Jared Monti - American Hero

Jared Monti was awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously, yesterday. He was an Army Forward Observer. You can read more about him at the links below. He's important to us, because he was also a JFO. We train JFOs here at Ft. Sill. They'll be dedicating the new JFO building (Monti Hall) in his honor later this fall.

http://www.military.com/news/article/president-gives-moh-to-soldier.html?wh=wh

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,551380,00.html??test=faces

Its for your own good! ...even though its bad for you.

Studies show that in spite of the fear-mongering from the left, the majority of Americans are
satisfied with their health care. So why do we need everyone on Government health care now, what's the big rush?

First of all, there is a major discrepancy in this debate, the synonymous use of the term health care and health insurance. We hear how millions of Americans don't have health care, and we must fix it now. Untrue, an estimated 46 million Americans don't have health insurance. But, they do have health care. Anyone in this country (citizen, illegal alien, tourist, etc) can walk into an ER for any problem, any time of day, and get medical care. If they are unable to pay for it, we taxpayers provide it free of charge. (Your welcome by the way.) Of those who don't have health insurance, for many of them its by choice.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/24/obama-pushes-national-health-care-americans-happy-coverage/

Secondly, there will be rationing. Anything that is in limited supply is rationed. All goods and services have a limited supply. We don't have unlimited amount of hospitals, doctors, and so on. Currently, we ration our health care for ourselves. That's freedom, the liberty to make our own choices about our health and the spending of our hard earned wealth. Which, if you remember from the Declaration of Independence, is God given, not from the government. If this bill passes, the government WILL decide what medical care you need and when you need to get it. Or, will determine you must have something you don't want (e.g. vaccinations).

Thirdly, we will pay for the bad lifestyle choices of others. So you work out regularly, eat healthy, have good genes, and haven't seen the doctor in years? Ok, but that guy next to you coughing up his lungs from smoking a pack a day, we'll all be covering the consequences of his bad choices out of our paychecks. Ever hear of personal responsibility? You make a bad choice, you reap the consequences. You make a good choice, you get the reward. Well, that's how we're taught, but reality will be just the opposite. You make good choices and you still have the consequences of those of us who made bad ones.

Finally, what reform does health care need? 1) We need tort reform. Willy nilly lawsuits raise the price of our health care through extraneous insurance and unnecessary procedures that doctors order to protect themselves from Johnny-lawsuit-happy. 2) We need medicare reform, and eventual phase-out. Medicare is borrowing funds against time, just as is social security. It inherently doesn't work and raises health care costs for those of us on private insurance as well. And, 3) we need to allow competition in health insurance. Currently, we create monopolies within state boundaries by restricting health carriers operations state-by-state. Allow us to shop for health insurance in the neighboring state, or a national insurer. Competition is a friend of the consumer, it forces companies to cater to their needs. Monopolies don't have to, the consumer must come to them.

So, among many other arguments against government run health care, this brings us back to our original question? Why do we need this now? The answer is, we don't, we never will. The left's objective is a utopian society, which doesn't exist. Everytime its been tried it ends in tyranny (e.g. Soviet Union, Fascist Italy & Germany, etc). Your freedom needs to be curtailed so that the government can make wise choices for you and eventually lead to a utopian society. But that is anti-thetical to the constitution and the ideals for which this country stands for. We stand for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or so we profess. If we allow this bill to pass, we will be curtailing our own rights. This is only one step in the process. I believe we've given up enough of our rights already, there's enough of my own liberties I want back, and you can forget about having anymore of them. Don't believe me now? Wait until whatever Czar in government tells you how to run your life.

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." - Pastor Martin Niemöller.

Will that be said by us in a few years? Take a stand now against the erosion of our freedoms. Stand for the Constition, for your Liberty. Take responsibility for your nation, before its taken from you.

Hawaii & Michael Vick

First, Michael Vick: Note the image to the left. Some have been vilifying him and the NFL for letting him back in and allowing him to play. But, shouldn't he have a second chance?

He was convicted for a crime and did his time in prison for it. Is he reformed? Is he going to do it again? We don't know, but we won't either until we give him a chance to prove himself. We do this in our society, define a person by their mistakes. Are you perfect? Would you want to be defined for life by your biggest mistake?

I say, give the guy a second chance to prove himself, and kudos to the NFL for allowing him to try. What a great story this could be, Michael Vick arrested for dog fighting, does time, returns to the NFL, reforms himself, and becomes an excellent role model/an example of overcoming adversity instead of succumbing to it.

Our News:

We just got home from Hawaii. We were there for a month with work. Ashley has photos up on her facebook page, I've got a few from the guys' golf outing on facebook also. We almost had a hurricane while we were there, but it downgraded to a tropical depression, then slipped by Oahu to the south. So, we ended up having wonderful weather the whole time we were there. We stayed in Waikiki, right on the beach. And the highlight of the trip was swimming with some Galapagos sharks. Very cool!!!

Lawton

Officially we're residents of Lawton Oklahoma and no longer Illinois. We said our goodbyes last weekend, gathered up our stuff out of storage and trekked it to Oklahoma. We're still unpacking and deciding where things belong. It was a bittersweet weekend, starting fresh, but saying goodbye to so many wonderful friends in the Chicago area. Now, we're looking forward to finding out what God has in store for us here.

A quick update

After what seems an interminable timeframe, we're leaving this weekend to go back to Chicago to pick up all our belongings and actually move to Oklahoma. Ashley is happy about not sleeping on the floor anymore. I'm beginning to feel like most of our life is being spent living out of luggage and not knowing what comes next. The dogs aren't doing well with all the topsy-turvy either, they've been sick for the past couple weeks. Ashley took them to the Vet yesterday to get them on antibiotics. Hopefully, by the end of the month we'll be all moved in, unpacked, and have most of the little projects on the house wrapped up. Thankfully my new unit is giving us 2 weeks off to get our move taken care of.



Thanks to John Hawkins at Townhall.com for: 5 Myths the Left Has Created About Itself

Via Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the school systems, the Left has created a number of positive myths about their ideology, none of which stand up to the slightest amount of informed scrutiny.

Liberals are pro-women: No, no: liberals are pro-liberal women -- as long as they know their place. When Hillary Clinton did the most admirable thing in her entire political career, trying to pull out a come-from-behind win against Barack Obama, the long knives on the Left even came out for her. .....But what Hillary faced was nothing compared to the vile smears liberals level at strong, conservative women. Whether it's photoshopping them into pornography, going after their families, or degrading them with "hate f***" lists, the Left does everything it can to destroy women who are courageous enough to stand up to them. Just ask Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and Carrie Prejean about it. If liberals hated Al-Qaeda the same way they hate conservative feminist icons, we'd have already won the war on terror by now.

Liberals look out for black Americans: Really? How? By destroying black families with welfare? By championing releasing black criminals back into their communities? By standing up for rioters? By getting promising black college students into schools they're likely to flunk out of via Affirmative Action? By making parasitic buffoons like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton into representatives of black Americans in the eyes of most of the country? The biggest obstacle black Americans face today is not racism; it's the paternalistic, "You poor thing! You need our help to make it day-to-day" attitude of liberals that has shattered the black family in a way that even slavery and Jim Crow laws couldn't.

Liberals are compassionate: Liberals love nothing better than to talk about compassion and caring for the poor -- but, only when other people's money is involved. Studies consistently show that conservatives give more money to charity than liberals. What's supposed to be compassionate about robbing Peter to pay Paul to vote for you?
Liberals are intellectuals: Liberals portray themselves as brilliant intellectuals who are so much smarter than the riff-raff out there in flyover country. Meanwhile, back in the real world, they run presidential campaigns based on "hope" and "change" and the intellectual roots of their philosophy could be explained by a caveman. Abortion good! People who want to stop abortions bad, bad, bad! Gay marriage good! People who want to protect marriage bad, bad, bad. It doesn't matter whether it's a college professor, a rocket scientist, or Barack Obama -- they all turn into cousin Cletus, the mountain simpleton who lives out by the hog pen, when you try to get them to explain why they believe what they believe.

Liberals are tolerant: Liberals are extremely tolerant -- of people who agree with them or of foreigners who hate America. Everybody else? Not so much. If you happen to say, try to give a conservative speech on a college campus, say that you believe marriage should be between a man and a woman after you're asked about it in a beauty pageant, or believe science has led you to draw a different conclusion than liberals have in regard to global warming, you're not going to see much tolerance on display. In other words, the liberal idea of tolerance is, "I agree with what you say, I'll defend to the death your right to say it -- and the rest of you need to be quiet."

Something to share

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/06/02/5_character_flaws_that_are_destroying_americas_future?page=1

Government Stealing Land Again

While a worthy cause, it doesn't justify taking private property. See article below:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,519277,00.html

If we don't have private property rights we cease to have freedom.

Let the love continue...

Something to think about...

I'm on again, off again about legalizing drugs. But the prohibition argument is probably the most persuasive in my mind.

Update

A bit of an update from the Stegherr's. We're moving to Oklahoma. After a long wait, we heard back from the unit at Ft Sill. We've got some paperwork and a physical to complete, then we'll get an official start date. In the meantime, we close on a lovely 3/2 house sometime next week. We found it while we were out there interviewing and went ahead and bought it. It all just felt like God's direction, buy the house, even though we didn't have the job yet. We couldn't make it contingent on getting the job either as there were several offers on the house, and it was bank owned, they didn't allow any contingencies. The final close date is a little up in the air thanks to some pokey underwriters. Ashley has found a school north of the Ft Sill area that she's applied to for the COTA program, Occupational Therapy Assistant. With all that and with her family being so close, in Texas, we're really excited about this move.

We're Home!!!

Back in the States. In Texas to be specific, taking a couple weeks of built up vacation time. Looking forward to reconnecting with everyone. Ashley's phone is back on, mine not yet.

2009 Already?!

Sorry for the lack of posts. Time flies I guess. Since I posted last we enjoyed Nurnberg's Christmas Market, in spite of the crushing crowds. My mom, sister and her husband came to visit. We took them to the western side of Germany, saw the black forest, Luxemburg, Belgium, Bastogne, Paris, and toured several castles. Its gotten bitterly cold here. Similar to what we'd have back home in Chicago, but extremely abnormal for here. Right now we're shipping things home and selling our car in preparation to leave. We'll both be back in the US by early February. I think 6 months was just the right length of time. We got to see most of the things we wanted to, enjoyed living in Germany, but now we're ready to come home and move onto the next phase of life.