Shrinkage

Consumer News: I have bought Breyer’s yogurt because it is the only brand that offers eight ounce containers. All of the other brands have gone down to six ounces while charging the same price. For a couple of weeks I couldn’t find Breyer’s on the shelves at Wegman’s. I asked a person in the dairy department about it, and he said that Breyer’s went to six ounces, so Wegman’s stopped carrying the brand. He said that the only reason they offered Breyer’s at all was because it came in eight ounce containers. So I’m basically through with yogurt. What good does six ounces of yogurt do a growing boy like me? I might as well buy a package of six grapes while I’m at it. It makes as much sense. Is the amount of plastic that goes into the landfill worth it for three spoonfuls of yogurt? I’m done!

It gets better. I went on the internet and found that since Unilever bought Breyer’s, they have also shrunk the size of their “half gallon” ice cream containers to 1.7 quarts and started adding fillers to their ice cream. It made me recall those Breyer’s commercials where the little kids would try to read the list of ingredients on the competitor’s cartons. The kids couldn’t read all the chemicals, but they could read the Breyer’s label because it said, “milk, sugar, vanilla,” and so on.

It turns out that people are so pissed with Unilever about the ice cream, that the Wikipedia entry for Breyer’s has been locked due to vandalism! What a tremendous innovation, to not only give people smaller amounts, but add fillers to what you do sell them to make it cheaper to produce. People get big bonuses for coming up with these ideas. It reminds me of how The Simpsons in syndication have gags cut out so they can show more commercials. You think about how it’s somebody’s job to watch a Simpson’s episode that was created by many talented and creative people and cut out 90 seconds of it so three more promos can be shown for another rerun that they show on the WB. That is precisely someone’s contribution to the entertainment industry and American society. This should be a soul-crushing occupation, but sadly I’m sure it’s not. These people could be kissed by a Dementor and just get right up, pop in a breath mint, and be on their way.

In other news, the US Open is underway and I haven’t caught any articles in the New York papers covering how expensive all the concessions are. No exaggerations do justice to the actual price of something like a sandwich at the US Open. A sandwich is like $14. Every year it’s sublime. The prices are ludicrous, people complain, the people at the US Open don’t see what the problem is. Maybe it’s not even news any more. That would be a shame because the whole thing was so amusing to me.

The resignation of Alberto Gonzales is like all the resignations under George Bush. A guy who gave rational people severe reservations when he took the job shows total ineptness and contempt for the rule of law and the American people, and it takes numerous attempts before the President finally lets him resign. Because once again in this administration, loyalty trumps ability. And Bush looks all the worse for saying that the problem is everybody outside of his administration, not his hand-picked cronies who are driving the country into the ground from the inside. It’s a shame that congress didn’t stand up to this nomination in the first place. Instead, they let Gonzales’ tenure lead to its inevitable scandals and then tried to run him out with months after months of hearings. The Justice Department and whatever is left of due process has paid the price. TWO Christmases will pass before this guy is out of office.

Find other demotivating posters at the link below. It was hard to pick my favorite, but I posted the “Stupidity” one because I thought the picture was hilarious. That's how I was holding my head about halfway through my fantasy football draft.

http://www.despair.com/index.html

Drive

It was past time that I got the oil changed on both of our cars, and luckily I can just drop them off at a garage near my office and then walk to work. There is no need to make an appointment or wait for the car to be finished. It’s a perfect setup and I can’t imagine anyone not doing the same thing. But nearly every time I need to take the car in, the same thing happens. One of the women I work with will see me walking down the street and express a ridiculous amount of concern. They ask “Did I see you walking down the sidewalk this morning?” in the same tone of voice you would use to ask “Was that you I saw digging through the garbage this morning?” It takes some effort to assure them that everything is all right. I guess since it would take a series of calamities to get them to walk a few blocks, they assume that I’ve had some serious misfortune. They invariably offer to drive me the next time. What bugs me the most is how deeply ingrained and reflexive this lazy attitude is - "If there is any way I can avoid expending the effort and time required to walk somewhere, I should take it, obvious to the other costs involved." So I got the oil changed in the Saturn on Wednesday with no problem. Yesterday, I was walking back to the garage to pick up the Ford and sure enough I got busted. A co-worker calls from her van, asking if I want a ride. I decline and she insists that it’s on her way, not understanding at all. How come it is the walking of two blocks that seems like the waste?

From today's Buffalo News on the growing trend of families with three or more cars: "The trend, mirrored nationwide, is most prominent in the region’s growing suburbs, such as Clarence. Affluent and purposely designed to mostly keep people and places distant from each other, Clarence has dealt with the subsequent need to drive everywhere by accumulating the county’s largest percentage of households — about one of every four — with three or more vehicles." I used to live in New Jersey, and I'm reminded of it everytime I drive down Transit. The good life!

Dennise had on one of the music channels that we get through the TV and it was playing “Rehab,” but it was the Jay Z “remix.” It sounded for a few seconds like the DJ had his mic open and he was just yelling and talking over the music. I thought “What the hell?” Then it broke into the “rap” part of the song where Jay Z shows what a super talent he is. He is such a super talent that he waited for Amy Winehouse to write a hit song so that he could add a rap verse in the middle of it and then release it four months later. Kick ass.

Expect to keep seeing a lot of Michael Vick jerseys this year. If people went out and bought OJ jerseys after the double homicide, they are certainly going to keep the Vick jerseys they already bought.

I replaced the mechanism in the upstairs toilet tank on Wednesday. One of the main problems with our house is that there is no way to completely turn off the water anywhere. I can’t turn the water off at any of the sinks or the commodes because there are no valves. When I turn off the water in the basement, I still get a pretty decent trickle. There were a few minutes when I thought I was going to flood the house, especially after I cracked the old fill valve and there was no turning back. I was home alone with Drew, who of course started screaming from his crib. I had to set him up in a seat in the hallway, where he watched me while I knelt down in a puddle of water and tried to figure out the instructions. Everything turned out perfectly, except I had to dirty many more towels than I was hoping to.

RIP Scooter

What more can possible said about the Scooter?

So many wonderful memories have been recalled and so many wonderful things have been said by thousands of baseball fans already today.

Phil Rizzuto was like a member of the family. He was like your dad’s uncle, and he shared the New York Yankees with me through the first twenty-four years of my life. It is with uncles, fathers, and grandfathers that we first experience and learn about baseball.

I am glad that I was able to listen to Scooter and Bill White call baseball games for so many years. White was the consummate professional who perfectly complimented Rizzuto and had an obvious affection for him. Rizzuto was above all a Yankee fan and his excitement and his style came from wanting his Yankees to do well.

The simple, honest enthusiasm of my youth was reflected in Rizzuto’s enthusiasm in calling a ballgame. I think part of the sadness for so many of us comes from the realization that we have not felt that way in a long time!

Senate Passes Children’s Health Bill, 68-31

New York Times - August 3, 2007:

The Senate defied President Bush on Thursday and passed a bipartisan bill that would provide health insurance for millions of children in low-income families.

The vote was 68 to 31. The majority was more than enough to overcome the veto repeatedly threatened by Mr. Bush. The White House said the bill “goes too far in federalizing health care.” But Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chief sponsor of the bill, said, “Millions of American children have hope for a healthier future tonight.”

The bill would increase spending on the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over the next five years.

“Covering these children is worth every cent,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who helped create the program 10 years ago.

The House passed a much larger bill on Wednesday, presenting negotiators with a formidable challenge in trying to work out differences between the two measures. Still, the strong commitment to the issue by Democratic leaders virtually guarantees that they can work out a compromise before Sept. 30, when the program is set to expire. But that compromise is likely to be unacceptable to Mr. Bush. If Mr. Bush vetoes the bill, the future of the program would quickly become an issue in 2008 campaigns for Congress and the White House, in the context of a broader debate about universal coverage for health care.

The House bill, which passed on a vote of 225 to 204, would increase spending by $50 billion over the next five years. The Senate rejected a proposal by Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, to match that increase — and to cover the extra cost by raising taxes on people with incomes exceeding $1 million a year.

Both bills would raise tobacco taxes. The federal excise tax on cigarettes would rise to $1 a pack under the Senate bill and to 84 cents a pack under the House measure, from 39 cents a pack.
The House bill would sharply reduce federal subsidies paid to insurance companies offering private health plans to Medicare beneficiaries. Many Democrats say these plans, which serve nearly one-fifth of the 43 million Medicare beneficiaries, are overpaid. The Senate bill does not deal with Medicare.

Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said Congress was jeopardizing health care for millions of needy children by passing bills that “the president will have no choice but to veto.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who helped write the Senate bill, said he intended to try to persuade Mr. Bush to sign the legislation that emerges from Congress. But Mr. Grassley said that he would fight the proposed cuts in Medicare payments to private plans.
“It’s a question of equity for rural America,” Mr. Grassley said. “Before 2003, rural Medicare beneficiaries rarely had private Medicare plans to choose from. They did not have the same choices people have in urban America. These plans can be a good choice for people with a chronic illness, for lower-income people and for those who want extra benefits.”

Insurers say the private plans would disappear from many parts of the country if Medicare payments were cut as proposed by House Democrats. But AARP, the lobby for older Americans, has endorsed the House bill. It says the “excess payments” to private plans cause higher premiums for all beneficiaries, including those in traditional Medicare. In the final Senate vote, 18 Republicans and 2 independents joined 48 Democrats in supporting the legislation. All the no votes were cast by Republicans.

Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, set forth the case this way: “As lawmakers, we have a moral obligation to provide health care coverage for the millions of uninsured children. Health care should be a right, not a privilege, and covering every child is an important step toward this goal.”

But the Senate Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, said: “If you want to go to government-run, socialistic medicine, this is it, this is the way it’s going to happen. Even my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle are buying this deal.”

Senator Baucus insisted that “this is not a huge massive expansion. This has nothing to do with national health insurance.” Under the bill, states can use federal money to pay health care providers or to help families buy private insurance. Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, said, “To suggest that this is somehow socialized medicine is one of the most far-fetched arguments I have seen on the Senate floor. This care is provided by private physicians, using private insurance companies.”

Both bills would offer bonus payments to states as an incentive to find and enroll low-income children. The Congressional Budget Office says the Senate bill would cover 3.2 million uninsured children, including 2.7 million who are currently eligible but not enrolled. The House bill, it said, would cover 4.2 million children, including 3.8 million already eligible for benefits. In addition, both bills would provide money to prevent 800,000 children now on the program from losing coverage.

The current allocations of federal money, totaling $5 billion a year, are not enough for states to maintain their current programs. Senators of both parties said the bill would help Mr. Bush fulfill a promise he made at the Republican National Convention in New York City on Sept. 2, 2004. “America’s children must have a healthy start in life,” Mr. Bush said then. “In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of poor children who are eligible but not signed up for the government’s health insurance programs. We will not allow a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need.”

The Bridge

Here are the President’s comments regarding the Minneapolis bridge collapse:

“We in the federal government must respond and respond robustly to help the people there not only recover, but to make sure that lifeline of activity, that bridge, gets rebuilt as quickly as possible.”

Who has raised concerns about how soon the bridge can be rebuilt? In any report of this tragedy, has any witness or rescue worker or local official paused long enough from describing the horrible images they have seen to ask about rebuilding the bridge?

It is this fake bravado from Bush that also sent hundreds of rescue workers into the rubble of the WTC while the government lied about air safety. While the truth has still not come out after congressional hearings, we did hear from Christine Todd Whitman that the Bush administration thought it was important to restore activity as soon as possible in order to prove something to the terrorists. Ironically of course, the outcome of this policy was a higher and still rising death count from the attacks.

So here we go again. Nearly 100 victims are still in the depths of the Mississippi River and the safety of 77,000 other bridges across the country are suddenly called into question, but by all means let’s make sure we rebuild this bridge as quickly as possible and restore “activity.”

How crass to mention “restoring activity” during a rescue operation, when “activity” for the George Bush can only refer to burning gas on your way to the store to buy something on credit that you don’t need and can’t afford.

While Bush was trying to prove something to the terrorists with his post-9/11 bullhorn posturing (as if terrorists are going to receive and be persuaded by a message from us), I’m not sure to whom he is trying to prove something here. I think this is just business as usual. Strong words from a weak man who hasn’t been able to back up anything he has ever said with either ability or integrity. A man, who with everything he says, proves that he just doesn’t get it.

Maybe I am overly obsessing on one comment, but seriously, screw him. Screw George Bush. Nowhere is he seen or heard where I am not reminded of what he has done to this country. I sicken thinking of the toll this administration will continue take on us over the next seventeen months.