I learned some new words yesterday, like echocardiogram, pericardium, and pericardial effusion.

My Irish bride, Maureen had been having back and chest pains for over a week, and decided yesterday to go to urgent care at our doctor's clinic. That's how we ended up spending most of yesterday at the emergency room. 

We found out that if you go to our clinic's urgent care facility and tell them you are having chest pains, they call an ambulance, give you an EKG, draw some blood, feed you some aspirin, and send you to the hospital.  They don't want to mess with you, you do not pass go, do not collect $200, and go directly to the Emergency Room.

After seven hours and several tests, an echocardiogram determined she had pericardial effusion.  According to the Mayo Clinic's website, the heart is surrounded by a double-layered, sac-like structure called the pericardium. The space between the layers normally contains a very small amount of fluid.  Pericardial effusion is excess fluid around the heart caused by inflammation.

They gave us a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and sent us home.  She has to go back tomorrow and have another echocardiagram to determine if the prescription is working, but she is feeling a lot better today and it looks like the pills are working.

They're all in college now! A freshman,
a sophomore, a junior, and two seniors.

In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world.  It was blessed with abundant agriculture, vast swaths of rich farmland laced with navigable rivers and an accessible port system. Its level of industrialization was higher than many European countries: railroads, automobiles and telephones were commonplace.

In 1916, a new president was elected. Hipólito Irigoyen had formed a party called The Radicals under the banner of "fundamental change" with an appeal to the middle class. Among Irigoyen's changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance, and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Put simply, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country's operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts.

With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government's payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers' contributions. Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States' Social Security and Medicare programs.

The death knell for the Argentine economy, however, came with the election of Juan Perón. Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation's rich. This targeted group "swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated."

Under Perón, the size of government bureaucracies exploded through massive programs of social spending and by encouraging the growth of labor unions. High taxes and economic mismanagement took their inevitable toll even after Perón had been driven from office. But his populist rhetoric and "contempt for economic realities" lived on. Argentina's federal government continued to spend far beyond its means.

Hyperinflation exploded in 1989, the final stage of a process characterized by "industrial protectionism, redistribution of income based on increased wages, and growing state intervention in the economy." The Argentinean government's practice of printing money to pay off its public debts had crushed the economy. Inflation hit 3000%; food riots were rampant; stores were looted; the country descended into chaos.

And by 1994, Argentina's public pensions - the equivalent of Social Security - had imploded. The payroll tax had increased from 5% to 26%, but it wasn't enough. In addition, Argentina had implemented a value-added tax (VAT), new income taxes, a personal tax on wealth, and additional revenues based upon the sale of public enterprises. These crushed the private sector, further damaging the economy.

A government-controlled "privatization" effort to rescue seniors' pensions was attempted. But, by 2001, those funds had also been raided by the government, the monies replaced by Argentina's defaulted government bonds.

By 2002, government fiscal irresponsibility induced a national economic crisis as severe as America's Great Depression."

In 1902 Argentina was one of the world's richest countries. Little more than a hundred years later, it is poverty-stricken, struggling to meet its debt obligations amidst a drought.

We've seen this movie before. The Democrats' populist plans can't possibly work, because government bankrupts everything it touches. History teaches us that ObamaCare and unfunded entitlement programs will be utter, complete disasters.

Today's liberal government is enslaving future generations to poverty and misery. And they will be long gone when it all implodes. They will be as cold and dead as Juan Perón when the piper must ultimately be paid.

If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

This is a secret AA battery trick that will save you money.
I don't think battery companies want you to know about it.

I found this on the internet!

Especially if it's a great pyrenees.

This is the craziest police chase I've ever seen!
...or maybe she was just looking for a parking space.