What I have been up to....boring! I know.

I have been writing my Congress and Representatives about Healthcare reform. I know I don't usually get political on the blog. But here are the fruits of my labors.

August 11, 2009

The Honorable Jon Kyl

Dear Congressman Kyl:

I am writing to let you know that I OPPOSE HR3200 and the government hijacking my private healthcare decisions. I do not want the government to have more control and influence over my health care.
I also have a few questions for your Congressman Kyl. My first question is do you support Obamacare? My second question is it is my understanding that Congress will be exempt from Obamacare. If that is true; then why is Obamacare good enough for me, but not good enough for you?

I oppose the plan to nationalize our health care system and urge you to oppose it. There may be good intentions behind the legislation, but the unintended consequences will be massive and destructive to our economy.


Here are a few reasons why ObamaCare will be destructive to our country:

* Healthcare rationing: Government takeover of health care also would allow Washington to use "comparative effectiveness research" to dictate to doctors which treatments they should prescribe and how much they should cost. That in turn would lead to rationing of health care services. (Page 29 - rations healthcare; essential benefits are defined and there is an annual limitation of $5,000/individual and $10,000/family).

* Government decisions about what healthcare benefits you can receive, even from your private employer: (Page 30 – the "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide what treatment/benefits you receive.) It ultimately would transform legislators into quasi health care practitioners. Legislators would become quasi medical practitioners because they would lead and guide the government-controlled medical boards, personnel and policies that would oversee the program. That would include abortive and end-of-life counsel and services. Federal politicians would rely upon relatively few chief physicians (appointed mostly by them), who in turn would oversee and implement the medical policies and procedures that they felt were best for the country.

* Family Planning Services (code phrase for government funded abortion Pages 769-770) – --every version of ObamaCare currently being discussed includes the devastating Abortion Mandate that will REQUIRE me and other pro-life Americans to fund abortion with our tax dollars! THIS IS WRONG!!! Why should we be required to fund abortions when we are morally against it. Government Funded Abortion is not a "right" guaranteed in our constitution.

* This legislation also requires euthanasia counseling - the frequency of which increases with age and illness. (section 1233 of the legislative proposal) This deals with a government requirement for an “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session. Dr. Betsy McCaughey who is a former New York state officer and health expert said. “They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner.” The proposal specifically calls for the consultation to recommend “palliative care and hospice” for seniors in their mandatory counseling sessions. Palliative care and hospice generally focus only on pain relief until death. That section may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign. This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law.

* ObamaCare is an economic suicide pill for our faltering economy! It will add to an already ridiculously high deficit. This legislation clearly would drive our country deeper into debt and cannot be paid for without massive across the board tax increases. America cannot afford the $1 trillion price tag of socialized health care during these difficult economic times. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate version of the health care legislation "would result in a net increase in federal deficits of about $1.0 trillion for fiscal years 2010 through 2019." Is that what you call good fiscal responsibility within an economy and government that already is bordering on bankruptcy? I flatly reject any health care proposal that increases costs or imposes new taxes on any American.

* This legislations will kill small businesses under a mountain of taxes, regulations and other cost. It will NOT save money, but will increase the rapid rise in healthcare cost in the country.

* All Employers will be required to auto-enroll all employees in ObamaCare with no options. Businesses will be pushing workers onto the government run plan, driving up costs, and shutting down private insurance. ObamaCare ultimately would limit the competitive market of health care. You don't create competitive markets by creating monopolies, yet that is exactly what government-run universal health care would prevent: competition. If government should do anything, it should crack down on medical insurance monopolies. If government wants to regulate one more thing, it would be better to regulate the medical insurance companies, not the American people.

* Mandated audits of the books of private companies: -Page 22 - mandates the government will audit the books of all employers that self-insure

* It also requires A National Health ID card, complete with government access to our personal information and even our bank accounts.

* It mandates counsel to "increase the frequency interval" between pregnancies (in other words, bureaucrats will tell us when we should have a child). And, it even requires taxpayers to pay for "sex change" surgeries!

* Other mandates: Page 317 – government can prohibit a hospital from expanding, Page 341 – gives government the authority to disqualify certain plans, i.e. Medicare Advantage (Medicare Part B), Page 353 – sets limitations on enrollment of special needs individuals

And what about the taxpayers who would pay for the program? Would having universal health care encourage their future productivity? Further taxing members of the upper class (which would mean further penalizing their productivity) certainly would not provide incentive for Americans chasing the American dream. And their added taxes obviously would trickle down to consumers, as well. Or do we just assume they would pay 47 million Americans' universal health care out of their surpluses?

One needs only look at the failed and deeply flawed TennCare in Tennesse and Massachusetts’s government run health care plans to see that Government-run Universal Healthcare is a bad idea that will end up devastating our nation.

Canada and Europe already have proved that national health care translates into national nightmares, with a plethora of new government regulations and new systems of rationing medical attention. Under government-run services, personal health care would transform into more impersonal harassment.

I urge you to stand against the loss of personal freedom, the skyrocketing tax increases and the healthcare rationing that will result from H.R. 3200, "Obamacare". Please know that I am watching your actions on this bill. I urge you to take time to listen to your constituents during the August recess.

Respectfully,
International Party Girl

“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation”

I am still here in Palm Springs. I shouldn’t still be here although if you know me at all you should not be in the least bit surprised. I do adore a vacation.

My BFF and I have been having a great time! I might not go home tomorrow. She has to leave on Wednesday so surely I will head back then! LOL :) However she is going to be back here in December so yeah!

The most fun about this weekend away is that she and I have gotten to plan our upcoming trip to Russia. We will be leaving September 5 and be gone until September 12! YEAH! The only scary bit is that she and I probably are going to have a hard time finding something to eat while traveling.

Upon returning home on the 12^th I am going to drive down to Auburn from Atlanta, and catch the Auburn Mississippi State game. Then I will head down to spend a week at the beach with my parents and the long suffering Bey. THEN I will come home, and promise to be good and stay in town for at least 10 days at a stretch. :) I have to find out if I can take SD out of school for that amount of time…HOPEFULLY everyone deserves a week at the beach!

Sometimes you need a hairbrush

On my way to Palm Springs for a short Vacay in San Diego. I made sure to capture the empty passenger's seat signifying my childfree weekend.

San Diego a wonderful city. Hitting the beach and enjoying catching up with my BFF! I miss miss miss her and wish I could replicate her world wide. Lol!

If things go wrong, don't go with them. ~Roger Babson

I had forgotten. Prior to moving to IPGzona Bey and I prayed that God would slam all the doors that He wanted closed, and swing wide the doors he wanted us to go through. If the doors seem to be slamming I must not be doing what I should be. In that case it is time to press forward. Chin up…today is a new day!

I got SD contacts yesterday for her Birthday. She looks so pretty. I love seeing her without her face hidden in glasses. I had to talk her dad into it. Then he had to talk to her mom! SD wanted them…and she plays me like a fiddle sometimes she wants something. After getting her contacts she looked at me and said “Next stop Make Up” and I said oh no…that is your own battle there missy.

It is funny this time every year she would be going back home, and I wouldn’t see her again until Thanksgiving. It was always a tough time for me, and it made me weepy. Although it is understandable why I would feel that way, I felt that way because I was going to miss her so much, and there was nothing I could do about it. However this year I have the same feeling, I wonder if it is just force of habit. I can’t figure it out. Although I am glad that she is going back to school…I have some things I need to handle that are difficult when she is here…I still love the seemingly endless lazy days that we enjoy!

If I had my life to live over, I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. ~Don Herold

Have you ever had one of those times in your life where nothing is going right? Yeah me neither until recently. I swear this town is cursed for me. I will get it straightened out, but come on…can’t I have one or two things just go my way. Why is that asking too much?

A house I want to buy was supposed to foreclose August 10. I just found out the guy is going to file bankruptcy probably tying of up the foreclosure process for months to years on end. He is living in the house for free. I realize this is mercenary of me, but I just don’t think that is right. From what a foreclosure expert told me he could have his bankruptcy tied up for up to 2 years. Meaning he could live there for free for nearly 3 years. What on earth is that about? And get this…even after the bank forecloses on it they might have to pay him to leave. It is call cash for keys or some other such nonsense. I guess I have to find a new house. That must not be my house. :(

My very first SMS blog! Unfortunately I only have 160 characters and I refuse to use text language. I guess we shall see how this works!

“"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings” Lewis Carrol

OMG what have I done? I have signed on to do some really really big course redesigns in the next couple of weeks. Why did I do that since I know SD hasn’t gone back to school yet? What is wrong with me???? The work is big, and threatening to smother me. It also doesn’t help that I am running off on jaunty vacations every weekend.

And in other news…I need my eyebrows waxed BADLY. What is a wicked stepmother without perfectly executed eyebrows? I also need my bangs cut, my nails and toes done, some other maintenance type things done. But I have no clue where to go. Perhaps I should relate a quick story about why this is such a tragedy. My hair in most places is white blonde…white white…Barbie white. My eyebrows are a shade slightly lighter than that. One might describe my eyebrows as polar bear. ANYWAY, the last time I ventured into an unknown salon I had my eyebrows WAXED OFF. Yes you read it right. The girl accidently waxed off one of my eyebrows. She claimed she couldn’t SEE it. Well one can’t go around with just one eyebrow so the OTHER one had to come off as well. It was disastrous. Now I don’t know what to do. Do I go brave the wilds wondering what sort of scary wax wielding ninja might butcher my perfectly maintained arch? Or do I cower at home like a mouse?

“Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.” Jesse Owens

I was awarded a blog award by “Dad’s Second Whatever.” You can follow her blog by clicking here or on the side. I am so happy that she felt my blog worthy of an award. I am so grateful I have met all these outstanding stepmoms through their blogs. Thank you for giving my blog an award, and taking the time to read my mad ramblings.

So I have officially been in Phoenix by myself over a month now. I am lonely. I will be attending a social event with the Auburn Alumni group here in town on the 29th. I will be attending some of the events with my sorority this month as well. But it is time to start working on my new local BFF. This coming weekend I don’t have time to work on it. It is my weekend without SD so I will be spending it in San Diego with my lifelong BFF Sally. I will be relaxing on the beach and catching up about the minutiae that define our lives as women.

But when I get back home the hunt for cultivating new friendships will be on. I also need to put my big girl panties on and quit staying at my aunt’s house every night. I am basically paying a little over $1,000 bucks a month for a storage unit for a rental house I have slept in like 5 times. In my defense though it is much easier to stay over there, and she likes having me around. I am an excellent cook so my uncle enjoys my being there as well.

One thing that always stumps me is that I really have no peer group. I work from home. I am an online college professor. So I don’t get up and go to a job everyday. On occasion I am free to shop in the middle of the week or take long leisurely lunches. That makes me sort of like a stay at home mom. However I don’t have any kids at home…there are not many 32 year old women that don’t work at all, don't work from home and don’t have kids leaving me stuck with no peers. That is not meant to be a poor me kind of post more like a …hmm what is a gal to do kind of comment.

“Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose” Alfred North Whitehead

Now that I live on the “west coast…” or near the west coast anyway, I can read post secret before I go to bed on Saturday night. But it seems so sad because I don’t get to read the secrets with Bey.

I just returned from my vacation with my SD. Some notable things happened on the trip. First I discovered a passionate love for a town in northern Arizona called Jerome. It was once a mining town that became a ghost town in the 50’s. The kids LOVED ghost hunting at our hotel and took 2 ghost tours. I am a skeptic and don’t believe in ghosts, but the kids had so much fun…who am I to be a kill joy?

Another notable occurrence is SD bragged to me that she got to use the word “sought” the other day. This obviously needs a little bit of back story. I am a vocabulary nut. Scoring nearly perfect on my SAT verbal section, GMAT, and GRE, I have an infatuation with words. In fact, I can tell you the two words I missed on my SAT…in case you are curious…which I know you are…aplomb and hoi polloi. (Don’t worry I know what they mean NOW). Anyway, not only do I love words, but as I grow tired or frustrated I tend to use larger and more complex words. For example, if I am in an argument with Bey instead of saying, “You hurt my feelings”, I might say “The belittling of my banal requirements must cease and desist post haste.” Nevertheless SD hates when I use words that she doesn’t know. I typically do not define them for her, but have her look them up herself so that she can remember them. She told me that she had the opportunity to use sought, and was very proud.

I need to remind any of my gentle readers that do not know this, but I am her stepmom. So on occasion I get the crumbs. I sometimes wonder what impact if any at all do I have on this child’s life? It is always so gratifying when something like this occurs. Case in point, it is because of my constant badgering that she is such a bibliophile. Perhaps in a few more years she can score PERFECT on her SAT’s! If they ask “sought”, “aplomb”, or “hoi polloi”. She will get a perfect score NO PROBLEM!

I got some AMAZING calla lilies from the man for my anniversary. He has never gotten them for me before and they are my most favorite flower. He is so thoughtful he also sent a small floral bouquet to my aunt. I one time told him that if one woman in a house gets flowers everyone should get flowers. Isn’t he amazing? He listens, he is loving, he is warm…who could be better?

I still have pictures of the trip that I will be uploading tomorrow. I dropped SD off with her mom today, and I get her back on Tuesday. It is always so weird when she is not around after having been around for so long…like I am missing an appendage. :)