John McCain diagnosed with brain tumor

The New Neo Posted on by

John McCain is a controversial figure within the Republican Party. Although he was the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 (or maybe because of it), he’s disliked and even hated by many conservatives because he’s the quintessential RINO, the “reach across the aisle” guy who often undercuts conservative positions.

And yet he’s got a history that makes most people admire him (except, perhaps, Donald Trump, but let’s not go there) when he was a prisoner of war for 5 1/2 long years in what was sarcastically called “The Plantation.” You can find some of the story here, and it shows an impressive strength of character and body:

They took me out of my room to “Slopehead,” who said, “You have violated all the camp regulations. You’re a black criminal. You must confess your crimes.” I said that I wouldn’t do that, and he asked, “Why are you so disrespectful of guards?” I answered, “Because the guards treat me like an animal.”

When I said that, the guards, who were all in the room””about 10 of them””really laid into me. They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes. Then I was taken to a small room. For punishment they would almost always take you to another room where you didn’t have a mosquito net or a bed or any clothes. For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.

They wanted a statement saying that I was sorry for the crimes that I had committed against North Vietnamese people and that I was grateful for the treatment that I had received from them. This was the paradox””so many guys were so mistreated to get them to say they were grateful. But this is the Communist way.

I held out for four days. Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5½ years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I was reaching the end of my rope.

I said, O.K., I’ll write for them.

They took me up into one of the interrogation rooms, and for the next 12 hours we wrote and rewrote. The North Vietnamese interrogator, who was pretty stupid, wrote the final confession, and I signed it. It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities. It was unacceptable to them. But I felt just terrible about it. I kept saying to myself, “Oh, God, I really didn’t have any choice.” I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.

Then the “gooks” made a very serious mistake, because they let me go back and rest for a couple of weeks. They usually didn’t do that with guys when they had them really busted. I think it concerned them that my arm was broken, and they had messed up my leg. I had been reduced to an animal during this period of beating and torture. My arm was so painful I couldn’t get up off the floor. With the dysentery, it was a very unpleasant time.

Thank God they let me rest for a couple of weeks. Then they called me up again and wanted something else. I don’t remember what it was now””it was some kind of statement. This time I was able to resist. I was able to carry on. They couldn’t “bust” me again.

McCain was left with permanent injuries from his time as a prisoner.

Now he’s been diagnosed with an aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma. The prognosis is not good although the tumor was apparently removed during a surgery; the average survival time of glioblastoma patients after diagnosis is 14 months with treatment, although 10% live 5 years or longer. I’d bet on McCain surviving longer than average for two reasons.

The first is that he’s tough, and the second is that it appears his tumor may have been diagnosed earlier than usual and before he had any symptoms except a blood clot and some problems mild enough that most people would not even have gone to a doctor about them. He was visiting the physician as part of routine periodic screenings he has for possible recurrence of the melanomas that have plagued him for about nearly two decades.

I have some political quarrels with John McCain, but I very much hope he recovers and lives much longer than average, symptom-free.

[NOTE: The photo at the top of this post is of McCain in a Hanoi hospital shortly after he was taken prisoner in October of 1967.]

Deja vu all over again: coverage of Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

I read roundups of the news every day, and I continually get that deja vu feeling.

Sometimes I even wonder if I’m looking at a cached version of the news. But no; there are a few themes that are rammed home day and day after day.

The first is the “Trump administration is in chaos” theme. A subset of this is the theme “Trump is going crazy and is dreadfully unhappy” or “Some member of the administration or relative of Trump is going crazy and is dreadfully unhappy.”

Then there’s the “Republicans will lose in 2018” theme.

After that we have the “Democrats lost in 2016 because they failed to successfully spin things to better appeal to those racist, bigoted, stupid white people in the rust belt, and next time we should do a better job of pretending to serve those idiots” articles.

Next we have the perennial favorite “The world hates us even more than before because of Trump.”

Lastly we have “Trump and Russia, Russia, Russia.”

I’m sure I missed a few. But those are the basics.

The Obamacare repeal/replace collapse: not so fast, Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

Democrats couldn’t be happier about the failure and disarray of the Republicans on dealing with Obamacare. But this editorial in Investor’s Business Daily warns them to be careful what they wish for. The title is “Democrats Will Soon Regret That Republicans Failed To Repeal ObamaCare,” and the idea is that Obamacare is failing on its own and Democrats may come to rue the day the Republicans failed to rescue them by reforming it:

It was amusing to hear Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer say, after the Senate bill failed, that Republicans should “work with Democrats on a bill that lowers premiums, provides long-term stability to the markets and improves our health care system.”

Lower premiums, stabilize insurance markets, improve health care? Wasn’t that what ObamaCare was supposed to do in the first place?

The article goes on to list a host of indications that Obamacare is sinking even further. And then:

…[W]ith repeal-and-replace now off the table, all we have left is the self-destructing ObamaCare. Don’t be surprised if ObamaCare’s popularity suddenly nose-dives again.

So the GOP’s answer to Schumer should be: You had your chance to fix health care. You blew it. Twice. First when you passed ObamaCare, and second when you refused to admit that mistake and decided to cast Republicans as evil. Why should the GOP reward you with a third?

But is “repeal and replace now off the table”? There are rumblings that the “repeal” part is only mostly dead. “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead,” said Billy Crystal in “The Princess Bride,” and it may be true for the repeal effort or even the repeal and replace effort (see this, for example).

Whatever happens to Democrats as a result of the Republicans’ failure to repeal and/or to “fix” Obamacare, there’s little question that at least for now there’s a lot of anger being expressed by the GOP rank and file towards those Republican lawmakers. It’s understandable, and it’s virulent. This isn’t new, however. Contempt for and rage at Congressional Republicans has been widespread on the right as far back as I can remember in my political life since my political change.

One of the many angry things said by people on the right about the Republicans in Congress is that the two parties are the same and that there is no difference between them. But on the contrary, I think it’s actually this way:

It becomes obvious, once again, that Republicans and Democrats are two parties ”” separate and distinct, with different drive wheels, different motives. They play different games.

Democrats are naturals when it comes to offense; they love to batter down doors and burn down barns to get done those things they have decided for one reason or another need doing, such as the creation of a program of federally subsidized health care.

Republicans by temperament play defense; they hold that line ”” or fail to hold it ”” and then fall back to work out terms that might make the situation a little less disagreeable than it was before. Republicans are never entirely unhappy with half a loaf. They think on how much less than half they could have gotten. The notion of wrestling away the whole loaf and digesting it happily in front of the Democrats inspires comparatively few Republicans. They’d rather deal ”” a preference that comes naturally to the business, front-office types who make the party their home….

The first is short-term. The GOP swore in blood to get rid of Obamacare. It starts to look as if a number of the oath-takers had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

I would quarrel with the phrase “starts to look,” because the Republican rank and file has been feeling for over a decade that every time the GOP members of Congress say they will do something they’ve got “their fingers crossed behind their backs.” The distrust is way up there with distrust of the MSM, and that’s saying something. It wasn’t going to be repaired by something as simple as repealing Obamacare or passing some bill that reformed it and made it more market-friendly. Either of those things probably would have helped a tiny bit, but the praise would have been grudging and much fault would have been found with the details of the thing.

Maybe you think I’m naive and too trusting of the GOP in Congress. I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why. I don’t feel the same depth of outrage at them for the simple reason that I never invested much trust in them in the first place. I feel that way about politicians in general, and I think the legislative process is inherently slow and difficult and is capable of being derailed by a few dissenters (particularly if the party doesn’t hold an overwhelming majority in the legislature).

Sometime there’s a failure of will on the part of the members of Congress, sometimes a failure of execution, and sometimes both. It’s not always easy to tell which is operating at any given moment. But I’m not naive; I’m cynical.

Is the Obamacare repeal/replace effort over? Maybe for the moment. But I think Congress will return to this problem, sooner or later.

This shooting by a police officer doesn’t fit the narrative

The New Neo Posted on by

Another fatal shooting by a police officer, of a civilian who doesn’t seem to have been doing anything wrong.

But this one has a twist that defies the expectations of the usual activists, although they are creative enough to try to turn it around to their advantage:

Whenever a police officer shoots a civilian under questionable circumstances, one question looms large: How can our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters frame the narrative to advance liberal agenda items? When a white cop shoots a black person, of course that’s racism. When a black cop shoots a black person, then that’s institutionalized racism. But what if it’s a black Muslim cop shooting a white person?

That’s what happened in Minnesota on Saturday night, when Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor shot an Australian woman named Justine Damond behind her home after she called 911 to report a possible assault nearby. A lot of things about the story don’t add up: Damond has in her pajamas and didn’t have a weapon, the police say there’s no footage from the patrol cruiser’s dashcam or the body cameras that Noor and his partner were wearing, and Noor has had several complaints filed against him since joining the force in 2015…

When a Hispanic police officer named Jeronimo Yanez shot Minneapolis resident Philando Castile last year (which I found indefensible), it was easy to fold that into the ongoing Black Lives Matter narrative. Yanez isn’t white, but close enough. But this one is a bit more tricky. This one requires a bit more finesse.

How is the left dealing with it? Why, they’re talking about how afraid the local Muslim community (particularly the Somalian community, because the officer was Somalian) is of a backlash of hatred against Somalians.

All these shootings need to be investigated. If there was wrongdoing on the part of the officer, that officer should be punished. If not, let’s find that out as well. But is it too much to ask that these incidents not always be spun and spun and spun to the left’s advantage? Yes, apparently it is too much to ask.

Praying for the president

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s come to this:

“Theological heresy” to pray for Trump?

Wouldn’t it depend on what you prayed? I thought prayers were often on the order of prayers for guidance and wisdom. Wouldn’t that be an especially appropriate prayer for even (or maybe especially) your political enemies?

Rev. Barber is a political activist, a “progressive” who had previously been called by historian and professor Timothy Tyson “the most important progressive political leader in this state (NC) in generations” who “built a statewide interracial fusion political coalition.” I don’t doubt for a moment that he’s a “progressive political leader.” But he also is a pastor, and although I’m neither a pastor nor particularly knowledgeable about them, I cannot imagine that saying that a president should not be prayed for is good Christian theology. And how can it be “heresy”? That term refers to a matter of doctrine and there’s no issue of doctrine here that I can see.

Reverend Barber didn’t stop there, either. As you might imagine, he had a lot more to say, although most outlets are focusing on that sound bite. Here’s some of the rest:

“When we have this extremist Trump Republican agenda that takes health care, transfers wealth to the greedy, that’s hypocrisy and sin,” he told Ms. Reid. “Seven hundred billion dollars, Joy? You haven’t seen that kind of transfer of wealth on the backs of bodies of people since the days of slavery. Claiming to care about life, but then passing a bill when you know thousands will die ”” 22 million people, poor, working people will be hurt ”” that is hypocrisy and sin.

“Passing bills that hurt children, the disabled and veterans ”” that is sin. That is hypocrisy,” he continued. “And what leaders ought to be doing is challenging the president, challenging [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, and challenging [House Speaker Paul] Ryan and challenging these senators and others and not trying to appease them. Instead, they’re acting like priests of the empire rather than prophets of God.”

The usual leftist stuff. And I think perhaps the Reverend was looking in the mirror when he spoke that last sentence.

Back to the drawing board on health insurance reform

The New Neo Posted on by

The recent GOP efforts have been Shakespearean:

…It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Actually, that’s harsher than my own opinion of what’s been going on—although it seems to be a good description of the opinion of what a lot of other people on the right think: that is, that the GOP members of Congress are idiots or even worse.

I happen to think that they are politicians, although rather ineffective ones at the moment, but that’s not quite the same thing as “idiots.” Among them you find varying degrees of honesty and corruption, narcissism and service, pragmatism and principle. In addition, there are some very different political philosophies among members of the GOP that can make it inherently difficult for them to come together on a vote.

As though that’s not enough, in the case of health insurance reform, you have some additional problems. The subject is both complex and deeply emotional, so any “solution” would be a compromise that doesn’t give people what the majority seems to wishfully want: coverage that is cheap and still comprehensive, painless, and kind to all. The more conservative solutions are excoriated as too cruel, and the more liberal solutions as too expensive. And “unfair” is the cry that hangs over everything.

But the GOP is in charge now (be careful what you wish for). And it had better come up with something. Right now that “something” isn’t any of the “replace” bills in House or Senate—it’s a return to a simpler concept, “repeal” and kick the can down the road on the specifics of what might replace it.

You can see a spectrum of coverage here; it’s not a pretty sight.

Paul Mirengoff analyzes the situation and doesn’t think the chances for stand-alone repeal look much better, either:

Majority Leader McConnell might push for a vote on repeal coupled with the House bill (the AHCA) as the default to take effect in two years if no other replacement legislation is agreed upon. Ed Morrissey discusses this option here.

It’s doubtful that this approach could garner 50 Senate votes. GOP Senators rejected the AHCA out-of-hand, instead setting out on the rocky road that has led them nowhere. Susan Collins and some center-right members consider it too draconian. Some conservatives think it doesn’t go far enough. For example, it does not contain the “choice” provision that Ted Cruz demanded.

There’s also the question of whether the House would support such legislation. Sure, it passed once. But as Ed notes, some of the 217 Republicans who barely pushed the AHCA over the finish line did so in the expectation that Senate Republicans would create a better approach to repeal and replacement.

Remember back when Obamacare was first passed, and many pundits declared that the American public would get used to it over time, and that it would be very hard to change it once that had happened? That’s true, I think, and the GOP knows it. The more conservative wing of the GOP doesn’t care; the more liberal wing does.

But although this reflects the results of Obamacare, it’s not just a result. It’s a pre-existing condition, as it were. These conservative/liberal splits within the party have been going on for many decades, long predating Obamacare, and that’s part of the reason that the GOP never was able to come up with a comprehensive health insurance reform bill back in that tiny window of time when it had control of Congress. Instead, it passed Medicare Part D. You can read some of the legislative history of that bill here; suffice to say it only passed by the skin of its teeth, with a lot of arm-twisting. A great many conservatives hated the bill at the time and regarded it as a betrayal. But it represented an effort by the GOP to get some credit for being kinder and gentler—not that they’ve ever gotten that much credit for it at all.

One of the interesting things about Medicare Part D is that the program is widely considered a success (you may disagree, but I’m talking about general perceptions). It’s not that much older than Obamacare (Part D was passed in 2003), and yet I virtually never hear talk of repealing it. If you Google “is Medicare Part D successful?” you will come up with tons of articles that answer “yes.” I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of the program here, though; I just want to say that most people have accepted it and a great many people who like it forget that it was passed by Republicans (some conservatives, of course, are still mad at the GOP because they consider the program too liberal and too expensive).

Back in 2003, Republican leaders Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert were in charge, and reportedly they (particularly DeLay) were a lot more—-shall we say, forceful—in convincing members to go along. McConnell and Ryan may not be so good at that sort of thing, or perhaps members of the GOP have grown more impervious to the threats and other persuasive devices brought to bear.

It’s easy to observe that Democrats seem to be able to corral their members much more effectively when it’s time to take a controversial vote. That’s the way Obamacare was passed, after all. But I think there is a much smaller percentage of so-called “moderate” Democrats to begin with, and much greater ideological unity on the Democratic side, and therefore the task is easier. And for the Republicans, the “no” votes came from the extremes of both sides, both the conservative and moderate wings of the party.

I can’t predict what will happen next. But I do know that for the moment the Democrats are gloating.

The internet is sometimes wonderful

The New Neo Posted on by

Such as yesterday, when I was wearing a silk blouse and eating something with salad dressing on it, and a couple of drops of oil dripped on my blouse. I’d had that blouse for many years and had nursed it along oil-free and stain-free for the entire time. But when a blouse’s number is up, it’s up, and I thought yesterday that moment had come.

I was ready if necessary to bid it a fond and thankful farewell after countless years of selfless service, until I thought to Google “removing oil stain from silk blouse,” and many helpful sites popped up with the same suggestion: after blotting the stain, put a heap of something like talcum powder or cornstarch on it and let it sit for many hours, brush it off, and see what you’re got.

I did it overnight with cornstarch, and lo and behold, in the morning I found that underneath the cornstarch what I had was a blouse without a visible stain. Fabulous, no?

Pre-internet, to deal with a problem like that you had to have foresight and actually buy a book of helpful household hints, and then when the disaster struck you had to find the book and the page with the information.

And prior to that, I guess you had to learn that sort of stuff at your mother’s (or father’s) knee.

Similar changes have gone on with cookbooks, at least for me. I used to be a sucker for cookbooks; almost every time I went to a bookstore (remember bookstores?) I’d browse in the cookbook section and several of them would call to me with their near-irresistible siren songs. I used to even take a cookbook or two along with me on certain long trips where I’d be staying with in-laws or other relatives and I’d be called on to cook.

Now? I still have the best of my cookbooks on a bookshelf, but I only consult them on special occasions or for old favorites that I don’t make often and for which I need a brush-up. Every other recipe I get online.

I guess people still buy cookbooks, but I’m not one of them. Of course, I already have more than enough. But curiosity drove me to research the subject (online, of course!), and it turns out that, although the death of the cookbook had been predicted for several years, cookbooks are still doing very well, thank you very much (the article is from 2016):

“It’s at least just as healthy, if not more of a market,” said [editor] Rotella by phone from Manhattan. He did a quick eyeball estimation of his office. “My shelves are full,” said Rotella, who has long covered the cookbook industry and compares the public’s affection for physical over digital cookbooks to the children’s book market, which actually gained ground in 2015. “There’s just something about an illustrated book.”

It’s true. Just as sometimes I prefer the tactile and visual pleasure of strolling down the aisles and looking at the books in a bookstore, or flipping the pages of a catalogue rather than an online search—so, too, are cookbooks often a treat:

“That great blossoming of so much content was wonderful ”” until it was totally oppressive and overwhelming and hard to get through. There was no filter; you became the filter,” said [publisher] Jones, who characterized the act of cozying up to a hardback collection of recipes as a sort of retreat from the world of digital noise of voice prompts, bleeping timers and helpful glossaries into a quiet room of focused satisfaction. “It led to an incredible craving for something that was mind-calming, not illuminated. The consumer response was, ”˜Wow, I want a physical format to hold in my hand; I want to get off of my screen and silence all the disruptions.’”

Even I—inveterate internet user that I am—want to silence those disruptions now and then and chill out with a book.

The middle-aged Aled Jones sings a duet with the young Aled Jones

The New Neo Posted on by

I sent this video to a friend of mine and he commented, “I hear a brilliant treble singing with an okay but nothing-special baritone.”

And I basically agree. But I think it’s almost unbearably poignant to hear the two versions of Jones singing together, and to watch the old clips together with the new. Don’t their (his??) voices blend beautifully?

[NOTE: I’ve written about Aled Jones before, and the wonderful documentary made about him when he was a young pre-pubescent teenager.]

Erythromelalgia : hotfoot Part III

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I can be found here.]
[Part II can be found here. You might want to take a look at them to refresh your memory on what on earth I’m talking about.]

The years passed but I never found a doctor who could shed light on what was wrong with my hot red feet. I remember talking to one who said he’d seen at least a few cases like mine. That was a first for me because no other doctor I’d spoken to (and there were many of them) had ever seen even one case that was similar.

I remember another doctor who said he didn’t know what was going on, but he thought my spinal injury had damaged sympathetic nerves that were nearby the site of the damage, and that those nerves were telling my circulatory system to continue to send blood to my feet when it should have gotten the “off” signal. In other words, the thermostat in my lower extremities was broken. That somehow seemed intuitively correct to me. Exactly why this might be happening to me, no one could say. Whether it would go away, improve, or worsen, no one could say.

I also learned the term “RSD,” which is an extremely severe neuropathic pain syndrome that had some things in common with what I was experiencing but not everything. A few doctors mentioned that I might have it (it’s now called CRPS, by the way). But from what I read about the condition, it was so terrible that I would have done almost anything to have avoided that diagnosis, so not having RSD was perfectly fine with me, although the possibility kept gnawing at me.

Over time, I learned a few tricks for dealing with my weird symptoms. If I found some socks that didn’t hurt me as much as others, I bought many pairs of that style so I wouldn’t run out if they stopped being made. I learned to soak my feet in cold water, to place an electric fan so it would blow on them at night and cool them, to sleep with my feet outside the covers, and to wear the same somewhat-more-comfy shoes (sandals) every day, summer and winter. In winter I wore socks with the sandals as a concession to the cold, and anyway at that point in time I wasn’t going out that much so it didn’t really matter what I wore. I owned a pair of roomy snow boots to put on in winter if I absolutely needed to, and as the sandals got more and more worn and raggedy-looking I wondered what I would do when they finally wore out.

Wearing ugly footwear for many years was the least of my worries, although as a not-yet-old woman it troubled me. I learned to tolerate my baseline discomfort, but the baseline fluctuated in an unpredictable fashion. Many things could flare me up significantly above that baseline, sometimes for months at a time. Once, I went for a massage and the massage therapist rubbed my feet. That was good for about a month of increased burning. I could count on getting worsening symptoms if I set off to do a lot of walking, too; for example at the mall.

One memorable day I was visiting New York City and set off for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The trip involved a walk of about 15 minutes to the subway station, and about ten minutes on the other end to the museum. Then there was more walking inside the museum, of course. It wasn’t a hot day, but after only about 20 minutes at the Met my feet began to burn something awful. What to do? I didn’t want to go home so soon, after making the whole trip to get there. I wanted to see the museum!

So I sat down and pondered my dilemma. I was all alone; it was an off day and no one except a uniformed guard was in the room where I was sitting. So I glanced around, took my shoes and socks off, and sat there for a while with my bare feet on what I suddenly noticed was a marble floor.

Marble is cool. Very very cool. This is known to cooks, who like to use marble counters for pastry or candy-making. It felt wonderful on my feet. Luckily the guard decided to ignore me rather than warn me that bare feet aren’t allowed (are they? I have no idea), and he let me sit there for about a half hour as the burning began to subside and I decided I didn’t have to go home right then and there after all.

Even now, with all the information available online, I am unimpressed by what I find there about erythromelalgia, although it’s 100% more than what was available when I had it. There is very little known about erythromelalgia’s causes even today. Article after article lists the problems that can spark secondary erythromelalgia (for example), but I could find only one that even mentions back issues—and curiously, it seems to think that’s one of the more common causes of the problem (and this was written in 1992):

Calcitonin gene related peptide (CGRP) is a marker for a class of sensory ganglion neurones in the superficial spinal and medullary dorsal horn. Peripheral terminals with CGRP-like immuno-reactivity are found in tissues in which sensory stimulus is usually painful. This suggests a role for this peptide in nocicepter processing. CGRP is also an important vasodilator. A report of a patient with the features of EM was recently published showing increased staining for CGRP in the spinal cord at the point corresponding to the distribution of the perceived burning pain. As approximately 42% our primary EM patients date their symptoms from a time of back injury (unpublished observations) the above hypothesis is attractive.

None of the literature talks about erythromelalgia ever getting better. But I’m happy (very very happy!) to say that mine did.

Its departure was as mysterious as anything else about the condition. The leavetaking happened slowly, so slowly that I didn’t realize for years that what was happening was that it actually was fading away. The first sign of this was a curious one—the burning became more asymmetrical. I would be sitting in my favorite back-friendly recliner, watching TV, and my feet would slowly heat up as they sometimes did. But instead of “feet” it was often “foot.” One foot (if I recall correctly, my right) would get very hot and red, while the other would simultaneously remain relatively pale and quite cold.

This was so bizarre that I had no idea what to make of it. But it was objectively obvious; another person could touch the right foot and feel the intense heat, and then touch the left foot and feel that it was quite cold. The difference in color between them was extremely obvious too. This one-sided erythromelalgia went on for a couple of years, and then even the right foot’s symptoms slowly became less intense and came with longer intervals of relative normalcy in between.

At some point—I really don’t recall when—it occurred to me that my feet hadn’t seriously burned or turned bright red in a long time. I had intermittent symptoms, but they were milder and far more easily ignored.

That was some years ago. Now I travel without the fan I used to drag along with me when I had to sleep overnight away from home. I usually (although not always) start the night with my feet underneath the covers, just like a normal person. But my feet aren’t really normal, even today, all these many years later (over 25). The bottoms feel disordered, a trifle numb but not too bad, and sometimes they get somewhat hot. I still always untuck the sheets at the end of the bed because it helps to be able to stick my feet out of the covers now and then if they get even the slightest bit hot. I have to shop extremely carefully for socks and shoes. Even socks that feel smooth to the hand can feel rough to my feet. Nowadays there are lots of attractive shoes that are quite comfortable, so although my shoe choices are still limited, it’s much easier to find something I like. But when I travel I pack heavy, in part because I have to take so many changes of shoes and types of shoes.

And I wouldn’t even think of walking on sand without protective footwear (see Part II). In fact, I almost never walk on sand at all. But it’s a very small price to pay.

I’m writing this to give hope to any erythromelalgia patients who happen to find it. Nothing I’ve ever read about erythromelalgia indicates that the problem ever just fades away—and yet mine did.

At least, so far.

If the Trump Jr. story wasn’t complicated before…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s certainly getting complicated now.

And you know what? Today I’m going to leave it to others to create some narratives to connect the dots. I’ll wait for more to be revealed before I even attempt to weigh in again with my own ideas.

So see this, this, and this. Take your pick—and there’s plenty more where those came from, and from just about everywhere else.

Oh, and you can refresh your memory on the DNC and Ukraine, as well as Ted Kennedy’s efforts some years ago.

I wonder what percentage of Americans are following this story in any detail, and what percentage just shrug and go on with their lives—usually continuing to either love, hate, or continue with their mixed feelings about Trump and company.My guess is that the majority of people are not following this obsessively but nevertheless have opinions about it that tend to fall in line with their previous opinions on Trump vs. Hillary.