August 2009 Archives

I think we should also be discussing the entire concept of health insurance. The definition has changed drastically in my lifetime.
Many people expect free doctor visits, free prescription pills, etc. etc., etc. - but that is not what I believe health insurance should be a part of.

When we buy car insurance, we don’t expect free oil-changes, free brake pads, etc. Health insurance should be the same.

Go back to catastrophic coverage - where the medical bills are paid if they are over a substantial deductible.

For those concerned about people who can’t afford a doctor’s visit, well, if the doctor doesn’t have to have a staff to bill insurance companies for regular doctor visits, etc., the cost of the visit may very well become easily affordable.

There are a lot of issues to discuss, but for the political class to assume health insurance that pays for everything is desirable or should even be called “insurance” demonstrates to me the lack of imagination, common sense and intelligence in Washington DC and all the State Capitols.

That is mohair from our Angora Goats - some dyed, some natural. These are cleaned and dried locks.

It all still needs to be combed or carded before being spun into yarn.

And it takes a ton of time to clean the stuff!! Goats are kinda dirty, living out in the pasture and all!

True Story.

There is a woman who has a lovely horse - 1/2 Thoroughbred, 1/2 Welsh Mountain Pony (making a nice little dressage horse). This mare was injured a year or so ago, destroying the woman’s hopes of having an eventing horse, as the mare can no longer jump without risk of injury.

So, the lady kept the horse out in the pasture for a year, and the mare is ridable on easy trails or for some dressage classes. But certainly does not have the high stakes future she once had. This horse is 8 years old.

The woman has decided that feeding this horse is just not worthwhile, because the mare’s quality of life is not what it was intended to be, so the woman is going to put the horse down in 4 weeks if no one steps up to take care of this horse.

Now, the woman thinks she is being really altruistic by “giving” the horse away to someone who will take care of her.

The lady will only give the horse to someone who promises to only ride the horse gently, even if the injury is someday ‘cured’. Because she wouldn’t want to put the horse through the stress of being competitive, don’t you know. The horse would be better off … dead.

Naturally, John and I believe that once you get an animal, unless it is meant for food, you take care of that animal for its natural life, so this lady loses all claims to goodness in our eyes. One of our horses, Petey, is blind in one eye and is really not ridable at all (he spooks and bucks if something shows up suddenly), but we would never dream of putting him down or of giving him to someone else to care for.

What does this have to do with health care?

If Obamacare goes through, some bureaucrat will decide the fate of those of us who might suffer an illness or an injury. No, they are not going to “put us down”, but they WILL decide whether the contributions we can make to society are worth enough to pay for treatment for us. So, many people will be neglected by the Government-run health care program, because we have already had enough life.

And what’s worse, is the government won’t even allow you or your family to find your own health care and pay for your own medicine, surgery, etc. It will not matter if you can manage to get your own - Big Brother will make the determination that you will or will not get health care, even if the Govt. does not have to pay for it,

In this case, the horse lady is being kinder than Obamacare will be, for she is at least giving the horse a chance at life if someone else will pay for it. The Federal Bureaucrats who will be running the show will not treat people as well, ask the Brits.

If you look at the statistics for 5-year survival rates for prostrate cancer victims in the USA vs the UK,you will be stunned to find that men in the USA have a nearly 100% survival rate, while in the UK, it is only about 75%.

This is because Bureaucrats decide when your cancer is bad enough for treatment and delay treatment, often for many months, or deny treatment altogether if you are considered too old. No, these are not death panels, in that you are not slipped a dose of Hemlock with your afternoon tea. But they ARE denying people the opportunity to live because of health care rationing, and the determination that only the youth deserve a healthy life, the rest of us can just suck it up and rely upon our happy memories of youth, as that is all we really deserve.

So I suppose, in reality, the poor little injured horse has a better chance at living a long life as someone can rescue her. Whilst we Americans will not even have a chance at being rescued if the Bureaucratic panels decide we are not worth the money for treatment.

Over the weekend, Sven, our cute little black and white tuxedo kitten with 7 toes on each front paw, started to feel his testosterone.

Poor John had to pull him off of Cleo, our senior, sickly cat, twice whilst the little bugger was attempting to screw her. We decided he needed to be neutered ASAP. Sven is only a little over 6 months old, but has a very dominant personality and has been throwing his alpha cat weight around like there is no tomorrow. He even slaps at the big dogs who get in his way.

I called Jeannie’s office (our vet who takes care of all creatures, great and small), and though she felt he was a little youngish to be castrated, agreed to do the job on Monday, as soon as she got back from an appointment.

So, after a night of no food, I packed up little Sven in the carrier and drove him down to the vet’s office. I held him as Jeannie injected an anesthetic and waited for him to go to sleep. Then, Vickie, Jeannie’s assistant, put a mask over his little head while Jeannie prepped him for surgery.

Ouch, or it looked like ouch to me! Rather than trying to shave the tiny little kitty scrotum, Jeannie plucks the fur off of them - apparently, there are fewer problems with razor burn that way. Yikes.

Then, very quickly, a quick incision was made, the testicles were snipped and removed from the scrotum and placed on the table next to him.

Cat balls are very tiny.

So, Sven is back home, and he knows something is different, but he’s not sure exactly what happened. He is losing his previous control over the other cats and the dogs of the household. He is becoming, a regular kitty, no longer forcing his inexperienced will on the household population.

So I think of our President Obama - he is Sven - needing to be neutered. He is trying to screw our old and sick, and he is trying to do it on his own, ignoring the protests of over half the populace.

President Obama needs to be politically neutered - and we can do that in the 2010 elections - we can take away at least one of his testosterone-laden balls - the Senate - by voting out every Democrat and every RINO we can possibly rid ourselves of. Hopefully, the House can also be taken away from him - and Nancy Pelosi will no longer be the Speaker of the House and 3rd in line to the Presdency!

Only then will the President learn that he needs to respect our views, but I suspect he will continue to act like an inexperienced kitten, not realizing his power belongs to us.

And somehow, in the router software, we are forbidden access to any “Social Networking” site like Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks, Cisco.

Thanks Linksys.

This is the United States of America. There is a thing called the Bill of Rights in our Constitution. We can walk around freely without being stopped by police and forced to show identification!

Well, at least that is the way it supposed to be.

So get this - Bob Dylan. Yes. The. Bob. Dylan. Bob Dylan is in New Jersey for a gig.

He decides to go for a walk. The poor guy is just strolling around, in a not-so-great neighborhood and someone calls the police on him because he is strolling around the neighborhood.

So, police show up. They want to know who he is and why he is there - mind you, this is not some gated community - this is in freaking Long Branch, New Jersey. The police are too young to recognize Bob Dylan,in fact, they have never even HEARD of Bob Dylan, so they want to see his identification - which Americans are NOT required to carry with them unless they are getting on a freaking airplane or are driving - and Bob doesn’t have his ID with him.

Mind you, Bob has done not one thing illegal or otherwise, but the New Jersey Cops decide that they MUST find out who he is, so they drive him to his hotel, where the hotel vouches for him.

But, and this is a big but ….the MSM doesn’t see the issue as the police should not be asking someone going for a stroll for their ID, no, the MSM is upset that the police don’t recognize Bob Dylan!!!!

Doesn’t anyone have any sense of what liberty and freedom mean anymore?

And the fact that they are now starting to term the whole mess “Health Insurance Reform”, proves my point. So, maybe I don’t even need to go into this big ol’ mess!

Sorry, I have to get into it just a bit. I object to this Democratic plan that will within a few years force ALL non-Congressional Americans into a Single Payer Plan.

The USA leads the world in medical advances because we have a free-enterprise system. Doctors who develop new procedures can expect to be rewarded by making more money performing such procedures and teaching other doctors how to perform these procedures.

MONEY IS AN INCENTIVE.

That is why our Pharmaceutical Companies, our Medical Research Hospitals and Universities keep coming up with new treatments.

For example a particular type of genetic blindness has a cure in sight (yeah, I know, not meant to be punny) due to the work of Ophthalmology Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s gene therapy, and whether or not gene-therapy would be allowed under Obamacare is not at all clear, and very possibly unlikely because of the costs involved.

In the United Kingdom, the NHS (National Health Service) rejects many life-saving cancer drugs as being too expensive. My dear friend, Cassandra, has many examples here.

The NHS also has a high incidence of MRSI Infections. It seems the understaffed nurses in the State-run hospitals don’t have the time to clean hospital BEDS when a new patient arrives or even wash their hands much. But heh, it’s free, Nationalized Health Care, those are the chances you take.

I have several Canadian friends who have that wonderful “free” healthcare. But how long is an emergency room wait in Toronto? Not too bad - 4 or 5 hours - but the wait is often much longer as the patient is simply shunted off into a bed that is in a hallway, and does not get the treatment he or she needs for a very long time.

That’s what happens when cost-cutting occurs. Cost-cutting has been President Obama’s main excuse for nationalizing our health care.

I’m not looking forward to the overcrowded, understaffed hospitals that would be the result of this government power grab.

So, I’m one of those evil-mongers who is totally against it.

I’m writing letters, making phone calls and now, blogging against this huge, expensive boondoggle.

There may be a way to improve access to our health care, but dismantling the free enterprise system is NOT the way to do it.

I’m pissed.

I have a conservative friend who is pretty sure that her objections to Obamacare have been forwarded to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Why does she feel that way? Because suddenly, she is getting emails from David Axelrod talking up the glorious benefits of Nationalized Health Care under Obama:

Dear Friend, This is probably one of the longest emails I’ve ever sent, but it could be the most important. Across the country we are seeing vigorous debate about health insurance reform. Unfortunately, some of the old tactics we know so well are back — even the viral emails that fly unchecked and under the radar, spreading all sorts of lies and distortions. As President Obama said at the town hall in New Hampshire, “where we do disagree, let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that’s actually been proposed.” So le t’s start a chain email of our own. At the end of my email, you’ll find a lot of information about health insurance reform, distilled into 8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage, 8 common myths about reform and 8 reasons we need health insurance reform now. Right now, someone you know probably has a question about reform that could be answered by what’s below. So what are you waiting for? Forward this email. Thanks, David David Axelrod Senior Adviser to the President

The letter continues on and on and on and on - basically reiterating the new White House “Reality Check” pages.

But my question is - how did my friend get on the Axelrod White House Mailing list? This email was sent directly to her - it was not forwarded by anyone else. She has never, ever signed up to get email updates from the White House.

Today, Major Garret of Fox News kinda got into it with Press Secretary Gibbs on just this question.

I just felt the need to start a blog where I can talk about politics without necessarily offending a lot of the artsy-craftsy types who may or may not read my other blog,The Farm at Castle Argghhh!

Twitter and Facebook both seem to be very limiting, yet way too time consuming, especially those darn games, like Bejeweled Blitz, that suck me into the vortex.

So, after much hemming and hawing and procrastination, I bring you,She Who Will Be Obeyed II (The Second Coming). Please don’t be offended by the title of my blog. I think it’s kinda funny.

You can expect to read a lot of ranting about the current state of political stupidity, the media, the global climate fearmongers, the idiots who think that socialism is the way of the future, and anything else that makes my blood pressure spike unacceptably.

I’m also considering reviving the Carnival of the Recipes, which I began some years ago, and eventually turned over to other people who turned it over to other people who turned it over to someone who quit doing it. I definitely will need input on whether anyone has any interest in eating food anymore,or sharing ways of preparing said food with readers of my blog.

My latest interest is spinning. Not spinning bicycles (shut up you fitness geeks) but fiber. Mohair, wool, and other interesting fibers. So I’ll likely write some about that, too.

Wish me luck!