Visual Thinking and Occasional Odds and Ends

No doubt you’ve seen heard about the Paul Ryan budget.  If you remember Ryan from during the fall campaign, you may remember how he insisted that his earlier budget was meant to save Medicare, but he never said from what.  Ryan is back again, and it is roughly the same plan, so Medicare is an issue again.  It won’t effect me since I will be Medicare eligible in a little over 3 years, but if you were born in 1959 or later, Ryan’s plan will hurt you.   He will also gut Medicaid and much of the social safety net.   The deficit hawks (or scolds) seem bent on cutting Medicare in the worst way.  And by that I mean the WORST way.   The problem with Medicare is the same one  that troubles all medical insurance, costs have been rising far faster than inflation.  So simply limiting how much the Feds will give to seniors to pay their Medicare premiums is a terrible idea.  Without a serious attempt to control cost, and one backed up by the force of law, so that those who follow the cost cont

--> As the Catholic Church goes about selecting a new Pope, this lapsed Catholic wonders if the men who run the show really believe in the message.    I mean the old men with the dresses and funny hats, the ones in charge.    Do they really believe that they can turn bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood?   That what looks to all like a tasteless wafer becomes the “true presence” of Jesus Christ?    “True food” and “true nourishment.” Really? They must know how ridiculous it all sounds.   And with their education, surely they know that in the early church there were no priests at all, nor was there a communion ceremony or wafer of any sort (yes, I know there was a meal, but it was a real one!)   As the Church grew, it built a complex and intellectually convoluted set of beliefs, usually culminating in a mystery when the story got too ridiculous for even the wiliest theologian.   And then there is the notion that we needed to be saved anyway.