Friday's Odds and Ends

It's a cold, rainy day here in East Texas, so I thought I would start the day with a cup of tea and a biscuit. Care to join me? I can share.

 It used to be that we had political mudslinging and candidates acting like two-year-olds for about six months before a major election. Then we might have some political peace for a year or so. Now we just go from one verbal mess to another. The latest being insults lobbed at Texas state senator, Wendy Davis by a Greg Abbott supporter. Both Davis and Abbott are running for governor of Texas, and some time ago, Jeff Rutledge posted a Tweet calling Davis "retard Barbie." Instead of calling Rutledge on using such bad taste, Abbott simply thanked the man for his support.

Such nice guys.

A Texas resident recently noted a Medicare overpayment that was double what the actual bill was. When she called to report the error, a Medicare representative told her that it is now standard payment for some services, and the system automatically pays that amount, no matter what the billing amount is. The woman then asked why each bill is not paid according to the billing amount, and she was told that this the system that is in place and it all balances out in the long run. The reasoning is that some submitted bills are higher than the standard payment amount, so that cancels the overpayments.  

Oh, really?

I read a news report about a charter school in Houston that had a serious financial problem. It seems that administrators misused $5.3 million in federal funds for trips to Las Vegas and New York, as well as some cruises. The two top administrators also received salaries of $440,000 while enjoying all those trips and the perks that came with the trips.

It's been a while since I've done Literary Lessons, so here's one from Family Circus, a quote from Grandma:    "Making mistakes is okay if they're new ones each time."

These next two are from Harlan Coben's novel,  StayClose.

"Ken considered himself a disciplined man, but the truth was, human beings were not built for self- denial. It was why diets rarely worked in the long run."

"The measure of a man isn't how many times he gets knocked down. It is how many times he gets back up again." 

Now, for no reason other than I think the goat is cute, here is my Lucy, enjoying some treats I threw over the fence. The green stuff growing behind her is called goat weed, and she doesn't eat that. I've never known if it is called goat weed because goats don't eat it, or if Lucy is just too picky and all the other goats do eat it.