CBS News Sucks

CBS Evening News has developed a habit of whoring for its "60 Minutes" show on a regular basis. They run clips from that show as a "news item" with the show's logo in the lower corner, and then advise that you can see the entire piece on "our prime time news magazine Sunday night." Yecch.

They also now believe that is a story is worth running, it is worth running every evening all week. This week we were supposed to be utterly fascinated by the plight of refugees leaving North Africa for an obscure island in the Med. They claimed they were talking about Syrian refugees, but those were most certainly not Syrian people; probably Somalis. They advertised that they were going to be "onboard with a Navy rescue ship," not telling us in advance that it was the Italian Navy and that it was routine patrol rather than a rescue mission. Why is the action of the Italian Navy in foreign waters news in the United States?

African Tulip Tree

The camera angles exaggerate slightly the amount of vertical growth, but it has been phenomenal; when planted last year it barely reached the bottom of the lower window, and now it is very nearly at the top of it. The flowers are only the beginning, as there are eight more clumps which have not yet opened. Watching this grow this summer has been fun. Click on the image for a larger version.

Round Two Begins

Molly survived heartworm about eight years ago, so now she is starting a campaign against a second invader; a lymphoma in her small intestine. It is a slow growing kind, which the vet says is treatable and probably curable, so she tells us to be optimistic.

She is taking pills twice per day, twelve different medications, and is reasonably cooperative in that process, merely raising one paw in protest and looking somewhat indignant afterward. She does get treats once the process is finished. She also gets chemotherapy at the vet every three weeks. The staff there cracks up at her demeanor, which is all meek and passive until she reaches her limit and hisses at them.

The vet was describing the factors in our favor, one being that she is a Calico, who are very durable, and another that she is female, which are far tougher than males. “She’s not a wimpy male,” she was saying and caught me sort of glaring at her. “I’m talking about cats,” she added somewhat hastily. My wife cracked up.

“Listen,” I told the vet. ”I’ve had a heart attack, several strokes, severe emphysema, Parkinson’s Disease, a metal plate and seven fractures in my right leg and three in my left and I walk without a limp. Don’t talk to me about wimpy males.”

Anyway, she assured us that because of the type of chemotherapy and because cats are neurologically different than people, the therapy will have little or no effect on Molly and no, her hair will not fall out.

Update, 9:30am: I looked up the term "well differentiated," which the vet used to describe the condition, and it means the cells are spread out and have not coalesced into a tumor. There are none in the blood stream either, all of which makes them easier to kill, so that's good news.

Freezer Meals

Thanks to everyone who came and listened to me talk about freezer meals!! If you were not able to get a hand out just right click the image, save it to your computer then print it out. 

Thanks again, it was fun sharing a few helpful freezer meal tips with you. Enjoy!!

 

Why Not A Balanced Budget?

In a comment to an earlier post Bruce asked what the problem was with having a balanced budget and why an economist would claim that a balanced budget is a bad idea. The answer lies in the totally unchallenged statement by politicians and economists both that “consumer spending is 70% of our economy” and that restoring a healthy economy requires restoring that 70% which is consumer spending.

That would be fine, and was fine, so long as that money was being spent on goods and services made in this country, but that is not the case and has not been for many years. A considerable part of that spending is for goods from other countries, which is reflected in our balance of trade deficit, and which no one ever talks about. It is a huge negative, has been for many years, and it reflects wealth leaving this country and not returning. That means that we consume more than we produce, and that means that our economy depends upon the accumulation of more and more debt.

During the housing boom much of that debt was accrued by the private sector, while at other times debt has been accumulated by the business sector. But in order to continue consuming more than we produce, somewhere we have to create more and more debt.

When the private sector cannot assume any more debt, and the business sector cannot do so, then government must assume debt, which is where we are now. So the economists are, to that degree, correct. An attempt to balance the budget, either by reducing government spending or by raising taxes, would be disastrous.

If we ceased accepting the simplistic insanity of “restoring consumer spending” and restored a productive economy in which production balanced consumption and in which our balance of trade was a net positive, then we could balance the federal government budget quite safely without harming the economy at all, because such an economy would not have to accumulate debt in order to maintain itself.

Politicians may not know that. Economists do, they just don’t want to say so, because doing that would be too hard.

Shutdown

Due to the shutdown...

The NASA website says, "Due to the government shutdown the website is not being updated," with a picture of the US Capitol building. Um, isn't that itself an update?