Hey. Hey! Listen to me!!

...mad points to anyone who can identify the song intro I pulled that from.

I spent some time today going back and forth on a friends' Fecesbook post about health care. He's a liberal Republican (I suspect he believes himself to be moderate), a Massachusetts Republican with libertarian leanings, definitely above average intelligence. Great guy. We agree on many things, although he's to my left, but politics has never really mattered to me with friends, anyhow.

 So yeah, I revisited the post a few times yesterday, contributed some thoughts.

 After a post where I was accused of being 'monstrous' (by someone I've never met) for suggesting that taxing income to pay for health care may have unintended consequences, and that economics very clearly shows that subsidizing a private industry never drives down costs, there was some pearl-clutching and name calling, mostly at me and other 'taxation is theft' minded people.

 Name calling means I'm either dealing with a tard or have made my points, generally, except where I'm being called an asshole, which I am, and which I am on Fecesbook even more, in which case it's being honest.

 There was a glorious moment of autistic screeching when I used the phrase 'dead wood' to describe the unproductive class, because now apparently that's offensive...something about a Chinese prison camp where medical experiments were carried out and the poor bastards who got dissected were referred to by that name.The term iteself comes from maritime usage, like most things, with a parallel origin that's literal, describing dead wood.

 Oh, it's the part of the ship's upper keel, at the stem, against which the heels of the forward frames are abutted if you care.

 At any rate, once my friend inserted that bit of trivia, I was the devil for not caring or, apparently not being appropriately ashamed of myself.

 Yeah, I'll reconsider when gay means happy again or no one can say 'gas' because gas was used to kill people in concentration camps.

 Anyhow, I was immediately thinking this, but was able to move on.

 My point in writing this is that 1), thank you for your patience, because I know you didn't come here to read political shit, and 2), when I was being called a monster and such for not agreeing with all the leftists, my friend chided the name-caller, and asked him to stop, but he wrote something that struck me funny. I'll have to paraphrase, but it was something about 'we'll never find solutions if we resort to name calling.'

 That actually killed my interest in the post. We weren't finding solutions, we were choosing sides and speaking our minds. No one of the hundred or so commenters changed their mind or was going to change their mind, so what was the point? Me, I have a couple semesters in college  and grad school in economics and no training or background in health care policy. Neither did anyone else there. It wasn't a MENSA meeting, or the G7, or a Scientology... meeting? service? I don't know what those dingleberries call getting together.

 Sadly, we didn't find any solutions, except that I got blocked I'm sure by some folks I never interacted with before.  I didn't even get to unlimber my id and start tearing into people. Must be getting soft. But then again, we weren't there to find solutions. I was there to pass time while my lunch was cooking, and other people were probably taking shits at work and the like.