I have discovered how to receive free health care for all of us. There is one hitch though. We need to move to a third world country that has a deep water port. Our Navy, (the best in the world) will provide health care for the needy in these foreign ports. I know it is a good thing to help these people who might otherwise suffer or worse, die in their humanitarian and friend building efforts. However I feel if they can do this for non citizens of our country why can’t they do the same for us? As I have stated before I am a vet so I am eligible for some of the best health care anywhere in the world. I can not say that for the rest of my family though. Our easiest way to provide basic health care for all of our citizens is to expand the medicare and medicaid roles. I know this does not fix everything and that they will have to limit some procedures but it would be a huge step in the right direction. I also know that there would be a huge outcry against the government controlling what could and could not be done for us. However those same healthcare insurance companies who would fight a move like that tooth and nail would still be able to offer health care to anyone who wanted more coverage for themselves and their family. I know that this is not the complete fix for our healthcare but we need more than is going to be supplied by “ObamaCare” as they call it but we need more not less as the Republicans are poised to do if they win the elections this year. It was them who fought so hard against Medicare and Medicaid during President Johnson reign. Now it is so basic and important we wonder how we made it before it was instated.
just the thoughts of the ringleader
Once again it seems that I have been dragging my heels in posting my feelings about the soldier who massacred sixteen innocent Afghan civilians. I have thought long and hard about this and feel that the US was wrong in spiriting him away in the “dead of night” so to speak. I feel like this was the exact wrong thing to do. He killed Afghans and should be dealt with harshly if we want to maintain healthy relationships with Afghanistan and its people. Instead it looks like we are going to shield him from the wrath that Afghanistan people demand. That he being returned to the US makes it look to them that we are not going to punish him as they feel he needs. If we intend to maintain relationships between our two countries we can not allow him to get out of this if he is found guilty. Whatever the out come we need to think of the ramifications in our response to this situations in that part of the world.
I am going to make this one fast and directly. During the previous presidential administration we heard from several fronts that “Dick Cheney has no heart”. Well to all those doubters I only have to point out that Mr Cheney received a heart yesterday. That kills that thinking. I give out a sincere, get well soon. One reason for this, is that we honestly want to see him get better and for a questionable rumination, who paid for the heart transplant? While we know he can afford it we still wonder if he still receives medical care from the government as part of your severance from being such a high ranked official in our country. I believe that it is part of the great medical care that we give our government officials. The ones that can afford it the most get it for free and the ones that ones who need it the most can not get it.
Once again Limbaugh has created a row on his syndicated radio show. This time it appears like it may hurt him where it hurts the most, his pocketbook. His anal views and spiel has reached out and bit him. Recently a Georgetown law student spoke in front of Congress testifying that “birth control is essential to women’s health”. A view that he against the Federal Government providing birth control. After this woman’s brave testimony, he spent the next three days calling her a slut and asking her to give him pornographic videos of herself having sex. Not only was he way out of line with his jargon, he was also showing that he is a pervert for asking a woman only old enough to be his daughter (if not his granddaughter) for anything sexual from this young lady. Our women in congress stood up immediately to Limbaugh’s rhetoric and so far have succeeded in getting 20 key sponsors to drop all their adds from his show. Without add revenues some local stations are dropping his show. This could not happen to a nicer guy. Now I am not against his being able to espouse his views to whomever he pleases. I am also all for people to take action against anyone via boycotts or other peaceful avenues. Now maybe they will silence or at least cut back his hateful and extreme views against anything that helps the general populace and does not help the wealthy.
Here it is February all ready. I can come up with several reasons for not posting sooner and being in the hospital was one of them. No need to say there was no partying for the new year while you are on your back in the hospital. Though I could have borrowed my wife’s laptop while mine was in the shop. There is a plethora of items that should have been exposed to y’all. They are going whole hog after the wolves in the west again. I know twenty eight does not sound like many but when you count them against the total number the percentage of living wolves decreases.
On another front our internet is facing an attack from our congress and supposedly our president will sign the bill into law. This one would forbid search engines from displaying any sites that are accused of copyright laws. This especially attacks foreign web sites. Right now the pirates are not a significant percentage of over all users and a lot of these pirates would not mind paying for digital content if it was packaged with a reasonable price and the ability to use the content you just bought and paid for but you could not watch or listen to the dvd or cd you legally bought. You buy it, then if you want to watch it on your laptop you are in violation of their law. To me there is something inheritability wrong with this scenario. There is a huge number of people that use Apple’s iTunes service and it would make a great model to other digital content providers. Plus we can not forget that this will affect some of our favorite sites, like facebook, twitter and lest we forget google who is going to be under a law suit brought out by ViaCom to the tune of a few billion dollars.
More to come soon.
For the first thing let me apologize for not posting earlier but again I have been under attack by my immune system. Arthritis, rosacea and and my fibromyalgia have ganged up on me and attacked me all at once. It can be a tough “row to hoe” and I would not wish these medical problems on my worst enemy much less on any one else. That alone is enough to pretty much take me out yet. Adding to my feeling so bad was the fact that I had to take care of our eBay business. Helping to thrive and drive was my sister-in-law Sharon. Now she has left me and I am doing her part as well as mine and it is much more difficult. Time consuming as well. I know my wife and daughter promised to take up her part but so far I have not seen any help other than the few minutes my brother helped me while shipping. It is a big push from eBay as the coming Christmas gift buying is in full swing. Plus anything that sells and ships for free with expedited shipping will be eligible for a 20% discount. That means a huge deal for us sellers that are “Top Rated Sellers” will get an additional 20% discount totaling for an over all 40% discount. Being as most of my shipping is free to the customer. First Class qualifies as expedited shipping. So for most of my listings will see the final value fee reduction. That will be a boon to us as we ship in one day and we ship for free.
As per normal with me nowadays I am once again posting something late. This is still as important today as it was 4 days ago. November 11th is Veterans in the United States. Some may still call it by the name it once has as Armistice Day. That was when the guns fell silent in the war to end all wars, WW I. The agreement lasted a little over two decades and once more the world was at war again. That is all in the past and we need to remember the past. I was reading the Freedom Alert that my Senator, Jim DeMint uses as the title of all his emails to me. I intentionally left out the honorable part ’cause I am not so certain he is that honorable. The way I look at it pretty much all politicians are out to grab all they can and not worry about what will happen after we are dead and gone. The VHP a project of the Library Of Congress’s American Folklore Center. We are losing approximately one thousand vets a day. Once they have passed there is no way to get their side of the story.
But I transgress. What I want to do is try and get everyone involved in the Veterans History Project. You can visit the Library of Congress and download the VHP field kit. Visit their home page and in the upper right there is a search box and you can simply type Veterans History Project. Your results should right on top. Visit the appropriate link then download the ebook that explains what they need and can use. There is an address inside of the papers that gives you the physical location to forward all of the information you have gotten. We need top remember the past and the sacrifices that they made so that we can live our life without the fear that could have happened if not for their bravery. I say thank you to all our veterans and try to speak to each and everyone that I see wearing caps and colors from their units and branch of our military. Try it. Next time you see one our vets proudly (and rightfully so) displaying what branch of the military their were in or a unit patch. I try speaking to each and every vet that I see and express my gratitude for their sacrifices and heroism all for us back at home. I am proud to say I am a veteran as was my father one brother and my sister also served. Us children were too young to go to war in Vietnam and I tried but they found my lie about my age. The next time you see a vet, young or old you should look them in the eyes and tell them “Thank You” for everything you did for us at home. I feel blessed knowing our family had so many vets. I feel lucky to have gotten to talk to WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam vets. I felt I was in the presence of heroes every time we would go to the VA medical center in Asheville NC. I listened to many tales, but one really stands out in my memories. I was joking around with a elderly black man in the visitors area when grandpa was a patient. I told him he looked a little too old to be from WWII and asked him if he was a WWI vet to which he told me he was not a WWI vet. He told me he served in the Spanish American war. This excited me as I had never spoke to a vet that old. I was very surprised as that meant he was nearly a hundred years old. After he told when and where he served I was really excited. So I asked him did he charge up the hill with Teddy Roosevelt. That is when he told me that they only let him take care of the mules. It brought that ugly “race issue” to the front. We never talked about that but I later learned about the race card as they would not let a black man and a white man serve together. He did have an extremely important job but it was such a shame that he could not charge the hill and serve with the other men. Either man could actually get killed doing his duty but they had to segregate the races even on the battlefield where all men were equally killed.
I am glad to report that race no longer plays as a reason for rank, pay grade or units. That is the way it should be. No man is better than another simply because the color of their skin is different.
I once again am slow to get back to my blog to post and I try to show reasons why but even with the problems we have been having I still should be more regular in my posting. A big whoop de do over nothing in my opinion has caused a rift in the family. My sister in law and her two grandchildren were living with us as one family up until just two weeks ago. Now They have moved in with her daughter the mother of the two children and it looks as if things will never be the same any more. I know our eBay business will suffer some as she was unrivaled in her ability to find awesome deals for us to purchase and then resell on eBay. We will carry on and go on without her and the kids but it seems so quiet here without them.
On the eBay front sales are sporadic but still moving forward towards Christmas. I need to make a few changes to what we have listed and make sure everyone knows that express mail is an option if they want to pay the high shipping fees. I have also been looking for a Christmas countdown clock that is up to date so I can insert it into my HTML if they will still let me use one. I have done it before but a lot of water has gone over the dam since then. Every season they make changes so we have to stay on top of things if we want to sell and make a good profit. We are pretty much like regular department stores in that we get into the black during Christmas season. Everything all year long goes mostly back into purchasing more stock to have for this time of the year. I need to get moving again and list some more items for sale as we have some very nice Game Boy Advance SP’s that are nearly impossible to find in like new condition like some of these are. As a matter of fact a few are actually new but they were opened and inspected before being put up making them impossible to list as new but “New Other” is an option. If anyone knows of a good countdown clock that I can use for free please drop me a note. Best wishes for all.
Unless you have been sleeping under a rock then you surely know that next year is an election year. Next year we decide upon who will be President the following four years. Ron Paul one of the front runners is planning to abolish the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Interior and Education. This in itself is pretty radical and would affect nearly every American and most for the bad. Now even worse Republicans are advocating eliminating the EPA. Earlier this year former House Speaker Newt Gingrich became the first high-profile conservative to champion one of the most extreme environmental positions in recent memory: total elimination of the EPA. I personally feel that this position is ludicrous. I think the upcoming elections need to be watched closely. These programs that they want to eliminate protect all of us and our country for not only us but our grandchildren and their grandchildren. Some help us gain ownership of homes. There is oversight of our roads and airways, protection of public lands, energy planning for our future,Commerce and education. Somethings they say sound good but you need to listen to everything. loss of all of these would be bad for the country and only help those who wish to rape and pillage our country for themselves and to hell with the future. I hope you are able to see through their facade and see them for what they really are.
It has some several days since I last posted and There are numerous reasons for this. Either I am in the middle of a flare or something much much worse. We buried my nephew this week. Of all my nephews both on my wife’s side and my side he was my favorite all through his shortened life. He was a victim of capitalism. He had a steady job at a sawmill when he had a life changing accident. The machine he was running threw a 2×4 piece of lumber towards him and impaled him. He almost died then before they could airlift him to the hospital. After multiple surgeries and the loss of a good portion of his intestines and stomach he was finally released from the hospital to waste away his remaining days living off of intravenous feedings and vomiting every thing he tried to eat and when he ran out of food to throw up he still continued to vomit. He held on for a little over two years until he lost the fight last week. I was there while the paramedics were doing their best to revive him but it was too late and the Lord took him home to suffer no more.
One would think that an accident like that would force a change in the machinery and install some sort of guard to protect the operator if it happened again and happened again is exactly what it did. O.S.H.A. forced them to shut down two days and then allowed them to open right back up with no new safety updates. I personally know of two more incidents of the same machine doing the same thing to two more men at separate times. Each time O.S.H.A. would shut them down a day or two and then allow them to open right back up with no new safety requirements in place. Not only was a government agency negligent in their protection of workers but the owners were so greedy that they would not spend a dime to protect whomever was unfortunate enough to be running that machine. A case of capitalistic greed plain and simple.
Now those of us who loved him are left wondering why. His poor wife and three small children left to grow up without a father and her without a husband. And for what? Capitalistic greed is all. I am neither a socialist nor a communist but still feel there are some better options than to let capitalism run the show as they are doing now. His death is small by comparison to what is done in the name of profits. Rape of our mother earth goes on everyday and so few stand up to say anything. Enslaving the populace goes on everyday in the name of capitalism. I do not know the complete answer to fix this but somehow we need to find a way to progress and keep our communities thriving but at what cost are we willing to pay?
Tomorrow is a big day for our family. My daughter in law is going to address congress in hearings about the need for funding for rheumatoid arthritis, all manner of auto immune diseases and health care in general. This is a very big honor and I am very proud of her. I would love to be able to go myself and just watch from the gallery but I can’t do that so maybe I can get her to guest author a post or two detailing it and her feelings on the state of our government and health care issues where we tend to agree on a large portion of things. She is quite intelligent and I am sure she will make a good showing with them. I only hope that they will actually listen and make changes for the good of all citizens instead of just making corporations happy.