Cause and effect in your own life

From: Cal Wendlandt, Dassel

Have you ever thought when people sit at their kitchen table and hold their head in their hands, asking “why me, why me?” that it is probably because of something they did or decided in a current or long past life? Everything that happens or does not happen in your life can be linked to a decision you made in your life.

It is something I learned in my high school science class. If you throw something at a window and the window breaks, don’t ask why is the window broken.

Everyone wants to play a victim game – I am a victim of this, I am a victim of that. To that I say BS.

In time pasts, I worked at a company and in the lunchroom I heard people talk about how this, and that was not working for them. I told them, “Go do something about it.” The answer I heard was I don’t want to move, and leave my friends or relatives. Bang. They just made a decision.

Instead of improving their lives, they would rather stay where they are at. You just decided how things are going to be. So stop complaining and live with your decision.

For some reason about four years ago I was driving home from work and took a route that usually I would not take. That designation I made caused me to get involved with avoiding another vehicle and I ended up with a broken hip, broken ribs, and broken sternum. I never whimpered and asked “why me.”

You hear on TV, I am a victim of this, I am a victim of that. Get over it. The day you were born and began breathing you became a victim of controlling your own life.

Let’s say you have a couple of relatives, of neighbors or friends, and a disagreement erupts between them. You go to intervene and help settle things. Before you know it, you get sucked into it and end up being the bad person. Has that ever happened to you? If it has, maybe you should have kept your nose out of the dispute.

You see this is how our government gets sucked into problems around the world. At the time, this country was engaged in the war of independence and some other country would have interjected themselves to settle it, I am sure they would have been thrown into the ocean and told to get out of here.

Every time our government interjects itself into another country’s business we, the Americans, become the bad guys.

Other countries have the same right as our founding fathers had – to choose their own destiny. Even if other countries don’t like the outcome.

How many decades did it take for America to have its form of government to develop? Well, maybe it takes other countries just as long. And what is wrong with that?

You have to bear in mind, how many decades did England dominate the Middle East? So, is it any surprise that those countries do not trust outside countries to come in and tell them what to do or not to do?

And some say “it is in our national interest.” Well I am sure the “Natassia” felt the same way as far as what they were doing. No matter how wrong it was.

So anything that takes place on this planet is nothing new. History is constantly repeating itself, different time, different place, same old crap. The problem with our government is it never learns. It refuses to reflect on history.

So if you feel your life is crap, get off your lazy butt and do something about it. And if you don’t, someone else will do it and you may not like the results.

Gov. in health care reform critical

From: Josh McIntosh, Waverly

The July 27 edition of the Herald Journal printed a letter to the editor entitled “Prescription for failure.” The writer is a regular contributor of letters to the editor and advances a consistent theme of anti-government rhetoric.

The letters are generally long on fear mongering, contain many factual errors and use loaded language to subtly instill fear and mistrust in the reader.

For instance, the “Prescription for failure” submission starts with references to dropping from the gallows and the noose around the neck in a manner that brings up images of hangings and lynchings. Prior editorial references to socialism, communism and other nonsense offers a greater reflection on the writer than the subject.

Rather than submitting a point-by-point response to the submission, I submit that the credibility of the writer is as low as the accuracy of much of the content. I trust the readers to take these submission for what they are worth, but I do get concerned as when some people scream long enough and loud enough occasionally people start to listen.

Unfortunately, many of us in the main stream don’t respond and such anti-government rhetoric is not regularly exposed as coming from a fringe element mired in conspiracy theories and paranoia.

As opposed to the opinion of the writer, I believe that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are all examples of government success stories that are more relevant and important now than ever. These programs have kept countless elderly and disabled Americans out of poverty and despair, and served our country and communities well.

It is not the government that drove the current health care system to implode, it is the greed of the insurance industry, the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, the unlimited appetite of the public for a finite resource, and a delivery system that has not been reasonably regulated.

What we should all be able to agree on is that the issues involved in reforming the current system are extremely complicated. I, for one, am glad that the government has gotten more involved as I believe that it is the only institution large enough to influence meaningful change in the health care system.

I trust the President Obama has the interests of the country and the general public at heart and that he and his administration are doing their best to make positive changes and I am tired of the incessant government bashing from a very few obsessed individuals that appear on the letters to the editor page almost every week.

I further trust that the president has some extremely knowledgeable and talented people working on the health care reform initiative and they are not compromised by a profit motive.

I am realistic that politics in Washington is like sausage making, and it is not a pretty process, but something has to be done. My health insurance premiums have more than doubled in the last five to six years and with no sign of that pace slowing I am willing to trust the president and support a public health insurance option.