Saturday, March 25, 2017

It's Maple Weekend in Vermont! YUM!!




17 comments:

  1. An enjoyable movie indeed--The Mouse That Roared, with Peter Sellers and Peter Sellers and Peter Sellers. Somewhat different from the book, but that's artistic license.

    Alan

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  2. I'd like to suggest the Quartz Daily Brief. Although it considers investors its primary audience, it assumes investors are interested in political developments and provides some very good analyses. Today's lede is a lengthy analysis of Trumpcare's failure and what it means. The final paragraph reads: “We were a ten-year opposition party, where being against things was easy to do,” a chastened Paul Ryan, the House speaker, admitted afterward. “Doing big things is hard.” Welcome to reality

    You can sign up at https://ssl.qz.com/.

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    1. Thanks for the tip, Bill; I will check it out. I regret the passing of the old (pre-Murdoch) Wall Street Journal, which had dependable high-quality analytical journalism on a wide variety of subjects; one could not reasonably paint it as a propaganda rag, even if one looked at a subject from a different angle.

      --Alan

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  3. Okay, I can't help myself:

    Roses are red,
    Violets are purple.
    Bernie's as sweet
    as maple syurple.

    Yeah, it's bad. It was an earworm I'm trying to evict.

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    1. Oh, Lordy! I'm going to be laughing at that one for some time, Susan; thanks for sharing!

      --Alan

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  4. The Jordanian Airline Making Money Off the Laptop Ban [Click] "How trolling Trump became a marketing strategy." Interesting language change--I should have used the verb "twit" rather than "troll."

    --Alan

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  5. The following story should be a caution to anyone who figures that a "businessman," e.g. D. Trump, can make the government work better; it also confirms my observation that business school graduates are generally inferior as managers to people who came up through the ranks of a company:

    The Management Myth [Click] "If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead."
    ========================
    On another note:

    Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Has Little in Common With Most Americans [Click] Now, I wouldn't say that being born to great wealth is necessarily a disqualification for a judge, but then comes this:

    Judge Gorsuch, the world is too complex for easy moral philosophy [Click] This doesn't sound like an unreasonably poor grasp of philosophy for a high school sophomore, but for an adult? A college and law school graduate? Well, it doesn't surprise me that such a shallow person should be nominated to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump. (I note that he was nominated to the 10th District Court of Appeals by Bush the Younger.)

    Put those two together and you get The Frozen Trucker Case. [Click]

    Such a shallow, out-of-touch person should not be a judge in ANY court.

    --Alan

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  6. Taunting Trump: How the Campaign to 'Not Normalize' Donald Is Driving Him Crazy [Click] Seems like an extensive accounting…

    --Alan

    P.S.: I am going to be doing some shopping now, and will pass by a contract post office. I think I will lay in a supply of postcards for whenever I feel the urge to twit Trump.

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  7. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/5-ways-trump-is-meantally-torturing-us-now/

    From the article:

    ""I had more people crying in my office the day after the election than honestly I've had since the day after 9/11," Dan Hartman, a Philadelphia-based psychiatrist, told Philly.com about his patients' reactions to Donald Trump becoming president. Four months in, the wounds are still fresh, and the Trump administration, with its trampling of rights, unending legislative chaos and wholesale disregard for the truth, continues to cause millions of heart palpitations, insomniac nights and untreatable migraines."

    Hmmm.......Migraines......

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  8. Hmmmmmm.... indeed, Susan. Might it be said with some truth that in certain cases migraines can indeed be caused by evil demons?

    So Much Winning[Click] The illustrations alone are just one hoot after another.—Alan

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    1. Tidbit from the text:

      David Frum, a conservative for God's sake, reminds us that Trump's "core competency is not deal-making with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims."

      --Alan

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  9. Bernie announced to Vermonters today that he is going to introduce a Medicare-for-All bill in the Senate. Peter Welch is going to introduce it in the House.

    Leahy, Sanders, Welch play to packed house
    http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2017/03/25/leahy-sanders-welch-play-packed-house/99630040/

    Bernie got two standing ovations, in response to the introduction of him, before he even spoke! Three more during his speech! Awesome. All three were wonderful. Peter Welch spoke of how, for weeks after the election, he walked around feeling disoriented and wondering if he could continue to do his job. He said it was the People standing up and marching and speaking out that made it possible for him to continue. I very much appreciated his candor!

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    1. I hope they fund it by simply removing the cap on earned income subject to contributions--and extend it to certain types of non-wage income. A financial transaction tax and a tax on services might be nice as well. Never aim too low!

      Alan

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    2. "Medicare for all," despite the somewhat misleading name, isn't Medicare. The current Medicare tax will go away and presumably be replaced by something entirely different. Most likely by a general income tax increase that we can hope will fall more heavily on the truly rich.
      It's also possible that premiums will be involved, as they are for Medicare. I believe that my wife and I each pay about $100/month for Part B and $50/month for Part D.

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    3. I think we pay about $130/month each for Part B (withheld from Social Security), and now $20/month (last year it was zero) for Medicare Advantage through Kaiser, which includes Part D, so just about the same.

      --Alan

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