Kaibab Journal - Random Fragments - October to December 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Cruz' Gambit - Texas Senator Ted Cruz got lots of flak from the usual suspects when he launched into his filibuster opposing ObamaCare. And, he got flak from some members of his own party who just seem clueless. Yes, Cruz wasn't going to get ObamaCare overturned. But, the common complaint, from presumably sympathetic Republicans was that his tactics were flawed. At the time, I thought they were wrong. Now, a little over a month later, I think that its time for his friendly critics to reassess.

That is, we have now begun to see the flaws with this horrendous health care "reform." Some argued that the best strategy was to let it fail on its own. Wrong. There needs to be a strong voice of opposition to collect those who become increasingly disenchanted with this law. And, that's where Cruz has positioned himself in this affair. If he hadn't challenged the law so vocally, how would the GOP capitalize on the shortcomings [flawed web site, high prices and dropped coverage] we've seen so far? Quite simply, they couldn't.

But, everyone knows that Cruz put himself out there in a Don Quixote-esque role, tilting at the health care windmills. When these windmills start coming off their rails, he'll be able to say, "I told you so." Or, better yet, he'll be able to say, "OK, now let's kill this beast." The worse the effects of this new law, the more Cruz will benefit.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Where ya' from? - I stumbled across this web site where you are quizzed about your word usage and pronunciation. For each question, a small map will pop up showing you what sections of the country are most closely associated with your reply, shown in red. [Those "least" close, if that's the right way to put it are shown in blue.] At the end, you get a map that shows where you're from based on your replies. My map is shown to the right (click on it to see a bigger image). It zeros in on three cities. For me it was Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs, all in Colorado. Wow. I'm impressed. I was mostly raised in Denver (1st grade through the end of high school), so that makes sense to me. I wondered how I would fare given that I was born back east, but didn't likely pick up on any particular word usage, and spent more that a decade in Hawaii while on the slow track in graduate school, where I must have already been set in my ways. Anyway, you can find out for yourself at the U.S. Dialect Map.