I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange
Comments
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Belinda - so happy "jimmies" was evocative of summer for you....me too - also loved Carvel Big Softies dipped in chocolate, so the chocolate made a "crust" when it cooled on the soft ice cream, all swirled up BIG on a soft cone...drool, slurp, drool..
RAIN - imagine that, another day of RAIN, flas flood watches across the WHOLE state, and thunder storms, today, tomorrow, the day after that....
And in a little while I go to my PS office to be "explanted" - soon a Sunflower will be a flat chested Buddha - expecting the "buddha belly" will be even more noticeable - but these little poached egg silicone blobs under my pec muscles will be g-o-n-e - and downward facing dog will feeel GOOOOOOD again....
happy today all....
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I never knew "sprinkles" were really called "jimmies" - is that an east coast thing?
Blue - Tesla was a modern day (relatively speaking) Leonardo da Vinci wasn't he? And for years after his death no one even heard of him. Blue, what kind of flowers are those that you posted on the last page? (last picture on the last page). They are so pretty.
Sun - hope for no pain for you.
Seems like you folks have received all of our rain this year. We don't normally go for weeks on end with no rain - but it's supposed to be another beautiful day today in Seattle. (Though it's gray at the moment.....)
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Hi Everyone,
Had a little work come in, so got that done .. then the dreaded mowing. All this rain is killing me. The grass grows too damn fast.
Glenna ... so happy to hear the news is stable and you don't have to change your medication.
Blue ... love the pic ... never thought of putting a little bird bath in the house. I have a sewing machine just like that one ... it's giving me an idea!
hugs to all,
Bren
PS .. I had a HUGE SCARE this morning when I walked my dogs down in my fields. OMG ... out of nowhere comes this great big pitbull. Tank took off after him. I yelled at the dog to go home, but he went into the woods and circled back around us. Scared the living daylights out of me. I finally got Tank to come back and we hightailed it back up the hill.
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Glenna - So glad you're boring.
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"Explanted"
- Love that term Sunny. My gf came back from her trip to Vermont. Humid Humid and the ground very soggy everywhere. We're back to our glorious type summer days here on the West Coast. Enough of that heat wave!! (Ended July 3rd.) Not too hot and a nice mountain breeze. We are in a drought though and it could be a very serious fire season from here on out (usually from lightning starts in August).I've been asking my non employed friends if every spring has been like this and I just didn't notice, being locked in my office fulltime - no, this has been exceptional. Lucky me to have retired and have 6 months of almost uninterrupeted sunshine.
I hear the War on Women has officially started in Texas and elsewhere. I'm sure the next battle is to limit Voting Rights in same states. I hope this mobilizes people who respect their liberties in 2014. Could it be their last hurrah? Hopefully.
Belated Happy Birthday Alexandria!
Love hearing the boring and somewhat boring news. Bren - was it you who posted you are on low dose Taxol?? Is it causing hair loss or neuropathy for you? I had such a hard time with DD Taxol, but I know so many tolerate it well.
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This is one HAPPY flat chested sunflower
Sore, but happy - mainly cuz they're gone - AND the PS was amazed that one of them had "cracked" and was "oozing" in the capsule ( sorry, T.M.I.) - my gut insttint working again to have them OUT, OUT, OUT ( damn, Spot!) - whew. That's IT for me & surgery. Explantation doesn't hurt, local lidocaine ( sp?) and the weird feeling of having someone PULLLLLLLING this thing out of your chest, and it kinda "pops" -Jimmies - yup, an East Coast thing. I thought it was just New England, but maybe a little south too. I was distraught when I first moved to Washington DC ( after living in Europe for years) and not being able to find Marshmallow Fluff in the grocery store. WHAT. NO MARSHMALLOW FLUFF? Oh my, Kraft "Kreme" ain't the same as Marshmallow Fluff - just can't make a proper fluffernutter without Marshmallow Fluff. Also lovely on ice cream...
Meant to say, Glenna, almost boring is excellent. Happy Dance.
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Sunnyflowers ... glad to hear you are pleased with the explantation. Just sorry you're experiencing soreness. I know you're relieved to have them out, especially the one that oozing!
hugs,
Bren
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Sunny - happy for you that you feel relief!
Glenna - so happy for your mostly boring news!!!
Tonight we're having my birthday present. Birthday was back in March, but my present was going to see the Pirates of Penzance tonight!!! (plus dinner)
. I'm taking tomorrow off so that I'm not totally without sleep...I see the House of Representatives are continuing their ongoing hatred of the poor. Imagine that. They passed the Farm Bill without the Food Stamp extension. Christian values my great grannies buttocks!!!
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Congratulations on almost boring, Glenna. We'll take what we can get, and almost boring is close to what we want to see.
Sunnyflowers, so glad you are feeling relief and no pain since your "explantation." I know they have troubled you for a while -- I'm glad that you were able to get them out with relatively little hassle.
Rain, rain -- :-( I was planning on mowing the yard tomorrow, but they are now saying 90% chance of rain. Blah. As last as yesterday evening they were promising mid-80s and sunny. Waaaaahhhh! I hope I can get it done between showers.
I watched a very interesting documentary on PBS Frontline last night - "Two American Families." It followed two families from Milwaukee intermittently from the early 90s to now. It was very illuminating ... People who have one piece of bad luck and somehow never regain the ground they lose. It is heartbreaking, although most regressives who watch it will complain about the choice the people made and blame them for their own misfortune (and gripe about the food stamps that one kid gets now). I found it haunting. Here is the page from PBS -
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/two-american-families/
L -
what RL said: "People who have one piece of bad luck and somehow never regain the ground they lose" Frontline hasn't been shown here yet, Bill Moyers spoke of it on his program. I think what you wrote is the REAL takeaway line most people don't get. There is NO "cushion" - nothing. Reminds me of when Willard suggested to a questioner asking about student loans, to "just ask your parents for the tuition" - a different world.
President Clinton ( the first President Clinton
) used to refer to people "who played by the rules" - and were in serious economic problems. Both those familes did EVERYTHING they could, and were doing well - until ONE firing, one illness. Hope we get the entire Frontline here soon. -
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I watched it last night also. Heartbreaking. A copy of the programme should be REQUIRED viewing for every Congressperson and CEO -- yes, and especially people like Willard. Speaking of which, I was thinking of this when I heard on NPR about WalMart in DC. Won't go into it here, but just another reason I will never, ever shop at WalMart.
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We MUST ensure that unborn babies are born, but we must NOT under any circumstances allow their incubators to eat, and we must NEVER, EVER allow said unborn babies to eat after they are born. Giving them food aid will just make them dependent, you know.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/11/the-fight-over-food-stamps-explained/
The regressives in the Houses stripped SNAP entirely out of the Farm Bill and then passed it today. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Well, they couldn't pass the Farm Bill last week because the troglodytes wouldn't vote for it because the $20 million in cuts to SNAP wasn't enough. So they stripped it out entirely, and all they have to do is never bring that part of the bill up again for a vote. Ever. Voila - no food stamps. 25% of the children in this country are dependent on government food aid. Just when you think they reach rock bottom, they find a new low of loathsome. I wish these hungry people would just start showing up on those fat cats' manicured lawns, or ask for food outside their lavish fundraisers. They can't though - they are too busy working 2 jobs to try to keep their children from starving or living on the streets. When you struggle every day to work to get food, you don't have time for political activity. Survival takes everything you have.
L -
I don't even have words to describe elected officials who would take food out of the mouths of hungry people. I find it so ironic that the Republicans who are most vocal against food stamps call themselves "Christian." Is another Jesus out there who did not spend most of his ministry caring for the sick and the poor?
Sun, welcome to the ranks of Flat and Fabulous! So glad it's over and you got those things out.
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How come people don't use the word fetus anymore? That's the most accurate description. Who would call a hen's egg and unborn chicken?
Sandy - took DEEEEEEP breath when I woke up this am, and felt SO SO SO GOOD not having a big rubber band across my chest pressing down on two foreign objects! Really, I was so unaware of how deeeeeply uncomfortable I felt with those things - even had no idea one had ruptured, which wasn't why they felt so uncomfortable. Another aspect of bc that doesn't seem to be as well known - implants can feel awful.
Eager to healing of small incisions - PS said a full three weeks before I can do yoga....but know I'm gonna LOVE Sun Salutation and Downward Facing dog again.....YEAH...
BTW, rain, rain, flood watches, did I mention rain?
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YAY for Sunny!
I can't even comprehend the republican mindset. Oxymorons!
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Redundant oxymoron or something.....what an un-believable and heartless group --- not for the love of God, just for the love of money.
Sunny....happy days will be here again soon. Well, they are here, but will get even happier in three weeks or so. Yay for you.
Glenna....count me in with the bounties of almost boring.
Hope you all have a fabulous Friday except for the Pirates.
Jackie
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A little note to all Republicans:
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The New York Times called the regressives out very eloquently today:
In the House, a Refusal to Govern
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: July 11, 2013
On two crucial issues this week, the extremists who dominate the Republican majority in the House of Representatives made it clear how little interest they have in the future prosperity of their country, or its reputation for fairness and decency.
The House will refuse to consider a comprehensive immigration bill that could lead to citizenship for millions of immigrants, Republican leaders said on Wednesday, and will slowly and casually consider a few border-security measures that have no chance of passing on their own.
And, on Thursday, the House passed a farm bill that stripped out the food stamp program, breaking a pact that for decades has protected the nutrition needs of low-income Americans. It was the first time since 1973 that food stamps haven’t been part of a farm bill, and it reflected the contempt of the far right for anyone desperate enough to rely on the government for help to buy groceries.
These actions show how far the House has retreated from the national mainstream into a cave of indifference and ignorance. House members don’t want to know that millions of Americans remain hungry (in an economy held back by their own austerity ideology), and they don’t want to deal with the desperation of immigrant families who want nothing more than a chance to work and feed themselves without fear of deportation. (my emphasis added)
On both issues, in fact, many House Republicans are proudly asserting that they will stand in the way of any attempts to conduct a conference with the Senate. That might, after all, lead to a compromise.
Few things sum up the attitude of the current crop of Republicans in Washington than their loathing of conference committees. On issue after issue, they have passed radical bills and then refused to negotiate. On Thursday, for example, Senate Republicans refused for the 16th time to allow the Democratic Senate budget to be negotiated with its dangerously stingy counterpart in the House.
On immigration, House members fear a conference with the Senate would add back the pathway to citizenship that they consider a giveaway to undesirable non-English speakers. The eventual House border bills “should not be handed to a conference committee so that they can be reconciled with the Senate bill,” wrote Representative Tom Cotton of Arkansas in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Instead, he and others say, the Senate should be forced to take up whatever the House produces.
Similarly, on the farm bill, Democrats said Republicans are insisting on conditions to a conference that would limit, in advance, the size of the food stamp program that the Senate could restore in negotiations. Clearly they are listening to bad advisers like the right-wing group Heritage Action for America, which warned on Thursday that a farm-bill compromise “will be very appealing to big-government liberals and appalling to conservatives who should be trying to reduce the size and scope of government.”
A refusal to even to sit at a bargaining table is another way of refusing to govern. The nation’s founders created two chambers for a reason, but Republicans, in their blind fury to harm the least fortunate, are forgetting even those fundamental national values.
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That any single person in this country could support this is sad. The number of hateful people who actually do support them is shocking. The regressives are deliberately and with malice aforethought trying their damndest to trash the economy, starve needy people and keep their business buddies in business with cheap, under-the-table labor while whipping up racism and fear in people who should know better. This is the stuff of which revolutions are made, DH keeps saying. How do these people remain so lost to reason? I know the pendulum swings, but really -- how far can it still go before people wake up (edited at Mods' request and under protest because *someone* complained who won't follow the "don't like, don't read" rule here).
L
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Well said!
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![From @[346937065399354:274:Occupy Democrats]. Shared at @[108038612554992:274:Americans Against the Tea Party]](https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/s403x403/988246_693828390642675_1145923839_n.jpg)
Thought for the day ...
L
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Everything RL said at least twice with at least that much emphasis.
Jackie
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hehe Libby!
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And here is another one from the Atlantic's newsfeed:
Yes, You Should Be Totally Outraged By the Farm Bill
It's not just a microcosm of congressional insensitivity and bad economics. It's a small moral play about the role of money in politics.by Derek ThompsonJul 12 2013, 9:43 AM ETThe farm bill passed by the House of Representatives yesterday is pretty much a disgrace. Republicans took legislation that had historically been 80 percent food stamps and 20 percent mostly awful and antiquated agribusiness subsidies. And they passed something that is 0 percent food stamps and 100 percent mostly awful and antiquated agribusiness subsidies."Billions for farmers, nothing for the poor" is a stark assessment, but a fair one.
Food stamps -- or, as they are now officially called, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) -- went out to more than 46 million people in 2012 with the average individual receiving just over $130 in benefits. That's 73 percent of the monthly grocery bill for men under the USDA's "thrifty" plan. The current program lapses at the end of September.
The GOP's aversion to funding food stamps is cultural and deeply ideological. But the less obvious background music playing here is the powerful and pernicious role of money in politics.
Three weeks ago, in a report that had nothing to do with farms, the Sunlight Foundation revealed that just 0.01% of the U.S. population -- one ten-thousandth of the country -- accounted for 28 percent of all disclosed political donations in the 2012 election. About one-third the capacity of a large football stadium funds about one-third of national elections.
This is just a factoid. But it's a revealing factoid. Relying on the wealthiest Americans to finance our elections isn't bad for the obvious reason, which is that rich people "buy" elections. It's bad for the less obvious reason that rich people buy the attention of the electeds. As Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, recently told the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies, senators and congresspeople are functionally telemarketers, whose ambition requires them to spend the majority of their time raising money for the next election.
This is about the farm bill, how exactly? Elected representatives trying to raise millions of dollars a pop don't have people on food stamps or unemployment insurance on their speed dial. That would be absurd. But they do have ag lobbyists and large farm donors. And they do have deficit-weary financiers who are scared of debt and the growing safety net. The people on the other ends of these fundraising calls (or at these fundraising events) wield a powerful weapon. Their influence shapes "the limits of acceptable political discourse, one conversation at a time" to the point where passing a bill without increased farm subsidies seems wholly unacceptable but passing a bill without food assistance for 47 million families feels a-okay.
"It doesn't really matter what low-income or middle-income voters think about a policy," Sunlight's Lee Drutman wrote. "They might favor it. They might oppose it. It has no real effect on how likely the policy is to happen." When the rich and the poor disagree on policy, Marty Gilens has shown, Washington basically sides with the rich.
The mechanics of this "for 0.01%, by the 0.01% government" don't explain everything you need to know about the farm bill vote. It can't. Democrats have to play by the same call-your-rich-friends rules too, and they support funding for SNAP. The House GOP is antagonistic toward the safety net for ideological reasons shaped by culture, geography, and certain assumptions about work ethic and the role of government spending.
But in a system that requires elected officials to perform the duties of a high-end telemarketer, the poor are easy to ignore. Or, put more generously I guess, they're hard to remember. Republicans say they'll get to food stamp funding later this month. But their first vote was to protect big agriculture because, well, big ag is on the speed-dial. First call. First vote. That's just Washington at work.
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L
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I LOVE LOVE LOVE the garden photo, Blue - that's ME sitting on the bench, sketchbook in hand.
Well, almost lunch time - I think I'll have unborn chickens for lunch.
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