Home of Today’s Common Sense

Published Brownsville Herald August 24, 2008

I am beginning to look at political issues as right or wrong rather than “left” or “right”.

An election season that began as historic with the first black person and the first woman as nominees for President began the process. We now seem to be returning to the cold war era with Russia bursting at its seams with a little drooling at its neighbors. The first target was Georgia a tiny nation on the southern Russian border. Using pretenses of defending Russians in Ossetia, a provincial area in northern Georgia, Russian troops and armor entered many of the commercial areas and damaged substantial amounts of infrastructure. This was done, according to news reports, because Georgia had chosen to align with Western countries. As the days wear on, even though there is a cease fire agreement in place and the Russian President has pledged withdrawals, Russian Troops remain in key positions in the center of the Country and short range missiles have been installed. Further, the Russian leaders have threatened Poland with worse for allowing the U.S set up missile defense positions there. Other little countries that were part of the Soviet Empire have been threatened and harassed as well, with economic sanctions for successfully developing their free economies and political policies. Prime Minister Putin envisions a new Russian Empire with an economy supported by the billions in oil dollars currently flowing in.

We already are involved in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan that threatens the stability of oil supplies to us as well as the rest of the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Published Brownsville Herald August 11, 2008

Over the last year I have written about personal experiences in medical care and two hospitals that I was treated by. I can now share experiences of Valley Baptist and critical care hospital, Solara.

Over the past few months I have had to deal with a rare skin disease and a crop of slow healing wounds that followed an earlier serious illness.

I pointed out a number of exceptional circumstances and some great health professionals. I met folks like Martine a wound care and physical therapy technician who recently was name as Valley Regional’s best trooper, and I can attest to that.

Due to some issues arising in the care after the hospitalization I was referred to the Valley Baptist Hospital Wound Center where I encountered Dr. Lorenzo Pelly, an icon in Brownsville Health. He emigrated from Cuba and subsequently came to Brownsville in 1982. Many can thank him for guiding their recoveries.

He found some problems that needed a more intense program and referred me to Solara Hospital that provides more in the way of critical care. There I met more great health care folks like Jamie, a charge nurse and Fred, a former military medic, who were not only skilled professionals but nice folks as well. The staff as a whole was well practiced and knowledgeable about their duties. My treatments were accomplished when needed, which on occasion found Dr. Pelly performing wound care in the early hours of the morning supported by the staff. Over the weeks, I became impressed with the doctor’s study of my medical problems and the implications of the unusual skin issues. We are progressing, even though slowly. Read the rest of this entry »

Published July 20, 2008 Brownsville Herald

Submitted July 1, 2008

We are celebrating the anniversary of the declaration to England and the World that we now considered ourselves an independent self ruling nation.

Our nation began its life as a “government instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ It was designed that “We the people “created a government that would obey laws empowered by “We the people “. The “folks” would be the sovereigns in a nation that would work in our best interest.

It was definitely not the intention to create a nation ruled by professional politicos whose primary interests are self-promotion and personal benefit.

In the federal government one size and style for all, subsidies, programs, and entitlements are created in Washington and enforced on everyone in the country, uniformly, whether they are needed or work or not.

The lobbyists, politicos, program vendors, etc. are the real beneficiaries and rarely are the intended beneficiaries uniformly satisfied.

The Nation that was conceived in the Declaration of Independence was defined after an experiment as a confederation by The Constitution which specifically limited the powers of our representatives in the Congress to reserve power to the individual - the community - then the states.

Today, we live in a politically correct world where federal authority pervades our lives through a system of extortion of resources called taxes and the reassignment of those resources to affect control over “We the people”. Read the rest of this entry »

 Published Brownsville Herald June 15,2008

The Political World Series is on all the media all the time. The league pennants have been pretty much settled. The Democratic Party has advanced a candidate that looks good at first blush but Barak Obama has a more than a few questions that need to be resolved and positions that need to be considered. Mr. Obama’s star became apparent at the Democratic Convention just a few years ago. His speech and charisma propelled him to a national prominence that even the previously “omnipotent Clinton Machine” could not overcome. The mere fact of his nomination for the most important position in our country has already redefined the United States as a much less racist society than is often attributed. 

The Primary campaigns raised a number of questions that taken as profile rather than a set of separate incidents have caused many to wonder at what kind of leader the real Mr. Obama will be. His voting record speaks of what has been termed as the most liberal in the Senate. Further, in the campaign, Mr. Obama spoke of solving many of the Nations ills by increasing taxes on the “wealthy” and buying solutions with that money that comes from our paychecks every week. What concerns me are the perceptions created by the exposes that seem to place him, for nearly all of his adulthood, in a culture of supporting social change through violence. (Relationship with William Ayers, a former member of the radical group the Weather Underground who is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago) This picture is supported by the values and social attitudes (a “Black Value System” that  refers to “our racist competitive society” and includes the disavowal of the pursuit of “middle-classness” and a pledge of allegiance to “all black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System.” It defines “middle-classness” as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”)  of his church, its pastor and community that he was a part of for over 20 years.  Read the rest of this entry »