The best thing about the Clinton White House ...

Forgive the photo of Bill Clinton, it's an image of Socks the Cat I was looking for!

The most honest creature that lived in the White House with the Clintons went to the Rainbow Bridge today.

Socks Currie, former "pet" of Chelsea Clinton, had been fighting mouth and jaw cancer. Those of us who love cats know that's a tough thing to overcome, and Socks was thought to be 19 or 20 years of age. He was helped to the Bridge this morning in Maryland, where he'd lived since the Clintons left the White House in 2001.

You might recall the Clintons chose for Socks to stay with former secretary Betty Currie rather than take him—a family member—with them to NY. Probably for the best. Look what happened to the dog they chose over Socks (poor Buddie got run over a short time after the move).

Betty Currie took great care of the cat, and gave him all the love he deserved. I read she specially prepared chicken for him to eat.

Bless you Betty Currie for taking care of this sweet creature. He is health and whole again and he's waiting for YOU at the Bridge. It's you he will be looking for, not any of the Clintons.

California has a budget ... sort of

So California has a budget. Good for us. Now maybe the Legislature can get on with writing laws that will prevent the likes of Nadya Suleman from happening again in our fair state.

This will not be a rant about Octomom today. I’m still writing about her on Trials & Tribulations and the traffic to that site increases whenever I put something up about that wackjob. Today’s rant is the proposed budget that Ah-nold will sign today.

First let me say I think we’d be in worse shape if Gray David had been retained in office. Unlike many, I don’t hate the Governator and honestly would like to see him run for a Senate seat (anything is better than Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein!). Because I lean toward being a moderate (pro-choice and pro-stem cell research), I have no problems with his efforts to work with the dems and do what he feels is best for our state. (Though if a candidate is pro-choice or not pro-choice, that stance all alone is not enough to make me vote or not vote for him or her. There are bigger issues we must deal with here on Earth. We will all face God someday and he will ultimately tell us which point of view was right or wrong.)

So there are four temporary tax hikes that we get to vote on in May. Should I do the pure Republican thing and vote against them, or bite the bullet and perhaps admit we’ve got to raise revenues somehow?

I approve the spending cuts but they aren’t enough. I read nothing about “entitlement” cuts to illegals. So they will continue to come here to get their dialysis and cancer treatment on our dime.

The Sacramento Repubs should have insisted on billing the federal government for those services, and should insist that we want a secure border. Period. Hey, it’s sort of unrelated to a budget package, but consider it pork. Come on, how many bills have been written that have utterly unrelated pork attached to it? Heck even this does—the open primary concept pushed by Sen. Abel Maldonado.

Today the dems are crying foul and not fair. Hey, you all like your pork? About time a Republican does the same back to you. Congratulations Senator Maldonado. The chairman of the California Democratic Party, Art Torres, said what Maldonado did was “extortion.”

About time a Repub play your game, Torres.

Cuts in education are necessary simply because there is so much waste in the system in the first place. Fees for community colleges and state universities are still affordable, and provided an individual or his family has not overextended him or herself credit-wise, there is education money.

Which reminds me, there will be problems down the road in education borrowing with all of the foreclosures and walk-aways. It will become more difficult for those families to obtain student loans, but look at it this way: a student loan is no different from a car loan or a mortgage. You gotta be able to pay it back.

I’m not sure which way I will vote in May. An increase in the state sales tax is at least an equitable way to raise taxes—those who buy more pay more. Those who worry about another penny on every dollar probably shouldn’t be buying “it” anyway.

Don’t even get me started on Obama’s “stimulus package.” What a crock of crap!

Who will pay?

I‘ve been bad again in ignoring this blog. Earlier this week I dragged myself to work (and learned it’s easier to take light rail to work instead of driving!) and for the past couple of days dealing with a weather-induced exacerbation of back pain.

I am hoping the needles and rhizotomy on March 2 puts my back out of sight out of mind for a few months.

Yesterday I decided to write up an entry on the Trials & Tribulations website about the Nadya Suleman case. She’s the goofy Angelina Jolie wanna-be who just had a litter of children while unemployed, living on food stamps, disability, social security and student loans and living with her parents. I won’t repeat what I wrote there, but encourage you to go to T&T and read it yourself.

You all know I do not believe that government is the teat that nourishes all. I also do not like the idea of the government butting into medicine. I mean come on, look how stupid so many senators and house members are about finance, housing, taxes, and well … everything! Imagine those idiots making decisions about our medical care. I shudder to think …

But Nadya Suleman has unfortunately made it necessary for the government to further butt into reproductive medicine. I believe this is what will come of this debacle (and the second debacle of quads currently residing in the uterus of a 49-year old woman who used donor eggs—and this woman has no health insurance either! Guess who her doctor was … yeppers, same nutcase doc as Suleman!):

1. The number of embryos implanted will be strictly limited by maternal age and past reproductive history. Any IVF pregnancy that results in a bad outcome will become the physician’s responsibility. The law will be written in such a way that the doctor will be protected if he or she refuses to stick an obscene numbers of embryos in a uterus. There will also be an increased emphasis on looking at a woman’s psychological reasons for wanting children, especially someone who already has children.
2. I predict that women/families who pursue IVF will be required to prepay insurance premiums that will ensure health care coverage during the pregnancy and postnatal period. For the life of me I can’t understand why a doctor would impregnate medically indigent women and know they could not afford to pay the bills associated with the pregnancy or were covered by health insurance. I am sick of paying taxes in this state that encourage irresponsible and predictable behaviors.

Angelina Jolie can birth and adopt as many babies as she wants because she isn't asking for any sort of government assistance. Angie signs the checks. Nadya Suleman is not Angelina Jolie. Period. She's simply a nutcase.

Hockey musings…

I’m watching the Sharks-Hurricanes game, and I’m reminded why I stated watching hockey in the first place—because of current Carolina player Ray Whitney.

Ray was the first player I chose to pay attention to when I attended my first NHL game in 1994, Sharks versus Winnipeg. Ray was all over the place that night, and oh he was so very cute! I always felt the Sharks gave him a raw deal during the 1996–97 season. At the time they had a horrible coach named Al Sims who, for whatever reason, decided Ray was “too small” and undermined his confidence.

During the summer of 1997, on the day we were getting ready to go to a swim meet, the San Jose paper announced Ray’s contract had been bought out. My daughter and I were just devastated; that's what happens when you get attached to a player.

I did not watch SJ games for about two years, and made it a point to attend games when the opponent was Ray’s current team. So I’ve sat through Edmonton, Florida, Columbus and Detroit games just to see Ray play. I’ve not seen Ray play since the ‘Caines won the Stanley Cup in 2006 though.

I don’t tend to buy hockey memorabilia, but the one game-worn jersey I do own is one of Ray’s from the 1995 season, when he wore #14 with the Sharks. I do wear it occasionally, too. I also have a bunch of Ray's cards, including a one-of-a-kind card from when he was with the Florida Panthers, a card I got at a shop in Toronto. Back in 2000, that card was worth $80. I got it for a whole lot less by trading tennis memorabilia with the store owner.

The next player I want to have win the Cup is Owen Nolan, who plays for the Minnesota Wild, and then Scott Hannan, who plays for Colorado.

I seldom watch the Sharks since they let Scott leave two summers ago as a free agent, when SJ would not fire their coach as a condition of Scott staying and providing a hometown discount. A season too late, then-coach Ron Wilson was fired, but Scott was long gone to the Avs for a big fat $4 million+ contract. He hasn't played very well since he left San Jose.

There is no one on the team whose personality interests me. Guess their marketing department isn't doing such a great job.

Four months of back attack is nearly over!

After dealing with a back attack that started around Halloween, I finally have an appointment for a bilateral two-level rhizotomy on March 2.

There are some laughable observations and errors in the comp physician's report that I need to have corrected, but luckily I have been a bit too busy to deal with that. But there are things that need correction—I did not hurt my back as a result of having a seizure, as in "I" had the seizure. It was an inmate that was found to be faking seizures that caused my injury as I tried to make sure he didn't suffer an injury. The comp doctor also thinks there is no reason I should still require pain medication nearly 20 years later, so he wants comp to stop paying for that too! I'm on the stuff I'm on because I had a bleeding gastric and duodenal ulcer in 2001 because of NSAID use. For me, there are too many side effects from this family of medications.

Medicine nowadays is a joke! That doctor has never met me, and he went off on a "drug addiction" tangent, listing signs of drug abuse. Good lord, I lost my sister due to a combination of prescription and illegal drug abuse. I'm sure as hell not going down that path!

Fortunately my surgeon is a level-headed guy who also knows how to work the worker's comp system.

Still, it angers me that people like me who have legit injuries are looked at as malingerers, while the story about the woman in Whittier who had the octuplets unfolds and it is revealed she's been getting comp disability benefits for nearly 10 years, and in that period of time she managed to have 14 kids! WTF?

More on her when I have the time.