maven&meddler

If your Monday is an indicator of the rest of the week, this should be a disaster. Nothing went right. If I could lose it, I did. If I could miss it, I did. It was so nearly a giant CF. The good news is that the rest of the day went reasonably well.

Things got off to a badish start last night. I’d taken a month long ‘rest’ from my chemo-suppressant, Arimidex. It was time buck-up and start taking it again. The side effects make you wonder if the cure isn’t worse than the disease. But since the disease, breast cancer, is probably worse - a Stage IV recurrence isn’t curable at all - that I have to find a way to manage the freakin’ side effects. But, I understand why so many women opt to go off of it and take their chances.

Sigh. Vanity, thy name is woman. I want hair. Hair that actually grows. Hair that isn’t thinning and falling out. Of course, leaving the extreme heartburn, joint pain and water retention behind would be cool, too.

This brought to mind the conversations Mr. Maven and I have been having about the cost of our prescriptions now.

It’s grim.

Back in the day, with our previous insurance provided by the huge airline, we paid $10 per prescription. Now it’s $40 and up. Mr. Maven’s eye drops for his glaucoma were $40 and are going up to $60. My chemo suppressant, which has no generic, is about $160 for three months. Then you add all the meds to manage the side effects.

It starts to add up.

In fact, as we’re starting to do our taxes, it’s become obvious that our medical expenses are more now, do to higher prescription drug costs and co-pays, than when I was actually getting treatment from the worlds’ best cancer center.

It gives you pause. Especially each time you hear a Republican chime in that the only real problem is tort reform and capping malpractice.

Bullshit, in a word.

Those might be valid points, but they ain’t even close to all of it.

I wonder why I never even get a kiss from UnitedHealthcare these days.

The good news is that Candidate Obama may be back to replace the imposter in the White House. Today, Obama got fired up, and got real.

Here’s the bottom line: We don’t care to keep counting our chickens - votes - before they hatch. Take the damn vote. Let these Blue Dogs raise their hands and decide which side of history they want to be on.

They need to do it now. Let the people get a good, close look at just how not horrible, or socialist health care reform will be before the mid-term elections.

Maybe even Sarah Palin will start helping Obama, since she’s admitted to using the Canadian single-payer system herself.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”

Yes, ironic is one word that comes to mind.

Mr. Maven brought home a stolen Newsweek from the doctor’s office today and it was great. Fareed Zakaria has an outstanding explanation of just how we could pay for healthcare and so much more in a skip and a jump if we only had the balls to revamp our tax system (‘Defusing the Debt Bomb’).

(Is Gov. Jim Gibbons listening?)

It’s like I’ve been saying for years:  

1- get a value added tax like European countries have. This would put a brake on the unsustainable spending spree American has been on. The average VAT is 18% with the Scandinavian countries coming in at 25%. If we were to enact a 25% VAT it would bring in billions. BILLIONS. And, it would ELIMINATE the need for an income tax for anybody earning under $100,000 or 90% of all U.S. households. Take that, Tea Party nitwits.

2- End the subsidies for mortgages, huge agribusiness and healthcare. That’s right, no other country offers a deduction for mortgages. And, they have higher rates of homeownership… without so much of the exposure to foreclosure. That’s because they bought houses they needed, instead of buying houses to flip.  

3- Make sensible modifications of entitlements. This should make conservatives all smiley. Like raise the retirement age a couple of years to reflect the reality of who we are now.

But it will never happen. That’s not because Washington is any more broken than it ever was, we are. (Evan Thomas of Newsweek).

You have only to look at the CPAC speeches to know this.

We faithfully re-elect every political whore that brings home the bacon rather than those who stand up and make the tough decisions. And, we ask Obama to make those tough decisions now. In fact, we demand it of him.

Are we then going to condemn him to a one term presidency for doing what we ask of him?

Sen. John Boehner and John Cornyn probably hope so.

And, Karl Rove, too. He’s got a new tear jerker book out that can only be a cynical attempt to remake Karl into an effective post-Bush era operative while taking another swipe with the polishing cloth at the Bush years. The media eats this up.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It isn’t even playing well among tried and true conservatives … Texas conservatives.

Former Texas GOP chairman Tom Pauken had this to say:     

“With the younger Bush’s election [in 2000] came all the elements of the perfect storm to kill the conservative movement: the rise to power of Machiavellian pragmatists such as Karl Rove along with neoconservative foreign policy advisors … under the sponsorship of Vice President Dick Cheney,” Pauken writes.

“From Karl’s perspective, there was nothing wrong with big government now that he and his cronies were in power.”

But. that said, where were the’ true believers’ while all this was going on? Pauken goes on to tout former Texas governor Rick Perry as the answer. Yeah, right. This is the same man who sees secession as an answer.

They’re all crazy.

Including Mitt Romney. Well, crazy like a fox, maybe.

I listened to an interview with Mitt on NPR the other day. It was a thinly veiled campaign speech, and it was good. I mean this cat has it down, and he’s not going to make the same mistakes again.

Which makes you wonder how he plans to keep saying crazy stuff like the following and still find enough normal people to put him into the White House.

Just remember, Mitt is really, really, really rich. He doesn’t have to worry about the cost of his healthcare going out of reach.

Well, I guess that all the ‘right’ movies won at the Academy Awards. I didn’t watch. Never do. Don’t care. Don’t have any time for watching folks pat each other on the back for doing something that paid them a whole boat load of money.

And for this, they need awards, too.

Here is a show that certainly doesn’t deserve any awards. It’s the latest GOP ‘put the fun back in fundraising’ powerpoint that trades on the loony rights’ fear of anything not them.

For your consideration, a couple of the actual slides:

I just don’t have much to say after that. Well, actually I do, but can’t do it here.

maven