Today is the last day that I’m going to have access to this blog. After 19 years, I’m going to stop blogging. It has been an incredible ride, and I know I’m going to miss having this blog to share my thoughts with.
It’s been fun. The fact that 470 people wanted to know what I was sharing was powerful. Thank you all for being part of my journey here. It’s time for me to move on.
Unfortunately, we recently had some storm damage to our house. A large branch from a mature tree on our yard broke, and crashed onto our roof. The damage is bad enough to justify an insurance claim, but we really came through it fairly well. The insurance company responded very quickly, as did the tree service we called to get the branch removed. Right now, we’re only waiting on estimates from roofing contractors to get the structural damage repaired.
I have some news to share, but it’s not all good.
Last Thursday, I went to the VA clinic where my primary care provider is, for a routine physical. Many of the results of that physical were good – my weight and cholesterol are both down, and so is my blood pressure. My A1C (a measure of diabetic risk) was reduced. All of this was, to the best of my knowledge, because of my increasing the amount of (and variety of) vegetables in my diet.
However, there were some things that rang alarm bells. The first and greatest was that when the Nurse Practitioner taking the place of the normal Primary Care physician in my clinic put his stethoscope to my chest to listen to my heart – he freaked out!
He believed that he heard something called an atrial fibrillation, which is an abnormal heart beat in the top two chambers of the heart. He asked for my consent to run additional tests, which included both an EKG and an echo-cardiogram, and after I’d agreed to the tests and they’d been run, they confirmed what he’d originally heard on the stethoscope.
Right now, I’m wearing a device that is designed to to a long-term EKG while mounted to my chest. It is supposed to run for at least 3 days.
He ordered the nearest VA pharmacy to overnight ship a prescription to me that may help reset my heart rhythm. If it succeeds, no further intervention will be needed. If it fails, I’ll need to follow up with a cardiac surgeon, and have a long discussion with that person about what my Living Will and Advanced Directive will allow him to do.
It’s all done. We passed our last inspection yesterday, and I personally flipped the switch to turn our solar panels on. Actually, I had to flip that switch, because the inspector for the energy company told me that he is not allowed to do that. It actually felt really good to do that very minor task.
It was 1230 hrs (12:30 pm) when the install was complete – and by 6pm (1800 hrs) we’d already generated 35 KwH (kilowatt hours) of electricity from the panels we have. Considering how early this is in the summer season, we’re expecting to do very well at replacing our daily usage with alternative energy.
I think this will be a very good year.
When I called our home owner’s insurance company to upgrade our policy, I got a few pieces of very good news.
First: Our solar panels are fully insured.
Second: Because of other improvements we’ve made to our home since we bought it nearly 13 years ago, our home’s value has more than doubled.
Third: Our home owner’s insurance actually went DOWN when I reported the condition of our home to the insurance company. Not by much – just $9.00/m0nth – but when weighed against the fact that the value of our home more than doubled, I was extremely surprised.
When we bought this home, we paid $77,000 USD for it, and almost $8,000 was just for replacing the roof, which wasn’t part of the purchase price, but was factored into the loan so we could buy the house.
So, imagine my huge surprise when I found out from the insurance company that our home is NOW valued at $154,000 USD, nearly 13 years after we bought it. I think we’re doing something right.
IMHO – the only thing that could go wrong for us – and it would affect about 80% of all US home owners because of their mortgages – would be for POTUS Biden to be allowed to succeed in his scheme to force the whole country into socialist medical care. A 52% income tax would devastate the middle income home owners across the country, because most are living paycheck to paycheck, and POTUS Biden’s plan would nearly DOUBLE the federal income taxes that each family owes. Nobody living that way can afford that sort of increase.
Honestly, IMHO, the only reason Joe Biden got the nod for the Democrat party was because he was running against Hilary Clinton. Joe Biden has never held a job outside of Washington, DC, government since the Carter administration. Every time there has been a Republican incumbent, or a 2nd Term Democrat POTUS who couldn’t run again, Joe Biden tried to get the Democratic Party to back him for POTUS. In 50 years, he NEVER got that support, until he ran against Hilary. He’s always been seen as far to extreme, even for the Democrats. He does NOT deserve to be president, and even the Democrats are asking him to stand down in the next election. If he’s smart, he’ll do it, because there are several contenders more likely to succeed than he will be.
Despite liberals trying to rewrite history, it is clear that the republicans have helped minorities and women far more than the democrats:
1. The First Hispanic Governor was a Republican, in 1863, Romualdo Pacheco of CA
2. Republicans freed the slaves,Republicans passed the 13th Amendment unanimously – against nearly unanimous Democrat opposition
3. Republicans passed 14th Amendment to defend African-Americans from their Democrat oppressors in the post-Civil War South.
4. In 1869, the Republican-controlled 40th Congress passed the 15th Amendment, extending to African-Americans the right to vote. Nearly all Democrats in Congress voted against the 15th Amendment. The 15th Amendment was ratified the following year, but using intimidation, poll taxes, registration fraud, and literacy tests Democrats prevented most African-Americans from voting for nearly a century.
5. The First African-American Senator was a Republican, in North Carolina, Hiram Revels.
6. The 1871 Civil Rights Act effectively banned the Klan and enabled Republican officials to arrest hundreds of Klansmen. The KKK did not rise again until the Democratic administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
7. Republicans passed the 1875 Civil Rights Act that banned racial discrimination in public accommodations. Though struck down by the Supreme Court eight years later, the 1875 Civil Rights Act would be reborn as the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
8. Republicans gave woman the right to vote. In 1878, U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduced in Congress the proposed 19th Amendment, according women the right to vote. Over the next four decades, it was primarily the Democrats who would oppose the measure. Not until 1919, after the Republican Party won majorities in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, did Congress approve what would become the 19th Amendment.
9. A Former Slave Chaired the 1884 Republican National Convention, John Lynch.
10. Bertha Landes, a Republican, was the first woman to serve as mayor of a large American city.
11. A Republican President Appointed the First Jewish Cabinet Secretary, Oscar Straus.
12. In 1924, Republican President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to all Native Americans. The law had been written by Rep. Homer Snyder (R-NY)
13. The First Hispanic U.S. Senator was a Republican, Octaviano Larrazolo of New Mexico.
14. The First Asian-American U.S. Senator was a Republican, Hiram Fong of Hawaii.
15. In 1940, the Republican National Convention approved a plank in its platform calling for racial integration of the armed forces. Not until 1948 did President Truman finally comply with the Republicans’ demands for racial justice in the U.S. military.
16. Judge Tuttle, a Republican, in 1962, ordered the University of Mississippi to admit its first African-American student, James Meredith.
17. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The author of Brown v. Board of Education was a Republican, Chief Justice Earl Warren.
18. Republicans Passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act against the filibustering democrats. The GOP improved upon this landmark legislation with the 1960 Civil Rights Act.
19. Republicans Ended Racial Segregation in Little Rock. President Eisenhower ordered federal troops to the state, where they escorted African-American children to school against the will of the Democrat governor.
20. After 911, under Bush leadership,the U.S. military, together with forces from Britain and other allies, destroyed terrorist camps and ousted the Taliban, liberating 27 million people from Taliban oppression, including giving girls the opportunity to attend school and giving women the right to vote.
Vernon Pope 