Prayers

Jan 19, 2011

The House passed the bill to repeal Obamacare on to the Senate. This is very good, although it may come to nothing in the Senate. There are at least 21 Dem's in the Senate who are up for re-election next year, so it could actually get kind of interesting. So far 27 states are suing to get out of Obamacare, however, Missouri is not yet on of them.
This is going to be a page that is just my opinion, and I will provide links.

I kind of got drug into politics by forming a serious long-term monogomous relationship with someone who had followed them his whole adult life. I will call this man the Cyclist, and he used to force me to watch news talk shows for hours on end. I always had a book with me and mostly read, but there was one show that just drove me crazy and made even me put my book down. I called it The Motormouth and The Dead Guy. I would explode and say "AAAAAHHHH. Why do they do that? It can't be that hard to find out what the truth is and report it!!!!"
Then the Cyclist would explain to me that this was not the news, it was a talk show. Furthermore, that all the talk shows did that, just let people ramble on about crap that had nothing to do with what they had been asked. I got that it wasn't the news, but I could not get why WHY they didn't ever back up anything they said with any facts. Well, ok, it was mostly The Dead Guy that did that, The Motormouth would wear you out with facts, which got on my nerves until it just physically upset me.
So I started watching different stations, and comparing what I saw reported with what I could actually verify.
I did this to prove the Cyclist wrong, naturally. And naturally, it turned out that it couldn't be done. I was appalled.
Now, where you go to verify is up to you. You can, and will, find almost anything on the internet to support almost any claim, no matter how strange.
I go to National Review Online, The Heritage Foundation, Brietbart, Fox, there are lots of places you can go. If you are a facebook friend you are probably already familiar with these places.
What I found was that Fox had more facts. Especially if you just watch the regular news. The other networks spin it one way or another. This is just my opinion.
The other thing that I started doing was looking up the voting records of politicians. This is key. The best place I have found is Votesmart.org. This is so important for you to do before you go vote because a lot of them lie. Not all of them lie. But some of them are absolutely shameless and if you follow their voting record and then see them on TV talking exactly the opposite you know they are a liar right there.
Also note that lots of research needs to be done when voting on Propositions and Amendments. You can find lots of information on these usually, but you have to look for the truth. The crap they hand you on pamplets is usually bent toward one side or the other.
One that comes to my mind from recently was the Proposition to make 60% of our energy come from renewable sources in 10 or 20 years. It appealed to the folks that think anything Green is good. It turns out that it will make our energy costs skyrocket and no one will be able to afford electricity....We voted this on ourselves, people. We could practically be from California. I find this very frustrating. And I mean nothing bad toward my good tea party friends in California. There are good Americans there. They have Dennis Miller there, for God's sake.
I am an Independent voter. I am a Tea Party Member.
I am both of these things because I still believe that American goverment is run by the people, for the people, and of the people.
I am both of these things because I believe that most people are capable of making their own decisions and taking care of themselves and their families without any "help" from some person they don't even know who has a bunch of paperwork to fill out that doesn't make any sense.
I am both of these things because I don't throw in with large groups of people easily.

I am afraid of the future for the first time in my life.
It starts slow, but it has moved very fast.
When I was growing up, if I got sick, my mom drove me 30 miles to the Dr. The Dr. fixed whatever was wrong with me, be it strep throat, a bladder infection or a broken leg. Well, for the broken leg we went across the street to the hospital for the cast.
This cost about $25. Ok, the cast was probably more. Say $200.
Fast forward 30 years.
You can get in to see your "primary" physician, but if anything is really wrong with you, you have to get a "referral".
This referral consists of you getting another appointment (in 6 weeks, if you're lucky) at another Dr. in a town approximately 250 miles away from where you live.
We have been doing this for so long that we have young women of child bearing age who think nothing of driving 250 miles to give birth. Giving birth is a process that can usually be accomplished by calling your women relatives, driving a stake in the yard and boiling water. I kid, I kid. But do you see the point?
Why is this? It's because none of our small hospitals carry insurance for deliveries anymore.
It's because they can't afford to carry insurance because they can be sued. This is why we have lost our hospitals and our doctor's. They literally cannot afford to stay in business.
Torte reform is one of my biggest causes and no one wants to address that.
It is very important to think for yourself, be well informed, and do NOT, DO NOT get used to standing in line, filling out paperwork and being herded through like cattle.
This has been kind of a long post, or at least it seems that way. And it's been kind of rambling, but stick with me here.
If you have children, you can't really not pay attention anymore. When I was younger I would just go get drunk and dance till 4 am myself, but I'm too old to do that anymore.
Now is the time to start paying attention, however you feel.

Feel free to leave comments. We will see where this goes from here.

Parking Lot Compulsions

Update on not smoking.  I feel so much better it is hard to explain.  My joints literally feel lighter and do not ache so much.  I also have rhuematoid arthritis, which always bothers me more in the winter, but I feel better than I have in years.
Yesterday a friend called me and asked me if I would bring her cigarettes on my lunch break, as she was stuck in the house.  There was no way I was going to go anywhere in this town and buy cigarettes after all this!  I laughed.  LAUGHED, and told her that I had a pack in my purse I had been carrying for security and I felt able to let those go now.  That worked.  And I didn't have a panic attack.  This marks the first time in roughly 26 years that I have not had a pack in my possession, in fact, within 10 feet of my person.  You can take a few years out of that 26 for pregnancy.  For some reason the minute I became pregnant I could smell like a bloodhound and never had the least bit of trouble throwing them away.  That sense of smell was more a burden than a blessing most of the time, but I think God gives you that so you can be a good mother.  It does gradually fade, though.
So I guess I'm on the road to replacing my addiction to smoking with an addition to eating candy. 
Last night I started picking up candy and ended up with 4 bags of assorted goodies in my basket along with the dogfood that I went to the store for.  I was trying to come up with a plan of how to hide all this crap from the kids until I could get it to work, and I sat there and ate a huge candy bar (chocolate and toffee on sale for $1.29).  While I was sitting there in the parking lot, in my warm car, in the dark, I remembered some talk show I saw years ago on compulsive eaters.  They cried about how embarrassing it was for them to go through drive-thru's (because they did it several times a day) and how they would drive around and park in parking lots to eat the food because they were too ashamed to let anyone see them eat.
I knew just how they felt.
I wondered if there were any in the parking lot that had cigarettes.......I had some good stuff to trade......
Then I just separated out all the candy and tied it up and put it with the bags of stuff ready for the Salvation Army the next time I go, and went home.
Stay tuned for how to deal with acne in your 40's so that it doesn't interfere with wrinkle solutions. 

I got a couple of paper cuts on the pads on my fingers yesterday.  Not enough to bleed but enough to have a perforation in your skin that you almost break open anytime you pushed on anything.  It makes me shudder to even type that.  I really, really hate paper cuts like that.  I would rather it just go ahead and make a cut and get it over with.  I keep a some New Skin in my desk for just such emergencies.  It is like super glue and works really well.
When I got home I grabbed what I thought was my bottle of New Skin at home and reapplied some to one of my fingers.  I thought it burned quite a bit worse, but it dried and I went on with my night.  Before bed last night I noticed that it was all white and weird, so I went and got the bottle.  I had put Compound W on my papercut instead of New Skin.  Great......I tried to pick it off and it almost took my skin off with it. 
These are the things that I do and don't even know it for hours.
Distracted?  Well, just intensely multi-tasking is the way I would put it.

Coming soon - Political page

Tonight I will wade into Obamacare and the problems with nailing down who that will cover and how much it will cost.  I have added a page for this stuff so that only those who are actually interested in it will be able to go there for discussions.