Sunday, September 29, 2013

You can't fix stupid

My friend Jazz Shaw over at HotAir asked the question yesterday, how can anyone who does not live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no connection to the outside world without even having a clue as to what Orwellian named "Affordable Healthcare Act" aka ObamaCare is about.  The CNN video clip he posted is telling as to just how clueless some people are.  They can tell you what Honey Boo Boo did last week but not have a clue as to what even happened up the street from them.

Well Jazz, we have plenty of these people here.  A local radio program asked random people in downtown Memphis how ObamaCare is going to affect them.  The answers ranged from, "I can't wait to get my free health care", "Can I get this all put on my EBT card and can I use it in a supermarket?",  and "Where do I go so sign up for this?  My girlfriend is about to pop a baby next week". 

The bottom line is you can't fix stupid, as Ron White so aptly pointed out several years ago.  We have a lot of them, and they do vote, once someone takes them to a polling place and tells them how to vote.

I don't know how to fix this.  Education might help, so long as they are not taught by teachers from the Memphis and Shelby County Public Schools.  We have tenured teachers who are functionally illiterate and can barely speak proper English training kids to be nothing more than government dependent serfs, who between recharging their EBT cards are out gang banging, or knocking up their harem of girlfriends.

These are not people watching the news, they watch Dancing with the Stars, and whatever Tyler Perry is churning out these days.

I'm writing this out of frustration, half asleep and pissed off that the stupid people of the US have so much power to elect equally stupid people or worse.

*Sigh*


Monday, September 16, 2013

What ObamaCare means to me

I'm a 56 year old man, I have multiple sclerosis and my overall health is not the best.  I spend 5 days in the hospital last month and even with insurance it is going to cost me, out of pocket, over $7000.

My insurance company decided to drop me after that illness, effective Oct. 15, the exact same day that ObamaCare exchanges become available.  Very convenient for them.  It seem a lot of private insurance companies have decided that this whole insurance racket is better suited to be run by government bureaucrats and let the federal government take the hit when people get sick.  So here I am looking for medical insurance.  Nobody wants to offer me coverage. NOBODY.  ObamaCare is where I'm going to get stuck.  I lose my doctor, lose my insurance, and get stuck under a plan administered by faceless government employees who got jobs because of political patronage that do not give a damn about anything but their next raise.

Barack Obama lies that if you like your doctor you can can keep your doctor.  He also lied that if you like your insurance plan you can keep it.  I'm losing both. 

What I know now is my insurance premiums double for me under the Orwellian named "Affordable Healthcare Act" , my primary health care physician won't deal with ObamaCare and is approaching retirement.  My neurologist who has been treating my MS for years now is moving back to India, because he hates all the new regulations, and says he can still make a living there without a lot of government interference.

I'm just venting here, but I am not the only one stuck in the wonderful new world of socialized medicine.  Congress is inept, they can't pass a budget let alone defunding this medical nightmare.  Young people are going to suffer far more than I will from this.  They are going to pay the bill for ObamaCare for decades to come.  Fortunately I'm not poor and can pay to get decent health care, but we as a nation will suffer the fate of the UK and Canada.  There is a large medical center in Plattsburgh, NY for nothing.  It's a small town just an hour away from Montreal.  It's full of Quebecois who can afford to pay cash.

In the end, this how we are going to get medical care in the US.  Either pay up cash up front at medical centers in places like Singapore or Thailand, or wither and die on an ObamaCare exchange.


Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Have you ever met an astronaut?

Have you ever met an astronaut?  I've met a few in my career, mostly from the Shuttle.  But one encounter was more interesting and gave me some insight into the early, glory days of the Mercury astronauts.

I really did not like "The Right Stuff" movie for a lot of reasons, not the least the treatment it gave Gus Grissom.  It portrayed his as a coward, and a bit of a dolt.  He was neither, and he was slated to be the first man to pilot a moon landing by Deke Slayton before he was killed in the awful Apollo 1 fire, that killed the whole crew during a test on the launching pad.

I did have the opportunity to meet Gordon Cooper on a plane flight about 10 years.  He and his wife were sitting across the isle from me on a flight I was lucky enough to get bumped up to first class.  I recognized him, but he looked old and frail and his wife helped him to his seat.  I was hesitant to approach, because I'm not an in your face type of guy first of all, and didn't want to get kicked back to the back of the plane between 2 fat ass women in row 36E, so I quietly sad hello.   He smiled, said hello back, and then I got up the courage to ask him if he was Gordon Cooper.  Well, he got this big shit eating grin on his face and told me that I was addressing the one and only.  The old ego never went away, and he still liked to talk.

He told me that he really didn't like all these dramatizations and documentaries that really don't get what was happening in the space program, all the politics, internal and external to NASA, and how he got railroaded out of the program because of personality conflicts with Deke Slayton.

Cooper may have been old, but he had a good mind, and wasn't shy about giving me a piece of it.  After we had a few drinks together, and his wife scowling at both of us, he went to the restroom, and I asked Mrs. Cooper if I was causing a problem or a distraction.  Her answer was basically, no but don't get him too excited.  He likes to talk, but he had a weak heart.

I tried to tone things down when when Col. Cooper returned, but he wanted to talk.  Apparently not many people recognized him, and he liked talking about his experiences, and we talked for another hour.  He was an interesting guy, was a real pioneer, both as a hot shit test pilot and a gutsy astronaut who flew a not too well tested spacecraft and lived to tell of it.  Guys like this advanced American technology and allowed us to get to the moon, before the deadline that JFK gave them.

We can no longer put people in space, and have to rely on the Russians, who are not our friends, to get to the space station.  We no longer have a space program that has goals, deadlines and objectives to either go back to the moon and establish something bigger, or do an interplanetary mission.  NASA is now more about Muslim outreach, and just maintaining what we have up there.  Gordon Cooper is turning over in his grave.