I Don't Get It.....

There are DEMOCRATS who are wobbling on cutting Social Security and Medicare?  I thought those kinds of thoughts occur only in tiny little Tea Party minds?

Were these DEMOCRATs and their presidential candidate actually around during this past election?  Or were they so busy raising $$ they forgot what it was for?

Didn't they get the message?  NO CUTS of any kind for Social Security and Medicare.  None.  Zero.  Zip.

Also, while we're at it, SS & Medicare are not ENTITLEMENTS!  We PAID for that shit, folks.  The money came out of our paychecks without fail.  

If they want to get rid of the deficit, they can stop making the stupid billion dollar bombers and sending millions of bucks to Israel every month.  And they can restore taxes for the very rich.

Digby's column today says it very well.  Look it up!

And what's Obama doing meeting with Romney today?  Does he have our permission to do this?  Did Romney start shipping his household stuff to the White House and the Presnit wants to return it??

Even MORE Music....

If you can call it that...I got this tune at work as a promotion from the record company in the early 1980s.  Mine was pink, too. It always makes me laugh.  Happy Monday!

More Mozart...."Prague" symphony (#38)

I asked Cathy if she had ever heard any other symphonies (besides the Jupiter) by Mozart. 

"Oh, sure," she said...."the Prague!" She's even visited Prague. The girl knows everything!

Stu: The Prague symphony is #38. I put that on here, knowing your obsession with numbers! *:0)

Start the week with Mozart!

Mozart wrote 41 symphonies!  I didn't know that.  Piano concertos, operas, yes.  Symphonies, no.  Beethoven was the symphony person I remember hearing the most.  But I read about this last night and checked it out.  I love the conductor especially:  Jeffrey Tate, leading the English Chamber Orchestra performing the Molto Allegro section of Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony, or #41.

I tried earlier this morning to post a bit about the Gaza war, but I couldn't get it to stick.  So...a little music....

Delusional Duck?

Nothing seems to slow down the Repug candidate for v.p.--not even losing the national election (especially in his hometown--first time ever and by 25 points).  He doesn't seem to have the brains to figure out his budget plan was a big part of what turned voters off the national Repug ticket.  His twisted nonsmile has been popping up already on the national media.  Can he just go away?  Nope.  Not when Boner needs him to continue the assault on ordinary voters, lest the rich guys who back them have to pay more taxes than they do now.  If this were the military, we could say "Cherchez la femme!"  but in this case, it's "Cherchez les gros chats!"  Look for the fat cats.

Welcome to Dan Ariely

I found a new blog that's fascinating:  Dan Ariely.  It's now on the right-hand side of XE's home page in Blogs I Love.  Ariely's "short bio" says,

Despite our intentions, why do we so often fail to act in our own best interest? Why do we promise to skip the chocolate cake, only to find ourselves drooling our way into temptation when the dessert tray rolls around? Why do we overvalue things that we’ve worked to put together? What are the forces that influence our behavior? Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University, is dedicated to answering these questions and others in order to help people live more sensible – if not rational–lives.

Via Open Culture, Ariely will offer a course--"A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior"--starting next spring, and I've signed up for it.  It's completely free, if you don't count the 7-10 hours per week required.  His blog notes that he is a "founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight." Boy, that's what I need!  HINDSIGHT!!

One Other Reason Why I'm Glad I Quit FaceBook

Quite apart from the outrage of having my FB account hacked and not being able to fix it with FB's lame instructions and virtually non-existent user support group, there is THIS TO CONSIDER. Thanks to Juan Cole for posting this yesterday.

This being the fact that FB et al. are selling our data to data mining companies. "Our data" include not just our names, addresses, occupations, phone numbers, but also our patterns of usage of the so-called social media, and many other things about our lives we like to consider cherished personal information.

There is no privacy any more unless you want to live in a cave, but c'mon....most of us do not consider our lives are up for sale. If FB or anyone else wants to monetize our data, shouldn't they at least be paying us for it?

Another Interesting Demographic Analysis....

Thanks to Juan Cole for this excellent commentary in response to Bill O'Reilly's lament on white male voters no longer having the majority. My favorite line is the last one:

What has happened is that America is democratizing, and people want a fairer system than dominance by male WASPs.

Demographics.....

Everybody's yakking about the voting patterns by race, gender, age, SES, etc., in Tuesday's election, but nobody's mentioned morality!

Even Fox News's early night exit polls had patterns like
"Regular church attendance 57% Romney; 42% Obama."

(Ha...later analysis shows it varied by religion, though:
Weekly attendance Protestant 70% Romney; 29% Obama.
Weekly attendance Catholic 57% Romney; 34% Obama. (Same as the overall average among church attendance at all.)

 Is anyone else curious to know what all those regular church attenders who voted for Romney think about Romney's wholesale, consistent LYING!!!??? Or what moral law allowed Ohio to turn over the state's voting machine business to a candidate's (Romney's) son's corporation? The whole election was full of this kind of thing.

My idea is that many, many voters in this country (say, 48%?) may not even know clearly what "morality" is--unless it relates to sex, although the Repugs have injected plenty of confusion there, too. Thankfully, the voters in Missouri were smart enough to throw out Akin! Ditto for Indiana voters and Mourdock!

Got Science? November 2012: Watch Out for Wooden Nickels...and Fake Government Reports | Union of Concerned Scientists

OK....it's time to get serious about one item that was not discussed much if at all in the recent presidential campaign:  global warming. 

This link takes you to an article about pseudoscience masquerading as addenda to previous genuine government reports.

Got Science? November 2012: Watch Out for Wooden Nickels...and Fake Government Reports | Union of Concerned Scientists

WE WON!!

Photo courtesy of NARAL Pro-Choice America's Photos

GO VOTE!!

"We can do so much when we are all in this together!"  Barack Obama

Remember your responsibilities to your fellow citizens! 

Something's Rotten in the State.....

So tonight I logged onto a DC website to see what time the polls open tomorrow.

And what catches my eye clearly in the upper right-hand corner is an AD for Romney/Ryan...something like "Virginia needs...."

Right.  Virginia needs a Republican administration like it needs a hole in the head.

Also, why Virginia??  This is DC, last I heard.

But...what about having political ads at polling places?  There's a law against this, and it's been around as long as I've been voting, which is many years.  Shouldn't putting ads on a state's voting information website count, too?

Is this just Google doing this?  Is Google so freaking greedy it doesn't care about following laws and clean elections??  Is this what the gazillionnaires are buying with their  megabucks?

Somebody DO something about this!!  NOW.  The election is in two days.  This stuff has to be cleared off the websites.

Much Better.....

Here's what I should have used to slice the apple:  the food pusher.  And please notice my thumb is MUCH better.  No bleeding for more than 24 hours, no swelling, hardly any pain.  It's sensitive to touch, but not all that bad.  I'm happy I could care for it when I couldn't get to the medical facilities in the area.

This was a storm bringing accidents.  Dear grandson Sam had to go to the dentist for two root canals and temporary caps when he fell and broke his bottom front teeth.  He's doing very well, too. 

The storm is bringing great change, too.  Tomorrow I get my new CI processor activated.  If it works well, I'll call my brother Bob, who has been moved to a hospice.  He has been the rock of the family for years.  And now it's his turn to retire from that responsibility.  God love you, Bob.  Say hi to everyone for us!