THE THINGS WE TAKE FOR GRANTED

With all the talk about the problems in the world and who is denied this or that I wonder if people ever really consider just how good they have it? Protesters recently complained when police had Chik-fil-a was brought in to feed the police doing their job. They felt they deserved it as well. My guess is if they had bothered to order it and pay for it then it would have been delivered. But they wanted it free. College students think they’re being overburdened because they have to pay for their education, ignoring the fact that if you want anything in this world you have to pay for it. In an age of free cell phones from the government how can a rational person not think they’re entitled to everything free?

This is not to slam those who take advantage of the free items out there. That’s a great thing, to have access to so much for free or little costs. But those items were placed there as a means of helping people move forward not to contain them there for the rest of their lives. Odd to complain about slavery while making yourself a slave to whoever is in control isn’t it?

But all of this talk leads me to something else that bothers me. While we worry day and night about those who are disenfranchised we rarely ever hear anything about the elderly. While some claim to be the most ignored group on the planet how often do we consider the plight of the elderly, their needs both physical and mental? I’m guessing not one of you has had to consider it of late.

Consider a woman in her 90s whose husband has passed away and who took care of her all those years. Maybe she took him for granted and expects someone or everyone to fill that void. It’s not a reasonable request. If she were willing to look at things from other’s perspective she might realize that she needs to do for herself more. Then again there will be times where she needs help. Assisted living comes to mind. But what about those who can’t afford that? What about the many who are unable to afford just taking care of themselves be they elderly or disabled? What about the many who never made plans or just put things off to do so just one more year only to find themselves in a predicament made by that error?

I’m there now. I see the mistakes I made. None of them were anyone else’s. I own them completely. And yet I never demand anything from anyone, no call to arms for the government to give me an outrageous sum to suit my every whim. You deal with what life delivers, even if the mistakes made were yours, and you carry on. You hang on to your faith and seek divine providence and if it doesn’t come when you want it to you don’t hold God accountable, you carry on. Day by day.

You begin to realize the things you took for granted for so long. I wonder how many reading this realize the number of things they take for granted on a daily basis. Consider a normal day start to finish. If it’s summer you probably have the air conditioner going through the night. What if running it that much made your electric bill too high so you had to resort to the old days of open windows? A shower? What if you had to haul your water in rather than indoor plumbing, the same with that initial trip to the toilet, indoor not out? Not to mention using the cheapest toilet paper you could afford. What if you couldn’t afford toothpaste and had to go with the old baking soda routine? You also have to bend down to rinse because you can’t afford those cute tiny cups for water. How about just shampooing your hair? If you couldn’t afford the numerous shampoos the world offers and had to use a bar of soap could you? And not any bar of soap but the least expensive kind.

Breakfast would consists of eggs if you can afford them but maybe you save those to cook with. You either cook on the stove or eat cereal, but only the bagged cheap brands because the name brands are outrageously expensive. Do you combine milk and water on that cereal to save money? No orange juice, it’s too expensive. You can’t go anywhere because you can’t afford a tank of gas. If you could where would you go? Everything costs money to go to. Maybe a walk in the park or just a drive. But again the price of gas.

Lunch is an affordable meal, a cheese sandwich. It is your lifeblood next to the ever popular peanut butter sandwich. And neither one hurts your teeth if you have dental issues you can’t take care of because you can’t afford it. Another treat, instant drink mix. Why? Because it taste better than water and it’s affordable when placed next to cola. Speaking of you don’t drink Coke or Pepsi because it’s too much money too except on those wild days when it’s on sale and you have a coupon as well.

So you’re stuck at home with nothing to do but watch TV. There you have a grainy picture that features only the local channels. All those complaints about 500 channels and nothing to watch fall by the wayside when you can’t afford cable or dish. You sit and wait for someone to visit but chances are they’re at work and can’t stop by. Even after work the odds are slim because they have lives of their own to deal with as they move forward to the same spot you are in right now.

Dinner is the same as lunch unless you bought enough things to make something that will last for days like a pot of chili or maybe soup beans and cornbread. But meat isn’t often because, again, it costs too much. And why does the issue of costs continue? Because the money you have coming in, most likely social security, isn’t much. Maybe $1,300 a month. From that comes rent, utilities and food. You applied for food stamps but the average amount people get is $16 a month. Even though you always hear about how welfare cheats are making sometimes $200 a month on food stamps and trading them for cash to buy cigarettes. You have no idea how to take advantage of that and are too proud to do so anyway. Not to mention too old to start having several children that you can then ignore.

Nigh comes and you watch TV in a dark room, trying to keep your electric bill down. You sleep on a sagging mattress because you can’t afford a new one. You sleep alone because your spouse is no longer there. You don’t have a pet because you can’t afford the vet bills or to even feed one if you had one. You lay there at night and life has changed. You went from a vital person who went places, who did things, to someone along that no one wants to take anywhere or comes to see. Life has boiled down to just counting the days until you die. And if you haven’t already made plans for your death you’re handled by the state. If you did make plans your heirs discover that the plans you made and paid for are now more expensive and they have to pay the balance. And anything you save to leave them is taxed so they get less than you wanted to leave them. Odd since the money you earned was taxed once to begin with.

Depressed? Well imagine if you were that person I was talking about. We tend to ignore of forget the elderly these days. Where there was once a time when they were revered and cared for after they stopped working we now push them aside and hope someone else takes care of them.

So how about this. A challenge since I love to issue those.

If you have an elderly relative go and visit them. Don’t do it once, do it periodically. See if they need anything and if you are able, help them with things they might need. Imagine the joy nothing more than a tube of their favorite toothpaste might bring. Invite them into your home for family gatherings. It might be a pain in the ass for you but I’m betting just the ability to be among family means the world to them. If you can afford it or have the ability let them live with you. They provided for you for so many years, why wouldn’t you want to do the same? Look back at all they did for you that you took for granted all those years ago as a child and consider what they gave up for you to have things. Give them love. It is one thing they need more than anything.

The elderly are ignored because they don’t matter to those who should take care of them. Politicians don’t care about them because they aren’t a big enough voting block to make a difference to them. But they should matter to you. Remember that your children are seeing how you treat your family members. They’ll learn from that years down the line.

Like I said when I started, put yourself in their shoes for just one day. Consider the things you take for granted that they either can’t do or can’t afford. Could you give up those creature comforts? A single cheeseburger and a Coke at McDonalds? If not then consider how much so little could mean and pass a small token to those who cared for you.

OBAMA UNITES?

 

I sometimes wonder if President Obama actually considers the things he says before he opens his mouth and words come out. The man says one thing one day and the opposite the next. Today he said that his country is not "as divided as some have suggested." Really? At every opportunity he has attempted to divide us whenever possible.

Even The Huffington Post has adopted his tact of saying one thing and then the opposite with an article last year headlined “Evidence Shows Obama Did Not Divide The USA” while this year an article says “We’re More Divided As A Nation Than Ever, And This Poll On Obama’s Legacy Shows It”. Really? They think this happened in a single year?

An article at The Blaze noted 7 areas in which this has happened under his tenure.

1-Antipathy between parties – His reluctance to meet with member of the opposite party began the day he took office and has remained. And that attitude has functioned to increase bad feelings between parties.

2-Polls continue to show that most Americans think the country is on the wrong track. But every time he talks about this issue he says it’s going along perfectly. So apparently he knows better than anyone and the majority of the people are wrong. Which would tie into his elitist attitude of thinking he’s smarter than anyone else.

3-Trust in government is at an all-time low. With the economy sinking for most Americans, with the wealthy gaining more and the poverty stricken losing more (something he has said needs to end ever since he was a candidate in 2008 yet has apparently only helped along), with racial unrest higher than I can recall seeing it, with enemies of the state emboldened by his inaction and with a member of his administration allowed to get off scot free for crimes others have done jail time for by other members of his administration is it any wonder?

4-Ordinary Americans worse off economically. I mentioned this already as one of the reasons Americans don’t trust the government.

5-Greedy government workers. Not greedy in the sense that they want more, we all do. But in the sense that while he hasn’t increased the number near as much as one would think he has increased what they make. A study by the Cato Institute found that “federal workers’ pay and benefits were 78 percent higher in 2014 than private employees who earned an average of $52,688 less than public sector workers last year. So I guess the best way to make a decent living is to work for the government. But I’m sure he thinks that businesses who “didn’t build that” are the problem.

6-Borrowing from future generations. He seems to be unaware or just not care about the fact that for every program he wants to push forward (or for that matter increasing the wages of government employees) has a price tag affixed to it. He’s like a person with a charge card who never looks at the bill and just hands it to a waiting spouse. As the article states “It took 200 years and two world wars for the United States to accumulate $10 trillion in debt. But since he took over, Obama has managed to increase that to $18 trillion.” He has borrowed more money in 8 years than every administration combined since George Washington.

7-Looming retirement apocalypse. 29% of baby boomers have no savings whatsoever in pensions of retirement funds. Those that do have only small amounts. From the article “The massive expansion of government spending under Obama has encouraged the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates at near zero for six years, lowering the interest on the debt that the government must pay. But it has also meant that retirees earn practically nothing on their savings.” This means that immigrants and government employees have done fantastic while he’s been in office but that retirees and the middle class have suffered.

His comments today were in response to race relations going on right now. Even there he’s done little to promote solid relations and more to tear them apart. Whenever anything happens he always feels the need to say something and it seems more often than not in incites people rather than calms them as a leader should do. In 2009 police in Boston responded to a breaking and entering complaint a concerned citizen called in, arrived and questioned the person who was in the house who turned out to be the actual owner. But rather than understand they were responded to a complaint, which had he not been there would have saved his place, he began hurling insults at the police, complaining that it was all because he was black and created such a scene that he was arrested for disorderly conduct, which charges were later dropped. Before the facts came in thought President Obama weighed in on the matter saying "I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." So he starts by saying he doesn’t have all the facts and then turns it into an issue of race, while at the same time calling the police stupid. Way to unite Mr. President.

During a trial involving the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, again not knowing what all the facts were before he spoke, the President said “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago”. Was the incident a tragedy? Certainly. Was there reason to suspect Martin? Possibly. The neighborhood he was in had been victimized by robberies in recent days and he looked suspicious to an overzealous community watch member. But in making his statement the President took sides again before the facts came in.

Consider Ferguson and the riots that followed the death of Michael Brown. Evidence proved that the depiction of him trying to surrender with his hands raised in the air, the “Hands up, don’t shoot” portrayal of events were far from the truth. He actually had assaulted the police officer, tried to take his gun and was coming at him again when he was shot, not running away or having his hands raised. But of course President Obama weighed in, as always not knowing the facts first. “Obviously we don’t yet know what happened,” Obama said. He continued later with “There was a whole structure there, according to the Justice Department report, that indicated both racism and just a disregard for what law enforcement is supposed to do.” So let’s ignore the fact that Brown had just committed theft, punched the officer when stopped for doing so, tried to take his gun to shoot him and then began to attack him again. No this was all about racist law enforcement. At least when you weigh in before you know what actually happened. Am I the only one that sees a pattern here? Does he really think that in making these comments, almost always before the facts are released, that he is a uniter and not a divider?

But surely he must say things that would paint the picture of working together between parties. Except that he never does so unless he’s gotten something he wanted as the result of Republicans capitulating their ideas and goals. Consider his comments before a Hispanic crowd in 2015. He started the speech by talking about how CA Congressman Ed Roybal had been humiliated by a Los Angeles police officer 75 years earlier. Way to move forward and away from the past. He did praise the immigration reform bill of previous President Bush…except that he failed to make mention that as senator Obama he voted for an amendment that emasculated the bill’s guest-worker program and almost killed the bill. But hey, he still told the crowd that they needed Democrats to help them and that those darn Republicans were the reason for all of their problems. Again, way to unite Americans there Mr. President.

All of this has combined to divide the people of this country more than ever. Actions always speak louder than words. It’s one thing to say that we’re not as divided, it’s another to make it actually so. So many Presidents in the past have gone out of their way to speak to both sides of an issue, black and white, Republican and Democrat, rich and poor, men and women, young and old. They strived to bring people together, worked with both sides of the issues and did indeed unite the people of this country. Having lived through the administrations of ten different Presidents I can honestly say that the current one has done more to tear apart the things joined together by all previous Presidents of the past than any single President I am aware of. But then gain he did promise he was “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”