I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

AnnNYC

Blue -- glad you're on the strong antibiotics for your hand -- hope it's being looked at by a doc regularly.  Hand infections are so scary -- well I guess we shouldn't tell all our scary hand infection stories, just like when we get dx'd with BC it's a drag when people tell all their scary stories ("my aunt, my neighbor...") -- but please err on the side of caution and get back to the doc if it doesn't keep steadily improving!  If it starts to feel even a little worse, don't wait to see if it reverses course -- please!   (((((((((((((((Blue))))))))))))))

1Athena1

konakat

Oh Blue!  Yuck and scary!  I hope the spider met his untimely demise and isn't looking for his next meal.  Hold out for local strawberries -- picked ripe and no critters.

crazy4carrots

FLORIDA: At a Tea Party rally last month, Gov. Rick Scott (R) unveiled his budget, telling supporters he would make the state the most “fiscally conservative” in the nation. The budget would slash corporate income and property taxes, lay off 6,700 state employees, cut education funding by $4.8 billion, and cut Medicaid by almost $4 billion.

Edited to add:  Slashing property taxes will warm the hearts of all the Canadian snowbirds who have bought Florida properties at bargain-basement prices, and  with the Cdn dollar above par.  But laying off 6,700 employees and decimating the education and medicaid budgets won't do much for the locals.  Isn't Scott the guy who defrauded Medicare and ended up having to pay 600 million in fines?  How does a crook get elected?

Blue - take care of that hand!

AnneW

What else does FL have for revenue besides property taxes? You can slash lots of stuff, but in the end, you still need to make money (and I don't mean by printing more.) No one seems to be addressing the need for revenue. They think cuts will suffice.

All the "rich morons" out there need to pony up and pay more in taxes than I do. They won't do it voluntarily...

Medigal

Blue:  So sorry to hear about your hand problem.  Like myself, I notice you don't have your diagnosis listed.  However, if you had any positive nodes especially on the side you got bitten on, I hope you are making sure it does not get infected.  I wear a Medi-Alert bracelet on my "positive" arm to make sure it is protected and a reminder to me to keep it protected.  You probably know more about this than I do, but just a reminder to you, in case it skipped your mine.  Best of luck with caring for that bite.

1Athena1

The idiocy of Florida's governor and others like him shows you that morons (and crooks) can make it very far in life.

The Tea Party politicans are doing what Karl Rove and other neocons had been advocating for years and years: shrink government and starve the beast so that it will be unable to provide basic services and small government will prevail. In fact, the first cynical step in the direction we are seeing today was during the Bush years when the treasury was starved by means of tax breaks and wars of choice. The upshot of this is that government became so crippled that it was unable to assist the poor and needy. Hurricane Katrina and the disastrous federal response marked the beginning of the nation finally realizing how incompetent Bush was (some of us already knew that, but....). It also highlighted how morally bankrupt the neocon ideology was.

Now, dressed up as the Tea Party, some of the same people are using the deficits their ideological predecessors created as an excuse to slash government. And their followers still think it is all about "We the People" I suppose it all depends on your definition of "People."

Wait until we have a tsunami or other disaster, God forbid. If it happens after the cuts proposed in Florida and the Mid West, we will have to ask Somalia and Sri Lanka for help.

crazy4carrots

I've heard TPers and others say that government should be run like a business (I think Scott was also quoted as saying that).  Now, if a business fails, it creates an opportunity for another business or businesses to move in.  Not so with government -- unless, of course, what the TPers really want is for the end of democracy and the beginning of plutocracy (rule by the rich).  The dwindling middle class is perhaps a good clue.....

bluedahlia

Thank you friends.  THe hand is feeling much better.  I'm looking for streaks and know it's rush to the hospital if that happens.  So far so good.  My onc. took a look at it today and it looked like it was healing to him.

1Athena1

I think the diehards in the Tea Party (and I include Rand Paul) wouldn't mind seeing an end to the federal system except to control defense, and have each state govern itself. Rather like the EU.

What they don't realize is that most of the poor and dispossessed would be in their own states. They could always go back to planting cotton for subsistence, I suppose. They would probably try to impose a flat tax and find themselves unable to enforce non payment by about 60 percent of the population. They would soon find that since the rich, liberal states are feeding the poor red states (including Paul's own Kentucky), they might have to start being nice to those "blue" people - especially those in California, the world's sixth largest economy. In fact, they could easily wind up as vassal states to the liberals like New York and California. (Texas would probably have a civil war fought between those who want to go back to Mexico and those who don't want to go anywhere.)

annettek

Blue- do me a favor- if there is any red surrounding the bite - draw a light circle in pen (or have someone else do it for you_ around it....this is quicker indicator than streaks if the circle of red spreads...especially true for the recluse, or other dangerous spideys out there. We have a good friend and client wh ois infectious disease specialist...he called my recluse bite a few years back when another doc said all ok hahahaha...i got bit the other day in back of my arm...almost all cleared up now...hope you continue to heal quickly.

annettek

oh yeah- got my new *twins* in today....I think a boy and a girl as doc used alloderm at intitial surgery and no telling if there was some male tissue in there...so I defer our of fairness and will call them Ike and Tina

Really zoned on vicodin- but surgery went well...go to see ps tomorrow to take a peek on how everyone is doing. Glad to be home instead of hospital. One more step in BC journey...

bluedahlia

Thanks for the tip annette! Dr. did that yesterday and most of it has washed off. It doesn't look like it has spread and is definitely not as red. Hope Ike and Tina don't give you too much pain.

annettek

not feeling much pain - for if there is some- the vicodin makes me not care:) gonna go sleep

iodine

Annette, congrats on the "twins" and may they have a more loving and long term relationship than the originals of those names. 

3monstmama

agree with annettek about drawing the circle---our pediatrician told us to do that with the monsters bites and the like.

annettek feel better and don't skimp on the meds.  Sleep is good!

bluedahlia

Have a good rest!

1Athena1

Congratulations annettek! One more step indeed. I hope you are happy with the results. Did you get drains? That was the only thing I really hated about all the surgeries.

bluedahlia

I guess things COULDN'T be worse in Japan!

crazy4carrots

Blue, every time I turn on the news, the reports get worse and worse.  It seems the Japanese are not getting the truth from their government -- the truth is too difficult to comprehend.

1Athena1

It's so strange how they are being told to keep calm. In the US, or the West, we would hear a very different message. Don't know if one thing is better than the other. The Japanese are probably in shock.

Blue, I am glad things are under control with your hand. Wish I could give as good a health report. Never a dull day in my tiny corner of the planet. Calm would be nice.

1Athena1

Oh, BTW, dinner?? Lindasa - Barbara, tell us what you had. Chicken here and nothing else, I'm afraid. :-) Oh, and a gin & tonic.

lassie11

I'm wondering about the conflict in information. Why should we disbelieve the Japanese on issues in their own country and believe an American "expert" who is not there?

bluedahlia

Now this is loyalty!  The good news is they were rescued.

iodine

We spent a year in Korea.  From our experience, the Asian culture seems to want to never say anything you wouldn't want to hear.  We had a constant experience of "oh, yes, it will be ready next week"---for 3 months.  Or: your dress will be fine from the dry cleaners, when after 6 weeks we discovered that it had be ruined and they didn't want to give bad news.  It was also a custom to tell one that something Could be done, but in fact, could not.  It's a very different approach to things than Western culture is used to. 

DH and I have been wondering about the transparency of the reports from the Japanese gov't. as this awful tragedy has progressed.  So, for once, maybe our gov't has a strong idea of what may actually be happening and not being fully reported.  I'd say if they couldn't even dump water on the site with choppers due to high emissions, something is definately not right.  the chopper would be over the site for such a brief time as to cause no injury to the personnel, so to call something like that off is strange.

On the side of the Japanese gov't, with the intenese population concentrations in that small island, preventing panic until you have a good plan in order may be good planning.  And they really don't seem to have a firm plan yet.  They are not accepting many of the rescue offers as yet---until they have a good plan in place, according to the "news". 

AnnNYC

Lassie and Athena, I think the main source of "downplaying" in Japan is TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co), operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant. 

A friend of mine living in northeast Tokyo posted on FB today that "TEPCO has a long and ugly history of lying to the public, and I don't trust them one whit."  My friend, his wife and their 10-year-old daughter are relocating to the southwest of Japan for a few days, to a town with shelter set up for families with children.

Anyway, I think the Prime Minister (and even the Emperor!) are very concerned about the situation -- but TEPCO has been stonewalling everyone, even the government.
[see http://www.npr.org/2011/03/16/134573800/nuclear-information-gap-spreads-doubt-fear]

And the Emperor's unusual live TV appeal asking people "not to give up" doesn't sound like he's saying there's no cause for alarm -- I think it's a sign that there's cause for alarm that the Emperor felt the need to make a statement: 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3473214/Japans-Emperor-Akihito-emerges-in-appeal.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News

Japan's Emperor Akihito made a made a rare appearance live on TV yesterday - to beg his people not to give up.

TV stations interrupted programmes to show him describing the crisis facing the nation as "unprecedented in scale".

The 77-year-old - who is deeply respected and symbolic in Japan but rarely seen - revealed he was "deeply worried" by the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

1Athena1

I wager that the Japanese are in utter shock and disbelief. I have never been to Japan, but reaction to these things is very cultural. iodine's experience is one that I have had in the west but in developing countries, where the custom is to never disappoint (therefore, "yes, we will have it ready for you tomorrow" and tomorrow never comes - not even three months later) even though in politics, it is to kill or rob.

The situation with the power company reminds me of ours with BP during the Deep Water Horizon crisis. In countries like the US and Japan is it scary how powerful corporations have become. The are usually the only ones with the technology and know-how to even try to contain a crisis like this. Our government eventually did what Ken Salazar got into trouble for saying: the administration put its boot on the neck of BP. Yet even with that, even with Steven Chu having technical discussions with BP officials, etc... our government was rather powerless to do anything other than act like a horsewhipper.

I find it scary when our country is in crisis and the government does not have the know-how to protect its people but must rely on a private entity with moral obligations to no one except for shareholders strewn about throughout the world. 

iodine, your experiences remind me of the shooting down of the Korean airliner in the early 80s by Russia. In the stories that emerged after the incident (if my memory serves me correctly) one Korean pilot testified that he knew the plane his colleague was piloting was off, that it was where it shouldn't be, but that he would never question a colleague's judgement. As so he said nothing, and so the Russians shot down the plane.

Not that we here in the US have anything to brag about. On the one hand, I find it refreshing that in this country we feel freer to open our big mouths and tell the government what we think when disaster strikes; on the other, perhaps the lack of open debate in Japan right now is a sign of better respect, more wisdom and national solidarity, and also a sign that criticizing isan't going to help? We might cope better, but not without a fistfight or three. That rich, wonderful country is perhaps unprepared for this disaster or for speedy action or for change but, at this moment, one can only weep for it.

Japan is one place I have always wanted to visit and I hope I do some time in the future.

BarbaraA

Athena, I truly hope you will have that opportunity to visit Japan. It is just so mind boggling.

Dinner was Mac and cheese and brussels. Followed by So Decadent Mint Chip cocnut milk ice cream. Shoulda skipped the mac and cheese and headed straight for the ice cream.

1Athena1

My father always had wonderful stories about Japan, and he bought a gorgeous porcelain tea set from there that my mother still has.

But speaking of the official attitude towards the crisis, here is today's NYT article:

TOKYO - With all the euphemistic language on display from officials handling Japan's nuclear crisis, one commodity has been in short supply: information.

When an explosion shook one of many stricken reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday, power company officials initially offered a typically opaque, and understated, explanation.

"A big sound and white smoke" were recorded near Reactor No. 1, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power, announced in a curt memo. The matter "was under investigation," it added.

Foreign nuclear experts, the Japanese press and an increasingly angry and rattled Japanese public are frustrated by government and power company officials' failure to communicate clearly and promptly about the nuclear crisis. Pointing to conflicting reports, ambiguous language and a constant refusal to confirm the most basic facts, they suspect officials of withholding or fudging crucial information about the risks posed by the ravaged Daiichi plant.

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/world/asia/17tokyo.html?ref=asia

Bren-2007

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16/rush-limbaugh-mocks-japan-refugees_n_836384.html

Limbaugh mocks Japan.

Rush Limbaugh laughed about Japanese refugees recycling after the earthquake that struck the country on his Tuesday show.