Reality Challenged

When I moved to Jacksonville, I needed to find a new family doctor. A friend of mine who already lived here introduced me to one of his friends. He was a nice guy and we got along well together. It’s important to get along with your doctor. It was nice to learn that he wasn’t in it for the money and that he wanted to minimize my medical expenses by not repeatedly referring me to other doctors. I wondered about his not wanting to refer me to other doctors or specialists when they could more effectively treat a given problem, or successfully treat one. He assured me that in all his years, he never lost a patient due to ignorance. He went on to explain that he never once was in a position that his diagnosis was wrong. He never started a treatment that a patient didn’t like even if it would save the patient. I found it very curious about this guy’s approach to medicine. It sounded good but appeared to be missing something. I needed to find some of his patients for references to instill my confidence in this guy.

I couldn’t find any of his patients. I did find a slew of people who knew and liked him. They beamed when talking about him, many calling him their best friend. Not once did he ever let them down. I also found out he knew some famous people too that liked him. One even mentioned him by name on Leno or was it Letterman?

The only problem was that I couldn’t find out how people thought of him as a doctor. I did some research and found out the guy wasn’t a doctor at all, never was! It turned out that he was a volunteer in a hospital – my friend introduced me to a quack doctor! I called my buddy and explained to him what I found. He told me I was nuts and that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I told him that he didn’t have a medical degree. My buddy chastised me about not being able to understand and that the AMA was campaigning against this guy because he didn’t believe in the use of specialists and that I was just listening to propaganda. I was dumbfounded by my buddy’s logic and tried to explain the value of specialists and I was told that I was just a puppet indoctrinated by the AMA to regurgitate their views.

Well, I didn’t buy it for one second. I found a real doctor that had credentials and was willing to seek other’s help to make sure my health efficiently taken care of.

Today, I’m doing quite well even though I do have various medical problems that would have occurred regardless of my lifestyle or medical intervention. I shudder at the thought of what my health would be like if I chose that quack - how many emergencies would he have screwed-up irreparably?

What amazes me is that people want to vote a person for president that is akin to knowingly choosing quack doctor. Just change of few nouns above and you realize how many foolish people this country allows to vote.

The last polling location I visited was at a church with sandy dirt for a parking lot. Trudging through the sand wasn’t that bad except that had ants, got into my shoes and into my car. I wondered what it would be like if it were raining. I never went out to vote again – that was 1988. However, I have voted in every presidential election since then via absentee ballot.

It used to be that one needed to justify voting absentee. Today, no justification is needed but most fail to even consider it as an option. Originally, I did it out of laziness not wanting to take off from work and drive to the polling station. I quickly realized that voting absentee is the best way to perform my civic duty. Besides, in 1992, it was raining on election day and that parking lot would have been a deterrent to many with its now muddy sand.

With a disability, voting absentee can make life significantly easier. For some disabilities, travelling outside is a major event. Travelling to an unfamiliar location such as a polling station can be a high source of anxiety not knowing if they can accomodate your specific needs even though advertised as handicap accessible. Each election season, the local media brings attention to the lack of accessible voting locations yet fail to emphasize or even mention that absentee voting is even an option.

Absentee registration is easy. In my county, you can register for absentee ballots online on the county’s website and have it for just the upcoming election or for all the elections of the year. In my county, even the return envelope is postage-paid. If not online, a quick call to your area’s supervisor of elections will get you registered for a ballot.

Even without having a disability, voting absentee makes the whole process painless. All one needs to do is register far enough in advance to election day.

Come this election season, I’ve vote like I always do… in front of the TV with one of those drinks with a tiny umbrella in it – Cheers!

"We need to help the families of America. We need to relieve their burden."

Help! I need a shovel! I’m being buried alive!

It is the time of year when all politicians tell us more lies than we can handle. Their voting track record is illustrative of their true beliefs. Our nation’s politicians, both Democrat and Republican, favor those with alternate lifestyles and single parent families over the traditional married couple. The truth is defined not by the words they speak but by the actions of their record in congress.

Over the past quarter of a century, the US Congress has traded domination by both Republicans and Democrats. Yet, in all those years, they have been evasive to eliminate the taxation preferences to single people over married people, also known as the marriage penalty tax. In fact, their voting record favors divorce, couples living together out of wedlock and gay marriage. Yup, even the most conservative politician in Washington favors gay marriage.

This can’t be true, can it?

Yes sir-eee! It’s all about money. It’s true because the Republicans want to fund more tax breaks for those who are far beyond my tax bracket and the Democrats want to fund more social programs for those who don’t need them. Gay marriage is a perfect route to collect more taxes for their pork spending. I believe that both parties secretly want marriage of any kind to be made legal – such as marriage between a man and his dog.

How do you figure?

Quite simple. As the approval of marriage other than between a man and a woman become more widespread, a new tax base becomes formed. Currently, the US tax code doesn’t recognize gay marriage but a simple change would remove their preferential taxation treatment. Yup, tax ‘em like the rest of the married population! It’s amazing that it has not been done already but, it’s only a matter of time. It’s a yet untapped source of revenue that would be used to provide more money to favored pork programs.

Somebody will propose to make the taxation change. It will be easily approved by Republicans and Democrats alike and both will claim it’s not a new tax. It might be interesting to see how this gets proposed on Capital Hill. To approve the change means that one recognizes gay marriage and to disapprove it means that one gives preferential treatment married gay couples. It’ll be interesting to watch how some politicians deal with their own beliefs, their constituents and sense of fair play.

I like to think of myself as a realist when it comes to the issues of the day surrounding me. I prefer to gather information on my own and make my own determinations of right and wrong and the best path to follow. The most dangerous people in the world are not leftist liberals or way-far-right conservatives but those who blindly follow and allow others to tell them what to think. These “followers” are told what their opinions are rather than developing their own. I’ve debated issues with these “followers” whose depth of understanding of an issue stops with a few sound bites and over generalized facts. What’s worse, they actual believe they have a sound understanding of the issue. The inevitable response to the challenging of their information with more easily produced detailed facts is a response that completely discounts those detailed facts as lies, propaganda or not relevant. Typical replies follow the flavor of “you wouldn’t understand” [the classic egotist's response] or “you’re just a puppet of the National Demoplublicanist party” [a favorite of the fringe element]. The first clue to spot a follower is when they provide a simplistic solution to a complex problem. “To stop all hijackings, just don’t let them on the airplane” – simple solutions to complex problems! If we add stupidity to a “follower”, one could end up elected to Washington and be active in ruining life for the rest of us. The problem is that it seems that more and more people are outsourcing their opinions in favor of developing their own. I wonder if they can get their opinions even cheaper by outsourcing to Mexico, China or India? This election season, my wish is not that more people register to vote but more people to try to think for themselves before they help vote the wrong idiot into office.

Yeah, and I want world peace too.