Sunday, July 31, 2016

Who's interfering in our politics?

It's a tempest in a teapot, but I'm struck by the irony of commentators decrying the idea of Russia interfering in our political process by releasing the DNC's embarrassing emails. Well somehow Hillary's Russian reset didn't work and President Obama's whispered reassurance to Vladimir never really clicked. So we can't really control what the Russian's do. But isn't the real issue that one of our major parties was the one egregiously interfering in our political process by secretly working against one of its candidates?

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Ron Blustein's Well Tempered Clavier Synthesizer

An old friend of mine just surfaced, Ron Blustein. We were friends from residency days in the late 60's at SF General. In those days a bunch of us collected most nights at our house in the Mission District to listen to and make music.
Ron is a musical prodigy. He could pick up almost any instrument and play it with proficiency. Back then Indian music was all the rage. Ron got a sitar from somewhere and played it like Ravi Shankar. He could do anything.
We lost contact for t...he most part but Ron through the years has turned composer. He's done all sorts of stuff which can be played on a synthesizer, but most notably he has done a collection of 24 preludes and fugues in every key that are astounding to me. Of course famously Bach started this with the Well Tempered Clavier, but Chopin and Shostakovich also did it and now Blustein! Of course Bach did it twice.
For anyone interested I added a link to a sample.

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Friday, July 29, 2016

Hillary is not the problem. It is the Democrats!


I wouldn't call Hillary dangerous and sinister as the Dems are referring to Trump. It's more that she is consumed by ambition and will go to any length to achieve her goal. And like her boss, Obama  I think she is smart enough but incompetent. But Hillary is not the problem for me, it is the modern Democrat party which has embraced big government.
I agree with our founder's idea of government as a necessity which must be kept limited. You think government is compassionate? It is not. It is collection of politicians and bureaucrats, each with their own interests. It is for the most part impersonal, inhumane and wasteful.
We all have our own experiences but I have seen what government can do from the inside. I started in medicine just before Medicare and have watched the whole sorry mess develop, decade by decade. Government regulation and policy has virtually destroyed medical practice. Don't think that this is just your doctor's problem. If you're concerned about the high cost, inefficiency and maldistribution of medical care look to the government takeover.
For those of you who think that doctors are dropping Medicare because of greed, think again. It's not an easy decision to let go of a large portion of your paying customers. It's what you have to do to get paid that's the problem. For those of you who don't care to have your doctor sitting in front of a computer entering data instead of taking the time to listen to you, join the club. Your doctor hates it too.
Now I'm not against regulation per se. Life without it would be chaos. But what we've got now has gone far, far beyond all common sense. So for those who are satisfied with the government's fingers in every part of your life, and want more of it in the future, and want to give your hard earned money to pay for it to boot, vote for Hillary. For my part I'll take a chance on Trump. He isn't your standard politician and that's fine with me.

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Trump, the Emails and the Russians

The Democrats are telling us to pay no attention to the DNC's hacked emails. The important thing is that the Russians did it.
Yesterday Trump joked that since the Russians are hacking things that they might be able to supply us with Hillary's deleted emails. The Democrats and the media were aghast. I heard one accuse him of treason.
You see when they asked Hillary to turn in her emails she didn't want to bother everyone with silly stuff about Chelsea's wedding and her yoga classes, so she deleted a whole bunch of that personal business. But she didn't delete her emails like you and I would by pressing the delete button. She got rid of them so that even the FBI forensic experts couldn't retreive them.
So some of us are curious about what other little things were in those emails. If the Russians really hacked her servers then they have those emails and us Americans don't. I don't think it's really treason to ask the Russians that if they have the emails to share them with us. That's only fair.
The liberal news media might give us their spin on the story, but I think the regular guys and gals are going to figure this one out.