Saturday night

I didn't make it out of here till dinner time and went directly to Flanigan's for a surf 'n' turf dinner (8 oz. NY strip + 6 lightly breaded fried shrimp). Had steak soup first. I'd had hardly anything to eat all day long, just a little Stouffer's pot roast meal.

Then did grocery shopping. Going shopping on a full-stomach has the opposite effect of shopping while hungry: I didn't feel like buying food, but I had to focus and get something for the coming week.

[Later] Called my friend in STL/FTL. (He's in STL this weekend.) He's a Republican and started talking politics. He was in a tizzy. He knows where I stand on issues and I found it somewhat impolite and disrespectful for him to be pushing "talking points" on me. One thing he said was that he would never be able to recover any respect he had for Obama unless Obama apologized for calling out the Supreme Court (during SOTU address) on the recent campaign-finance ruling. He was really on a roll and said there were two things Obama had done that were basically unforgivable: calling the Cambridge, Mass. police "stupid" over the fracas with the black professor, and now calling out the Supreme Court during the State of the Union Address. He said the latter was the most egregious. He even got a little high-handed telling me he had read Obama's address in the Wall Street Journal (his Bible), so he was speaking from the utmost, highest authority (as if only the Wall Street Journal ran a true transcript of the speech). This was a put-down to me, but I told him I had actually watched the speech myself and also had ready access to a transcript of the speech. (He probably hadn't even watched the speech.) (I think there's quite a big difference between watching a speech and just reading a transcript of it.) (I even googled transcripts of the speech and found discrepancies.)

This went on and on and I just let him rant. I refused to be contentious and let him engage me in an argument, but I stood my ground. I'm fairly savvy on the issues, even though I don't read the Wall Street Journal (I used to subscribe, however, and was a business reporter myself). Finally he got out of that mode and apologized for bringing up politics.

He and I are friends based on our both being raised in Miami within blocks of each other and belonging to the same downtown church. I never broach politics with him. But he just can't resist. I think Obama is right about the Republican mind-set these days. It's all about politics with them and not about the good of the country. And this guy is gay, too. How a self-respecting gay person could identify with a political party that treats gay people as second-class citizens (or much worse) is beyond me. (But he's at least 10 years older than I am -- he signed up for Medicare and Social Security last year -- and attended military school somewhere in the South. Also, he earned his living in Missouri.)

Finally, he said he arrives at his opinions as an accountant (another assertion of higher authority) (he's a tax lawyer, too).

Meanwhile, his much younger, schizophrenic BF, who was recently adjudicated incompetent and put on Social Security and Medicare for life and is unemployable, is still a constant source of torment. Makes me glad I'm alone (or with cats). (Thank goodness for those social safety-net programs to take care of the people who are in dire need of help.) (We need Medicare for all.)

I say, if you want to rant about politics, better to do so on a blog and not offend your friends.