09:59 – Barbara and Frances met the Hospice nurse at 5:30 yesterday at Sankie’s apartment. The nurse determined that Sankie isn’t ready to be moved to Hospice yet, but she’s now officially under Hospice care. That means no more trips to the doctor, and if there’s a crisis they’ll call Hospice instead of 911. If Sankie continues to get worse, they’ll eventually move her directly to Hospice. There’s no telling how long that might be. It could be weeks or it could be days. I suspect days is more likely than weeks. So, for now, we’re all in waiting mode.
It’s a cold, breezy, wet day. Barbara has yard work she wants to do, but that’ll have to wait for tomorrow. She’s out running errands at the moment. When she returns, she’ll get started on labeling 90 more sets of bottles for chemistry kits while she watches some of the series she likes on Netflix streaming.
Looks like soon that you will need to wear your bracelet in order to fire your gun:
http://www.nraila.org/legislation/federal-legislation/2014/4/holder-floats-taxpayer-funded-smart-gun-research.aspx
Sounds like a nightmare to me. I’m sure that battery operated interlocks will work 100% of the time. Especially when you need them in a emergency.
So, for now, we’re all in waiting mode.
BTW, my wife and I can very much emphasize with you and yours on this. We moved her father back into a rehab / nursing home on Tuesday after he had another surgery last Monday (which did go well). Last night he called Pam to say that he wanted to go home which is just about impossible at this stage. He can get himself into a wheelchair with the help of the nurse. But he cannot get off the pot without extreme help. If he makes it to the toilet first before things start going…
Nothing below his waist is working very well at all, at this point. His brain is ok, not great, but his body is rapidly deteriorating. Our next crisis point will come when his medicare hospitalization runs out after 90? days and he has to start paying for a lot of it himself.
Another problem is that he is in a private room right now and apparently the VA will not help pay for a private room. I would think that my FIL could pay the difference between private and semi-private but I am not sure that the VA will allow that.
A TV show recommendation for y’all: Orphan Black. It’s a joint BBC/CBC production. We watched the first three episodes last night. The show opens with a young woman arriving in a city in Canada by train. She’s been on the run from an abusive relationship, is about to make a score, and wants to get her daughter and leave town. While at the train station, she sees another woman jump in front of a train to her death. However, the jumper looks exactly like her. Complications ensue.
It’s aired in the US on BBC America and season 2 starts today. Season 1 is available free for Amazon Prime members on their streaming service. The lead actress, Tatiana Maslany, was nominated for an acting Golden Globe. You get to see quite a lot of her in the series, ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. She also had a recurring role in Heartland as “Kit Bailey”, Robert.
Thanks for the tip, ech; should be watching Season One in a week or so; got to get through Season Three of “Deadwood” first. Also a couple of movies. When I should be studying for certs, but hell, all work and no play makes Davy a very dull whatever.
Mrs. OFD’s b-day today; MIL’s the other; too close together and too much angst and estrogen all at once, with daughter stirring the pot, etc., etc. And they’re all headed down to MA for Easter with grandkids but I did something to my back a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t hack the five-hour rides down and back, and may not be able to hack the plane ride this next Wednesday to Mordor. I can only be on my feet, standing or walking, for about ten or fifteen minutes, tops. As soon as I sit down I’m fine.
So I’ve basically been useless for two weeks and barely made it to and from my job interview last week, with a possible second one coming up, and maybe a couple of others. Could be interesting; last thing I want to convey is that I’m an old decrepit piece of shit with one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel.
I have to hand it to my uncle: he has not objected in the least to being in assisted living. His house just sold last week, and he was actually glad to be rid of the mental burden it represented. I really do not understand people who want to live at home, when it is quite obvious to anyone with marbles that they can’t. Unless they can afford a staff of servants.
I really feel for your situation, Lynn. The vets I have known, have had nothing but praise for VA care. They feel like it is their own private club with better service and care than what all the rest of us get. Hope your FIL can be convinced that he is better cared for by professionals in settings designed to care for people with problems, than being at home where they cannot possibly take care of themselves.
Of course, my uncle was trained by his mother that having people wait on you was as good as life gets.
Yep, I’ve had Orphan Black series one in our queue since it became available. I think we’ll wait until it’s canceled before we binge-watch the whole thing. OB cleaned up at the Canadian Emmy awards.
Yes, it was in my queue because Tatiana Maslany has the lead role(s). I’ve liked her since I first saw her as Kit in Heartland.
Hope your FIL can be convinced that he is better cared for by professionals in settings designed to care for people with problems, than being at home where they cannot possibly take care of themselves.
He cannot walk and cannot get up off the pot. Those two items are killers and he knows it. He is down to 250 lbs and his girlfriend, also 81, is 89 lbs. There is no way that she can lift him up.
He called the wife today and was calmer but still wants to walk out of the rehab / nursing home.
BTW in other news, the largest electric utility in the Great State of Texas is going bankrupt next week. This may be interesting.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/04/15/energy-future-holdings-misses-filing-deadline/
EFH, aka TXU, is the largest owner of lignite / coal power plants in the USA. The environmental groups are advocating that the coal plants be shutdown permanently during the bankruptcy. If this happens, Texas will have rotating power blackouts this summer as we got very close this winter with three of their plants mothballed since October.
I worked for TXU and a predecessor for 8 years in the 1980s. They moved my pension to Fidelity a couple of months ago, thankfully. In 11 years, I will be collecting $265/month for the rest of my life. I plan on taking that check to McDonalds and swapping it for a Big Mac.
Infrastructure in this country is in big trouble. All of it, everywhere. This just reinforces my contention that private enterprise — in this case private equity, exactly like Bain Capital — is precisely the wrong place to put trust for infrastructure responsibility.
Infrastructure should be government run (I have no problem with states running it, and prefer that), and the service provided non-profit, at wholesale rates to the consumer population in general. Lacking that, you are going to see much more of this, as the greedy private equity firms squeeze these businesses to death, while letting backup systems slide into non-existence. If OFD’s projections of a future without the grid comes true, it is going to be because of the greedy capitalist 1% running infrastructure projects into bankruptcy. What do they care? As John Perkins pointed out in his book, they have figured out how to make money at every step of the acquisition, running, disposition cycle, whether these infrastructure providers (or any businesses they own) go belly-up or not.. Kind of like currency traders, who now have figured out how to make money whichever way the currency goes — they just make more if it goes the direction they project.
If OFD’s projections of a future without the grid comes true, it is going to be because of the greedy capitalist 1% running infrastructure projects into bankruptcy.
I disagree. I think it will be due to the environmentalists who object to coal and fraking. They say franking at 5,000 feet is affecting the water table at 1,000 feet. The greenies really do not understand geography, or much else for that matter. I think all greenies should be made to walk everywhere, only eat the food they can grow, and not use any electricity for a year including pumping their own water with a hand pump. No phones, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury.
Mr. Chuck, most of us here don’t want gummint in charge of infrastructure (track record not that good). But how about this: Put the military in charge. Beef up the MOS’s needed, make an officer secondary specialty (serves two years in “power” and two in combat MOS), let enlisted stay for 30 years without “up or out”. Throw in some Civil Servants for continuity (no contractors). Keep military standards, dedication to duty, etc. Would that work for you?
Well, certainly greens can throw roadblocks in the way of the private equity guys, but when it has reached the point where it makes no difference whether a company makes money or goes bankrupt — the equity firms still make money, — no one is really invested in the business, like moms and pops are. Greens cannot force companies into bankruptcy, they can only close options.
When the AT&T guy tells me the infrastructure in his company is crumbling and inadequate for the traffic, and the backups they had up into the ’80’s are now non-existent, how did the greens cause that?
Further, if state government ran the power grids, as they once did when power was plentiful, wholesale, and cheap, tell me the greens could stop the power flowing. Politicians would be responsible then, and if the electricity did not flow, heads would roll. No one at all is accountable for the grid now — thanks to those clever politicians. As witness, this Texas situation is the perfect example. No one will pay for that, except the consumers of Texas with brownouts and higher rates.
This conservative line that government is incompetent to run anything is clearly and historically incorrect. It does a damned good job of running a military that threatens the world and breaks peace more than the USSR ever did. And it should be running all infrastructure as non-profit, selling to citizens who indirectly own it, at wholesale. Get the Mitt Romneys of the world in there, and you will have positively certain failure as the Texas situation proves.
And no, the military should be castrated, IMO. They should not be running anything, including any type of international policing force.
Gosh, wake up people. Nothing in society is functioning well, except deliveries in the food chain. My bank will no longer accept third-party endorsed checks. One of my clients will only pay me by passing on a check he receives, so there is no tax impact to his operation. Now it is not at all illegal in this state for third party checks to exist. In fact, it is provided for by state law. But when banks refuse to accept them — perfectly legitimate transactions — who is there to make them do what is provided for by law?
The mess we are in today is caused by the privatization of everything. IT is the cause of problems; not government running infrastructure.
That’s a damn good idea, MrAtoz; we could use the existing Guard units in each state instead of continually activating them and sending them to combat theaters overseas. Infrastructure maintenance and security in one fell swoop!
Plus, of course, close all the overseas bases and installations and bring all the troops home anyway and stop interfering as World Cop everywhere.
But we’re just dreaming; our rulers are very busy right now extending empire in the so-called ‘great game’ in central Eurasia and starting to build up forces in the Pacific facing China. They can’t sustain this in the long run but meanwhile they’re sucking up financial and human resources that would obviously be more productive elsewhere.
There are parallels between us and the former British, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Roman empires, but in our case the inevitable collapse may be accelerated and take place over a much shorter period.
You lose.
Seriously, is that line ever used except by people who are utterly unable to make their case and persuade people? “You don’t agree with me, so you must be asleep or deluded. Wake up!”
We get it, Chuck. There are problems here. Pretty much none of us agree, or ever will agree, that socialism is the answer, whether in roads and power or healthcare or limiting CEOs’ salaries. Capitalism has problems, but they’re not as bad as socialism’s problems. I’ll also point out that the US doesn’t actually have capitalism, but rather crony-capitalism, a totally different beast.
Corporate fascist oligarchy, in other words. Socialism for the wealthy, and rabid dog-eat-dog radically free market for the rest of us. (a few eggs must be broken for the omelet, etc.)
I don’t have much trouble imagining an “Elysium” type world in our future, but on the other hand don’t think it could be sustained at current and projected rates of financial disintegration. The elephant in the room is the multi-trillion-dollar debt, which is likely to double, and then double again, unless, of course, the U.S. Leviathan defaults. Which would be unprecedented on that scale.
Elections and voting are utterly meaningless in this burgeoning scenario. We’ll be looking to our families, friends, and neighbors to carry us through the coming turmoil together, society’s “little platoons.” The State is exhausting itself here and cannot be relied on for help or much of anything else except continued repression and stifling of dissent and opposition; the Bundy ranch caper was a dry run and political theater for the masses. Next time they’ll shut down communications on-site and control the bodies accordingly. People like the Bundy family will simply disappear. Occasionally they’ll make examples of crushing mass dissent, or set up a de facto martial law lockdown like they did in Boston and like they’re doing right now there as we “speak.”
And peeps will applaud and genuflect.
Steve, that comment is at the least disingenuous. My call to wake up is to observe what is going on. I know damned well you are smart enough to weigh what has been happening contemporaneously with past history. Proof? You have been here a long time. OFD and Lynn, Mr. Atoz, ech, pcbduffer, daily point out the state of affairs. But you guys who belong to the conservative religion — whose claims are as fictitious as Christianity’s — without examining what they advocate and how they actually conduct themselves, past the point of what comes out of their mouths do need to wake up. I’m no socialist advocate, but I am a realist. Conservative philosophy as practiced by the Republican party is at the least dishonest and often criminal. I got off that train when I was past the point of believing in the tooth fairy. Took a little longer to examine Christianity, but I have finally come to full agreement with Emma Goldman.
Power is not only going awry in Texas — just google Duke Energy and Indiana, and read up on what Duke Energy has been trying to pull here. And, as OFD points out, they are using their crony capitalist connections to try and get a CEO for state operations off the hook for felony offenses while running the power grid here.
Just keep believing that Republican party conservatism is the best answer and keep supporting them. See where it gets us. The day people here stop complaining about life in the US, is the day I will believe you have the answer.
“Just keep believing that Republican party conservatism is the best answer and keep supporting them.”
Who here ever says that?
Not me, that’s for sure. I can’t stand those treasonous bastards.
I have tried before to give a basic illustration of the differences between “standard-issue” “conservatives,” the Tea Party buffoons in their tricorner hats and suchlike, country-club Repubs who control the Stupid Half of the War Party, and genuine conservatives such as are found at the Rockford Institute in Illinois, Chronicles Magazine, and vdare.com, the Salisbury Review, etc., etc. Some call us paleos. Whatever. And most of us are, in fact, Christians, often Roman Catholic and Orthodox. Most of them don’t curse and swear like I do, however; I plead guilty and previous work in all-male environments, repeatedly, over decades.
But I am also a realist and know that the answers are not to be found in voting or elections anymore, or paying much attention to the garbage the MSM feeds us daily and nightly in this country now. We’re heading for a fall, and how hard a fall is unknown at this time; I hope, like Bob, that it continues to be a slow and not-too-painless slide into eventual dystopia and an orderly reboot of the system. But I fear it will be more like a BSOD crash and hard drive failure.
I agree with Chuck that the government can and should run *some* things (but not others.)
It ran electricity generation, water and sewage, telecommunications very well until the Nineties, when this stuff got sold off and the new private owners hiked prices and implemented just in time servicing of equipment, which meant there were often delays in fixing infrastructure.
Governments can and should run major airports, but not airlines, as it’s rarely economical for a city to have more than one major airport, but setting up airlines is comparatively cheap and flexible: if circumstances change you can shift airline routes, so there’s no need for the government to own them.
Under the wonderful free enterprise system our electricity and water charges have gone ballistic, they were far cheaper when state governments ran them.
Sounds like the government should not run condom distribution systems, “Another sign that central planning works: condom shortage in Cuba”:
http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=6043f7810362a545dc3f006f0&id=6e0f543085
Although I do think that the USA government should open Medicare to all citizens in the USA as it has totally screwed up the paying for health care in the USA.
We note, as Sovereign Man essay points out, that Cuba is among the most destitute of “modern” nations, but also that throughout the Castro regime thus far, the Western Left has idolized and adored the place and its rulers and never faltered in that regard. It is what they would like for the rest of us, as they decree how we shall then live and work….or not. As they, of course, live in the lap of libertine luxury, our very own nomenklatura, their highest goal in this life.
Long ago OFD worked at DEC and another DECoid used his vay-cay time to go down to Nicaragua to help the Sandanista regime set up their communications networks. He was right proud of hisself, too. I told him in the internal EasyNet bulletin board that after the next revolution there, maybe after the Contras took over, I’d use my vay-cay time to slide on down and assist with their firing squads and hoped he’d be there. I got jammed up with my “manager” over that, and also comments I’d made about one of the Kennedy brats visiting Northern Ireland and stirring the shit there. A few nights later two of the tires on my car were spiked, out in the DEC parking lot.
The US regime is in the process of messing up the public health care system and its billing/payment scams so badly that they will be “forced” to declare some sort of ‘national emergency’ situation and combine all the country’s medical and retirement and SS schemes into one gigantic pile of loot, which they and their cronies will then pilfer until it’s all gone.
LOL Some *Dems* pushing “Shrub III” for El Presidente:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/21/why-the-gop-needs-a-return-to-the-bush-leagues.html
Jeb Bush versus Hillary would ensure an easy win for the Heroine of Benghazi in 2016. I’ve got a book for that also:
http://www.amazon.com/State-Disobedience-Tom-Kratman/dp/0743499204/
HILLARY! has a lot of messy baggage and though middle-class, middle-aged white wimmenz on the coasts and in the cities adore her utterly, she is liable to blow a gasket at some press conference or other, and she has some potentially serious med issues, evidently. And meanwhile they’re touting Chelsea to be her “senior adviser.” How the hell does that work? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Oh, wait; I forgot; we live in Mirror World now.
So it may be that they start positioning the Mooch for a run, or someone not even on the media horizon yet. And the Repubs have nobody. Wouldn’t matter anyway; they’re toast, demographically and otherwise. Good riddance.
In the end, it may be such a mess, and there may be other major events taking place, that the Incumbent gins up a ‘national security’ situation and is ‘forced’ to stay on for a wholly ‘precedented third term, like his fellow commie, the late Pharaoh Roosevelt II.
I say bring it; the worse, the better. Sooner it falls apart, sooner we can reboot.
The Repubs have Ted Cruz, a Tea / TEA party favorite here in The Great State of Texas. An easy win here in the South and flyover country. A tough sell on the coasts.
Maybe Rand Paul also. Same problems as Cruz. We may end up with both fighting for the top. Not sure that Rand Paul is mean enough. Cruz is a vicious bulldog and ran an absolutely brilliant campaign to take the junior senator seat in Texas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/04/20/ted-cruz-and-rand-paul-opposite-directions/
Seems that Rand Paul is moving to follow his father’s isolationist footprints. I could support that.
Chelsea as Chief of Staff? Really? Seriously? Ok, why not have an all women White House? Wait, I forgot about Lanny Davis.
No, Chelsea is being talked about as the senior adviser for her lovely and brilliant mom’s campaign; after that, who knows? She herself is also so lovely and brilliant.
And Cruz and Paul and whomever can walk on water and turn Wonder Bread into caviar but they cannot overcome demographics. The Repubs are done. Toast. That is all.
My ideal White House would be The Mooch as President, with Fauxcahauntus Warren as the VP. Put the Heroine of Tripoli and Benghazi in charge of the DOD; she’s a regular warrior queen anyway, amirite? Then we’ll have some darn good entertainment for a few years as the country slides like shit through a goose into the porcelain altar.
Chelsea as advisor is a great way to funnel $100,000’s to her from donations for doing nothing. 1%er and all that. She’ll make more than the *real* advisor.
I see the State Department thinks Syria may have used toxic chemicals in an attack. At least our only involvement will be a harsh memo from Obummer. “Stop it and Praise Allah!”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-cites-indications-toxic-chemical-was-used-in-syria-attack/2014/04/21/78a8592c-c987-11e3-93eb-6c0037dde2ad_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
Heh. I needed some MOSFETs for my electronics hobby. Ordered from DigiKey about midnight Friday. They arrived USPS First Class today. Nice.
Good point, MrAtoz! I see you’re as cynical as I am on this! Sure, put the whelp on the campaign trail, have her do photo ops with the baby, and channel a boat-load of cash donations to her account/s. The real adviser, assuming Lady MacBeth of Little Rock even needs one, will be a slick operator like Carville or some other hardcore retread from previous Klintonista capers.
If we’re so concerned about what the Assad regime is doing in Syria right now, or what Vlad is up to in Ukraine, how come we’re not worried about what the Norks are doing to their own people? Why didn’t we care a tinker’s dam about the massacres in the Congo, Uganda, and those other Hobbesian states of nature nightmares over there?
To hell with them all! Stay home and take of business here! We certainly have enough on our damn plates!
Cause the Norks have nukes and 14,000 artillery weapons pointed into Seoul. The new dictator, same as the old dictator, appears to be just as crazy and mean as his sainted father. In fact, we need to get our troops out of South Korea. And Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc, etc. If any of those give us trouble, an airburst nuke will take care of their issues for a while.
Yup, Carville will be the real power behind the throne of the Hero of Benghazi. And maybe his wife will run the Repub campaign again for Jeb Bush. It will be 2000 all over again except with different results. And Jeb has the personal funding to run so he is ready.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/us/politics/jeb-bushs-rush-to-make-money-may-be-hurdle.html?_r=0
Maybe Assad and Quaddafi and Hussein shoulda got them some nukes, buy ’em from the Russians or Chinese or Pakistanis or Indians or South Africans…or….Israelis…!
Then maybe they’d get a little Nork-type respect from our own brilliant strategist warrior princes….
Meanwhile, with the tech chops assembled here we oughta gin up our own damn nuke!
I designed a functioning fission warhead when I was 18 or 19, as a project for second-year physics. My professor sent the design off to someone he knew for evaluation and got the response, yup, it would work. And then he laughed his ass off when he gave me a C for the project. The assignment had been to design, build, demonstrate, and write up something showing some aspect of physics, and I’d done only two of the four parts. I tried to protest that the school didn’t provide me with any fissionables or explosives, but he came back with the totally bogus response that he’d clearly stated that any unusual tools or supplies were the student’s responsibility.
(To be honest, I don’t remember the grade I got on the project. I got a B in the class and I had near-perfect scores on the tests, so I deduce that I got a C. I’ve come to terms with having lost the ability to perfectly and effortlessly form new memories, what with having lost that knack more than 30 years ago. But the relatively new loss of older memories is starting to annoy me.)
Well, youngster, you are in for a real treat in the next few years; truly ancient memories will become clear as day, as though they just happened, while whatever the wife told you five seconds ago disappears into thin air. Assuming you even heard her at all. Which, in my case, what with tinnitus in the right ear (from decades of munitions blowing up) and, well, let’s be honest here, lack of interest most of the time, might not happen.
You will also find yourself deliberately placing small objects in a spot that you KNOW you will remember and of course forget where that was as soon as you step away.
All this can work to your advantage if you play your cards right, though.
SteveF wrote:
“And then he laughed his ass off when he gave me a C for the project. The assignment had been to design, build, demonstrate, and write up something showing some aspect of physics, and I’d done only two of the four parts. I tried to protest that the school didn’t provide me with any fissionables or explosives…”
Ya lazy bugger, get the potent stuff yourself. According to John McPhee in The Curve of Binding Energy there’s a lot floating around, and not well guarded.