News Day

A Twitter comment today criticized DHS head Janet Napolitano because it took her 24 hours to post a short statement about yesterday’s massacre in Milwaukee. I have some sympathy for her. How do you know if you are one of the people who is expected to make a statement? And when? What difference does a statement make anyway? Continue reading →

Something about the employment numbers has been nagging at me for a while. Every month, the growth in employment comes from the private sector, and government employment falls. This — during a Democratic administration denounced as “big government” by Republicans and Tea Partiers.

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Friday is usually a slower-paced day, an end-of-the-week breathing space. And August is the slowest news month of the year, so when I headed in to the office this morning, I expected to get caught up on some of the pile of emails and stories that built up during the week. Continue reading →

Minnesota’s MCA scores were released today, and there’s plenty of analysis spinning around, though it’s hard to claim much real change from last year.

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Health insurance companies have to pay more than a billion dollars in rebates this year, because they didn’t spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical care. According to the Chicago Tribune:

Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies are required to spend 80 to 85 percent of the money you pay in premiums on actual health care. … Insurers that don’t spend the prescribed amount have to issue rebates.

Is that an unreasonable amount to spend on actual health care? Well, take a look at what Medicare spends on administrative costs. Continue reading →

Books in boxes, books on shelves, and book people everywhere — that was the scene at the inaugural poetry reading at SubText, St. Paul’s newest indie bookstore. David Unowsky brought his cow, and many friends, to the first of a weekly Wednesday reading series he has organized for this summer. Poets Carol Connolly, Shannon Gibney, Ed Bok Lee, Jim Moore, and Juliet Patterson read in alphabetical order. Forty or fifty of us occupied an eclectic selection of comfortable chairs, and we enjoyed the wine-and-cheese welcome and relaxed atmosphere. Continue reading →

I couldn’t pronounce the address of our apartment — Dessewfy utca 22. I learned, eventually, that there are 47 characters in the Magyar alphabet, which may explain why I can’t pronounce anything. Magyar also has different words for “red,” depending on the temperature of the word. Not the color or shade — but one word would mean the passionate red of blood, while a different red would mean the red of a roof or something “cooler.” And that made me wish even more that I could understand the language. Continue reading →

Budapest is a lovely old European city, built and rebuilt as tides of war and armies swept over it, from the conquering Roman Empire to Attila the Hun to the Ottoman Turks to the German occupiers, Allied bombers, and Russian armies of World War II. The city is bisected by the Danube (Duna) River, with Buda on the west one side, and Pest on the east. The government buildings are on the Pest side (as was our apartment), with other castles and churches on the Buda side. The Pest side is flat, and the Buda side rises to a mountain height, which must have been the more defensible ground, as it’s easy to see the fortress-like structures ascending the mountainside. All of the bridges connecting the two sides were destroyed during World War II, and later rebuilt. Continue reading →

Ron and I went to Amsterdam on our second day, to see the Jewish Historical Museum (left) and the Portuguese synagogue. They are across the street from on another, near the center of the city. Across a second street is a large church, the Church of Moses and Aaron, and an open-air market. Continue reading →

As soon as we arrived in Utrecht and stowed our luggage, Macy led us out to the Domtoren, just a few blocks away, and then to lunch. We all sampled Loffel beer, which is excellent, and enjoyed an excellent lunch. Some of the guidebooks say that the Dutch do not make very good salads, relying heavily on iceberg lettuce. That’s true in cheaper places across the countries we visited, but not in good restaurants like this one. When I get home, I will acquire goat cheese and make good salads with goat cheese medallions and balsamic vinegar. The photo shows Ron drinking coffee, in the approved-by-Annette manner, pinky finger lifted.  Continue reading →