Musings of a Liberal Texan

So, it's been about 24 hours since I had Marley's head in my hands, locked eyes with him and felt the spirit of that beautiful animal leave.  Thursday we witnessed the dizzying descent.  He seemed to plummet.  Unable to put any weight on his back legs, his spirit still pushing him to play.  He was would fall and then pull himself up and then collapse again.  We made him as comfortable as possible, giving him three aspirins and some "pet ease" which knocked him out until the following day.  The next day, he seemed a bit better. I carried him to the car, went by Burger King and got him two bacon cheese burgers and went to the park.  He was so happy.  He walked and sniffed and had that lovely smile on his face...even as his body betrayed him.  He wanted to go further but he simply couldn't.  So we sat on a blanket and he ate his treats with his head on my lap. We sat together absorbed in the beauty of the day, the joy of just being together.  All in all we were in th...

My Marley It’s hard to put the words to the memories I have of Marley. My beloved dog of almost 16 years, he was a co-parent to my toddler boys when I was alone. He guarded my house, my yard, me and the boys from all that would harm us. He played games with the boys that made them squeal with laughter. He would allow them to tug relentlessly on his ears and lips and tongue. He would follow them and herd them away from danger. If they ventured out too far in the surf for Marley’s liking, he would be out there, swimming if he had to, to guide them gently back to the shore. He ran with them, he lay with them, he played and frolicked with them. As they grew older, and their interests inevitably strayed from home into the outside world, he waited for them. Any scrap of attention was enough, any scratch on the head or pat on the back was adequate. He smiled to the point a wide gleeful grin that inevitably made all that saw him, smile back. He was a tolerant, yet firm guide to the uneducated ...

Health Reform Without a Public Plan: The German Model By Uwe E. Reinhardt Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economics professor at Princeton. In the previous two posts , I sought to explain why the public health insurance plan that Barack Obama had firmly promised during the presidential campaign appears to have become a deal-breaker in President Obama’s quest to sign a genuinely bipartisan health reform bill later this year. What if that plan were sacrificed on the altar of bipartisanship? Would it be the end of meaningful health reform? Not necessarily, if the health systems of the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland are any guide. None of these countries uses a government-run, Medicare-like health insurance plan. They all rely on purely private, nonprofit or for-profit insurers that are goaded by tight regulation to work toward socially desired ends. And they do so at average per-capita health-care costs far below those of the United States — costs in Germany and the Netherlands are less t...

This just makes me so proud to be a Texas resident. Lawmaker defends comment on Asians Call for voters to simplify their names not racially motivated, Terrell Republican says By R.G. RATCLIFFE AUSTIN — A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.” The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes. The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans. Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common Engli...

This from Kathy Freston: I've written extensively on the consequences of eating meat - on our health , our sense of "right living" , and on the environment . It is one of those daily practices that has such a broad and deep effect that I think it merits looking at over and over again, from all the different perspectives. Sometimes, solutions to the world's biggest problems are right in front of us. The following statistics are eye-opening, to say the least. If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save: ● 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months; ● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year; ● 70 million gallons of gas--enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare; ● 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware; ● 33 tons of antibiotics. If everyone went vegetarian...