The Student Prince

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postaday2012

Tonight my son and I met the hubby at The Student Prince restaurant in Springfield. The restaurant is an old-fashioned German restaurant that had been around for a very long time and still held by the original owners. I love it because it doesn’t change, it is a constant that is rare especially in the restaurant business. All the German staples are on the menu and the beer selection is top-notch as well. It should be since the tap-room is literally burgeoning with beer steins from the old country. The restaurant only closes twice a year and both days are dedicated to bringing down the steins and polishing every single one of them.

I particularly love the German language, the words such as Hasenpheffer and schnitzel sound so hearty and strong, bunny rabbit and veal; but in German, those two words sound manly when you order them. I also love the wurst, any type of wurst with sauerkraut and Dijon mustard, delicious. They also have game and seafood; any type of seafood. It is an excellent restaurant and has been solidly busy for all these years. Their desserts put a lot of places to shame, their home-made whipped cream dolloped over a home-made apple strudel; can there be anything better than that to finish the evening?

We had a lovely dinner, when we got back I walked the dogs and digested a bit. Now it is time to relax and begin enjoying the weekend.

Should there be a time limit in coffee shops?

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postaday2012

Should coffee shops limit the amount of time that laptop users can occupy tables?

April 6, 2012

Laptops and Coffee Shops

Paris cafe’

No, the beauty of cafe’s in Europe is that you can stay forever and enjoy your coffee, your reading material and life in general. We need more of the same here, life is too short to be rushed out of a place, everyone will eventually have their turn.

Haley’s Comment

Being a woman, contraception was on the forefront of my mind because having a child and raising one, let alone two or three, is extremely expensive in this country.To hear Nikki Haley say that women don’t care about contraception just underscores how misguided her analytical and reasoning skills are, contraception has as much to do with economics and employment as anything else. Pregnancy doesn’t help in the workplace, you need to worry about daycare and other concerns that fall to women. The underlying implication that GOP male lawmakers care even less really pushes women’s buttons because that crystallizes further imbalance of responsibility in the home and with dealing with child rearing. The GOP’s message to women is that you are on your own and, oh by the way your reproductive rights aren’t your own, just the responsibility of caring for how many kids you have, good luck.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Ann Romney Wouldn’t Find Free-Market Health Care Without Mitt Romney’s Millions

It is sad that in this country of ours, if you don’t have a lot of money and you don’t live in MA, you not only stress about finding a job, keeping a job, trying to pay for education or paying off student loans, you also have to stress about health problems that could render you homeless. How can the lead country in the industrialized world condemn its people to uncertainty such as this. Is this romanticized idea of living like our pioneer fathers and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps really what America is all about? I don’t find this civilized, I find it a little barbaric. That a country would think that a medical problem would be an okay way to go bankrupt so that a private company keeps its profit margins up. That is barbaric.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Election 2012: Shift To Obama vs. Romney May End Silly Season

Doesn’t anyone in D.C understand the absurdity of Ryan’s economic budget. On the one hand, you have wealthy individuals and corporations who are raking in extraordinary money who’s tax burden will be lowered and who couldn’t care less about the spending cuts instituted across the board because they don’t need any of those programs. On the other hand, you have the rest of us, who through decreased union participation in various industries and job transfers overseas, have seen their wage income decrease or stay stagnant for 30 years and yet their taxes will either rise or the programs that they depend on will be cut. Ryan’s economic plan is a win/win for the upper tier and corporations and a lose/lose for the rest of us and all because the GOP wants to fix a long term deficit that is fueled by long term health care costs, exploding in part because we don’t have national health care coverage and the private health insurance companies who cover some, operate on profit. How can anyone say that this is okay?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Eric Cantor’s Obama Comments Contradict Mitt Romney Attack Line

The GOP lawmakers shoot themselves in the foot every time they open their mouths to criticize President Obama and his vision. When Romney says that our President wants government to control every aspect of our life he is outright, to your face lying to you. The ACA law is for the most part the private health insurance industries dream, our President hasn’t push for more public sector jobs, on the contrary the federal government workforce has decreased ever since President Obama came to office. When Romney was Governor of MA, he sent his staff to D.C regularly to get federal monies for MA fully understanding how crucial federal monies are to the health of each individual state. As governor Romney also did what he could as head of his government to get private sector in the state. He is deliberately lying about what our President’s record because Romney knows that he has really nothing of value to bring to the table. Romney knows venture capitalism and that’s about it, his record on job creation was pretty dismal in MA, what makes him think that he can do differently as President. His campaign depends on lies and misdirection.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The Fable of the Century

We already had two versions of that fable. The robber baron era; the first time the rich were plundering our nation, we had a brave republican Teddy Roosevelt who became our first progressive President and this country saw the birth of the unions and social justice for the common man. The second rendition of that fable was when the financiers came along and the stock market crash of 1929, we had another brave Roosevelt who passed the New Deal and not only instituted social insurance programs but also regulatory frameworks to insure that rampant greed wouldn’t strike the market again bringing down the whole economy. This is our third go around with the fable. However now we have both the robber barons and the financiers who are both determined to keep their power and ill gotten gains. This time we are at the fork of the road, we either elect the true representative for the robber barons and the financiers and let the wolf in the hen house completely or we re-elect President Obama and stay with him as he continues to redress our nation’s trajectory back to a strong middle class fortified with more avenues of opportunity and freedom.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost