My View

Some random thoughts from a warped and fevered mind...

Good health is such a great blessing. Those that enjoy it can sometimes take it for granted, but life has a way of forcing its way back in to our consciousness and making us cognizant of our frailties. That happened this past week to the wife of Buddy Oakes, one of our good friends in the blogging community . Cathy, Buddy's wife, was rushed to the hospital Tuesday with what was thought to be serious heart problems. Fortunately, that was not the case, and Cathy is now home resting and recovering. Here's to a quick recovery, Cathy, and a return to good health.

Marriage is made in heaven. Then again, so are tornadoes.

My mother died several years ago, and in her last few weeks of life, she was given palliative care by her attending physician. Simply put, she was made comfortable and suffering was minimized because there was no legitimate hope for recovery. This type of care happens in numerous end of life events, and the single most important consideration that I and my family had in that situation was the trust in the doctor's judgement and competence in making a determination about the possibility of recovery for my mother. This occurred because of numerous conversations and interactions with the doctor. In London, the Daily Telegraph is reporting that the National Health Service (NHS), Great Britain's socialized medical service, has come under intense scrutiny for having wrongly judged some ill patients as being beyond recovery and having medical care withdrawn. These patients are put on palliative care- usually heavy sedation- until they pass away. Obviously, medical treatment for a patient that is in their last days and forecasting death is an inexact science. In my mother's last days, I was in constant communication with her doctor and caregivers. The great problem with socialized medicine like is proposed in this country is that the ability to determine an appropriate course of action with the doctor providing care is eliminated. Instead, a bureaucrat is interjected between the patient, the patient's family, and the doctor. Other nations have tried socialized medicine with at best less than optimal results and at worst horrific results. This is the most important thing to remember as we debate this issue, it does not work. Keep that in mind as the spinmeisters in the mainstream media try to sell the Democrat's agenda.

Do you ever get the feeling of deja moo? That's the feeling that you have heard this b.s. before.

2011 should be an interesting time in the sports world. That year will be, to my recollection, the only time that all four of the major professional sports will have the collective bargaining agreements with their players expire concurrently. Imagine for a moment if professional hockey, football, baseball, and basketball all went on strike simultaneously I will wait a moment while the guys reading this recover from their momentary fainting spell........ okay- back with me? In my opinion, the two sports that have the greatest potential for labor unrest are the National Hockey League (see my post from Wednesday) and the National Football League. The similarities between the two leagues are striking (pardon the pun). With the ouster of Paul Kelly as Director of the NHLPA earlier this week, there is a vacuum in leadership that will presumably be filled before negotiations start to really heat up between the players and management; the NFLPA has a relatively new Director, DeMaurice Smith, who was elected March 2009 after the death of long time Director Gene Upshaw. Both of these leagues have players associations that have indicated they want a bigger piece of the revenue pie and are starting to stake out some positions that are sure to be contentiously negotiated with the owners (as an aside, the President of the NFLPA is Kevin Mawae of the Titans). Fans of their respective sports should be paying attention to the rhetoric and posture on issues that these unions take for an indication of the type of sports world we will see in 2011.

I have not yet begun to procrastinate.

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend. Be safe.

And that's my view