Amazon
Another web site for which I've been writing pays in Amazon cards, so I used one to buy Power to the People, the one of Laura Ingraham's books I'd missed. When it was in the stores I had a land phone and had been annoyed by a "robot call" using a recording of Ingraham's voice, so I even mentioned in an AC article that I wasn't buying this book. Well...if I'd read the book, I would've understood why she was desperate enough to let her voice be used that way. Surviving cancer costs money. Ingraham's second book rambles over a variety of topics, including a lot of what was then world and national news, her religious conversion, her cancer treatment, and her disagreements with other conservatives. Disagreements with me? I think Power to the People contains more of those, page for page, than all her other books together. And I still like her, and I still enjoyed her book. I wish I'd bought it years ago. You can buy it here:
I'm annoyed, though, by the way Amazon confuses itself about multiple accounts, when Amazon encourages people to have different accounts. My Affiliate account links to the group e-mail for this web site (our charity, as a group, is ADRA). The e-mail to which the gift card was sent is my individual e-mail account; its charity is Heifer International, and the individual name that may appear on Amazon is "Priscilla Heifer.") It took about an hour to get the system to recognize that "Priscilla Heifer," who has a right to rave about Power to the People on Amazon, uses the same computer as the Amazon Affiliate site, "Saloli AniGodagewi." I'm irked by the way Amazon addresses the person using different accounts as a separate "you." Anything to avoid paying our site its commission for "selling"...meh, for an Amazon Smile sale I suppose the full commission should go to the charity. Still, the experience was annoying.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/f.html?
Animals
Angelfish...I've always thought "angelfish" was an even sillier oxymoron than "Kitty Hawk." (Piers Anthony
had about as much fun with both names as they deserve; unfortunately I don't remember in which book he played with each one.)http://kasmansaquaticworld.blogspot.com/2016/07/my-angelfish-have-spawned.html
Books
Norah Colvin picks this picture book, among others, as a nice children's story about sounds and listening:
(The Cat Sanctuary has a new Resident Possum--another big one, almost as big as Alfred was. I don't know its gender but it's answered to the name of Ralph. However, a possum in a child's backpack would be Bad News!)
Colvin's post:
https://norahcolvin.com/2016/08/09/listen-to-the-sounds/
For the grown-ups, what about a birthday celebration? On Twitter, @GeneWeingarten reminded Post readers that Philip Larkin was born on this day in 1922. He is best known for a poem that reflects everybody's shadow side, beginning with "They [rude synonym for "foul"] you up, your Mum and Dad" and ending with "Get out as quickly as you can, And don't have any kids yourself." If you're up for witty expressions of angst, cynicism, and negativity, a complete collection of Larkin's poems is available:
And Margaret Atwood publishes again...you know you want to...
http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/251269/the-heart-goes-last/9781101912362/
Economy
Some places are more expensive to live in than others. Christopher Ingraham has a map showing which U.S. states are generally the most and least overpriced:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/09/how-far-a-dollar-goes-in-each-state/
Health
Has everyone out there heard of therapeutic body brushing? It's not only for autistic children, or autistic patients, or children.
http://www.blogbourne.com/autism-therapeutic-brushing/?mref=rusty2rusty
Obamacare
Here's a sample of the sort of mess that happens when insurance companies are allowed to foul up the process of medical care. While this is a particularly egregious example involving a U.S. veteran's little boy, my objection to Obamacare is based on the fact that fairly well everybody I've ever known who's used medical insurance, going back to 1972, has had some similar complaint. They say you're paying into a fund that insures immediate payment for whatever you need; reality is that (a) that's after the organizers of the scheme have paid themselves, generously, for gambling with your money, and (b) most of the time there's not enough money left, so they fabricate some reason to delay or deny payment, and if you don't have other ways to pay for what you need, you don't get the medical care you need. I'm a big advocate of the idea that people who take responsibility for their own health care don't need much medical care anyway...but sometimes, like little Eric, we do. And insurance gambling schemes should be swept out of our way. The V.A. is an especially bad situation because they used to have a good medical care plan for paying the actual costs of treatments that worked, after the patients and their families had time to pay what they could pay.
https://www.change.org/p/help-eric-get-the-wheelchair-he-needs?
Politics (Election 2016)
Rand Paul stays busy in Kentucky:
http://www.eventbrite.com/o/rand-paul-for-senate-7693309817
Washington
Very, very bad news, though some people want to know...Condolences to anyone who's in Washington, D.C., and especially those who had to be there last weekend. Note that this did not happen when the gun ban was lifted. It happened when more "rage" was going on, nationwide, and also during a wave of absolutely foul weather, the kind of weather in which people's brains tend to malfunction. (Adults forget important things; students find it harder to read and add; people prone to violent insanity do this.)
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/08/four-people-wounded-in-triple-shooting-after-one-minute-in-dc/?
Not quite such bad news, but not good news. I hope people out there can help these infants.
http://dcist.com/2016/08/pg_hospital_nicu_transfer.php
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