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Dear Friends,
With your support, your phone calls, your emails, we won a major legislative victory today for a state single payer health care option in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. The House Education and Labor Committee approved the Kucinich Amendment by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes.
The amendment propels the growing single payer health care movement at the state level. There are at least ten states which have active single payer efforts in their legislatures. They are California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. The amendment mandates a single payer state will receive the right to waive the application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which has in the past been used to nullify efforts to expand state or local government health care.
Under the Kucinich Amendment a state's application for a waiver from ERISA is granted automatically if the state has signed into law a single payer plan. With the amendment, for the first time, the state single payer health care option is shielded from an ERISA-based legal attack. Now that the underlying bill has been passed, as amended, by the full committee, we must make sure that Congress knows that we want the provision kept in the bill at final passage!
The state single payer option was one of five major amendments which I obtained support to get included in HR3200. One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine, (integrative medicine). Another amendment drives down the cost of prescription drugs by ending pharmaceutical industry's sharp practices manipulating physician prescribing habits. An amendment stops the insurance industry from increasing premiums at the time when people are not permitted to change health plans; and finally an amendment imposing a requirement on insurance companies that they disclose the cost of advertising, marketing and executive compensation expenses (which generally divert money from patient care).
Please make sure you post this message on your social networking site, ask all your friends to get involved and encourage everyone you know to sign up at www.Kucinich.us so we can build full momentum behind this movement for real health care.
Let's do this! |
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I bet many technically disadvantaged folks may fall for this and get a virus. I came across the bad website when searching for something:
Go to google.com and type HR3200 into the search.
The 7th result (when I did it) is HR 3200 - July 16 2009
"On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association, I am writing to express our appreciation and support for HR 3200, the 'America's . ...
Click on the link.
The scam is beautiful. If you are on a MAC, Unix, or Linux, you don't have to worry about accidentally running the .EXE that it will try to get you to run. If you are running Windows, you might NOT want to view this just to be safe. It may be more advanced than it appears, but I don't think so. Whatever you do, don't download the .exe and run it.
Take a look,
--Moof |
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A new 24-hour diner opened in Winton Place last Monday called Mike's Diner. They have a 732 page menu (exaggerating) and the portions seem to be on the extra large side to please the gluttonous folks. For everybody else, one meal purchased on Monday will feed you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Tuesday. They have Greek specialties, matzoh ball soup, and diner food. We ate there on opening night and tonight. Jen got the lobster ravioli but wasn't able to bring any home because she ate all of it. She's also had crab cakes tonight and will have enough for lunch tomorrow. I had a gyro topped salad with greek dressing. It was huge. I also had a half-chicken with salad, fries, and spinach. They also serve a small hors d'oeuvres or appetizer automatically. Once we had some marinated beets and a macaroni salad. The other time we had bruschetta and a different kind of macaroni salad. I would like to purchase that orange inflatable beach ball and that small bucket and spade; ooops, I mean: La mango estis bonega! Dlej korajin gratulonjn' al la kuristo. |
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movies
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Jun. 22nd, 2009 @ 01:03 pm
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I want to see two movies that aren't in Rochester. I would like to see "Outrage," and also "Alien Trespass."
I feel like an outcast. Why do the movies that I want to watch not appeal to the neanderthals (I mean my fellow movie watchers)? I feel as out of place as Senator Claghorn[1] if he were at the Civil Rights game[2] in Cincinnati last weekend.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator_Claghorn
[2] http://www.wlwt.com/news/19815784/detail.htmlCurrent Mood:  annoyed |
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When I may have low-blood sugar, Jen analyzes the situation by asking me who the president is. If I am impaired and can't answer properly then there's a pretty good chance I need to eat something. During the Bush years, Jen asked me a different test question, but now asks me who the president is again. It's interesting that my glucose-starved brain answers Clinton rather than Obama, or sometimes, "The new dude." I've been condioned to answer Clinton and still respond that way even though it's been over 8 years.
Hypothesis: If everybody overdoses on insulin, we can wipe out the Bush catastrophe and all negative consequences will hve not have happened (at least until you eat a sufficient supply of carbohydrates). |
| » Ft Lauderdale |
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5 hours to fun. Key West is calling. 
Sent from my iPhone Posted via email from Michael's posterous
Mar. 22nd, 2009 @ 09:43 am
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| » En route to beach |
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In honor of cussmuffin, Jen tries a new pose for the camera: 
Sent from my iPhone Posted via email from Michael's posterous
Mar. 22nd, 2009 @ 06:10 am
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| » looking forward to tomorrow |
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I can't wait for tomorrow. Today I had to say goodbye and that was very difficult. Tomorrow I get to say goodbye and will love every minute of it.
Jan. 19th, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
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| » travel plans |
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I have to go to Maine this week to either tie up project #1, and possibly start project #2. I'm nervous about going. I play mind games to try and relieve the nervousness such as I've already been there and finished the second project, but Time just hasn't caught up with me yet.
I am going to would have accomplished if time was a little more persistent.
Maybe the little rascal will wait until I get back on Friday. I hope everything goes well this week, baby, project and all. Well, just in case, Happy birthday little one.
Jan. 11th, 2009 @ 01:25 pm
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| » I love Katamari |
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It's kind of difficult to play in a moving car. :-)
It's double hard if you are driving the car while playing.
Dec. 25th, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
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| » bonus |
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Work's been good to me. Bonus. No longer in debt. Wow. It feels good.
Dec. 11th, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
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| » vice city stories |
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I bought a Sony PSP as a reward to myself for finishing my project at work. I spent almost all of this week playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.
My favorite part was standing in the center of the mall killing "actor" zombies. The poor zombies didn't stand a chance against my shotgun. I think if I were in a real mall with real zombies coming after me that they would be immune to a little shotgun fire, and I also think I wouldn't be able to pick them off 5 to 10 per second like I can in the game.
It was all fun until the PSP stopped working. The damned UMD drive went dead. I was out of town and couldn't get the PSP replaced yet. I will stop at FYE at the mall on Black Friday on my way to CT and see if they'll replace it. Hopefully I won't have a problem. I am apprehensive because I mailed the receipt and a portion of the box back to FYE to get a $30 rebate and of course, like an idiot, I didn't make a photocopy of the original receipt.
I also found out that Sony is supposedly releasing a new version of the PSP tomorrow morning. Maybe I can purchase an upgrade during the replacement process. BEWARE OF SONY PSP PRODUCTS DUE TO FAILING UMD DRIVES. They must have evil management at Sony just like most other huge companies. It is pretty aggravating that the mechanical subsystems in a children's toy are so susceptible to failure; there seems to be a fairly large amount of victims out there who are upset with the trashy devices. The thing that really bothers me is that the games should be downloadable to a PC and the internal flash card and not require a mechanical drive. It turns out that most of the games are less than 1GB and the PSPS have builtin WIFI. I'm kind of saddened after seeing the demise of an excellent consumer electronics company. I remember getting a portable TV from sony (a watchman) back in 1977. This predates LCD technology and LED technology. They actually had a 1.5" CR tube and a nicad battery pack and an analog tuner in a television about the size of a thick paperback book. I can't find any references to the TV or the name watchman for the device that I had. My dad never explained exactly where he got it other than it was a gift. I know the date was 1977 because I snuck the TV into my room and watched SNL during season 2 when I was 11 years old. I remember trying not to LMAO during episode 19 because I didn't want to get caught. Sony made some wonderful products back in those days. It was two years later when the walkman became as popular as the iPod is now.
Nov. 28th, 2008 @ 12:31 am
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| » t-mobile bait-and-switch crap |
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I was looking at the g1 phone from T-mobile. I chose the $199 phone, a service plan, and accessories. When I went to the checkout page, the total went from $199 + stuff to $399.99 + stuff.
I think the shopping cart automatically changed price when midnight arrived. I'm not going to spend over $600 for a new service with a 2-year contract. I guess T-mobile sucks too, just like all of the other services. **sigh**
Nov. 4th, 2008 @ 12:06 am
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| » steak |
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We finally have a working oven. After a decade with a broken one, I've been looking forward to baking some bread. It's in the oven now. Should be ready in 20 minutes. Now that we have the gas range and the million square foot grill in the yard, I decided to cook the old fashioned way. It went like this:
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) pengcognito and I worked outside by the pool today. She is used to working with her laptop outdoors, and was quite able to get stuff done. I, on the other hand, am easily distracted. I watched the squirrels, birds, little green bugs, tiny tiny tiny red-spider shaped thing, etc. About 4PM I decided that the experience would not be complete unless I set stuff on fire. I got the fire pit out and threw some tinder in a pile and lit it on fire. I added the huge logs next and squished the fire out. I guess I was a little too eager. Then I took the paper box full of tinder and threw that in the pit and set it on fire. Too much. After a lot of trial and error, I put a few small sticks on a sheet of newspaper and lit that. That worked better than when I tried the whole newspaper. Once it got going a little, I added more wood to the fire slowly. I got the bonfire up to 6 feet high which is pretty good for a tiny 4-square foot fire pit. When the whole thing burned down to coals, I got a bread pan and put a NY strip steak in it, and threw that in the fire. WOW. It was done in only a couple of minutes. I flipped the steak, but it was already cooked on both sides. YEAH. That has to have been one of the best steaks I've ever had. It was perfectly browned on the outside and nice and pink in the middle. It was juicy and fantastic.
MEAT. YES.
I did actually get about 1 hour of work done. I wonder how the bread is doing...
Jul. 4th, 2008 @ 08:30 pm
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| » three things |
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Stolen from all over:
1. Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
2. See if anybody else responds with "I've done that."
3. Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what scandalous unique things they've done in their life.
1) played a trumpet in front of large audience at Severance Hall
2) wrote a program using my TRS-80 to roughly digitized "Tainted Love" in 1981 using a 1.5 bit A/D and 1.5 bit D/A converters at approximately 150Kbits/S. Today, I think it's called an iPod.
3) got my first large computer program published in 80-micro, Volume #62 in March, 1985.
umm, this is going to get embarrassing, I'd better stop...
4) urinated off the top of the synagogue into the park...
Jun. 27th, 2008 @ 08:02 am
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| » bbc big read top 100 |
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1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Jun. 27th, 2008 @ 07:45 am
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| » house full of n-hexane |
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wheeee, I'm dizzy...
I can't wait until the construction is complete. We have the house fan and an extra fan blowing the dizzying gas out of all of the open doors and windows. If you walk into the basement, you'll may see the path to Hades. The rest of the house is okay now.
May. 29th, 2008 @ 11:51 pm
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| » disgusting |
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When I was a child, I never liked to clean my room. When Jen was a child, she didn't like to clean her room. My mom used to say things to me to try and get me to be responsible and clean up after myself. She say stuff like, "When you go on a date and bring your girlfriend home, she won't be able to put up with this mess. You're going to have to clean up after yourself young man."
Jen and I laughed many times about that. We are disorganized and "not so clean." However, after today, things are going to have to change a little. Linus came over to grab the free-standing cabinet we were using for kitchen food storage and take it to his place for the huge sale next weekend. When he moved it from the spot it had been for the last 10 years, he almost got sick. The sight was so disgusting that most mortals would have fainted from the smell and possibly have died. Fortunately, he has a stronger constitution than most mortals.
The occasional rodent that had gotten away from our pet cats over the years had been living underneath that cabinet. There was a solid inch of waste in a perfect rectangular pattern. I used some sodium hypochlorite solution (extremely concentrated bleach) to clean up the crud (disposed of now). Karen had been helping us prepare for remodeling the kitchen by packing everything in the kitchen in boxes and I've been carrying the boxes to the garage. She put up with most of this mess for the past few days, but this was probably too much. Well, that and me chlorinating the kitchen.
The fumes escaped in about 5 minutes with the windows open. The floor looks much better. Sorry Lance, I think we win when it comes to a messy household.
I'm sure when all of the cabinets get removed on Monday or Tuesday, there will be a few more surprises. However, after the kitchen is gutted, and then rebuilt, it will be like new again. Karen is going to help us tackle the rest of the house over the summer. Thanks Karen. You are special.
May. 11th, 2008 @ 09:02 pm
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| » password security |
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I haven't really used one of my computer accounts except for email forwarding for over 17 years. I may have logged in three times over the last 17 year period to change my .forward file.
I haven't changed the password on that account in 17 years.
I hate computer systems that force me to change my password once a month.
May. 6th, 2008 @ 09:10 am
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| » OMG That's Fing HUGE |
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Jen and I went to Sears at Eastview not too long ago. We thought we might buy a refrig/freezer to replace our old ailing standing on one leg :-) unit. We walked in and passed the Kenmore Elite stainless steal full-sized fridge, and full-sized freezer. We thought the fridge would replace the old one, and the freezer would go in the other corner.
A couple of weeks passed.
We went there again yesterday. Ooo. 20% off. Fridge, Freezer, Gas oven and range, Full sized hood, lights. So, after we figure out exactly what we want, we are told to (blink, blink) come back at 5:30PM.
half the day goes by. 5:30PM.
Okay, there's an additional sale, 10% off. So, we save 30%, and all of this stuff is worth 37 raffle tickets in the one-night raffle.
Today, I rented a U-Haul, and brought home the grand prize, a 1050 sq in. 6-burner gas grill. Next week our kitchen gets remodeled. We still have to purchase the exterior door or there's going to be a humongous hole in the side of the house where a door should go.
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We have no free will. If I had to bet yesterday if today I would have been driving a truck home with a enormous gas grill, I would have said, no way. I have too much to do at work. I don't have time to go out and look at fancy grills.
I wonder what the universe is cooking up for us next.
May. 5th, 2008 @ 02:59 pm
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