Raising the Minimum Wage
As seen in the paper yesterday. A very good question:
Sure. As long as the Left’s agenda includes destroying small businesses, why not just employ the nuclear option, get it over with?
We are screwed. I realize this fellow is being sarcastic, but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover there are those in authority who do believe this is the solution to all our problems.
Napolitano Might Run for Pres In 2016
But that’s not what I wanted to show you. This was what got my attention. As seen on Instapundit.
That’s funny, I don’t care who y’are.
Cataract Surgery Day
Yippee. Leaving for the drive to the hospital in about 50 minutes. I’m feeling a bit apprehensive, but there’s nothing to do but go.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Movie Review: “Olympus Has Fallen”
It’s a movie about terrorists taking control of the White House and seizing the president and most of the cabinet.
If it really happened now, couldn’t we just let the terrorists keep them? They aren’t doing anything useful anyway.
Food Stamps
The title link takes you to this article, which I read this morning. Seems people have taken umbrage to Gov Haley’s assertion that there should be restrictions on what food people can buy with food stamps.
Here’s the thing. I agree with her. The people using food stamps aren’t the ones paying for them. That would be me. And all the other taxpayers. We’re footing the bill so people who get food stamps can use them to offset what they’re paying for groceries. Or whatever they’re buying with them. Hubby, who works for Wal Mart, says people use food stamps to buy all sorts of things you wouldn’t think you could use food stamps for.
I went to DSS’s website and found this, which includes a partial list of what you can buy with food stamps. It’s not exhaustive, just an example, and this is what’s posted there in its entirety:
Any food or food product except for ready-to-eat hot foods
Baby formula, goat’s milk, Pedialyte and Pediasure
Seeds and plants used to grow foods including fruit trees
Fresh produce items from authorized vendors
Meals prepared and delivered by a meal delivery service such as Meals on Wheels
Meals at congregate meal sites such as soup kitchens
Nutritional supplements such as Ensure, Isomil, Boost and Sustacal
Weight loss products such as Dynatrim, Slim Fast, Cambridge Diet and Nutrisystem
Artificial Sweeteners
Distilled Water
Ice
Lactaid caplets and Lactaid milk
Cooking Sprays, such as Never Stik and Pam
Prepared cold sandwiches or salads that will not be eaten in the store
Hubby says he sees people all the time using their food stamps to buy candy and sodas. While carrying the latest iPhone, sporting expensive manicures, hair dressed and styled professionally, wearing $200 shoes, festooned with bling.
Priorities, I guess.
Anyway, here’s my take on it. If I’m paying for your food stamps, you bet I get to tell you what you can buy with them. Or at least my elected government officials and their offices can tell you what you can buy with them. And you don’t need sodas or candy. Your kids need milk, and fruits and vegetables, and protein. So do their parents.
What a society we’ve got.
Pre-Cataract Surgery Observations
I was told during my appointment on the 13th that I had to stop taking certain pills, I expect because they have an effect on blood clotting. Vitamin E and fish oil had to be stopped. I also take feverfew (for migraines) and ginkgo-biloba (so I can remember where I live), and both of those also affect blood clotting.
In the days since I’ve stopped taking those 4 things, I’ve noticed my eczema is, weirdly enough, clearing up. Might be a coincidence, but it’s still pretty cold and usually that keeps it bothersome. I’ve had a patch about two inches square on the palm of my right hand for a few months, in addition to the usual places on my knuckles and joints, where the skin has been splitting with distressing regularity. And in the past week, it’s getting better. I don’t know what I was taking that might have been exacerbating it, but if I could figure it out I might not take it anymore.
On the minus side, the pain I pretty much always feel is worse. Left hip, both shoulders, lower back. All worse. I’ve been taking Tylenol (can’t take Motrin or aspirin or Aleve until after the surgery). It doesn’t seem to help much.
I went to Wal Mart today to talk to the folks in the Vision Center about my glasses. It occurred to me that once I can take the eye patch off, the correction in the right lens will be a problem. I don’t know if I’ll need correction, though, and won’t until I can take the patch off. I expect the doc will want to test me, but there’s going to be a period of time when I can’t wear my glasses as they are without tipping over or running into things or something. And driving? Yikes. The nice lady at the Vision Center said they could certainly put in a plain lens, but it would have to be ordered and would take 7 to 10 days to arrive. I could order it now, but if I need correction for reading, which is highly likely, what kind of correction will I need? Oy vey.
Life is fun. I’ll be very glad when all of this is over.
And As to My Boss’ Sense of Humor
As previously mentioned — he doesn’t have a mean streak. What he’s got is a sense of humor that might best be described as bizarre. I can’t read him at all, it’s disturbing. Oh, well. Things could be worse. And have been.
Cataract Surgery
Next Tuesday. March 26th. Right eye first. Seems my left eye is one line on the eye chart short of being ready, so the nice tech at the office told me the next time they check the vision in that eye, don’t try so hard.
The plan is to install (if that’s the right word) a standard artificial lens, as Tricare won’t pay for anything else. And because I have astigmatism, and Tricare won’t pay for the fancy lens to deal with that, one alternative is for the surgeon to make incisions in my eye that will cause the eye to go to a more normal shape. Might not eliminate the astigmatism, but it will help. And it’s not a fancy lens that might have to be replaced. I do have to pay for those incisions, though, as Tricare won’t. $400 per eye. And the healing process will take a bit longer.
I wonder if I’ll have to wear an eye patch. I bought a bandanna at Wal Mart the other day, so I can do a pirate thing at least for that first day back. I couldn’t find a parrot, though. Or a hook. Or a peg leg. I don’t have a sword. I do have a machete, but walking around the church carrying a machete might send the wrong message.
I am looking forward to being able to see, and read music. That will be stupendous.
Overheard At the Office
Working in a church is fun. Yesterday one of the junior pastors was talking about a statement he’d wanted to make in the sermon he gave last Sunday (the senior pastor was out of town), but he was afraid a video of it would end up on YouTube. What he’d wanted to say:
“Jesus rose from the dead. You can get up and come to an 8:30 a.m. service.”
I’m sorry he didn’t say it, it would have been hysterical. We do record the sermons, though, for rebroadcast, so… yeah, it would have ended up on YouTube.
He did an excellent job, by the way. Especially given that one of the features of the service, referred to as the “Pastor’s Minute” and is used to get information out to the congregation, ran 21 minutes. The folks who had the floor for that part of it last Sunday seemed disinclined to be brief. He’d had to defuse the tension a bit when they finally, finally decided they were done talking.
I should also mention that some days before this conversation, he was discussing with the two ladies who work in the main part of the office his daughter’s excretory issues (only a few weeks old and she’s having consistent “blow-outs” — his phraseology) and the relative merits of Target store brand diapers. I’m pretty sure I’m glad we opted for dogs and cats.
Dennis Rodman Is an Idiot
That’s all.
I suppose he thinks he and Kim Jong-Un are buds now. If he’s capable of thought, which I doubt. Never mind all those North Korean citizens being starved and tortured in concentration camps. I was blipping around the house a couple days ago, Hubby had ESPN on and there was either a broadcast, rebroadcast or excerpt from his interview with George Stephanopoulos, and I heard him say this:
“He’s a good guy to me. As a person to person, he’s my friend. I don’t condone what he does.”
It takes a special kind of moral bankruptcy to compartmentalize evil of that magnitude with, “I don’t condone what he does.”
I spent a year in Korea and know something (albeit not a lot) about Korean culture. They regard people like Rodman as freaks, with his piercings and tattoos and weird sartorial choices. So he’s not anyone they respect. He’s amusing, and they consider him pathetic and sub-human.
Example — A very good friend of mine some years ago adopted two Korean babies. They weren’t orphans. Their parents put them in an orphanage because they were born with defects. The boy was missing one leg below the knee, and the girl had, if I remember correctly, a club foot. Because these babies didn’t meet the Korean culture standard of perfection, they were discarded.
Rodman isn’t anyone they respect. He’s the equivalent of the court jester, without the class. Article at the title link, if you can stand it.
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