SWITZERLAND FORUM

[Emeritus]

I just spent a very pleasant weekend in Houston, visiting with old friends and associates. The campus is the same, but the medical center is encroaching. There must be an enormous profit in hospitals!

[cklaurence]

It would seem as we baby boomers grow older, everything medical grows more profitable...

[Emeritus]

My birthday will be Friday, God willing, and I'll go on Medicare. I have already signed up for it and a Medicare Advantage plan that my primary care physician likes. I'm wondering how long that will last under the sequester. It looks as if Congress is determined to put ideology ahead of doing anything for the country. I'm not an admirer of LBJ, but I think that he was right when he said that politics is the art of compromise.

[cklaurence]

I respected LBJ for pushing JFK's Civil Rights package through--regardless of the fact that we all knew he cared about as much about civil rights as he did for having a Negro (sic) marrying his sister. Yes, and politics should be "the art of compromise," but it has turned into a farce at our Country's expense. The suffering begins with us and will get worse for our children, grandchildren, and should there be future generations, worse still...

[Emeritus]

I am officially and old timer. I've signed up for Medicare and Medicare Advantage plan. Of course how long that will last under this Republican assault on the middle class is unclear. After all, the oil companies have to have their $83 billion in subsidies and the Koch brothers want more.

[cklaurence]

Ah, we Dems aren't completely absolved of guilt, Em. What about the 60 billion that Kerry tithed to the Syrian (was it the Syrians or was it some other Arab rebels) rebels to keep their cause alive? Here we are pledging all this money that we don't have to all these ridiculous causes--taking it right out of the pockets of our own programs, stealing from us and our children and our children's children--bankrupting our Country and feeding it into the jaws of the Chinese. We are so f*cked--I don't see a way out...

[cklaurence]

Hey Em--you around? Haven't seen you here or at facebook over the past couple of days. Hope all is well...

[Emeritus]

I'm fine, I've just been in Houston visiting Rice and some old friends. To tell the truth, I haven't been keeping up with what has been going on and I'll have to catch up. I hope that you and your family have been doing well.

[cklaurence]

Hey Em! I saw your "Like" at my Anniversary post on facebook, and then I came over here and you were here as well. Whew! So long as you're okay, it's all good.

So are you watching Ross's this year's (what I call) obfuscation game? New logo, new uniforms, revved up stadium (promised) yada yada yada... While they continue to make glaring errors in decisions about players (trading established really good ones then picking up older guys in free agency and hoping to do well in the draft) and the cycle begins all over again. Ross never learns from his mistakes and keeps going back to the smoke and mirrors in attempts to fool his audience. Some of the fans can be bought by they movie stars, fireworks and break-dancing, but the bottom line is what happens when the season draws to an end and we are once again the joke of the Division (with the Jets kindly keeping us company this year). It's killing me because I care, I would really like to see my team go legitimate once more before I leave this planet. It sure won't happen with this yutz jerking everyone around like he is...

[Emeritus]

Some owners just can't get it that promotion is no substitute for winning. If a team is winning, fans will be fighting for tickets. If they keep losing, no amount of show business hype will sell tickets. The best hope for Dolphins fans is that empty seats will convince Ross to sell the team. I still think that the Dolphins have a lot of good players. The problem is at the top, with the owner and his back-stabbing general manager.

[cklaurence]

Back-stabbing? Why do you say that, Em--when I thought they were a real team, like, um, f*ck ups together. Ross keeps him on year after year, as the seats in the stadium empty more and more each season. We were barely half-full this season (and that was with him GIVING seats away the last half of the season to long time season ticket holders like me - one ticket for every seat you hold for the last five games). I couldn't even give away my extra seats and getting people to fill my four seats has gotten to be a trauma to boot. I used to fill 12 seats without a problem each and every week back in the day.
Yet it's been gimmick after gimmick. How can he be that stupid? The only think that has been consistent (other than the team's losing record) has been the loss of people attending the games. It's a no-brainer. First it was the movie stars and his Jimmy Buffet era. He took away our fight song (because he didn't like it--claiming "owner's prerogative") and replaced it with a Buffet-Calypso number. He then took out all the normal football music along with it and put in all Key West/Calypso beat numbers--totally inappropriate and NOT conducive to getting the crowd into the game. Then came the movie stars, who eventually replaced replays. They wood throw their pictures up on the big screens saying "Fins-Up" and making a sign for it, which never caught on.That accounted for his first three blundering years while the team went through head coaches, lousy players and other horrors. His horrendous blunders in coaching and player-relations have put us in a position where no coaches or first tier players want to come to Miami (as witnessed by last year's snubbing by Manning and Harbaugh--which were well-deserved!) and a number of lesser known flicks of fingers vs. acceptances. It is a mess! I am, however, curious as to which particular incident you are referring to when you say Ireland is "back stabbing." All along here I thought he was just the quintessential asshole...

[Emeritus]

I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I didn't mean that Jeff Ireland stabbed Ross in the back, but that he was willing to sacrifice old friends to keep his job. He has made a lot of mistakes, but he always has somebody picked out to take the fall in case anything goes wrong. He has no character at all. I don't know Ross as well as you do, but to me he seems more clueless than evil.

[cklaurence]

Ross is more pathetic than anything else. He should have bought a movie studio (I believe), because he seems to want to rub elbows with movie stars, not athletes. He's a local guy. Grew up on Miami Beach, probably comes from money--most of the Beach kids did. I don't know where he's getting his football advice from, though, because he just does one awful thing after another as far as the team is concerned. I've never seen an owner turn a team into a joke so quickly--especially a franchise that was so respected as the Dolphins!
As for Ireland, we agree completely on him. He's not an asset to Ross in any way, shape or form, but Ross hangs onto him regardless. As I say--he doesn't have a clue about anything football and continues to make the Dolphins the League joke. So frustrating :*( ...

[Emeritus]

I think that you're right, ck. The Dolphins need an owner whose primary interest is in football. But look on the bright side: you could have Jerry Jones for an owner.

[cklaurence]

[color=#0080FF]At least Jerry Jones has some rings on his fingers...[/color]

[Emeritus]

That's true, ck, but how much of that was his doing? I don't know a single Cowboys fan that doesn't hate him. I sure have been enjoying the weather here! All of the flowers, both garden varieties and wildflowers, and blooming like crazy and it is just the right temperature to do things outdoors, if only sitting in the porch swing and watching the lawn contractors work.

[cklaurence]

It's been magnificent here as well. I'm most excited about the final bloom on my mango tree! It finally reacted to that last cold spell and is covered. Once against I shall have the most prolific tree in the land (with the most delicious mangoes of all). Soon however, the heat will be unbearable as six miserable months of summer move in (maybe 7 or 8) and the suffering begins again...

[Emeritus]

I've about decided to start spending the late summer in a cooler climate, like Maine or New Hampshire, perhaps.

[cklaurence]

I'm sure if Peter didn't have to work, we'd spend more time away from here in the really hot months. Heat is really bad for me--the Arachnoiditis has an awful reaction to it and it wreaks havoc on me, even if it's just for the time I go to and from the car.

Awful about what happened in Boston. Also--losing Pat Summerall. All our icons are leaving and I just hate what the world is becoming. I know. I must sound like a broken record--constantly complaining about what's happening, but I just feel as though I don't fit in anymore. At night I've found a station from somewhere in the midwest that takes me way back in time and allows me to fall asleep with a smile. The lineup? WKRP in Cincinnati; Mary Tyler Moore; Bob Newhart I; Bob Newhart II. The commercials? About two or three during and between the shows, slow moving--no super graphics, just old fashioned, printed up on the screen like the used to be--no sex, no blood 'n guts--what a pleasure! I do like Hi Def, though, lol.

Hope all is well with you. I've missed you this week, but we've had some complications here that I'll discuss some time in the not-too-distant future.BE well my friend...

[Emeritus]

I'm just glad that everybody there is OK. As shocking as the Boston bombing was, it has been pushed to the back of my mind by the fire and explosion at a fertilizer plant in the little town of West, TX. There are so many missing that the toll is unknown. A school was flatten by the blast, among other things. I can't imagine why a school - and the little town for that matter - was built so near what is essentially an explosives plant. It makes the same sort of fertilizer used to blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

It is a different world and I don't like it either. The world that I was born into was unfair to black people, but better in every other way, in my opinion. It was a Happy Days sort of world. We didn't have some of the gadgets that we have now, but I think that it has been a poor trade.

[cklaurence]

Truly, women and Blacks had it a lot worse than they do now; but the pendulum has swung (too far) I sometimes believe.It's not about equality anymore. It seems to be more about "I want it and I don't want you to have it!" Remember the old, "separate but equal?" Well, in many ways, women and Blacks today do not want equality, but want superiority. Not all, of course--that would be a ridiculous generalization, but I see it all the time, and it's pretty damned ugly. I suppose it's pretty much like everything else in this Country and the world today.

There's just so much anger!! Of course there was anger way back when, but not like today where it is the overriding emotion. You see it on the roads, in the movies, on television--even in commercials for christmas' sake. They even try to sell by fear. And it's escalating at a great rate. In ten year increments, you can see marked differences in the violent acts--whether by terrorists or domestic disputes. It is now out of control. Media doesn't even bother to report acts of good will anymore--just continuously hypes up the horror stories, keeping the civil people afraid and managing to ramp up the volume on those that lack controls. It's dismal, and I don't believe there's any hope for recovery. Just like the others before us--the Romans, the Greeks--we've followed their disastrous patterns and are self-destructing. Sadly, we're just doing it with higher tech toys and weapons...

[Emeritus]

We will have to disagree about the rights of women and blacks. It seems that half of the state legislatures are trying to take back the rights that they have won. To me, equal rights means equal rights for everybody, period. I believe that racism is as strong as it has ever been, but it couched in other terms. North Carolina passed a law making Christianity the state religion, but it was vetoed. Gerrymandering is the worst that it has ever been in America. I think that we still have a long way to go before true equality is achieved.

[cklaurence]

Well, here in South Florida, caucasions have become the minority. I'm not sure that isn't true for the whole State at this point as well. Surely the Hispanics have taken over more States than just Florida! As I understood it, majorities were becoming minorities at a great rate of speed and their agenda is every bit as short-sighted as when it was the other way around.

I stand on my original statement. History keeps repeating itself. People don't learn from the mistakes of the past and with each generation they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. Doesn't matter what color or kind is coming in or going out. It's all so very, very sad...

[Emeritus]

You have an unusual situation in South Florida because of all of the Cubans. We get lots of Hispanics, but most of them are from Mexico and Central America. They are nothing like the Cubans. They aren't pushy at all and are liberal Democrats. Mostly they just work all of the time and ask for nothing. San Antonio, which has a population of over a million, may be the most Mexican city in the USA, but they don't throw their weight around at all. I guess that the Cubans just got radicalized and the Mexicans didn't. The Republicans think that they can appeal to Hispanics through Rubio, but the Mexicans don't like Cubans. They say that the Cubans got special treatment and they resent it.

[cklaurence]

You are right about our Cubans, Em. They are a world unto themselves! They definitely call the shots when it comes to the game--and it goes their way or the highway BAM!!! Oh and are they far to the right... They single-handedly changed Florida from a Democratic to a Republican State; however in the past few years, we've been able to slip out from under their iron hands and pull some elections our way! They seem to have gotten caught in their own nets and we've been able to pull a couple of elections off to the left the past couple of years... eels good!

[cklaurence]

Em and any *hooverers that may come around... Don't forget, TUESDAY, MAY 7TH IS DRAWING NEAR. PLEASE CHECK FOR THE TIME AND NETWORK (LOCAL STATION) YOU CAN WATCH DR. OZ THAT DAY. HIS SHOW WILL BE ON VARIOUS PAIN REMEDIES. IT WAS ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO BE (AS WE UNDERSTOOD IT, BUT YOU KNOW TELEVISION) A COMPLETE SHOW REVEALING THE TRUTH ABOUT EPIDURALS AND EXPOSING ARACHNOIDITIS--MEDICINE'S DEEPEST, DARKEST SECRET. IN THE END, THOUGH, IT SEEMS IT IS TOO DEPRESSING TO DO AN ENTIRE SHOW ON, SO IT WILL BE PROPPED UP WITH HIS 'FLUFF STUFF' TO KEEP PEOPLE SMILING AND LOSING WEIGHT, LOL.

EPIDURALS AND ARACHNOIDITIS WILL BE COVERED, HOWEVER, AND--GET THIS, EM--IF YOU DON'T BLINK, YOU WILL GET TO SEE ME ON NATIONAL TELEVISION (AS IT STANDS NOW). I WAS ONE OF THE VERY FEW TAPES OF PEOPLE WITH ARACHNOIDITIS DISCUSSING WHAT IT HAS DONE TO MY LIFE THAT WAS CHOSEN FOR HIGHLIGHTS. I HOPE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO WATCH IT!

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU WATCH MY POSTS AT FACEBOOK, BUT I'VE BEEN A REAL PAIN IN THE BUTT POSTING DAILY ABOUT IT, SO ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE ON TUESDAY--OR I SHOULD SAY I HOPE FOR YOU TO SEE ME THERE. HUGS. HOPE ALL IS WELL WITH YOU.

[cklaurence]

Em? Everything okay?

[Emeritus]

Everything is fine, ck, just a little hectic. As I may have mentioned, I volunteer to work with graduate students to help them prepare their theses. At this time of the year everything has to be finished and some start to panic. In a couple of weeks it will all be done and I can just sit in my porch swing.

[cklaurence]

S'long as all is well I shall not worry, and will wait patiently until your return. I guess you missed my National Television Debut on Dr. Oz last night. I'll leave you the link here so you can check it out when you have a moment, though--just don't sneeze, sniffle or blink or you will surely miss me, lol... http://www.doctoroz.com/episode/dr-ozs- ... ideo=19177 Huge credits to Dr. Oz for going into an area against really big money and actually presenting against something that has been hidden for decades by doctors and 'caregivers.' The reason? Arachnoiditis is a disease that can only be given by doctors and 'caregivers,' so they have simply been covering it up. Check it out...

[cklaurence]

It's getting hotter and hotter here, Em. The only good news about that is that it means football season is getting closer. That's the only plus--otherwise they call it "The Mean Season" in south Florida. Hurricanes--just as in Texas. We were all left so wiped out a few years ago after that two or three years where we were hit with one hurricane after another--even the same hurricane would cross over and then cross back. They even had a name for the condition it left people in--although I've forgotten it now. Not to say I don't forget just about everything, all the time these days.
Hope all is well in your world. Hope to see you soon...