Here we go again!

You have heard it all before, or maybe not, because the media has done a wonderful job of de-emphasizing it. The economic crisis we are in was not caused by “free-market capitalism” or “greed on Wall Street” or (that favorite bogey-man) “eight years of deregulation under George W. Bush”. I wrote about this ad nauseum in previous posts such as Despair and others referred to therein:

We are suffering from the domino effect of a credit crunch created by the government, which encouraged and even coerced banks into irresponsible lending practices to non-credit worthy individuals. And to add insult to injury, the inmates who caused this mess, who brushed off Bush Administration warnings about the impending insolvency of Fannie and Freddie and the toxic assets they were spreading around the financial community, have been put in charge of the asylum.

But even if the perpetrators and perpetuators got away with their irresponsible behavior, you would have thought that the one bright side in this fiasco is that the irresponsible lending to non-credit worthy individuals has finally ended. Well, think again.

Grazie, Cristoforo!

Thank you, Chris, for your amazing achievement.

So what if you really weren’t the first European to make it to the Americas, having been preceded 500 years earlier by Leif Ericson, et al? Your discovery is the only one that mattered.

So what if you grossly underestimated the circumference of the earth in thinking that it would be a shorter route to India by going west? And so what if you thought you were in India when you were actually in the Bahamas?

So what if a bunch of historical revisionists who have nothing better to do try to paint you and your achievement in the worst light, blaming you for introducing all the evils of European civilization on the supposedly peace loving and innocent indigenous peoples of the Americas?

There are still plenty of us who celebrate your courage to try something new and daring. And even if there is a grain of truth to the revisionist rants, there are those of us who maintain that the Americas are still a better place because you stumbled into them.

So thank you for your amazing feat. Thanks for joining the long line of Italian achievers, and particularly for putting your birthplace of Genoa on the map. And, last but not least, thanks for providing federal workers an extra day off in October!

Birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Genoa, Italy

Fiscal Folly

A belated happy (fiscal) new year to all!


October 1 has come and gone and, as usual, Congress has not passed the appropriations for the new fiscal year, so federal agencies must operate off of a "continuing resolution".


According to the Library of Congress’ website on the “Status of Appropriations Legislation for Fiscal Year 2010’ the only appropriations bill that Congress has passed and the President has signed into law is P.L.111-68, which funds operations for the legislative branch. You can tell where their priorities are.


The funding of the business of government (whether legitimate or illegitimate, constitutional or unconstitutional) is usually tied to separate appropriations bills. This year, the appropriations are divided as follows:

Dilemma

I think I need to change my profile. Maybe. Maybe not. As any of my extremely limited number of readers knows, I make no bones about coming from a Christian perspective. I also mention that one of my passions is apologetics and I even quote one of my favorite verses on the subject:

"But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect." (I Peter 3:15)

I still try to live by that verse, but the “gentleness and respect” part sometimes gets me into trouble. Whether I am talking religion or politics, the views I hold are usually not mere preferences but rather convictions. So it is a challenge to avoid getting too passionate or argumentative. This is why I prefer blogging to spoken debate. While alone at my computer keyboard, I can take a deep breath, gather my thoughts and calmly put together a reasoned discourse while perhaps sipping a glass of wine. I then read it over several times and say a prayer before clicking on the “submit” or “publish” button.

Hot Air

I never took the global warming debate very seriously, so I did not follow it all that closely. I do, however, remember some general turning points. Back in the 90’s, the Clinton Administration signed onto the Kyoto accords, an international treaty which declared with astonishing certainty that (1) the general temperature of the earth’s atmosphere is on the rise and (2) the cause of this is human activity such as burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect therefrom. The Kyoto accord was an agreement by the signatory nations to somehow limit this activity in an attempt to halt or reverse the effect. The accord also extended exemptions to “developing” nations and imposed most of the heavy lifting on the United States.

Taking it in the Rear – Part II

In my attempts thus far to provide anecdotal support for the case against government run health care, I have talked about my generally positive experience with the U.S. healthcare system. Of course the other side of the coin is all the negatives of socialized medicine in places like England and Canada where people have to wait months for surgeries, interventions, treatments and even medical tests which we take for granted in the USA. The results, such as significantly lower survival rates for cancer and other serious illnesses, are well documented.

Of course, the amount of time I have spent in England or Canada can be expressed in terms of hours, so I have not had the pleasure of personal exposure to their public health systems. Italy is another matter, though I am reticent to criticize the beloved homeland of my fathers. Indeed, there are some good things I can say about Italian health care. They have some excellent medical schools. They have also conducted some decent research which has resulted in medical innovations. I remember last year translating some Italian articles for a friend of a friend who was almost fatally injured in a roadway accident in Salerno, Italy. The article discussed the excellent care he received from Italian orthopedic surgeon Antonino Valente, and the innovative techniques used to bring about an incredibly speedy recovery, which was acknowledged in congratulatory letters from the U.S. Consul and from U.S. doctors who provided follow-up treatment. And in the interest of full disclosure, I must mention my father’s positive experience with a back operation in Rome (for which he did not pay a dime because he was also an Italian citizen), shortly after having had a less-than-positive outcome months earlier at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Based on the above information relayed to me by others, I suppose there are some things to boast about Italian medical care, but my personal experience tells me that it leaves much to be desired. I have personally visited relatives at Italian hospitals and found a barracks-like atmosphere, with three and four beds to a room. Very often, patients’ families have to bring toilet paper, soap and other personal hygiene items that are routinely supplied by U.S. hospitals.

Taking it in the Rear – Part I

As evidenced by my last two posts, health care has been on my mind as of late, as it is indeed on many people’s minds. I can approach the issue from a philosophical standpoint and provide reasons why I believe the free market and competition have given us the best health care on the planet (despite its flaws), and why the last thing we need is more government involvement, which inevitably invites inefficiency and abuse, as well as the mediocrity and poor service that are inherent in a one-size-fits-all government operation.

But I also have plenty of anecdotal reasons to buttress my philosophical position, as to why the free market works and the public option does not. What follows is one of the few negative experiences I have had with the private system, but in the end it turned out okay. I posted this story last December at a blog called “Down with Absolutes”, where I served as one of the few conservative voices amidst a sea of lefties.

Nationalized Health Care? Say What?

I have thankfully spent precious little time as a patient in a hospital. I got my tonsils out when I was six years old, and I don’t remember much from the experience other than being in a good bit of pain the morning after the operation. The discomfort was immediately mitigated by getting to eat all the ice cream and Jell-O I wanted.

Other than that, I don’t think I was ever admitted to a hospital until I was forty-nine. That winter, I caught a nasty cold that seemed to stick around longer than usual and even developed into an ear infection, or so I thought. It got to the point where I had difficulty hearing in my right ear, but being the stubborn and clueless male that I am, I ignored it for a couple of months before Susan persuaded me to see an Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist.

On my first visit, the ENT took out a handy little suction hose and pulled out what seemed to be a crusty buildup that had accumulated on my ear drum. When this seemed to provide little or no benefit, he administered an audiogram, which confirmed a hearing loss in the right ear. He then ordered up a multitude of tests, most of which I can’t remember, but there were several tests for meniere's disease. lyme disease or other maladies which might have damaged my cochlear nerves. Already suspecting that this was the case, he put me on steroids in hopes of either stopping or reversing the damage. At the same time, he also ordered up an MRI of the brain, mentioning that in certain very rare instances, such hearing losses are caused by something called a vestibular schwannoma (also known as an acoustic neuroma), which is a tumor wrapped around the auditory nerve between the ear and the brain. The ENT reassured me that such tumors are extremely rare and he highly doubted I had one, but he felt compelled to order the MRI just in case. Long story short, I got a call from the ENT a few days later, asking me to come back into his office and advising that I no longer needed to take the steroids. The MRI was positive.

The Weather and People's Health

-- Mrs. Eynsford-Hill: I do hope we won’t have any unseasonable cold spells; they bring on so much influenza. And the whole of our family is susceptible to it.

-- Eliza Doolittle: My Aunt died of influenza, or so they said. But it’s my belief they done the old woman in.

After thoroughly training Eliza Doolittle in culture, refinement and speech, Henry Higgins was ready to test her ability to maneuver in high society without betraying her humble upbringing and Cockney accent. As a safeguard, he had one proviso: “She's to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody's health.” These memorable lines from My Fair Lady have perhaps contributed to the almost proverbial notion that “the weather and people’s health” are the last polite and safe topics for conversation, as opposed to, for instance, religion and politics.

Alas, as Eliza discovered, I am not sure either topic is safe anymore. This day and age, even an innocent comment about a delightfully mild winter might provoke a diatribe about global warming, caused by the evils of corporations and the American way of life, which are responsible for excess emissions of carbon dioxide--that newest of pollutants that also happens to be what we exhale.

And speaking of exhaling, people’s health is no longer a safe topic either, as it has the potential to devolve into a debate about doctors, health insurance and national health care. I have known this for a while, but it was brought home to me recently on Facebook. It all started last week when my niece posted the following:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

Great Food Away from the Tourist Traps

I have heard it said that it is hard to get a bad meal in Italy. Indeed, any establishment that tried to serve one would not be in business for very long. Even the Autogrill’s (the fast food establishments along the major highways) offer some reasonably priced fare that could easily pass for something authentic in a stateside Little Italy restaurant. But as for traditional sit-down restaurants, the real trick in Italy is to find a place that not only serves delicious fare but does so at a reasonable price. The best ones are usually the smaller, family-run affairs, off the beaten path and away from the tourist traps.

Susan and I found one such gem on our ascent up Mt. Etna. Just beyond Taormina off of highway A-18 from Messina to Catania, about 10 kilometers up from the Fiumefreddo exit and toll plaza, the winding road takes you through the small town of Linguaglossa. Just beyond the town, the road resumes its hairpinning ascent through vineyards and olive groves that cling to the Etnean foothills. If you aren’t paying attention, you might miss a small sign that says “Trattoria Le Sciare”.