11/30/2014

Thoughts On A Sunday

It's taken days but most of the power has been restored to the over 200,000 homes left without it after the Great 'Day Before Thanksgiving Day' Nor'easter. We were fortunate that our power was out for inly 2 hours. Others didn't have theirs restored until today.

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Deb and I have been cleaning up around The Manse, continuing with both the post-Thanksgiving Day cleanup and our continuing fall cleanup. That has included cleaning the oven (it really stinks when we run the cleaning cycle) and finishing the last of the dishes before they are returned to their owners or to storage in one of our kitchen cabinets.

A trip to the dump and the recycling center helped do away with a the piles of unserviceable bits and pieces we've accumulated. We are also gathering clothing we no longer wear because they are too big, too small, or just unwanted, and will be bundling them off to the local Goodwill. Some last shoveling and snowblowing also opened the ground for some melting over the next few days.

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I find it hypocritical the media is slamming RNC staffer Elizabeth Lauten for posting comments about Malia and Sasha Obama's reactions during the annual Turkey Amnesty, yet remained absolutely silent when the DNC and the media went after Sarah Palin's kids with a viciousness that took many people by surprise, including many Democrats.

It just yet another example of the double standard and an indication that much of the media are merely Democrat operatives with bylines.

What Lauten wrote was a mild rebuke. The abuse heaped upon the Palin children was orders of magnitude worse than that.

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This quote brought me up short:

“How come looters never steal work boots?”

By way of Maggie's Farm.

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Ashe Schow reminds American radical feminists of Five Things To Be Thankful For As A Woman In America. For sure most, if not all of those things would be denied them in places like the Middle East and the Asian sub-continent.

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For those who have been paying attention, it's no surprise that more Americans than ever are delaying medical treatment due to the skyrocketing cost of health care caused by Obamacare. This was not an unexpected side-effect of the misnamed Affordable Care Act.

The hardest-hit: the middle-class. Americans with an annual household income of between $30,000 and $75,000 began delaying medical care over costs more in 2014, up to 38 percent in 2014 from 33 percent last year; among households that earn above $75,000, 28 percent delayed care this year, compared to just 17 percent last year.

It isn't just affecting the cost of treatment but the cost of pharmaceuticals. In the past 18 months I've seen the cost of one particular pharmaceutical increase by over 121%. When I asked our pharmacist why the cost had gone up so much, she stated that all the drugs of that type had gone up because of certain provisions of the ACA.

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David Starr adds his 2¢worth about the rising costs of health care in the US, showing we aren't getting our money's worth and why. He offers four solutions to the problem. I happen to agree with all of them.

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Oh, yay! Yet another hate hoax at one of our institutions of higher learning.

I expect the perpetrator will be severely dealt with...or not. At least previous perpetrators of these types of hoaxes have not had anything more than an admonition from the administrators of those colleges not to do it again.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

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This doesn't bode well for fast food workers in the US.

Due to a labor shortage in Singapore, one restaurant is using robots to fill the jobs normally taken by humans, in this case delivering food orders to their patrons.

How long before US restaurants start doing the same thing, but in this case to replace very expensive and overpaid waiters and other food service personnel?

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The New England Patriots lost to the Green Bay Packers in Green Bay, 26-21.

It wasn't a blow out and the Patriots managed to seriously limit Green Bay's ability to score touchdowns from the red zone. In the end the Patriots didn't get it done.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where power has been restored, the madness of Black Friday has subsided, and where all of the Thanksgiving visitors have departed for home.