I suffered a severe stroke back in April while visiting my parents in upstate PA. It was a god thing that I had the stroke at their home instead of by my place in Memphis. I was quickly rushed to the hostel. If I was alone, I surely have died that night. For the next month I was in and out of a coma. Fortunately I had good doctors who helped me get better. Still I'm not fully recovered, although I have regained my speech for the most part. I still have trouble remembering short term and partly lost some use of my right hand.
I'm convinced that the prayers and thought of family and friends helped me rover as much as I have.so far. I truly appreciate all the physical and spirit help.
I am back for the most part and I'm going to het back to writing my blog and chat rooms.
I truly believe that God allowed me a second chance at life on this Earth.
Updated: Well I've had another minor stroke I spent 3 days in an over crowded hospital.after a minor stroke. I left there worse off after leaving. Spending 22 hours a day in bed didn't help. at least it was during the day. I still am not up to full stock and have lost some speak. This is very difficult for me. I'm home now. Please keep me in your prayers.
Thanks!
Keith
Friday, July 11, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Safety Tip: Don't ever drink tap water on an airplane
I saw a tweet on twitter tonight that really got my attention. Katie Pavlich from Townhall.com posted a photo of a bottle of water that she filled on an airplane in filled from the spicket in the lavatory on the plane thinking it was drinkable. Really Katie? I know you are young, but you travel. Here's a safety tip to those who travel. That water is NEVER safe. First the water tank, although on US carriers is cleaned regularly doesn't mean after every flight, and the source of the water is always unknown and the tanks are not sterilized. That flight you just took to from DCA to LGA may have had last been serviced for water in Guatemala. Don't drink it.. If you need clean water on an airplane get bottled water from a flight attendant. Colera and typhoid are still common in places just a few hours by 737 from ATL or DFW.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Help still needed
I'm still trying to help with the aftermath of super typhoon Hayian (Yolanda in the Philippines), but since the media abandoned the place once the sizzle for their network dried up, the donations and help have to. This was a storm that made Katrina look like a thunderstorm and throughout the central Visayas west of Leyte and ground zero in Tacloban they are still trying to recover.
This is a place that still needs a lot of help. Of course most of the international relief organizations are still there in some form, but not so much. My go to guys there are still the Salvation Army. Once all the governmental orgs leave, thery are there and so are Catholic Charities .... to a point. Still it not governments who bail out people who lost everything, it is us, we have to step up to the plate and help out. Do you want the same people who blame Israel for all problems in the Arab world, or Americans for causing nonexistant global climate change running a relief organization?
I'm only asking a simple thing, donate what you can to to a charity that can help. The Salvation Army is my first choice. But what ever yours is, please give generously.
Thanks!
Keith
This is a place that still needs a lot of help. Of course most of the international relief organizations are still there in some form, but not so much. My go to guys there are still the Salvation Army. Once all the governmental orgs leave, thery are there and so are Catholic Charities .... to a point. Still it not governments who bail out people who lost everything, it is us, we have to step up to the plate and help out. Do you want the same people who blame Israel for all problems in the Arab world, or Americans for causing nonexistant global climate change running a relief organization?
I'm only asking a simple thing, donate what you can to to a charity that can help. The Salvation Army is my first choice. But what ever yours is, please give generously.
Thanks!
Keith
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Dealing with Multiple Sclerosis and ObamaCare
I'm having yet another sleepless night, and my legs are twitching a lot. Getting out of bed, reading, having a green tea are not helping much.
I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis just a few years ago, but I'm 57 years old, this usually has early symptoms at much younger ages, so apparently when I was stumbling around during my mispent younger days, it may not have always been the beer talking to me.
Well, some of the treatments really do help me, some don't, and most are expensive and even with insurance, which has gone up astronomically under the Orwellian named "Affordable Care Act" better known as ObamaCare, some of my costs for these treatments are ow getting out of my price range. I've been informed under the new policy that takes effect on April 1, the most effective ones will no longer be covered by any of my insurance plans. I'm not a millionaire by any means, but have saved a bit of money, but not enough to pay for these treatments, so I guess it sucks to be me right now.
I'm not whining here, but I'm not alone with these expense issues. Now that the federal government owns the health care industry, they own our lives, and as Barack Obama once said to a man who had an elderly mother who needed heart surgery, "can't she just take a pill?" says everything we need to know about government run medicine.
Welcome to the DMV of medical treatment. We are all screwed.
As for me, I'm hobbling around with a walker tonight, something I hate using, and I know this will only get worse. MS won't kill you, but it does cripple a lot of people a lot younger than me. The beautiful Mousketeer and actress Annette Funachello suffered with it all her adult life, so I am grateful to only putting up with this in the later third of my expected lifespan.
I'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life right now, before I get too crippled up to do something about it. Moving to my property and building a home in the Philippines is very attractive now. I'll have to buy expensive helath and evacuation insurance, but pricing it out right now, it'll be cheaper than when my next ObamaCare increase shows up early next year, and I'll be able to live without all the intrusive regulations, taxes, and bureaucrats I have here. We'll see how this plays out, but it is an attractive option.
Ok rant over. I'm going to try to get some sleep.
Who wants cake?
I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis just a few years ago, but I'm 57 years old, this usually has early symptoms at much younger ages, so apparently when I was stumbling around during my mispent younger days, it may not have always been the beer talking to me.
Well, some of the treatments really do help me, some don't, and most are expensive and even with insurance, which has gone up astronomically under the Orwellian named "Affordable Care Act" better known as ObamaCare, some of my costs for these treatments are ow getting out of my price range. I've been informed under the new policy that takes effect on April 1, the most effective ones will no longer be covered by any of my insurance plans. I'm not a millionaire by any means, but have saved a bit of money, but not enough to pay for these treatments, so I guess it sucks to be me right now.
I'm not whining here, but I'm not alone with these expense issues. Now that the federal government owns the health care industry, they own our lives, and as Barack Obama once said to a man who had an elderly mother who needed heart surgery, "can't she just take a pill?" says everything we need to know about government run medicine.
Welcome to the DMV of medical treatment. We are all screwed.
As for me, I'm hobbling around with a walker tonight, something I hate using, and I know this will only get worse. MS won't kill you, but it does cripple a lot of people a lot younger than me. The beautiful Mousketeer and actress Annette Funachello suffered with it all her adult life, so I am grateful to only putting up with this in the later third of my expected lifespan.
I'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life right now, before I get too crippled up to do something about it. Moving to my property and building a home in the Philippines is very attractive now. I'll have to buy expensive helath and evacuation insurance, but pricing it out right now, it'll be cheaper than when my next ObamaCare increase shows up early next year, and I'll be able to live without all the intrusive regulations, taxes, and bureaucrats I have here. We'll see how this plays out, but it is an attractive option.
Ok rant over. I'm going to try to get some sleep.
Who wants cake?
Sunday, March 23, 2014
What Kind of Person Represents You?
I was out with some friends, some of them who look down at the average auto mechanic, HVAC technician or plumber as not being as "smart as them" because they have advanced degrees from anything from law to underwater basket weaving. But still they have masters degrees in something, and that dummy who is fixing their furnace is your inferior. It's a bit of a strange world we live in these days when your masters of arts degrees in prepubecient transexual studies trumps a HVAC guy who can actually produce something than well...who knows what the other guy can do.
We have a very bad habit as a nation to consistantly elevate Ivy League graduates to almost a cult status, and revere them as the people who know how to "fix" this country. It hasn't worked out that well, has it. The Clintons are the "smartest people in the world". Barack Obama, who is supposedly a constitutional scholar from Columbia, maybe is, because he knows how to trample all over it, but maybe he was saying constitutional scholar from Colombia. We don't know, because his records are sealed, is the "most transparent administration EVAH!!!!!!"
So, here we are in an election year, not to elect a new president, but a new congress. Who do you want to represent you in DC, which seems to consolidate more power over the states daily. Does a Harvard or Yale lawyer represent me? No, not at all.
I'm a reasonably educated guy with a BSEE degree from a state university, and about 40 years of experience working in various jobs and industries afterwards. I've never been active in politics, or a community agitator, but I like to think I helped our country and the businesses I worked with.
My Grandparents were not Ivy League, or necessarly the best educated, but my dad's father, who grew up a poor farmer who had a drunk for a dad and built up a very successful business as a building contractor, and my mom's dad who helped his family survive the great depression by working wherever he could, and was a master electrician and machinist made their lives work, and kept their families together without "our betters" taking care of them.
So, the question is why is "WHY DO WE NEED IVY LEAGUE LIBERALS" to help us poor pleebs live our lives. Think about this before you vote next time. Rodney Dangerfield put it best. Academia is not the answer. They are why we fail whenever they get into power
Corrections: Fixed a few typos. Thanks to my editor @tamij for noticing.
We have a very bad habit as a nation to consistantly elevate Ivy League graduates to almost a cult status, and revere them as the people who know how to "fix" this country. It hasn't worked out that well, has it. The Clintons are the "smartest people in the world". Barack Obama, who is supposedly a constitutional scholar from Columbia, maybe is, because he knows how to trample all over it, but maybe he was saying constitutional scholar from Colombia. We don't know, because his records are sealed, is the "most transparent administration EVAH!!!!!!"
So, here we are in an election year, not to elect a new president, but a new congress. Who do you want to represent you in DC, which seems to consolidate more power over the states daily. Does a Harvard or Yale lawyer represent me? No, not at all.
I'm a reasonably educated guy with a BSEE degree from a state university, and about 40 years of experience working in various jobs and industries afterwards. I've never been active in politics, or a community agitator, but I like to think I helped our country and the businesses I worked with.
My Grandparents were not Ivy League, or necessarly the best educated, but my dad's father, who grew up a poor farmer who had a drunk for a dad and built up a very successful business as a building contractor, and my mom's dad who helped his family survive the great depression by working wherever he could, and was a master electrician and machinist made their lives work, and kept their families together without "our betters" taking care of them.
So, the question is why is "WHY DO WE NEED IVY LEAGUE LIBERALS" to help us poor pleebs live our lives. Think about this before you vote next time. Rodney Dangerfield put it best. Academia is not the answer. They are why we fail whenever they get into power
Corrections: Fixed a few typos. Thanks to my editor @tamij for noticing.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Disappearance
the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 in itself is a very disturbing event, but not knowing what happened to the plane even more so. It has been mising for several days now and there is no sign of an aircraft or a wreckage. This is unusual, but not unheard of, especially when the plane was not under radar contact from ground air traffic control. The airplane was also not equiped with satellite communications data uplink (SATCOM), something more and more airlines are installing, on long range planes that travel vast distances between ground controllers. SATCOM allows messages, and aircraft performance data to be communicated to ground stations, either airline operations and maintenence or air traffic controllers. MH370 had to rely on HF radio to communcate with controllers and the last communication was with Subang Malaysia ATC, however at the time of disappearance they were nominally under Vietnamese ATC control.
What we do know is the last known position was over the South China Sea off the coast of Vietnam at 35,000 feet altitude. Vietnamese military controllers may have seen the aircraft attempting to turn back toward land, but this is not verified. There are issues with 2 passengers who may have been flying on stolen passports, which is disturbing, but I'd be hesitant to read too much in to this at this time. The captain had well over 17,000 pilot in command hours flying and had been with MAS for years. I don't know much about the first officer, except he was a very junior B-777 F/O.
The 24 hour media has been bombarding us with a lot of "experts" giving their "woulda, coulda, shoulda" analysis, and I'd advise to either ignore it or take it with a grain of salt. We do not know what happened to the plane. If for some reason the plane was either bombed, or came apart due to an explosive decompression, the debris field may be hard to find, as a lot of parts on a modern airplane would simply disintegrate. Also if for whatever reason the plane nosedived into the sea, there might be a very small debris field.
The Air India plane that was bombed over the north Atlantic back in the 90 was never recovered, and it took years to find and retrieve the flight data and voice recorder from the Air France plane that went down off the coast of Brazil. This is something to keep in mind when everyone wants everything to be solved in a 2 hour episode of 'Without A Trace".
At the request of all parties involved the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been called in to the investigation. Having worked with them, I know that they are very good, methodical forensic analysists. They do not jump to conclusions quickly, and even in a fairly straight forward accident like the Asiana crash at San Francisco, which was undoubtably caused by pilot error, the final reports has yet to be released.
Finding this airplane may take a lot longer than the drive-by media is interested in and will soon move on to talking about lane closures on New Jersey roads, or some such nonsense that fits the 24 hour news channels' standard operating procedure.
I'll keep you updated here as more info is known.
UPDATE 1: There are now reports from the Malaysian Airforce that they tracked the airplane after it turned 90 degrees off it's flight path across the Malay Penninsula and over the Malacca Strait. They apparantly had radar contact briefly there, but the plane was as a much lower altitude. The aircraft then disappeared. This revelation begs to question, why did it take so long for the Malaysian military to acknowledge this info, while the search and recovery teams were wasting time searching the South China Sea? Obviously the MAF had this info from day 1 of the disappearance.
Both of he transponders had been turned off, What caused that? The only way to tor off power to the transponder is pull the appropriate circuit breaker in the cockpit. If a hijacking had been taking place, the pilots, with a flick of a switch could have sqwaked 7500 on the transponder indicating a hijacking in progress.
Was the cockpit door closed and locked? Apparently Malaysia Airlines has pretty lax security in that respect, as they often fly with the door open during flight. I have witnessed this personally when flying on them a few years ago.
There are still many more questions than answers. Again I'm hesitant to speculate as to why this airplane went missing. A hijacking or possible pilot suicide are among the possibilities, but until the aircraft is located, there is no way of telling, and the talking heads know exactly what I do, not enough to make an educated guess.
More as new data comes in.
UPDATE 2: The Malaysian military and civil aviation authorities have proven themselves as inept and ill prepared for an aircraft disappearance like this, and the Chinese government is understandably losing patience with them. Today a Chinese (spy?) satellite detected what might be debris from a crashed airplane and the Malaysian Air Force is sending aircraft to investigate it. Again, not reading too much in to this, the airplane had 8+ hours of fuel aboard, so this aircraft could be almost anywhere in Asia. I'm still not convinced that the plane crashed. I am still wondering why many of the passengers' cell phones are still ringing. Most of these were on the Chinese QQ network, and I would think that by now, those who were calling those phones would be getting a "subscriber can not be reached" message if the phone was under 600 feet of water.
The talking heads are all going through the woulda, coulda, shoulda pseudo-analysis on the various news channels, but an act of air piracy or hijacking is not out of the question. There are plenty of places to land an airplane in the often very remote regions of south and southeast Asia. Just a thought, but at least I'm not assuming all are dead and at the bottom of the ocean.
More as info comes in.
UPDATE 3: There has been a lot of chatter on the internet and on the network news about a Wall Street Journal article mentioning that engine data recorded aborad the aircraft and sent to Boeing and engine manufacturer Rolls Royce indicated that the airplane flew for 4 hours after loss of radar contact. My friend Ed Morrissey at Hot Air picked up on this along with the Malaysian authorities rebutal of this claim.
I'm skeptical that either Boeing or Rolls Royce has such info. First Malaysia Airlines did not buy the option that allows ACARS data to be automatically transmitted to the manufacturers. Second, the airplane was not equipped with SATCOM, which allows voice and data communication pretty much anywhere in the world. SATCOM is an expensive option and many airlines do not choose to install it. They rely on a VHF data link, which is strictly line-of-sight reception. Now at 35,000 feet, line of sight is a long distance (up to 150 miles), but the aircraft would have had to be within that distance of a designated VHF data receiver, and there are not that many in the part of the world where the airplane was flying.
Did somehow Boeing and RR get this data? They are not saying at this point, but the WSJ did some shoddy journalism by suggesting that these companies had the data, when even MAS is saying they don't have that data.
So the question remains, what happened to the plane? I don't know, and neither do the talking heads. There have been disappearances of aircraft ofver the years that were never resolved. Most recently, back in the 1970's a Boeing 727 disappeared near Iceland and was never recovered. Hopefully with the large scale international effort to find this airplane, it will be found. In the mean time, be skeptical of "reporting". The media has a very bad history of getting the story wrong time and time again.
UPDATE 4: Well here we are a week after the disappearance of the plane and all the over the top coverage of this, with all its talking heads hasn't found it. Well, they know about as much as me. NOTHING. India and Pakistan are no longer saying anything, and the US which has a significant naval air station on the tropical paradise island (not) of Diego Garcia has said nothing. What's not being said is as important or more than whats being said. Has this plane been tracked to a refuge for terrorists? Who the hell knows, I don't and neither does CNN. What's telling to me is that the chatter from countries in the region where the plane was supposedly tracked have been deadly silent. Diego Garcia is a major listening post for American intelligence in the region, and they don't usually talk about what they are seeing. India and Pakistan also monitor the region very closely.
I really have nothing to add other than stop watching and listening to all the talking heads spout off theories that might get ratings, but produce no information.
Stay tuned for more. This is far from over.
UPDATE 5: Everything you know I know by now. And CNN has denegrated into tragedy porn as far as I'm concerned. Shoving a microphone in a family's face ans asking "how does it feel not knowing what has happened to a loved one?" is disgraceful.
Also media is also keeps telling us that the area of investigation is off the coast of Australia. Technically they are right, but 1800 miles off the coast of a continent is not :off the coast". The analysts who have satellite images as well as aircraft in the area spotted stuff in the southern Indian Ocean. This is not 24/7 news, there are garbage patches through out the oceans.
Dear CNN, get back to news and quit this horrible death Kabuki you are playing out. How about reporting on the gun control advocate cum gun runner Leland Yee? Nothing there yet, eh?
Bottom line, this is an airplane that has been lost, and we don't really don't know where. It's a sad story, but there are better things to report on than this. When/if something shows up, it'll be news.
I've got nothing more to say here, other than I'm disgusted by the 24/7 ratings war over this tragedy.
And the beat goes on.
Monday, March 3, 2014
How well will western sanctions work with Putin's Russia?
So, how is that "reset Button" working out? Putin has 16,000 (as an estimation) troops on the ground in Crimea, and is threatening all of Ukraine. President Obama and Sec. of State Kerry issue strongly worded statements and Putin farts in their general direction.
This is not looking for the west. NATO has proven to be pretty much a debating society, and there will never be any action by the UN so long as China and Russia have veto power in the Security Council.
Lets be clear here, the US and the Europeans are not going to go to war over Crimea or all of Ukraine for that matter, Putin learned his lession in Georgia that he can get away with land grabs. Sanctions are an option, freezing bank accounts in the EU and USA are certainly possible, but Russia stores their wealth in Cyprus, the new Switzerland for money laundering.
So how about a little hypothetical situation here. The west imposes tough economic and military sanctions on Russia. Putin, like all dictators loves to play tit-for-tat. Now that Obama killed the menned space program, the country that once put men on the moon can't even put astronauts in low Earth orbit. We rely on "our friends" the Russians to use their antiquated Soviet era Soyuz space craft to get Americans and Europeans to the International Space Station. Russia can easily unilaterality decide to no longer transport our people to/from the space station, possibly stranding our people there. Would he dare to do such a thing? You betcha in a Moscow minute if it served his interests.
Here's just another unintended consequence of a president who is more interested about redistrubuting the wealth than further advancing science and technology. NASA is a shell of what it was, and "our friends" the Chinese are working on lunar missions, and not necessarily for the good of mankind.
But fighting Global Warming is far more important to President Obama than engaging in a very dangerous world and promoting our interests at home and abroad, and by abroad, that includes in outer space.
This is not looking for the west. NATO has proven to be pretty much a debating society, and there will never be any action by the UN so long as China and Russia have veto power in the Security Council.
Lets be clear here, the US and the Europeans are not going to go to war over Crimea or all of Ukraine for that matter, Putin learned his lession in Georgia that he can get away with land grabs. Sanctions are an option, freezing bank accounts in the EU and USA are certainly possible, but Russia stores their wealth in Cyprus, the new Switzerland for money laundering.
So how about a little hypothetical situation here. The west imposes tough economic and military sanctions on Russia. Putin, like all dictators loves to play tit-for-tat. Now that Obama killed the menned space program, the country that once put men on the moon can't even put astronauts in low Earth orbit. We rely on "our friends" the Russians to use their antiquated Soviet era Soyuz space craft to get Americans and Europeans to the International Space Station. Russia can easily unilaterality decide to no longer transport our people to/from the space station, possibly stranding our people there. Would he dare to do such a thing? You betcha in a Moscow minute if it served his interests.
Here's just another unintended consequence of a president who is more interested about redistrubuting the wealth than further advancing science and technology. NASA is a shell of what it was, and "our friends" the Chinese are working on lunar missions, and not necessarily for the good of mankind.
But fighting Global Warming is far more important to President Obama than engaging in a very dangerous world and promoting our interests at home and abroad, and by abroad, that includes in outer space.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Weakness at home, Impotence Abroad
When President Obama assumed power after an overwhelming victory in 2009, he made his apology tours, Cairo speech blaming The United States for all the evils in the middle east, sent Sec. of State Hillary Clinton to Moscow to present a Oversize Reset button in the hopes that "leading from behind" would make the worls live us him.
Things didn't work out according to the plan of using Smart Power, now did it?
Overthrowing a friendly dictator, but friendly to US dictators in Tunisia and Egypt led to Islamists seizing control through one man, one vote, one time elections. Tunisia's Islamist government policies have emptied out their previously very popular beach resorts, due to prohabition of alcohol, and strict dress coads and separation of sexes on beaches. Egypt is a basket case, tourists are gone, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to force Sharia Law down peoples' throats and the tolerant people of Egypt were not having any of that. Of course Obama sided with the wrong people, the Brotherhood. The military stepped in, and the formerly stable Egypt is on the brink of a civil war. The intervention in Libya to overthrow Kadafy made no sense then and makes no sense now. He has not been a threat to US national secutiry for years. We were left with a failed state where Al-Qaeda linked jihadists have been trying (almost successfully to neighboring Mali and Niger).
SMART POWER indeed.
In Europe Obama cancelled the military defense missle agreements with ou NATO Allies, the Czech Republic and Poland with nothing to show in return from the increasingly beligerant Vladimir Putin inThe Soviet Union Russia. But President Obama was being flexible.
Of course all our allies as well as advisaries and enemies see all this as a sign of weekness, as they should. Obama made a deal with Iran that relieved sanctions that allows them to keep the centrifuges running and refining bomb making nuclear material. And the band played on.
Is it any surprise that China has taken an aggressive stance towards Japan over some oil rich section of the East China Sea or all but declared the entire South China Sea as China's private lake, threatening Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and once again Taiwan (who China still considers a renegade province)?
North Korea keeps testing missles and developing more nuclear arms, and even with a large American force just across the 48th parallel, and a strong ROK army, who is to stop a mercurial dictator from deciding to make the ultimate test of Obama and decide to nuke Seoul followed by an invasion by a million man army who are nothing more than cannon fodder?
Yes indeed SMART POWER has certainly changed the way we do business with other countries.
Are people sleeping easy now in Tel Aviv, all of eastern Europe or the pacific rim?
Things didn't work out according to the plan of using Smart Power, now did it?
Overthrowing a friendly dictator, but friendly to US dictators in Tunisia and Egypt led to Islamists seizing control through one man, one vote, one time elections. Tunisia's Islamist government policies have emptied out their previously very popular beach resorts, due to prohabition of alcohol, and strict dress coads and separation of sexes on beaches. Egypt is a basket case, tourists are gone, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to force Sharia Law down peoples' throats and the tolerant people of Egypt were not having any of that. Of course Obama sided with the wrong people, the Brotherhood. The military stepped in, and the formerly stable Egypt is on the brink of a civil war. The intervention in Libya to overthrow Kadafy made no sense then and makes no sense now. He has not been a threat to US national secutiry for years. We were left with a failed state where Al-Qaeda linked jihadists have been trying (almost successfully to neighboring Mali and Niger).
SMART POWER indeed.
In Europe Obama cancelled the military defense missle agreements with ou NATO Allies, the Czech Republic and Poland with nothing to show in return from the increasingly beligerant Vladimir Putin in
Of course all our allies as well as advisaries and enemies see all this as a sign of weekness, as they should. Obama made a deal with Iran that relieved sanctions that allows them to keep the centrifuges running and refining bomb making nuclear material. And the band played on.
Is it any surprise that China has taken an aggressive stance towards Japan over some oil rich section of the East China Sea or all but declared the entire South China Sea as China's private lake, threatening Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and once again Taiwan (who China still considers a renegade province)?
North Korea keeps testing missles and developing more nuclear arms, and even with a large American force just across the 48th parallel, and a strong ROK army, who is to stop a mercurial dictator from deciding to make the ultimate test of Obama and decide to nuke Seoul followed by an invasion by a million man army who are nothing more than cannon fodder?
Yes indeed SMART POWER has certainly changed the way we do business with other countries.
Are people sleeping easy now in Tel Aviv, all of eastern Europe or the pacific rim?
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Fall of a Republic
2014 will determine a lot more for the United States than most think.
We have lost a lot of wars in my lifetime. The Vietnam war was won, and the Tet offensive was a disaster for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Vong (VC), yet Walter Cronkite declared it a disaster and huge loss for America that Lyndon Johnson turned it into a loss. Nixon made "peace with honor" and Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho got their Nobel Peace Prizes, just to have the NVA run over South Vietnam less than 2 years later.
We as a country lost our will to win a war at that time. Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" watched in horror as we lost a war that was already won. Korean Was is considered was a draw, but the Republic of Korea is one of the most prosperous countries in the world now, while just north of the 38th parallel they are still trying to figure out which rocks are edible.
We have become fat, lazy and self indulgent ad a country, and the hippies who opposed the Vietnam War are now in power and in the US congress. So, do we have a will to survive as a nation, or will we go the way of the Roman Empire.?
For many of us, who understood the threat of radical Islam going back before the Iranian hostage fiasco, the attack on our country on September 11, 2001 is not only a wake up call but a call to action against this evil bloodthirsty movement disguised as a religion. Not all Muslims are part of this movement, and Turkey seems to be ready to kick out the Islamists if the regime allows free elections this year. But radical Islam is at war with us, and all of the west, even though most don't realize it because they are not paying attention. War is here whether we like it or not, even though Obama lost Iraq and now Afghanistan. I'm not even going to talk about the Libyan fiasco or Syria now. This is about us as a country.
So where do we go from here? Can we survive as a country? These are serious questions, and I want serious answers.
We have a pacifist, complacent, self-indulgent population who wants more and more free stuff from the federal government that we can't afford. These people vote, and this is what they vote for. They don't look at future consequences or worry about how we are going to pay for all this "free stuff".
Furthermore, they do not see radical Islam as a threat. It is as though the American people hit the snooze alarm after the initial attacks by Al-Qaeda on 9-11-01. They just want to forget about it.
This is they way countries collapse. We are heading down that road. I don't see how we stop this road to perdition unless America wakes up and realizes that we are under attack, not from outside but from within. Illegal immigrants, and radical Islam is part of our problem to say the least, but we as a nation are just too busy worrying about who will perform on the next Super Bowl and if he will expose his junk to understand that we are becoming Rome in the time the fall of the Roman Empire.
So as Dennis Miller says, who wants pie?
We have lost a lot of wars in my lifetime. The Vietnam war was won, and the Tet offensive was a disaster for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Vong (VC), yet Walter Cronkite declared it a disaster and huge loss for America that Lyndon Johnson turned it into a loss. Nixon made "peace with honor" and Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho got their Nobel Peace Prizes, just to have the NVA run over South Vietnam less than 2 years later.
We as a country lost our will to win a war at that time. Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" watched in horror as we lost a war that was already won. Korean Was is considered was a draw, but the Republic of Korea is one of the most prosperous countries in the world now, while just north of the 38th parallel they are still trying to figure out which rocks are edible.
We have become fat, lazy and self indulgent ad a country, and the hippies who opposed the Vietnam War are now in power and in the US congress. So, do we have a will to survive as a nation, or will we go the way of the Roman Empire.?
For many of us, who understood the threat of radical Islam going back before the Iranian hostage fiasco, the attack on our country on September 11, 2001 is not only a wake up call but a call to action against this evil bloodthirsty movement disguised as a religion. Not all Muslims are part of this movement, and Turkey seems to be ready to kick out the Islamists if the regime allows free elections this year. But radical Islam is at war with us, and all of the west, even though most don't realize it because they are not paying attention. War is here whether we like it or not, even though Obama lost Iraq and now Afghanistan. I'm not even going to talk about the Libyan fiasco or Syria now. This is about us as a country.
So where do we go from here? Can we survive as a country? These are serious questions, and I want serious answers.
We have a pacifist, complacent, self-indulgent population who wants more and more free stuff from the federal government that we can't afford. These people vote, and this is what they vote for. They don't look at future consequences or worry about how we are going to pay for all this "free stuff".
Furthermore, they do not see radical Islam as a threat. It is as though the American people hit the snooze alarm after the initial attacks by Al-Qaeda on 9-11-01. They just want to forget about it.
This is they way countries collapse. We are heading down that road. I don't see how we stop this road to perdition unless America wakes up and realizes that we are under attack, not from outside but from within. Illegal immigrants, and radical Islam is part of our problem to say the least, but we as a nation are just too busy worrying about who will perform on the next Super Bowl and if he will expose his junk to understand that we are becoming Rome in the time the fall of the Roman Empire.
So as Dennis Miller says, who wants pie?
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Media Whores Abandoned the Philippines
American mainstream media seems to have a broadcasting policy of; "If it bleeds it leads". They hung around in Tacloban, the worst hit city in the Philippines from the Category 6+ typhoon, but never went much beyond ground zero. After a week, ratings waned and they came home after giving absolutely no help to people who really needed it. But I am sure they felt good flying back to the US on their first class fully reclining seats while drinking expensive wine and enjoying froie gras and lobster tails.
The problem is that once the media goes home the attention fades, but the tragedy does not. This is an ongoing tragedy, people are dying, and although basic things like water and rice are being delivered, people are living in squalid conditions, and this is diseases like typhoid are rampant now.
Media focused on ground zero in Tacloban, the whole islands of Leyte, Samar, Bohol, Cebu, Negros, and Panay, as well as smaller islands have serious damage, power and water loss by this in many cases has not been even addressed yet.
Once that the valiant NBC correspondent who was staying in a powered RV got done looking at people in Tacloban with a pitiful look, and got on his first class flight home, the donations dropped. The Philippine Red Cross (NOT the American Red Cross), and Salvation Army are distributing relief as much as they can and need your help.
The media may be gone because there is no sizzle there now, but this tragedy still looms, and people keep dying. They need our help.
Pray about this and consider about helping. I'm thinking of going on a missionary trip to do my part after the 1st of the year.
The problem is that once the media goes home the attention fades, but the tragedy does not. This is an ongoing tragedy, people are dying, and although basic things like water and rice are being delivered, people are living in squalid conditions, and this is diseases like typhoid are rampant now.
Media focused on ground zero in Tacloban, the whole islands of Leyte, Samar, Bohol, Cebu, Negros, and Panay, as well as smaller islands have serious damage, power and water loss by this in many cases has not been even addressed yet.
Once that the valiant NBC correspondent who was staying in a powered RV got done looking at people in Tacloban with a pitiful look, and got on his first class flight home, the donations dropped. The Philippine Red Cross (NOT the American Red Cross), and Salvation Army are distributing relief as much as they can and need your help.
The media may be gone because there is no sizzle there now, but this tragedy still looms, and people keep dying. They need our help.
Pray about this and consider about helping. I'm thinking of going on a missionary trip to do my part after the 1st of the year.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
My 2013 Thanksgiving Story
A lot of people have enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday surrounded by family. Since most of mine are either in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area or scattered throughout the US and Asia, we made a decision to just stay put this year and help others have a nice meal and get out of their homes and meet people.
I volunteered to work at a dinner sponsored by several churches and synagogues, and had an enormous amount of support from many of those EVVVVVIIIIL companies who donated money, food by the ton, delivery trucks, and volunteer employees to help in the kitchens.
We started planning this a couple months ago, raised money, got a lot of companies like Kroger, Costco, Sam's Club, Wal-Mart and some smaller merchants to donate food. We really had no idea how many people would show up. We planned on dinner from 11am to 6pm or until the food ran out. We were set up in the gym of the church to hold about 400 at a time.
After a while, we got requests from nursing homes and elderly assisted living homes for food to be delivered. We considered this, made plans and agreed. This thing just kept getting bigger. As of Wednesday we had enough food for 4000 dinners, although desert would probably run out early.
I got asked to show up at the church kitchen at 8am to deliver bulk quantities of prepared food for the various homes. I showed up around 7:45am to load up the box trucks loaned to us by an express delivery company based in Memphis, and people were already lined up outside in 15 degree temperatures for a dinner that wasn't going to open for hours. Some looked very poor, and this is in the burbs, not the inner city. We got the pastor to open the sanctuary and Sunday school rooms to get them out of the cold and they were offered coffee.
We went out and did out delivery runs, and they took almost 2 hours. By 10am, the church was full and the only place for them was in the gym, which had been set up for dinner.
We could see this turning into an ugly free-for-all once the serving lines were opened, so we passed out tickets that somone wisely brought along, starting from the people in the sanctuary and the Sunday school rooms. We told everyone we'd be serving by number and assured everyone that there was plenty of food, which their was. There was some grumbling, but this worked out with a few jerks who had to be special.
Finally everything was ready to be served to the first 400 people, invited them to the gym, and then my real work started. I was working on the food line dishing out food, and grabbing stuff from the kitchen to replace empty pans. We had a great taskmistress (that sounds kinky, but she is a 75 year old Jewish woman who runs big meals all the time). The rest was relatively easy, or at least methodical. I though there was no way we would use up all the food that had been donated or bought by 6pm, but it was all gone by 3:30pm and deserts were gone by 1pm.
Some people just wanted to come out and have a meal because they were alone, but some families who showed up were really poor, and this might have been the only meal they had all day. And this is in the suburbs, the affluent suburbs, not the inner city.
We are clearly becoming a much poorer nation with the high unemployment, people who have just given up hope on getting a real full time job, and the only change that they have gotten since 2008 has been the change in their pockets.
Although helping people have a nice Thanksgiving dinner is gratifying to me, the need to have something of this magnitude says a lot more about the direction where this country is going.
I volunteered to work at a dinner sponsored by several churches and synagogues, and had an enormous amount of support from many of those EVVVVVIIIIL companies who donated money, food by the ton, delivery trucks, and volunteer employees to help in the kitchens.
We started planning this a couple months ago, raised money, got a lot of companies like Kroger, Costco, Sam's Club, Wal-Mart and some smaller merchants to donate food. We really had no idea how many people would show up. We planned on dinner from 11am to 6pm or until the food ran out. We were set up in the gym of the church to hold about 400 at a time.
After a while, we got requests from nursing homes and elderly assisted living homes for food to be delivered. We considered this, made plans and agreed. This thing just kept getting bigger. As of Wednesday we had enough food for 4000 dinners, although desert would probably run out early.
I got asked to show up at the church kitchen at 8am to deliver bulk quantities of prepared food for the various homes. I showed up around 7:45am to load up the box trucks loaned to us by an express delivery company based in Memphis, and people were already lined up outside in 15 degree temperatures for a dinner that wasn't going to open for hours. Some looked very poor, and this is in the burbs, not the inner city. We got the pastor to open the sanctuary and Sunday school rooms to get them out of the cold and they were offered coffee.
We went out and did out delivery runs, and they took almost 2 hours. By 10am, the church was full and the only place for them was in the gym, which had been set up for dinner.
We could see this turning into an ugly free-for-all once the serving lines were opened, so we passed out tickets that somone wisely brought along, starting from the people in the sanctuary and the Sunday school rooms. We told everyone we'd be serving by number and assured everyone that there was plenty of food, which their was. There was some grumbling, but this worked out with a few jerks who had to be special.
Finally everything was ready to be served to the first 400 people, invited them to the gym, and then my real work started. I was working on the food line dishing out food, and grabbing stuff from the kitchen to replace empty pans. We had a great taskmistress (that sounds kinky, but she is a 75 year old Jewish woman who runs big meals all the time). The rest was relatively easy, or at least methodical. I though there was no way we would use up all the food that had been donated or bought by 6pm, but it was all gone by 3:30pm and deserts were gone by 1pm.
Some people just wanted to come out and have a meal because they were alone, but some families who showed up were really poor, and this might have been the only meal they had all day. And this is in the suburbs, the affluent suburbs, not the inner city.
We are clearly becoming a much poorer nation with the high unemployment, people who have just given up hope on getting a real full time job, and the only change that they have gotten since 2008 has been the change in their pockets.
Although helping people have a nice Thanksgiving dinner is gratifying to me, the need to have something of this magnitude says a lot more about the direction where this country is going.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Category 5+ hits the Philippines. They need our help now.
A category 5 typhoon is slamming in to the central Visayas in the Philippines as I write this. Samar and Leyte are getting the initial brunt, but this affects a far wider population. This is a poor place and most houses are not built to sustain this sort of thing. Some reports say there are 200 mph winds.
Weatherunderground has a better analysis than I can do.
Once this storm passes these people are going to need a lot more help than the ObamaPhone lady .
All I can ask for is for prayers for these people, and contribute what you can to the charity of your choice. I'm one who thinks that the Salvation Army does the best job getting help to where it is needed. Their overhead is low compared to the Red Cross and Catholic Charities, but give to help these people if you can. I don't see any Islamic charity stepping up to this tragedy.
This storm makes Katrina look like a rain shower.
God help these people....please!
Update I've been trying to call friends and family all night. Of course the phone lines are down and cell have been destroyed. Still i was able to at least to get some news on Skype from my niece in Cebu. This is worst storm in recorded history and all the charities I mentioned will be on the ground to help. I still see no Muslim charities trying to help. They are too busy helping insurgents in Zamboanga kill Christians.
This storm is not over. Once it gets over the South China Sea it will intensify again, and it looks like Vietnam may get a direct hit.
This is the worst storm I've ever seen.
Update 2: The typhoon had some of the highest sustained winds on record, but because it was a fast moving storm, the deaths and devastation were far less than feared. If a storm with 200+ mph winds stuck around for a long time, there would not be much left on Samar and Leyte. Tacloban airport has reopened in a limited way and people are cleaning up a real mess, but it could be far worse.
The storm is now over the South China Sea and gaining strength again. Vietnam seems it's likely target. As poor as the Philippines are, Vietnam is far worse outside the major cities, and the communist government is too corrupt, incompetent and complacent to deal with the aftermath. The charities I mentioned above will be working overtime, provided that Vietnam lets them in to help.
Update 3: Photos are starting to come in now. The UK paper, The Daily Mail, shows how much devastation was done in the city of Tacloban on Leyte. There are over 1200 dead according to the Red Cross, 1000 in Tacloban alone. Relief flights are coming in now, but Tacloban airport is in bad shape. As bad as this storm is, the death and destruction would have been worse if it was not a fast moving storm. Vietnam is going to get the full brunt in the next few hours, as will Cambodia. Neither country has the infrastructure to recover from this. The Philippines, as poor as it is will bounce back much quicker.
Update 4: This not so much an update than it is a commentary. The US Air Force, and Marines have been bringing C-130 transports to Tacloban Airport, even when it was flooded and in almost unusable shape. The Salvation Army, Red Cross and several other others who have the means to do it ae on the ground giving relief to victims. Even though this storm was fast moving, some reports predict 10,000 dead. I'm not sure of that, because that is what the mainstream media said died in Katrina. But Leyte and Samar are in ruins right now. Any help would be appreciated.
One thing that is notable, is that not a single so called Muslim charities have offered any assistance, yet they are funding a low level insurgency in Mindanao that has gotten far more violent in recent months. The siege on Zamboanga City has been going on for 2 months now with no let up, and guess who funds the MILF, and MNLF? Yes it is the Muslim Brotherhood and their CAIR front organization in the USA.
So, While we in the west and mostly Christians and some Jews may give money to help the victims of the typhoon, the Religion of Peace (tm) are giving money to kill Christians in the Philippines.
I'll have further updates when I know more. I'm not speculating on anything. I'm not a TV network where "if it bleeds it leads". Family are fine, but this isn't over
Update-5: The devastation on Leyte, a very sizable island, is massive and Tacloban and Ormoc are destroyed. The media is not paying too much attention to anything outside the largest city of Taclobann, largely because it has a serviceable airport, and relief flights are coming in from nearby Cebu and Manila.
Ormoc, a smaller city on Leyte is also devastated. It's a port city and is not a stranger to disaster. It was destroyed in a large typhoon in 1992 and was rebuilt in to a very livable city. But once again it is destroyed. Nobody knows the number if villages and baranguay that are wiped out.
The island of Samar, just across a bridge from Tacloban also has massive damage and loss of life. The foreign media is not paying attention to Samar, because it may be difficult to get to the most affected areas. It is a very large island, and most towns tend to be smallish. So IU've only got limited information from here.
President Aquino has downward estimated the death toll to 2000~2500. As awful as it is, it is not 10,000 dead. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier will arrive in the area on Thursday and hopefully it can help get food water to the victims.
That's all I have for now.
Update-6: I really don't have to much more to add regarding the disaster in the Visayas, except that the damage goes far beyond Leyte and Tacloban. Many places as far west as Aklan province in Panay are without power, and there is widespread damage throughout the region.
One thing I need to emphasize is that all these care packages that church groups in the US indented for the Philippines will probably never get there. Relief flights are bringing large containers and palettes of bottled water, 100 kg bags of rice, and bails of clothing that can be moved on and off the C-130 planes that the US and Philippine military are bringing in, and small care packages of canned tuna, ramen noodles, instant rice and things of that nature just can't be accommodated now. The best thing you can do is contribute money to the charity of your choice. The Philippine Red Cross, Salvation army and World Vision have people on the ground now to help distribute relief. They buy supplies locally within southeast Asia and get those goods shipped in. Care packages sent by various church groups here in the US will most likely end up in soup kitchens at home.
Just a thought. I know that it makes people feel good making care packages, but the current relief flights and infrastructure in the affected areas just can't deliver or deal with these things.
Weatherunderground has a better analysis than I can do.
Once this storm passes these people are going to need a lot more help than the ObamaPhone lady .
All I can ask for is for prayers for these people, and contribute what you can to the charity of your choice. I'm one who thinks that the Salvation Army does the best job getting help to where it is needed. Their overhead is low compared to the Red Cross and Catholic Charities, but give to help these people if you can. I don't see any Islamic charity stepping up to this tragedy.
This storm makes Katrina look like a rain shower.
God help these people....please!
Update I've been trying to call friends and family all night. Of course the phone lines are down and cell have been destroyed. Still i was able to at least to get some news on Skype from my niece in Cebu. This is worst storm in recorded history and all the charities I mentioned will be on the ground to help. I still see no Muslim charities trying to help. They are too busy helping insurgents in Zamboanga kill Christians.
This storm is not over. Once it gets over the South China Sea it will intensify again, and it looks like Vietnam may get a direct hit.
This is the worst storm I've ever seen.
Update 2: The typhoon had some of the highest sustained winds on record, but because it was a fast moving storm, the deaths and devastation were far less than feared. If a storm with 200+ mph winds stuck around for a long time, there would not be much left on Samar and Leyte. Tacloban airport has reopened in a limited way and people are cleaning up a real mess, but it could be far worse.
The storm is now over the South China Sea and gaining strength again. Vietnam seems it's likely target. As poor as the Philippines are, Vietnam is far worse outside the major cities, and the communist government is too corrupt, incompetent and complacent to deal with the aftermath. The charities I mentioned above will be working overtime, provided that Vietnam lets them in to help.
Update 3: Photos are starting to come in now. The UK paper, The Daily Mail, shows how much devastation was done in the city of Tacloban on Leyte. There are over 1200 dead according to the Red Cross, 1000 in Tacloban alone. Relief flights are coming in now, but Tacloban airport is in bad shape. As bad as this storm is, the death and destruction would have been worse if it was not a fast moving storm. Vietnam is going to get the full brunt in the next few hours, as will Cambodia. Neither country has the infrastructure to recover from this. The Philippines, as poor as it is will bounce back much quicker.
Update 4: This not so much an update than it is a commentary. The US Air Force, and Marines have been bringing C-130 transports to Tacloban Airport, even when it was flooded and in almost unusable shape. The Salvation Army, Red Cross and several other others who have the means to do it ae on the ground giving relief to victims. Even though this storm was fast moving, some reports predict 10,000 dead. I'm not sure of that, because that is what the mainstream media said died in Katrina. But Leyte and Samar are in ruins right now. Any help would be appreciated.
One thing that is notable, is that not a single so called Muslim charities have offered any assistance, yet they are funding a low level insurgency in Mindanao that has gotten far more violent in recent months. The siege on Zamboanga City has been going on for 2 months now with no let up, and guess who funds the MILF, and MNLF? Yes it is the Muslim Brotherhood and their CAIR front organization in the USA.
So, While we in the west and mostly Christians and some Jews may give money to help the victims of the typhoon, the Religion of Peace (tm) are giving money to kill Christians in the Philippines.
I'll have further updates when I know more. I'm not speculating on anything. I'm not a TV network where "if it bleeds it leads". Family are fine, but this isn't over
Update-5: The devastation on Leyte, a very sizable island, is massive and Tacloban and Ormoc are destroyed. The media is not paying too much attention to anything outside the largest city of Taclobann, largely because it has a serviceable airport, and relief flights are coming in from nearby Cebu and Manila.
Ormoc, a smaller city on Leyte is also devastated. It's a port city and is not a stranger to disaster. It was destroyed in a large typhoon in 1992 and was rebuilt in to a very livable city. But once again it is destroyed. Nobody knows the number if villages and baranguay that are wiped out.
The island of Samar, just across a bridge from Tacloban also has massive damage and loss of life. The foreign media is not paying attention to Samar, because it may be difficult to get to the most affected areas. It is a very large island, and most towns tend to be smallish. So IU've only got limited information from here.
President Aquino has downward estimated the death toll to 2000~2500. As awful as it is, it is not 10,000 dead. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier will arrive in the area on Thursday and hopefully it can help get food water to the victims.
That's all I have for now.
Update-6: I really don't have to much more to add regarding the disaster in the Visayas, except that the damage goes far beyond Leyte and Tacloban. Many places as far west as Aklan province in Panay are without power, and there is widespread damage throughout the region.
One thing I need to emphasize is that all these care packages that church groups in the US indented for the Philippines will probably never get there. Relief flights are bringing large containers and palettes of bottled water, 100 kg bags of rice, and bails of clothing that can be moved on and off the C-130 planes that the US and Philippine military are bringing in, and small care packages of canned tuna, ramen noodles, instant rice and things of that nature just can't be accommodated now. The best thing you can do is contribute money to the charity of your choice. The Philippine Red Cross, Salvation army and World Vision have people on the ground now to help distribute relief. They buy supplies locally within southeast Asia and get those goods shipped in. Care packages sent by various church groups here in the US will most likely end up in soup kitchens at home.
Just a thought. I know that it makes people feel good making care packages, but the current relief flights and infrastructure in the affected areas just can't deliver or deal with these things.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Random thoughts from a dumb non-Ivy League College graduate
I was listening tonight to a bunch of liberal talking heads discussing how stupid Tea Party people are. An the biggest arguments are they are violent racists (no proof of that) and uneducated rednecks because most of us never went to an Ivy League school.
I thought about it for awhile, and I have to admit that I'm part of the unwashed masses that the Democrats want to rule because they are so much smarter than me. I only went to a large mid-west university and have a B.S. degree in electrical engineering, and have worked as a flight simulation engineer for over 30 years. But I'm not a Harvard lawyer who has spent his whole career in politics, so I guess I need to be ruled by the likes of him. I get it.
We unwashed masses just can't understand complex issues like health care, debt, and balancing a budget. I'm so glad that smarter people than me who know what I need better than me are relieving me of decisions I'd have to make otherwise. No matter that it costs me more and I as a 56 year old man have to pay for pap smears, breast exams and abortions, the best and brightest are looking after us, the little people, the undereducated people who only went to a state university. Never mind that the Obama roll out has been a disaster and even the website does not work, let alone the exchanges that we are all supposed to sign up to if not on a group plan.
Everything is going to be great once all the "gliches" get worked out. The real market place must step aside for the government controlled "marketplace".
Ok I'm being very sarcastic here, and like I mentioned in a previous post, unless we get rid of this regime and this abomination ObamaCare I'll probably do the ultimate opt-out and build a house on my property in an undisclosed location in Asia, but a day trip to Singapore to get my MS treatments every other month.
Elitists in both parties just don't understand and are not connected to people outside the northeast and west coast. Normal people who are not addicted to government free stuff that costs the tax payers plenty will someday get fed up. I'm hoping it is not too late. If we don't get rid of socialized medicine, and get debt under control, we are doomed. Taxing our way to prosperity will turn the whole country into Detroit.
I thought about it for awhile, and I have to admit that I'm part of the unwashed masses that the Democrats want to rule because they are so much smarter than me. I only went to a large mid-west university and have a B.S. degree in electrical engineering, and have worked as a flight simulation engineer for over 30 years. But I'm not a Harvard lawyer who has spent his whole career in politics, so I guess I need to be ruled by the likes of him. I get it.
We unwashed masses just can't understand complex issues like health care, debt, and balancing a budget. I'm so glad that smarter people than me who know what I need better than me are relieving me of decisions I'd have to make otherwise. No matter that it costs me more and I as a 56 year old man have to pay for pap smears, breast exams and abortions, the best and brightest are looking after us, the little people, the undereducated people who only went to a state university. Never mind that the Obama roll out has been a disaster and even the website does not work, let alone the exchanges that we are all supposed to sign up to if not on a group plan.
Everything is going to be great once all the "gliches" get worked out. The real market place must step aside for the government controlled "marketplace".
Ok I'm being very sarcastic here, and like I mentioned in a previous post, unless we get rid of this regime and this abomination ObamaCare I'll probably do the ultimate opt-out and build a house on my property in an undisclosed location in Asia, but a day trip to Singapore to get my MS treatments every other month.
Elitists in both parties just don't understand and are not connected to people outside the northeast and west coast. Normal people who are not addicted to government free stuff that costs the tax payers plenty will someday get fed up. I'm hoping it is not too late. If we don't get rid of socialized medicine, and get debt under control, we are doomed. Taxing our way to prosperity will turn the whole country into Detroit.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
How Will ObamaCare Affect You?
So, how is Obamacare working for you? The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is Orwellian in title, and it is anything but affordable so far for anyone who doesn't get pushed on to Medicaid. A lot of us have been told that we will lose our medical insurance at the end of the year. Mercifully, mine has been extended until 2015 with a substantial premium increase.
Having several preexisting conditions, under ACA my monthly premiums would go up from $400 a month to $2000 a month if my insurer didn't decide to keep me on another year. My insurance agent is not optimistic. He reckons it might be as high as $3500 a month come 2015. This is not sustainable for the average person. Most of us who have preexisting conditions and although not disabled, can't afford to pay $42K a year. With any luck ObamaCare will implode under its own weight over the next year, and relieve is from this socialist state rum monstrosity. I'm not betting on that.
I am seriously considering moving out of the country so I can still get pay as you go health care in places like Thailand, Taiwan, and Singapore. My chemo infusions cost about $4000 a treatment in the US, much cheaper abroad, and I only need them bi-monthly. It is cheaper for me to live in a home I've already purchased in Asia and buy a round trip ticket to places like Singapore or Thailand than to pay the Obamacare premium.
It is indeed sad than Obamacare is driving people offshore because the ACA is anything but affordable. And until this gets repealed or fixed, which I am doubtful it can be, people with preexisting conditions, to paraphrase President Obama, should just take a pill.
I may take the ultimate opt-out, but what happens in 2014 will help me make a decision. Oh by the way the website debacle is the tip of the iceberg. It gets far worse from there.
As Nancy Pelosi said when this passed: "This is our gift to the American people". But Joe Biden said it best: "This is a big fucking deal"
Big fucking deal indeed.
Having several preexisting conditions, under ACA my monthly premiums would go up from $400 a month to $2000 a month if my insurer didn't decide to keep me on another year. My insurance agent is not optimistic. He reckons it might be as high as $3500 a month come 2015. This is not sustainable for the average person. Most of us who have preexisting conditions and although not disabled, can't afford to pay $42K a year. With any luck ObamaCare will implode under its own weight over the next year, and relieve is from this socialist state rum monstrosity. I'm not betting on that.
I am seriously considering moving out of the country so I can still get pay as you go health care in places like Thailand, Taiwan, and Singapore. My chemo infusions cost about $4000 a treatment in the US, much cheaper abroad, and I only need them bi-monthly. It is cheaper for me to live in a home I've already purchased in Asia and buy a round trip ticket to places like Singapore or Thailand than to pay the Obamacare premium.
It is indeed sad than Obamacare is driving people offshore because the ACA is anything but affordable. And until this gets repealed or fixed, which I am doubtful it can be, people with preexisting conditions, to paraphrase President Obama, should just take a pill.
I may take the ultimate opt-out, but what happens in 2014 will help me make a decision. Oh by the way the website debacle is the tip of the iceberg. It gets far worse from there.
As Nancy Pelosi said when this passed: "This is our gift to the American people". But Joe Biden said it best: "This is a big fucking deal"
Big fucking deal indeed.
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*
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
A really bad month
I've been pretty sick this past month. It started with what my doctor thinks was food poisoning, and it went downhill from there. I ended up seriously ill, in the hospital, and I didn't realize just how close I came to cashing it in at the time. Well, after almost a week in the hospital, under the good care of the doctors, nurses, and technicians at Methodist Hospital in Germantown, Tennessee, I was good enough to be released and although weak, just being home made me feel better. My elderly parents insisted that as soon as I was strong enough, they wanted me to travel to their home in northeastern Pennsylvania and recuperate there. So off we went. It was nice spending almost 2 weeks in that part of the world, getting some good food....mostly....I won't get in to the mostly part because I don't need the wrath of mom descending on me.
We went to the Harford Fair, one of the largest country fairs in the state of Pennsylvania, and it was crowded. Good food, interesting exhibits, and fun competitions like tractor pulls made the day worthwhile.
I came home to get some stern warnings from some of the pathology reports. Because I had hepatitis when I was younger, and I've not always treated my liver all that well in the past, I've been told in no uncertain words, never to take an alcoholic drink again. I can do it, but I won't like it. My white blood count is also very low, and one hematologist wants to get a bone marrow sample from me. This is an extremely painful procedure and may not yield any useful information. My PHP told me do not do it. (Next year when I get stuck under ObamaCare, it will probably not even be offered as an option, as it is expensive). That is advice I'm happy to follow.
So folks, I'm back, just feeling old at 56, and still trying to get over this really bad health crisis.
Thanks to my friends for your prayers and good thoughts during my illness, and know I appreciate you all. God bless!
We went to the Harford Fair, one of the largest country fairs in the state of Pennsylvania, and it was crowded. Good food, interesting exhibits, and fun competitions like tractor pulls made the day worthwhile.
I came home to get some stern warnings from some of the pathology reports. Because I had hepatitis when I was younger, and I've not always treated my liver all that well in the past, I've been told in no uncertain words, never to take an alcoholic drink again. I can do it, but I won't like it. My white blood count is also very low, and one hematologist wants to get a bone marrow sample from me. This is an extremely painful procedure and may not yield any useful information. My PHP told me do not do it. (Next year when I get stuck under ObamaCare, it will probably not even be offered as an option, as it is expensive). That is advice I'm happy to follow.
So folks, I'm back, just feeling old at 56, and still trying to get over this really bad health crisis.
Thanks to my friends for your prayers and good thoughts during my illness, and know I appreciate you all. God bless!
Friday, August 30, 2013
TSA and selective use of full body scanners
I've been traveling through a number of airports, both large and small over the past few months, and one thing that is omnipresent are the multitudes of TSA agents, even at the smallest airports. TSA has become an acronym for Thousands Standing Around in many of the small town airports.
One thing I'm beginning to notice is that TSA has removed the full body scan (back scan) machines at some of the small town airports, and restoring the tried and true metal detectors that don't require you to take off everything except shirt, pants and socks. The reason given to me by a TSA employee at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (AVP) for removing them is that they are needed at larger airports. So, if the back scanners are not needed at AVP, why are they needed anywhere? There are direct flights to Philadelphia, Newark, Chicago-Ohare, Detroit, Atlanta and Charlotte daily from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and passengers are not required to be re-screened upon arrival at the major airport..
Does the Department of Homeland Security think that a potential terrorist would only consider using a major airport to initiate an airborne terrorist attack, and not pay any attention to more lacks security? (although, I tend to think these small town airports do look people over better than my hometown airport of Memphis International Airport)
So here is a suggestion to our friends at TSA, get rid of all the full body scan units, or use them everywhere there is scheduled commercial air service.. The back scan units are intrusive, leave x-ray radiation residue in the bones, that is accumulates and is a potential cancer threat, and now seems the use of these machines depends on your airport of origin.
With the removal of the back scan e-ray machines at secondary airports, the effectiveness of using them at all now approaches zero. Use them everywhere or better yet, get rid of these intrusive monsters.
One thing I'm beginning to notice is that TSA has removed the full body scan (back scan) machines at some of the small town airports, and restoring the tried and true metal detectors that don't require you to take off everything except shirt, pants and socks. The reason given to me by a TSA employee at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (AVP) for removing them is that they are needed at larger airports. So, if the back scanners are not needed at AVP, why are they needed anywhere? There are direct flights to Philadelphia, Newark, Chicago-Ohare, Detroit, Atlanta and Charlotte daily from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and passengers are not required to be re-screened upon arrival at the major airport..
Does the Department of Homeland Security think that a potential terrorist would only consider using a major airport to initiate an airborne terrorist attack, and not pay any attention to more lacks security? (although, I tend to think these small town airports do look people over better than my hometown airport of Memphis International Airport)
So here is a suggestion to our friends at TSA, get rid of all the full body scan units, or use them everywhere there is scheduled commercial air service.. The back scan units are intrusive, leave x-ray radiation residue in the bones, that is accumulates and is a potential cancer threat, and now seems the use of these machines depends on your airport of origin.
With the removal of the back scan e-ray machines at secondary airports, the effectiveness of using them at all now approaches zero. Use them everywhere or better yet, get rid of these intrusive monsters.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Trust
Trust is not something that is a given thing, but must be earned. Ronald Reagan said about the once defunct Soviet Union, trust but verify. Under Vladimir Putin, an old KGB guy, Russia is not trustworthy once again. Trust is hard to earn, and it has to be earned, not by words, but by deeds.
A good and decent person who I've helped out for the past 11 years, not only with moral support, but monetary support at times told me I'm not trustworthy. It's a dagger in the heart to me. I'm not only sick in my heart, but have lost faith in people I used to think I knew.
I really don't like being like this, but my soul has been shattered. I guess I'll be trustworthy to people who are not afraid to have someone who loves them.
A good and decent person who I've helped out for the past 11 years, not only with moral support, but monetary support at times told me I'm not trustworthy. It's a dagger in the heart to me. I'm not only sick in my heart, but have lost faith in people I used to think I knew.
I really don't like being like this, but my soul has been shattered. I guess I'll be trustworthy to people who are not afraid to have someone who loves them.
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