We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
What's the difference between wholesome obsessions, distractions, avoidances and diversions - and unhealthy ones? (I am not speaking clinically about obsessions and compulsions here, but just in the layman's sense of the words.)
The difference is in the purpose, not so much in the thing itself. The most common ones we all see in daily life are:
- TV, radio, and listening to music - Shopping - Reading - Surfing the net - Sports, exercise - Sleeping and napping - Socializing - Hobbies - Sex and erotic activities - Computer games - Drinking and drugs - Work, chores, and projects of all sorts - Mental preoccupations of all sorts
That covers most of life, doesn't it? Trust me - I am all in favor of fun and productivity. Not one of these things is necessarily unwholesome - except when they are used as avoidance of something or things. That usually - but not always - means when they are not done in moderation and in proportion.
Why do so many of us have our best thoughts and insights in the shower? Because we aren't doing any of those things in the shower...generally speaking.
Only the mentally strongest people - and I do not include myself in that category - routinely face their anxieties, worries and fears; routinely deal with every responsibility or burden immediately, or routinely face their relationships or the realities of themselves: their weaknesses, their guilts, their unsettling thoughts and feelings, their disappointments and sadnesses, regrets and remorse, boredom, loneliness, or empty feelings - or just "being with oneself."
There is an expression in AA: "Move a muscle, change a thought." It's good advice if one is avoiding a dangerous thought but it's bad life advice if one is avoiding thoughts that need to be considered and faced and maybe even acted upon.
If I decide on a Saturday nap after two hours of tennis in 90 degrees, fine. But if I decide on a nap (maybe without realizing it) because I am worried about paying the bills, not so fine.
Having kids is a great diversion and distraction. For years, it will fill your life with preoccupations and duties which have the advantage of being truly responsible and loving. But when they get older, you face yourself again.
Therefore, whenever I find myself immersing myself in something, I try to remember to ask myself why. That's not obsessive navel-gazing, it's just common sensical self-monitoring. "Metacognitive," as they say.
And when I drive, I try to leave the radio off - so I can listen to the real news about what is going on with me, my soul, and my life.
America is swiftly becoming a granny state. Less frail and more involved, today's grandparents are shunning retirement homes and stepping in more than ever to raise grandchildren while young adults struggle in the poor economy.
The newer grandparents are mainly baby boomers who are still working, with greater disposable income. Now making up 1 in 4 adults, grandparents are growing at twice the rate of the overall population and sticking close to family — if their grandkids aren't already living with them.
The modern invention of the nuclear family never really worked out that well, did it? Too isolated, too little support and help, etc. Farm families consisted of extended families.
...it appears that our massive “investments” in education have produced no measurable economic return. Should we be surprised by this? No. Average scores on standardized tests have not risen, despite the fact that we are “investing” seven times as much in real terms in each student than we did six decades ago. So, even by the measures used by the educational establishment, it is clear that the higher spending has not created any additional human capital.
I do not overrate learning. I think we overrate spending on the education industry which protects a monopoly on credentialing. Learning and education are not the same thing. Learning is for adults (over 16); education is for children.
People of all stripes will go to lengths to hold onto their preferred views of things. Re-thinking is difficult and often upsetting to one's equilibrium. But facing reality generally is more effective in life - however painful at times. Upsetting a comfortable equilibrium can also sometimes lead to better things, open up new vistas.
Dr. Sanity has a detailed essay on the topic: DOES THE LEFT UNDERSTAND PSYCHOLOGICAL DENIAL? Even if you overlook the political aspects of her essay, it's a good overview of the points at which psychological defenses and logical error frequently intersect.
I have been posting about the value of a rigorous high school education, and the frequently minimal value-added of college for many kids. I forget the average number of study hours of American college kids these days, but it is low. High school can prepare anybody for a lifetime of learning. Maybe you can't take a class with Jacques Barzun, but anybody can read his books.
So here's my question for my readers: Let's hear about people you have known who have led interesting and challenging lives without a college degree, including yourselves if applicable.
I'll start with a few:
- The omniscient, cynical, whiskey-breathed City Editor of an urban newspaper where I worked summers during college - The guy in town who started his plumbing contracting company and now has 50 employees - Bill Gates (I don't really know him) - Our Shakespeare scholar electrician - my Master Gunsmith
His perspective on cultural history is so wide as to view history as a series of births, flowering, decay and finally decadence. “When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label. A decadent culture offers opportunity mainly to the satirist…”4 which describes our time perfectly. But just as in the natural world, the cultural world holds the seeds of rebirth within.
Kevin Carey in The Wilson Quarterly makes the case for college - or at least some college - for all. Naturally, I think that is insane, and for more reasons than I have time to list.
A rigorous high school degree can still provide all that is needed to continue one's education on one's own, if wanted; all that is needed to be a good citizen, and all that is needed to perform 90% of the work out there.
We all know that a college degree can mean a great deal, or next to nothing - same as a high school degree.
A couple more education links:
Are Colleges Ripping Us Off? Half of all college students make no learning gains in their first two years, and 36 percent show no significant intellectual growth even after four years.
His first is to ask, what about, say, Muslim patients who refuse to see other-sex doctors (and but hey - what about the nurses and the gay docs?)
Second, he considers whether it is up to the government, via the Big Government payors Medicaid and Medicare or (slightly indirectly) Obamacare, to decide what they want to pay for.
As for the first question, no problem. They should get their care from whomever they choose in whatever form they choose (unless trying to die in the ER). It's called freedom. (Last I read, however, Muslims may be waivered from ObamaCare anyway because it's not Sharia or whatever reason.)
As for the second question, of course government payors can decide what to be willing pay for, given whatever Congress, the bureaucracy, and etc decides. However, that does not, or should not, require that it be provided. The requirement is the rub, and it constitutes a federal takeover, an overreach, an intrusion into choice.
Of course, the larger issue is the politicization and governmentalization of medical care, which promises to create endless explosions if ObamaCare proceeds. Dr. X is quite right that we are headed towards turning the corner where medical coverage is no longer insurance, but plain payment with the feds as the Grand Medical Commission in DC.
Rather than ObamaCare, I would have liked to have seen a wide-open, nation-wide market for private (including charitable) medical coverage of every size, shape, and sort with no federal involvement, and subsidies for the poor of any age - old or young. (Medicare was a giant error, since the elderly, statistically, are wealthier than the young who pay those bills with their taxes.) Muslim policies for Muslims if they want them, Muslim clinics and hospitals if they want them, Catholic policies if Catholics want to buy them, etc. etc. If unrestrained by government, the market would be providing for every individual or family want. Unfortunately, we never had a wide-open market for medical insurance due to the state insurance commissions' protectionism, or whatever it has been.
She wants one of these (the convertible, please) to show the love:
I want this pair:
However, back in reality, what I am going to do is to make dinner for She Who Must Be Obeyed: Cherrystone clams on the half-shell with lemon slices, then a steamed 3 lb. lobster with home-made horseradish mayo, cucumber slaw and potato salad, with champagne or maybe a nice Meursault. Valentine cupcakes for dessert.
I've lived in the New York City metropolitan area for 26 years. I take many things about New York for granted. I still haven't been up to the top of the Empire State Building, and I haven't been to the Statue of Liberty. I did (back in 1982, when I was in college) get to the World Trade Center, and I've been to Windows on World for dinner. I've also been to the Top of the Rock and the Rainbow Room (which I preferred to Windows on the World).
None of these really compare to Central Park, though. It's just a great place to hang out, and thankfully is very close to my office.
We mentioned that theme here yesterday. Compassion without discernment is generally moral vanity or spiritual-ish pride; often foolish, often counterproductive or destructive, and often humiliating to the recipient. It reminded me of this well-known speech by Ivan Illich (not Ivan Ilyich, who died) on the topic of paternalistic "help." The intro:
An address by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968. In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service "mission." Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request.
I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.
I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.
The Fed has kept interest rates at an historic low in an attempt to help 'heal' the economy. Fed Governors have no fear of dead weight in assets, in the form of declining values and poor potential returns. The assumption is that with economic expectations so low, inflation is not a risk, and that rates can be used to 'fix' things by keeping rates low indefinitely.
This artificial approach to soothing our economic woes is a dangerous game. The economy has, in many respects, become unlinked from the stock market. In pursuing the current path, the Fed has gambled on some concepts which have been tried before, though in different conditions and with varying results.
Does this sound familiar? Because if it doesn't, remember that the current situation was caused, in part, by the creation of bundled mortgages, an existing tool which was utilized to try something new, with the assumption of safety baked in. In theory, the level of risk was limited. The problem with them was related to the nature of the individual loans themselves. Each bundled group offered had varying degrees of risk involved. Despite the levels of risk, many high risk assets were given very good ratings. In the end some failed, which put all at risk.
Penicillin, and its deadly poisonous antibiotic cousins, kill billions of life forms yearly. Some near-extinct critters hardly exist, these days, outside the zoos of biologists' labs. The little Anthrax critter, for example, and variola.
These little bugs are just as much a part of the ecosystem as any other living thing.
Photo is of the Pneumococcus, a species which humans attack and kill by the billions every year. Even good old treponema pallidum and yersinia pestis are near extinction.
Where is PETA? This is a serious biodiversity issue. The vast majority of earthly life forms require microscopes to see, but is that any reason to excuse man-made extinction of these critters?
Is it just because they don't look cuddly? Dr. William Osler famously termed pneumoccal pneumonia "the old man's friend" because it provided a peaceful ending.
ObamaCare is designed to become a government-controlled Welfare program for all, with insurance companies as back offices, check-paying services for a one-size-fits-all government program. Leviathan is always hungry. Freedom and free choice is the cost.
Are there really tons of folks out there who want the federal government in charge of their own medical care? Who really wanted this, except for government? And government employees are exempt from it, which just goes to show...
The politicization of medical help has only just begun. It's a feature, not a bug.
As an aside, recall that the Church supported Obamacare. Compassion, of course. Compassion without discernment is just vanity and foolishness.
Groupon released their first earnings report, and to say the least, they underwhelmed. I had shared some of my thoughts about Groupon several months ago. But something new is afoot.
In the last week, we've seen Facebook file for an IPO. It's been talked about incessantly, and there are many interesting things within the filing which have caused people to begin sharing opinions about it. Since Facebook is in my industry, I find this discussion intriguing and certainly have my own point of view, particularly since I use Facebook.
Originally, I didn't want to join Facebook. Several friends emailed me invitations to join in 2007. I wouldn't accept. Finally, I joined just to stop the invitations. At first, what I found fascinated me. It's actually a terrific picture sharing facility. On the other hand, as Betty White famously said on Saturday Night Live about when she was younger, "We hadPHONEBOOK...seeing pictures of people's vacations was a punishment."
Clearest explanation I've seen about Obamacare:The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate -Critics are missing the main point. There are good reasons that your car-insurance company doesn't add $100 to your premium and then cover oil changes.
One quote:
Notice the doublespeak confusion of "access" and "cost." I have "access" to toothpaste because I have two bucks in my pocket and a competitive supplier. Anyone who can afford a cell phone can afford pills or condoms.
Poor women who can't afford birth control are a red herring in this debate. HHS isn't limiting this mandate to the poor anyway. We all have to pay. The very poor typically don't have employer-provided health insurance in the first place. "Allowing women to space their pregnancies"? Was there some sort of federal ban on birth control before this?
It's not about "access" and it's not about "insurance." It's because Americans, when paying even modest copayments, choose to spend their money on other things. They prefer a new iPod to a "wellness visit" to the doctor.
As the HHS unwittingly admits: "Often because of cost, Americans used preventive services at about half the recommended rate." Remember, we're supposed to be worrying about skyrocketing health-care expenses. Doubling the number of wellness visits and free pills sounds great, but who's going to pay for it? There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free.
Sorry. Every increase in coverage means an increase in premiums.
That doublespeak about access and cost is what I have been writing about. If it's a plan to pay for every medical cost, it isn't insurance in any ordinary sense.
Many Republicans are falling into a false dichotomy, between social and other issues, instead of focusing on the common thread that unites these issues, the gross overstepping and inadequacies of the Obama administration.
Astute commentators are pointing out that President Obama is strategically steering the national conversation toward social issues – inequality or contraception, as examples -- in order to neutralize his weaknesses in other areas. Republicans, it is said, are either playing into Obama’s re-election playbook or allowing themselves to be neutralized in stressing Obama’s failed economic and foreign policies, which are part and parcel with his social policies in undermining American and global freedoms.
The serial rallying of many conservatives to the non-Romney contender of the month is central to proving this point. Deep anger at the Obama administration fuels the desire for a more “red meat” candidate. This is largely unfair to Romney and fails to stress the commonality among Republicans on the core issues. Instead, it falls into the Obama trap of a false dichotomy between social and other issues.
Romney's campaign had tried to calmly sound the theme of competence in facing the common thread of the Obama administration’s failures: incompetence and ideology. Romney tried to remain the gentleman he is but, defensively, instead has had to fiercely attack his opponents who fiercely attack him. This has consumed resources and credibility, and detracted from the attractiveness of the core Republican issues: the gross overstepping of the Obama administration into personal lives, crony mismanagement of the economy, and alienation of allies left adrift by Obama fecklessness in facing anti-Western foes. The social policies of the Obama administration should not be faced in isolation, allowing Democrats to draw in social liberals, but be placed in their proper context of more indicators of class warfare that undermines the freedoms of all to succeed or to have private moralities untrammeled by Washington.
Democrats are smiling, as well they should. The Republican primaries are shielding them from the main thrust of the Republican message while Republican contenders for the nomination savage each other, weakening unity, and fall into the Obama traps on stressing social issues.
Newt Gingritch was a false vessel for conservative hopes. Rick Santorum, a more consistent and saner conservative, lacks the attractiveness to a wider audience of those on the cusp. Mitt Romney, however, while not a red-meat orator has the unique ability to present the Republican theme in a manner, with conviction and deep understanding of the intricacies, that doesn’t antagonize moderates. Romney is not charismatic but he is competent, and has the abilities to deracinate Obama’s pretensions and unify a majority around stopping the Obama administrations’ transgressions that weaken us in all ways. Romney may not be red-meat but he is meaty. It’s about electability, and that with adequate confidence that together with a Republican Congress a new administration in Washington will accomplish more Republican and American priorities.
Moreso than his opponents, Romney is what Republicans need to win, and what America needs to unseat Obama. I’ll vote for whoever gets the Republican nomination. But, I’m not happy at being part of many of my compatriots playing out a self-destructive temper tantrum that could lose the election.
Get over it: there is no Reagan available, nor was Reagan all that fond memories say he was.
The issue is not whether birth control and abortion are available. They are. The issue is whether the government should have the power to force your neighbor to pay for these things, and/or to require all insurance policies to cover them. Also, neither of these things are particularly expensive.
The insidious premise of the discussion is this: If it isn't covered, it's not available. But don't people buy their own Nyquil, Tylenol, heat pads, Viagra, divorce counseling, cosmetic surgery, toe fungus medicine, toothpaste, Botox, morning-after pills and Dr. Scholl's foot products?
Have people become so trained to expect somebody else to buy what they want that the premise has become distorted? I am a happy product of an unexpected pregnancy, and refuse to regard pregnancy as a disease. Pregnancy is health. If an unexpected pregnancy is a disease, then I am a disease. A tumor, or something.
In fact, I cannot understand why some medical insurances cover pregnancy at all, much less abortions. In my view, we all ought to be free to buy, or not buy, medical insurance of any sort with any sorts of coverage, depending on what makes sense for us. We ought to be able to bring a check list of what we want to the table, and see some nation-wide competition for our business. Get bids, like anything else.
Here at Maggie's, we tend to prefer high-deductible Major Medical coverages with our own choices of docs. Cheap protection from financial catastrophe.
In the past week, we have had links about government (and doctors) advocating against salt and sugar. I don't mind my doctor giving me advice (I pay him for it), but when docs try to get governments to control what to do, I get annoyed. As I understand it, it is the job of doctors to offer advice, not to provide control.
From the same sort of academic busybodies who gave us the ever-popular global warming panic comes a new prediction of catastrophe. This newest ginned up rationale for enabling Liberal-Progressive-Democrats (L-P-Ds) to have more control over the behavior of ordinary citizens hasn't been given catchy name yet, so rather than wait for the mainstream media to compare notes on JournoList, let's all agree to call it...global sweetening!
Yes, my friends, President Obama's fellow travelers within the progressive movement have decided that they have to find a new excuse for imposing government controls since climate change (née global warming) failed to achieve their overarching goal of controlling the car you drive; the fuel you're allowed to use; the type of light bulb you are allowed to use; and, after they get the "smart grid" in place, how warm you'll be allowed to keep your home.
Mayor Bloomberg, of course, is the poster child for obnoxious Nannyism. Here's the ultimate governmental rationale for these sorts of controls: Ideology, not science. A quote from Dr. Keane's piece (from Australia):
It is extremely frustrating when reports of harm are used to justify forcibly overriding autonomy, completely ignoring the other side to the equation. In this regard, ‘promoting healthy lifestyles' is no longer enough; they are now being enforced whether you like it or not.
Internationally, the public health debate is somewhat more balanced than in Australia, as represented by Eli Feiring, an academic from the University of Oslo, Norway: ‘Given that respect for the autonomous choices of patients runs deep in modern healthcare, there are strong reasons to value the claim that competent and well-informed individuals are the best interpreters of their own interest and that they should be free to make choices others would regard as non-beneficial to them.'
Many academics demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of autonomy.
Indeed. Experts tend towards arrogance, not towards autonomy (freedom). And, in the long run, academic experts usually turn out to have been wrong anyway.
A few items from the Duncan Phyfe show at the Met. His workshop/factory in Manhattan copied, but simplified, the popular styles of the time. Not exactly my taste, but much in demand at the time:
The American financial crisis was no more a failure of free markets than the European crisis was. Just as investors tried to signal that something was wrong with the euro, they tried for decades to show that something was rotten in American finance. The rot remains, but Washington has spent the past two years demonstrating that it would rather distort or block market signals than rely on them. This strategy thwarts economic recovery.
The financial system crashed in 2008 because vital checks on the financial industry had eroded long before. One of these checks was that the bondholders who lent money to banks had known that they would lose money if those banks failed and didn’t leave behind sufficient assets to pay their debt; only small depositors enjoyed government protection. But in 1984, the U.S. government saved a failing bank, Continental Illinois, from the normal bankruptcy process because its failure would have posed a threat to the global financial system. Thus was born the phenomenon popularly called “too big to fail.” Bondholders and other lenders to banks began to realize that in a crisis, they could count on intervention from the U.S. government, and they started lending to banks more and more carelessly—so banks grew still bigger and still more threatening to worldwide finance. Immunized by the government against losses, investors could no longer provide important market discipline for big banks.
According to our hypotheses, the tax code is equally open to all. Does the average citizen have the time and expertise to plow through 70,000 pages of tax codes? Clearly, the answer is no, so it's simply not true that the tax code is equally available to all.
Let's imagine a different set of values and governance. Let's suppose the tax law stated that the entire tax code must meet two requirements: it must be able to be read and understood by the overwhelming majority of citizens with a high school education in one hour or less.
The national labs (or equivalent impartial bodies) would be tasked with conducting a randomized sampling of 100,000 citizens to test each year's tax code. If 80% of the adult citizenry with a high school education (or GED) were unable to put the tax code into practice after an hour of study, then the code would be rejected and sent back to Congress for revision until it passed this simple, transparent standard for equality before the law.
Clearly, the tax code is both legal and completely skewed to the very wealthy and politically powerful. $100,000 is still a fairly significant contribution in politics, and if that contribution ends up yielding a tax break that gains the donor $1 million in lower taxes, then that donation earned a 10-fold "return on investment."
Only the wealthy can afford to hire Panzer divisions of tax attorneys to pore over the 70,00 pages and game the system to pay less than self-employed citizens pay in Social Security and Medicare tax, never mind income tax.
The first hypothesis is still vaild--the tax code is legal--but the second--that fundamental opportunities are open to all--is demonstrably false. Equal opportunity is revealed as a social control myth promoted by those benefitting from opportunities that are not available to the citizenry at large.
This is the definition of an oligarchy.
All that the regular person can do is to declare all of their income (unless you are somebody like Tim Geithner or Charlie Rangel - hey, nobody is perfect). After that, it's a crap shoot.
Some have compared the impact on agents of ObamaCare’s medical loss ratio (MLR) to the impact of online technology on travel agents.
Yesterday, I spent hours studying many web sites to decide on a hotel to take my family during spring break. Although the web sites were very informative, most offering standard categories as to number and type of beds, whether there is a pool, etc., the information was not complete or didn’t cover all my requirements. I still had important questions to meet my family’s particular needs. I, also, noted many Commenters at these sites who’d had bad experiences due to lack of adequate information. I phoned several sites and directly to several hotels’ reservation lines, but those who answered had no more information than at their sites. Finally, I reached an agent who spent a half-hour giving me complete answers to my questions, and I made the reservation.
MLR requires medical plans to commit 80% of premiums of small group and individual plans to claims, and 85% for large plans. Agent commissions, though a pass-through charge from buyers, are treated in ObamaCare as administrative costs, thus making it harder for insurers to meet the 15% or 20% allowance for non-claim costs. The argument goes that as the Internet makes it easier to make reservations directly, the need for travel agents has declined. So, too, will the need for insurance agents decline as medical plan purchasers can buy directly from insurers or government-directed exchanges. Lastly, standardized medical plans dictated by ObamaCare are supposed to make choices easier. Therefore, we needn’t be concerned that to meet MLR restrictions that agents’ commissions have been as much as halved, leading many to reduce services to buyers or to leave the field.
This leaves medical plan buyers – as it does travel buyers -- largely at the mercy of 1-800 ignorance or inadequacy, as well as self-interest or lack of independence in not providing useful comparative information. Further, a buyer is not given additional information important to the decision, say about nearby facilities or services involved in the trip, or the efficiency of claims-processing or how certain treatments might be actually covered by the medical plan. Then, unlike the range of accommodations available at hotels at varying prices, standardized medical plan buyers will be forced under ObamaCare to buy services they either don’t need or, even, religiously or ethically object to, and pay the cost of these services, in effect, for those who want them. Premiums have already increased to cover provisions mandated by ObamaCare, and will increase further.
There’s another aspect to the MLR regulations that will further reduce the choices available and increase the costs to many medical plan buyers. If an insurer does not meet the MLR percentage limitations, beginning by August 1, 2012 the insurer will have to pay rebates to buyers. Insurers are each setting aside tens of millions of dollars for these rebates, costs that will be recovered through higher premiums. According to healthcare consultancy The Segal Co., “Until now, insurers have been able to subsidize less-profitable product lines and types of groups (usually small ones), and do it across state lines, with the profits of the more-lucrative ones. Now, with insurers under the threat of paying out rebates on the latter, they may give small-group policyholders fewer subsidies and charge higher premiums.”
There’s bipartisan legislation pending in the House and Senate to relieve this impact on agents but, even if it might pass, it is unlikely to be signed by President Obama, or regardless of the President may not muster 60-votes in a future Senate if blocked by ObamaCare supporters there.
For disclosure, I’ve been a health plan consultant and broker for 25-years. I’m at the age and resources where I’m nearing retirement. That decision is speeded by Obamacare. It’s not worth it to provide the services I did, so I reject most of those who now approach me for help. Tens of thousands of other agents are making the same choice, even if not able to retire. Tens of millions of medical plan buyers are being left adrift, at higher costs and less needed information, not able or allowed to buy a medical plan that best and most affordably fits their individual needs.
What's the difference between wholesome obsessions, distractions, avoidances and diversions - and unhealthy ones? (I am not speaking clinically about obsessions and compulsions here, but just in the layman's sense of the words.)
One in four Americans are grandparents, soon to be 1 in 3. From 
I have been posting about the value of a rigorous high school education, and the frequently minimal value-added of college for many kids. I forget the average number of study hours of American college kids these days, but it is low. High school can prepare anybody for a lifetime of learning. Maybe you can't take a class with Jacques Barzun, but anybody can read his books.
Penicillin, and its deadly poisonous antibiotic cousins, kill billions of life forms yearly. Some near-extinct critters hardly exist, these days, outside the zoos of biologists' labs. The little Anthrax critter, for example, and variola. 
Many Republicans are falling into a false dichotomy, between social and other issues, instead of focusing on the common thread that unites these issues, the gross overstepping and inadequacies of the Obama administration.
