Considering yesterday's post, this may seem a bit one-note-symphony of me, but sometimes a monster's really just a monster.

Back in January, I said I believe things are being engineered in such a way that our government will own foreclosed homes and will become one big landlord. I admit I didn't expect my prediction to come true so soon, though. Back then I was spitting-mad over it. Now I'm feeling sad and wrung out about it - what really can be done to stop this? Has the world run mad?

While I'm doing my shrieking Cassandra routine, let me also mention the healthcare commandeering (it can't be called negotiation, can it?) which is being played out in D.C. The economy stinks on hot ice, thanks in large part to Obama's administration effectively hobbling industry with meddling and the woefully unstimulating "stimulus" package, which we are told we need another of-. Pah! With this tanking economy, Obama sees how imperitive it is for him to get healthcare reforms rammed through before the reps and senators recess in August. He says it's going to happen, no matter what. Obama will not acknowledge there is any other reasoned argument against nationalized healthcare and shuts down any possibility of dialogue by calling opponents to his power-grab "naysayers." Fine: Nay, says I. Then he says he's got new ideas and we learn he's trotting out the same, hackneyed crappy old ideas that didn't fix things like poverty in our country the first, second or third times.

Goody.

Further, I'm wondering who the large corporations are who are buying up private physicians' practices throughout the nation. Who has the kind of money companies like Pediatrix have to buy up small professional practices and go national? This seems more in line with efforts to streamline these practices into a centralized organization. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is just some private company which saw a better way to run these offices, but I'm frankly creeped out by centralization. Health care used to be about healing. It used to be about trained physicians, nurses and medical assistants who were members of their communities and providing vital services, but now it's looking more and more cookie cutter and soulless in my opinion. Borg-like, even.

What I'm wondering is who is making the money off this centralization, and how are they connected, politically? I'm suspicious and have been for quite some time. Articles like this one do nothing to assuage my apprehension at what is happening to our healthcare system. The HIPAA forms we've all filled out notwithstanding, have you ever considered that YOU and not your doctor-- own the rights to the information contained in your medical records?

The sad fact is that despite laws which were marketed to us as protection of our privacy and our rights, our medical information will likely be used against us in a heavily rationed and limited healthcare system in which our government has unfettered access to our medical records. If the thought of that doesn't make you sick, something's wrong with you.

We now return you to our usual programming of puppies, shoes and pink fluffy clouds. There's no place like home. *click*click*click*

The little Twilight thing continues apace. D came back from vacation and found a lovely parcel of chocolates awaiting her from Edward on Monday.

Blow Fuzzy von Saucy is on team Jacob. She says that Jacob should begin trying to steal D away from the Edward camp. I dunno. I haven't read those books and I'm already feeling out of my depth here.

BFvS is obsessed with the book series, in the meantime. She watched the movie obsessively, rinsed, lathered and repeated. Big, buff, ruggedly heterosexual Marine Brother-in-Law got a little steamed that BFvS was obsessing over a 20-ish year old actor. He said "I guess I'm not good enough for you now because I'm not a fagpire."

That was priceless. I hope she kissed him on principle, if nothing else. Thanks for adding that matchless term to my lexicon, BiL.
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In other news:

Bastille Day.

Allons enfants de la patrie...

What? People used to storm the gates of tyrants?
Hmph.

I tend to use little kid toothbrushes because I'm picky about how soft they are, and the adult style never seem soft enough. I try to keep new packs of them around because I tend to go through them pretty quickly. Lately, however there's been a remarkable up-tic in the attrition rate on my toothbrushes.



Miss Praline has discovered that sometimes goodies are left on the bathroom sink, and apparently she hops up there the minute my back is turned, now. Since she'd torn up all my other toothbrushes, yesterday I opened the last remaining unmolested Firefly toothbrush. Don't get excited-- not Firefly the series, but a little toothbrush with an end you can squeeze to make it flash until the little kid has brushed their teeth long enough.



I went out to the car to get something right after brushing my teeth yesterday morning, and when I came back in a few minutes later, the unsprung pink toothbrush below (NEW, yes, new, of late) was bleeding out in the hallway. Oddly enough, it still flashes.



I've long said that to have pups, you need to love them more than anything else you have, because they are little destructors. Maybe we should get it over with and name them all Gozer?

Can you believe the flap about someone being gored to death at the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain? It's silly, actually.

Man plays with fire, gets burned.
Rattlesnake wrangler fanged.
Chainsaw juggler lops off limb.

Please, media-- next time try for more obvious, trite headlines, mkay? *yawn*

I'm loving the new rod&reel. It's nice to be in the country and be able to pick up and just go fish for an hour or so if the mood strikes.

I got a few really good bites(other than the skeeters), but didn't catch anything. It just happened that the two best catches on the lake that day were fishing on either side of me.

Good times. Yes, I shall take this camera (my good one) along next time I'm fishing at the ferrety lake. If you click to embiggenate, you can see the lure in the air of the first photo, then the circles rippling where it landed (watered?) in the third photo.

Golly, I'm so glad it's Friday. Why does the week always seem so long after a holiday weekend?

Yeah. Me too.

If you've sent me an email in the last couple days, I may not have received it. I don't know what's going on, but I've had more than one email not arrive and also not bounce back to the senders.

The funny thing is that the ones promising to enlarge my manhood are still arriving as per usual. *harumph*
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Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal titled Why It's Easy To Steal From Medicare. If Medicare is a fraction of the size of what it would take to run an entire nationalized healthcare system in this country, do you think they'd actually have more success at managing fraud, etc? I don't.

After weeks of what has monolithically appeared to be a circle-jerk of media types waxing orgasmic about what our Dear Leader has in mind for our healthcare, it's nice to see some doubts being raised in a calm and rational matter.

Remember how I was leaving little tokens d'amour from Edward of Twilight on the desk of his fan D at work?

Thursday was her last day before a vacation, and Edward left her a nice chocolate bar along with a note quoting the first stanza of "She walks in beauty" by Lord Byron. Edward wished her a lovely and restorative holiday.

I returned to work Monday morning to find an email to a few dozen people in the company which read:

Dear Edward,
Thank you so much for the beautiful card and poem. Lord Byron's poem is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE!!!!!!! If you are reading this and do not understand it, then this e-mail is not for you. Please ignore it. If you are Edward - THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY MONTH!!!!

Isn't that cool? She came into the training room the previous week and mentioned the Edward cards, and looked a couple people in the eye and asked them if they were Edward, but she didn't ask me. Else I would fain have been able to give myself away. Anyway, it's a lovely lark and I'm glad she's enjoyed it as much as I have. Maybe moreso. She returns next week, and Edward will no doubt have something lovely waiting for her.

I was pretty excited when I was fishing with my new rod and reel and cast across the little cove on the lake and saw a dark brown critter darting in and out of the rocks. I thought it was a ferret, but I didn't know if that was an indigenous critter here.

Anyway, turns out it WAS a weasel-like creature and it came around the cove all the way over to us, making its way by ducking in and out of the loosely tumbled boulders on the bank. It came to a rock by my foot, and was just about 2 feet away from me. It was amazingly cute. It seemed curious. Suddenly it scampered back around the cove and I regained my senses and took out my cell phone to snap a pic. Yeah, it's just a smudge on the pic, but I know I got a picture of the Yeti, and the Yeti knows...

It was a beautiful day, overcast, and cooler than yesterday's 107. Had a grand time and saw an unexpected critter. I'm loving my fab new rod and reel. More later...

from the makers of the Venture Brothers...