Well, by now it is Saturday afternoon. That means hospital or walk-in clinic. So walk-in clinic it is. May need it for the toddler some day so might as well check it out. I get there and find out my insurance doesn’t seem to be working (I’ll save that for another story) which gets me very upset. The doctor only looks at it for a second and confirms that it is Shingles. I am still upset about my insurance. He prescribes an anti-viral. are your sure that is okay, it is rather expensive … you know for not having insurance.  (I wouldn’t call $225 very expensive, but eventually the insurance thing is cleared up and I only have to pay $60, but that is for another story) I am still more upset about the insurance thing. A couple days later the pain really kicks in. Sleep is hard to come by. Every position causes pain. Then a couple days after that things start to subside. Pain relievers seem to work to the point where I get some sleep.

I am lucky the symptoms were not worse. Some cases of Shingles can lead to horrible terrible excruciating pain that stays with you the rest of your life. (also really terrible things if it happens on the face like blindness) It is a fact that the earlier you start taking the anti-viral the less severe the symptoms and it was definitely thanks to my wife that I started taking them on day 2. So this is why you need to listen to your wife, because doing so might just save you from a lot of pain.

Which is to say that an accuser should be required to prove in open court that something is illegal copyright infringement before any action to block or remove the information is undertaken.

Sure, you will get people putting up some illegal material and then take it down some time later and sure the music and movie industries could say the damage is already done, but that is going to happen with or without this kind of law. The music and movie industry already has the ability (and used it) to sue individuals for copyright infringement.

This really is a question of data protection. Once a movie is out there, it is hard to stop it from being spread illegally on the internet. (I might point out that illegal DVD copies sold overseas in a certain country that might start with ‘C’ probably is more significant than online piracy, but I guess that is a different story) Trying to block sites is never going to be fast enough to solve the movie and music industries concerns and it is much more likely to affect many more people who have done nothing wrong.

It is interesting that so many Republicans are behind this law while at the very same time saying that we need less regulation and smaller government – are they all hypocrites or are they all insane with split personalities?

Okay how about this for an answer:

My son’s Grandma makes my son push her cat around in a stroller

Take EPA restrictions on Mercury and other hazardous chemicals being emitted by power plants. It is not a global warming thing or a energy efficiency thing, but purely hey look 10,000 fewer kids a year are going to die if we do this. You would think the entire right-to-life crowd would be all on board. But no. So the government shouldn’t regulate to help save lives except for abortions when the government should regulate like crazy? I wonder if those people understand the meaning of the word hypocrite?

I don’t know, I mean I don’t like big government but I don’t like big business even more. Don’t people see how much scarier big business is? Water contamination, food contamination, smog, what do these all have in common? They are things that all lead to big company profits and which all lead to you needing more health care which then leads to more big company profits and the cycle continues. I just wish I had the conviction to make radical changes, going off the grid, eating organic non-GMO local foods, producing no trash – but I am too lazy and up ahead is another McDonald’s drive through… well maybe not this time, a small change at least.

But think about a person who earns 6 times the average. That rich person will pay over $2 million more in taxes than they will get in benefits. Seem so unfair. So obviously we should lower their taxes. Isn’t that logical? Okay, maybe not.

Lets look at it another way. The tax breaks being pushed would reduce the average U.S. citizens taxes by less than less than $50,000 over their lifetime. On the other hand, it would at the same time reduce their benefits by over twice as much. Makes me wonder why so many average citizens are in favor of it. That same tax break would reduce that rich person’s taxes by over $500,000 – so I completely understand why they are in favor of it. I mean that rich person can always buy expensive air purifiers to make sure they breath nice clean air in their house and buy expensive water purifiers to make sure they drink nice clean water and buy expensive food that doesn’t have salmonella or ecoli or rat and have private security patrolling their gated communities and send their kids to private schools and go to expensive doctors for special treatments and so on. So they don’t really care that much if the government reduces public benefits.

I totally understand people who vote based on their views on abortion, marriage or other such topics. What I don’t understand is how so many of them also got hoodwinked into supporting tax breaks that actually will hurt them over the long run while really helping out the rich.

At least there are people out there like Warren Buffet who are willing to say the truth, that they should be taxed more rather than less.

Well, to all out there, average or rich, I still wish you the best during this holiday season and have a happy new year.

She also made a green-bean casserole from scratch. No can of mushroom soup. No jar of fried onions. She made the mushroom soup. She fried the onions. She works to such a level of perfection.

We also had mashed potatoes, cranberries, rolls, and a sweet-potato pie with whip-cream topping for desert.

Hope you all had a great thanksgiving meal and have much to be thankful for.

Go to Google. Type in ‘direct flights from [city of your choice]‘ and hit enter. Look at the top of the search results. Cool, no? Here we are in Chicago trying to figure out where we can go in the Caribbean and the travel websites were telling us San Juan or St. Thomas. But we didn’t want to go to San Juan or St. Thomas. Did the Google search on a whim and there, down the list, was Grand Cayman Island services by Cayman Airways. One flight a week. Now, I don’t know anything about Grand Cayman or Cayman Airways, but at least now I know about the option. Just another example of how Google is changing things for the better.

Abortion is such a tricky topic. So many views on either side that bring such passion and yes even some extremism. But the recent move to define a ‘person’ to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent thereof smacks of the very same kind of extremism that kills abortion doctors (isn’t it ironic that a movement based on life goes around killing people?). First of all, I really do not understand the rationale behind telling someone who was raped or who suffered incest or who could die from trying to carry to term that they cannot get an abortion if they wanted to. In this day of IVF, that could also mean a lot more dangerous multiple pregnancies too or maybe no more IVF.

But in the end, I think that the debate is pointless. A women has the right to choose. Women have the right to choose when they get pregnant and the right to choose to stay pregnant or have an abortion. It is not a medical issue or a population issue or a religious issue. It is the same kind of right for a women as to vote, to get an education, own property, etc. Even the right to wear a veil if they so choose (I am against the law in France that says otherwise).