Through the WV Looking Glass

As if these times weren't trippy enough, I decided to listen to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Although taken as a whole it didn't seem to hang together as tightly as Alice in Wonderland, it does contain some of my favorites from the master of trippiness, including The Jabberwocky, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the walrus and the carpenter and such.

A little trippiness these days may be necessary in order to follow West Virginia politics, from the impeachment hearings about the WV Supreme Court mess to state senate president Mitch Carmichael's bizarre twitter storm accusing WV teachers of supporting an "Obama-styled socialist agenda. "

Among the items on this alleged pinko agenda were universal health care, child care for working parents and debt-free higher education. More than one commentator has pointed out that Carmichael himself was leading the charge on a free community college bill earlier this year.

I'm not sure what Carmichael was thinking since he didn't gain a whole lot of popularity points during the WV teachers' strike--and then had the gumption to claim credit for the pay raise he tried to squelch.

My friend and twitter warrior Sean O'Leary had this to say about that,

"Just woke up from a terrifying nightmare where all West Virginians had health insurance, could go to college without going into debt, and all children had quality childcare while their parents worked."

All told, things are pretty brillig here and the slithy toves are gyring and gimbling in the wabe.

Let them eat emergency rooms

It's kind of entertaining these days watching the whole political circus. Or circuses, to be more exact, there being so many to choose from. I must admit to being amused by presidential candidate Mitt Romney's latest prescription for health care for the uninsured: using the emergency room.

Ironically, this is something that another Mitt Romney not so long ago denounced as "socialism," as this Huffington Post article points out. His  Massachusetts plan, this Mitt said, was designed to put a stop to that.

On the other hand, many conservatives view the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, as socialistic, even though it was modeled largely on the Massachusetts plan associated with you know who.

Is anybody else confused yet? Would the real socialist please stand up...

Meanwhile, for all the talk about how unpopular health care reform is supposed to be, I imagine there would be hell to pay if provisions of it were actually repealed.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, WV is on the verge of making decisions about how its health care system will unfold. I wouldn't look for a lot of boldness here.

HE'S RIGHT THIS TIME. El Cabrero is not always on the same page with David Brooks, but I think he nailed with this piece on conservatism old and new. To tell the truth, I kind of like the old version.

A DRASTIC CURE. An historical study of Korean eunuchs suggest that castration could lead to longer lives. Which leads me to ask, who wants to live forever anyway?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No socialism here

Venus is an anarcho-syndicalist.

Probably most of us get all kinds of forwarded emails that just go viral. These run across the political spectrum. I usually just hit delete but this one was kind of cute:

This morning I was awakened by my alarm clock powered by socialist electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the socialist clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the socialist radio to one of the FCC regulated channels to hear what the socialist National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using socialist satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of socialist US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the socialist drugs which have been determined to be safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as kept accurate by the socialist National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I got into my socialist National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the socialist roads build by the socialist local, state, and federal departments of transportation, potentially stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the socialist Environmental Protection Agency, using socialist legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way I deposited mail to be sent out via the socialist US Postal Service and dropped the kids off at the socialist public school.

If I get lost, I can use my socialist GPS navigation technology developed by the United States Department of Defense and made available to the public in 1996 by President Bill Clinton who issued a policy directive declaring socialist GPS to be a dual-use military/civilian system to be managed as a national socialist asset.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the socialist workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the socialist USDA, I drove my socialist
NHTSA car back home, on the socialist DOT roads, to my house which did not burn down in my absence because of the socialist state and local building codes and socialist fire marshal's inspection, and which had not been plundered of it's valuables thanks to the socialist local police department.

I then got on my computer and used the socialist internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and browse the socialist World Wide Web using my graphical web browser, both made possible by Al Gore's socialist High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. I then post on freerepublic.com and Fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

By the way, what do people think Medicare and Medicaid are?

Don't read it, be it

El Cabrero has long believed and often stated that humans are creatures of narrative or story. We read them, watch them, listen to them, and make them up all the time--even when we don't think we're doing it.

That's my story anyway. And, yes, I'm sticking to it.

That's one reason why I think literature is so enriching to life. While it is probably beyond the reach of a Mud River pirate such as myself to attempt to define what great literature is, I do have a working definition of a great story.

Y'all ready?

A great story is one that you cannot only lose yourself in; it's one that you can find yourself in.

You can use that if you want (with proper attribution of course).

STATES SLASH SERVICES. Programs benefiting vulnerable citizens have already been cut in 34 states so far as the recession spreads. That will probably be the next big thing to hit WV.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS when you overuse a word.

I PREFER COFFEE. Here's Krugman on tea parties.

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO CLEAN out the brain.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED