Years ago it was not much talked about (except right here) but the impoverishment of the so-called middle class may be further underway than I thought. For the record, I regard only the self-employed as middle class. What the media call middle class, I would call working class with credit cards. It does not matter how much you make, if you work for somebody else, you are working class. Civil servants, who now average $119,000 per year, twice the average US wage, are still working class people.So what’s the point? Well, I once mentioned the depression would not get much attention until it started biting the doctors ad lawyers. Guess what? Y‘day I saw a doctor about some skin tags. These are tiny harmless growths,but you should still have them checked. They occur in “friction” areas, for example, if you get one your eyelid, it is called a sty. I’ve nicely developed one on my neck from wearing a tie in this climate. Hey, it’s my bingo tie so I had no choice.
I got in to see a dermatologist, who determined it is benign. In modern medical terminology, that means “not covered by insurance”. But get this. In less than 60 seconds of negotianion, I got the price down from $800 to $40, and she even offered to do that on credit. My but times have changed.
I made an appointment in June, because she was so drop down gorgeous, I want to see her again. Seriously. Within moments of meeting she stated outright that I was not the average patient they get around here. I reminded myself that my medical chart said I was single, and intend to let Nature take its course. One thing, she sure has perfect skin.
It seems two fans got refused admission to a stadium in California for wearing t-shirts reading “Viva 1070”. This is the Arizona Bill 1070 that allows police to check for citizenship. The White House is calling the bill unconstitutional, but they would say that. The point here is freedom of speech, and as Craigslist says, it smells like “a fifty mile high law suit”. You see, the stadium is public property and public funded. You watch, the stadium will try to claim the shirts were a safety issue.
Also making the rounds is a recording from a talk show where some lady called in to say the USA should let in all immigrants because we were “making too much money”. When asked what the population of the USA was, she guessed 600 million, and when asked how much money she made, she was on welfare. When asked were the welfare came from, she said all the illegal immigrants put their money into a fund and it was paid out of that. The DJ had to hang up on her, explaining that he’d once heard that the definition of Hell was a place where there was no reason.
She actually believed her welfare checks were paid by illegal immigrants. Now that is not the most stupid thing I have ever heard. I once met a Canadian who had finagled his way to stay on welfare since the day he turned 18 by claiming work “made him go crazy”. He said taxpayers had no right to complain because he got his money from the government so it’s not like he was costing them anything. I asked him where the government got their money and he said they printed “lots of it” and they were very rich because “they bought things like the army”, and wondered why I was so dumb I didn’t know that.
He guffawed when I told him welfare came out of taxation. You can’t fool him. But, that is one thing about people who get free money. They have no incentive to learn anything about the system. As far as they are concerned, the system works perfectly, at least for them, as one theory is just as valid as another. The welfare lady was from Boca Raton, Florida. On welfare in paradise. Only in America. Listen to it yourself.
Something whacky is going on at FireHow. For long stretches of the day, their site just will not work, or it takes a minute to react to any commands. I used the delay to search for an easy way to delete items from the system tray. This is the ever-expanding group of little icons that appear at the lower right of your computer screen. Each represents a process running in the background on your computer, slowing things up.
It turns out getting rid of anything once it gets in there is a monumental undertaking. Even PC World declared it could take a half day. Isn’t it just like MicroSoft to even allow such a thing to occur. I’ll look deeper, but it seems these programs burrow their way into your system registry.
