Head in the Sand

Economics has never been my strong suit, but let's just pretend for a moment that I'm a moron. I'll give you some time. Don't need any? Ouch. Ok, here's what I want you to do. Explain this quote from Hillary Clinton in a way that it'll make sense to me:

"I believe it would be important to get every member of Congress on record....Do they stand with the hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with the oil companies? That's a vote I'm going to try to get, because I want to know where people stand, and I want them to tell us - are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?"

Taxes are small fees placed on purchased goods and services that provide the government with its revenue, right? How exactly would lifting them - temporarily - impact oil companies? You know, besides increasing demand and giving them the perfect opportunity to raise prices? How did anyone allow the self-applied label "policy wonk" to stick to this senator? If she believes this tripe (and I don't think she does), then she's less competent to be president than I thought. Listen, when you're stuck in the desert, you don't spend all your effort coaxing the last few drops out of the canteen. You get out of the desert.

Seven Minutes in Heaven...

...if your "heaven" looks like a political news montage. This video cuts through the last five months, give or take. On the one hand, it would seem to work only if you've been paying attention. My guess is that a coma patient waking up today could watch it two or three times and feel completely caught up.

NuClio Away!

Correcting Fox News would be a full-time job (that unfortunately very few of their editors are interested in doing), but it's nice to see that my superhero gambit wasn't completely silly:

Crackabones

In anticipation of my August trip to Lafayette, LA to visit the incomparable Dwight David - a fellow teacher who's retiring to his family's estate - I've been reading Mike Tidwell's Bayou Farewell. It's a repository of homespun wisdom and a snapshot of life "down de baya," but it also contains some eerily prescient passages on the Gulf Coast's vulnerability to hurricane damage. Published in 2003, you can almost see Katrina on the horizon.

Tidwell also took notice of the preponderance of billboards for chiropractors in southern Louisiana - doctors who specialize in treating the occupational aches and pains of the shrimp trawlers, crab fishermen, & oil workers who live and toil down there. The cajuns call them "crackabones."

Well, after following the orthopedist's instructions to a 't,' my own back trouble has plateaued at "tolerable, but subnormal." So I think it's time for a visit to the crackabones. Has anyone out there been? Any advice you can give?

And if de crackabones don't work, is de barbecue cure for moi.

Viva la Street Meat!

For Willis, an enthusiastic carnivore who has been away from American-style indulgence for almost two years, a Drew Carey exposé on bacon dogs.

The meme that short-term risks like food poisoning are somehow more threatening to public health than long-term risks like heart disease has always been troubling for me. If we base our laws on a desire to curtail the potential for individual harm, how can we justify the legality of cigarettes? Second-hand smoking regulations, they make sense. Person A is endangering Person B without Person B's explicit consent. But Person A, he can mesquite-ify his own lungs, so long as he's footing the bill for the inevitable treatment he'll require.

This debate is at the crux of the controversy over universal health care. If the public picks up the tab for preventable diseases, doesn't it also deserve to mandate preventive care? Given how nebulous and subject to fluctuation is the science regarding what ails ya, the notion of codifying dictates based on the latest in medical research is scary. Aren't pharmaceutical and oil lobbyists bad enough? Do we really want to facilitate the rise of the Medical-Industrial Complex?

Well, let's toll that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, hands off the bacon dogs. Uncle Sam was a butcher, you know. And, Willis, I'll see you at Five Guys Burgers & Fries come August.