Why I blog

Because this is what I do when I'm not blogging.

Knitting and baseball are my new drugs. It's a potent combo. Kind of like washing down barbituates with burbon, except wholesome. But why am I making big-ol' legwarmers in spring with varigated yarn? Search me.

I was in the knitting store yesterday to get help for my latest project from the owner. Somehow the subject of healthcare came up, and to my great surprise, it seems like this yarn lady in the crunchy granola town of Amherst is a Republican! She was giving Mitt Romney props for seeking to expand MassHealth, the Massachusetts state health safety net. Yet at the merest mention that perhaps we should just go the whole kitt'n caboodle and going national single payer, she dug in her heels and shook her head. She doesn't want the gub'mint to be in charge of the healthcare because it'll be too centralized and they'll screw it up. But...but...I countered, how is it any more efficient to have each state be in charge of separate entities to take care of people? No dice. She seems convinced that if healthcare is nationalized we'd all have to telephone to Washington for approval before we get our annual checkups. Meanwhile, a second yarn lady piped up that her sister knows this woman who comes down from Canada to see a doctor in the States and therefore all that Nationalized healthcare business is no good.

I don't want to give the impression that the yarn lady was ill-informed. She sure laid the smackdown on me when I unthinkingly passed on the 'taxachusetts' meme. Apparently, we have some of the lowest state taxes per capita income in the country here in Massachusetts. For instance, she informed me that Georgia taxes groceries, one of the most regressive taxes I can think of, at 6.5% whereas groceries and clothing are untaxed in Massachusetts (except for things like soda and pet food...I don't know what' sup with that.) Appropriately humbled, I promptly pleaded defeat on this issue, whereupon she had the chutzpah to bring up the Newsweek Koran scandal and how people shouldn't just believe what they read in the press unthinkingly.

Sheesh.

I would have like to say:"Maybe Newsweek wouldn't have given the Koran story as much credence if it were not for the times we really did pile naked Iraqi prisoners into pyramids, sodomized them with sundry objects, put them on leashes, threatened them with dogs, sexually humiliated them with grinning female corporals giving the thumbs up and posing for a snapshot as if they're on a visit to the Liberty Bell or the Grand Canyon."

But you don't say things like that to a yarn lady.