Jefferson: Blog

It seems Mr. or Ms. Anonymous wishes to have a conversation but still refuses to give a name or e-mail address. Yes, s/he actually wrote back to me in response to my previous blog post.

"Rationalize" means make rational / logical , it
does not mean death committees , " Obamacare"
actually reveals the costs of health care and
distributes the social costs in a designed way
rather then by obscene costs to those not
sheltered by agreements between providers and
insurance companies. Hard to determine if you
don't know the meaning of rational or if you
intentionally misinterpret ill give you the
benefit of the doubt that it wa an intentional
play on rationing rather than just stupid

If Obamacare is so rational, so logical, so wonderful, why is Obama and his administration giving all of these waivers to all of their buddies? Why is it that Congress, the very people who wrote and passed the bill - they had to pass it to find out what was in it after all - have decided they don't want to live under it? Why is it that President Obama keeps, illegally, delaying pieces of the law? If the law is so bad that he needs to delay it, maybe we should put the whole thing on pause and see if we can't come up with something better?

"and distributes the social costs in a designed way
rather then by obscene costs to those not
sheltered by agreements"

In other words, "let the other guy pay for it." Let the guy who has worked hard all of his life, has succeeded, has some money in the bank, a nice house and a good job, let him and his family pay THEIR medical bills plus pay the medical bills of the guy who quit high school, was "too smart" to worry about college and has to work mall security for minimum wage while trying to support himself and letting the government support his three kids. The problem with this is, the government makes no money. Most of the money the government spends, is OUR money, taxes paid by the American taxpayer, you know, the ones who have a job.

Obamacare, otherwise known as socialism, will not raise everybody up to the same level. It will not suddenly make the poor into the middle class. It won't work. Show me one society where it has worked and I might admit that Obama has a chance. No, it won't raise anyone up. Socialism will drag everyone else down. It won't raise the poor up, it will drag the middle class down. If you want equality, I guess you'll get it. Everyone will be equally miserable. What a noble goal to aim for.

Don't delude yourself into thinking that because people like Warren Buffet, George Clooney and Matt Damon support redistribution of wealth that it means anything. They already have their money safely secreted away in some off-shore bank account. When Socialism destroys the economy, granted it may will take twenty or thirty years, but when it does, they will still be rich. They will still be living in their mansion. Socialism won't drag them down. If you think you're going after the one percenters, fighting that noble fight for the ninety-nine percent, you're going to lose. They will still be rich, including Obama. It's you, me and the rest of us who are going to be miserable.

You are watching the news right? You are watching as big company after big company turns their previously full time staff into part time staff in order to avoid this law? People are losing their jobs because of Obamacare. People are being demoted from full time to part time. Do we really need to destroy the American economy to make sure that everyone gets health care? Seems like an awful high price to me.


You are watching the riots over in Greece and France and Spain? Their welfare state has outgrown their ability to pay for it. It will happen even quicker here in the US because there is no one bigger to bail us out. We, the United States, are the main reason that the European socialist states have managed to survive as long as they have. We were defending them for the last fifty years. Since the end of World War II. They didn't have to pay for a military. Now that they do have to support a military, they have to make cuts... or go bankrupt.

As for the word rational. Yes, I know the meaning of the word. I am a writer. Dictionary.com is a favorite bookmark of mine.

Rationalize: Verb. to ascribe (one's acts, opinions, etc.) to causes that superficially seem reasonable and valid but that actually are unrelated to the true, possibly unconscious and often less creditable or agreeable causes.

"Superficially seem reasonable and valid but that actually are unrelated to the true and often less creditable or agreeable causes." Yeah, that sounds about right for Obamacare.

I'm pretty sure that's NOT the definition you wanted, is it?

I anxiously await your response.

Well, in the just about 14 hours since I posted my previous blog entry, I have gotten seven responses, all of them mostly positive except for one.

The one negative one is, of course, the only one that was sent anonymously.

You got all of them. Every right wing touchstone.
You obviously don't know what "-obamacare" does.
It rationalizes health care. We are already paying
for the indigent with $120 asperin at the
hospital. Obama simply removes the "hiding" you
seem to want a pony

And he's right. I don't know what Obamacare does. Congress, who passed the bill, and the President, who signed the bill into law, don't seem to know what Obamacare does. Nobody knows what Obamacare does or will do. That's why Obama keeps breaking the law by delaying putting pieces of it into effect.

As for "rationalizing" health care. First off, I don't want my health care rationed. And second, I don't want the federal government - Gotta remember, The United States Federal government has come up with some real zingers in the past... Social Security, which is now broke, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who are partially responsible for the depression we are supposedly now recovering from, and the present state of the US Post office. - NO! I do NOT want elected officials, or appointed bureaucrats, making health care decisions for me or my loved ones.

If someone is going to kill me and my loved ones, damn it, it's going to be me!! :) That was a joke for those who have no sense of humor.

The 12 Most Necessary Steps To Fixing The United States Of America:

In No Specific Order...

1) End Obamacare. The Federal government is already spending more money than it has. Just like France, Spain and Greece over in Europe we can not afford cradle-to-grave socialism. The healthcare system we have isn't perfect. Everyone knows that and there are things we can do to make it better, to make it cheaper, but even the people who wrote Obamacare no longer want to live under it.

2) End the IRS. The income tax was always a bad idea in my humble opinion. We are wasting Millions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of man hours filling out tax forms, going to tax specialists and suffering through tax audits. The IRS Scandal, the IRS using it's power to delay and harass conservative organizations (for you liberals who support this idea, your party impeached Richard Nixon for less of exactly the same thing so I'd be rethinking my ideas on that one) is just more proof that the IRS, and the income tax, is a bad idea. We should move to a National retail sales tax (NRST) where we are taxed on what we spend, not on what we earn. There are issues that need to be figured out with the NRST, or the Fair Tax, which is a plan for an NRST, but the NRST can't be worse than what we have and there are other advantages. Tourists who come to the US would pay taxes to the US government with every purchase. Criminals, drug dealers and prostitutes, who don't pay taxes on what they make in their "Other" career, would suddenly pay taxes when they go buy a hamburger before going to work or buy "bling" to make themselves look good.

3) Take the power of collective bargaining away from all public unions - just the PUBLIC unions, not all unions. Politicians should NOT, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER be allowed to negotiate with labor. The Politician has "no skin in the game." The politician has NOTHING to lose by giving into the union demands, this makes the union happy, the union throws it's support behind the politician who gave in to all of their demands, they raise money to support the politician's re-election campaign, provide manpower and votes for that politician. Once they get him reelected, s/he now owes them, guess what happens when they go to renegotiate the unions contract? By the time that contract begins to hurt anyone (like it is up in Detroit nowadays) so much time has passed, there is no way anyone remembers who's to blame. Even if the voters did remember, the politician has probably moved on or retired by then.

4) Begin striving for real energy independence. The US government should allow drilling everywhere within reason, on and off shore. Yes, The US is having a bit of an oil boom right now but it is IN SPITE of Obama, not because of Obama. The Federal government is still slow-walking issuing permits to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. Allow Fracking, yes, there MAY have been problems in the past but they have been fixed, even Obama's own EPA can't prove any harm has ever come from Fracking. And if energy independence isn't a good enough reason to allow the Keystone pipeline (That oil is going out. It's just a matter of how. Either through the US or from the West coast of Canada to China and would it not be safer in a pipeline than in a truck?) The US government should also name oil as a "national security issue." I'm not saying we should nationalize the oil industry but we should recognize the importance of oil to this country at least for next 20-50 years. We should set an export tax on all oil. One or two of out every ten barrels drilled, should stay in the US and be processed and sold in the US. That should bring gas prices down. Pumping and using our own oil would not significantly hurt the middle eastern nations who pump oil (they have two other buyers, China and India, who will happily keep them in business for decades to come) but at least we won't be sending money to our enemies.

5) Secure the Southern border. Right now this isn't a real big issue because the flow of immigrants has changed directions. There are no jobs in the US so all the illegals are returning to Mexico where things are actually BETTER than here in the US. We need to secure the border, not just to protect our jobs but also because it's an easy way for our enemies to enter the US and attack us.

6) End All foreign aid. Especially aid going to less-than-friendly countries. This would include all of the Middle East (except for Israel) most of N. Africa, N. Korea.... This would not include humanitarian aid where needed, of course. Stop giving them money, stop selling them weapons. While China and Russia are often less-than-friendly, we should stop aid to them simply because they don't need it. There are some who say China will overtake the US as the richest nation in the world here soon, do we really need to be sending them aid?? Seriously???

7) Term Limits on Congress. You want to stop the "old boy networks" in Congress? Do you want your congress critters actually doing what you want them to do? Put term limits on them. No one serves more than 12 years, Period. People should not be making Congress a profession.

8) Declare that we DO have a "Muslim problem". Bill O'Rielly got in a good bit of trouble for saying this on "The View" a couple years ago. Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg actually got up and left the set they were so disgusted by Bill's racism or whatever. But think about it, if the Muslim nations, their political, cultural and religious leaders are supporting the terrorists, if they are allowing the Islamic schools, the Madrases', to continue to turn young Muslim boys into terrorists, if they are not going after the terrorists backers and the terrorists in their own country, are they really supporting us? Are they really helping? If the people are supporting the terrorists, with money, with assistance, ladies and gentlemen, we DO have a Muslim problem and we should make it clear to these Middle Eastern and north African nations that we will hold THEM partially responsible should a terrorist attack be launched from their nation.

9) Rebuild the public education system. We are paying more per child, per year for our public education system than almost any other country in the world and getting nowhere NEAR the results. This partially goes back to the public sector unions as the teacher's unions are some of the worst. They demand more and more money, more and more benefits but we never get better results. Open up school choice. The government should give parents money to send their child to whatever school they decide is best for their child, whether a public school, a private school, a parochial school, home schooling or even group schooling.

10) Force the Federal government to live by the Constitution and force them to live within their means. In my opinion, it's a crying shame that the government of the richest nation on Earth is broke and being forced to borrow money from those who may one day be our enemies. Congress and the President MUST learn to live within their means and they must remember that the Constitution lays out what powers the federal government has and states clearly, that all other powers are left in the hands of the states and the people. In my opinion, the Federal government should not even be involved in some issues like abortion and healthcare.
I recognize that there are somethings we need the Federal government to do that our Founding Fathers could not have foreseen. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, who set the rules for airplanes and broadcasting over the airwaves, respectively, are jobs that must be done at the federal level but the people and the government should be looking at these things and deciding "is this really something the federal government should be dealing with?" and if the answer is no, the federal government should stay the hell out of the way.

11) Reduce the minimum wage law. If you want to put more people back to work, let companies pay their employees what their work is actually worth. If you think flipping burgers is worth more than $2 an hour they offer, you can always go somewhere else.

12) End the Fucking Racism! And no, I'm not talking about folks on the right. I mean stop Affirmative Action. The NAACP and other such organizations were wonderful ideas in their day but like unions, they have accomplished most of what they set out to do. Institutionalized racism is GONE! Yes, there are still racists out there but there are LEGAL means of dealing with them now if they get in to a position of power. They can be taken to court, they can be sued, they can and will be fired by most national chains just to avoid the embarrassment and costs of going to court. Affirmative action is racist. It says that black people need HELP in order to get in to college, or to get a job. To me, it sounds like those who support Affirmative action are the racists. They're are the ones who believe black people NEED help. They don't. Like the rest of us, they should be allowed to succeed or fail on their own.

Well, it had to happen again... eventually.

I actually finished a story and managed to get it posted.

"Pie" is nothing more than a tiny little romantic flash story, not much more than intimate, romantic little sex scene.

It's my first story in a while, so I hope it gets LOTS of attention. E-mails with comments, criticisms or compliments are always welcome.

Thanks.

Well, my newest story, Solomon's Tower, has now been up for seven days. 719 downloads, 54 votes, has been added to 24 libraries and I have gotten e-mail feedback from.... Bill. Thanks Bill. :)

I know, I know, I always say "I write for myself. If other people enjoy my stories, that's pure bonus." And, no matter what I say here and now, it is absolutely true. But 700 people have read my story, fifty of them liked it enough to vote, and most of them rated the story pretty good, but only Bill had the time and wherewithal to fire off a quick e-mail?

Thanks again, Bill. :)