Lee Shayler’s Blindness Walk

There have been many articles and news items recently about Highlands Ranch resident Lee Shayler’s charity walk for blindness:

Highlands Ranch Herald: Blind man on a 1,000-mile quest

9News TV: Blind man to walk 1 mph for 1,000 straight hours

YourHub Staff Stories: Walking to fight blindness

I worked with Lee in the IT biz many many years ago here in Denver and I’m sorry to hear his disease has progressed so much.

Although there are endless causes to donate to, “assistance begins at home”, and I encourage everyone to donate any amount they can to this local resident who is one of us.

Lee’s website for info and donations is www.mEyeWalk.com.

Keep up the fight and great effort, Lee.  As they say in England, “Well Done!”.

Congressmen Coffman, Town Hall, My Health Insurance

I finally got off my lazy behind and attended a Feb. 16th Town Hall Meeting hosted by our 6th District U.S. Congressman Mike Coffman.  Admittedly I had selfish motives as I wanted to express my concerns about recent changes in my insurance premiums.  When the microphone came to me my comments were, to paraphrase:

“This is about health insurance.  I am a free market and limited government person, and I loathe the current health care legislation attempting to be passed in Congress.

There have been reports in the news in the last week or two about Anthem Blue Cross Insurance in California raising insurance premiums 34% this year.  Secretary of Health Katherine Sebelius is looking into it as this is considered an unconscionable increase, and the company has delayed the increase as a result of the bad press.

My health insurance premiums for this year have been raised ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE PERCENT, from $235 per month to $563 per month, and I haven’t heard a whisper in the news.

This increase is for the same plan I had last year.  It isn’t even a “Cadillac” plan, though I feel like I’m buying someone in the insurance industry a Cadillac.  This is health care run amok.

I’d be grateful if you would review this increase data I have for you, and if you have the opportunity please pass it on to Secretary Sebelius.  Thank you.”

I did not expect a specific solution.  I just wanted Mike and others to know about the situation.  Mike’s response to me and to other health care queries throughout the evening were consistent with my own opinions.  We need free market solutions, health care portability, and cross-state competition and availability of health insurance plan choices.  The current proposed health care legislation may well be illegal to mandate, or force, individuals to obtain health insurance.  The proposed attempt to pass the legislation in piece-meal fashion via Budget Reconciliation may also be illegal.

I’m very much opposed to government control of anything, including health care, and I’m very frustrated with a free market industry (Aetna Insurance in my case) that contracts to assist you with the delicate and personal issue of your health and then increases your premium by a huge multiple with a few weeks, take it or leave it, notice.  I essentially had no choice but to take the single, expensive, option offered, or be without health care.  (FYI it is a company provided retirement medical plan, from which I will be dropped anyway when I turn 65 in a year.)  I will be investigating other insurance plans in the meantime, though I suspect it may be a difficult search due to my successful prostate cancer surgery last year.  Also in the meantime I plan to pursue the usual letter-writing campaign expressing my dissatisfaction.

One thing that irks me most is that I have paid into the company provided plan (different insurers over the years, negotiated by the company) for over 24 years.  All well and good when I was younger, healthier, and less expensive to the insurance companies.  Now that I’m on pre-65 retiree medical (and still paying premiums) they have one more year to extract a pound of flesh from me.

Of course none of this is likely to bring a tear to the many who have NO insurance at all.

Caught between big brother, I’ll-run-your-life, government, and a cut-throat “your money, or/AND your life” insurance industry, a rock and a hard place have never looked so unwelcoming.

By the way, the Town Hall Meeting was well attended and informative.  Mike Coffman is a GREAT representative and I trust we will keep him in office for as long as he wishes to be there.  He spoke well on the many issues brought before him, and his recurring themes are limited government, self-responsibility, and individual freedom.

Muslims Unite! Down with terrorism!

I rarely agree with anything NYT opinionist Thomas Friedman says, including some of the things in his piece Father Knows Best,  but he expressed something I was discussing with a friend just yesterday and anyone who agrees with me can’t be all bad.  He stated:

“…no laws or walls we put up will ever be sufficient to protect us unless the Arab and Muslim societies from whence these suicide bombers emerge erect political, religious and moral restraints as well — starting by shaming suicide bombers and naming their actions “murder,” not “martyrdom.””

IMO, until the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world get sufficiently outraged at the radical terrorists amongst them, and express that outrage through anti-terrorist activity and condemnation, then they can never be considered a peace-loving people who want to live with us rather than against us.

Friedman concludes, and I concur:

“Every faith has its violent extreme. The West is not immune. It’s all about how the center deals with it. Does it tolerate it, isolate it or shame it? The jihadists are a security problem for our system. But they are a political and moral problem for the Arab-Muslim system. If they won’t address this problem for us, I truly hope they will do it for themselves. Eventually, we’ll find a way to keep most jihadists off our planes and out of our volleyball games — but they will have to live with them.”

DEMS head for the door??

BREAKING NEWS, as they say.  I was not overly surprised when I read Senator Dodd Will Not Seek Re-election, Democrats Say in the NYT early this morning.  In addition to his many political problems he underwent prostate cancer surgery last summer, as I did in September.

However, when I next read the blazing front page headline Ritter to withdraw from Colorado governor's race in the morning Denver Post today, oooooh, I wondered what was up.

Are Democrats falling on their altruistic sword for the sake of self-sacrifice and the good of the people?  IMO they are usually willing to sacrifice others for their agendas but it is uncharacteristic to sacrifice their own political careers.  Of course I’m always willing to wish (political) death to these (Euro-Socialist) infidels, but is there a greater plot afoot?

I find it odd that Democrats, holding unprecedented power in national and state governments, would lose self-confidence so quickly and seek an exit.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but is it a Communist Plot (Euro-Socialist, actually) to approve all the current socialist agendas, such as the national health care mandate, and then make room for new Democratic candidates who can thus say “it wasn’t me that approved those things, you can trust me!”?

I for one will be staying tuned and watching this closely.

Be not complacent, any of you who still advocate individual freedom, self-responsibility, and the PURSUIT of life, liberty, and happiness.  It isn’t over until we Vote The Democrats Out Of Office.

Tiger is human! OMG, OMG!

Per Woods says he regrets ‘transgressions’ and not unlike a whole lot of us guys, Tiger’s priorities, urges, and brains are not centered in cerebral cortex as commonly assumed, but actually in a somewhat lower region.

He ain’t the first one.  I do applaud his wife for whatever she did to get him rushing out of his house and over a fire hydrant in the early AM hours.  You go girl!

I was rooting for Tiger to keep his privacy however.  A much bigger and more disconcerting phenomenon, to me, is the obsessive, raptured, fawning of the media and the masses over celebrity lives.  It’s as though such individuals have no sense of selves of their own.  I find this troubling.

It is no wonder our population seems dazed and ready to follow any pied piper that comes along and promises to show them the way.  Think for yourselves, people.

Seattle Police Officer Killings

I’m outraged. Unmitigated, un-tempered, multiple expletives deleted, outraged.  While we hand out get-out-of-jail-early cards due to “budget constraints” on our prison systems, we have insane people running amok across the country killing police officers, campus students, family members, and women en masse. 

Enough of this turn-the-other-cheek, where did we go wrong and slight you.  Where is eye-for-an-eye when we need it?  Oh, I know.  The recession made me do it, and that is Bush’s fault.  Enough of that too.

IMO justice must be swifter and surer.  Our fellow men and women police officers and the citizens they protect should not have to fear for their lives in the most mundane of circumstances.

Jail time should be a WHOLE lot less comfortable.  (We might even save money.)  If you don’t want to be caged like an animal then don’t act like one.

Philosophically I think the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment.  We’re already putting hundreds to death for crimes against humanity.  Perhaps if we continue to incarcerate and dispatch those inhumans amongst us in sufficient quantities we will all become so thoroughly disgusted that the penalty will someday become a deterrent.  I surely don’t know, but the bloodbath of innocent people in the streets and homes has got to stop.

I’m outraged.  Internalized, but outraged.

UPDATE 12/02/2009:

I nearly deleted this blog as I find the subject matter highly distasteful, to put it mildly. Justice has been served, in this case, but we must find a way to be proactive, before the loss of innocent lives, rather than reactive, after the fact. It is a delicate dance on the sword blade of democracy, falling into chaos and anarchy off one side or lock step fascist socialism off the other. Even distasteful subjects have to be dealt with however.

Disparate Housewives: Sarah Palin Strikes Again

(Disparate Housewives/Desperate Housewives?  The TV show?  Never mind.)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disparate :

Main Entry: dis·pa·rate

1 : containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements
2 : markedly distinct in quality or character

synonyms see different

________________________

Disparate and incongruous as in Palin/McCain, Palin/President or Vice President, Palin/Politician.

I’ve opined on Sarah Palin before:

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Sarah Palin as Conservative Writer?

Saturday, July 04, 2009

No... more... Palin... puh-LEEZE

 

I haven’t read her new book (Going Rogue), I haven’t seen her on Oprah, I’m not going to watch her Barbara Walters interview.  I still do not see her as presidential or vice-presidential qualified.  I do marvel that she is an instant-packet of modern day political folk hero, someone to be ga-ga about for those Republicans desperately seeking a… marvel.  I sympathize with her for the unevenly rude treatment by the campaign press and the comedic vitriol of the likes of I’m-not-so-holy-now David Letterman.

In my opinion, conservatives AND Republicans would better serve themselves and their fellow men and women by staying focused on the real issues of the day: health care reform, cap and trade crippling of our energy resources, amnesty for illegal immigrants, civilian showcase trials for terrorists, and bowing to the wishes of every country in the world but our own (not to mention bowing to the Emperor of Japan, or the King of Saudi Arabia, but I digress). 

Big Brother has never been bigger, or less of a brother.  Conservatives have better things to do than fawning over Sarah Palin, but she IS a great distraction to Democrats.