COMMON MATTERS

LESSONS OF LIFE

Haylee and Kinsey bounced into my house to show me their renderings of playdoh artwork.  They wanted me to choose whose was best.  Yeah.  Like grandmothers and mothers want to instill self-worth in one child by destroying it in the other. I was able to quell their appetites for a winning approval by telling them I am eclectic and love each rendition for its own distinguishing treatment of the art medium chosen.  Unh, hunh.  I did.  However, there comes a time when we must distinguish between ones work and place value upon ones efforts; don't you think?

Kinsey and Haylee wanted to earn some money to buy some new dolls. Haylee offered to dust, and even do laundry.  Goodness, she's only seven!  I told Haylee if she would vacuum my 8 by 10 rug, I'd give her a dollar.  Kinsey wanted to make a dollar too, so I told her to clear the floor and put away the books, before Haylee vacuumed.  Kinsey balked a bit because Haylee wasn't helping her pick up the three items on the floor.  I patiently explained how Haylee was doing her part for her dollar by vacuuming the floor.  They completed that task and wanted another.  So, I told them I want them to sweep my porch each day.  Haylee agreed immediately.  Kinsey balked again.  "I don't wanna sweep the porch."  I chuckled and said, "Okay, then Haylee can do it and she will get the dollar."  Kinsey whined, "but I wanna dollar, too.  I wanna get a doll, too."  I said, "then you will work like Haylee does so you can get your doll."  Kinsey whimpered, "I want the money, but I don't want to work for it."

Why should Haylee vacuum my rug and take my small bags of trash to the dumpster each day to earn money, if I give Kinsey the same amount for doing nothing?  Kinsey is five and can't quite grasp the compensation-for-services-rendered concept.  But Haylee is seven; she's well acquainted with math.  It wouldn't take her long to add up that her twenty times one does not make forty to be shared with her little sister who chooses to do nothing.  Fair is fair, after all, isn't it?  Perhaps not.

I saw a photo this week of President Obama sitting in front of a child who'd built a very high tower with Lego blocks.  Beneath Obama's awed expression was a caption of the president's exultation: "Wow, it looks like you've been working really hard here.  Now, I'm just going to take away some of your legos and pass them out to kids who have been napping all day."  What an illustration of our president's ideology and work ethic!  Friends, reduction of another's efforts, and taking away well-earned praise and reward, does not instill production; it destroys production and annilates motivation.  It robs a legitimate worker of the desire to work.  Why build if someone is going to take off half your building and give it to someone else?  Why paint, or sculpt, or create anything if everyone is going to get the same reward for less than the best effort?  If no one is a winner or no work is superior to anothers, why bother building a resume?

Oh my.  I think Obama has somehow infiltrated the mind of my grandchild.  Stop the presses.  How did he get into my home-schooled grandchild's head?  I looked up and realized my television had the POTUS making a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma.  That's it.  No more television in this house when the grandchildren are about.  What is crammed into the brains of my grandchildren will eventually develop into full-grown tumors of socialism before they're old enough to vote.  Here, our president was taking credit for an unfinished pipeline that did nothing.  He stands in front of his teleprompter taking credit for constructing half a pipeline which can do nothing without the upper pipeline, and for which he has done nothing to promote, and done everything to block.  How's a grandma suppose to teach a child to do her fair share with that kind of example?  I ask you, how?

Windmills, Algae and Chevy Volts

Our President's been jetting around the country pushing Chevy Volts like he owns the company and entertaining Britian's Prime Minister.  Seems like our president is feeling rather optimistic about our economy, too.  He's been bragging about the 8.75 percent unemployment.  Like 14-million folks on food stamps and Medicaid is something to crow about.  Next thing you know he'll be telling us how wonderful it is that our gasoline is less than 5.00 a gallon.  Or maybe he'll tell us we should be thankful, given the price of oil, that our bottled water has only doubled in price since he became president.  Or since he inherited such a debt from his predecessor that we should be grateful our national debt has only risen to 16 trillion dollars.  Trillion?  Did I say trillion?  Whew!

I love the spin our President puts on things.  He stands at a podium and tells us we all need to give our fair share to equalize the burden of life.  All the while he spends millions flying around the country using up jet-fuel to tell us how to conserve gasoline and energy.  Then he wants to add to our burden by increasing taxes on those who are able to create and offer jobs to the unemployed. Wonder how many raises will come to common employees as a result of higher taxes on corporations and their CEOs.  Oh, but maybe that's the plan.  Keep the unemployed beast alive and well-fed.  Soon the whole country will be supplemented by the government.  I just find it hard to understand exactly how Pres. Obama plans to supplement everyone if everyone is out of work and not making any money to pay any taxes.  Baffling.  Simply baffling. 

I had to laugh at a friend's comment on Facebook this week.  She wrote, "I believe in Cap and Trade"...."Cap Spending and Trade Obama".  She's from the liberal New England territory, too.  I'm thinking, no matter who runs against the sitting president in November, they'll be a better trade-in.  Then again, ya never know. I've heard more than one person say they are happy living off the government and unemployment.  They like being subsidized by the working man's tax dollars.  Some folks like getting paid for doing nothing.  Ask Obama and Harry Reid.  They get big bucks for not passing a budget, not fixing the economy, not developing a successful energy policy, not securing our borders, not signing bills that build the Keystone Pipeline or drilling for oil in our own country.

I had to chuckle when the President was talking to a rally this past week and extolling the progress he seeks through alternative energy.  Windmills, algae-fueled cars, solar panel companies like Solyndra, the Chevy Volt (which couldn't sell even 10,000 models).  A man in the audience who was concerned about the rising gas prices, asked what he was suppose to do; he had a family of 10 children.  How was he suppose to fit ten kids in a Chevy Volt?  Obama's advice was to buy a Hybrid Van.  I'm next to positive that the man could hardly wait to get out of that rally and run down to the car lot and get himself one...why in the world didn't he think of that himself? Seriously, Mr. President?  If he could afford a 64,000 dollar Hybrid van, he probably wouldn't have to worry about the rising gas prices.

My question to the president is this: does he plan for truck drivers who haul our products and hybrids to market to begin using algae instead of diesel to fuel their 18-wheelers?  Are they suppose to pack our computers, furniture, clothes, lawn-mowers and barbeque grills inside Chevy Volts to transfer them across the country?  Michelle needs to whisper in Obama's ear: "Folks need their pick-ups and big SUV's to haul lumber, windows, tile and carpet.  Farmers need tractors to plow their fields."  Or does Obama plan for them to start hooking their plows to Chevy Volts and Hybrid Toyotas?  Can you just imagine?

I Told You So...

I wrote last week that if we don't do something about the government forcing us to do what it has NO business telling us to do, that they'd soon be taking away our Oatmeal Pies.  Remember?  Little did I know that about a month ago in North Carolina, a mother packed her four-year-old daughter a lunch with a turkey and cheese sandwich, a bag of potato chips, a banana and apple juice.  The food-police were in the lunchroom and took her lunch away from her because it wasn't what they deemed "healthy" enough.  They marched that little girl up to the cafeteria line, gave her a school lunch of chicken nuggets.  Excuse me...fat-fried, reheated frozen chicken nuggets made from ground-up chicken parts, are better than a turkey and cheese sandwich?????  Then they sent the mom a bill for 1.25 along with a note-of-admonishment telling her mother that the lunch she packed was not "healthy" enough.  Say what?

Even if Momma omitted a government-approved appropriate veggie, say, a bag of carrots, the food-police overstepped its authority.  It's intrusive.  It's ridiculous.  It's absolutely insane.  It's totalitarianism in every aspect of the definition of the word.  The Puritans who left the dictates of tyranical English government did not risk life and limb, give up their homeland and families, to come to America and found a country that forces mothers to add a bag of spinach to her child's lunchbag or pay a fee to replace the lunch she gave her child.  Our "founding fathers" did not write a Constitution that prohibits the freedom of parents to feed their own children.

Nor did the signers of the Declaration of Independence intend to infringe on citizens' economic freedom and force them to purchase insurance that doesn't meet their needs. I ask you...Why should I, a 63 year-old pro-life Christian woman be forced to purchase insurance that includes birth-control, abortive medicine, and procedures?

If they wanna fix health insurance problems in this country, why not offer medical/age-specific insurance choices?  We don't have car insurance that includes a boat or motorcycle, do we?  We don't insure Mustangs like we do 18-wheelers.  Car insurance is based on the vehicle.  Why isn't medical insurance?  I'm an aging lady with age-specific ailments.  I need insurance that deals with that fact.  I'd be interested in bone-degeneration insurance.  I'd be interested in accident/style insurance based on how many old folks my age have "fallen and can't get up". I don't go to the doctor every time I get the sniffles.

I don't particularly like my tax dollars going to fund the food-police in elementary schools.  Come on.  This is absurb.  A reporter asked the expert what recourse the mother had with the school system for "outing" her child and over-ruling her mother's care (Imagine how that trusting 4-year-old will question her mother's future decisions on her behalf).  What is this mother recourse?  To take her child out of that stupid school and enroll her in private school?  To homeschool her child?  But why should she be forced to pay taxes for public education (operative word: education), and not benefit from it?  Why should that mother be forced to do anything beyond what is expediently injurious to her child? 

Why should anyone in a free society, be forced to cow-tow to a totalitarian?  do we want a form of government that uses its political authority to exercise absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life? do we really want to be subordinated to the state in which opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed and we all have to eat chicken nuggets?  If so, four more years of Obama's fundamental changes to America may just give it to us.

 

It Came In An Email

I get all kinds of silly emails from friends. Some have hilarious pictures of cats nursing baby skunks, and drenched kitties crawling out of toilets. Some forward You-tube videos and links to other spectacular natural wonders. Those are particularly exciting to save and share with my grandchildren. They love to see pictures of animals doing crazy things, with nutty expressions on their faces.

A lot of my gal-pals love to send cartoons imparting Maxine's wisdom about getting old (like me). Her insightful cartoons often crack me up and give a much needed relief to the weightier issues of life. Recently I got one that shared Maxine's take on a current political situation (I think Maxine is an Independent). This one struck a chord of common-sense I thought you might like to see, too (especially if you don't have the luxury of internet email buds). Maxine poses a legitimate question as she muses about Obamacare. She writes:

"Let me get this straight. We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't...Which purportedly covers at least ten million MORE people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents...

...written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it (but exempted themselves from it), and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief (who didn't pay his own taxes), for which we all will be taxed for FOUR YEARS BEFORE any "benefits" take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, and all to be overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that is broke!!!

What the heck could possibly go wrong???"

You have to love cartoons and satire. Maxine has presented one of the greatest cases of reasonable doubt we could have a nation of jurists deliberate over. It really shouldn't take a nano-second for America to return a verdict on this piece of legistature. Maxine couldn't be more convincing. Considering her argument, the "nation of jurists" would convict our legislature of complete and total lunacy.

Well, I think like Maxine. You've read my thoughts on this before. It seems that we have more than enough reasons to doubt this health-care system will work. And it is even more doubtful that we will receive better medical care than we are already receiving because of it. I guess what concerns me the most is all the real-life doctors who have no desire to practice medicine under the guidelines that a panel of pencil-pushers will hand down to them for their patients. It also concerns me how many big-businesses and corporations and unions are getting waivers so that they are exempt from participating in this health-care plan. Seems someone is going to have to pay the brunt of it and I'm afraid, once again, it will be the small businesses, the mom-and-pop shops, the self-employed farmers who are barely scraping by as it is.

If my voted counted on this nation of jurists, I'd vote guilty. Our legislators have lost their minds and need to be committed. Committed to us--Americans--not lobbies and special interest groups. But I'm only one vote. If Maxine puts together a petition, I would sign it. Who knows?  Maybe that's the next one I'll get in my email.

Why I Want to Clone Myself

I went to the grocery on Friday to pick up a few veggies and fruit.  As I strolled by the bananas, I overheard the produce manager tell a stockman not to forget the "USA stickers": "Make sure you use those USA stickers."

I thought about that as I picked through the peppers searching for ones with the least amount of wilt and blemish.  The sticker on one pepper said it was from Canada.  Another said it was from Holland.  Can you believe that?  Holland.  I always check to see where my fruit and vegetables come from.  I am ever amazed they come from all over the world and not here in America.  Supposedly America has more land to farm than any nation in the world.  Yet, we can't get our produce from here!  Now, I realize America is not the tropics and we won't be growing too many bananas.  However, green and red peppers?  These use to come from California, but now...now, Barbara Boxer and her cohart in crime, Nancy Pelosi, have turned off the water in California to protect a bunch of 2-inch minnows.  Therefore, we cannot have fresh beans, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli and corn from our own country.  Instead, our food must be shipped in from foreign countries with who-knows-what kind of standards for growing the food?? 

In California, thirty-thousand unemployed folks stand in food lines where they now depend on the government to feed them powdered milk, and government-issued canned goods.  I guess that's one way to get rid of illegal immigrants from coming to California.  Destroy the farmlands that gave them jobs harvesting fruit and vegetables, huh?

Nancy Pelosi (House Speaker from San Francisco, California) blocked legislation from coming to the floor (7 times) to get the water turned back on. If she treats her own state that way, what will she do to ours if given the chance?

The federal government turned San Joquin Valley into desert wasteland.  Why?  To save a bunch of inedible fish?  I don't think so; I think it is about controlling Americans.  The Pelosi/Reid/Obama folk want government to dole out our every essential commodity (including healthcare), so that we are utterly and completely dependent upon the federal government.  They want to limit how much electricity we use, how hot or cold we keep our houses, who gets water and when.  They want control over everything--what we think, what we spend, what we own, what we teach our children, and what we eat.  Soon they will be telling us we can't hunt deer, plant vegetable gardens, or can our own beans.

I wish I could clone myself and vote in legislators who seek to provide us smaller government, fewer rules, less taxes.  I wish I could clone myself and vote out the knotheads all across our nation who seek to keep us under the thumb of bigger government, higher taxes, selective health-care, and business-stifling legislations. I want all the Barbara Boxers, Barney Franks, Nancy Pelosis, and Harry Reids voted out of government before they come capping our water to save some minnow, worm, or varmit at the expense of our livelihoods and food supply.

Yeah, I wish I could clone myself and vote a few hundred times across the nation tomorrow.  Since I can't, I'll just pray for God's intervention.  After the Tuesday votes are counted, maybe, just maybe, we'll have a new House Speaker who will bring the legislation to the floor to vote for California's water to be turned on.  At least then I won't be picking through peppers from Holland. 

A BLANK CANVAS AND NOVEMBER ELECTIONS

 Let me give you a little unsolicited advice.  When you make plans for three little girls, do not tell them what the plans are.  If you do, they will drive you buggy about doIng everything you planned.  If for some unforeseen reason, the weather does not cooperate with your plans, or you can't get rid of ticks in your yard so that you can put up a tent, then you won't be held accountable when you don't deliver on your promises. The best thing about each new day is the blank canvas we have when we wake up.  It's a do-over of sorts.  What we don't get done yesterday, we can do today.  Life needs to be flexible.  If one plan goes awry, we can move in a new direction.  We can paint a different picture.

 

It seems that may be what folks have in mind with the 2010 elections.  Voters want to know what happened to the hope and change they were promised in 2008.  Seems that many people are quite frustrated with the picture that Congress and the present administration has been painting since Obama took over the West Wing.  Seems Obama's "spread the wealth around" philosophy only applies to those folks who are employed by the government.  How about you?  Have you felt the love from the government lately?  Are you feeling wealthier?  Let's face it.  For every dollar the government takes from the private sector (that means you), the bigger government gets and the fewer dollars are left for the private sector to create jobs and give out raises.  So all we have is larger government and fewer jobs for folks who need them.  Today our president popped out of the West Wing and into the Rose Garden and all he could talk about is passing an unemployment bill for an economy where Obama said "there are 5 applicants for every job opening".  And what does he say is the problem?  Tax breaks for the corporations that create the jobs for these people who are out of work.  Yeah.

Okay.  So let's tax the corporations who create the jobs and give the tax money to the unemployed so the corporations cannot create more jobs.  Hmmmmmn.  Sorry.  Something is wrong with that picture.  Yeah, I can see why people are frustrated with the present administration.  He paraded three people in front of the cameras to make his point--showing folks who can't find jobs and need the extended benefits. To me, this just magnifies the point of his own failure to create more jobs.  The only jobs he is creating is for bigger government. When is Obama going to do something about helping small businesses create more jobs?  All he can talk about is Clinton's surplus that was eaten up. 

 

Obama seems fixated on yesterday's paintings.  He can't see the canvas before him.  He cannot paint a new picture.  It's beyond his pay-grade folks. Just as it was beyond his pay-grade to determine when life begins.  It's beyond his pay-grade to build a better economy, protect the borders, preserve our religious freedoms, plug an oil leak in the gulf and clean up the mess that is happening on his watch.  Obama had everything he needed to paint a better picture for America if the old picture was so disastrous.  He had a democrat controlled Senate and House.  And all we have to show for his "community organizing" artistry is a health-care bill that should be repealed and trillion-dollar deficits.  And if there are no jobs, and no one has any income to be taxed, how are we going to pay off the deficits?  Never mind paying for health-care.  Something is wrong with this picture.  Legislators are scrambling to paint roses amid the dandelions to save their necks in November.  Somehow I think voters are looking for new artists who have enough sense to stop spending money on old paintings.  What do you think? 

 

What Is Rightfully Yours Is Mine, Now

Decisions, decisions.  Some of you may recall my search for health insurance. A human resources rep told me to have my husband quit his two part-time jobs, then Oklahoma would pay for our medical bills, our rent, our food, and utilities. In other words, become a societal parasite.  Nix that idea. In all good conscience we can't do that. But bear in mind; many folks are being advised to do this every day.  So, with the passage of healthcare, I imagine that advice will only increase and breed parasitical socialism.

Remember the experience I had with a group of bogus insurers touting ridiculously low fees for even more ridiculously high benefits?  Expect more of those fraudulent groups to sprout like weeds in newly tilled gardens. I finally got a quote from a reputable insurance company. It will only cost us about $10,290 a year.  Isn't that great?  Of course, that's just for me.  It doesn't include my husband.  Doesn't really matter. Insurance is unaffordable. To get a policy that will cover 50% of my medical costs, I'd have to first pay a $7,000.00 deductible.  So, why bother with insurance?  The fine Obamacare will impose won't cost near as much as insurance. The IRS will just deduct the fine from hubby's Social Security check, along with the 96-dollar fee for near-worthless Medicare we've been paying into for 40 years.

You might wonder if you'll have to absorb my medical costs should I go to the hospital.  If I went, you might.  I don't plan to go.  For anything.  Not much sense in it.  Doctors hands will be tied anyway.  Obama's watchdog panel will prohibit much of any care for a useless human being like myself. Since I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, I am able to stand for 10 minutes at a time without the excruciating pain on my lower back.  I sit for fifteen minutes to take the pressure off, then start all over again.  I've already been told to take narcotics to address the pain.  I'm a dispensable statistical comodity.  I'm not alone in my misery. There's lots of folks with this dilemma.  I've talked to them. Will Obamacare fix our problems?  Of course; all we have to do is accept the fact that we are societal parasites.

It is great to be an American, today.  We have the "fundamental right" to sit back and do nothing to support ourselves, and make everyone who does work, pay for our "fundamental right" to do nothing but watch eagles fly and flags wave in the wind.  How does that make you taxpayers feel today?  Used?  Now, now.  Obama is just spreading the wealth around.  It's what America voted for on one cold day in November 2008.  Feeling wealthier?  Do you have more hope?  Enjoying the changes?

I apologize to our children and grandchildren for the national debt we have bestowed upon them and their children.  Economists estimate that for every dollar they earn, they'll be turning over about half to pay off the debt.  This congress is "fundamentally changing" America to rob your children of what is rightfully theirs tomorrow, to pay for things that are not "rightfully" mine today.  That's just fundamentally wrong.

Spring Forward Folks!

Oh, my!  I'm dreading it already.  We have to turn our clocks ahead this Sunday.  Some say we'll gain another hour of daylight this way.  All I know is my emotional clock loses an hour's sleep and takes two weeks to catch up and get readjusted.  In previous years, I've tried going to bed an hour early on Saturday night to appease my need for extra zzz's.  It never works.  It always seems like my brain won't shut off that early at night, nor turn on an hour earlier in the morning.  Seriously.  Why do we do this?  It's not like we're going to gain anymore time.  I'm bound to be grumpy for at least a week.  In fact, I think I'm already grumpy.  Nothing makes me happy when I'm grumpy.  Seems like nothing goes right.  Ever notice that about grumpy moods?  They breed more grumpiness.  It never fails.  Take last week.

I was in a great mood on Tuesday because I got to go file for Social Security (that wonderful side benefit of growing older).  I had all my paperwork--exactly like the girl at the Social Security office wrote on a little post-it note last December.  She told me to come back in March.  So there I am, the second day of March.  I get my little ticket and wait patiently--exactly like everyone else had to do.  An hour and a half later I happily get to the window with all my documented proof that I am who I say I am, was born where I say I was born, and am married to who I say I am married to.  And what does she say?  "You're here too early."

In my mind I squawk, what?!!!  Verbally, I calmly remind her, "But you told me to come back in March."  To prove it, I show her the post-it note she wrote for me.  She got a bit flustered, then dismissed my proof with a wave of her hand.  She tells me to "come back on the nineteenth, exactly three months from my birthdate when I would be eligible" to begin receiving benefits.  I'm fried.  I'd been waiting like everyone else, and just don't get it, but realize I'm up against a brick wall.  It's the government after all.  So I ask if I can make an appointment for three weeks ahead.  She smiles triumphantly and says she can do that to make it easier for me so I won't have to wait.  Then she says, "I have an opening tomorrow".  Say what?!!

Now I'm completely befuddled, so I say, "I thought you said I had to wait till the nineteenth."  She stares me in the eye and succinctly asks, "Do...you...want...the...appointment?"  Another brick wall.  I smile, wishing I could scream, and say, "Yes, thank you."  My brain goes into overdrive.  If five minutes earlier I was suppose to wait for three more weeks, why would she give me an appointment for the following day?  You guessed it.  She just didn't want to process me.  She was the only one at the window at that moment on that particular day.  It had nothing to do with me being there too early.  She was in a grumpy mood.  She felt pressed because there were so many people in the waiting room and the other clerk had gone to lunch, then I show up with more than a slam-dunk kinda situation for her to solve.  Now I ask you...is that not enough to make a happy person grumpy?  The good mood I had going into the office slowly dissolved with my encounter with that clerk.

There's something about being around grumpy people that sucks the sour right out of their lemons and sticks to your skin.  Soon, that sticky sourness turns rancid. You can go out to lunch to get out of a grumpy mood and the waitress gets your order wrong.  You can go shopping and every single item you like doesn't fit.  Or the stoplights all change from green to red just when you get to them.  Murphy's Law.  There's a pattern in grumpiness.  Like I said earlier; grumpy breeds grumpy.  My husband tends to ignore me when I'm grumpy.  I think he's a very smart man.  Why give the devil a foothold?

IF THIS COLUMN "SOUNDS FISHY", JUST FORWARD IT TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Did ya'll hear about the White House requesting information on the American people?  Seems their website wanted everyone to listen to their neighbors and anyone who hears anything "fishy" about health-care reform via emails, casual conversation, websites, and who knows?..maybe even this column, should contact the White House.  They want us to let them know who it is and what they are saying.  Say what!?  And they wonder why folks are getting hot under the collar at town-hall meetings. 

Some politicians and pundits say the folks (turning out by the hundreds to protest health-care reform), are "organized mobs" of "astro-turf" people financed by the wealthy Republicans. In other words, they are fakes.  They're called "un-American". "Infiltrators." The citizens are saying the politicians need to get out of Washington and walk amongst real folk.  Some just don't like the idea of the government controlling all their health-care and every iota of their lives.  Some folk don't like what they are hearing.  They don't want fast-track governing where our elected representatives fundamentally alter our lives with mandates and laws that "change" things that don't need changing.

Did you hear about that one man who got bullied by four thugs who didn't like him handing out flags and buttons that said, "don't tread on me"?  Yep.  Happened last week.  He was an African American Republican and those guys knocked him down to the ground and called him the "N" word.  One of the "thugs" was also African American and a member of a union SEIU (The Service Employees International Union, the largest and fastest growing union in North America, focused on uniting workers in the key service sectors).  Is that the kind of "mob" they are talking about?  Or is it just "mobs" of citizens who are tired of being ignored by their government and saying so?  You know..."mobs" of housewives, nurses, retired salesmen, and white-haired gramas?  Seems it may be the latter, because they escorted out a very vocal father who was speaking for his adult son afflicted by cerebral palsy sitting in a wheelchair in front of him.  His political representive called hin an "infiltrator" sent to disrupt the meetings.  Now this "infiltrator" is having thugs show up at his house in the middle of the night with threats against him.  Is that not sad?

I'm thinking that citizens are just fed up with the Feds feeding us pork and pipe-dreams.  So laborers, voters and veterans are turning out in droves to say so.  I'd been meaning to go to one of those town-hall meetings if one ever comes to Lawton.   And guess what?   A friend of mine told me our Congressman, Tom Cole, is having one Thursday, August 13th, at Cameron University.  So, I think I might just waddle on down there and join the "mob".  That way I can get a firsthand peek at what all the fuss is about and meet some of these mobsters.

If I get my chance at the microphone I might ask several questions.  What's national health-care mean to accessing a physician?  Will the government system be like the VA?  Will my husband still have to wait an entire year to get a follow-up on his abnormal PSA score, and find out if his thyroid medication needs to be changed again?  Will the medicine that the private physician told us would help correct his heart condition still be disallowed?  Is my husband's care considered government "waste"?  Will the publicly insured get as good a care as the privately insured? 

Hey, Washington, in case you get this column at the White House because it sounds "fishy", could you answer a few questions?  Exactly how does the national health-care system plan to operate?  Will the public get to "choose" their doctors and the hospital they want to go to for care?  Can they travel out of state for better cancer treatment; or will all the treatments in all states follow cookie-cutter instructions from that Health Advisory Board that President Obama is setting up?

By the way, no one has paid me to ask these questions.  No one has helped me "manufacture" them.  I've just been sitting here reading the paper, listening to the news, surfing the internet, and talking to every-day folks I know.  If someone shares this with you, and you answer me, I'll be sure and forward your answers to everyone I know.  I'm not angry.  I'm sickened.  Can you hear me now?  Or must I raise my voice?  [printed in THE COUNTY TIMES, Cache, OK]   selahV

CAN THIS REALLY HAPPEN?

Sometimes I listen to news reports about legislation going through Congress and wonder if it's all hype.  Sometimes I wonder how true things are.  Lately the healthcare debate has grabbed my attention and rang a bell in my brain.  SENIOR CITIZENS may be in trouble.

Could it be true?  Will there really be a Federal Health Board set up basing all our healthcare on data received and compiled in a computer?  Will this all be entered by fallable data-entry folks who do not always put in the correct numbers and names?  Uh...think I'm kidding?  Remember the stimulus checks that went out to dead people and non-citizens?

Our President says he wants to set up a team of health "experts" and "doctors" who can eliminate "the waste" in healthcare.  Friends, I think I am his "waste".  Me.  A senior citizen who can drain the system because I am bound to need more and more healthcare as I age.  Of course, part of the way he can control my "waste" is to eliminate the unnecessary tests and treatment because his "experts" will tell me what I need and don't need.  I truly hate to be a wet blanket, but those "experts" can't determine anything from Washington about ME in Lawton, Oklahoma.

When I go to the doctor and tell them what is wrong with me, the best thing they can do is "guess" what test I need..."guess" what my problem is...and "guess" what medication to give me.  Why?  Because I am an individual who has individual needs based on MY problems...MY history...MY allergies, etc.  For the most part, it is always a guessing game.  My husband's cardiologist (one of the best in Oklahoma), determined by a few tests in the Emergency Room, and his best "guess", that my husband's symptoms were most likely "a pinched nerve in his back".  One wise consulting surgeon's intervention, several tests, and a heart catherization later, proved he needed open-heart surgery to repair 5 blockages.  These tests showed this notable expert that his best "guess" was wrong.  Dead wrong.  So now, a group of folks in Washington will determine these things?  and the care from here on out for my husband's congestive heart disease?
 
According to Obama, healthcare is all about "waste".  Could some of the "waste" be babies, children, and adults who will put an added drain on the healthcare system because of their chronic-diseases, disabilities, and castastrophic illnesses?  I wonder.  Based on data accumulated, the probability of a person with a specific cancer has only X-amount of chance to survive even with the best of treatments.  So, what do you think this federal board will decide is the most appropriate care for them?
 

Obama says we need "affordable" healthcare.  Whose definition of "affordable" are we using, anyway?
 

He says Americans need to "give up things that don't make them healthier."  Uh..let's see.  What are things that aren't making us healthier?  According to President Obama, it is "Testing" and some treatments.  Hmmmmn.  So what makes us healthier?  Our diet.  Obama says one of the things that panel of experts will be in charge of doing is, "making sure our diet is what it ought to be."  Now that's a grand mandate.  Are we gonna be issued cards that monitor how many packages of Oreo Cookies we purchase?  How many jars of pickles we buy?  How many gallons of ice cream we consume?

Obama pooh-poohs those folks, like me, who don't like his healthcare plan.  He accuses folks like me of saying, "Even though I don't like this devil, I like this devil better than the devil I don't know."

He said a mouthful, there.  Speaking of "devils", I've heard another phrase that folks say: "The devil is in the details".  I think this could be true of this healthcare bill.  Quite true.  By Hariette Petersen