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Autobiography of the Cab Driver...

I liked this poem by Rebecca McClanahan as featured in Tuesday's The Writer's Almanac.

Autobiography of the Cab Driver Who Picked Me Up At a Phoenix Hotel to Catch a Four A.M. Flight and Began to Speak in (Almost) Rhyming Couplets

I got two problems. One,
I never see the sun
and two, if I did,
I couldn't take it, never could.
Now, my sister? Out one day
and brown the next. That's the way
my father was. We never
took vacations but he used to steer
on Sundays with one arm
out the window. Get dark as a black man.
Something in his blood, I guess.
Once I bought me a mess
of tanning cream, but something
kept me from using it.
He's been dead a whole
year. They say there's not a soul
on the streets this hour,
but the souls are just now rousing.
Yes Ma'am, when I see daylight I slide
into my coffin and close the lid.
Cooler that way. They say if you can survive
a summer in this heat, you're a native.
My brother's child? She claims to be one,
but I tell her she's got Made in Japan
stamped all over her keister.
Hey lady, you still on Eastern
time? You can have it. Yesterday
the TV reporter in Cincinnati
was three feet in snow. I phoned
my old drinking buddy back home
to rub it in. Lied and said I was out
today without a shirt. Barefoot.
He said you can keep those hundred
degrees. I said you don't have to shovel
a heat wave. Young lady, you okay?
Looks like you're fading. The longest day
I ever lived was the night
I left for Vietnam. What a sight,
would you look at that? Damn
jackhammers at three a.m.
They sure like to play in the dirt here.
Yes Ma'am. It's the same everywhere.
The shortest distance between
two points is always under construction.

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Tilting Back the Front Seat

Ever been riding in a car and tilted back the front seat for a snooze?  I certainly have.  Turns out this is quite dangerous, but for some reason the government and automakers are hesitant to make this fact abundantly clear.   The danger isn't much of a surprise if you think about it...but that's the point.  We often do things like this without thinking about...assuming that "if you can recline the seat, it must be safe to do so."

Emily Bazelon has the scoop on Slate: link

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What Did I Do?

This video of Andrew Meyer getting Tasered at a John Kerry event at the University of Florida is pretty crazy.  I'd like to see a video of Kerry's face throughout this.  He has such a calm, understated tone in his voice...but surely a facial expression or two must have slipped out.

 

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Universal Health Care

Not that I'm a policy wonk.  I haven't studied the issue, but the possibility of universal health care is certainly intriguing.  One of the most common criticisms seems to be something like this (e.g, from wizbang politics):

Health care services are not unlimited, so offering "universal coverage" necessarily requires price controls and rationing.

The expected reaction to this argument is, I guess, "price controls and rationing?!?  Heck no!  Homey don't play dat!"  But the idea of universal healthcare is not unlimited universal healthcare.  It is healthcare that is available universally at a certain minimum level.  Those of us with the means, of course, will have options beyond that minimum.  And as far as rationing goes, if rationing is really what is required to make the minimum available to all, then I'm for it.  Rationing is what compassionate people with an interest in the common good do when there isn't enough to go around.  We take a little less for ourselves so that all can at least have some.

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