Well…there are times that I do look at the stats for my site here and today I hit a milestone of sorts…this morning’s post was number 6,700…yep, six thousand 700 of these things done over the past 9 years or so…yow…that’s a lot to me…I did get out on the bike today to take a look at the trails…actually just rode up to the office here to drop off the rent check but, at the last minute, I decided to go full thermasuit just in case I could get out on the trails and that now appears to be the right decision…the trails were okay but still had lots of ice on them but they were passable…with the ice though, it took way too much attention and made the ride a lot of work…it was nice to get out and the slower speed made it very relaxing and I even took time to look around some when I had to walk the bike over a couple of bridges that were snow covered and really slick….tomorrow should be better with the rain melting a lot of the remaining ice today…but it is not as warm as they predicted so it could ice up again later…hope not….
All posts by James DeVol
December 1st
Well…it appears I’m about on time this morning with getting up just a little before 6…forgot to try the lying in bed thing to sleep more but I will try that tomorrow…I did sleep okay last night but feel worn out today and I am waiting for the coffee to work…I did check my BP when I got up and it’s below 120 so that’s a good thing…and it was good all day yesterday, too so I guess the machine is now a toy to play with…not worried much about it…I did get out on the bike and did laps around the lot here…10 miles is such a bore when the scenery doesn’t change…but it was nice to sweat a little…going to try to get out today but the rain is coming in pretty quickly and I don’t think I want to get wet…didn’t get anything done yesterday but I am going to try to get some cleaning done today….but, who knows? The start of the month is always a little depressing and today is no different…so I am going to ease into it…need to eat more today, too since I only had one meal yesterday trying to adjust for not riding….more later…
Medicare changes…
Well…okay…you guys all know I’m pretty old since I talk about retirement and old guy stuff once in a while..but, I really do try to keep that to a minimum to not bore my younger readers…but, today I am going to talk a little about Medicare and the changes I made this morning. The biggest problem with conventional Medicare is that, if you have an extended hospital stay, you are on the hook for 20% of it no matter what the cost…and it is pretty easy to get into six figures for even just a short stay….and that means a bill for me of over 20K and I just couldn’t pay that. So, this morning, I switched over to a Medicare advantage plan that any hospital stay of any length will only cost me 4K at the most and they start paying all of the bill after 7 days in the hospital…so, that reduces my exposure to going broke quite a bit and it only costs an extra 9 bucks a month…and that include basic prescription coverage, too…that I just found out increases in cost for every month you don’t have coverage. I still may add some dental coverage in the next month but I want to think about that for a while…and I have two months to make that decision…so, that takes a load off some and I even get to keep my doctors…pretty cool…and I am going to celebrate that by doing nothing the rest of the day…and month for that matter…no more later…
Another two for the B-3 count…
Well…after talking to T the other day and her question if I remembered the song “dragging the line” by Tommy James, I got sucked into youtube again looking at videos of music that I have in my playlists that I use on the bike every day…one of those is “Dark eyed Cajun woman” by the Doobie Brothers and I had never seen that they used a Hammond B-3 organ before so I am going to add them to the B-3 count. I also saw a commercial on tv with Elton John in it that covered his career from the start until now and, though I thought he just played piano, there is one shot of him playing a B-3 so I’ll add that to the B-3 count, too….
Restoring the rule of law…
Well…with all of the fireworks that have been going off in the Mueller investigation and the emphasis on who is a crook and what crimes they committed, one really important facet of the investigation has been overlooked…that what Mueller is really doing is trying to restore the rule of law in this country that has been all but destroyed by the repubs over the past few years. As I’ve written before, the repubs have been acting like the laws of this country don’t apply to them and the constitution is just for suckers unless they can use it to attack people they don’t like…but now, with the Cohen guilty plea yesterday of lying to Congress, Mueller has signaled that all of the laws of this country are to be followed or there will be consequences…and guess who that puts right in the crosshairs of Mueller and the dem congress in January? Yep, Donnie Jr. and Jeff Sessions to name just a couple…but also almost every other trump associate who testified to support the trump lies about Russia and the campaign. So, there are going to be a lot of things to look forward to in the next month or so…meltdowns of idiot boy are going to be delicious…impeach…
Yow…they raided Deutsche Bank yesterday…
Well…another day, another raid on the top money laundering bank in the world yesterday, Deutsche Bank. This one should have the idiot trump shaking…and it does if his tweets about the Mueller investigation yesterday are any indication. Remember that when every other bank in the world cut off idiot boy’s access to capital, Deutsche Bank was the lone bank that would deal with trump…and it just happens that they have been laundering money out of Russia for decades…I wonder what that connection is? Look, it has been clear for some time that trump has been laundering dirty Russian money through real estate for years…but the majority of that was from the oligarch thieves who were pillaging the Russian economy…what is going to come out from this raid is that the Russian government was paying off trump and his cronies by providing the money that Deutsche bank was loaning trump….now, this is just speculation on my part but with how the Russians have groomed trump over the years, it would not surprise me if this is the truth. Another raid that happened yesterday was to the offices of a Chicago alderman whose accounting firm just happened to be employed by trump for the past decade, with their relationship just ending earlier this year. Wanna bet that these two raids are connected? With these latest happenings I have only one piece of advice for trump and his cronies…run! Run fast and run far…you are all going to jail if you don’t…Saudi Arabia would be a good place for you…impeach…
November 30th
Well…running a little late this morning and I just can’t get going….feel worn out today and kind of sore from sleeping on my right shoulder…that pain kept me up part of the night and I should have taken something for it since it is a tendon problem and I need to get the swelling down to make the pain go away…I did have to help K with her dog last night and that is a sad thing…not sure I want to think about that right now….I know I was going to get some work done around here yesterday but just didn’t get to it…not sure if I’m going to do much today but I do need to change my Medicare plan so I guess that will be the goal for the day…it’s not too much work but I need to decide how much I want to spend on it…9 bucks more a month or 35 bucks more…need to think about that a little…not much to do today…I do need to get some pork chops in a marinade for tomorrow but that is about it…more later….
This is what happens when an idiot thinks he’s a genius…
Well…haven’t been watching much news lately, preferring to read print instead but last night I turned on Rachel since there was nothing good on tv and, without cocktails, I get bored pretty easily. It was an interesting show comparing what crimes Nixon was impeached for to what the idiot trump has been doing since he was installed. The conclusion was that trump is much, much worse…attempting to obstruct justice on an almost hourly basis and using the same tactics as Nixon did to subvert the Justice Department. One of the details of obstruction, and written right into the law, is dangling a pardon in front of people who are essential to the investigation into crimes committed by the president…something that idiot boy does on a daily basis and especially in regard to Paul Manafort. With it being revealed that Manfort blew up his plea agreement with Mueller by lying to and spying on Mueller and his investigation, I can see trump sitting in the WH thinking he is the most clever person in the world by getting Manafort to do that…but, Mueller is playing eleventy dimension chess while trump is playing checkers….there was a reason that none of the past few days revelations came out until trump had submitted his answers to Mueller’s questions…Mueller knew that Manafort was spying and lying and he knew that with the coordination between trump’s and Manfort’s lawyers, he had the evidence that trump was committing perjury in those answers…this was all because trump is an idiot who thinks he is a genius and truly believed that he was smarter than Mueller…and everyone who has ever listened to trump knows that is a huge laugh. Today, the dominoes continued to tumble with the pleas of Michael Cohen to many more crimes that he did for trump…and, with 70 hours more testimony, Cohen has given Mueller what must be getting close to being the final nails in trump’s coffin. No matter what trump wishes for, the Mueller investigation is not winding down but speeding up and it looks like the timing of the release of the report should be just when the dems take charge of the House and can use the information to reveal just how big a bag of crooks that trump and his cronies are….and I just can’t wait…impeach…
November 29th
Well…I’m a little irritated this morning after doing the grocery run and Meijers being out of my cocktail materials…I’ve been good all week and that was something I was looking forward to…and Family Fare keeps theirs locked up in the morning to keep the high schoolers from shoplifting them so that was out, too…oh, well…I guess I’ll just go out after I get the workout in…slept okay last night and feel pretty good after the third day of being good and I think I may just continue that tonight even if I can get the cocktail stuff…I did break down and buy some red meat this morning since there was no other cheap protein on sale this week…I mean, how can you pass up pork chops for 99 cents a pound? But, this won’t be continued as soon as I can get some chicken for the same price…I do have a couple of breasts in the freezer that I will thaw after I use the fish I have marinating overnight…I did try to figure out why the drivers door speaker doesn’t work and couldn’t easily so I am going to just leave it til spring or til a winter thaw…can’t tell the difference anyway and that one must have been dead for quite a while…didn’t get anything else done yesterday but I am going to clean the bathroom today and try to get the flat surfaces in the kitchen done, too…but, I’m not really motivated right now…maybe more coffee will help? More later….
Why?
Well…not going to talk about the WH idiot today…as I’ve said, I need to talk about other things to keep my sanity…what little there is of it…intact…over the past couple of months after going out to Kos a few times a day, I’ve noticed a couple of things…first, even with the pie fights that erupt sometimes over politics, there are a lot of really nice people that hang out there and the mood is normally pretty upbeat with the overriding theme that we can make the world a better place by staying true to progressive values, supporting a science and fact based world, and looking for and valuing the truth in our daily discourse. One thing that has alarmed me some is the almost daily fundraising that is necessary to keep our fellow members from homelessness and medical bankruptcy…and my question is why? In a country as rich as ours, why the hell can’t we take care of everyone’s health like almost every other first world country does? Just today, there was a couple at Kos that were running a fundraiser to get to the 1,500 dollars they needed for copays so that one of them could go for cancer treatment…let that sink in…there are many people who don’t have the money to save their lives because medical care is not covered…just like the woman here in GR who was turned away from a life saving heart transplant and told that she needed to go out and fund raise the 15K to get the process started before the hospital would do anything…that is just one the most sick things I have ever heard…we have trillions to give away to the rich and corporations but people who are months away from dying without proper medical care are told they are on their own and need to come up with cash before they can be saved. I lived that life for 16 years before Medicare kicked in…there was not one day that the small pain in my chest didn’t trigger dread in my mind that I was going to end up in the hospital and lose every thing I worked my entire life for just because health insurance was too expensive for me to afford…and the stress was there every day, wondering if there was some chronic disease like cancer or heart disease that was building up and just waiting to attack…something that could have been so much less serious if it would have been caught in the early stages by preventive care that I couldn’t afford. Why? I worked my whole life until our rotten society deemed that I was no longer worth a job just because I had gotten older…and corporations were allowed or even encouraged to discriminate against mature workers by chasing every dime of profit for the owner class while wages stagnated and everyone else kept going backwards. Again, I ask why? Even now, with moving to a Medicare advantage plan, I am still on the hook for 4,000 dollars a year if anything happens to put me in the hospital…right now, I can afford that, but that is almost 20% of what I get from SS every year and if that happens, I can see having to make some hard decisions like do I eat or pay my bills…and, no one should have to make those decisions after a lifetime of hard work and education….