Dear President Obama, I'd love to give but....

Dear President Obama,
During your election year I was thrilled to meet you when you came to Las Vegas. I campaigned for you and even donated money.
I am sorry I can't do that this time. I believed you when you said "Change"
I realize you have repeatedly said we must be pragmatic and compromise when it comes to politics.
I am a teacher looking at a state government who is intent on busting our union. I am asked to pay more for insurance and retirement although I accepted meager raises during the boom times. My pay is to be cut but I do not know how much yet.
I left a profession as a social worker with a Masters degree to borrow 40,000 to get a Masters degree in Education, at a time when the country was screaming for teachers.
After ten years of teaching elementary school, spending much of my own money for supplies, spending enormous amounts of personal time in my profession, volunteered countless hours for extracurricular activities, and always worked two jobs while teaching to support my family  my profession, and myself, personally are  now reviled by the entire country. How did this happen?
Tonight I sit here trying to figure out how I am going to pay my bills with the additional costs and a pay cut. Since I have been teaching ten years and am in my fifties, I am at risk for  layoff, but one would never, never say it was because of my age or the amount I make compared to a first year teacher. would they?
Where have you been,, President Obama as the country ramped up the hate rhetoric about teachers?

I am lost. Who do I vote for in the next Presidential election? A President who ignores the tremendous unemployment rate of our country especially related to those over the age of fifty? The loss of full time employment for thousands in our county as corporations break our unions and decimate our employment laws? The loss of hope my eighteen year old daughter feels in the wake of high unemployment and low wages? Who do I vote for now? The suicide team intent on now taking away my social security and medicare when I am only seven years from eligibility? Or do I vote for you, a man I believed when he said, "Change Everyone Can Believe In? While I never supported Bush, his lies and manipulation were blatant and outrageous. We knew he was stealing from the middle class.
I don't know how you can ignore what is happening in states where government is king, people have no say, and big money doesn't even have to hide its role in dismantling one of the greatest nations in the world-all for greed. So who do I vote for?

Honestly, President Obama,
I have no one to vote for in the next election.

Three Wars-No armies

The United States is fighting three wars with three countries having NO ORGANIZED ARMIES and we can't wrap it up???
We have no reason fighting any of these wars. None.
Why are we paying all this money to fight meaningless wars?
Bring our troops home and have a little respect for other country's business.

No insurance? What made you think you could come here????

My grandson became very sick last week. Because my daughter has no health insurance for either of them we tried everything we could to stop his vomiting and bring down his fever. We kept looking for signs of dehydration. He kept nothing down. By day five he was listless and we were feeding him pedialyte with a syringe. By day six we were arguing about what we should do.
Should we take him to the emergency room where he would not be denied care? I had 160.00 left for two weeks, should we go to a med center?
Las Vegas is a mean town when it comes to health care.
The "free" clinic is for adults. No pediatric care is offered for a reasonable price. We have no pediatricians willing to see children without insurance coverage. How could they order tests? Too much liability.
we asked around. No luck.
Finally we took him to the emergency room at Sunrise Hospital.
He spent the day in the emergency room. He was hydrated and given a medicine to stop the vomiting and nausea. After eleven hours in the emergency room she went to check out.
The hospital knew she had no insurance. She told them when she came in the door.
When my daughter got to check out the billing clerk yelled at my daughter, "What did you think you were going to do when it came time pay?" she yelled in front of the people in the waiting room. "The bill is $2,000.!!
Who is going to pay the doctors for their care? How do you think this hospital keeps serving patients?
She yelled louder, "This bill is $2,000. "What WERE YOU THINKING?"
After seven days with a sick baby, agonizing whether to bring him in, she was exhausted and crying.
"I just wanted my son well, she said." I will pay you back after I get out of school in July, in the meantime I will send what I can>"
The clerk handed her the bill and stated, "Yeah, well good luck with that." Who will the pay the doctors?"

My daughter has two months of school and then she will have a job with insurance coverage.
She doesn't have much choice at this point.
This may sound a little dramatic, but the message from health care is this-"unless you qualify for medicare or medicaid, or have private insurance, don't come here. Don't you dare come here."

Like any service offered on an optional basis such as pedicures, facials, manicures, hair design, etc.,  if you don't have the money do not use the service. Your health, your baby's health is not important enough to warrant service without payment, Go away. If you die, it is that much cheaper for us.

How dare you come here without the ability to pay.
Know any pediatricians who take cash and charge reasonable rates.?

Welcome to The United States of Conspiracy Theories and Lunacy

What factors account for a country's descent into sheer lunacy? When voices of reason and actual facts take a backseat to an increasingly paranoid population hell bent on destroying its' government and actual well being?
A country which celebrates cold blooded murder and firing squad assassinations of  third world county leaders?
What barbaric code of ethics does this country abide within?
When normally reasonable people believe in conspiracy theories and demand the release of graphically violent pictures to assuage their cynical sense of self,- how did we get here?
Did the media become stupid first? Or did the citizens simply find an equal partner to put a face on their national stupidity?
Did we elect people into office whose initial intentions were greed, avarice and blatant disdain for the citizens actually served or have they become corrupted along the way?
The United States is a dying democracy.-
it's citizenship participating in its' own demise.
As a nation we are so divided we are beyond partisan politics.
We do not politely agree to disagree - we violently repudiate another's opinion, believing  to our deepest core a differing opinion constitutes treason or at least a personal betrayal.

It is a sick, sick society, a runaway train with no brakes, this  craziness in which the truth can no longer be recognized.

Us Budget Woes? Three Wars ignored by the American People???

700 billion dollars were spent in the last year on three wars. Not a peep from the American people. The United States defense budget is more than all defense budgets of the entire world combined.
Did you know that?
We are fighting wars in three countries which have no organized armies. And we are losing!!
When will Americans quit thinking stupid?
Why are in three wars?
Why are we not out of these countries?
Enough!
Or do we like our persona? Kill anything that moves?

America's Degrees of Inhumanity

Outrage isn't what it used to be.

Numbed by a barrage of culturally accepted, media hyped violent images, games, movies and real life violence, America has accepted higher degrees of inhumanity as the "new normal".

As we dumb down our education system and blame it on the teachers, ignore those most in need of our compassion and assistance, accept millions of unemployed fellow citizens -in fact, blame them for their unemployment and refuse to hire them, we plow on toward our goal:

Higher degrees of inhumanity, always with another explanation -another curious sound bite.

Human life in America continues to cheapen. 

What other country on this planet is currently fighting three wars?

*yawn* says the dumbed down America. .

Momentary Perspective for those less than shallow

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Momentary Perspective

Japan's horrible disaster appeared to create about 60 seconds of reflection from our mostly self absorbed, narcissistic country-
After all, what do we REALLY have? Stuff can get washed away in seconds. Entire families can die within minutes, and in some cases, family members will never be located.
As I drive to work in the morning my renewed respect for this earth has me humbly acknowledging the power of  the mountains surrounding Las Vegas.
-Nature has a way of balancing itself- man can only destroy Earth for so long.
We seem to be feeling the effects of natures inability to balance all that we demand from it.
Millions of fish and birds dying, flooding, earthquakes, huge monster storms

If mankind can't get beyond the selfish destruction of its own planet, we will perish.
Earth will have another round of some form of life as it knows it, but we will not.