Too Stupid For the Job?

It is becoming difficult to watch the continuing dysfunction in Washington DC. Each new day brings with it some fresh manifestation of either incompetence, ignorance or tomfoolery, or in some cases, like the President’s press conference yesterday, all three. At some point you have to start asking some hard questions, like…what the hell is wrong with our government?

This is a non-partisan question. Readers of this space know my Libertarian leanings and the low opinion I have of the Democratic Party. But, I have displayed an equal distaste for the Republican alternative. The place we find ourselves in as a nation has many fathers, so what follows is not an indictment of merely the current President and his party, but rather the entire governing class. Trust me when I say, Democrats and Republicans in Washington have much more in common with each other than either of them have with us.

As an observer of politics for the past 40 years of my life, I have seen my share of incompetence, so in a sense, the presence of bumbling idiots in government isn’t exactly a news flash. But the level of such bumbling has risen exponentially over the past 10 years or so, sort of like the much hyped, global warming caused rising of the sea levels. Only this increase is actually measurable. Any fair-minded observer who has been paying attention can’t help but wonder if anyone in politics knows what they’re doing. From Colin Powell’s UN speech offering “proof” of weapons of mass destruction, all the way to President Obama’s “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” fiasco, one is left with the creeping suspicion that the people at the highest levels of our government just aren’t that sharp. I have a theory.

In the 35 years after our Civil War, or the period from roughly 1870 through 1910, Americans turned against government. After all, it was the hot-blooded rhetoric of politics that had helped plunge the country into war in the first place. After the loss of nearly 600,000 Americans, the country was in no mood for it anymore. It was time to heal and time to make some money. Accordingly, the best and brightest began to go into business. Soon the industrial revolution gave rise to a new breed of man, the captain of industry.  Men like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt rose to the top of the heep. At the same time, Americans were left with a long list of third stringers as Presidents. This was the era that gave us such notable chief executives as Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, and Grover Cleveland. These weren’t exactly intellectual heavyweights and consequently are largely forgotten by history. Since the juice of the country had flowed away from Washington, these men were known largely for doing nothing, and for a country that had barely survived a bloody civil war, “doing nothing” sounded pretty good.

What about today? Where are the best and brightest? Not in Washington DC. Any list of influential, transformative thinkers and doers begins with names like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg. At the top of anyone’s list of high achieving Americans would be names like Howard Schultz, Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey, not rubes like John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Silicon Valley is populated by hordes of extremely bright and highly motivated men and women making giant technological strides, while their contemporaries in Washington are writing unworkable, 3000 page laws that nobody reads or understands.

The big difference between the lightweights of the late 19^th century and our lightweights is the fact that guys like Chester Arthur and James Garfield KNEW that they were lightweights. Our political leaders today from both Parties all think they are geniuses, and it is this hubris that is driving the country over a cliff. From perhaps the most unaccomplished, inexperienced, thinnest credentialed President in history all the way down to a plucky Alaskan governor thought smart and worthy enough to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency by a major American political party, the overwhelming conclusion that must be drawn is that our representatives just aren’t smart enough for the job.

Now, if only they knew that.

What does a 142 million dollar painting look like?

I love art. Beautiful paintings, sculptures, great books, and fine music add immeasurably to life. Sometimes, just being in the presence of something artistic makes the world seem less dangerous somehow. Art has the power to transform us, to reorient our perspective. So, I love art. Yet, sometimes, I don’t get art.

 Yesterday a painting by Francis Bacon sold at auction for $142,000,000. No, this was not a sketch found in an attic belonging to the great English philosopher. This was a three part painting by a dead Irish artist known primarily for being openly and proudly gay at a time when most gay people were neither. The painting was in three frames and depicted a man sitting in what looks like some sort of wired cubicle at various angles. The man’s features are blurred and abstract. It turns out that the subject of the painting was Lucian Freud, a famous and influential painter in his own right, with whom Mr. Bacon had an ongoing relationship. These details are irrelevant. What boggles my mind is the price tag that this particular painting brought. One hundred and forty two million dollars is a lot of money. You could buy 300 Lamborghinis with that kind of money. You could sponsor 350,000 starving South American kids for a year with that kind of money. But some anonymous person thought to spend 142 million on this instead:

 

Now, don’t misunderstand me here. My beef isn’t with the price itself. The proper price for anything is simply what someone is willing to pay, so in this case, since someone was willing to fork it over, this painting was, in fact, worth 142 million. My problem is with the painting itself. This is the part of art that I don’t get. I mean, look at it, just stare at the thing for a few minutes. My eyes see a blurry, disjointed sketch set against a backdrop of nothing. The subject’s face looks like paint that got smeared by a raindrop. But there are a thousand art critics who will extol its brilliance from the rooftops. It’s a bit like the concert I attended this past weekend. The music was divinely performed and beautiful beyond description, except for the headline piece, a brooding discordant thing which featured intentionally sharp, grating chords tied together in a somber funeral dirge pace. My son rolled his eyes at me when I shared this opinion, embarrassed by my Philistine sensitivities. Guilty as charged, I suppose. Life is already full enough of discord and disharmony, why rip it out of music too?

I’m told that Mr. Bacon’s painting fetched the highest price for a painting in history. That’s great news for the art business, but I’m not sure what it says about art. But, what do I know?  

My Words Come Back to Haunt Me

This past weekend I attended a wedding shower for a young couple. After dinner we were to split up into groups of men and women to dispense advice to the bride and groom. When it was my turn, the gist of my comments were about how important it is to listen to your wife. This morning, with clear algorithmic malice, my Facebook feed offered the following piece of evidence highlighting my hypocrisy....

Why Men Don’t Listen to Their Wives—November 12, 2013

Last Friday, I informed my wife that I would be getting the leaves up in the yard. Henrico County picks up leaves in my neighborhood only twice this fall, and one of those days would be the following Monday. Since we would be in New Jersey for the weekend, it had to be done on Friday. Our conversation went something like this:

Pam: Wait, you’re going to bag up the leaves on the day before you have to drive 5 hours to New Jersey??

Me: ..er, well…yeah.

Pam: With that shoulder? The last thing you need is to screw up your shoulder or throw out your back right before making that kind of drive!

Pam and I have had variations on this conversation at least a hundred times over the nearly thirty years of our marriage. I make a simple declaration of my intentions to do A or B. Pam replies with a couple of paragraph-long warnings about all of the horrible things that might happen because I plan on doing A or B. I proceed to do A or B anyway. Many times, she is proven right by events. But it doesn’t matter, because although I listen to my wife, I often choose not to hear her. Why is this? I have a theory.

All of my life, I have been accused of doing the sorts of things that women seem to think are dangerous. When I was a kid, I was the tree climber, the bull chaser (a story for another time), and the kid who would throw rocks at hornet’s nests in the tops of trees. So, the first influential woman in my life, my mother, would be the one yelling things like, “Douglas, you better put your old shoes on before you walk through that trash fire,” or “Don’t shoot that BB gun in the house,” and “If you fall off that roof and break your leg, don’t come running to me!”  Then, as I became a teenager, it would be various girlfriends who would say, “Doug, are you sure that recruiting the football team to lift Mr. Jefferson’s MG on top of the breezeway roof is such a good idea?” Now, as a grown man, it’s mostly Pam looking incredulously at me as I’m walking out of the door to play golf. “You’re going to play golf today, the hottest day of the year, seriously? 100 degrees in the shade today and you decide to play golf?”

What all of them are essentially saying is, “Be careful. You might hurt yourself.” And, that is why I don’t listen. The possibility that I might hurt myself is half the fun of the thing. This is what women don’t understand. Asking a man to be careful might seem like prudent advice, but to a man it sounds like, “don’t have any fun.” If men throughout history listened to this type of womanly advice, we would all still be living in mud huts, eating berries and roots.

The fact that Pam has, more often than not, been prescient in her warnings isn’t the issue. The reliability of our wives’ instincts are not the point. The reason men don’t listen is because, we don’t want to be reminded about the calendar. We don’t want to be reminded that we aren’t twenty-two anymore. We are fully aware that back then a badly turned ankle meant Bayer aspirin and a bag of ice, while today it means x-rays, crutches, pain-killers and three weeks of rehab. We know all of that.

But to acknowledge it would mean admitting that we aren’t real men anymore. We would rather take the risk, or better yet, deny there even is any risk. Doing so helps us to hang on to our sense of worth, our dignity, and the last vestiges of our self respect.

So, we look at our wives as they warn us about the latest harebrained scheme we have cooked up, and we nod in agreement. All the while, we hear nothing, just like the parents in Peanuts television specials, “Wa, wawa, wawa, wa.” We would rather be daring than careful. Besides, if a leisure activity does not carry with it at least the possibility of putting ones eye out, is it really worth doing in the first place?

My New Favorite Politician

 

 

 

This is Ron Ford.

Ron Ford is the mayor of Toronto.

He's in trouble because a video has surfaced showing him smoking crack.

Hard to believe, eh?

Glad That's Over With

Thank God that’s over with. Ever since the rollout of ObamaCare, we have been inundated with story after story, (including mine) of Americans being kicked off of their health plans by the new law, this despite the President’s ironclad campaign assurances about how if we liked our health plans, we would be able to keep them.

The White House has struggled mightily to spin their way out of what seemed to some  a bald-faced lie. First, they denied people were actually losing their coverage. Then they claimed that the people who were losing coverage would find better and even cheaper coverage on the exchanges. When that explanation turned out to be false, they blamed the insurance companies. When that charge was debunked by none other than the Washington Post’s fact checker, it was time for the President himself to offer an explanation. In a speech three days ago, he told a crowd of 200 true believers that what we all heard him say more than 30 times over the past 4 years wasn’t what he said at all. The word IF was added to the sentence in question, as in “IF your insurance company made no changes to your plan after March of 2010, you could keep it.” The trouble with that explanation was that nobody can find any tape of the President ever uttering this new formulation. Even for our famously in-the-tank news media, this was a bridge too far. So, the wise men surrounding the President got together and decided to have the President do what he should have done months ago.

There was the President sitting across from NBC reporter Chuck Todd, a portrait of George Washington hanging forlornly over a fireplace behind them. When asked about the nearly 5 million Americans who will be losing coverage because of Obamacare, President Obama said, “I’m sorry.”

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.”

Well, ok then. We can all move on. There’s nothing else to see here. The President is sorry that the empty assurances he employed so brilliantly to get his law passed in the first place didn’t turn out to be…well, true. But isn’t that what really matters, that he’s sorry? I mean, hey, we all make mistakes.

I watched the entire interview. The only thing that was missing was Oprah, and tears. The President could have greatly helped his cause if he could have managed to tear up a bit, to demonstrate the depth of his contrition. But Chuck Todd is no Oprah Winfrey. No tears. In fact, the President looked like someone who would rather have been having a root canal without Novocain, than to be forced to apologize to a lousy 5 million Americans too stupid to know what a great deal they were getting with Obamacare. Seriously?! 5 million people lose their health insurance? 5 million out of 250 million?? How in hell are you supposed to make an omelet without breaking a few eggs?

But, there he was, having a difficult time maintaining eye contact with Chuck, galled beyond human understanding to have been put in such a humiliating position, but there he was saying those magic words, “I’m sorry.”

Glad that’s over with.

Kids No More

This coming weekend, Pam, Kaitlin and I will make the drive to Princeton, New Jersey. The famous Westminster Choir will be in concert on Sunday. Kaitlin will get to see Princeton for the first time, and we all will get to hear this phenomenal choir for the first time. There will be a morning of sight-seeing and good food. It will be the first time that all four of us will have been together since July. Then, two weeks later we will be together again for Thanksgiving. Sensational!

Last night I was reading A Moveable Feast while listening to Ella Fitzgerald on Pandora, but could concentrate on neither. All I could think about was how it seems like just a few months ago when the four of us were crammed into a booth at Friendly’s enjoying sundaes after a day of Little League baseball at Tuckahoe. Pam would be consoling Kaitlin over some tough last inning loss, while I was trying to get Patrick to stop kicking his sister underneath the table. It was my daughter who was the intense, brutal competitor, while my son’s favorite part of the game was wearing the cool catcher gear.

In Princeton, we will sit around a much more sophisticated table. The conversation will be of things literary and musical. Pam and I will glance at each other in the midst of it with astounded wonder at what we have managed to present to the world. They, after all, will one day be our replacements. In more ways than I can begin to articulate, they will be a vast improvement, not because we were such great parents, but because of something both fascinating and ethereal, the constant visitation of God’s grace in their lives. Often it took the form of talents, endowed upon them at birth, flowered into maturity by skilled and loving teachers. When I consider the impact that people like Larry and Diane Collawn, Sherri Matthews, Mark and Joanne Terlep, and Jeremy Welborn had on the two of them, it is impossible to calculate. When I think of the incredible people in the extended family to which they are connected by blood, I realize that some of their success is indeed hereditary. No two kids on Earth have been endowed with such a loving and supportive tribe of uncles, aunts and cousins. Surely such love and acceptance helped sculpt their self-image as human beings of value and worth. Whatever it was and however it happened, Pam and I are two lucky parents.

Yes, can’t wait for the weekend. I’ll let you know if Patrick kicks his sister under the table for old time’s sake.

Voting "NO"

I made a mistake yesterday. After spending nearly fifteen minutes in the voting booth trying to decide between impossibly flawed candidates, I made the mistake of declaring on Facebook that I couldn’t bring myself to vote for any of them. Instead, I had only voted against the Meals Tax. This morning I read the results and it is clear that for the 1,659^th time in my life…I should have kept my mouth shut. Among other things I was accused of inexcusable apathy. I was reminded of all those who had fought and died to preserve my right to vote. I was told that since I had not made a choice in the voting booth, I had lost my right to complain. I was accused of aiding the Democratic candidates by not voting. Even my credentials as a Christian were challenged since I didn’t vote against the Democrats since they are the only party in America completely bereft of morals, principles, and values.

Politics is an enterprise that doesn’t respond well to reason, so mounting a defense against these charges is in many ways a pointless exercise, sort of like attempting to answer the question, “does this dress make me look fat?”  But, I do love a challenge, and pointless exercises are for me, the spice of life, so here goes.

1.     INEXCUSABLE APATHY. If I were truly apathetic, I wouldn’t have gone to the polling station in the first place. I did, in fact, vote. If apathy is the lack of passion or excitement, I can make a reasoned argument that this is a good thing when it comes to politics. In our nation’s history, it has been the true believers in the power of politics who have done the most damage to life and liberty. Woodrow Wilson’s deranged progressives at the turn of the century provide a textbook example of what happens when a group of people get fired up over the possibilities of political power. I would think an intense skepticism about politics would be a much wiser approach, given the history of partisanship.

2.     People have died for my right to vote. No, they haven’t. The brave men and women of the United States military who have fallen in battle did not do so to preserve my right to vote. They did so to preserve my freedom, which includes the freedom to not vote. If you want mandatory voting as a requirement of citizenship, move to Cuba. Besides, any thinking person who knows anything at all about this country does not want every citizen voting. Do you really want the 40% of Americans who can’t name the Vice-President, and think the Supreme Court was the name of Diana Ross’ second album…voting?

3.     By not voting, I lose my right to complain. Bullshit. I am a tax-paying, fully functioning citizen of the United States of America. The fact that I couldn’t in good conscience pull the lever for the candidates that our cash-addled political parties vomited up onto the ballot this year takes my right to complain away in much the same way as refusing to eat poisoned food takes away my right to starve to death. Again, people who say this are describing Cuba, not a free Republic.

4.     By not voting, I helped the Democrats get elected. I, er..uh, what??

5.     Even if I didn’t like the Republican candidates, I should have voted against the Democrat since they are immoral. Several people made this point, bringing up the Democratic Party’s support for abortion and gay marriage as evidence of their immorality. First of all, I agree that abortion is immoral, and I believe that homosexuality is a sin. But to make the leap to, “democrats have no morals” is ludicrous and insulting. One can be mistaken without being immoral. Are these two issues the only two things that require morals, principles and values? I can make a reasoned and intellectual argument against the entire welfare state apparatus on the grounds that it is injurious to the very people it claims to help. But I can concede and even admire the moral underpinnings of my Democratic friends who support it, since it is their moral, principled, value system of caring for the poor that undergirds it. You might even say that they believe that it is their Democratic party that is trying to follow the commands of our savior to care for the “least of these.” I believe them to be merely mistaken, not immoral. The assumption that underlies the view among many Christians that  Republican Party support equates to genuine Christianity is an insidious slander. Besides, “blessed are the peace makers” isn’t exactly a description of the Republican Party these days. What about that moral? Or how about Capital punishment? Surely reasonable people can disagree, right? Seeing as how roughly 50% of “born again believers” end up in divorce court, does that mean that they have no morals, since divorce is clearly contrary to scripture. You can’t cherry-pick moral values, and any assertion that any secular political party has a monopoly on values, principles and morals is lazy and disingenuous. Still, many of my Christian friends will say that regardless of where a candidate stands on a thousand other issues, a Christian cannot vote for him if he is pro-choice. Ok. So, does that mean that if a Pro-Life candidate came along who was for Obamacare, raising taxes, and an expanding welfare state, that Christians lose their right to complain about losing their health plan and their higher taxes?

Politics has often been called the ‘art of the possible.” Well, morally pure, totally principled political parties don’t exist. You make the choice the best you can between very flawed men and women. And every now and then, when presented candidates for whom the bar has been lowered beyond comprehension, you do the moral, principled thing…and vote “NO.”

Election Day

Getting ready to go vote. I must make a choice among a field of candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General. Then I have to approve or disapprove a proposal that would allow Henrico County to impose a 4% “meals tax” on all prepared food, the proceeds of which would be earmarked for schools.

Terry McAuliffe vs. Ken Cuccinelli offers up the classic matchup between a big government carpet-bagging liberal and a dreary right wing scold. For three months now Mr. McAuliffe has been warning me about Mr. Cuccinelli’s plans to outlaw abortions, and deny women their birth control pills. Seriously, that’s it. That’s all I know about Cuccinelli. He apparently has it in for women. For the past two months and three weeks, all I heard about Mr. McAuliffe was about how much he was planning to raise my taxes, $1746. Only over the past week have I heard that a vote for McAuliffe would be equivalent to a tacit approval of Obamacare. At this point, I would be willing to pay both of these guys $1746 to shut up already! I suppose I should point out that there is also a Libertarian candidate on the ballot as well, some guy with a bi-racial family who wears sear sucker suits and goes around pointing at McAuliffe and Cuccinelli saying, "I'm not them!"

Then there’s the most worthless office ever created, Lt. Governor, the guy who sits around for four years waiting for the governor to die, while piling up cash for his own run for governor. This year I must choose between some guy named E.W. Jackson and the Democrat candidate who wouldn’t shake his hand after their last debate. The fact that I can’t recall his name says something either about his candidacy or my poor citizenship. A quick Google search informs me that he is one Ralph S. Northam. That’s too bad, since the name “Ralph” doesn’t have much of a resume in modern politics. All I know about Mr. Jackson is that every politically active member of my church is in love with the guy, plastering my Facebook wall with testimonials to their undying devotion to this Harvard educated, fire-breathing social conservative, who lists as qualifications the volatile combination of preacher and lawyer. I haven’t seen a single add for either candidate.

The Attorney General race has been a mud-slinging tour-de-force, with Mark Obenshain and Mark Herring accusing each other of being notorious, pathologically lying bastards. So, there’s that.

The meals tax thing has been recently pitched by its proponents as “for the children." Whenever any political cause is presented to me on these terms I instinctively throw up a little in my mouth. Generally, it’s never truly about the children. It’s usually about manipulating you into paying higher taxes so the teacher’s union can finally have that convention in Hawaii next year. Any political movement pimped as being for the children is almost always really about the people who make money off the children. Sorry. No deal.

So, there you have it, Election Day in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

My Weekend in the Mountains

What does $485 buy these days? Not as much as it did twenty years ago, for sure, but that’s not to say it is a worthless sum. I spent $485 this past weekend on an idea that lodged itself in my brain when I woke up Friday morning, and wouldn’t let go. The idea was, “Get out of Richmond.”

I started poking around on the internet, searching for some out of the way place in the mountains where Pam and I could escape for a couple of days. Since the leaves had begun to burst with color practically overnight, I figured that I had little chance finding a decent place that wasn’t already booked. I got lucky. Apparently, there is an actual town near Lexington called Vesuvius. With volcanic enthusiasm, I discovered a quaint and extremely isolated destination at 2800 feet of altitude called the Sugar Tree Inn. One of its cabins, the St. Mary, was available for one night and one night only. I clicked the “book it now” button, then texted Pam, hoping against hope that she hadn’t scheduled us to attend some wedding planning seminar or something. A more intelligent approach might have been to check with her first, before plowing ahead with such a spontaneous plan, but that’s not how I roll.

So, Saturday morning, we got up, packed an overnight bag, had a bagel breakfast at Einstein’s, then hit the road for the two hour trip to a corner of Virginia where neither of us had ever been. It was a gloriously beautiful fall day, almost perfect with its bright blue sky and cool 60 degree breezes. By the time we hit Charlottesville, we were both starting to relax. Usually when Pam and I go somewhere like this we spend most of our time talking about our kids, but on this day we had launched into a full throated discussion of the myriad twists and turns of Breaking Bad. It was as if we had forgotten that we were married!

Most of the trip was on familiar roads, interstates 64 and 81. When we departed 81, everything changed. For me, there is something wonderful and exciting about driving down a road never before travelled. I suppose I get this from my Mother, that famous lover of those far away places with strange sounding names. Vesuvius, Virginia qualifies. It’s kind of like finding a town just outside of Paris named Bubbaville.

The further we drove the narrower and more precarious the roads became. Then we began a steady climb, further and further away from anything that looked at all familiar. Oddly, every home, every barn we passed along the way was meticulously maintained, each yard, neatly trimmed and free of junk. Each blind curve we went around revealed some new breathtaking vista, and with each new curve, Pam began to become more and more agitated. “What’s happening to the road? It’s too narrow! Where are the guardrails??”

Vesuvius ended up being a tiny hamlet containing a post office and an antique store dissected by a set of railroad tracks. According to my GPS, the Sugar Tree Inn was 5 miles straight up an extremely narrow road ahead of me where a sign greeted all those entering with this unsettling warning, “GPS navigation not recommended.” The rest of the drive was nothing short of awesome…for me, for Pam, not so much. 5 miles and several near death experiences later, we arrived at the Sugar Tree Inn sign and pulled off the State road onto the Inn driveway, a mile long, white knuckled thrill ride full of switch backs and hairpin turns. It was the kind of road you drive down while wondering if anyone making this drive had ever returned, and wondering what in the name of all that is holy you’re going to do if you meet someone coming the other way??

Finally, at the top of the last blind hill we arrived at the lodge. We climbed the staircase out front and turned around, marveling at the treacherous climb we had just survived. The view back down the valley was nothing short of stunning. How exactly we were going to coax our exhausted and traumatized car down this mountain would be left for another time. The Inn owners couldn’t have been nicer, as they reassured us that the driveway is actually ten feet wide. “We’ve measured it! Oh, and don’t worry, in the eleven years we’ve been here, we’ve only met another car coming the other way 3 times!” No explanation of what ever became of the unlucky three was offered.

Saturday afternoon was spent making the 1.7 mile hike up to nearby Crabtree Falls. Spectacular views and clean fresh air made for a wonderful climb. On the way back we discovered an incredible general store in the tiny town of Montebello. Pam would end up getting an unexpected jump on her Christmas shopping snatching up the mountain cabin motif regalia.

By the time dinner was served in the main lodge, we were both starving but unsure what to expect from such a remote kitchen manned by people who had only run into three other incoming cars over the past eleven years! Once again, we learned for the hundredth time not to judge a book by its cover. Pam’s beef short ribs were delicious and my braised pork tenderloin medallions yielded to my fork like a mound of rice, tender and juicy beyond description.

Our cabin was beautiful and new, hanging precariously out into the forest, a deep gorge just outside our back deck. Inside was a king size bed, two of the most comfortable chairs I have ever sat in, a gas fireplace and a TV that only worked with DVDs and VHS tapes, which were free in the lodge. It would have been asking a lot for a place this remote to have cable and internet. I felt fortunate to have electricity! We snuggled together after dinner and did something we hadn’t done in at least fifteen years… we slid a VHS tape in the oversized slot on the front of our 18 inch TV set and watched a jumpy, scratchy version of Bull Durham.

Sunday morning’s breakfast was sensational. We settled up our bill around eleven and then survived the free fall descent down the mountain to the relative safety of Vesuvius. By the time I filled the car with gas after a walking tour of VMI and Washington & Lee, the entire weekend’s bill came in at $485.

What a deal!

A Plea For Help

Dear Reader,

I need your help. It has come to my attention that I may be the beneficiary of a mistake by my health insurance company. This mistake will result in me maybe being able to keep my current health insurance, which Shakespeare might describe as a “consummation devoutly to be wished.” The problem lies in the fact that my insurance company insists that my current plan is “grandfathered”, even though I can think of three things that have occurred since March 23, 2010 that should have “un-grandfathered” it. What to do?

My wife suggested that I call my insurance company, describe these three events to them hypothetically (without giving them my name), and ask them if my hypothetical policy is still grandfathered. This seems like a reasonable approach. Except, I don’t want to run the risk of blowing up this incredibly sweet deal I have stumbled upon! “Let sleeping dogs lie” is the way my mother used to describe situations like this.

On the other hand, my last two blogs about the follies of Obamacare have been widely read. In them I took several perhaps gratuitous shots at the Affordable Care Act. Maybe there’s some welfare state loving, progressive, yes-we-can true believer at the NSA snooping around this blog who would love nothing more than to place a “head’s up” call to Anthem suggesting that they pay extra attention to one Douglas Dunnevant’s case file.

So, dear reader, if you have been reading this blog for very long, you have at least some idea of what kind of person I am. I would appreciate any suggestions you might have as to how I should proceed. What’s the right thing to do here? Blow the whistle on the illegitimate grandfathering of my policy, and take my Obamacare medicine, or accept this magnificent bureaucratic windfall and wiggle off the hook?

I suppose if I escape Obamacare, the higher premiums I would have paid won’t be available to provide the subsidy for someone else’s insurance. Does that make me a bad person? On the other hand the 600 and some odd dollars I will be saving every month can be spent buying steaks, bread and Yankee candles, which will benefit the butcher, the baker and the candle stick maker. Yes, this is a fine mess I find myself in. This is the mother of all conundrums.

Please respond either in the comment section below, or on Facebook. I eagerly await your wise and discerning suggestions.

Sincerely,

Doug

Sticker Shock

Yesterday’s post about my personal introduction to Obamacare lacked only one thing. Since I have been unable to penetrate the gauntlet of fire breathing dragons that protect Healthcare.gov, I have only been able to fret over what the cost might be. I said yesterday that my “trick knee” was telling me that I was about to be paying a lot more for my health insurance. Now, the truth can be revealed. Always trust your trick knee.

A friend of mine and colleague, Blair, happens to be a broker with Anthem, and as such has what amounts to a back stage pass to the troubled web site.(How come it’s always the beautiful blondes that wind up with back stage passes?) Anyhow, she was kind enough to print out all of my Obamacare options for me. Eight pages long, and 22 different options thick, I was greeted with a dizzying array of precious metal choices, bronze, silver and gold. I can only assume that the platinum and titanium levels are restricted to politicians and their families.

Ok, my present coverage with Anthem carries with it a $3500 deductable and a $5000 family out of pocket per year, which means that I have to rack up over 5 grand in medical expenses every year before my policy will pay anything. For this catastrophic coverage I pay $610 per month. So, the first thing I did when presented with my eight page printout was to find which plan was the closest to what I already have. It turned out to be something called the “Anthem HealthKeepers Preferred Direct Access HMO GOLD plan. Only, this plan carries a $7000 family out of pocket. Wait, I thought that one of the objectives of Obamacare was to give people better, more comprehensive protection. But, the richest plan offered to me will require me to pay MORE out of pocket, not less. Hmmm. Now for the fun part. What will my premium be for this inferior policy? Instead of $610 per month, it will be my new privilege to fork over $1384.15 per month, a 127% increase. The good news, I’ll have “wellness care.”

No reason to panic, I thought. After all, that was the Cadillac gold plan. Suppose I buy the bare bones bronze plan? Turns out that going back to the Bronze Age would force me to accept a $12,700 yearly out of pocket expense, and my premium would still be higher than I currently pay, $770.77 per month compared to $610.

So, it would seem that under Obamacare I will have to accept much higher out of pocket expenses and ridiculously higher premiums, a twofer!

When I consider the fact that this bill was conceived and designed by politicians, I am reminded of that old line about the camel and the racehorse. “A camel is a racehorse designed by a committee of politicians.”

Obamacare Hits Home

Back in March of 2008, I had to make a decision about my health insurance. The coverage I had back then was getting very expensive. My insurance company offered me some less expensive options. In order to lower my premiums, I would have to be willing to accept much higher deductibles and copayments. As I began doing the math, it occurred to me that the money I was saving on premiums could be set aside in a Health Savings Account, and by the end of the year would add up to more than the amount of the higher out of pocket expenses I might incur. In fact, if my family had a good health year, and didn’t use it much, I might even turn a profit on the deal.

I’ve been doing this for the past five years now, and I must confess, haven’t turned much of a profit, but I’ve been happy with the results nonetheless. My premiums have gone up since I started with the Health Savings Account, but modestly. Overall, I have been happy with this arrangement. It was my choice. For me, in my financial situation, it is a perfect system. I buy health insurance to protect me and my family not from the cost of doctor’s visits, checkups, and prescription drugs. I buy health insurance to protect us from the possibility of a $250,000 heart operation, in other words, catastrophic coverage. If I can comfortably write a check for it, I don’t need to insure it.

Well now. Along comes the Affordable Care Act, and I discover that my current plan isn’t good enough for me. Someone in Washington has decided to save me from the consequences of my foolish decision to self-insure the small stuff. Not only are my deductibles and copayments much too high, my current plan doesn’t cover oral and vision care, not to mention the all important “wellness services,” whatever the hell they are. What was I thinking?

Yes, but no problem since my plan is “grandfathered,” right? I bought it prior to March of 2010, so my plan is grandfathered…only not really. When Nancy Pelosi told us that we needed to pass Obamacare first so we could find out what was in it, she wasn’t kidding. On page 34560 of the regulations(I am NOT kidding about that page number, you can look it up), we discover that if your deductable goes up by more than $5, then your plan can no longer be grandfathered. Hmmm, let’s see now, two years ago my insurance company raised my deductable by $500 dollars. I’m screwed.

But Doug, but Doug, your new plan will have much better coverage with lower deductibles and lower out of pocket costs, and you will have oral and vision care and the highly coveted “wellness services”. Yes. But how much will this new coverage cost me? Ah, there’s the rub. I’ve been trying to find the answer to that question through Healthcare.guv for weeks now with no luck, but my trick knee tells me that I’m in for a sizable premium increase. That’s usually what happens when you purchase more of something. But what if I don’t WANT more? Suppose I’m perfectly happy with my current plan? My President assured me on a thousand occasions that if I liked my plan, I could keep my plan. Actually, his exact words were:

“That means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

What he meant to say was, “if WE like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”

So, a voluntary arrangement I entered into as a free citizen of my country is about to be nullified by people in Washington who think they know better what kind of health insurance I should have than I do. These are the same people responsible for a $650 million dollar website that doesn’t work, a 17 trillion dollar national debt, a National Security Administration that monitors my phone calls, and an IRS that targets the government’s political enemies.

What could possibly go wrong?

Texting With My Son

Just because my son lives in Princeton, New Jersey doesn’t mean that we don’t get to watch the World Series together, thanks to Steve Jobs and his handy smart phone. For the past couple of nights, I have been firmly ensconced in my movie room, snacks at the ready, watching the games on my 52 inch HDTV. I watch them by myself since neither Pam nor Kaitlin are huge baseball fans, and I think maybe I scare them a little this time of year what with my loud, unpredictable outbursts.

So, there I was last night, watching the game and having a running text dialogue with my Son. I will now share some of the highlights. First off, a critique of Harry Connick Jr.’s National Anthem performance:

Me: Harry nailed the anthem accapella.

Patrick: For once, an anthem that isn’t a riffing contest!

Then he proceeds to chastise me for my take on the NSA spying scandal from my earlier blog called “Spy vs. Spy”.

Patrick: I’m not sure “self interest” justifies spying on 70 million private phone conversations.

Lovable kid, my son. Idealistically naïve, but lovable.

Then the game gets into the 8^th inning and Red Sox manager John Ferrell decides to bring in closer Koji Uehara with two outs and the Sox up by two runs.

Me: Don’t like this move. Lester hasn’t thrown that many pitches!!

Patrick: UEHARA=SAYONARA?

Me: He better be.

Patrick: Let’s cross our fingersara.

Me: hahahahah

Patrick: “hahahahara”

Me: Hope this isn’t a kamakazi mission.

 Uehara proceeds to strike out the first batter he faces on three pitches.

Me: Wow

Patrick: Koji pitch any better??

It’s a very proud moment as a father when your son gets the better of you in a pun slinging contest.

Then it’s time to rag on the commercials.

Patrick: So tired of this iPhone commercial.

Me: Good Lord! I’m tired of the Taco Bell PS2 one too.

Patrick: Yeah. Still doesn’t make me want to eat Taco Bell. In all likelihood I would buy it to see if I won, then when I didn’t, give the food to someone else.

Me: Oh, and the Budweiser one with the fireworks at the end?

Patrick: I kinda like the Budweiser “Do you know who brewed your beer?” one. Although that quip about them being the “biggest local brewery” made me want to vomit in my mouth.

So, thank Steve Jobs for creating something that allows me to enjoy watching baseball with my boy from 290 miles away.

By the way, Uehara WAS sayonara.

Spy vs Spy

The salons of Europe are atwitter with indignation at allegations of American spying. Thanks to Mr. Snowden’s revelations, it would appear that our NSA has been quite busy intercepting millions of phone calls on that continent, most troubling to European sensibilities, even those from Prime Minister Merkel’s cell phone. This is apparently a bridge too far for the Euros. Howls of protest are being heard from Brussels to Berlin, from France to Finland. Merkel dialed up Obama herself, (presumably on a secure satellite phone), to scold him in no uncertain terms that “friends do not spy on one another.”

Excuse me. I will continue to write this blog after I take a few minutes to roll on the floor laughing.

“Friends do not spy on one another?” What universe has Frau Merkel been living in for the past sixty years? Friends spy on each other every minute of every day and have been doing so for 4,000 years of recorded history. We spied on the Brits during World War II, and the Brits spied on us. It’s called “self interest”. All of this feigned outrage coming from Europe isn’t over the shocking news that the NSA has managed to hack their calls. The outrage comes from the embarrassment attending such a one sided revelation. If Mr. Snowden had access to all of Germany’s intelligence comings and goings, it would be the United States who would be feigning outrage.

Listen, every American ambassador understands when he first walks into his new embassy home, whether it’s in Berlin, Paris, or Moscow, that job number one is to  remove every listening device he can find, knowing full well that the possibility of a private conversation is virtually impossible, same thing in Washington. Why? Well, human nature being what it is, we have a hard time trusting each other. Individuals as well as nations are constantly looking out for their own self interests in ways large and small, and while we may have tons in common strategically and culturally with Great Britain, they would sell us down the river in a New York minute if the opportunity presented itself. The instinct for self preservation is powerful and has no scruples.

I’m no fan of the NSA when it comes to its increasing domestic snooping what with the no scruples thing, but when I hear that they managed to tap Merkel’s cell phone, I gotta say…impressed. It’s called doing your job.

Game Three. Holy Cow!

The following instant analysis of game 3 of the 2013 World Series may not be not be rebroadcast, retransmitted, or in any way rewritten without the express, written consent of Doug Dunnevant….unless a sizable check changes hands between you and me.

 

Top of the first: The guy on the mound pitching for the Cardinals, the one who looks like an accountant, is throwing 98 mph cheese with movement. Might be a long night for the Sox.

Bottom of the first: Peavy looking a little shaky. When he goes to his mouth with that chaw in there, is the tobacco in his spit considered a foreign substance? 2-0 already. Red Sox nation ready to “trade da bum!!”

Top of the second: Carpenter makes an amazing play robbing Nava of a hit. Without Napoli in this lineup, there isn’t much to scare you. Without the DH, St. Louis is a better team.

Bottom of the second: First Erin Andrews sighting, always a good thing. Peavy settling down. Also saw the Clydesdales. Instantly wanted a beer.

Made it through 2 full innings without seeing an erectile dysfunction commercial.

Top of the third: Stephen Drew looks like an out. Poor kid doesn’t have a clue at the moment, but plays a mean short stop. 4 for 43 in the post season ain’t gonna cut it. The kid is one error away from death threats in Bean Town.

Ahh yes, Cialis commercial. Suggestion for their marketing people...nothing happening with separate bathtubs. Just saying.

Bottom of the third: Can’t decide which was more little-leagueish, Ellsbury’s drop or Hollidays’ horrible base running. Bad call on the strikeout of Adams. Ball was low. Peavy looking better.

Top of the fourth: Ellsbury gets first Sox hit. Victorino looks terrible at the plate. Love watching Pedroia swing the bat. He’s the toughest player on the field. Need Big Papi to hit one out here. Smart strategy by St. Louis. No way I’m letting Papi beat me. Make Nava be the hero. Yep, coulda used Napoli in that spot.

Verizon commercial about the family who goes trick or treating while obsessively looking into their smart phones is one of the things wrong with America. Leave the phones at home Mom and Dad!!

Bottom of the fourth: How come every time I see Yadiar Molina play I think he’s the best player on the field? Maybe because he is. Best defensive catcher I’ve ever seen. Bases loaded, nobody out. Strike out, pop up, pop up. Great job by Peavy!!

Top of the fifth: Leadoff triple by Boegarts. Yeah baby. Momentum shifting. Walk. Very large Cardinal pitching coach to the mound. Cardinal relief pitchers begin in-game Yoga, or synchronized stretching. Either way, creepy. Poor Drew. Carp pinch hitting for Peavy, looks like an out waiting to happen, and grounds out but scores the run. 2-1. Umpire suddenly blind to outside corner. Great at bat for Ellsbury…but strikes out. Time for some snacks.

Triscuits and Colby jack cheese with a Jonathan apple.

Bottom of the fifth: Two out double brings Molina to the plate. Nervous. Walk him? Yes! Make Freese beat you. At some point in this game a ball is going to be hit to Ortiz at first, I just hope it’s not now. Doubrant has just made two great pitches that were both called balls, but overcomes by getting Freese on a flyout. Now for the 16^th commercial  trying to sell me a pickup truck.

Top of the sixth: Who looks worse at the plate right now? Drew or Victorino? V  gets a walk, so I guess it’s still Drew. Pedroia lines out. New pitcher for the Cardinals. But first a word from Geico. I was tired of the green lizard two years ago. Oh, and the 865^th airing of the Taco Bell PlayStation 4 commercial. Ortiz is soooo clutch. 1^st and 3^rd, one out. Somebody besides Big Papi is going to have to get a big hit. Whose it gonna be? Daniel Nava!! Base hit scores the run 2-2.

Bottom of the sixth: Doubront looks hittable, but isn’t. Cardinal crowd is stone cold quiet. Don’t think a silent crowd is part of the “Cardinal way.”

Top of the seventh: Battle of the bullpens. Fourth of the night for St. Louis is on the mound throwing 98. Drew put out of his misery, pinch hit for. Three up, three down. Navy man just belted God Bless America out of the park. Wow. Stretch time.

Bottom of the seventh: Third Sox pitcher, Breslow. Check swing base hit. Now Beltran. Nervous. Ball grazes him. Two on, no out. Bye Bye Breslow. Tazawa coming in, Japanese pitcher number one. High cheese, then ripped down the line to left, 4-2 Cardinals. Big hit by Holliday. Tazawa looks uncomfortable.

Top of the eighth: Sox have six outs left. Better get cracking. Lead off single by Ellsbury will help! Victorino looks terrible, then gets hit. Huge gift! Come on Pedroia! Ferrell starts the runners so Peedy’s ground out advances the runners. Now they load em up by walking Ortiz. Good strategy, make Nava beat you. Rosenthall coming in. This guy is unbelievable. 100 and nasty. What a great game! Nava scores a run on a groundout. 4-3. Now it’s the kid’s turn. He comes through!! Tie game baby. Where the heck is Erin Andrews?

Bottom of the eighth: Bench player for Cardinals leads off with a hit. Isn’t that always the way it is with baseball? Pop up. Two outs. Beltran. Nervous again. Always nervous with Beltran. The rookie steals second. Single scores the go ahead run. Now they walk Beltran to pitch to Holliday, a guy who has already knocked in 3. Hmmm…. Glad I’m not a big league manager. GOT HIM!!! Let’s go to the ninth tied at 4. Why yes, I think I will!

Top of the ninth: One, two, three. Heck of a time to ask a relief pitcher to have his first career at bat!? “At least he didn’t get hurt,” the announcer says. Haha!!

Bottom of the ninth: Let’s see if we can get Molina out. Nope. Japanese pitcher number two coming in. Hopefully Uehara will equal sayonara. Craig rips a double to left. Runners on second and third with one out. Fly ball wins the game. Why are we pitching to Jay?? WHAT?????? Thrown out at the plate, then a wild throw past third then another throw out at the plate but interference is called. The game ends on an obstruction call? Great play by Pedroia. Wow! Amazing game ends with the most obscure call in the rulebook. Holy Cow.

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love baseball.

It's Nobody's Fault

Anyone who reads this Blog with any regularity surely knows how much I love baseball in general and the World Series in particular. The fact that the Red Sox are playing this year makes it all the more awesome. But, I have noticed something lately about sports and sports fans that fascinates me, that is this strange notion that if one’s preferred team loses, it is always the result of either incompetence, or treachery.

Last night, for example, the Red Sox lost game two. They had a 2-1 lead going into the 7^th inning. Manager John Ferrell removed his starting pitcher with one out and two runners on base. He replaced him with a left handed relief pitcher who had pitched brilliantly throughout the post season. This time however, the Cardinals pulled off an audacious double steal, then scored a run to tie the game on a sacrifice fly and the another on two errors on the ensuing play. By the time Ferrell removed his left hander, St. Louis was up 4-2, which is how the game ended.

This morning, a friend of mine on Facebook made the observation that the Sox had “blown it.”  Others have blamed the loss on Ferrell’s quick hook of starter John Lackey. No Red Sox fan I can find has thought to credit the Cardinals for daring to attempt a double steal, down by a run. No one has lauded sore-ribbed Carlos Beltran’s clutch single that scored the insurance run.

Listen, I’m a Red Sox fan, but I’m sorry, they didn’t “blow” the game. They got beat. This is baseball. Stuff happens. Teams don’t always “lose” games, sometimes they just get beat. It’s no one’s fault. Give the Cardinals credit for a gutsy comeback.

Read your newsfeed the day after a big Virginia Tech game or a Redskins game. If either of them lost, you will be treated to a laundry list of reasons why they got hosed by the officials, or how stupid a coach’s decision was, or how horrible so and so is because of a fumble or an interception. The other team’s performance never has anything to do with the outcome of a game.

I suppose it’s a natural reaction of fans, short for “fanatic.” And yes, sometimes my teams do lose because of ill-conceived strategy, or dumb blind bad luck. But more often than not, it’s just…..baseball. Last night’s game was every bit as fun to watch as game one for me. It’s October, and I’m watching great baseball. I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever wins this World Series will deserve it.

In Search of Humility

So, last night there was a bit of controversy in the first game of the World Series. A double play ground ball was hit by one of the Red Sox. If properly executed, the Cardinals would have gotten out of the inning unscathed. Instead, the shortstop completely missed the ball. It glanced off of the webbing of his glove. Bases loaded. Except the umpire who was standing 5 feet from the play with a perfect view inexplicably called the runner out. As you might expect, Red Sox nation proceeded to have an apocalyptical fit. But, because this is baseball, sanity and justice would prevail. Immediately after the horrible call, the other five umpires converged on the second base bag. A conference began, in which a unanimous conclusion was drawn that Dana Demuth had in fact made a bad call. The call was reversed, order restored, whereupon Mike Napoli hit a bases clearing double. None of this is to say that Mr. Demuth is a horrible umpire. He just made a mistake.

As I watched this unfold, a thought passed through my fertile imagination. What if politics worked this way?

What if the Republican Party after 9/11 would have gotten together and said, “You know, these terrorists are real bastards and all, but do we really want to fight a ground war in freaking Iraq? And, I know we’re all scared right now, but this Patriot Act thing might really come back to bite us in the buttocks one day. Why don’t we all calm down a little, and take some time to think this all through?”

What if the Democratic Party after the roll out of HealthCare.gov would get together and say, “Holy Crap! How do you spend 650 billion dollars on a website and end up with this? Listen guys, I know that most of us have wanted Socialized medicine for all of our lives and all, but this Obamacare business is a train wreck. Do we really want to be associated with such a colossal disaster? How about we go back to the drawing board and design a bill with 200 instead of 2000 pages?”

Although baseball is clearly showing us the way, the above two scenarios will never happen because it would require basic humility and an admission of error.

Never gonna happen.

It's All About The Women

It’s been four days since my last blog. For me, that’s a long time. The simple fact is that I’ve had nothing to say. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally a fog descends over me. For two or three days at a time, everything seems heavy, my movements become leaden. It becomes a colossal effort to think critically. I never know when such days will come, and they leave me as abruptly as they arrive. This morning, for example, life is lighter.

It occurs to me that those of you fond of psychoanalysis will have a field day with that paragraph.

So, this morning I have learned that Denmark has been declared the “happiest nation on earth”, by some United Nations outfit who arbitrarily declared itself the judge of such things. Why are the Danes so happy? Apparently, it’s all about the women.

In Denmark, women are fully represented in government. They even have a female Prime Minister. Their most popular TV show also features a female Prime Minister. Women in Denmark contribute a much higher percentage of household income than women in the U.S. When a women has a baby, she is given 52 weeks of paid maternity leave, then when she does go back to work, her child gets free day care. The Danes have free health care, and they use the heck out of it, the average Dane consulting with his or her primary care physician 7 times a year. So, it would seem that the Danes are happy because they enjoy cradle to grave Socialism. No mention is made in this “Happiness Survey” as to whether the Danes are pursuing this happiness or having it presented to them by enlightened government programs, but the suggestion is very clear that it is the latter. No mention was made of what kind of tax burden is borne by the happy Danes, so I had to do a little research. The Danes pay income taxes at a top rate of 56%. In addition, there is a VAT tax on all purchases which amounts to a 25% sales tax. This year, a new tax was added on fatty foods that would make Michael Bloomberg proud. By comparison, our top tax rate is 39.4%, and our sales taxes vary by state by average around 5%. The American idea has always been, keep more of your earnings, go out there and pursue your own happiness wherever you can find it. The Danes philosophy seems to be, give us your money and we’ll provide your happiness.

Of course, the happy Danes do have a couple of peculiar advantages over us melancholy Americans. First, they aren’t expected to be the policemen of the world. They don’t have a military budget that chews up 25% of their GDP. Secondly, Denmark has no aggrieved minority; they don’t have to wrestle with a melting pot of nationalities, those teeming masses yearning to be free, a melting pot that hasn’t melted much over the last 30 years. So, there’s that.

But, give the Danes their due. They have learned something as a nation that our grandmothers and mothers, wives and sisters have been telling us for years. When momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Week in Review

The Week In Review:

Government shutdown ends, and within minutes the National debt clock, which had been mysteriously stuck on $16,800,000,000,000 for months, suddenly bolted upward by $328,000,000,000. We continue to be assured by all the smartest people that this is, in fact, a good thing, or at least, not a bad thing. Would the last person leaving the Republican Party please remember to turn out the lights?

Major League baseball seems to already have found a successor to Mariana Rivera, in the long-faced Japanese closer for the Boston Red Sox, Koji Uehara. Like Rivera before him, Uehara struggled early in his career until miraculously becoming unhittable around 3 months ago. His five out save in game five of the ALCS was as overpowering as any I’ve seen in my 45 years of watching baseball in the post season, prompting me to declare on Facebook that Uehara=Sayonara. The fact that my son didn’t chastise me for latent racism for the remark must mean that I am growing as a person.

A 17 year old girl caught shoplifting in a New York City Victoria’s Secret, was found to be carrying a dead baby in her shopping bag. Her story initially was that she had experienced a miscarriage earlier in the week, but upon further investigation, it was discovered that the child was born fully formed and viable at 8 and a half pounds. The 17 year old mother of a two year old boy could be charged with murder in addition to shoplifting sexy lingerie and makeup, officials say. A spokesperson from Planned Parenthood pointed out that this whole disturbing incident could have been avoided by a safe and legal abortion. A spokesperson from Health and Human Services pointed out that the shoplifting charge could also have been avoided if only lingerie were on the approved essential purchases list for the Food Stamp program.

My week dramatically improved this morning when Pam made apple pancakes with apple syrup along with thick pepper encrusted bacon. A spokesperson from Michelle Obama’s Fitness and Nutrition task force pointed out that by consuming such a breakfast, I have most likely taken 22 hours off my expected life span. My reply to this news is that if I have to read very many more stories about 17 year olds carrying around dead babies at Victoria’s Secret, my demise couldn’t come soon enough!