Things I do that make me go wtf

So I’m watching Jeopardy!.  I don’t remember the category but there was a picture of a woman shown as a clue with one answer.  Even before I read or heard the answer I knew it was Theda Bara.

I can’t remember what I did yesterday.  I probably wouldn’t recognize most of the people I’ve ever known, maybe even some relatives.  How the heck can I recognize Theda Bara?

I have trouble recognizing actors from the last 50 years and I pull the name of an actress from the 30s out of my head?

My brain is weird.

The Oscars

I don’t watch awards shows these days, not for any particular reason, but when I was a kid I used to enjoy watching the Academy Awards.  Recently I was wondering why I used to like it so much.  Sure, I liked going to movies, and there were only a handful of stations to watch back then.  (For you younger readers, growing up I lived in an area with a lot of TV stations – we had 7).  I considered that the show hadn’t changed that much over the years, except for the host and production elements and the opening routine and – OK, it’s changed, but the essence remains the same.  So does the length no matter how hard they try to speed things up.

But the question remained, why did I like it before but today I’m just kind of meh about it?  So I thought about it a bit and rather quickly came to a conclusion.

I think I used to like it so much because it was a celebration of creativity. 

Sure it’s an enormous self-congratulatory ego fest, but who cares.  The Oscars are all about every aspect of making movies.  OK, the technical awards always get short shrift; I guess they get almost as much time as one of the production numbers.  But the idea is to award excellence in creativity.

I like that.  Watching the Academy Awards was a common and acceptable way of celebrating Art and creativity.

I may not watch them tonight, but I used to really like them and I’m glad they’re still around and a big deal.

Medicare costs

With everyone talking about how to lower the deficit, has any pundit or network talking head mentioned that health care costs have stopped rising at twice the rate of other spending?

Which means that projected Medicare spending for the next 10 years has dropped by about $500 billion dollars.  Half a trillion in savings already and no cut to benefits needed.

Do you think they’ll stop insisting that cuts are the only way to go, and need to be done now?

Me neither; just like I don’t expect them to stop acting as if Social Security increases the deficit (it doesn’t).

The Chained CPI

Changing the way Social Security cost of living adjustments are calculated will reduce benefits but it will not help lower the debt.  Social Security has never added one cent to the debt.

But if you switch all government calculations to the chained CPI you will also lower VA benefits.  That will save the government money but screw over veterans.  And tax brackets will adjust more slowly so a small raise may push you into a higher tax bracket even if you only make $20k a year.

Talking about Social Security and COLAs and the debt is either just a disingenuous – or stupid – way to cut Social Security benefits without helping the debt at all, or it’s a smokescreen to cover cutting veterans’ benefits and increasing taxes on the poor and middle class.

Or it could be all of the above.

Medicare, the budget and funding

There seems to be a commonly held belief among media personalities, pundits and members of Congress that Medicare is in trouble.  They also seem to think that Medicare is the big problem we face with the budget.

Of course the major problem with the budget is unfunded wars and declining revenues due to tax cuts, but to take the second point first, Medicare costs have declined over the last 3 years.  Medicare costs have declined faster than any other measured medical cost and they have declined before the changes to reduce costs in the Affordable Care Act have taken effect.

As for the funding issue, the numbers show that with the current rate of funding Medicare will go broke in about 11 years.  That sounds ominous, except that the numbers have said that since Medicare started almost 40 years ago.  Medicare always seems to be on the edge but it won’t go over unless it is pushed.

Yes, reforms are needed because Medicare is not perfect.  But there is no crisis.  Like seemingly all of the recent economic crises this country has faced this one is manufactured.

The State of the Union

If anybody was wondering, and it’s not that I think you were, I didn’t watch the State of the Union.  I’ll read the transcript and watch the video later.

I expected there to be talk of gun control and entitlement reform.  Was I right?

Anyway, what he needed to say was that we should be borrowing money by the boatload.  People are paying the US to buy bonds so they can park their money in US dollars so we can borrow at less than 0% interest.

If you could do that wouldn’t you?

Then we spend it as fast as we can fixing roads and bridges and schools and water mains and the electric grid.  We build schools, hire teachers and fire fighters and police.  That will put millions back to work and the money they spend and the taxes they pay will fix the economy and reduce the debt.  It really isn’t rocket science.

Then the President should have talked about Medicare for all, allowing negotiation for drug prices, and eliminating the FICA cap and then doubling Social Security benefits.  Both of those would also improve the economy and reduce spending on medical coverage.

I imagine none of that was mentioned last night.  It should have been.  Austerity will hurt the country and a lot of people as well.  Spending will fix our problems – it worked during the Depression and WWII and led to the growth of the world’s biggest economy and greatest middle class.  Some talk about unions might be nice but maybe that’s asking too much.

At any rate I might check out the speech later, but I don’t expect to see anything I want to see in there.

Richard III

The bones of Richard III have been found, and apparently he didn’t need a horse so much as a parking space.

Some articles have mentioned that his face was reconstructed from the skull to show the real Richard, since some historians seem to think that historic portraits deliberately made him look more sinister.  Assuming the reports are true, historians need to learn more about disability.

I think the reconstruction makes him look too serene and I don’t think it’s accurate.  Take a look at the pictures of that skeleton that have been all over the Internet lately.  Maybe the artists who painted those portraits weren’t trying to make Richard III look more sinister than he actually was.

Maybe they were just accurately portraying the face of a man suffering from severe chronic pain.