episode 'cause they had so much better material to fall back on but of course that wasn't Fox.
ReplyDeleteI have always had a serious crush on Kevin James. There's something about him.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about King of Queens is you're channel-surfing and you come upon an episode and you say you're not gonna watch it but you wind up watching the whole thing. That's Honeymooners caliber.
ReplyDeleteI just love him.. he's so cute in a guy next door kind of way.
ReplyDeleteScott likes the girl who plays his wife because 'she has attitude'.
I pointed out that he doesn't particularly like 'attitude' in me.
His response, "She's not MY wife."
I like her too, must be a guy thing. I think she's a good actress and it's like you're watching a slice of life.
ReplyDeleteWe were talking a bit further about attitude.
ReplyDeleteHe said: "I haven't seen attitude out of you since 1996 and I don't expect to see any in the near future."
I am such a good girl.
You know having a 'tude in the chefing world can get you fired. Chefs have told me stories of guys getting fired for simply answering the head chef's questions with another question. Up at the Culinary Institute of America past Poughkeepsie on Rte. 9 (I always hate to have to spell that out but the ignorant might think the CIA has a chefing program) one guy told me the instructor and they can yell got so mad at a student he shouted "lose the 'tude!"
ReplyDeleteWhen I was up in NY the reunion was in Rhinecliff and I think we drove right past the CIA on 9 to get there.
ReplyDeleteI guess in nursing or in any field really you earn the right to have an attitude.
I was a real creampuff when I first started charge and I learned real fast that the whole world was going to leave footprints all over me if I didn't change my ways. Then when I was running the floor complete I actually had to learn to be somewhat aggressive because you really had to defend your floor to make sure you weren't being dumped on or given things you couldn't handle. You just really had to step up and go toe to toe with people-with Admitting, with the ER, with other floors, with residents. Otherwise your whole floor was going to suffer.
So I have a work persona (which has been of necessity MUCH toned down since I've been in this job) and I'm me at home, and the only time the twain might meet is if he gets sick or hurt. And he always hates that (especially when I turn out to be right! lol)
Back to chefing, today I'm going to run the zucchini through the mandoline and make fettucine out of it. Very lightly steamed and dressed with olive oil, lemon, a little oregano and some parmesan.
ReplyDeleteI made that one up too. :)
Oh, and I went to Li Ming's and got a boatload of shirataki (the yam kind AND the tofu kind) noodles, so expect them to be on the menu much in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI too have a work persona and people don't seem to get it. "You're so quiet today" "well I have alot of work to do, nothing personal" "Why don't you take a break?" "Because I have a shitload of work to do and if I take a break..." and my favorite "don't work too hard" like how is that even possible?
ReplyDeleteAbout breaks.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in nursing school you know you're all hysterical all the time and like insanely fixated on everything and you just can't tear yourself away long enough to pee (which is funny because when you're in school is really the only time you actually have a chance to pee, once you graduate you train yourself into a neurogenic bladder).... my nursing instructor would come to us at 9 and say, cmon, time for coffee, and we'd be like oh NO can't do it, can't go, got a million things to do.. and she'd ask us if we were doing brain surgery.
There was a doctor, I think his name was Sattler, at New Hanover, and he really was a brain surgeon, and he left the patient on the table and went and got him a sandwich, right in the middle of the surgery.
Obviously he lost his license and everything, but her point was that nothing we were doing was important as brain surgery and surely it could wait five minutes for us to take care of ourselves.
Of course the importance of this lesson was lost on me for an entire career, until I had students under me earlier this year and I made them go take a break, with the same explanation.
It's important to take care of yourself. You get too tired and slip and cut your finger off, well, you're outa work til they can sew it back on. Maybe if you had taken a minute to breathe, hit up the Red Bull, you'd be okay.
Just sayin.
And just because that story is SO CRAZY it sounds like either me or my nursing instructor made it up:
ReplyDeletehttp://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-07-30/features/9507300104_1_dr-raymond-sattler-nurse-dear-ann-landers
You can't make that shit up.
Speaking of Red Bull a chef told he gets rockin' when he downs a Red Bull w/a couple of Advil and then a cup of coffee. Helps him work better but then again when you're cracking jokes at 7 in the morning and everyone else is just waking up you get on people's nerves.
ReplyDeleteHe needs to watch that daily Advil stuff.
ReplyDeleteThat's a fantastic way to get a gastric bleed.
No shit.
Trouble is they make that stuff look like M&M's. Look chefs do all kinds of things but'cha wanna know something? I'd rather go through the day having a natural tired and deal with it. I think taking too many sleeping pills is bad too, look what happened to Tom Brokaw.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah. I am dead set against these 'gummy' vitamins. That's how kids get overdosed on things like iron. It's not good. Medicine should taste like shit. All of mine do :(
ReplyDeleteLately I've been hitting up the 5 hour energy type products. They make some that are cheaper that have the same amount of stuff. I'm not taking them so much for the energy part of it (I live on amphetamines...B12 is not gonna give me a rush) but because of the B12. BB showed me the links between B12 deficiency and pancreatitis and this is a pretty easy way to get a good size hit of it. And if it helps with metabolism or whatever, well, bully for that.
When I was on 8North I used to have my pre-report self-medication regime, which was basically 2 tylenol, 2 aspirin and a cup of coffee. I found out later on down the road that at one time there was a patent medication that combined those three things. Caffiene potentiates-that's why Excedrin has caffiene in it. Anyway it was part of my breakfast of champions when I worked 11-7.
These days I have to be real careful with anything that could cause a bleed. I think you're right in this: too much of any kind of med or whatever is basically asking for trouble.
"Medicine should taste like shit."
ReplyDelete& that was the beauty of Kaopectate back in the day until they started minting up the stuff. Next they'll have an espresso Kaopectate. One thing leads to another, gave up drinking straight milk for awhile 'cause of possible lactose-intolerance and then the doc told me I had a Vitamin D deficiency so now I take a daily supplement. Aspirin the wonder drug and it is but it also thins the blood and maybe makes it harder to clot. As you say risk/bennie ratio is the way to go.
Lactose intolerance. I switched to lactose free milk just because it keeps longer.
ReplyDeleteGoat milk kind of an acquired taste. Had one brand at Mrs. Green's the health food store and it had that grassy taste like you were in the meadow, not horrible but personally I think it all comes down to job stress. Every morning and the pre-work jitters and my friend says we should send the laundry bill to the company.
ReplyDeleteI like chevre cheese but I've never had goats milk.
ReplyDeleteThere are all kinds of huge evolutionary arguments based on lactose intolerance and quite honestly I think it's all nonsense in one way or another. I would die without dairy products, I eat yogurt 7 days a week and more cheese, omg I keep the cheese industry running. I have never had kefir but I would like to try.
I've been wondering about kefir myself. I'll try anything once and so I don't seem to care for chopped chicken liver. About things being nonsense I'm not sold on Restless Legs Syndrome and I think the real problem here is the need to have a problem.
ReplyDeleteOooh, let me tell you about restless legs.
ReplyDeleteI get it as a side effect from the Seroquel every time I have a dose increase.
It's horrible. I've also heard it's related to B12 and to potassium, but I can definitively state that every time we've gone up on the dosage, I have a serious issue with it and it lasts about a week and then tends to subside.
The first time I thought it was my imagination, but the second time around I had a replicable result, so I had to go with it.
Restless legs, why not take up dancing? Put it to good use.
ReplyDeleteI do dance. But not when I'm trying to go to sleep.
ReplyDeleteYou got my curiosity up. What is the neurogenic bladder?
ReplyDeleteWiki:
ReplyDeleteNeurogenic bladder refers to dysfunction of the urinary bladder due to disease of the central nervous system or peripheral nerves involved in the control of micturition (urination).
Neurogenic bladder is often associated with spinal cord diseases (such as Syringomyelia/Hydromyelia), injuries, and neural tube defects including spina bifida. It may also be caused by brain tumors and other diseases of the brain, and by peripheral nerve diseases. It is a common complication of major surgery in the pelvis, such as for removal of sacrococcygeal teratoma and other tumors.
Neurogenic bladder usually causes difficulty or full inability to pass urine without use of a catheter or other method.
____________________________
If you spend a career going literally 14-16 hours without peeing, you're going to end up with a neurogenic bladder. You might not be at a point where you need to self-cath but you WILL be at a point where 'urinary retention' finds its way onto your diagnosis list.
And at a point where you fight with the nurse in the hospital who wants to put a Foley in you because you've gone 16 hours without peeing and the bladder scanner is saying you have 950cc in there. And the nurse wins.
Yep. It's like that.