Higher Extremities

The medieval picture of heaven and hell hasn't been replaced  with anything more realistic.--Madeleine L'Engle, 1988, ushering in A Grief Observed

Treasure Coast Newspapers had a small scoop in disseminating Paul Ryan’s exit speech to wire services like Reuter’s and The Associated Press, but it was diminutive and low impact in terms of any breaking news story, and was rather reflective of attrition of established Republican ideology, to the extent that Ryan’s departure was a harbinger of any sort, and it was, for the core tenets of fiscal conservative sensibility. Ryan took the political temperature, told the truth about the swerving fissures under Donald Trump’s feet, and then walked it back, under pressure from whom, unknown. One might reasonably surmise the Senate Majority Leader used a careful selection of words, and the 54^th Speaker was reigned in, unlike the new empress from New York, who is seeming impossible to restrain. But when a somewhat simple-minded polemicist like Posoblec asked his followers what Ryan achieved after his 20 odd years in the House, this is disingenuous. Legislating is a difficult process even under one party rule: the Obama Trinity actually got the ACA into law and created a healthcare crisis in an ideologically aligned city like Philadelphia within five years. Insurance carriers hemorrhaged, and this represented a beginning once unfathomable. Beltway policy and execution put an already vulnerable quadriplegic in jeopardy.

Ryan and the Freedom Caucus had the more difficult task of restricting federal outreach. Sequestration proved nearly undoable, recalling Obamacare proved nearly impossible, and yet Ryan is still the boy wonder who has remained rhetorically elegant, consistent, and mathematically accurate. Entitlements will always outpace capital, they are punitive in stricture, and entirely unsuitable for quality of life, and the Rust Belt outcry prevailed. Trumpian populism lanced Ryan’s fiscal faith in business models, and Ryan, like Scott Walker, saw the writing on the wall. Yet people who live in Philadelphia row homes aren’t financially secure, let alone those who are subsidized in public housing. This may not be the case for every individual, but compliance modules and red tape have been the tragedy of this blogger’s life, and what did she want, precisely? The freedom a secure career might have offered, the esteem of home ownership, a husband. All this is a fairy tale now, bootlegged by the minority collective, lungs wheezing as readily as the PA GOP is losing. Lamb beat Saccone by a very narrow margin, D. Raja was asleep at the wheel, felled by lack of campaign contributions, and young Turks no longer emulate Ryan's exercise regime. Would it help to reflect back in time to when you did?

Miscellaneous Protocol

"They do not have to be doing this,"  Cassie James Holdsworth, linear whiner at regulatory restriction

No, I am not feeling particularly better, though I am less phlegmatic in color. Food is an anathema. It would be a pleasure to cease digestion and consider the possible vaginal absorption of Ensure. The Golden Years Rush.

Common Sense LOA edition back on shelf, due to other priorities, but Paine's anti-authoritarian rationale derived from agrarian Semitic polemicists mistrustful of city states would fit right in with the bravado insurgency. Would you enjoy a small token of honesty? Okay. I took a dig at the Miriam Carey event yesterday, a dig on the basis of deconstructing irrational behavior, upending it with the tenet that Obama speaks to everyone on nearly a weekly basis.

But in my annoying interdisciplinary approach, the Carey family has my commiseration. Miriam was sick, much sicker than the system ever attempted to make me accept about myself. I have been in Senate offices in DC, and I do not fuck with the capitol police, and I'd vanish at the approach of the Secret Service, who would kill me because I am mad at the President, which in translation means the trappings of the Oval Office would not subdue the Spastic Tongue Lashing, and then I'd go boom, like Miriam, poor woman. I do not believe she had to die like that, but what to do? I'm not that radical about non-compliance. She did fuck with the capitol police, the secret service, the landscaping contractor.

Nonetheless, the odds of her gaining access to the President were 10 to the sixth power to one, and it is unseemly, playing wild west with a citizen in pain in Washington's metro area with her baby in the vehicle.

On the less slim chance that my energy realigns sufficiently and I can land future assignments that I will complete to an editor's satisfaction, I am in search of a photographer with a decent portfolio who can negotiate their own contracts. I'll reiterate this every so often. I cannot deal with pics, even if Apple had spastic smart phones. I do have a portfolio. It may not be Vanity Fair, but it is sturdy, with one byline to a Pulitzer Prize winner. I am not in the mood for breakfast. Sulky morning, wondering how a dental hygienist could afford an Infiniti in the first place.

We need a moment of conscience.