Holiday News

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Health care reform reaches inch-by-inch stage, plowing ahead

Health care reform has now reached the plowing head inch-by-inch stage of “progress.” I use quote marks around “progress” to emphasize the uncertainty surrounding the whole issue right now. Unless and until the House and Senate versions of the legislation are reconciled, nothing hits the President’s desk and nothing becomes law.

I guess the most disappointing thing about health care reform to me at this point is the length of time it will take for the legislation to actually kick in once it is approved. The latest stuff I’ve read about it says it won’t really take effect before 2014. The irony of that is this: I currently have no health insurance because I cannot afford private health insurance — in mid-2014, I will go on Medicare and will no longer need private health insurance.

Frankly, if somebody slipped along side me and whispered softly, “Pssst — hey, big fella, want some good free insurance quotes on that health insurance?” — I’d probably at least give a listen to what they have to say. I’ve been very fortunate the last couple of years healthwise, but I have no idea whether I’ll suddenly find myself in bankruptcy from sudden medical problems.

It’s all a gamble, I guess, whether any of us will stay healthy or end up in serious need. Just hope when all this health reform stuff is settled and done, it really will get done. And done in ways that will truly help people who need help with health care.

Keeping busy for the holidays? You bet!

I don’t know about you, but these holidays (holi-daze??) times are keeping me as busy as a guy looking for vitamins for hair growth. Okay, I know that’s probably a lame analogy, but you get the idea — these are busy times.

The good news last week, of course, was the decline in U.S. unemployment numbers.

The bad news about that is, there are still a whole lot of folks out of work and in need these days.

I just stopped by to remind everyone who hangs out here — if you can, help someone in need these days. Give somebody a meal (there are some great community and nationwide programs to do that), give someone the gift of a helping hand. And, hey, if you can do it — try to help someone find a job.

As the old “Red Green” character used to say on PBS — “We’re all in this together.” So take some busy time these days, even with the rush of the holidays, to help someone!

Have you done that ‘early’ Christmas shopping yet?

I have one or two friends who are among those annoying people who buy Christmas presents as early as July or August. They keep sort of a running mental list in their heads alerting them to the interests and desires of family and friends and, if it’s July, August, whenever during the year — WHAM! If they find a good price on something matching their mental lists, they buy it.

I can certainly understand early holiday gift shopping if you’re talking about big-ticket items, from new cars to Samsung TVs to kitchen appliances. But if you are trying to find that special friend or family member one of a myriad of “small ticket” items, keeping mental shopping alerts active in spring or summer for holiday giving many months away — that sort of seems obsessive to me.

On the other hand, I suppose it’s no big deal. I mean, retailers in their desperation start putting out Christmas shopping teasers and displays before Halloween these days. Saw some at W*lmart just the other day.

What a country! Room for both Palin and Obama

Today is the official 233rd birthday of the United States of America, so it seemed fitting for me to make a couple of comments about our great country. I couldn’t think of anything that better reflects what’s BEST about America than my title: What a country we live in, when it has plenty of room for both a Sarah Palin and a Barack Obama!

(I don’t often use exclamation marks, but it seems appropriate there and in the title.)

I love the fact that we can be passionate about extremely diverse political positions — even such polar opposite positions as Sarah Palin’s and Barack Obama’s — and still live together under the structure of the U.S. Constitution and the various federal, state, and local laws, without armed violence, government overthrows, anarchism, etc. It doesn’t take much looking around our world and throughout history to see that such tolerance and cooperation within a nation is relatively rare. Two well-known cases to illustrate that would be North Korea and Iran. Fat chance political dissenters would be tolerated in either of those nations.

So hooray for us, America. May the strength of our nation, our Constitution and body of laws, stand strong against all threats of chaos. And may we ever offer hope to those throughout the world who are in despair.

And may we pray for those who suffer oppression and loss in all nations.

Time to get serious about losing the holiday weight, I guess

I think it’s time — past time in my case! — to get serious about losing the weight put on over the holidays, how about you? Ah, who am I kidding? I’ve been fat all my life, and I probably won’t change radically at this point.

Does that sound pessimistic? Cynical? I suppose it is to some extent. In reality, if I just cut back a bit on those late-night snacks and got up and outside to walk regularly every day, I could probably lose much of the excess baggage.

I got started on all this when I was doing some research online about a “diet pill” called Ephedrasil hardcore. It caught my attention because it was such an odd name. That particular product, from the review I read, is supposedly pretty new and the reviewer had little information about it.

All that started me thinking about the various diet pills, nutritional supplements, and odd programs I’ve tried from time to time to lose weight. Once, I had a doctor (this was in the late 1960s) tell me I absolutely had to get the weight off. He gave me a rigid but “doable” diet, along with a prescription for some tiny purple diet pills. I was to take one of these little pills each day at noon.

Wow, what a great diet plan. I felt incredible. I’d never felt so energetic and alert. I was really tearing up the course work at school and constantly felt vigorous and active. Then I discovered those tiny pills were amphetamines of some sort.

Since the Bible school I was attending frowned on such drugs, whether prescribed or not, I quietly flushed the pills. The diet itself went away a month or two later.

But, hey, seems to me it’s time to get serious about losing the holiday weight for now. I guess.

Holidays mean more travel — which may mean more luggage fees

Have you flown much lately? Are you planning any flights for Thanksgiving weekend travel, or perhaps a bit further ahead for Christmas and New Year’s?

I haven’t flow in awhile, but I would be very interested to know any recent experiences and your reaction to all the extra bucks most airlines are now charging for checking your luggage. When I first heard several months ago that most major airlines were charging $15, even $25 to check a second piece of luggage, I was appalled. Then when it reached the point that some were charging that much for ANY piece of checked luggage, I was stunned.

Why on earth don’t they simply charge more upfront on the ticket pricing? Do they really think most people travel without checking ANY luggage and so would feel angry about over-all ticket price increases? I, personally, would feel less like I’d been somehow “scammed” if they simply charged me more for the ticket and allowed me to check two or even three pieces of luggage without extra fees.

How about any of you reading this who fly frequently? How has the extra costs of checking luggage affected you? Or has it? Leave a comment and sound off about it here!

What a bummer — FBI warns about Valentine’s Day ecard ‘worm’

What better way to show your love on Valentine’s Day than to send a “worm” infected e-card to your lover to infect his/her computer??

Yeah, what a bummer. In a news report just released, the FBI says some e-Valentines making the rounds out there are not loving wishes — they contain the “Storm Worm,” which will hijack your computer and make it part of the Storm botnet and allowing nasty folks to use it to attack websites. Not too nice, I’d say.

So if you get a Valentine’s e-card and you aren’t 100% sure about the sender — maybe you should simply trash it and avoid the risk. Or, as the FBI warning suggests:

“Computer users are warned to avoid any Valentine’s Day mesages sent by unknown admirers, leaving suspicious e-mail unopened and especially not clicking on links in the e-mail.”

Better safe than sorry, and I’m sure all your friends, family, and loved ones will understand. (If some legit Valentine’s greetings get axed this way, here’s my suggestion — tell ‘em not to be so darned cheap and to send you flowers, candy, or both next year!)

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This Buddhist’s tree may tell one of my favorite Christmas stories

A Buddhist who faithfully keeps the family’s 70-year-old Christmas tree on display each year? What kind of Christmas story is that?

Read about this Japanese man and about all he and his family have gone through and the memories linked to their small artificial Christmas tree. I think you’ll agree that it combines all the elements of a great true story of hardship, suffering, faith, and redemptive love. And, yes, he does have some Christianity in his background, though he does consider himself a Buddhist. I hope you will go to the site I’ve linked at the beginning of this paragraph and read the entire story. (Note to the AP reporter responsible for the story: You DO know you’ve got a best-seller in the making if you can write a book of Mr. Iwatake’s life, right? Right??)

Which brings me to my Number One statement about Christianity and individual faith: Coming from a Bible-based “fundamentalist” background I realized a few years ago that the Bible doesn’t say every individual has to conform to my interpretation of doctrine and teaching to be “saved”; the Bible clearly says “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). And only the individual and God know exactly what’s in their heart and life and how that relates to “calling upon the name of the Lord” when we get right down to it, right?

Bet you didn’t expect to get a free “sermon of the day” when you came here, did you? Consider it my Christmas bonus/holiday bonus to you!

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Do ‘Christmas’ people actually know the origin of the word ‘holiday’?

Our local newspaper had a feature today about some women who created big buttons for people to wear which say something like, “It’s OK to Tell Me ‘Merry Christmas’.” All part of the bizarre notion well-meaning people have obsessed over that saying “Happy Holidays” diminishes the religious value of the greeting.

Do these people understand anything at all about the origin of the world “holiday”? It’s a contraction of the words “holy” and “day.” It originally meant a religious observance, then expanded to include all the modern meanings we have associated with it.

Good grief, folks. Get a life! Why do you persist in this silly notion that “holiday” somehow cheapens the “Christian” value of the season? For that matter, why do you persist in the misguided notion — if you’re truly doing all this because you are a Christian — that a special season or dates on the calendar really connect to serious “biblical” Christianity. Are you aware that actual laws in America back in the founding days of this “Christian” nation — made Christmas celebration illegal?? If you are clueless about this, check out this story about the legal prohibitions on Christmas celebration by the Puritans.

Oh, I forgot, the “Christmas war” people insist this nation was founded on Christian principles. “Christmas war” folks insist that “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” is absolutely vital to their faith. Therefore, this nation could never have made Christmas celebrations illegal. Thanks to such reasoning, we have just rewritten actual history to conform to 20th-21st century “Christian political correctness.”

Ah, well, what do I know? I’m just a guy who reads the papers

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My present to you: A ‘war on Christmas’ letter from God himself

An evangelical/fundamentalist Christian friend of mine actually sent this to me as a forwarded email. I’ve shortened it and done some light editing. I think it is a marvelous response, from “serious” Christians themselves, regarding that so-called “war on Christmas.” It’s a bit long, but enjoy:

Dear Children,

It has come to my attention that many of you are upset that folks are taking My name out of the season. Maybe you’ve forgotten that I wasn’t actually born during this time of the year and that it was some of you’re predecessors who decided to celebrate My birthday on what was actually a time of pagan festival; although, I do appreciate being remembered anytime.

How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood by those of you who have been blessed with children of your own. I don’t care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My birth just, GET ALONG AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Now, having said that let Me go on.

If it bothers you that the town in which you live doesn’t allow a scene depicting My birth, then just get rid of a couple of Santas and snowmen and put in a small Nativity scene on your own front lawn. If all My followers did that there wouldn’t be any need for such a scene on the town square, because there would be many of them all around town.

Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree. It was I who made all trees. You can and may remember Me any time you see any tree.

If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of My birth, here is My wish list. Choose something from it:

1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell Me all the time.

2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don’t have to know them personally. They just need to know that someone cares about them.

3. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you can’t afford and they don’t need, spend time with them. Tell them the story of My birth and why I came to live with you down here. Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them.

4. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and forgive him or her.

5. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt to take their own life this season because they feel so alone and hopeless? Sinceyou don’t know who that person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile. It could make the difference. Also, you might consider supporting a local suicide hot-line: They talk with people like that every day.

6. Here’s a good one. There are individuals and whole families in your town who not only will have no “Christmas” tree, but neither will they have any presents to give or receive. If you don’t know them (and I suspect you don’t) buy some food and a few gifts and give them to the Marines, the Salvation Army, or some other charity to make the delivery for you.

7. Finally, if you want to make a statement about your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a Christian. Don’t do things in secret that you wouldn’t do in My presence. Let people know by your actions that you are one of mine.

P.S. Don’t forget; I am God and can take care of myself. Just love Me and do what I have told you to do. I’ll take care of all the rest.

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