As for Obama….how many important operatives of terror cells did our former chump-in-chief gw…..eliminate or imprison? I believe I’ve heard of many more important terrorists  that have been removed from the playing field under Obama’s first 9 months in office then in all the years of the error of gw. And they haven’t been tortured either. How about the break up of the recent plots to terrorize our nation transit systems. Did gw ever accomplish breaking up a plot…not tainted by agents pumping up the facts….or bating the hook….like in Lackawanna, Buffalo, Liberty City….so few truly dangerous people were caught there I’d have to say.

So let me wrap up here since once again Beckie’s started to make my blood boil.                                                                    Across their full spectrum, Conservatives need to step to the plate and speak out loadly too put a stop to the drive towards the right wing revolution beening espoused by those idiots at the Fake New Network (FNN/FOX).  FNN and their Tea Bagging friends, along with their a–hole friend and drug  fiend….Rash Limbaugh are hoping to create, a climate of hate and fear of government, and of course all those on the liberal side of the argument.                        

I pray Becks teary eyes will fade from my TV screen sooner not later, along with his junk news friends and all those pesky obstructionist Republicans.  To loosely quote…….gw…..”Your either wit us or ur against us“…..thankfully we’ve retired that #43.

Now let’s retire the rest of the lunatic fringe.  Send them back to their farms, and their hovels and of course those who are in need of  care…..must go to  ”our” rest homes and “our” death panels.  WHOSE  NEXT?

In 1993 I was approved for Medicare and Medicaid. I’ve received what can only be described as………great care; responsive health care; one with little paperwork or billing problems on my end; with very competent doctors, hospitals and clinics. I truly believe that had I been insured by a paid insurance policy, I would have been denied some care and/or services; and I’d have to pick from a provider list. At this point I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been to hospital or clinics.

When I broke my leg…twice….I picked my surgeon. When I had my amputation, I picked my doctor; I meet with him and 5 days later…..chop….chop!….LOL Thanks to you and I, as well as our federal government……Medicare and Medicaid do indeed work! Sure they could and should be tweaked, and most certainly some segments of our society are allowed to “drop through the cracks” so to speak, but in reality they are successful, long standing programs, which from the get-go were immediately gutted by Nixon and his party. It’s amazing that they survived all these decades. It is amazing that I too survived.

The government needs to be allowed to bid on prescription drugs, medical services and equipment purchases. Those, along with covering the yearly costs of the Part D program, were cut from the final bill that Bush and the Republican party gave us. Talk about passing along the costs….to our children and their children! I believe that all people in this country should have health care, fully covered…..”it is our right”! We don’t have the money to fight the republicans and certainly, not the insurance lobby’s opposition to health care reform. Ask yourself, will I need medical coverage and will it bankrupt me? Over 62% do indeed go bankrupt because of the expense of care. Please take this message to heart. Do what’s Right. Demand action now.

As for Afghanistan, where we should have gone with a large troop presence to begin with, so as to capture  Osama Ben Laden and reduce the number of militants aligned with him, we now need to finish the job and get the hell out of there ASAP. History shows repeatedly that not one can conquer that 13th century dark age tribal country, no matter how many men and machines have been thrown at them.
 

Then there’s our Medicare program.  Again a well run government health-care system.  Imagine the republicans starting with Nixon, almost immediately, began to gut the Medicare program, passed a few years earlier and signed by President Johnson. Thankfully they didn’t destroy it, though they wanted too. No senior citizen in their right mind would want to have Medicare taken away.  Just ask them.  Then we have a federal employee’s health-care program, which covers federal employees along with our officials elected or appointed.  Medicare works; and our government can get a piece of mail from coast to coast in two days, so why can’t our politicians grasp this simple fact…..government involvement is a must. It seems like every time we/our government takes their eyes off of corporations they start to skirt the law as best they can and they continue to do so that is until they get caught.

When candidate Obama was looking to be elected, he stated that  he was a furious backer who supported  the immediate repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy.  Now granted he is just in office 6 months or 180 days and he  Obama, has so very many issues on his platter, which were not  even on his radar screen during the campaign and which blew up in all our faces last October.  I would also like to make the point that most citizens didn’t see the problems through the trees either. 

As a gay man I must admit that the near collapse of our financial institutions and the  economic  turmoil it brought;  foreclosures, bankrupt banks and auto manufactures and of course the massive  lose of jobs with  it’s  mindboggling  monthly unemployment figures, are all significantly more pressing then is DADT  or same-sex marriage legislation.

Taking that into account, this president who can multi-task with the best of us must keep DADT on the front burner, and he, President Obama needs to  “shit or get off the pot! “

From Sept 11th,  2001 through 2008 some 12,000 members of our armed forces were discharged because of their sexual persuasion.  More then 300 0f  those men and women were top of their grade fluent in Arabic as well as other languages and others were jet fighter pilots. Even more unnerving is the 4000 or more personnel who don’t reenlist…..each year……that’s approximately 30,000 over 8 years.

I therefore submit that we lose millions of dollars which we invested to train these soldiers.  With all those discharged because of DADT, and those that don’t re-up their service, I pose that we are endangering the safety and security of our nation!  They are our Homeland Security!  That we conduct what amounts to witch hunts in many discharges is just shameful. Most polls continue to reflect that the general public supports repealing DADT at about 70% and enlisted members concur polling around 55%. When under the pressure of battle I’d be willing to bet most soldiers won’t or don’t give a dam what the sexual persuasion of the guy in the foxhole is.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” discharges since Obama and the 111th Congress were sworn in now number 309.

I have great love and respect for our country, but I know we can do better than “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  Please write you congressional  representatives.  Use your phone or email them. Remember statisticians point out that just one single contact made via phone, email or snail mail in theory equates to 1500 contacts.

Also please checkout  the  Servicemembers.org  website.  Help keep DADT on the front burner of our policy makers stoves.  DADT shouldn’t be the gift that keeps on giving and giving to which there are no takers!

“I was 15 back then and I had saved my money made working at a deli for .50 cents per hour!  I lived in New Jersey.  I flew for my first time on a Yellowbird (DC-727) flight with a friend, down to Daytona Beach then by bus to Titusville the the afternoon before the launch. We plopped ourselves down at the end of a jetty. As night fell the brilliantly lit Saturn V was mesmerizing from 8 miles away across the intercostals waterway. Till this day I get goose bumps reliving the moments of the launch at 9:32 am. I recorded the sounds on my portable cassette tape recorder. The crowd was to large to comprehend. 

And silent. 

Then the rocket lit brightly and climbed ever so slowly, bellowing clouds of steam and exhaust. Higher and still higher.  Nothing more. Till precisely 56 seconds later……when a hard wind wiped across the water, heated and smelling of the spent rockets fuel! And with it the sound, a growing rumble that drowned out the then cheering masses. Till this day I’ve never felt nor heard, such an incredibly loud rush and roar of sound!”

• Hello All,

                                                           Wernher von Braun

                                                                January 1979

                                                        father of modern rocketry

“Stargazer, now star-reacher, man inhabits a smallish planet of an ordinary sun in a garden-variety galaxy that occupies the tiniest corner of a universe whose scope is beyond comprehension.”

                                                            July 20th, 1969                                                                  

 ”It’s a   scene of magnificent desolation”   

                                                             Buzz Aldrin

                                                          July 20th, 1969                         

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

                                                           John F. Kennedy

                                                            May 25th, 1961

If we learned anything at all from Apollo, it was just how hard and expensive and dangerous it would be to cross space in rockets. We didn’t conquer space that July day 40 years ago. We only thought we did.

                                                            New York Times

                                                             July 18th, 2009

“The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean — O.K. if I add “godlike”? — quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon.”

                                                               Tom Wolfe

                                                             July 19th, 2009

Nineteen years later, they will see a long-awaited increase beginning this month, bringing a subsidy for a typical family of three to $321 a month, from $291, city and state officials said.

For a family of four, the subsidy will rise to $413.70 a month, from $375.70.

The increase was a small line in Gov. David A. Paterson‘s budget this year, but a hard-fought victory by advocates for the poor, who have long argued that the welfare subsidy was too low.

“It was way overdue,” said Mark Dunlea, the executive director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State, which lobbied for the increase. “Nineteen years is a very long time.”  According to the terms of the budget, the subsidy will also increase incrementally in 2010 and 2011. On Thursday, the change was so new that many recipients had yet to realize that their checks were about to become a little bit bigger.

“What? No!” said Georgeanna Hicks, 54, as she was told of the news on her way out of the Pathmark supermarket in East Harlem. “It hasn’t gone up in years. That is great.” Ms. Hicks, who has diabetes, said she would like to find a job as a secretary, or perhaps go back to school and be trained as a dental assistant.

The extra money, Ms. Hicks said, would help her afford subway fare, which recently went up.  “I can go look for a job more often now,” she said. “I’ll do my laundry more often. I’ll spend it on things like toilet paper, lotion, dishwashing soap. I can’t really buy much of anything, but it’ll help me.”

Like many other low-income people, Ms. Hicks said she scraped by on a combination of food stamps, welfare, Medicaid and a small housing subsidy.  She also depends on her daughter, who pays for things like her cellphone bill. But she said her daughter recently lost her job, and is struggling to keep up with her own expenses.