Potpourri #756

What a day.

I passed out -- that was fun. It's the second time in a week, and several weeks of flirting with it. Actually, I don't think I was out-out. I was just out. Blip. For a second. A weird sense of tunnel vision, then a slight fade to darkness. Each time I was able to sit down. Well, "sit down," is a nice way to put it. More like: I managed to flop backwards.

Today's dive bomb was timely, in that I had an appointment with The Boutiqueur anyway. It almost happened again when I was exiting the car. She's up! She's down!

The Boutiqueur said it sounded like orthostatic hypotension. That makes sense. I guess. Anyway, I am going to try and "hydrate" more and take extra care when standing up. Just what I need, more incentive to stay in the wheelchair.

It actually has been harder and harder to stand and walk, both in terms of pain and in terms of getting my legs to cooperate. I am experiencing "myoclonic jerks" -- no, not flashbacks of the guys I dated in high school, but almost full body violent spasms. A few times now, I have tossed my coffee cup in the air. With any luck, the ceiling over the bed will pass for a Jackson Pollock. Or the shroud of Turin. [If La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore can rake them in to see her faux Francis the First's bedroom, I can go after the stragglers.]

Reminder to self: red wine, Concord grape juice, and some of that V-8 colada mixture. Toss some salsa up there, too.

In between patient phone calls and blood draws at the doctor's office, I thumbed through the latest Newsweek -- Limbaugh on the cover, mouth wide open.

Jacob Weisberg writes a regular column titled "The Big Idea." The big idea for this issue proved to be one that has been giving me headaches (and I don't DO headaches): "The Staying Power of the S Word," or "We're Not Swedish." A version was also published at Slate.com.

The relief I felt while reading it must be similar to what a person with increased intracranial pressure might feel if someone took a power drill to his skull.

Conservatives have finally figured out their critique of president Obama's agenda: he wants to make us French...

Newt Gingrich claims that Obama wants to bring us "European socialism."

"Socialism" is a scare word in our political culture and a poor description both of modern-day Sweden and whatever Obama has in mind. But the case that the United States is moving away from market capitalism, and toward a European-style social compact in which the state has a much broader role, is not absurd. ("We Are All Socialists Now," NEWSWEEK recently proclaimed on its cover.) The Obama administration is responding to the financial crisis by nationalizing financial institutions, subsidizing failing sectors of the economy and, while it's at it, regulating industry to fight climate change. It views greater social equality as an explicit goal. If Obama succeeds in turning health insurance and funding for college into universal entitlements, he will have expanded Washington's obligations on the scale of an LBJ or an FDR. This year, government spending at all levels will jump to 40 percent of GDP. Obama's proposals could bring that figure even closer to the European Union average of 47 percent.

A first question to ask about this expansion is what, exactly, is so awful about
European social democracy? [....]

Such deeply grounded differences explain why the European model of social democracy would be unlikely to find root here, even if the president favored it. But Obama shows every sign of instinctively resisting a paternalistic and overarching public sector as much as most Americans do. His approach to problem-solving reflects the national urge to rein in government even while one is busy expanding it.

This aversion to state control characterizes Obama's response so far to
the financial crisis. When asked in an ABC interview why he hadn't nationalized
the damn banks already, Obama's telling response was to talk about how our
"traditions" and culture are different from Sweden's. "We want to retain a
strong sense of that private capital fulfilling the core investment needs of
this country," he said. Note that Obama's global-warming plan is a market-based,
cap-and-trade system rather than a more straightforward carbon tax or regulatory scheme.

Even in areas where Obama seems to be moving in a more statist direction, there are crucial distinctions. Like most Americans, he believes government should guarantee health insurance. And like most Americans, he believes the system should be privately run. His college plan is for universal access to loans, not the essentially free ride that most students get in the EU. And he looks poised to pare Social Security benefits and Medicare spending, in addition to raising taxes, to constrain the overall cost of government. One way to describe Obama's program is a move toward cradle-to-grave opportunity, as opposed to the European model of cradle-to-grave security.

What was that again? Eh? Would you mind repeating that last little jingle-jangling oh-so-fine turn of a phrase?

A move toward cradle-to-grave opportunity, as opposed to the European model of cradle-to-grave security.

Of course, then I had to go and read the insipid comments after Weisberg's column, not unlike a 50-car highway pile-up. The one currently at the head of the line is by brooklyn486, posted @ 03/18/2009 9:41:07 PM.

What everybody seems to be over looking is the actual textbook
definition of socialism.

The definition os socialism is as follows:
Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or egalitarian method of compensation.

In othe words a country is not purely Socialist unless the governement
owns all factories and stores!!!

Study history and you might know a thing or two.

Hey, brooklyn486, wanna hear a joke?

What do Brooklyn and women in tight jeans have in common? Oops. No, not that one.

This one:
Q: Why did the duck go to Brooklyn? A: To buy some quack.

If only you were from Alabama! But then, I bet you hear that all the time.

So I had a fever of 100.9 at the doc's office. It was only 99.6 at home. Split the difference? 100.25? Now... if I could get my heart rate below 108. It's uncomfortable to wake up and find it racing along at 126. I know I should just ignore it but confess that's getting hard to do.

His theory of my ladylike wilting-with-the-vapors: my blood pressure has been abnormally high these past few months, so that when I experience a drop in pressure, standing up, the drop is that much more precipitous. Why is it happening to begin with? He thinks it could be an electrolyte imbalance, but bets more on dehydration. Daily fevers can do that, y'know! Wanting his theories to get as much bang for the thought as possible, he floated that as the reason behind these lovely full-body myoclonic jerks -- What my doctors don't know about CRPS might fill a big old book. Because I know it is a consequence of the CRPS/RSD. Do I know the science behind it? Nope.

"Maybe I could interest you in a hot cup of shut-the-fuck-up..." (Jon Stewart, 3.18.09)
I had to write that down, and now have to find the perfect application for it. Oh, this shall pass into my lexicon. But I have as much a chance of using it as I do of wearing my sapphire blue raw silk très short-skirted suit with a nice pair of red high-heels. (I haven't worn shoes in 7 years and rarely am in anything that isn't entirely old-lady-esque. Sigh.)

Oh, God. Cheney attributes the ever so mild effing up of things under his co-administration to... well, here is the quote:

"Eight months after we arrived, we had 9/11. We had 3,000 Americans killed
one morning by al Qaeda terrorists here in the United States. We immediately had
to go into the wartime mode. We ended up with two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some of that is still very active. We had major problems with respect to things
like Katrina, for example. All of these things required us to spend money that
we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the
budget.

"Stuff happens."

STUFF HAPPENS. WE ENDED UP WITH TWO WARS. OH. MY. GOD.

Binghamton v. Duke starts around 9:30 tonight. I get the feeling more than one television set may be operational. The Castafiore and I have dibs on the extravagant entertainment center in here... The Fredster can either grin and bear it, snuggling in between all the boobies, or he can go to one of the other 40 or so bedrooms. I think he wants to watch ER -- but gets upset at the idea of recording it. Go figure. Fred's deep. The Ways of Fred are Mysterious. He's a sweetie.

Hark! What's that I hear?

f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]
f'blasticball! f'blasticball! allez, dooook-uh! allez, dooook-uh! [shuffle shuffle]

Here she comes. Game on!