My lovely case manager, Erin, came to work Tuesday morning despite it being Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day in the U.K.!). I felt SRHT would surely have taken the last day of Mardi Gras off, the partying bastards that they are.
In honor of her return to work I made her a nice breakfast. She had her choice of a multitude of delicacies and requested two eggs (over easy), with hash browns and maple sausage. For conformity's sake, I had the same thing. She made some Masala chai (spiced) tea in the kitchen's microwave while texting. My neighbor Daryl and I watched her as we prepared our various breakfasts.
"Distracted microwaving," I said.
"Yup!" Daryl agreed.
"What?" Erin looked up.
"See what I mean... she's in another world," I observed.
"Yes," Daryl said. "That thing could start arching any minute..."
"Blow up..."
"Take our heads clean off..."
"Yes..."
"Then Erin goes back to New Jersey like nothing happened," Daryl concluded.
"Stop it," Erin exclaimed. "I'm not distracted."
Be that as it may, we managed to make it through that breakfast without any explosions, that day and yesterday at the Cooking Club, where we had some more breakfast delights, burritos filled with scrambled eggs (I was put in charge of the scrambling... I don't know why), and your choice of sauteed onions and peppers, crumbled bacon, cheese (cheddar), sour cream, sliced avocados, and salsa. With hash browns and orange juice. Some opted to put their hash browns within the burritos, I did not.
Enough avocado pieces were left over that Paul made some impromptu guacamole. There was a lot of everything left over actually, so much so that I'm going to enjoy some nice left over scrambled eggs and cheese in a little while (6:57AM real time as I write this morning), before I head out to Westwood to the Endocrinology Clinic at the VA, to have my endrocrines filed down.
So, what's in the news.
The economic downturn is continuing to make itself felt, and in most situations the governments response always seems to be the same... stick it to the poor, the least able to afford extra expenses, like the disabled, seniors, and school kids.
Yesterday I received a letter from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation informing me of proposed rate hikes and discontinuance of some forms of service, like the Cityride monthly bus passes that I use, effectively increasing my transportation costs 1,300%, all the way up to $14 a month. Maybe I should buy a moped.
This morning I've read of state medicaid cuts in services, diminishing a program that already under pays doctors so much that many don't see these patients at all, which are mostly low income children, disabled adults, and facilitated living patients.
Premiums for Medicare Advantage are said to be increasing 14%. Politicians are blaming the private insurance companies for the increases, and these companies aren't doing anything to further their causes, Anthem Blue Cross requesting a 39% increase for private health insurance plans in California (I even participated in a protest march Wednesday at Anthem's downtown offices, in my case to highlight the need for insurance reform in general. Anthem, by the way, is a subsidiary of my former employer, Wellpoint), as are many others across the nation. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is wondering why these increases are necessary considering the five largest insurers already experiencing record profits (12.2 billion last year).
One man in Texas got so upset with the IRS yesterday he set his own house on fire, then flew his private plane into an office building which housed some Internal Revenue Service offices.
I prefer marching as a form of protest.
Another guy bulldozed his own home before the banks could foreclose on it, and is considering doing the same for his business as well (which the IRS wants). Much smarter to bulldoze than to set on fire. No arson involved.
Dick Cheney admitted to war crimes on Sunday in an interview with ABC News. "I was a big supporter of water-boarding," he said.
We know water-boarding occurred under the Bush/Cheney watch, and we've prosecuted Japanese prison-camp officers and guards after World War II for the use of water-boarding, and convicted them of torture that clearly violated the rules of war. Seitara Hata was just one Japanese soldier charged with a war crime for water-boarding; Hatara was sentenced to 25 years hard labor.
So what's up Attorney General Holder? Why aren't you investigating the previous administration for clear crimes of war, some that senior officials freely admit to?
So what's up Barack? Why aren't you openly asking for such an investigation?
Who are you guys really working for?
"Change we can believe in," our President's slogan proclaimed. He also said there was only one set of laws, and that no one was above the law.
But clearly this does not seem to be true. It would appear that there is one set of laws for people like me, who will wind up in our nice Twin Towers facility (jail) for stealing as much a pack of gum from a supermarket, and another set of laws, or more correctly, a set of "Stay Out Of Jail Free Cards" for ex-Presidents and their senior officials whose crimes if investigated would lead back to those very ex-Presidents.
Thats not change, that's the same old crap we've seen from the Oval Office since Ford pardoned Nixon. Apparently it's okay to lie yourself into unnecessary wars, torture prisoners, and cause the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians if you're high enough in the American political structure.
I'm sorry Barack, I'm not interested in what you think is "productive," I'm interested in what's right and just. Pure and simple.
The conduct of the wars themselves, 98,000 soldiers still in Iraq, and escalation of forces in Afghanistan, these are continuations of the policies of the Bush administration.
Continued rendition, Guantanamo Bay still open, government secrecy and continued spying on Americans.
WTF?
As I've said in the first post on this subject, I sincerely doubt that Obama is working for the Republicans, but he makes it easy for me to make a case that he does. Too freaking easy.
Granted, we are drawing down in Iraq, and hopefully will be out of there by next year (so why the huge embassy, the largest in the world?), and we've recently made a great deal of progress in Afghanistan as far capturing top members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And finally, finally members of the Senate are pressing Harry Reid to use reconciliation to pass a health care reform bill that includes a public option, and Senator Reid has just signaled through his office that he is willing to go along.
We shall see.
Speaking about Dick.
Our former Vice President made an appearance yesterday at the Conservative Political Action conference (CPAC), and was hailed by this bunch of delusional bastards as a true American hero, rather than the traitorous bastard he really is.
I was glad to hear what he had to say though, which was he thought the Republicans would have a great 2010, and that Barack Obama will be a one term President.
Considering Dick Cheney's track record, that he was wrong about the war in Iraq, about WMD's, and Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda, about torture, and wrong about practically everything else, his two predictions of the future come as a rare comfort to me.
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