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10/27/20 11:39 PM #8372    

 

David Mitchell

Congrats Mark !!!


10/28/20 07:48 AM #8373    

Joseph Gentilini

I wanted to comment on John Jackson message about the new Supreme Court Justice and Originalism.  I think she will be a disaster for Americans.  In a small analogy, it is like science not improving and so we treat infections with aspirin.  The Constitution should evolve to deal with modern issues and problems.  The republicans are trying to say that Democrats were against her because she is Catholic.  During the hearings, the Democrats did not bring up her religion; they opposed her because of her legal philosophy of originalism.  I do not look forward to her decisions, especially when it comes to my own same-sex marriage and freedom.


10/28/20 07:59 AM #8374    

Joseph Gentilini

If I read the message correctly, Mark S is deserving of a CONGRATS!    Joe


10/28/20 09:18 AM #8375    

 

David Barbour

Dear John J.,

I love you , man!!!!  I missed the Atlantic article.  I love Joe, too.  With you all the way!

DB


10/28/20 10:11 AM #8376    

 

Michael McLeod

I propose an interregnum on poltical posts.

Actually I don't. I just wanted to use that word. 

It sounds like it could describe a very uncomfortable medical procedure.

Did not know that about Charles Schutz, Jim.

Up against the wall redneck mothers, Dave. JJW wrote great music to get drunk by. 

Thanks for the supreme Court court post, John. 

I frequently fantasize a scenario in which the framers are reincarnated long enough to see a production of Hamilton and weigh in on what we've made of their grand experiment. They were a progessive/idealistic/scrappy/literary/logical/deistic/committed-to-individualism-as-long-as-you-were-a-rich white-guy bunch. 

And o by the way - this from the editorial page::

"If you’re a supporter of that radical extremist group Keep America Habitable for Human Beings, you might have been encouraged by the 2020 presidential race.

In 2016, climate change — the scientific fact of the earth’s encroaching uninhabitability — was mostly ignored, including in the debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This year, the changing climate and what to do about it got airtime in both presidential debates and the vice-presidential debate. Climate change was also one of the top issues during the Democratic primary race. Several candidates published detailed climate plans; Joe Biden’s proposal is the most ambitious response to climate change ever proposed by a major-party nominee for president.

And yet I keep getting discouraged by how far there is to go. Voters, the candidates and especially the political media have not given it enough attention this year, considering the stakes at hand. Worse, when politicians do address climate change, the discussion in mainstream media is often uninformed, following a script favorable to oil companies.

These problems were on stark display in the ridiculous dust-up over Biden’s statement during the debate last week that the United States needs to transition away from oil. When asked about climate change, Biden told a series of truths. He noted, correctly, that it’s an “existential threat to humanity,” that “we don’t have much time” to address it, that doing so could create hundreds of thousands of jobs and that it would involve eliminating our reliance on the cause of the problem, fossil fuels.

 

Trump’s answer was a series of absurdities. He said that he loves the environment, but that plans to address climate change would cost a lot of money and many jobs, would require buildings with very small windows and that wind power creates “fumes” and kills a lot of birds. (In fact, cats, buildings and cars are far bigger threats to birds.)

I’m not sure how anyone could come away from that debate thinking that Biden is the one who made a rhetorical flub. “The takeaway isn’t what Biden said, it’s what Trump said,” Kendra Pierre-Louis, a former reporter for The New York Times who is now a reporter on the podcast “How to Save a Planet,” told me. “Trump effectively said he doesn’t have a climate plan, and we are facing an existential crisis.”

Yet it was Biden, not Trump, who got in political hot water for his answer. After the debate, Trump’s campaign, with an assist from talking heads on cable news and the internet, began suggesting that Biden’s comments would hurt his chances in oil- and gas-producing states like Texas and Pennsylvania. Biden later walked back his comment, explaining that a transition away from oil would take very long time.

What a disaster. Why can’t we abide an honest discussion about climate change?

One problem is the Electoral College: Our nutty electoral system gives more say to some voters than others. This year the nation has suffered a string of terrifying weather disasters hastened by climate change. Large parts of the West are on fire, and there have been so many tropical storms that we had to go deep into the Greek alphabet to name them. But in the race for president, the future of the fracking industry in Pennsylvania is elevated above all these other problems, because Pennsylvania is a swing state and Louisiana is not.

To make things much worse, the pundit class on Twitter and cable news rarely discuss climate change as the existential threat to humanity that it now plainly is."


10/28/20 11:10 AM #8377    

 

Michael McLeod

and then -- in terms of priorities -  there's this. Don't know why I don't pay more attention to truly significant issues. 

 

Justin Draper had decided that he could not live without a 12-foot-skeleton, so when a Home Depot sales associate told him there was a skeleton due to arrive at a store 70 miles away, that it was perhaps the last Giant Home Depot Skeleton in all Ohio, and that it would be sold to the first comer, it wasn’t so much a question of whether Draper would make the drive, but whether he’d beat all the other people who had decided that they, too, needed, with all their hearts, to own a 12-foot skeleton.

He peeled out of his driveway in Kenton, Ohio, the Benny Hill theme “Yakety Sax” playing in his head, and didn’t stop for gas even when his fuel light came on 30 miles from his destination in Piqua, Ohio. Somehow, he made it.

“My seat belt came off as soon as I hit the parking lot,” Draper says. “I opened the door and I was running inside.”

AD

He beat the other customers by minutes.

A mere $319.93 later, Draper was inducted into the cult of the Giant Home Depot Skeleton, the coveted Halloween decoration that, in a truly frightening season of a truly haunted year, has become so much more: an Internet meme, a status marker, a coping mechanism, a memento mori. A reminder that whimsical indulgences are still permitted, and still funny, no matter how morbid American life has become.

As the pandemic threw Halloween into limbo, Home Depot’s “12 ft. Giant-Sized Skeleton with LifeEyes,” as the product is officially called (the eyes move!), emerged as a blessed curiosity in a sea of grim news. On social media, people professed a love of the skeleton that ran the gamut from delighted confusion to faux lust. (One Twitter writer spoke of “the sexual tension between my bank account and the 12’ tall Home Depot skeleton.” “Can’t stop thinking ’bout him,” wrote another.)


10/28/20 02:40 PM #8378    

 

Mark Schweickart

How 'bout those Dodgers! Although I must admit they certainly did not look "formidable" for the first six inning facing Snell on the mound. But hey, after that, they got the job done. Woo hoo!

And what a weird time we are in. No mention was made of why one of their star players, Justin Turner, was removed in mid-game. It turns out he had Covid test results come back during the game, and he had tested positive.

Thanks for the congrats extended.

And thanks, Dave M. for the Jerry Jeff Walker song, posted in his honor. One of my all time favorite songs also.

 

 


10/28/20 04:17 PM #8379    

 

David Mitchell

Breaking News...............Green Beans to Oysters.

(read it here before it is handed over to the "Post" or the "Times") 

Just days ago, here in Bluffton, workers at our nearby Bluffton Oyster Company dock discovered a bucket of oysters, that had been left sitting around on their docks on the May River, that apparantly contained some secretly coded notes and writings on the shells. A couple of the local "Bluffton Oyster  Compnay's" little old Black lady employees - in their long rubber oyster-shucking aprons, high rubber boots, and heavy rubber gloves, turned this partuclular bucket of oysters over to a local FBI office. They allegeded that this bucket had been brought in by another oysterman, who apparantly forgot to come back to get his bucket, and they had been sitting around the dock, rotting and giving off a foul rotten smell.

In other words, "something smelled fishy".

Early indications are that the oyster shells contain information alledging that one David Mitchell, a long time memeber of the "OLP Boiz" had, on his first ever "overnight", stayed at the home of another of same OLP Boiz - one Thomas Aquinas Litzinger - who it has been corraborated, lived in a house at 256 East Schreyer Place, in Columbus, Ohio during the 1950s, 60's, and beyond.

The evidence would suggest that this same David Mitchell was a spoiled pill of a kid and didn't ever have to eat anythng he did not like, and that his mother alledgedly, spoiled him rotten. 

The information goes on to say that during this one evening, when these two (3rd or 4th grade?) "OLP Boiz" were called in from the backyard, to join the family of 8 (one Mr. Tom Sr., one (watchful-eyed) Mrs. Kay, one Mary Ruth, one Anne (gorgeous Anne!), one Billy, one Johnny, one Danny, and the other named subject, the aforesaid Thomas (jr.) for dinner, that a meal was served that was the first time said "Mitchell" ever had to eat ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,another mother's cooking!!!  

The documents alledge that when the subject (Mitchell), saw what was on his plate, he fell into a state of panic and nearly fainted - a trait he had perfected while serving on the altar during early morning weekday Mass located at the nearby "headuarters" of this OLP Boiz gang. 

In an attempt to placate the mother/cook, Mitchell attempted to use his fork to swirl some of the food around on his plate, hoping it would look to be at least, well,,, partially eaten.

But there remained one major problem - green beans!  As anyone who knows anything knows, one doesn't simply "swirl" green beans.

The de-coded oyster shells seem to indicate that Mitchell sat at the table with his back to a curtain which was drawn across the bay window behind him, a window with a broad shelf and several decorative ceramic trays (one, a fancy large ash tray) resting on the window shelf. And that Mitchell actually made several long "stretching" reaches to place handfulls of the green beans into the ash tray - which lay behind the curtain and were therefore out of sight from the family members. 

In the last few days since the disocovery of the oyster bucket in question, Fedearl Agents have located and questioned other menbers of this same "OLP Boiz" network. They traced another address only one block down the same street to another member of the "OLP Boiz" group, one John Jackson. When asked if he (Jackson) knew anything about Mitchell's behaviour as it relates to such activites, he replied, "Well, I knew both of them, but Mitchell was never allowed into our kitchen or our dinning room. He was only granted access to our basement where we used to practice the ancient right of Philatelics. Seeing as how none of the Federal agents were over 50, they had no idea what Philatelics, or Philately was, so their questioning ended there. 

Mitchell continues to maintain that he was innocent, claiming, "You can't prove anything. Nobody saw me do it."

(or did they?)

The FBI is currently weighing the fact that even if  they could locate the batch of green beans, they would have rotted into carbon dust by now, and the foul smell would not outweigh the smell of the bucket of oysters.

 

(Bluffton Oyster Company - the last of it's kind on the May River. The shrimp boat is named "Daddy's Girls")


10/28/20 05:52 PM #8380    

 

John Jackson

Dave, I'd like to affirm your story, but we need to have an interregnum on any discussion of my comments to the federal agents. If Trump wins, any comment I make now may land me in the gulag.

 

 


10/28/20 06:54 PM #8381    

 

David Mitchell

John,

My lawyers have advised me to take two interregnums and call them back after the election. 

 

 


10/28/20 06:58 PM #8382    

 

John Jackson

From The Onion, the one source we can all agree on, regarding how difficult it has become to exercise our (I hope!) constitutionally-protected right to vote.  OK, this is satire but the situation described is being played out with depressing regularity in states where Republican governors or legislatures call the shots on voting procedures:

MADISON—Authorities confirmed Wednesday that the already long six-hour lines had come to a standstill at Wisconsin polls after the state’s official voting pen rolled under a vending machine. “We regret to inform voters that earlier today, an elderly poll worker mistakenly dropped the only available voting pen in all of Wisconsin and watched helplessly as it went past the bubbler and got stuck in a dark, hard to reach corner,” said Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson Katheryn Vanderheyden, adding that already overrun polls would be closed statewide until the writing utensil, which was the only utensil allowed to be used to cast a vote since 1978, could be located and returned. “As of this morning, we know that the pen is pert’ near the back. We just don’t know where about that darn thing went. Officials have tried everything from shining a flashlight down there and looking for a stick or something to fish it out, believe you me.” At press time, the Supreme Court had reportedly ordered the polls to shut down once again after election authorities located the pen, only to find out it was out of ink.

 


10/29/20 08:02 AM #8383    

 

Frank Ganley

I would like to enter my interpretation of originality : when the law was written, time, society etc was being corrected as when we passed the amendment for women to vote. It's time had come and the amendment was passed and no real challenges to it , but the the 33 amendment repealing prohibition! The times had changed and it ned to be corrected and rules on. I believe the use of the word Army may be an all inclusive word taking in all of the branches of service. I like the court to be not only conservative but ultra. Their rulings defining what you can change and it relevance to present day society. now let's examine the electoral college. It was the belief and truth that if you won enough votes in new york, penna, and mass you need not win any other states as you had the plurality to win. With each state being allotted electoral votes in a a ratio similar to how many congressmen a state was given now every man's vote counts. In golf we have "match play" compition where player A has completed the hole in 4 strokes and player B completes it in 9 stokes plater A wins the hole ! And leads say one hole up with 17 more to play . If a candidate only won a few states ( I posted this earlier) but the biggest ones, cal. Ny Pa fla Ohio and Michigan that's all the votes he would need, thereby elimination of everyone else's votes because he won a plurality off votes. Be careful when saying things like eliminate the electoral college. We might as well get rid of the house


 


10/29/20 10:47 AM #8384    

 

Michael McLeod

Well I hate to start another ruckus. Especially right after an interregnum.

But THIS was Jerry Jeff Walker's finest hour:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI1sTyaErW0

 


10/29/20 02:34 PM #8385    

 

Mark Schweickart

Dave – First of all I want to congratulate you on a wonderfully realized short story about life in the boiz hood back in the day.

Second, I am complelled to ask, "What the hell brought this on? A bad meal of turned oysters and even worse green beans? A long repressed infatuation with the rubber-gloved shrimping women? An uncontrollable urge to let your elderly classmates know, after all these years, that Tom Litzinger's middle name was "Aquinas"? Or just an excuse to post an ariel shot of a shrimp boat you ran across? No doubt, it was a little of all of the above.

And third, I would like to complain that no one likes to feel so stupid after reading your post that they have to go google a word like "philatelic." Jeesh!  (In my defense, I thought it meant "stamp collecting" but wasn't sure.)


10/29/20 03:40 PM #8386    

 

John Jackson

Yikes, Mark.  Good thing you were able to avoid "going philatelic" over your need to Google the definition.

I propose a contest to see how many consecutive messages we can have on the Forum that include the word "interregnum".  And if you can't work that into whatever it is you're writing, "philatelic" is an acceptable substitute.


10/29/20 04:57 PM #8387    

 

David Mitchell

All I have to say to you people is, 

"TOUGH BEANS"  !

 


10/29/20 05:07 PM #8388    

Joseph Gentilini

I have really been enjoying all the comments from the Oyster story (nice job) to Frank's history lesson which gave me a lot more insight into the issue than I had.  THANKS.  Joe


10/29/20 06:14 PM #8389    

 

Mark Schweickart

Dave - I hope you realize that I really did enjoy your story and was just trying to be funny and wanted to make it clear that the amount of detail you put in does not go unnoticed. 


10/29/20 08:04 PM #8390    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

And speaking of words and understanding them...

As of 2 November the 21st Century Cures Act allows all Americans to electronically access all of their doctors' office and hospital notes that he or she has entered on them.

Already, many can access lab and other test results that they have had performed. And that is mostly a good thing. I say "mostly" because interpretation of numbers and verbiage on reports often is difficult for a non-medical person to understand and these should be discussed with the health care provider who requested the study.

When it comes to office notes, hospital notes, discharge summaries, etc., a whole new world comes into play. Reading such entries can be very confusing and misinterpretations could be quite common. From a physician's perspective it is not that we are trying to hide something from a patient but that such notes are designed to be read by other health care personnel. When viewed by patients their confusion and misunderstandings will likely result in an increased work load on already busy providers who will be called, texted or e-mailed by worried and uncertain patients. In many - hopefully most - cases, the provider will have previously explained to those patients what was ocurring during the visit or encounter.

Let me give as an example the following scenario: A patient is seen by his physician who has been following and treating him for several years for heart failure. He presents today with some new onset symptoms.

Mr. A has had some difficulty breathing the past week or so and felt lightheaded at times. He also says his stomach hurts but gets some relief with eating. He has not vomited. The doctor asks a lot of questions regarding his bowel movements and if he has had chest pains, cough, how he sleeps at night, if he is taking any new or over-the counter medicines or supplements, and then completes a history and does a thorough examination. His doctor makes a preliminary diagnosis of an ulcer which may have bled. Tests are ordered and show a significant anemia. The doctor explains that an ulcer which bled would explain all of his symptoms including making his heart failure worse thus causing his breathing problems and lightheadedness. The patient states he understands and has no questions. The patient is admitted to the hospital for treatment, transfusion and an upper endoscopy.

The office note, entered into the computer record, in part, may read as follows (this is just a representation and much text and some absolute numbers are omitted):

This 72 to WM who has a history of CHF presents today and is SOB with DOE, orthopnea and PND. He also c/o mid-epigasric discomfort partially relieved by eating. He has non-vertiginous orthostatic sxs. He denies N/V, hematemesis or hematoschezia but admits to some possible melena which had resolved by the time of today's visit. Examination shows pale conjunctiva, skin pallor, a systolic orthostatic drop of 15 mm/hg and moderate tachycardia. He has mid-epigastric tenderness to deep palpation w/o rebound. BS are active. Lung examination reveals bibasilar rales but no dullness to percussion. A soft pansystolic murmur of MR and a "flow murmur" across the AV is appreciated on cardiac auscultation. A DRE revealed absence of masses and a small amt of heme neg stool. 1. DDx includes PUD s/p bleed, r/o gastritis, r/o gastric Ca, 2. Anemia 2ndary to blood loss  3.Worsening CHF."

One can only imagine what the patient or his wife might be thinking in trying to read this note and the questions they might have for the doctor, which would result in a possibly lengthy phone call or messaging session. "Did he call me an S.O.B.? What is all that hemata- stuff and all those abbreviations? what is he trying to hide from me? Ortho-something - do I need to see an orthopedist?"

All of what the patient was told at the appointment (in bold type above) tells the patient everything that is in the computer note. And it was said in a way that the patient could understand.

Apologies to our journalists and English major friends who will find notes like the above offensive to literary standards!

Jim

 

 

 


10/29/20 10:00 PM #8391    

 

David Mitchell

Mark & Joe,

I'm glad you enjoyed the article about the oysters and beans.

But I am not sure we have heard the end of this story.

 

 

 


10/29/20 10:32 PM #8392    

 

David Mitchell

 

Frank,  

It has long been argued that there is a major flaw in the present setup of the Electoral College. The provison of the "all or none" results is terribly out of balance. Two states, Nebraska and Maine allow the electoral votes to be proportioned to each candiadte. I think this is a much more fair and sensible way of doing it.  

And I still find it mind-boggling that the loser of the popular vote could become the winner, even though it favored my own (once upon a time) party.

------------------

As for your mentioning of the Female Right to Vote. I think your comments are so dismissive and so far from the truth as to be insulting.

Your quote -   "...with no real challenges", is simply amazing.

The struggle for Womens Sufferage was a full blown movement (at least in Europe and the U.S.) for roughly 100 years. Many of those woman were, attacked, beaten, even imprisoned, not to mention that they went on hunger strikes. Marriages and families were split, threats were made, jobs were lost. Yes, They even had their own internecine struggles, and race also came into play. But they prevailed after decades of humiliating struggle.

There were "real challenges" applenty.

-------------------

And as for "originalism". Why don't we apply this to guns?

In a country where we have gone nuts over "right to carry", our streets are now full of armed, bullet proof vested, helmeted arrmies of local anti-government "hate militia" bullies and cowards who want to show off how tough they are, and who's purpose is to scare people, why don't we go back to the "original" time of this ammendment?

At that time, guns (personal arms) were single-shot, ball and powder, muzzle-loading guns. One would have to be blind to say that today's guns are not radically different, and more threatening to people than when this ammendment was "originally written".  

So the argument that this ammendment - this "right" - is sacred, and cannot be altered (with some common sense revisions - and I don't mean, "take all your guns away") looks pretty silly in light of our history of giving the vote to Women and African slaves.

Those were major alterations, wouldn't you say?

 

 


10/30/20 07:35 AM #8393    

 

Frank Ganley

Dave you have missed the pooing of the women right to vote! It was only an example as to a change in times, not the struggles etc but the time for the change, as every other amendment . Society demand and won the right for women to vote. This was not an argument for or against but ratber how an originality would look at the case. Prior to the passing no female vote, passed new law that changed the precidents and now that law is the argument for women's right and undid all the previous findings before the new law. Once again not a slam, slight or whatever's you we're trying to argue that I did


10/30/20 08:50 AM #8394    

Joseph Gentilini

Okay, David, I look forward to 'the rest of the oyster story'.  Joe


10/30/20 04:04 PM #8395    

 

Michael McLeod

Thanks for improving my vocabulary, Jim. I can't wait to see my girlfriend swoon on our next date when I tell her I have mid-epigastric tenderness for her. 

 


10/31/20 01:39 AM #8396    

 

Frank Ganley

One of the best covers and stories of Jerry Jeff Walker is done by David Bronberg. He speaks of Jerry Jeff research that he did while composing mr bo jangles. He will be missed


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