Uncle John

From Uncle John:

Happy Independence Day.

The big news is that I am now a grandpa.

We have various municipalities in the area that are passing ordinances that all new residences must have at least some masonry facade. This seems to be very popular with the bricklayers union but is strenuously resisted by homebuilder associations. The most active antagonist is the NAACP. I don't know exactly why that is.

New Orleans now has an inspector general. They never had one before. Surprised? Someone thought that since the rest of the country was pumping billions into that city of questionable local management practices, it might salve the nations unease if New Orleans appointed a watch dog. They picked the cat that had been Massachusetts' watch dog during the "big dig" tunnel project in Boston. That project re-wrote the record books in terms of cost over runs. Oh well.

Someone did a study and concluded that one is more likely to get a warning rather than a ticket after a traffic stop if one is a young lady, if one is local, if the area recently voted to accept a property tax increase, or if the area is reliant on tourist commerce. This is interesting but I sure hope taxpayers didn't pay for these pearls of wisdom.

We were watching a Wimbledon match and the announcer explained that James Blake, who was losing to an adversary from Spain, had beaten this fellow the last time the two had played head to head. I think I have heard this expression so many times that I paid it no attention. But [my wife], who is more exacting than I, wanted to know the other ways the two would have played against each other in the past. The American men have one contestant left after week one (Andy Roddick). What happened to USA men's tennis? On the subject of tennis, you have to check out the sports bra that Serena Williams sort of incorporates into her tennis outfit. The back band is one of the biggest pieces of elastic I have seen. I fear that if the thing were to burst, several spectators would be killed.

Some shrink on the IL side of the river was busted for defrauding Medicare and Medicaid. Many bills were submitted for treatments during periods when he was on vacation in other continents. Some days had 40 hours of treatments billed. I'm wondering if psychiatric care should be lumped in with other medical care. The opportunity for such mischief probably is too seductive. Anyway, this cat has the unusual name of Ajit Trikah. He set up a firm with a modest name of TRX. The President, secretary, and treasurer of TRX all happen to be Ajit Trikah. It must be quite a company.

My box of Wheaties has a prominent piece on the side panel that says "The NBA Cares," and went on to cite the countless things the NBA does to help kids. This message is bit incompatible with what I hear about the on court and off court antics of their basketball players. I suspect if they paid all their child supports it would be a good first step toward helping kids.

Texas A&M had a business ethics course in which 24 students were involved in a cheating scam. I wonder if they understood the concept of the course. Perhaps they did. Maybe it's one of those realism courses.

Michael Moore (one of the leading "do as I say, not as I do" crowd) says: "If a doctor says something is needed, then the government should guarantee it gets paid for." I'll bet you plenty that Michael Moore would side with the plaintiff in 99% of the malpractice suits against doctors for erroneous diagnosis, unnecessary treatments, bogus treatments, mistaken prescriptions, etc. So I'm confused.

The vote on the immigration bill never happened. The vote to continue it's consideration was defeated 53 to 46. The way I see it, The Democrats are the majority party and thus have over 50 votes. Several Republicans voted with the Democrats. Even so, they mustered only 46 votes. The Post Disgrace says the GOP killed the bill. By my reckoning, if a bill gets only 46 votes even with considerable help from the minority, one should more appropriately surmise that the majority party failed to deliver the bill.

STL tap water has been judged to be the best tap water in the country. How about that! Nonetheless, people here flock to convenience stores and groceries and vending machines in endless numbers in order to purchase expensive bottled water.

Scrushy, the ex CEO of Health South and formerly the only indicted CEO to beat the Justice Department, had a short lived victory. He has been sentenced to 10 years in the slammer for bribery and corruption. Gotcha.

I was looking at the back cover of [my wife's] most recent mag from her good friend Rush. He put forth some of the text of a Hillary address to an MIT crowd. It was an ongoing rant on how the governments must find ways to make selfish citizens more supportive of less well off citizens. At the end, Rush added "Karl Marx couldn't have said it better."

The challenge word was excoriate. It means to denounce harshly. The trivia answer from Mary Poppins was supercalifragilistiexpialidocious, or something in that vein. The lyrics challenge was from Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good to Me So Far." That song has a great line that I did not include: "They say I'm lazy but it takes all my time."

The new challenge word is "besotted." The trivia question is which planet in our solar system rotates in a direction opposite to its orbit? The new lyric challenge is: "I knew a father who had a son;/ He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he'd done./ He came a long way just to explain;/ He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping then turned around and headed home again./ God only knows; He alone has His plan./ The information's not available to the mortal man."