A Troubled World

A very good friend of mine wrote me this week to tell me how bad the news media exacerbates everything. He said he was just tired of all the complaining in general and that it weighs heavily on his mind. He felt that all the troubles of the world were being jammed down his throat. He constantly was hearing how bad the economy was, how bad the weather was, the gas prices, the health care debacle, problems in Africa, Iran, North Korea, our national debt and how China was going to own us. He said he was getting old and did not need to carry the problems of the world too. He asked whatever happened to the Grandfather who could just sit on the bench with the children and tell stories about the good old days and the children listened because the stories were interesting?

I said to him that I agreed with him in principal and wouldn't it be wonderful to sit back on the porch and tell our children and grandchildren that everything is beautiful and they do not have a care in the world. Yes, that would be nice but not reality. I told him that in fact, when we were kids, we listened to the radio and to the conversations of our Mom and Dad. The world was dangerous then and the United States was trying to deal with World War II and the likes of Adolf Hitler, a man who wanted to fly the Nazi flag over the entire world. When I sat down with my children, we were in Viet-Nam trying to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia and the threat of the Communist Soviet Union who threatened to destroy us. Today we are dealing with Iran, North Korean, nuclear proliferation and a radical Muslim religion which wants to destroy Christianity and the Non-Muslim countries. On top of that, we have elected a President who has shown very liberal tendencies and his administration seems to have their image of what our country should be like rather than what our Constitution has created over the past two hundred years.

My point is that we will always have these threats to our nation and to the world. We can ignore them and bury our head in the ground or we can talk about them, write about them and collectively raise our voices as we did this past midterm elections. I remember many years ago when joining the military that I would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The day that we as a nation no longer believe those words is when we forfeit our rights to exist as the United States of America.

Just My Opinion

It has been a while since I last entered some thoughts in my blog spot. I guess I just had to get through the frustration of the changing politics in our nation. I can honestly say I have been re- energized by the November 2010 elections. I cannot say with any certainty how often my thoughts will appear but I will have some observations.

As I look at the political seen since the elections, I have to wonder if the Congress in Washington is really listening to the people. I have come to the conclusion that only some were listening. For the past year, Congress has known that they needed to put together a budget for next year (FY2011) and yet they waited until the Lame Duck Session over the last two weeks to do this and also try to cram a few other questionable pieces of legislation down the throats of voters. I believe the Dems majority in both the Senate and the House purposely did this to pass as much of their agenda as possible before the new session begins in January with a Republican majority in the House and a Senate much more in balance with the loss of six Democratic seats.

There were a couple of victories during this session for the Dems but in all, perhaps a sign of better times to come. Certainly the passing of the Bush Tax Cuts Extension for everyone was huge. I congratulate the Republican Congressional Members for standing firm and refusing to pass the Omnibus Spending Bill (2000 pages) with its $1.1 Trillion price tag and $8 Billion in Earmarks ('pork"). Nothing but a blatant attempt by the Dems to dictate the budget for next year.

Before closing I want to say a few things about "ObamaCare". Obviously, many hope this takeover of our health system will be reversed by the courts as unconstitutional. There has been problems surfacing already and two of those problems I mention briefly. Yesterday the Obama Administration announced rules which are an effort to prohibit or reduce necessary rate increases by private health insurer's. Under proposed regulation, rate increases of more than 10 percent would come under scrutiny of state and federal officials. This opens the door for more oversight of private business. The feds want to give everyone health insurance (including children to age 26) but they want to prohibit health insurers from increases to cover such added expenses. Another highway to demise of the private insurer.

Last week the Food and Drug Administration revoked the approval of the drug Avastin, which as been one of the drugs of choice by thousands of Oncologists across the nation for the estimated 17,000 plus women struggling with advanced stages of Breast Cancer. The FDA states that the drug does not show "a significant benefit in slowing disease progression to outweigh the significant risk to patients." Risk!.. Not a significant benefit... Sorry to say that without this drug, these patients. short of a miracle, are going to die from Cancer, unless the drug is available and saves them for a while. Is this the first step towards "Death Panels"?

That's My Opinion...