Its December 7, 2016. 30 degrees outside and will get down to about 23 here again tonight. Some snow on the way. No wind, thank God. Its 4:45 and its already dark outside. Very depressing.
Dave started this blog when he was 57. Now he's 68 and feeling it. Spinal stenosis has caught up with him. Debilitating back pain for 14 months. Unable to do much at all. Now, due to diet modification, physical therapy, and healing time, the day to day pain is nearly gone. Back with the living.
My advice to anyone: give your back consideration. Don't lift heavy stuff. Even if you are in your 20s and really strong, the years will catch up with you and you'll be really sorry. A herniated disk can cause excruciating pain for days, weeks, and months; and that's if your really lucky.
That brings me to my next rant. Health care. The new administration, selected by the minority through the electoral "college" (which is nothing like a "real college") , has promised to repeal the health care act, medicare, and social security. I sincerely hope anyone over 55 has a way to take care of themselves, because medicare will be gone, and so will social security, and who knows what health care will be like. This scares the hell out of me. Environmental protection will be abolished. Millions of people will be deported, and a massive wall will be built along the US / Mexico boarder. The clean water act will be repealed, as will the clean air act. Will this all happen? Maybe. If people only knew what those regulations have actually done to vastly improve our planet, there would be a nation-wide uproar. But there is nothing. Well, all I can say is, I'm 68; by the time the roll-back of regulations has turned this place into a pile of garbage, I'll be dead and gone. . . but that makes me sick. What about our grand kids? Great grand kids? They will inherit a pile of garbage, if they even live that long. How can we do this to our God given paradise? I do not know. We were given this earth to take care of it, not to trash it. . . ... but; maybe; just maybe our new president will actually improve things here. He will protect national parks, keep clean water, keep clean air, encourage energy independence by subsidizing renewable energy instead of throwing billions of dollars a year at the petrol industry. He will improve health care so we all can afford it, he will make a college education available to every one without burdening them with a lifetime of debt. He will create jobs for everyone. He will force the rich to pay their fair share of taxes. He will keep the church out of politics. He will prevent racism, sexism, and provide equal pay for equal work. Hmmmm. I'm not holding my breath on that scenario. We'll see what happens. Sadly, there are a lot of things that really do need to be changed, that did not get changed in the past 8 years.
If the deportation were really accurate, most of us should be deported. The first peoples, who were nearly wiped out by small pox, tuberculosis, influenza, and measles (brought by the European invasion) are the people who really own this land. I am sure most will tell me I'm full of it for even saying that. It, however does seem reasonable to limit immigration. We can't pay for every one that wants to enter. That, said, we really need to be careful about where we send out bombs and troops, and how much collateral damage we create with our imperialist actions. We say we want to enable "democracy", when we really don't have a true "democracy" here in this country the electoral college proves that. It seems like we should clean up our act here first and set an example for the rest of the world. We are hypocrites. We live in a pseudo-democracy which is actually more of an oligarchy than any thing else.
