Edward Kennedy

I was never fond of Edward Kennedy. He simply did not represent any of my ideals and values. I mostly ignored all the media coverage of his death, laying in repose, and funeral mass. When I first turned on the television yesterday morning a priest was pontificating, "He understood the complexity of the society in which we live." I switched to a business channel.

In my opinion Kennedy was nothing more than a privileged rich kid that never grew up. He was a drunken sot most of his life. He had no more understanding of the complexities of our society than I have of the complexities of the atom bomb. He rode his brother's coat-tails, the Kennedy name, and the liberal illusions of Camelot to political prominence. Otherwise, he would have been nothing more than the town drunk.

The business channel I was watching switched to the funeral mass and Obama was emoting about all the tragedies in Teddy's life, as though we "common folk" have no tragedies in our lives. I just hope Teddy Boy has to face Mary Jo before he goes to his just reward, however God sees fitting and proper.

End-of-Life Issues

My wife and I were at a Republican Club dinner meeting Tuesday evening. Our congressman, Mike McCaul (R), was the featured speaker. Afterwards he held a Q&A. Toward the end he said he had time for one more question and called on me. I said: "I don't have a question. I have a message for you to take back to Washington. I'm 80 years old. If someone from the government shows up at my front door to discuss my end-of-life options, he damn well better be concerned about his end-of-life options!" It brought the house down. The congressman said, "That's a good way to end the meeting."

He left for another speaking engagement about 50 miles east of here. When we got home we had an email from the congressman's Blackberry that said, "Don, you had the best line of the evening." He later told a friend who told us he said, "I believe old Don really meant it."

Anyhow, that is my take on the situation.

HR3200 Sec. 1233 End of Life Issues

My dear readers, if you want to read a pretty good discussion on the Obamacare (HR3200) Section 1233 concerning End of Life Issues then click on the following link to a fellow blogger on blogspot:

http://doctorrw.blogspot.com/2009/08/hr-3200-end-of-life-counseling.html

Too Big to Fail - Small is Beautiful

If a company is too big to fail then a legislative bill is too big to pass. Small is beautiful. Small is more manageable than big. Who can read and understand a 1,000 page piece of legislation full of legalese? Can you imagine how many pages of regulations it will take to implement this law? It will be larger than the IRS Code. The end result will be that no one will be able to understand all the twists and turns in the briar patch, not even the experts. A whole new profession will emerge that specializes in guiding people through the morass of regulations and ways to evade or outright fraud the system. It will be a costly nightmare.

Health Care and the Deficit

I'm constantly amazed at the things members of the Obama administration say. Today on ABC This Week Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary, said to George Stephanopoulos that Obama's health plan will reduce the national deficit. How in common sense can you install a massive $$$ government run health care program that brings 43 million people into an already over extended government system and reduce the national deficit? Do they think we are all morons?

The only way the health care plan can possibly reduce the deficit is to cut and/or reduce benefits. That means extend the qualification for Medicare from 65 to 70, and to ration health care procedures, i.e., if you are 75 and need a knee replacement, you will be determined to be too old for it to be cost effective. So, you don't get a knee replacement. I don't know about you, but my health and quality of life is not a matter of cost effectiveness, especially as determined by some bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

The government can't run the post office in the black. It can't run AMTRAK in the black. It can't even run a relatively simple "Cash 4 Clunkers" program one week without mucking up the works. And, they want to run our massive health care system? Their mantra is, "No problem. We'll just tax the rich some more." My fear is we will soon run out of rich people to tax. I saw on TV today that 1.5% of the people pay 40% of all income taxes. Wow! I guess I'm glad I'm not rich.