FUN: A night at the opera

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Lessons learned from a night at the opera. (the met; not Groucho Marx movie)

1> add 45 minutes to the time table. (NYC traffic sucks!)

2> give the deadline times with smiley clock faces with the big hand on two and the little hand on the three! (girls don’t do numbers well.)

3> while the lead diva ain’t Taylor Swift, man, that heifer had a set of pipes. (funniest moment when lead guy has to pick her up a carry her to the imaginary bedroom. Bet he wears a truss!)

special note of the “child” in the show: those three guys making it move made the doll seem like a real kid.

Best joke of the night: “so that kid was brought to the USA and grew up to be Jerremy Lin!”

Now we”ll see what the others thought!

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FJohn ReinkeBestest oddest serendipitous moment of the night.

I was wearing my “campaign ribbon” on my lapel. Always do when I get clean up and dress up to the 9’s.

Coming out the rest room, this old gent going in, had be a 150 years old, grabs my arm and says “Like your lapel chevron. See I wear mine too.” I was stunned. He had the exact same one.

Surprising for me to think that fast, I said: “And I thank you for your service to our country that allowed me to earn mine.” His response: “You’re a good boy. God bless.”

And, ships in the night, we both moved on as the curtain chimes were ringing. Funny, never thought of myself as a “good boy”, wish we could have compared notes.

If I’d have been thinking faster, I should have given him my business card. I had them in my jacket pocket. (Never go anywhere with out the basic networking tools — business cards and a pen!)

I went back to my seat and wondered what he did to earn his. Bet it was a lot more than I did!

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POLITICAL: The debate is really NOT about “insurance”

Sunday, March 4, 2012

http://peadarroe.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/a-woman-said

A Woman Said
Posted on February 24, 2012

*** begin quote ***

What follows was part of a discussion on a well known “social media site”.  I copied it because I thought it said a lot about a great divide in our country, the one between two kinds of people, two generations, two different world views, two different cultures.  It was occasioned by the appearance of a cartoon showing the President of these Untied States wearing the clerical robes of a pope.  It was s satirical cartoon designed for strong reactions, and it got them.  People objected to the artist’s robing Obama as the Catholic Pontiff, commented on his support for abortion and his refusal to recognize the conscience rights of Catholics.  Someone, a young woman, wrote:

I find it disturbing, but I’m mostly offended by the commentary it represents. I don’t like Obama, but I don’t find him to be any more “tyrannical” or arrogant than any other President we’ve had. Calling him a Communist really just illuminates one’s complete misunderstanding of communism, and the equation of abortion with the Holocaust as well as the implication that requiring insurance to cover birth control is equal to abortion, just pisses me off.

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As for the requirement that private employer’s insurance policies cover contraception – I could go on at length about the necessity of hormonal birth control for many women (such as myself) for entirely NON-birth control related reasons (if I don’t take it, I get terrible cysts due to my endometriosis – cysts that may very well prevent me from getting pregnant in the future when I choose to) – but also that I don’t think an employer, whether or not it’s the Catholic church, should be making the medical decisions of its employees. Removing one area of coverage allows others to be chipped away at – and employers and insurance companies may find it in their interest to lower premiums by not covering many routine [JR: My emphasis.] and/or necessary procedures they chose not to agree with for whatever reason.

*** end quote ***

Stepping out from the pro-choice / pro-life debate for a moment, I’d suggest that we all focus for a moment on the word “routine”. To me that means, “ordinary and predictable”. And, are we talking about “insurance”? Where a bunch of folks with the same random risk profile pool their premiums to be paid out when that fire, flood, or tornado hits. Here we have a lady arguing that we, as a society, should “insure” “oil changes for our cars.” Where is the random disaster in an “oil change”? Went to aa Jiffy Lube / Oil Well / or some such place last week. In and out for under $100 in ½ hour. Now envision if it was insured. Call 1-800-thrid world country, file a report, yada yada. No way that was going to cost under $100 and less than ½ hour. In principle, it’s the same. Forcing “insurance companies” into the position of paying for “routine” stuff is just wrong. So, if this is NOT about “insurance”, then it must be about “politics”, propaganda, and manipulation. So this circles us back to the pro-life / pro-choice debate. Because it’s OBVIOUSLY NOT about “insurance”. imho. ymmv.

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