I was impressed with Obama Wednesday night but he still a dreamer. The Democratic Party and Obama have rubbed the republicans face in the political sand and they won’t forget it or forgive it. We elected these people to do what’s right for us but both parties think individually for themselves and their special interest groups.
Even though Wall Street and the big banks don’t like it I finial agree with Obama. He is finally getting as the say in Yiddish batesum (I don’t know if I spelled it right, but it is the lower extremeness of a male).
I was glade to see the demarcates get knocked down a peg and it was a large peg. When a party has to much power it is like being a doctored. Nancy Polisie is Obama’s hence woman. The bulldog that would cut your head off if you didn’t agree and to think I was happy a few years ago to she her get the chairmanship.
Maybe now there is a chance for bipartisan agreements on healthcare and other issues.
Clinton did it with a Republican majority while he was in office but then again Obama does not have the political savvy that Clinton had and still has.
As I have said many times before I am neither a Republican nor Demarcate, I am an American and I represent what I feel is good for America. I believe that we should stand up and fight for our rights.
Put controls on Wall Street, the banks, airlines, gas companies etc. We better start controlling what they do or we will all be broke. When it comes to health care we should put limits on lawsuits and keep the ambulance chaser at bay.
Lets talk about the Drugs companies. Why does it cost more here in the USA for medicines then anywhere else? Put controls on them or import it from Canada. People on Medicare pay close to a hundred dollars a month and that doesn’t include supplements or drugs programs. They are all extras to be paid for out of their pockets. The worst part about the system the government have for our seniors is the doughnut whole, where all seniors have to pay for there meds after a certain limit, I think it’s 2,700. If we all paid around $ 50.00 per person and have brokers handle the different companies, (Like other Insurances), it could be the best health care system in the world. But that’s to simple for our congress and senate to grasp.
To stimulate the country the congress and senate should give us back what they have taken from us for years. Deductions off our taxes for interest we pay on credit cards, cars, house repairs, work clothes, childcare. These are the things that if given to this country people would have more money to stimulate the economy. Instead they give us a refund taxes credit and thake others things away from us.
If you want everyone to pay his or her fair share of taxes then repeal personal income tax. Replaced it with tax on all foods, paper goods, gas and everything that is used in everyday life. It would be cheaper for us the people and more money would be put into the government. We would finally all pay the same taxes based on what we used.
Induce the banks to give us a few percentage more on our savings the more we save. Make retirement funds either none taxable or tax at a very low rate.
If we want to create more jobs we should cut taxes for all business. And put caps on what labor Unions can do. We need to hold down inflation buy holding down cost. Raises in inflation should only raise pay’s. Equal pay for a job should be determined by that job not by race or gender.
I think we should put term limits on our Senators and Congressman. It’s unheard of that they can serve in office for 45 years. After that long you know their corrupt how else can the get the money to get elected. Now that our Supreme Court has opened the floodgates they’ll be more corrupt. Both parties should be given money from the general fund at a certain amount to be spent on a campaign. News Channels should be asked to give equal time to all parties and not be paid for but deducted from business expenses.
My next issue is Illegal aliens if they do not want to become citizens through them out. They use our resources and send the money home. I don’t care if they have a child here or not, the parents are still illegal. We’re making cuts on people who paid into the social surety system all of the lives to give it to Illegal aliens. In closing about this issue if you don’t speak English, which is our language, then learn it. We shouldn’t have to lean their language although it would hurt all Americans who are born her to speak many languages.
When it comes to trade with other countries we should put tariffs on them as high as they put on us. Let deal on a level playing field.
If we really have allies then why are we the largest army in Afghanistan and everywhere else?
I know I sound harsh but we have to think about ourselves for a change. It’s the elderly and our children’s generation that will be effected if we don’t act.
I have helped the homeless and elderly along with being a big brother. I am always ready to help some one but I am tired of supporting people that don’t care about our country. It’s time for the middle to come back again and be strong and not be afraid of some one taking our house, job and life.
In closing lets not forget the people that really need our help now and years from now. The people who are suffering the devastation of the earthquake in Haiti. These are the people that the world should help.
I have place a link below to the Red Cross website
http://www.redcross.org/
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Chabad.org -- Thought for the Day
Chabad.org -- Thought for the Day: "
Any Jew alive on the face of this planet today is a walking miracle. Our mere existence today is wondrous, plucked from the fire at the last moment again and again, with no natural explanation that will suffice.
Each of us alive today is a child of martyrs and miracles.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
A call to action/ Wake up America
I was sent this email and it only proved what I had suspected. That is we should follow Israel and be ready for anything and be aware that the Terrorist are out to kill us by any means possible.
The world and America are at war; it could be the most important war we have ever had. We have to be strong and do anything that it takes. We need strong leaders. Not leaders that are afraid to do what maybe offensive to some. It means the lives of many for the sacrifice of few. I watch a show on T.V last night and although it’s not biased on true facts, it hit a fact that we better be aware of. The actor was asked when the jihad would be over. He said it would never end until all infidels were killed. That is true in real life. We are in a real war that may never end. The lives we lived before 9/11 will never be again. Our children, children-children and their children will never live in peace.
Read this below, it will put fear in you hart. Fear that should be there. Be aware of what goes on around you.
Advice from an Israeli Agent
AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ !!
Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie 'Munich' was based. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard, and she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.
In a lecture in New York City he shared information that EVERY American needs to know -- but that our government has not yet shared with us.
He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O'Reilly laughed, and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. Unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.
Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East) to the Bush Administration about 9/11, a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.
Now for his future predictions. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months..
Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke -- that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.
For example:
1) Our airport technology is outdated. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.
2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security will have us all travelling naked!
Every strategy we have is reactionary.
3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates.
Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel, security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.
Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (i.e., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as, rural America this time. The interlands (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).
The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.
Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.
Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U. S. Government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts. The world is quickly going to become 'a different place', and issues like 'global warming' and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.
On an encouraging note, he says that Americans don't have to be concerned about being nuked. Aviv says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to 'meet their destiny'.
He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, 'homegrown', having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U.S. He says to look for 'students' who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won't know/understand a thing about them.
Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terrorist threats we will inevitably face. America still has only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks, and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact SOON.
So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel's, Ireland's and England's hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to pay attention to, and trust 'aware' citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U. S. government continues to treat us, its citizens, 'like babies'. Our government thinks we 'can't handle the truth' and are concerned that we'll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake..
Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-travelled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase!
In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained' that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves.
Unfortunately, America hasn't been yet 'hurt enough' by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.
Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and about our schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. (In New York City, this was days, in some cases!)
He stresses the importance of having a plan, that's agreed upon within your family, of how to respond in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools too, develop plans of actions, just as they do in Israel.
Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.
Aviv says that the U. S. government has in force a plan, that in the event of another terrorist
attack, EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., will immediately be cut-off, as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated.
How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak to each other? You need to have a plan.
If you understand, and believe what you have just read, then you must feel compelled to send this to every concerned parent, guardian, grandparents, uncles, aunts, whomever. Don't stop there. In addition to sharing this via e-mail, contact and discuss this information with whomever it makes sense to. Make contingency plans with those you care about. Better that you have plans in place, and never have to use them, then to have no plans in place, and find you needed them.
If you choose not to share this, or not to have a plan in place, and nothing ever occurs -- good for you! However, in the event something does happen, and even more so, if it directly affects your loved ones, then this e-mail will haunt you forever.
Telling yourself after the fact, "I should have sent this to so and so, but deleted it as so much trash, plus I just didn't believe it", will not change anything. You were alerted, had the chance to do something, and instead of erring on the side of caution, you chose to disregard, if nothing else, a sensible, valuable warning.
The world and America are at war; it could be the most important war we have ever had. We have to be strong and do anything that it takes. We need strong leaders. Not leaders that are afraid to do what maybe offensive to some. It means the lives of many for the sacrifice of few. I watch a show on T.V last night and although it’s not biased on true facts, it hit a fact that we better be aware of. The actor was asked when the jihad would be over. He said it would never end until all infidels were killed. That is true in real life. We are in a real war that may never end. The lives we lived before 9/11 will never be again. Our children, children-children and their children will never live in peace.
Read this below, it will put fear in you hart. Fear that should be there. Be aware of what goes on around you.
Advice from an Israeli Agent
AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ !!
Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie 'Munich' was based. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard, and she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.
In a lecture in New York City he shared information that EVERY American needs to know -- but that our government has not yet shared with us.
He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O'Reilly laughed, and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. Unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.
Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East) to the Bush Administration about 9/11, a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.
Now for his future predictions. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months..
Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke -- that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.
For example:
1) Our airport technology is outdated. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.
2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security will have us all travelling naked!
Every strategy we have is reactionary.
3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates.
Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel, security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.
Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (i.e., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as, rural America this time. The interlands (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).
The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.
Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.
Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U. S. Government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts. The world is quickly going to become 'a different place', and issues like 'global warming' and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.
On an encouraging note, he says that Americans don't have to be concerned about being nuked. Aviv says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to 'meet their destiny'.
He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, 'homegrown', having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U.S. He says to look for 'students' who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won't know/understand a thing about them.
Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terrorist threats we will inevitably face. America still has only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks, and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact SOON.
So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel's, Ireland's and England's hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to pay attention to, and trust 'aware' citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U. S. government continues to treat us, its citizens, 'like babies'. Our government thinks we 'can't handle the truth' and are concerned that we'll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake..
Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-travelled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase!
In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained' that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves.
Unfortunately, America hasn't been yet 'hurt enough' by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.
Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and about our schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. (In New York City, this was days, in some cases!)
He stresses the importance of having a plan, that's agreed upon within your family, of how to respond in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools too, develop plans of actions, just as they do in Israel.
Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.
Aviv says that the U. S. government has in force a plan, that in the event of another terrorist
attack, EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., will immediately be cut-off, as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated.
How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak to each other? You need to have a plan.
If you understand, and believe what you have just read, then you must feel compelled to send this to every concerned parent, guardian, grandparents, uncles, aunts, whomever. Don't stop there. In addition to sharing this via e-mail, contact and discuss this information with whomever it makes sense to. Make contingency plans with those you care about. Better that you have plans in place, and never have to use them, then to have no plans in place, and find you needed them.
If you choose not to share this, or not to have a plan in place, and nothing ever occurs -- good for you! However, in the event something does happen, and even more so, if it directly affects your loved ones, then this e-mail will haunt you forever.
Telling yourself after the fact, "I should have sent this to so and so, but deleted it as so much trash, plus I just didn't believe it", will not change anything. You were alerted, had the chance to do something, and instead of erring on the side of caution, you chose to disregard, if nothing else, a sensible, valuable warning.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
no happy every after for him.
Once upon a time there was a young man who was happy go lucky. He lived life every day to the fullest. Then one day he met his love, dancing down the street. It didn’t take long for them to fall madly in live and get married.
They both worked hard and played hard. He worked from early morning to late at night. They family had everything except their father-husband there with them. He was trying to make a living for them but as usual he didn’t realize that they rather have him. He finally realized what his family wanted. They wanted him around more so he stepped down from his high paying position to a lesser position, a job to spend more time with his family. That position paid less and the family had to do with less. His wife didn’t like that. She was use to not working and having anything she wanted.
After twenty years of marriage it finally caught up to them. The arguments when they were together became command place.
One day his daughter look up at him and asked,” Why do you and mommy argue all the time, he answered, when we stop arguing it will be time to start worrying because then we wont care what happens to our family. As long as there was something to fight for the marriage would stay together he thought.
That day of reckoning came and after twenty years their family broke up. It was a very sad day for the kids but the parents knew it couldn’t go on. That it was better that he left and maybe his wife and the kids would live a calmer life. As most families he became a weekend dad, but he called his kids every night. He wanted to let then know that he loved them very much.
He stay by himself working all day and most of the night in a business he started. He was getting very lonely and prayed to the God above that he would met someone that would totally love for what he was and no for what he can give her. For years he would go out with several different woman and have a meaningless relationships with them. He was never really happy and always was glad to be alone again.
Then one day he met this very charming lady. She had a glare in her eyes a smile in her voice. He knew that she was special when he met her but how special she really was, was a pleasant surprise. She was a unique person, someone who would make everyone who met her feel good to be in her presents. To be around her was to be in front of an angle that was here on earth to spread happiness and joy. Could it be that God had finally answered his prayers? She was way more than he had asked for. He found a meaningful relationship with her that grow into a love that was strong and every lasting. Everyone that met them both could see how very much in love they were. It was a love story that you read in a book or see in the movies. His family and hers fell in love with each other. It was like they were all made for each other. They married and lived very happily but only for a short time.
Once again his hart would be broken. His soul mate died suddenly and he was left along again to morn her death forever. There could be no one to take her place; she was truly one of a kind. Once again God would take away the reason for living. When she was alive he had a purpose. Now there was nothing. What was sense of looking again, to fall in love, for it to be taken away? There will only be loneliness and despair there will be no happy every after for him.
They both worked hard and played hard. He worked from early morning to late at night. They family had everything except their father-husband there with them. He was trying to make a living for them but as usual he didn’t realize that they rather have him. He finally realized what his family wanted. They wanted him around more so he stepped down from his high paying position to a lesser position, a job to spend more time with his family. That position paid less and the family had to do with less. His wife didn’t like that. She was use to not working and having anything she wanted.
After twenty years of marriage it finally caught up to them. The arguments when they were together became command place.
One day his daughter look up at him and asked,” Why do you and mommy argue all the time, he answered, when we stop arguing it will be time to start worrying because then we wont care what happens to our family. As long as there was something to fight for the marriage would stay together he thought.
That day of reckoning came and after twenty years their family broke up. It was a very sad day for the kids but the parents knew it couldn’t go on. That it was better that he left and maybe his wife and the kids would live a calmer life. As most families he became a weekend dad, but he called his kids every night. He wanted to let then know that he loved them very much.
He stay by himself working all day and most of the night in a business he started. He was getting very lonely and prayed to the God above that he would met someone that would totally love for what he was and no for what he can give her. For years he would go out with several different woman and have a meaningless relationships with them. He was never really happy and always was glad to be alone again.
Then one day he met this very charming lady. She had a glare in her eyes a smile in her voice. He knew that she was special when he met her but how special she really was, was a pleasant surprise. She was a unique person, someone who would make everyone who met her feel good to be in her presents. To be around her was to be in front of an angle that was here on earth to spread happiness and joy. Could it be that God had finally answered his prayers? She was way more than he had asked for. He found a meaningful relationship with her that grow into a love that was strong and every lasting. Everyone that met them both could see how very much in love they were. It was a love story that you read in a book or see in the movies. His family and hers fell in love with each other. It was like they were all made for each other. They married and lived very happily but only for a short time.
Once again his hart would be broken. His soul mate died suddenly and he was left along again to morn her death forever. There could be no one to take her place; she was truly one of a kind. Once again God would take away the reason for living. When she was alive he had a purpose. Now there was nothing. What was sense of looking again, to fall in love, for it to be taken away? There will only be loneliness and despair there will be no happy every after for him.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Target does it again
I remember around last thanksgiving and Christmas emails were going around about Target. While Wal-Mart and other big stores would help the Vets and let Salvation Army set up in front of their stores Target wouldn’t.
When I got this email it reminded me why I don’t shop in Target. I rather go to K-Mart or Wal-Mart and spend my US Currency. Lets keep our money helping our economy.
Remark
Herb A
Wasn’t it last Christmas that Target refused to let the Salvation Army ring their bells in front of their stores?
Dick Forrey of the Vietnam Veterans Association wrote.'Recently we asked the local TARGET store to be a proud sponsor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall during our20 spring recognition event. We received the following replyfrom the local TARGET manag ement: ' Veterans do not meet ourarea of giving. We only donate to the arts, social actiongroups, gay & lesbian causes, and education.' So I'm thinking, if the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall andveterans in general, do not meet their donation criteria,then something is really wrong at this TARGET store. We were not asking for thousands of dollars, not even hundreds, justa small sponsorship for a memorial remembrance.As a follow-up, I E-mailed the TARGET U.S. CorporateHeadquarters and their response was the same. That's theirnational policy.Then I looked into the company further.They will not allowthe Marines to collect for 'Toys for Tots' at any of their stores.. And during the recent Iraq deployment, they wouldnot allow families of employees who were called up foractive duty to continue their insurance coverage 20 whilethey were on military service.. Then as I dig further, TARGETis a French-owned corporation.Now, I'm thinking again. If TARGET cannot support AmericanVeterans, then why should my family and I support theirstores by spending our hard earned American dollars! And, have their profits sent to France .... Without the American Vets, where would
France be today? 'They, most likely would be speaking German and trading in Deutsch Marks' Sincerely,Dick ForreyVeterans Helping VeteransPlease send this on to everyone you know to let Target know we don't need them either !
When I got this email it reminded me why I don’t shop in Target. I rather go to K-Mart or Wal-Mart and spend my US Currency. Lets keep our money helping our economy.
Remark
Herb A
Wasn’t it last Christmas that Target refused to let the Salvation Army ring their bells in front of their stores?
Dick Forrey of the Vietnam Veterans Association wrote.'Recently we asked the local TARGET store to be a proud sponsor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall during our20 spring recognition event. We received the following replyfrom the local TARGET manag ement: ' Veterans do not meet ourarea of giving. We only donate to the arts, social actiongroups, gay & lesbian causes, and education.' So I'm thinking, if the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall andveterans in general, do not meet their donation criteria,then something is really wrong at this TARGET store. We were not asking for thousands of dollars, not even hundreds, justa small sponsorship for a memorial remembrance.As a follow-up, I E-mailed the TARGET U.S. CorporateHeadquarters and their response was the same. That's theirnational policy.Then I looked into the company further.They will not allowthe Marines to collect for 'Toys for Tots' at any of their stores.. And during the recent Iraq deployment, they wouldnot allow families of employees who were called up foractive duty to continue their insurance coverage 20 whilethey were on military service.. Then as I dig further, TARGETis a French-owned corporation.Now, I'm thinking again. If TARGET cannot support AmericanVeterans, then why should my family and I support theirstores by spending our hard earned American dollars! And, have their profits sent to France .... Without the American Vets, where would
France be today? 'They, most likely would be speaking German and trading in Deutsch Marks' Sincerely,Dick ForreyVeterans Helping VeteransPlease send this on to everyone you know to let Target know we don't need them either !
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Thoughts of a Widower
I promised myself that I would not put my feelings of the lose of my wife and the loneliness I feel on my Blogs again but I was sitting watching the rain and felt sadden. So I started to write. I wanted to share my feelings with anyone who is going through the same hartach that I still go through almost two years afterwards. It’s never gets better. The pain will always be there
Thoughts of a Widower
As I look out my window watching the rain falling to earth and against the glass. It reminds me of the tears that fall down my face every night and every day. I could feel the cold wet damp weather that goes through you, the kind that chills your to the bones. It reminds me of the nights we sat by the fireplace cuddling to get warm.
I enjoyed holding you tight in my arms and touching your face with my hands, looking into your eyes and seeing all the love we had for each other.
When I close my eyes at night I ask to have that monument play once more time in my head.
My prays go unanswered and I feel abandon. For no one knows the loneliness and hurt I go through every day without you. You are still the first face I think of in the morning and the last face I think of at night.
How do we as widowers and widows get over the lost of our loved ones?
Is it written that we will find true love only to loose it?
Will we ever find the love we once had again?
Or move on to another type of love?
Will it ever be as good as it was before?
Or will we have to settle for second best?
It is hard once you have found your soul mate to seek that kind of love again.
I am ready to start over again but I don’t know how to obtain the love I am looking for.
I need mad passion in my life. A passion that will keep the flames of love and desire glowing for every.
Some one who could make the world happy with her smile and her angelica voice.
They say the eyes are the windows to our souls .I need a good soul in my life so I can become a better one and so I can become happy once more.
I dedicated this to my love Brenda and to all the Widows and Widowers that have found their soul mate and lost them.
May we all find love once more?
Thoughts of a Widower
As I look out my window watching the rain falling to earth and against the glass. It reminds me of the tears that fall down my face every night and every day. I could feel the cold wet damp weather that goes through you, the kind that chills your to the bones. It reminds me of the nights we sat by the fireplace cuddling to get warm.
I enjoyed holding you tight in my arms and touching your face with my hands, looking into your eyes and seeing all the love we had for each other.
When I close my eyes at night I ask to have that monument play once more time in my head.
My prays go unanswered and I feel abandon. For no one knows the loneliness and hurt I go through every day without you. You are still the first face I think of in the morning and the last face I think of at night.
How do we as widowers and widows get over the lost of our loved ones?
Is it written that we will find true love only to loose it?
Will we ever find the love we once had again?
Or move on to another type of love?
Will it ever be as good as it was before?
Or will we have to settle for second best?
It is hard once you have found your soul mate to seek that kind of love again.
I am ready to start over again but I don’t know how to obtain the love I am looking for.
I need mad passion in my life. A passion that will keep the flames of love and desire glowing for every.
Some one who could make the world happy with her smile and her angelica voice.
They say the eyes are the windows to our souls .I need a good soul in my life so I can become a better one and so I can become happy once more.
I dedicated this to my love Brenda and to all the Widows and Widowers that have found their soul mate and lost them.
May we all find love once more?
Monday, August 17, 2009
Doing with less 2009
Doing with less 2009
Everyone is cutting back now a days to afford just to survive. City’s, States and companies are doing the same to stay in business.
People are asked to do with less and take a cut in pay. Working fewer hours no matter how you look at it is a cut in pay. Some of us are asked to except a lesser health plan. We as consumers are spending less which controls the stock market and that controls our retirement (pensions&401K’s).
Us who are getting closer to retirement can’t afford it now. We have to get jobs in Wal-Mart to supplement what we receive. Social Security is not nearly enough to live on and Medicaid does not cover all the medicine a lot of the seniors have to take.
We as a country could and should do better for our citizens.
Staring by cutting back on what we give the World Bank and other counties. Let’s keep some of our money right here in the USA where it belongs. Maybe then we could afford healthcare and other service that should have.
Last but not least I haven’t heard the people who run this country talking about cutting their pay or benefits. Lets start with our dear old President. Senators, Congressman all along down the line, lets give all of them the same healthcare the give have and us them pay into the Social Security fund. Have them play by the same rules we have to play by.
Everyone is cutting back now a days to afford just to survive. City’s, States and companies are doing the same to stay in business.
People are asked to do with less and take a cut in pay. Working fewer hours no matter how you look at it is a cut in pay. Some of us are asked to except a lesser health plan. We as consumers are spending less which controls the stock market and that controls our retirement (pensions&401K’s).
Us who are getting closer to retirement can’t afford it now. We have to get jobs in Wal-Mart to supplement what we receive. Social Security is not nearly enough to live on and Medicaid does not cover all the medicine a lot of the seniors have to take.
We as a country could and should do better for our citizens.
Staring by cutting back on what we give the World Bank and other counties. Let’s keep some of our money right here in the USA where it belongs. Maybe then we could afford healthcare and other service that should have.
Last but not least I haven’t heard the people who run this country talking about cutting their pay or benefits. Lets start with our dear old President. Senators, Congressman all along down the line, lets give all of them the same healthcare the give have and us them pay into the Social Security fund. Have them play by the same rules we have to play by.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Obamanation called Obamacare
Page after Page of Reasons to Hate Obamacare
By Alan Caruba Sunday, July 26, 2009
Here are just a few very good reasons to hate Obamacare:Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)Page 42: The Health Choices Commissioner will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules in order to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliensPage 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No judicial review is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payrollPage 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payrollPage 167: Any individual who doesn't have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.Page 203: The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax. Yes, it really says that.Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected.Page 241: Doctors: no matter what speciality you have, you will all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)Page 253: Government sets value of doctors time, their professional judgment, etc.Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited from owning and investing in healthcare companies!Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on community input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.Page 425: Goverment provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patients health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN.Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.A tip of my hat to my friend, Ben Cerruti, for providing this look at the Obamanation called Obamacare. Write, email, fax or call your Senators and your Representative and tell them to vote NO!
Here are a few links to look at Judge for yourself
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574298661486528186.html
http://patientsunitednow.com/?q=node/233
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/23162.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/help-analyze-obamas-health-care-bill-2009-6
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16180589/Full-Bill-Now-Searchable
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per
Page after Page of Reasons to Hate Obamacare
By Alan Caruba Sunday, July 26, 2009
Here are just a few very good reasons to hate Obamacare:Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure!Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed!Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process)Page 42: The Health Choices Commissioner will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None.Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard.Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules in order to participate in a Healthcare Exchange.Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans)Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliensPage 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter.Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No judicial review is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages.Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payrollPage 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payrollPage 167: Any individual who doesn't have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.Page 203: The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax. Yes, it really says that.Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected.Page 241: Doctors: no matter what speciality you have, you will all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!)Page 253: Government sets value of doctors time, their professional judgment, etc.Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries.Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs.Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing!Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions.Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government.Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited from owning and investing in healthcare companies!Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval.Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on community input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN.Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing.Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc.Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals.Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone).Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia?Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time.Page 425: Goverment provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death.Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends.Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patients health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT.Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life.Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN.Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN.Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage.Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services.A tip of my hat to my friend, Ben Cerruti, for providing this look at the Obamanation called Obamacare. Write, email, fax or call your Senators and your Representative and tell them to vote NO!
Here are a few links to look at Judge for yourself
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574298661486528186.html
http://patientsunitednow.com/?q=node/233
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/23162.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/help-analyze-obamas-health-care-bill-2009-6
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16180589/Full-Bill-Now-Searchable
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per
Social Security 2009
I just received this article in an email. Maybe we should all pass it around and call our representatives and let them know that we want them on an even playing field with us. This way that would have the same healthcare and benefits that we get. Ha Ha I really don't think they would agree.
Social Security 2009
LET US SHOW OUR LEADERS IN WASHINGTON
"PEOPLE POWER" AND THE POWER OF THE INTERNET PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS.
IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU ARE REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT!KEEP IT GOING!!!! Propose this in 2009: START A BILL TO PLACE ALL POLITICIANS ON SOCIAL SECURITY ----------------- ----------------- SOCIAL SECURITY: (This is worth reading. It is short and to the point.)
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years. Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it. You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan. In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan. For all practical purposes their plan works like this: When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die. Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments... For example, Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7, 800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275, 000..00 during the last years of their lives. This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries. Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives. Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA!!! ZILCH!!! This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds; "OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"! From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer), We can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement. Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator Bill Bradley's benefits! Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made. That change would be to Jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen.. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us Then sit back..... And see how fast they would fix it! If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve.. How many people can YOU send this to? Better yet...... How many people WILL you send this to ?
Social Security 2009
LET US SHOW OUR LEADERS IN WASHINGTON
"PEOPLE POWER" AND THE POWER OF THE INTERNET PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS.
IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU ARE REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT!KEEP IT GOING!!!! Propose this in 2009: START A BILL TO PLACE ALL POLITICIANS ON SOCIAL SECURITY ----------------- ----------------- SOCIAL SECURITY: (This is worth reading. It is short and to the point.)
Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions during election years. Our Senators and Congresswomen do not pay into Social Security and, of course, they do not collect from it. You see, Social Security benefits were not suitable for persons of their rare elevation in society. They felt they should have a special plan for themselves. So, many years ago they voted in their own benefit plan. In more recent years, no congressperson has felt the need to change it. After all, it is a great plan. For all practical purposes their plan works like this: When they retire, they continue to draw the same pay until they die. Except it may increase from time to time for cost of living adjustments... For example, Senator Byrd and Congressman White and their wives may expect to draw $7, 800,000.00 (that's Seven Million, Eight-Hundred Thousand Dollars), with their wives drawing $275, 000..00 during the last years of their lives. This is calculated on an average life span for each of those two Dignitaries. Younger Dignitaries who retire at an early age, will receive much more during the rest of their lives. Their cost for this excellent plan is $0.00. NADA!!! ZILCH!!! This little perk they voted for themselves is free to them. You and I pick up the tab for this plan. The funds for this fine retirement plan come directly from the General Funds; "OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK"! From our own Social Security Plan, which you and I pay (or have paid) into, every payday until we retire (which amount is matched by our employer), We can expect to get an average of $1,000 per month after retirement. Or, in other words, we would have to collect our average of $1,000 monthly benefits for 68 years and one (1) month to equal Senator Bill Bradley's benefits! Social Security could be very good if only one small change were made. That change would be to Jerk the Golden Fleece Retirement Plan from under the Senators and Congressmen.. Put them into the Social Security plan with the rest of us Then sit back..... And see how fast they would fix it! If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe good changes will evolve.. How many people can YOU send this to? Better yet...... How many people WILL you send this to ?
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Mother’s day should be everyday
Where would we all be without our mothers? They are the life blood of our childhood.
Not only do they give us life but the are there every step of the way to nurture and protect us. Mothers are the best thing that god has created, even thought the fist mother got the first father in trouble with god,
All joking aside Mothers are the rock that keeps many families together at least they did when I was growing up.
The job of the mothers now a day I think has gotten even tougher, with having to go to work and taking care of the family when she gets home. They do have two full time jobs.
My mother was always there to wipe my tears and to cheer me up when I felt sad or troubled. When I was younger I was very sick, I almost died. She was at the hospital every day after work. One time she had an accident going to the hospital, the car was totaled but she still showed up.
My mothers loves all her three children the same.
I was the rebel in the family, but no matter what I did she stood behind me and never gave up. She gave me the strength to turn myself around and make her proud of me. I am still trying to do that even though she tells me all the time how proud she is of me. My mother is very strong person and will not take anything from her children.
She has given pleanty to us all these years now it time for us to give back. It is little compared to what you have gained from her love and caring.
If your mother is like my mine I try and celebrate her every day not just once a year but everyday.
This one for you mom, I love you
Herb
I have placed my charity discount shopping internet mall below. It’s donates 40% of profits to the charities listed. You shop at bargain prices while given to charity.
Home Shopping Center Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Not only do they give us life but the are there every step of the way to nurture and protect us. Mothers are the best thing that god has created, even thought the fist mother got the first father in trouble with god,
All joking aside Mothers are the rock that keeps many families together at least they did when I was growing up.
The job of the mothers now a day I think has gotten even tougher, with having to go to work and taking care of the family when she gets home. They do have two full time jobs.
My mother was always there to wipe my tears and to cheer me up when I felt sad or troubled. When I was younger I was very sick, I almost died. She was at the hospital every day after work. One time she had an accident going to the hospital, the car was totaled but she still showed up.
My mothers loves all her three children the same.
I was the rebel in the family, but no matter what I did she stood behind me and never gave up. She gave me the strength to turn myself around and make her proud of me. I am still trying to do that even though she tells me all the time how proud she is of me. My mother is very strong person and will not take anything from her children.
She has given pleanty to us all these years now it time for us to give back. It is little compared to what you have gained from her love and caring.
If your mother is like my mine I try and celebrate her every day not just once a year but everyday.
This one for you mom, I love you
Herb
I have placed my charity discount shopping internet mall below. It’s donates 40% of profits to the charities listed. You shop at bargain prices while given to charity.
Home Shopping Center Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Sunday, April 29, 2007
The potential loss of a loved one
Years ago I face the loss of a person who had become my dad late in my life and was always there fore me when my real father never cared. Ben was in my life for only eighteen years. Eighteen great years, he was not only my dad; he was my friend, confident, a man that I looked up to and learned from. He was some one that I wish I could be just a little like. Now looking back on the eighteen years of him not being here when I need him most. I feel the pain, the emptiness all over again. He died a horrific death from lymph node cancer.
Not too long ago maybe 4 months my daughter went to the ER and the doctor told us she had non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. For the first time in my life I sat there thinking to myself, that’s bad but what is it? I couldn’t think straight.
But it was the way he said it. He came over to the head of the bed and looked at us and said I have good news and bad. Your daughter does not have meningitis but she has Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He said it so matter a fact.
When we question him he started to back away a little and told us about others who lived a long life with it. My daughter has three kids ranging from 8 months to 4years. Naturally we wanted a second opinion, so a friend from another hospital got the records of the test and had another doctor look it over as matter of fact they had two doctors look it over and both said that the first doctor should have never told her that. The tests were not conclusive.
After have more test and seeing more doctors the final analyses was she had a very bad strep thought that was swollen enough to create her neck to look like part of her face. We dodged that bullet.
Now my uncle; a man who was there throughout my years of growing up was just told he has cancer of the pancreas, that is far advanced. My uncle who has many problems with his health that will hold him back from surgery. They gave him 6 months maybe a little more with treatment, but it doesn’t look good. He is another man in my life that stepped in when my biological father wasn’t there. Another man I could look up to and hope to be just a little like. I remember when I was younger and very sick; he was there, not my father. He would come to the hospital everyday to see me. Now he is sick and I feel that I can do nothing for him except be there and wait till he dies. Another father figure in my life will no longer exist. I am afraid to face his death. I’m afraid of how I will react when that time comes. It’s funny we never think about this until it becomes very obvious. Now I think about my mother who is around my uncles age,( a little older), who is in good medical shape for her age. I think about her longevity. I don’t want to loss her, I don’t want to think of it, but I know that I will have to face it some day.
We are all only here for a borrowed amount of time, G-D decides when we have to go. As hard as it is we must go on.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something 40% of the profits will go to charity.
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Not too long ago maybe 4 months my daughter went to the ER and the doctor told us she had non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. For the first time in my life I sat there thinking to myself, that’s bad but what is it? I couldn’t think straight.
But it was the way he said it. He came over to the head of the bed and looked at us and said I have good news and bad. Your daughter does not have meningitis but she has Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He said it so matter a fact.
When we question him he started to back away a little and told us about others who lived a long life with it. My daughter has three kids ranging from 8 months to 4years. Naturally we wanted a second opinion, so a friend from another hospital got the records of the test and had another doctor look it over as matter of fact they had two doctors look it over and both said that the first doctor should have never told her that. The tests were not conclusive.
After have more test and seeing more doctors the final analyses was she had a very bad strep thought that was swollen enough to create her neck to look like part of her face. We dodged that bullet.
Now my uncle; a man who was there throughout my years of growing up was just told he has cancer of the pancreas, that is far advanced. My uncle who has many problems with his health that will hold him back from surgery. They gave him 6 months maybe a little more with treatment, but it doesn’t look good. He is another man in my life that stepped in when my biological father wasn’t there. Another man I could look up to and hope to be just a little like. I remember when I was younger and very sick; he was there, not my father. He would come to the hospital everyday to see me. Now he is sick and I feel that I can do nothing for him except be there and wait till he dies. Another father figure in my life will no longer exist. I am afraid to face his death. I’m afraid of how I will react when that time comes. It’s funny we never think about this until it becomes very obvious. Now I think about my mother who is around my uncles age,( a little older), who is in good medical shape for her age. I think about her longevity. I don’t want to loss her, I don’t want to think of it, but I know that I will have to face it some day.
We are all only here for a borrowed amount of time, G-D decides when we have to go. As hard as it is we must go on.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something 40% of the profits will go to charity.
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Friday, April 27, 2007
Crule Enemy Cancer
Everything I need, I Had, Everything I have, I need.
by Rebecca Levine
I knew, of course, that I couldn't have breast cancer. Nobody in my family had ever had cancer. We were the hard-driving Type-A types felled by heart disease, not the reticent types prone to cancer. Moreover, I was scrupulous about using only underarm deodorants without aluminum, did not buy food containing chemicals, and ate copious quantities of orange vegetables, cabbage, and salmon, all of which, according to a Good Housekeeping article my friend's mother had clipped out and sent her, reduced the risk of breast cancer.
The only reason that I even bothered to go for a mammogram --my first in four and a half years -- was a series of classes Rabbi Kelemen gave on "doing your hishtadlus [effort]." The rabbi had taught that the only causal force in the universe is God. Everything happens only because God wills it from moment to moment. The Torah, however, obligates us humans to expend "normal effort." Thus, God sends us our livelihood, but we are obligated to get out of bed in the morning and go to work, because that is normal effort. And if we don't bother to expend the effort to work, God will likely teach us a lesson by not sending us a paycheck.
"Normal effort" for good health in 2003 mandates routine mammograms every two years for women over 50. I had gone for a mammogram shortly after my 50th birthday. I was appalled at how excruciatingly painful it was. Two years later, on schedule, I made an appointment for a second mammogram. It was the only time in my life that I totally forgot to keep a medical appointment. Was it my cocky certitude that I didn't have breast cancer or my primal fear of pain? Two and a half years after that, succumbing to Rabbi Kelemen's exhortations to "expend normal effort," I dutifully went for my second mammogram.
They found a lump.
I was unfazed. After all, everybody knows that most lumps are benign. And I knew that I couldn't possibly have breast cancer.
Dr. Cohen, looking grave, told me that they would have to take a biopsy. He never used the words "cancer," "tumor," or "malignancy."
After the biopsy, Dr. Cohen told me that, because they were working so close to the chest, I would have to go for an immediate chest X-ray. I started to wonder what all the urgency was about. Ruth, the somber-looking nurse (a melancholy personality, I surmised), told me to wait in the waiting room while they called the X-ray clinic. Instead, I walked just outside the entrance of the building to get better reception for my cellphone, so I could call my rabbi to ask him to pray for me. I was in the middle of getting his phone number when Ruth came running out of the building, waving the order for the chest X-ray.
"They close at three o'clock. It's 2:25 now!" Her voice was almost panicked. "Can you get across town in time? You'll have to drive fast!"
Speeding across Jerusalem, I felt like an unwitting passer-by who gets caught up in the chase scene of a movie. What was all the urgency about? I had just gone for a routine mammogram.
The chest X-ray came out clean. "Ruth needs to learn to relax," I muttered to myself.
THE DIAGNOSIS
Eight days later the Breast Clinic called and asked me to come in at five o'clock to receive the results of the biopsy. The previous week, despite my protestations, they had told me that they never give results on the telephone.
When my husband Moshe and I arrived, the waiting room, so busy and crowded the week before, was nearly empty. The only other people sitting there were an Israeli couple who looked to be in their early sixties. The woman, with henna-dyed reddish-brown hair, appeared distraught and worried. She kept leaning her forehead on her husband's upper arm.
I sat there reciting psalms and feeling sorry for the woman. Perhaps she really had breast cancer. Unlike me, of course. After about 15 minutes, I struck up a conversation with her, to divert her mind a bit. Her name, she told me, was Tzipporah. She wished she could recite psalms to stay calm. I offered her my book. She smiled and shook her head. Just then, a nurse called in Tzipporah and her husband.
Twenty minutes later they emerged, looking stricken. Tzipporah could barely walk. She leaned on her husband. Filled with sympathy, I jumped up and asked her, "Tzipporah, do you want me to pray for you? What's your mother's name?" Her eyes dazed, Tzipporah nodded, and barely croaked out the name, "Rachel."
At that moment, Dr. Cohen called in me and my husband. I had imagined the scene a dozen times during those eight days. He would usher us into his large, well-appointed office. We would sit down across the desk from him, and, with a relieved smile, he would announce, "The tumor is benign."
Instead, he ushered us into a tiny room dominated by a lit-up screen. Perched in front of it was my mammogram. The three of us squeezed into three chairs that were facing the screen.
"Now this is the lump," Dr. Cohen pointed to a bright spot of light that looked like the head of a comet, "and these are the irregular cells which extend from it, six centimeters along the milk duct." He pointed to specs of light that looked like the thin tail of a comet. He then launched into an explanation of the significance of calcification of cells.
Moshe and I were confused. What did it all mean? Finally Moshe piped up. "You mean the lump is not benign?"
Breast cancer. There are words that explode like bombs
Slowly Dr. Cohen shook his head. "I'm afraid not. It's breast cancer."
Breast cancer. There are words that explode like bombs. Moshe clutched my right hand. Breast cancer. I sat there silent, the truncated limbs of my life strewn around me like the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
Finally I blurted out, "I can't have breast cancer. I have two books to write!"
Dr. Cohen fixed me with his eyes. "You're not going to die from this. We've caught it early. This is Stage One Cancer. The tumor is only five millimeters. But you will have to have a mastectomy."
"Why not a lumpectomy?" I protested. I don't know how I remembered the word. Or any words. In an emergency room after a terror attack, I had seen victims in shock. They had no visible signs on their bodies, no burns, no shrapnel, but they stared straight ahead and did not speak.
Dr. Cohen pointed again to the tail of the comet on the mammogram. All those cells would have to be removed. It would leave the breast so disfigured that there was no point in keeping it.
I don't remember what else he said. Finally, he recommended two surgeons to us, and handed my husband a note with their names and phone numbers. We left, as dazed and stricken as Tzipporah.
A diagnosis of cancer is like a black hole. It sucks you in at a dizzying speed and dumps you out in a different universe. We emerged from that tiny room denizens of a new, strange world. It had its own language: stages, levels, in situ, invasive... It was populated by people who had survived cancer or were in the process of not surviving it, all walking incognito among unafflicted foreigners, their brand, their scarlet letter "C," invisible beneath their flesh.
A doctor would later tell me: "One in nine women will get breast cancer. Among Ashkenazi Jewish women, it's one in eight. You have no idea how many women you know who have had breast cancer."
As we left the breast clinic, I thought of my four friends who had died of cancer -- two of breast cancer, two of ovarian cancer -- during the last eight years. How could Dr. Cohen be so sure I wouldn't join them?
As soon as we reached our car, I picked up our cellphone and called Rebbetzin Milakovsky, in order to get an appointment with my rabbi. "Rebecca, how are you?" she asked in her sweet, Polish-accented English.
"It's... it's..." The words "breast cancer" simply would not come out of my mouth. All I could do was cry into the phone.
IN TOWN
On the way home, we had intended to stop at the butcher shop in town. My sense of efficiency (after all, we were already out in the car) would not let me renege on the errand. Since finding a parking space in downtown Jerusalem is nearly impossible, we decided that Moshe would circle around the block while I ran into the butcher shop.
As soon as I emerged from our car onto the crowded sidewalk, I felt like I had stumbled onto a firing range where the shooters were oblivious to my presence. Every look, every gesture -- a gruff word from the normally gruff butcher, a fellow customer jostling me to get to the frozen ground beef -- would be lethal in my condition. I was on the verge of tears. I felt like screaming: "Be gentle with me, or I'll shatter."
Of course, how could they know that I had just been diagnosed with cancer? Suddenly, with horror, it dawned on me: Just as my affliction is invisible to them, how many times had I spoken curtly or with exasperation to a stranger or to an acquaintance who also may have just been diagnosed with a dread disease? How would I know? How could they know?
Abashed, I remembered Rashi's commentary on the Torah's injunction not to verbally afflict with words a widow or an orphan. The 11th century sage Rashi wrote that the proscription extends to not verbally afflicting anyone, because, although the widow and orphan are the most obvious examples, everyone suffers.
I managed to make my purchases and leave the store without breaking down in tears. My two bags of frozen poultry, salmon, and vegetables were heavy. By the time I turned the corner to the street where I hoped my husband would find me, I could carry them no further. I plunked the bags down beside me and waited for our car to pass.
A young man in his mid-twenties, wearing a knitted kipa, was walking along the sidewalk, which, due to construction, narrowed at the point where I was standing. When he reached me, he jumped over my bags and continued walking. Two meters further, he turned around, smiled, and asked, "Can I help you?"
It was a simple act of noticing that a stranger might be in need. In my fragile state, however, I felt like I was the beneficiary of a world-shaking magnanimity. I was so moved by his kindness, that I could not speak. I shook my head mutely. And I wished that I would be the type of person whose random love could rescue strangers from the depths.
Two days after my surgery, a volunteer from the Israeli Cancer Society -- a woman who had undergone a mastectomy five years ago -- visited me in the hospital. In the course of our conversation, I said to her: "Well, the surgery is over. Now the worst is behind me."
She replied acerbically: "Once you've lived through the diagnosis, the worst is behind you."
I nodded my head knowingly.
OPENING THE LETTER
The next morning, I splurged on a taxi to the Kotel. (In the weeks leading up to my mastectomy, I would treat my body to many indulgences, trying to console it for the ordeal visited upon it -- hand-made jasmine soap, two suits, a massage, and two hats. Although our budget could ill afford these luxuries, and I felt like a clliché buying a hat to ward off depression, the truth is they made me feel feminine and attractive, a dire necessity, not a luxury at all, for a woman with breast cancer.)
Our sages say that when afflicted with suffering, a Jew should not ask, "Why?" (for who can fathom God's infinite mind?), but rather, "What?" "What do You want me to learn from this?" "What is the lesson hidden behind this suffering?" "What do I need to change in myself?"
The Kotel, or Western Wall, is the second holiest Jewish site after the Temple Mount. According to the Talmud, the Divine Presence never leaves the Western Wall.
I went to the Kotel the morning after my diagnosis to ask God what He wanted me to learn from this sudden and traumatic hairpin turn in my life. Fourteen years ago, my husband and I had become Torah-observant Jews. Moshe had left a lucrative psychology practice and I a budding writing career to raise our children in the holy atmosphere of Jerusalem. I idealized growth and was willing to pay a steep price for self-change. But breast cancer? Rather than the next segment of road on my spiritual journey, breast cancer seemed like a gigantic obstacle blocking the road.
God was sending me a message in a sealed envelope. I prayed to open the envelope and read His letter.
I sat in the shade of the ancient wall and meditated. Everything, everything, everything comes from the One Source. The same God who gave me my husband, my four wonderful children, my apartment in Jerusalem, and every single breath, that same God was now giving me a malignant tumor in my left breast. God was sending me a message in a sealed envelope. I prayed to open the envelope and read His letter.
I had learned to meditate by "putting my mind in neutral." Then, if I was fortunate, my mind would slip into "intuitive gear," where ideas would spring not from my intellect, but from a higher faculty, connected to the Divine. "Poor man's prophecy," my husband called it.
What do the breasts represent? I asked. The answer came clearly: They are the organs of nurture. What is this tumor growing in the milk duct? It is a blockage. What is blocked about my nurturing, and why in the left breast?
The answer almost knocked me off my chair. In Kabbalah, the right side stands for chesed, a free pouring-forth; the left side stands for gevurah, restrained giving, holding back, din, judgment. Known among my friends as a generous and loving person, always the first to volunteer to help a needy neighbor, I was okay on my right side. But there was a blockage in one of the 36 milk ducts on my left side. There was something wrong with my gevurah.
Both chesed and gevurah are modes of giving. Chesed pours forth without restraint. Sometimes that's not the best way to give. Sometimes the one receiving requires more measured giving. For example, Albert Einstein teaching math to an eight-year-old would not help her by pouring forth everything he knows. The pure exercise of gevurah, however, must be dictated by the needs of the receiver, not the limitations -- the stinginess or meanness -- of the giver.
A blockage in the left breast. In front of my mind's eye I suddenly saw all the people whom I refuse to nurture: my political opponents on the Israeli left; people I don't approve of; unmarried men over forty who suffer from commitment phobia and don't deign to marry my single friends; pro-Arab academics; vociferous feminists (of whom I used to be one); American Jews who spend their tourist dollars in Europe instead of Israel; and a host of other people guilty, in my mind, of moral failures.
With this revelation came another that overwhelmed me: God has sent me this message, this cancerous tumor, because He believes in my ability to grow, to change, to become more loving, tolerant, and empathetic than I presently am. I think I am, by anyone's standard, already a good person and a good Jew. But I have the potential to become even better, not to rest on my laurels, not to continue strolling down my spiritual path at a comfortable pace, but to race forward. The cancerous tumor is a ball that God is throwing me, confident in my ability to catch the ball and run with it. With my diagnosis of breast cancer, I have been upgraded to the fast lane.
I had the sensation of a hand on my back pushing me to run faster than I ever thought I could. I either had to double my speed or fall flat on my face. But with His other hand, He was holding me up. I wouldn't fall. Spiritually, I could really become someone great. I sat there by the Kotel, the tears streaming down my face, and thanked God for the gift of the tumor.
RE-ENTRY
Then I took the bus home. (I no longer felt the need for petty indulgences.) I walked into my apartment feeling exalted, privileged, closer to God than I had in years.
It was Lag B'Omer, a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar. All my children were home from school. The night before, my husband had explained to them that Ima is sick with something serious but not life-threatening, and she will need an operation. They shouldn't worry, but they should pray -- hard.
Now, as soon as I entered the living room, they all besieged me. They were fighting about a piece of a board game which Sheina, my 15-year-old, had lent Mordechai and Shimon (12 and 10 respectively), and they had somehow lost. Even little Shoshana (7) joined the fray.
I stared at my clamoring children and thought: "How did these aliens invade my new world, my world of cancer? Here I am about to lose a part of my body, and they are crying about losing a plastic game piece?"
I lifted my hands to heaven in a gesture which 17 hours before would have seemed to me melodramatic, and in a choked voice croaked: "Your mother has cancer! It's a serious illness. I can't take all your bickering and fighting. Do you want me to move out of the house until my operation?"
As the children stood there, their mouths agape, I ran to my room, flung myself on my bed, and cried.
And that's how it was for the next few weeks: I was a pendulum swinging between spiritual exhilaration and sudden depression.
MY MANTRA
Bernie Siegel's Love, Medicine, and Miracles convinced me that depression is a breeding ground for cancer. I went to Rabbi Kelemen and asked him for a method to make myself happy.
He pointed to a blessing that every observant Jew says every morning: "Blessed are You Hashem, our God, King of the Universe, who fulfills all my needs." He explained that this blessing signifies that everything I need, I have. Contemplate this truth, he advised me, and I'd be happy.
"Everything I need, I have." I started to repeat this over and over to myself. Of course, to believe in God means to know that He runs the world and dispenses to every single soul exactly what that soul needs to accomplish its purpose in this world.
Then, I realized, the converse must also be true: Whatever I don't have, I don't need. If, after my mastectomy, I don't have a left breast, then I don't need a left breast.
If I have a malignant tumor, I need that tumor for the lesson it has come to teach me
A second converse also occurred to me: "Everything I have, I need." This means that if I have a malignant tumor, I need that tumor. I need it for the lesson it has come to teach me. If I have a nasty downstairs neighbor, then I must need that nasty neighbor. I need him for the spiritual growth that ensues from dealing with a difficult neighbor according to all the lofty interpersonal commandments the Torah enjoins upon me. If I have an unpleasant encounter with a friend, then I need that encounter. It, too, has a lesson to teach me.
Wherever I went during the following weeks, as I ran around to doctors and tests, a liver ultrasound, a bone scan, blood tests, pre-operative screening, genetic testing to determine whether I had the gene for cancer, etc., I repeated my new mantra: "Everything I need, I have. Everything I have, I need."
Sometimes, after a particularly trying experience, I would have to repeat my mantra a dozen times until I calmed down and regained my perspective. The mantra did make me happy, or at least content that God is in control and that whatever He sends me is for my spiritual benefit.
MY SURGEON
Two days after the diagnosis, my husband and I went to see one of the surgeons recommended to us, Dr. Oded Olsha, a middle-aged man born in Australia, educated in Israel and England. After examining me and my mammogram, he asked me how long it had been since my previous mammogram.
"Four and a half years," I admitted guiltily, adding, "I know I should have gone every two years."
"With a tumor this small," Dr. Olsha remarked, "even if you had gone two years ago, it's doubtful they would have found anything."
"You mean I don't have to feel guilty about neglecting mammograms?"
Dr. Olsha raised his bushy eyebrows, appalled. "Is someone trying to make you feel guilty? How dare they!"
How does one choose a surgeon? My best friend was insisting that I search out the most expert surgeon in Jerusalem, that I not settle for a mere good bedside manner, and that I check, double check, and crosscheck Dr. Olsha's credentials. As far as I was concerned, however, the moment Dr. Olsha took my side against all my own inner voices of guilt and reprehension, I knew I had found my surgeon.
Dr. Olsha corroborated what Dr. Cohen had said. I would need a mastectomy, but, pending the results of all my tests, most likely I would not need radiation nor chemotherapy.
He explained that the surgery would include a "sentinel node biopsy." Until recently, he said, a mastectomy included removing all the lymph nodes under the adjacent arm, because the tumor may have drained into them, spreading the cancer. This kind of operation, called a "radical mastectomy," usually left life-long pain and swelling in that arm. Many women who have undergone a radical mastectomy had to wear an elastic sleeve over their arm to control the swelling.
The relatively new procedure of the sentinel node biopsy involved injecting the area of the tumor with both radioactive matter and blue dye before the surgery. Then the surgeon could identify which specific lymph node or nodes drained from that particular area. While the patient was still on the operating table, a fast frozen biopsy was made of just the blue lymph nodes. If they were clean of cancer, no additional lymph nodes would be removed.
"Everything I need, I have." I thanked God that I had breast cancer in 2003 and not five years earlier.
After explaining several other points, Dr. Olsha asked me, "Do you have any questions?"
I surely did. "Dr. Cohen said I wouldn't die from this. But I have friends who died of breast cancer."
I was thinking of Ella, whose death five years before had left a permanent sore in my heart. Ella was the mother of eight children, the youngest of whom was 18 months old when Ella died in the very hospital where Dr. Olsha would operate on me.
At Ella's funeral, when it was time to say kaddish, I noticed all the men on the men's side of the funeral parlor standing in a bowed position. This was strange, for kaddish is not one of the prayers we say bowing. Only a couple minutes later did I realize that the men were bending over in order to hear six-year-old Yankl, Ella's oldest son, recite the kaddish for his mother. On Ella's 41st birthday, several of us had surprised her with a small, impromptu party. We drank toast after toast of orange soda, raising our paper cups to "L'Chaim," to life! Six weeks later she was dead.
"How does Dr. Cohen know I won't die?" I demanded. "Breast cancer is a fatal disease."
Dr. Olsha answered in a gentle tone. "The breast cancer that younger women get is a much more aggressive kind. Post-menopausal women get a slow-growing cancer. We could wait a month, even three months, to remove your tumor, and no harm would be done. With the size of your tumor, the recovery rate is 95%."
I felt that the diagnosis was a death sentence, and Dr. Olsha's words were a reprieve. It never felt so good to be middle-aged!
We set the date for the surgery five weeks hence. That would give me time to do all the tests and to do "my research" on breast cancer and the pros and cons of reconstructive surgery, as well as to check out references on Dr. Olsha, just to please my friend.
HOW GOD FEELS
The evening before my surgery, I packed a small valise with a robe, slippers, toothbrush, toothpaste, two books, and bottled water, and set off to the hospital with my husband. All the way there, I was haunted by a sense of déjà vu. We had followed the same procedure each time I had gone to the hospital to give birth to one of our children. Those times, however, what had come out of my body was life: precious babies who filled me with delight. This time, what would come out of my body was death. And I would leave the hospital with less than I had arrived with.
Yet, I told myself, this surgery was also a birth. Out of this experience, I hoped to birth a new understanding, a gentler, more compassionate self. It was up to me if I left the hospital diminished or augmented.
Early the next morning, Dr. Olsha appeared at my bedside. He held two syringes, one of them grotesquely large. "I have to inject your breast with the radioactive matter now," he explained apologetically. "The blue dye you'll get in the operating room, but this stuff needs time to work. I'm really sorry. This first injection is going to hurt." He paused. "And the second one will hurt even more. I'm really sorry to have to do this to you."
He administered the first injection into my breast. It burned and stung. The second injection felt like the fires of hell liquefied into a syringe. I looked away and repeated my mantra, "Everything I have, I need."
"Now you know how God feels. People are always blaming God for all the pain there is in the world. But He's only doing it for our ultimate good."
When it was over, Dr. Olsha said, "I feel terrible to have to do this to my patients." I tried to console him. "You're doing this for my benefit, so I won't need to have all my lymph nodes taken out." Looking at my kind, secular surgeon, I added: "Now you know how God feels. People are always blaming God for all the pain there is in the world. But He's only doing it for our good, for our ultimate good. And He feels even worse about having to inflict pain than you do."
THE FIRST SHOWER
The day after my surgery, many guests came to visit. I was busy all day, with barely a chance to read the book I had brought. Late at night, when all my visitors were gone, Dr. Olsha came to check my incisions. "Have you taken a shower yet?" he asked.
"No, I've been too busy."
"Well, it's a good idea to take a shower," he suggested. "You'll feel better."
After he left, I thought hard about his gentle suggestion. Years before, my friend Etty had told me that her young sister-in-law had had a mastectomy. When I inquired how she was doing, Etty replied, "She was doing okay... until she took her first shower. It was traumatic for her to see herself."
I took a good look at my own mind. Was I really too busy -- and now too tired -- to take a shower, or was I avoiding my own image in the mirror?
It was 11:00 at night. My three roommates were asleep. I lay there thinking about my now disfigured body. It would look strange, even freakish. "You're deformed now," I told myself, then edited the sentence: "Your body is deformed now."
Suddenly I thought of my mother, may she rest in peace. A beautiful woman, she cared little about fashion, jewelry, or makeup. While my friend Babette's mother used to say to her, "The most important thing in the world is to be pretty and thin," my mother's values were: Be good and be smart. It occurred to me that if I had had Babette's mother, this mastectomy would have decimated my sense of self. Thank God, I had my mother, who from my earliest years had inculcated in me a sense of self not defined by my body or my appearance.
"Everything I need, I have" did not refer, I realized, only to the things and people in my life. It also referred to my inner resources, my strengths, talents, and capabilities. God had prepared me to cope with my mastectomy 55 years ago, when He assigned my soul to the womb of this particular mother, who would raise her daughter with a sense of self that would remain intact even when her body wasn't.
With that I got up from my hospital bed and went to take a shower.
Commentary
By Herb Krantz
This was an article that was sent to me through email. I feel that t is important to share.
I can really fell for this woman. My daughter went to the ER and the doctor told us she had non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. For the first time in my life I sat there in thinking to myself, that’s bad but what is it? I couldn’t think straight.
But it was the way he said it. He came over to the head of the bed and looked at us and said I have good news and bad. Your daughter does not have meningitis but she has Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He said it so matter a fact.
When we question him he started to back away a little and told us about others who lived a long life with it. My daughter has three kids ranging from 8 months to 4years. Naturally we wanted a second opinion, so a friend from another hospital got the records of the test and had another doctor look it over as matter of fact they had two doctors look it over and both said that the first doctor should of never told her that. The tests were not conclusive.
After have more test and seeing more doctors the final analyses was she had a very bad strep thought that was swollen enough to create her neck to look like part of her face.
Just like the woman in the story above we all had to find our inter strength for each other. You never know when or where it will be tested but they,(who ever they are),G-D will never give you more than you can bare. Sometime I feel like I would love to meet who ever they are and beat the hell out of them, but no matter what we all gather the strength we need to get through the bad times.
Cancer of any kind is a terrible thing to face and go through. My daughter and we have dodged the bullet this time but only to face the future death of an uncle who means a great deal to us. He was and is a like a father to me.
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Home Shopping Center Mall
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by Rebecca Levine
I knew, of course, that I couldn't have breast cancer. Nobody in my family had ever had cancer. We were the hard-driving Type-A types felled by heart disease, not the reticent types prone to cancer. Moreover, I was scrupulous about using only underarm deodorants without aluminum, did not buy food containing chemicals, and ate copious quantities of orange vegetables, cabbage, and salmon, all of which, according to a Good Housekeeping article my friend's mother had clipped out and sent her, reduced the risk of breast cancer.
The only reason that I even bothered to go for a mammogram --my first in four and a half years -- was a series of classes Rabbi Kelemen gave on "doing your hishtadlus [effort]." The rabbi had taught that the only causal force in the universe is God. Everything happens only because God wills it from moment to moment. The Torah, however, obligates us humans to expend "normal effort." Thus, God sends us our livelihood, but we are obligated to get out of bed in the morning and go to work, because that is normal effort. And if we don't bother to expend the effort to work, God will likely teach us a lesson by not sending us a paycheck.
"Normal effort" for good health in 2003 mandates routine mammograms every two years for women over 50. I had gone for a mammogram shortly after my 50th birthday. I was appalled at how excruciatingly painful it was. Two years later, on schedule, I made an appointment for a second mammogram. It was the only time in my life that I totally forgot to keep a medical appointment. Was it my cocky certitude that I didn't have breast cancer or my primal fear of pain? Two and a half years after that, succumbing to Rabbi Kelemen's exhortations to "expend normal effort," I dutifully went for my second mammogram.
They found a lump.
I was unfazed. After all, everybody knows that most lumps are benign. And I knew that I couldn't possibly have breast cancer.
Dr. Cohen, looking grave, told me that they would have to take a biopsy. He never used the words "cancer," "tumor," or "malignancy."
After the biopsy, Dr. Cohen told me that, because they were working so close to the chest, I would have to go for an immediate chest X-ray. I started to wonder what all the urgency was about. Ruth, the somber-looking nurse (a melancholy personality, I surmised), told me to wait in the waiting room while they called the X-ray clinic. Instead, I walked just outside the entrance of the building to get better reception for my cellphone, so I could call my rabbi to ask him to pray for me. I was in the middle of getting his phone number when Ruth came running out of the building, waving the order for the chest X-ray.
"They close at three o'clock. It's 2:25 now!" Her voice was almost panicked. "Can you get across town in time? You'll have to drive fast!"
Speeding across Jerusalem, I felt like an unwitting passer-by who gets caught up in the chase scene of a movie. What was all the urgency about? I had just gone for a routine mammogram.
The chest X-ray came out clean. "Ruth needs to learn to relax," I muttered to myself.
THE DIAGNOSIS
Eight days later the Breast Clinic called and asked me to come in at five o'clock to receive the results of the biopsy. The previous week, despite my protestations, they had told me that they never give results on the telephone.
When my husband Moshe and I arrived, the waiting room, so busy and crowded the week before, was nearly empty. The only other people sitting there were an Israeli couple who looked to be in their early sixties. The woman, with henna-dyed reddish-brown hair, appeared distraught and worried. She kept leaning her forehead on her husband's upper arm.
I sat there reciting psalms and feeling sorry for the woman. Perhaps she really had breast cancer. Unlike me, of course. After about 15 minutes, I struck up a conversation with her, to divert her mind a bit. Her name, she told me, was Tzipporah. She wished she could recite psalms to stay calm. I offered her my book. She smiled and shook her head. Just then, a nurse called in Tzipporah and her husband.
Twenty minutes later they emerged, looking stricken. Tzipporah could barely walk. She leaned on her husband. Filled with sympathy, I jumped up and asked her, "Tzipporah, do you want me to pray for you? What's your mother's name?" Her eyes dazed, Tzipporah nodded, and barely croaked out the name, "Rachel."
At that moment, Dr. Cohen called in me and my husband. I had imagined the scene a dozen times during those eight days. He would usher us into his large, well-appointed office. We would sit down across the desk from him, and, with a relieved smile, he would announce, "The tumor is benign."
Instead, he ushered us into a tiny room dominated by a lit-up screen. Perched in front of it was my mammogram. The three of us squeezed into three chairs that were facing the screen.
"Now this is the lump," Dr. Cohen pointed to a bright spot of light that looked like the head of a comet, "and these are the irregular cells which extend from it, six centimeters along the milk duct." He pointed to specs of light that looked like the thin tail of a comet. He then launched into an explanation of the significance of calcification of cells.
Moshe and I were confused. What did it all mean? Finally Moshe piped up. "You mean the lump is not benign?"
Breast cancer. There are words that explode like bombs
Slowly Dr. Cohen shook his head. "I'm afraid not. It's breast cancer."
Breast cancer. There are words that explode like bombs. Moshe clutched my right hand. Breast cancer. I sat there silent, the truncated limbs of my life strewn around me like the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
Finally I blurted out, "I can't have breast cancer. I have two books to write!"
Dr. Cohen fixed me with his eyes. "You're not going to die from this. We've caught it early. This is Stage One Cancer. The tumor is only five millimeters. But you will have to have a mastectomy."
"Why not a lumpectomy?" I protested. I don't know how I remembered the word. Or any words. In an emergency room after a terror attack, I had seen victims in shock. They had no visible signs on their bodies, no burns, no shrapnel, but they stared straight ahead and did not speak.
Dr. Cohen pointed again to the tail of the comet on the mammogram. All those cells would have to be removed. It would leave the breast so disfigured that there was no point in keeping it.
I don't remember what else he said. Finally, he recommended two surgeons to us, and handed my husband a note with their names and phone numbers. We left, as dazed and stricken as Tzipporah.
A diagnosis of cancer is like a black hole. It sucks you in at a dizzying speed and dumps you out in a different universe. We emerged from that tiny room denizens of a new, strange world. It had its own language: stages, levels, in situ, invasive... It was populated by people who had survived cancer or were in the process of not surviving it, all walking incognito among unafflicted foreigners, their brand, their scarlet letter "C," invisible beneath their flesh.
A doctor would later tell me: "One in nine women will get breast cancer. Among Ashkenazi Jewish women, it's one in eight. You have no idea how many women you know who have had breast cancer."
As we left the breast clinic, I thought of my four friends who had died of cancer -- two of breast cancer, two of ovarian cancer -- during the last eight years. How could Dr. Cohen be so sure I wouldn't join them?
As soon as we reached our car, I picked up our cellphone and called Rebbetzin Milakovsky, in order to get an appointment with my rabbi. "Rebecca, how are you?" she asked in her sweet, Polish-accented English.
"It's... it's..." The words "breast cancer" simply would not come out of my mouth. All I could do was cry into the phone.
IN TOWN
On the way home, we had intended to stop at the butcher shop in town. My sense of efficiency (after all, we were already out in the car) would not let me renege on the errand. Since finding a parking space in downtown Jerusalem is nearly impossible, we decided that Moshe would circle around the block while I ran into the butcher shop.
As soon as I emerged from our car onto the crowded sidewalk, I felt like I had stumbled onto a firing range where the shooters were oblivious to my presence. Every look, every gesture -- a gruff word from the normally gruff butcher, a fellow customer jostling me to get to the frozen ground beef -- would be lethal in my condition. I was on the verge of tears. I felt like screaming: "Be gentle with me, or I'll shatter."
Of course, how could they know that I had just been diagnosed with cancer? Suddenly, with horror, it dawned on me: Just as my affliction is invisible to them, how many times had I spoken curtly or with exasperation to a stranger or to an acquaintance who also may have just been diagnosed with a dread disease? How would I know? How could they know?
Abashed, I remembered Rashi's commentary on the Torah's injunction not to verbally afflict with words a widow or an orphan. The 11th century sage Rashi wrote that the proscription extends to not verbally afflicting anyone, because, although the widow and orphan are the most obvious examples, everyone suffers.
I managed to make my purchases and leave the store without breaking down in tears. My two bags of frozen poultry, salmon, and vegetables were heavy. By the time I turned the corner to the street where I hoped my husband would find me, I could carry them no further. I plunked the bags down beside me and waited for our car to pass.
A young man in his mid-twenties, wearing a knitted kipa, was walking along the sidewalk, which, due to construction, narrowed at the point where I was standing. When he reached me, he jumped over my bags and continued walking. Two meters further, he turned around, smiled, and asked, "Can I help you?"
It was a simple act of noticing that a stranger might be in need. In my fragile state, however, I felt like I was the beneficiary of a world-shaking magnanimity. I was so moved by his kindness, that I could not speak. I shook my head mutely. And I wished that I would be the type of person whose random love could rescue strangers from the depths.
Two days after my surgery, a volunteer from the Israeli Cancer Society -- a woman who had undergone a mastectomy five years ago -- visited me in the hospital. In the course of our conversation, I said to her: "Well, the surgery is over. Now the worst is behind me."
She replied acerbically: "Once you've lived through the diagnosis, the worst is behind you."
I nodded my head knowingly.
OPENING THE LETTER
The next morning, I splurged on a taxi to the Kotel. (In the weeks leading up to my mastectomy, I would treat my body to many indulgences, trying to console it for the ordeal visited upon it -- hand-made jasmine soap, two suits, a massage, and two hats. Although our budget could ill afford these luxuries, and I felt like a clliché buying a hat to ward off depression, the truth is they made me feel feminine and attractive, a dire necessity, not a luxury at all, for a woman with breast cancer.)
Our sages say that when afflicted with suffering, a Jew should not ask, "Why?" (for who can fathom God's infinite mind?), but rather, "What?" "What do You want me to learn from this?" "What is the lesson hidden behind this suffering?" "What do I need to change in myself?"
The Kotel, or Western Wall, is the second holiest Jewish site after the Temple Mount. According to the Talmud, the Divine Presence never leaves the Western Wall.
I went to the Kotel the morning after my diagnosis to ask God what He wanted me to learn from this sudden and traumatic hairpin turn in my life. Fourteen years ago, my husband and I had become Torah-observant Jews. Moshe had left a lucrative psychology practice and I a budding writing career to raise our children in the holy atmosphere of Jerusalem. I idealized growth and was willing to pay a steep price for self-change. But breast cancer? Rather than the next segment of road on my spiritual journey, breast cancer seemed like a gigantic obstacle blocking the road.
God was sending me a message in a sealed envelope. I prayed to open the envelope and read His letter.
I sat in the shade of the ancient wall and meditated. Everything, everything, everything comes from the One Source. The same God who gave me my husband, my four wonderful children, my apartment in Jerusalem, and every single breath, that same God was now giving me a malignant tumor in my left breast. God was sending me a message in a sealed envelope. I prayed to open the envelope and read His letter.
I had learned to meditate by "putting my mind in neutral." Then, if I was fortunate, my mind would slip into "intuitive gear," where ideas would spring not from my intellect, but from a higher faculty, connected to the Divine. "Poor man's prophecy," my husband called it.
What do the breasts represent? I asked. The answer came clearly: They are the organs of nurture. What is this tumor growing in the milk duct? It is a blockage. What is blocked about my nurturing, and why in the left breast?
The answer almost knocked me off my chair. In Kabbalah, the right side stands for chesed, a free pouring-forth; the left side stands for gevurah, restrained giving, holding back, din, judgment. Known among my friends as a generous and loving person, always the first to volunteer to help a needy neighbor, I was okay on my right side. But there was a blockage in one of the 36 milk ducts on my left side. There was something wrong with my gevurah.
Both chesed and gevurah are modes of giving. Chesed pours forth without restraint. Sometimes that's not the best way to give. Sometimes the one receiving requires more measured giving. For example, Albert Einstein teaching math to an eight-year-old would not help her by pouring forth everything he knows. The pure exercise of gevurah, however, must be dictated by the needs of the receiver, not the limitations -- the stinginess or meanness -- of the giver.
A blockage in the left breast. In front of my mind's eye I suddenly saw all the people whom I refuse to nurture: my political opponents on the Israeli left; people I don't approve of; unmarried men over forty who suffer from commitment phobia and don't deign to marry my single friends; pro-Arab academics; vociferous feminists (of whom I used to be one); American Jews who spend their tourist dollars in Europe instead of Israel; and a host of other people guilty, in my mind, of moral failures.
With this revelation came another that overwhelmed me: God has sent me this message, this cancerous tumor, because He believes in my ability to grow, to change, to become more loving, tolerant, and empathetic than I presently am. I think I am, by anyone's standard, already a good person and a good Jew. But I have the potential to become even better, not to rest on my laurels, not to continue strolling down my spiritual path at a comfortable pace, but to race forward. The cancerous tumor is a ball that God is throwing me, confident in my ability to catch the ball and run with it. With my diagnosis of breast cancer, I have been upgraded to the fast lane.
I had the sensation of a hand on my back pushing me to run faster than I ever thought I could. I either had to double my speed or fall flat on my face. But with His other hand, He was holding me up. I wouldn't fall. Spiritually, I could really become someone great. I sat there by the Kotel, the tears streaming down my face, and thanked God for the gift of the tumor.
RE-ENTRY
Then I took the bus home. (I no longer felt the need for petty indulgences.) I walked into my apartment feeling exalted, privileged, closer to God than I had in years.
It was Lag B'Omer, a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar. All my children were home from school. The night before, my husband had explained to them that Ima is sick with something serious but not life-threatening, and she will need an operation. They shouldn't worry, but they should pray -- hard.
Now, as soon as I entered the living room, they all besieged me. They were fighting about a piece of a board game which Sheina, my 15-year-old, had lent Mordechai and Shimon (12 and 10 respectively), and they had somehow lost. Even little Shoshana (7) joined the fray.
I stared at my clamoring children and thought: "How did these aliens invade my new world, my world of cancer? Here I am about to lose a part of my body, and they are crying about losing a plastic game piece?"
I lifted my hands to heaven in a gesture which 17 hours before would have seemed to me melodramatic, and in a choked voice croaked: "Your mother has cancer! It's a serious illness. I can't take all your bickering and fighting. Do you want me to move out of the house until my operation?"
As the children stood there, their mouths agape, I ran to my room, flung myself on my bed, and cried.
And that's how it was for the next few weeks: I was a pendulum swinging between spiritual exhilaration and sudden depression.
MY MANTRA
Bernie Siegel's Love, Medicine, and Miracles convinced me that depression is a breeding ground for cancer. I went to Rabbi Kelemen and asked him for a method to make myself happy.
He pointed to a blessing that every observant Jew says every morning: "Blessed are You Hashem, our God, King of the Universe, who fulfills all my needs." He explained that this blessing signifies that everything I need, I have. Contemplate this truth, he advised me, and I'd be happy.
"Everything I need, I have." I started to repeat this over and over to myself. Of course, to believe in God means to know that He runs the world and dispenses to every single soul exactly what that soul needs to accomplish its purpose in this world.
Then, I realized, the converse must also be true: Whatever I don't have, I don't need. If, after my mastectomy, I don't have a left breast, then I don't need a left breast.
If I have a malignant tumor, I need that tumor for the lesson it has come to teach me
A second converse also occurred to me: "Everything I have, I need." This means that if I have a malignant tumor, I need that tumor. I need it for the lesson it has come to teach me. If I have a nasty downstairs neighbor, then I must need that nasty neighbor. I need him for the spiritual growth that ensues from dealing with a difficult neighbor according to all the lofty interpersonal commandments the Torah enjoins upon me. If I have an unpleasant encounter with a friend, then I need that encounter. It, too, has a lesson to teach me.
Wherever I went during the following weeks, as I ran around to doctors and tests, a liver ultrasound, a bone scan, blood tests, pre-operative screening, genetic testing to determine whether I had the gene for cancer, etc., I repeated my new mantra: "Everything I need, I have. Everything I have, I need."
Sometimes, after a particularly trying experience, I would have to repeat my mantra a dozen times until I calmed down and regained my perspective. The mantra did make me happy, or at least content that God is in control and that whatever He sends me is for my spiritual benefit.
MY SURGEON
Two days after the diagnosis, my husband and I went to see one of the surgeons recommended to us, Dr. Oded Olsha, a middle-aged man born in Australia, educated in Israel and England. After examining me and my mammogram, he asked me how long it had been since my previous mammogram.
"Four and a half years," I admitted guiltily, adding, "I know I should have gone every two years."
"With a tumor this small," Dr. Olsha remarked, "even if you had gone two years ago, it's doubtful they would have found anything."
"You mean I don't have to feel guilty about neglecting mammograms?"
Dr. Olsha raised his bushy eyebrows, appalled. "Is someone trying to make you feel guilty? How dare they!"
How does one choose a surgeon? My best friend was insisting that I search out the most expert surgeon in Jerusalem, that I not settle for a mere good bedside manner, and that I check, double check, and crosscheck Dr. Olsha's credentials. As far as I was concerned, however, the moment Dr. Olsha took my side against all my own inner voices of guilt and reprehension, I knew I had found my surgeon.
Dr. Olsha corroborated what Dr. Cohen had said. I would need a mastectomy, but, pending the results of all my tests, most likely I would not need radiation nor chemotherapy.
He explained that the surgery would include a "sentinel node biopsy." Until recently, he said, a mastectomy included removing all the lymph nodes under the adjacent arm, because the tumor may have drained into them, spreading the cancer. This kind of operation, called a "radical mastectomy," usually left life-long pain and swelling in that arm. Many women who have undergone a radical mastectomy had to wear an elastic sleeve over their arm to control the swelling.
The relatively new procedure of the sentinel node biopsy involved injecting the area of the tumor with both radioactive matter and blue dye before the surgery. Then the surgeon could identify which specific lymph node or nodes drained from that particular area. While the patient was still on the operating table, a fast frozen biopsy was made of just the blue lymph nodes. If they were clean of cancer, no additional lymph nodes would be removed.
"Everything I need, I have." I thanked God that I had breast cancer in 2003 and not five years earlier.
After explaining several other points, Dr. Olsha asked me, "Do you have any questions?"
I surely did. "Dr. Cohen said I wouldn't die from this. But I have friends who died of breast cancer."
I was thinking of Ella, whose death five years before had left a permanent sore in my heart. Ella was the mother of eight children, the youngest of whom was 18 months old when Ella died in the very hospital where Dr. Olsha would operate on me.
At Ella's funeral, when it was time to say kaddish, I noticed all the men on the men's side of the funeral parlor standing in a bowed position. This was strange, for kaddish is not one of the prayers we say bowing. Only a couple minutes later did I realize that the men were bending over in order to hear six-year-old Yankl, Ella's oldest son, recite the kaddish for his mother. On Ella's 41st birthday, several of us had surprised her with a small, impromptu party. We drank toast after toast of orange soda, raising our paper cups to "L'Chaim," to life! Six weeks later she was dead.
"How does Dr. Cohen know I won't die?" I demanded. "Breast cancer is a fatal disease."
Dr. Olsha answered in a gentle tone. "The breast cancer that younger women get is a much more aggressive kind. Post-menopausal women get a slow-growing cancer. We could wait a month, even three months, to remove your tumor, and no harm would be done. With the size of your tumor, the recovery rate is 95%."
I felt that the diagnosis was a death sentence, and Dr. Olsha's words were a reprieve. It never felt so good to be middle-aged!
We set the date for the surgery five weeks hence. That would give me time to do all the tests and to do "my research" on breast cancer and the pros and cons of reconstructive surgery, as well as to check out references on Dr. Olsha, just to please my friend.
HOW GOD FEELS
The evening before my surgery, I packed a small valise with a robe, slippers, toothbrush, toothpaste, two books, and bottled water, and set off to the hospital with my husband. All the way there, I was haunted by a sense of déjà vu. We had followed the same procedure each time I had gone to the hospital to give birth to one of our children. Those times, however, what had come out of my body was life: precious babies who filled me with delight. This time, what would come out of my body was death. And I would leave the hospital with less than I had arrived with.
Yet, I told myself, this surgery was also a birth. Out of this experience, I hoped to birth a new understanding, a gentler, more compassionate self. It was up to me if I left the hospital diminished or augmented.
Early the next morning, Dr. Olsha appeared at my bedside. He held two syringes, one of them grotesquely large. "I have to inject your breast with the radioactive matter now," he explained apologetically. "The blue dye you'll get in the operating room, but this stuff needs time to work. I'm really sorry. This first injection is going to hurt." He paused. "And the second one will hurt even more. I'm really sorry to have to do this to you."
He administered the first injection into my breast. It burned and stung. The second injection felt like the fires of hell liquefied into a syringe. I looked away and repeated my mantra, "Everything I have, I need."
"Now you know how God feels. People are always blaming God for all the pain there is in the world. But He's only doing it for our ultimate good."
When it was over, Dr. Olsha said, "I feel terrible to have to do this to my patients." I tried to console him. "You're doing this for my benefit, so I won't need to have all my lymph nodes taken out." Looking at my kind, secular surgeon, I added: "Now you know how God feels. People are always blaming God for all the pain there is in the world. But He's only doing it for our good, for our ultimate good. And He feels even worse about having to inflict pain than you do."
THE FIRST SHOWER
The day after my surgery, many guests came to visit. I was busy all day, with barely a chance to read the book I had brought. Late at night, when all my visitors were gone, Dr. Olsha came to check my incisions. "Have you taken a shower yet?" he asked.
"No, I've been too busy."
"Well, it's a good idea to take a shower," he suggested. "You'll feel better."
After he left, I thought hard about his gentle suggestion. Years before, my friend Etty had told me that her young sister-in-law had had a mastectomy. When I inquired how she was doing, Etty replied, "She was doing okay... until she took her first shower. It was traumatic for her to see herself."
I took a good look at my own mind. Was I really too busy -- and now too tired -- to take a shower, or was I avoiding my own image in the mirror?
It was 11:00 at night. My three roommates were asleep. I lay there thinking about my now disfigured body. It would look strange, even freakish. "You're deformed now," I told myself, then edited the sentence: "Your body is deformed now."
Suddenly I thought of my mother, may she rest in peace. A beautiful woman, she cared little about fashion, jewelry, or makeup. While my friend Babette's mother used to say to her, "The most important thing in the world is to be pretty and thin," my mother's values were: Be good and be smart. It occurred to me that if I had had Babette's mother, this mastectomy would have decimated my sense of self. Thank God, I had my mother, who from my earliest years had inculcated in me a sense of self not defined by my body or my appearance.
"Everything I need, I have" did not refer, I realized, only to the things and people in my life. It also referred to my inner resources, my strengths, talents, and capabilities. God had prepared me to cope with my mastectomy 55 years ago, when He assigned my soul to the womb of this particular mother, who would raise her daughter with a sense of self that would remain intact even when her body wasn't.
With that I got up from my hospital bed and went to take a shower.
Commentary
By Herb Krantz
This was an article that was sent to me through email. I feel that t is important to share.
I can really fell for this woman. My daughter went to the ER and the doctor told us she had non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. For the first time in my life I sat there in thinking to myself, that’s bad but what is it? I couldn’t think straight.
But it was the way he said it. He came over to the head of the bed and looked at us and said I have good news and bad. Your daughter does not have meningitis but she has Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He said it so matter a fact.
When we question him he started to back away a little and told us about others who lived a long life with it. My daughter has three kids ranging from 8 months to 4years. Naturally we wanted a second opinion, so a friend from another hospital got the records of the test and had another doctor look it over as matter of fact they had two doctors look it over and both said that the first doctor should of never told her that. The tests were not conclusive.
After have more test and seeing more doctors the final analyses was she had a very bad strep thought that was swollen enough to create her neck to look like part of her face.
Just like the woman in the story above we all had to find our inter strength for each other. You never know when or where it will be tested but they,(who ever they are),G-D will never give you more than you can bare. Sometime I feel like I would love to meet who ever they are and beat the hell out of them, but no matter what we all gather the strength we need to get through the bad times.
Cancer of any kind is a terrible thing to face and go through. My daughter and we have dodged the bullet this time but only to face the future death of an uncle who means a great deal to us. He was and is a like a father to me.
I have created a charity discount shopping website. 40% of all sales/profits will go to the charities listed in the site. One is breast cancer another is to care of children with cancer along with others. Please visit the site.
Home Shopping Center Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a percentage will go to charity.
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Sunday, April 01, 2007
HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT Of Resturant-YEA
Subject: FW: True Story
HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT Of a mid West restaurant AND STAND UP AND CLAPPED.
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:07:24 +0000 TRUE STORY WE NEED MORE BUSINESS OWNERS LIKE THIS GUY!!!! This is one of the best things I've read in ages -- I wish I could go here for dinner! Montana Restaurant: This is a great story! The radio station America FM was doing one of its "Is Anyone Listening?" bits this morning. The first question was, "Ever have a celebrity pull up with the 'Do you know who I am routine'?" A woman called in and said that a few years ago, while visiting her cattle rancher uncle in Billings, MT, she had occasion to go to dinner at a restaurant that does not take reservations. The wait was about 45 minu tes; -- many ranchers and their wives were waiting. Ted Turner and his ex-wife Jane Fonda came into the restaurant and wanted a table. The hostess informed them that they'd have to wait 45 minutes. Jane Fonda asked the hostess, "Do you know who I am?" The hostess answered, "Yes, but you'll have to wait 45 minutes." Then Jane asked if the manager was in. When the manager came out, he asked, "May I help you?" "Do you know who we are?" both Ted and Jane asked. "Yes, but these folks have been waiting, and I can't put you ahead of them." Then Ted asked to speak to the owner. The owner came out, and Jane again asked, "Do you know who I am?" The owner answered, "Yes, I do. Do you know who I am? I am the owner of this restaurant and I am a Vietnam Veteran. Not only will you not get a table ahead of my friends and neighbors who have been waiting here, but you also will not be eating in my restaurant tonight or any other night. Good bye." To all who received this e-mail, this is a true story and the name of the steak house is: Sir Scott's Oasis Steakhouse 204 West Main Manhattan, MT 59741 (406) 284-6929 If you ever get there, give this fellow a sharp salute, buy a steak and tip the waitress. Keep passing this on. We should never forget our national traitor! HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT
Finally.
Commentary by Herb Krantz
For all of you who are to young to remember the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda went over to the enemy side and stood among our troops condemning them. It would be like some going over to Iraq and standing with the terrorist while they cut off someone’s head.
She stood there and watching our men being towered in small cages that were buried in the dirt directly in the sun. Vietnam was just like Iraq is today, an unpopular war that everyone wanted us to get out of. We did and lost the country and the war. We can’t do that aging this time.
Jane Fonda should have been hung as a trader back then or not allowed back into the country, She supported North Vietnam, she should of stayed there. It many ways she help them. She should have not been allowed to prosper in the country that she condemned so radically, but only in America can you do that especially when your father is Henry Fonda.
Well I glade that after all theses years someone finally stood up to her and let her know what kind of piece of trash she really is. Let us not forget next time when she publishes a book or makes a movie to boycott it.
Lets she here you either American all the way or get the hell out.
P.S. I’m not saying that America is never wrong but you can’t not take a side that is killing our people and except to be welcome back . Weather we are right or wrong we have to face our mistakes together not undermined all of us.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Everytime you make a purchase 40% of profits will go to the charities listed.
Home Shopping Center mall
http://homeshoppingcentermell.com
HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT Of a mid West restaurant AND STAND UP AND CLAPPED.
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:07:24 +0000 TRUE STORY WE NEED MORE BUSINESS OWNERS LIKE THIS GUY!!!! This is one of the best things I've read in ages -- I wish I could go here for dinner! Montana Restaurant: This is a great story! The radio station America FM was doing one of its "Is Anyone Listening?" bits this morning. The first question was, "Ever have a celebrity pull up with the 'Do you know who I am routine'?" A woman called in and said that a few years ago, while visiting her cattle rancher uncle in Billings, MT, she had occasion to go to dinner at a restaurant that does not take reservations. The wait was about 45 minu tes; -- many ranchers and their wives were waiting. Ted Turner and his ex-wife Jane Fonda came into the restaurant and wanted a table. The hostess informed them that they'd have to wait 45 minutes. Jane Fonda asked the hostess, "Do you know who I am?" The hostess answered, "Yes, but you'll have to wait 45 minutes." Then Jane asked if the manager was in. When the manager came out, he asked, "May I help you?" "Do you know who we are?" both Ted and Jane asked. "Yes, but these folks have been waiting, and I can't put you ahead of them." Then Ted asked to speak to the owner. The owner came out, and Jane again asked, "Do you know who I am?" The owner answered, "Yes, I do. Do you know who I am? I am the owner of this restaurant and I am a Vietnam Veteran. Not only will you not get a table ahead of my friends and neighbors who have been waiting here, but you also will not be eating in my restaurant tonight or any other night. Good bye." To all who received this e-mail, this is a true story and the name of the steak house is: Sir Scott's Oasis Steakhouse 204 West Main Manhattan, MT 59741 (406) 284-6929 If you ever get there, give this fellow a sharp salute, buy a steak and tip the waitress. Keep passing this on. We should never forget our national traitor! HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT
Finally.
Commentary by Herb Krantz
For all of you who are to young to remember the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda went over to the enemy side and stood among our troops condemning them. It would be like some going over to Iraq and standing with the terrorist while they cut off someone’s head.
She stood there and watching our men being towered in small cages that were buried in the dirt directly in the sun. Vietnam was just like Iraq is today, an unpopular war that everyone wanted us to get out of. We did and lost the country and the war. We can’t do that aging this time.
Jane Fonda should have been hung as a trader back then or not allowed back into the country, She supported North Vietnam, she should of stayed there. It many ways she help them. She should have not been allowed to prosper in the country that she condemned so radically, but only in America can you do that especially when your father is Henry Fonda.
Well I glade that after all theses years someone finally stood up to her and let her know what kind of piece of trash she really is. Let us not forget next time when she publishes a book or makes a movie to boycott it.
Lets she here you either American all the way or get the hell out.
P.S. I’m not saying that America is never wrong but you can’t not take a side that is killing our people and except to be welcome back . Weather we are right or wrong we have to face our mistakes together not undermined all of us.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Everytime you make a purchase 40% of profits will go to the charities listed.
Home Shopping Center mall
http://homeshoppingcentermell.com
HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT Of Resturant-YEA
Subject: FW: True Story
HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT Of a mid West restaurant AND STAND UP AND CLAPPED.
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:07:24 +0000 TRUE STORY WE NEED MORE BUSINESS OWNERS LIKE THIS GUY!!!! This is one of the best things I've read in ages -- I wish I could go here for dinner! Montana Restaurant: This is a great story! The radio station America FM was doing one of its "Is Anyone Listening?" bits this morning. The first question was, "Ever have a celebrity pull up with the 'Do you know who I am routine'?" A woman called in and said that a few years ago, while visiting her cattle rancher uncle in Billings, MT, she had occasion to go to dinner at a restaurant that does not take reservations. The wait was about 45 minu tes; -- many ranchers and their wives were waiting. Ted Turner and his ex-wife Jane Fonda came into the restaurant and wanted a table. The hostess informed them that they'd have to wait 45 minutes. Jane Fonda asked the hostess, "Do you know who I am?" The hostess answered, "Yes, but you'll have to wait 45 minutes." Then Jane asked if the manager was in. When the manager came out, he asked, "May I help you?" "Do you know who we are?" both Ted and Jane asked. "Yes, but these folks have been waiting, and I can't put you ahead of them." Then Ted asked to speak to the owner. The owner came out, and Jane again asked, "Do you know who I am?" The owner answered, "Yes, I do. Do you know who I am? I am the owner of this restaurant and I am a Vietnam Veteran. Not only will you not get a table ahead of my friends and neighbors who have been waiting here, but you also will not be eating in my restaurant tonight or any other night. Good bye." To all who received this e-mail, this is a true story and the name of the steak house is: Sir Scott's Oasis Steakhouse 204 West Main Manhattan, MT 59741 (406) 284-6929 If you ever get there, give this fellow a sharp salute, buy a steak and tip the waitress. Keep passing this on. We should never forget our national traitor! HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT
Finally.
Commentary by Herb Krantz
For all of you who are to young to remember the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda went over to the enemy side and stood among our troops condemning them. It would be like some going over to Iraq and standing with the terrorist while they cut off someone’s head.
She stood there and watching our men being towered in small cages that were buried in the dirt directly in the sun. Vietnam was just like Iraq is today, an unpopular war that everyone wanted us to get out of. We did and lost the country and the war. We can’t do that aging this time.
Jane Fonda should have been hung as a trader back then or not allowed back into the country, She supported North Vietnam, she should of stayed there. It many ways she help them. She should have not been allowed to prosper in the country that she condemned so radically, but only in America can you do that especially when your father is Henry Fonda.
Well I glade that after all theses years someone finally stood up to her and let her know what kind of piece of trash she really is. Let us not forget next time when she publishes a book or makes a movie to boycott it.
Lets she here you either American all the way or get the hell out.
P.S. I’m not saying that America is never wrong but you can’t not take a side that is killing our people and except to be welcome back . Weather we are right or wrong we have to face our mistakes together not undermined all of us.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Everytime you make a purchase 40% of profits will go to the charities listed.
Home Shopping Center mall
http://homeshoppingcentermell.com
HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT Of a mid West restaurant AND STAND UP AND CLAPPED.
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 00:07:24 +0000 TRUE STORY WE NEED MORE BUSINESS OWNERS LIKE THIS GUY!!!! This is one of the best things I've read in ages -- I wish I could go here for dinner! Montana Restaurant: This is a great story! The radio station America FM was doing one of its "Is Anyone Listening?" bits this morning. The first question was, "Ever have a celebrity pull up with the 'Do you know who I am routine'?" A woman called in and said that a few years ago, while visiting her cattle rancher uncle in Billings, MT, she had occasion to go to dinner at a restaurant that does not take reservations. The wait was about 45 minu tes; -- many ranchers and their wives were waiting. Ted Turner and his ex-wife Jane Fonda came into the restaurant and wanted a table. The hostess informed them that they'd have to wait 45 minutes. Jane Fonda asked the hostess, "Do you know who I am?" The hostess answered, "Yes, but you'll have to wait 45 minutes." Then Jane asked if the manager was in. When the manager came out, he asked, "May I help you?" "Do you know who we are?" both Ted and Jane asked. "Yes, but these folks have been waiting, and I can't put you ahead of them." Then Ted asked to speak to the owner. The owner came out, and Jane again asked, "Do you know who I am?" The owner answered, "Yes, I do. Do you know who I am? I am the owner of this restaurant and I am a Vietnam Veteran. Not only will you not get a table ahead of my friends and neighbors who have been waiting here, but you also will not be eating in my restaurant tonight or any other night. Good bye." To all who received this e-mail, this is a true story and the name of the steak house is: Sir Scott's Oasis Steakhouse 204 West Main Manhattan, MT 59741 (406) 284-6929 If you ever get there, give this fellow a sharp salute, buy a steak and tip the waitress. Keep passing this on. We should never forget our national traitor! HANOI JANE GET KICKED OUT
Finally.
Commentary by Herb Krantz
For all of you who are to young to remember the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda went over to the enemy side and stood among our troops condemning them. It would be like some going over to Iraq and standing with the terrorist while they cut off someone’s head.
She stood there and watching our men being towered in small cages that were buried in the dirt directly in the sun. Vietnam was just like Iraq is today, an unpopular war that everyone wanted us to get out of. We did and lost the country and the war. We can’t do that aging this time.
Jane Fonda should have been hung as a trader back then or not allowed back into the country, She supported North Vietnam, she should of stayed there. It many ways she help them. She should have not been allowed to prosper in the country that she condemned so radically, but only in America can you do that especially when your father is Henry Fonda.
Well I glade that after all theses years someone finally stood up to her and let her know what kind of piece of trash she really is. Let us not forget next time when she publishes a book or makes a movie to boycott it.
Lets she here you either American all the way or get the hell out.
P.S. I’m not saying that America is never wrong but you can’t not take a side that is killing our people and except to be welcome back . Weather we are right or wrong we have to face our mistakes together not undermined all of us.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Everytime you make a purchase 40% of profits will go to the charities listed.
Home Shopping Center mall
http://homeshoppingcentermell.com
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
I want to be an illegal alien
This is the snail-mail letter that was sent to The Presidentand a US Senators.
The Honorable Senators Melendez and Lautenberg731 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC, 20510 Dear Senators Melendez and Lautenberg, As a native of New Jersey and an excellent customer ofthe Internal Revenue Service, I am writing to ask foryour assistance. I have contacted the Department ofHomeland Security in an effort to determine the process for becoming an illegal alien and theyreferred me to you. My primary reason for wishing to change my status fromU.S. Citizen to illegal alien stems from the billwhich was recently proposed by the Senate and forwhich you support. If my understanding of this bill's provisions isaccurate, as an illegal alien who has been in theUnited States for five years, all I need to do tobecome a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and incometaxes for three of the last five years. I know a good deal when I see one and I am anxious toget the process started before everyone figures itout. Simply put, those of us who have been here legallyhave had to pay taxes every year so I'm excited aboutthe prospect of avoiding two years of taxes in returnfor paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be illegal retroactively? This wouldyield an excellent result for me and my family becausewe paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005. Additionally, as an illegal alien I could begin usingthe local emergency room as my primary health careprovider. Once I have stopped paying premiums formedical insurance, my accountant figures I could save almost $10,000 a year. Another benefit in gaining illegal status would bethat my daughter would receive preferential treatmentrelative to her law school applications, as well as"in-state" tuition rates for many colleges throughoutthe United States for my son. Lastly, I understand that illegal status would relieveme of the burden of renewing my driver's license andmaking those burdensome car insurance premiums. Thisis very important to me given that I still have high school aged grandchildren driving mycar. If you would provide me with an outline of the processto become illegal (retroactively if possible) andcopies of the necessary forms, I would be mostappreciative. Thank you for your assistance. Your Loyal Constituent, Commentary Herb A Krantz
This email was sent to me. As I read it my anger stirred because it is the truth. The illegally aliens have more right than us who pay for them. My ancestors did not come here years ago to sweat and give of their lives to this country so illegally aliens can have it easy. If you do not want to be a citizen of the USA then get the hell out!!!!. Who the hell needs you! The illegally aliens farmers will find people to do the work, there are plenty of people out of work. More than the government is telling us.
It’s bad enough that people from other countries came here and work for a short while and collect Social Security back in their country for the rest of their lives.
We as the people who are born here are not only asked to support them but now we have to support the illegally aliens also.
If I become an illegal alien I will be entitled to more than a person that pays his fair share, so why should they become a citizens?. Those dumb Americans will pay for me and my family. I can come and go as I please.
I can just hear them laughing at us as this words go through their mind or out of there mouths.
Don't get mad at me these are there words not mine. I was born here and Love my Country
Our politicians don’t care they don’t pay Social Security, it’s not there money, and you know how easily the spend ours.
It’s time again to stand up and be counted. Call your Representative in the house and the senate and let them know how made you are. If you don’t then don’t complain when there is nothing left for us, or we have to pay higher taxes.
I have put a link blow to my charity website. It was started in the of my cousin Alan Staller. This discount shopping inter mall will give 40% of the profits to the charities list there. You get to shop at a discount while donating to good causes.
Home Shopping Center Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
If I become an illegal alien I will be entitled to more than a person that pays his fair share, so why should I become a citizens?. Those dumb Americans will pay for me and my family. I can come and go as I please.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a 40% percentage will go to charity.Book a cruise,vaction, all inculsive or travel anywhere part of that will go to the charities listed. Link is
Home Shopping Center Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
AAA vacations Plus
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
The Honorable Senators Melendez and Lautenberg731 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC, 20510 Dear Senators Melendez and Lautenberg, As a native of New Jersey and an excellent customer ofthe Internal Revenue Service, I am writing to ask foryour assistance. I have contacted the Department ofHomeland Security in an effort to determine the process for becoming an illegal alien and theyreferred me to you. My primary reason for wishing to change my status fromU.S. Citizen to illegal alien stems from the billwhich was recently proposed by the Senate and forwhich you support. If my understanding of this bill's provisions isaccurate, as an illegal alien who has been in theUnited States for five years, all I need to do tobecome a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and incometaxes for three of the last five years. I know a good deal when I see one and I am anxious toget the process started before everyone figures itout. Simply put, those of us who have been here legallyhave had to pay taxes every year so I'm excited aboutthe prospect of avoiding two years of taxes in returnfor paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be illegal retroactively? This wouldyield an excellent result for me and my family becausewe paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005. Additionally, as an illegal alien I could begin usingthe local emergency room as my primary health careprovider. Once I have stopped paying premiums formedical insurance, my accountant figures I could save almost $10,000 a year. Another benefit in gaining illegal status would bethat my daughter would receive preferential treatmentrelative to her law school applications, as well as"in-state" tuition rates for many colleges throughoutthe United States for my son. Lastly, I understand that illegal status would relieveme of the burden of renewing my driver's license andmaking those burdensome car insurance premiums. Thisis very important to me given that I still have high school aged grandchildren driving mycar. If you would provide me with an outline of the processto become illegal (retroactively if possible) andcopies of the necessary forms, I would be mostappreciative. Thank you for your assistance. Your Loyal Constituent, Commentary Herb A Krantz
This email was sent to me. As I read it my anger stirred because it is the truth. The illegally aliens have more right than us who pay for them. My ancestors did not come here years ago to sweat and give of their lives to this country so illegally aliens can have it easy. If you do not want to be a citizen of the USA then get the hell out!!!!. Who the hell needs you! The illegally aliens farmers will find people to do the work, there are plenty of people out of work. More than the government is telling us.
It’s bad enough that people from other countries came here and work for a short while and collect Social Security back in their country for the rest of their lives.
We as the people who are born here are not only asked to support them but now we have to support the illegally aliens also.
If I become an illegal alien I will be entitled to more than a person that pays his fair share, so why should they become a citizens?. Those dumb Americans will pay for me and my family. I can come and go as I please.
I can just hear them laughing at us as this words go through their mind or out of there mouths.
Don't get mad at me these are there words not mine. I was born here and Love my Country
Our politicians don’t care they don’t pay Social Security, it’s not there money, and you know how easily the spend ours.
It’s time again to stand up and be counted. Call your Representative in the house and the senate and let them know how made you are. If you don’t then don’t complain when there is nothing left for us, or we have to pay higher taxes.
I have put a link blow to my charity website. It was started in the of my cousin Alan Staller. This discount shopping inter mall will give 40% of the profits to the charities list there. You get to shop at a discount while donating to good causes.
Home Shopping Center Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
If I become an illegal alien I will be entitled to more than a person that pays his fair share, so why should I become a citizens?. Those dumb Americans will pay for me and my family. I can come and go as I please.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a 40% percentage will go to charity.Book a cruise,vaction, all inculsive or travel anywhere part of that will go to the charities listed. Link is
Home Shopping Center Mall
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
AAA vacations Plus
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Iraq War Protesters
What the f is it with these people that protest against this war and our troops. Do the really have any idea of what there is to loss if we just walk away.
I don’t agree with the Bush or how we got into this war, but now we have no choice but to win. That means staying there for a long time to come.
We should have concentrated on Afghanistan and won that along with capturing Ben Laden.
Even that would have ended the terrorist threats but it might not have been as bad as it is now. Maybe we would have had time to get a real coalition together to fight the terrorist, not a few countries that we have now. I stall think that we should use our political force, (What we have left), to convince our so called allies to join us in Iraq or else.
Weak up America and World this is a war that will only go away when we kill every Terrorist that is here now and the new ones that are being brought up for the future. That means every man, woman and child.
This is not a task that that will be measured in a specific period of time. I don’t think that this will happen in my life time and I am only in my middle fifties.
This is war that may last for hundreds of years.
It’s time we all realize that after 911 our lives and the world will never be the same. It is a more dangerous world today. Our children will never see the kind of world we had. They will be fighting this war for years to come.
Bush has to make sure that the hundred’s of thousands of troops that will be coming home get the medical, physical and monitorial needs taken car of. That’s what you should be protesting for, not against our troops who are doing a job that Bush ordered them to do.
Next time you take to the streets remember who started this war and protest against him! Asked for him to step down.
BY Herb Krantz
I have place a Charity discount shopping inter mall below. Every time you make a purchase 40% of the profits go to a charity listed. Please visit us often and donate.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a percentage will go to charity.Book a cruise,vaction, all inculsive or travel anywhere part of that will go to the charities listed. Link is
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
I don’t agree with the Bush or how we got into this war, but now we have no choice but to win. That means staying there for a long time to come.
We should have concentrated on Afghanistan and won that along with capturing Ben Laden.
Even that would have ended the terrorist threats but it might not have been as bad as it is now. Maybe we would have had time to get a real coalition together to fight the terrorist, not a few countries that we have now. I stall think that we should use our political force, (What we have left), to convince our so called allies to join us in Iraq or else.
Weak up America and World this is a war that will only go away when we kill every Terrorist that is here now and the new ones that are being brought up for the future. That means every man, woman and child.
This is not a task that that will be measured in a specific period of time. I don’t think that this will happen in my life time and I am only in my middle fifties.
This is war that may last for hundreds of years.
It’s time we all realize that after 911 our lives and the world will never be the same. It is a more dangerous world today. Our children will never see the kind of world we had. They will be fighting this war for years to come.
Bush has to make sure that the hundred’s of thousands of troops that will be coming home get the medical, physical and monitorial needs taken car of. That’s what you should be protesting for, not against our troops who are doing a job that Bush ordered them to do.
Next time you take to the streets remember who started this war and protest against him! Asked for him to step down.
BY Herb Krantz
I have place a Charity discount shopping inter mall below. Every time you make a purchase 40% of the profits go to a charity listed. Please visit us often and donate.
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a percentage will go to charity.Book a cruise,vaction, all inculsive or travel anywhere part of that will go to the charities listed. Link is
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
What are we death dumb and blind? Let’s not be fool by Venezuela. It’s time we Wake up America!
This was very important to me when I received it via email. I felt that I had to share it. I was wondering about all those TV spots concerning Citgo providing oil to the poor... Don’t be fooled. Read this and pass it around.
Subject: Citgo's Name Change - Spread the wordFYI...Subject: Citgo's Name Change - Spread the word. This past week, thePresident of Iran visited President Chavez of Venezuela. Their main theme atthe meetings, "DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA" and "KILL ALL JEWS"! It is notPresident Bush they hate. It is you and me!President Chavez is spreading the "HATE AMERICA" to other South Americancountries. All Americans must stand up and listen to what the twoPresidents say. Chavez is using the "oil to the poor" in this country toundermine our government.Now Citgo is changing their name because of poor sales caused by ourstanding up and not buying Citgo gas. Don't let the name change fool you -it's still Chavez's gas!CITGO Changing Name To PETRO EXPRESSI had to forward this, because Chavez is starting to feel the loss ofrevenue from his holdings - HE OWNS CITGO. This is a very important movethat everyone should be aware of.ANNOUNCED JUST RECENTLY, CITGO, BEING AWARE THAT SALES ARE DOWN DUE TO U.S.CUSTOMERS NOT WANTING TO BUY FROM "CHAVEZ", HAS STARTED TO CHANGE THE NAMEOF SOME OF THEIR STORES, TO: "PETRO EXPRESS".DO NOT BUY FROM "PETRO EXPRESS". "PETRO EXPRESS" IS ALSO 100% OWNED BY"CHAVEZ". KEEP THIS MEMO GOING SO EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING.
Commentary By Herb A Krantz
I received this by e-mail and wanted to share it with you. I remember not to long ago receiving an email with all the gas companies that donate some of their funds back to terrorist groups all over the world especially alkida. Citgo was one of them high on the list.
Are we really that dumb to believe that CHAVEZ cares that much about America after meeting and agreeing with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to give oil at a discount to our poor?
Where’s the press? Why haven’t they looked into this?
We are hurting Chavez by not buying his oil. I am also surprised that the kenndies are affiliated with this advertisement. But then again it was said they got their money by supplying the Nazis with guns. I’m not saying it tore but why would the have a Kennedy telling us about the good work of Citgo for our Citizens. To me it’d all suspect. I think it’s time we should all wake up before we find it to late. If you think that we have lost our Human rights know, it is nothing compared to if we lose this war and Venezuela has placed themselves right along side the terrorist. If you are as concerned as I call your government leaders and news channels.
By Herb A Krantz
I have place a link to me Charity discount shopping link below. Please visit 40% of all profits will go to the charities listed on the site.
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a percentage will go to charity.Book a cruise,vaction, all inculsive or travel anywhere part of that will go to the charities listed. Link is
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
This was very important to me when I received it via email. I felt that I had to share it. I was wondering about all those TV spots concerning Citgo providing oil to the poor... Don’t be fooled. Read this and pass it around.
Subject: Citgo's Name Change - Spread the wordFYI...Subject: Citgo's Name Change - Spread the word. This past week, thePresident of Iran visited President Chavez of Venezuela. Their main theme atthe meetings, "DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA" and "KILL ALL JEWS"! It is notPresident Bush they hate. It is you and me!President Chavez is spreading the "HATE AMERICA" to other South Americancountries. All Americans must stand up and listen to what the twoPresidents say. Chavez is using the "oil to the poor" in this country toundermine our government.Now Citgo is changing their name because of poor sales caused by ourstanding up and not buying Citgo gas. Don't let the name change fool you -it's still Chavez's gas!CITGO Changing Name To PETRO EXPRESSI had to forward this, because Chavez is starting to feel the loss ofrevenue from his holdings - HE OWNS CITGO. This is a very important movethat everyone should be aware of.ANNOUNCED JUST RECENTLY, CITGO, BEING AWARE THAT SALES ARE DOWN DUE TO U.S.CUSTOMERS NOT WANTING TO BUY FROM "CHAVEZ", HAS STARTED TO CHANGE THE NAMEOF SOME OF THEIR STORES, TO: "PETRO EXPRESS".DO NOT BUY FROM "PETRO EXPRESS". "PETRO EXPRESS" IS ALSO 100% OWNED BY"CHAVEZ". KEEP THIS MEMO GOING SO EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING.
Commentary By Herb A Krantz
I received this by e-mail and wanted to share it with you. I remember not to long ago receiving an email with all the gas companies that donate some of their funds back to terrorist groups all over the world especially alkida. Citgo was one of them high on the list.
Are we really that dumb to believe that CHAVEZ cares that much about America after meeting and agreeing with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to give oil at a discount to our poor?
Where’s the press? Why haven’t they looked into this?
We are hurting Chavez by not buying his oil. I am also surprised that the kenndies are affiliated with this advertisement. But then again it was said they got their money by supplying the Nazis with guns. I’m not saying it tore but why would the have a Kennedy telling us about the good work of Citgo for our Citizens. To me it’d all suspect. I think it’s time we should all wake up before we find it to late. If you think that we have lost our Human rights know, it is nothing compared to if we lose this war and Venezuela has placed themselves right along side the terrorist. If you are as concerned as I call your government leaders and news channels.
By Herb A Krantz
I have place a link to me Charity discount shopping link below. Please visit 40% of all profits will go to the charities listed on the site.
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a percentage will go to charity.Book a cruise,vaction, all inculsive or travel anywhere part of that will go to the charities listed. Link is
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
Monday, March 05, 2007
Taxes What A joke
Taxes what a joke
Tax time is here again. This is the time of year that most of us hate, because we know that we will be paying not receiving. The government leaders make it so!
They scream no new taxes, however they don’t tell you about the deductions that they are taking away from us every year or so.
Does anyone remember once upon a time we could take off the interest you paid on the credit your cards? How about the interest you paid on your car loan. Any
interest you paid on any loan you had outstanding loan. That’s all gone. Getting credit for the decreasing value of your property or repairs made. I am not sure about this one but I think the either have a cap or took a way medical expenses. Believe it or not we even receive a credit for clothes we bought for work. Now only the rich get that.
The only thing we have left is our interest on our home loans and they are tying to take that away.
Every once in while you will hear a murmur about taxing your benefits from work. The congress has to come up with some way to pay for the money they spend without having it in the bank.
We didn’t always have taxes. I ‘m not old enough to remember that but I remember reading about it some where. Would it be nice if we didn’t need it anymore.
How about if we did away with taxes for everyone who made 100,000 or less combine household income or less. If we did that the federal government would have to tax everything the states already tax. So that means we would get taxed twice.
I prefer to do away with the income tax altogether and just have taxes on food, gas, everyday items that we use and buy. That way everyone would pay their fair share including the very rich. There would be no free ride but that’s too simple and the government would never even consider that. Maybe it’s time that we rise up and demand to Keep it simple stupid (KISS). To make a tax law that we will vote on and in if we agree for we are the one’s who are paying it.
By Herb A Krantz
I have posted a link below to my Charity Discount Shopping Internet Mall website. 40% of the profits will go to the charities listed. You get bargains and give to charity at the same time.
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Tax time is here again. This is the time of year that most of us hate, because we know that we will be paying not receiving. The government leaders make it so!
They scream no new taxes, however they don’t tell you about the deductions that they are taking away from us every year or so.
Does anyone remember once upon a time we could take off the interest you paid on the credit your cards? How about the interest you paid on your car loan. Any
interest you paid on any loan you had outstanding loan. That’s all gone. Getting credit for the decreasing value of your property or repairs made. I am not sure about this one but I think the either have a cap or took a way medical expenses. Believe it or not we even receive a credit for clothes we bought for work. Now only the rich get that.
The only thing we have left is our interest on our home loans and they are tying to take that away.
Every once in while you will hear a murmur about taxing your benefits from work. The congress has to come up with some way to pay for the money they spend without having it in the bank.
We didn’t always have taxes. I ‘m not old enough to remember that but I remember reading about it some where. Would it be nice if we didn’t need it anymore.
How about if we did away with taxes for everyone who made 100,000 or less combine household income or less. If we did that the federal government would have to tax everything the states already tax. So that means we would get taxed twice.
I prefer to do away with the income tax altogether and just have taxes on food, gas, everyday items that we use and buy. That way everyone would pay their fair share including the very rich. There would be no free ride but that’s too simple and the government would never even consider that. Maybe it’s time that we rise up and demand to Keep it simple stupid (KISS). To make a tax law that we will vote on and in if we agree for we are the one’s who are paying it.
By Herb A Krantz
I have posted a link below to my Charity Discount Shopping Internet Mall website. 40% of the profits will go to the charities listed. You get bargains and give to charity at the same time.
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Vise President Chaney Close call/OH Shucks
Vise President Chaney Close call/OH Shucks
Not that I want any harm to come to Chaney but maybe he will see what is really going on over there and come out of his dream state, that everything is going well.
Maybe reality will sink in? I think not. He has convinced himself that everything is going right on plan. He was asked by a news man how he felt about the attack on his life. He responded that they are trying to question the real authority. Who was he speaking about Hamid Karzai or himself? Even if they would have killed him we still have to put up with the idiot in the white house. The true tragedy is that 23 people had to die and 20 more were injured. They weren’t rushed into a bomb shelter; they took the blast for him. I wonder if he thinks about those poor souls?
By Herb A Krantz
I have posted my discount shopping website. 40% of the profits will go to the charities listed on the site. You get great bargains while giving to charity.
Home Shopping Center Mall (Affordable Shopping Mall)
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com/
AAA Vacations Plus
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com/
Not that I want any harm to come to Chaney but maybe he will see what is really going on over there and come out of his dream state, that everything is going well.
Maybe reality will sink in? I think not. He has convinced himself that everything is going right on plan. He was asked by a news man how he felt about the attack on his life. He responded that they are trying to question the real authority. Who was he speaking about Hamid Karzai or himself? Even if they would have killed him we still have to put up with the idiot in the white house. The true tragedy is that 23 people had to die and 20 more were injured. They weren’t rushed into a bomb shelter; they took the blast for him. I wonder if he thinks about those poor souls?
By Herb A Krantz
I have posted my discount shopping website. 40% of the profits will go to the charities listed on the site. You get great bargains while giving to charity.
Home Shopping Center Mall (Affordable Shopping Mall)
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com/
AAA Vacations Plus
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com/
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The truth and nothing but the truth By Tazman-Herb A Krantz: Virtual cinema of The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
VIDEO: Nissan ad turns Qashqai into skateboard
VIDEO: Nissan ad turns Qashqai into skateboard: "Filed under: Videos, Crossovers/CUVs, NissanNissan's really thinking outside the box with advertising for its new Qashqai crossover. Turning it into a giant skateboard for an unseen giant operator, they portray a Nissan as athletic equipment. With an oddly soothing soundtrack making the sights seem so natural, the Qashqai does things that no vehicle is capable of. But that's not the point really. The ad is showing us how the CUV will tackle anything the urban jungle can throw at it and provide some youthful thrills in the process. Just like a few years ago when potential buyers were doing ollies and following the X Games more closely than the stock market. Just because you're getting older doesn't mean you have to grow up. Very clever and very slick. Follow the jump to see the whole ad via YouTube.[Source: YouTube] Continue reading VIDEO: Nissan ad turns Qashqai into skateboard Read Permalink Email this Comments BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-tim"
Vise President Chaney Close Call / Oh Shucks
Vise President Chaney Close call/OH ShucksNot that I want any harm to come to Chaney but maybe he will see what is really going on over there and come out of his dream state, that everything is going well.
Maybe reality will sink in? I think not. He has convinced himself that everything is going right on plan. He was asked by a news man how he felt about the attack on his life. He responded that they are trying to question the real authority. Who was he speaking about Hamid Karzai or himself? Even if they would have killed him we still have to put up with the idiot in the white house. The true tragedy is that 23 people had to die and 20 more were injured. They weren’t rushed into a bomb shelter; they took the blast for him. I wonder if he thinks about those poor souls?
By Herb A Krantz
I have posted my discount shopping website. 40% of the profits will go to the charities listed on the site. You get great bargains while giving to charity.
Home Shopping Center Mall (Affordable Shopping Mall)
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com/
AAA Vacations Plus
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com/
Please vist my charity discount shopping site. Every time you buy something a percentage will go to charity.Book a cruise,vaction, all inculsive or travel anywhere part of that will go to the charities listed. Link is
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Dumb and Dumber
Bush & Chaney Dumb and Dumber
Bush and Chaney to peas in a pod one is dumb and the other is dumber. Which one is which I couldn’t tell you, or maybe they think that we are the dumb ones, especially when our biggest allied support over in Iraq will be pulling one third of there troops out soon.
I don’t know how Chaney or bush can say that this is a good thing.
The British didn’t have a hell of a lot of troops over there to begin with and pretty soon they will have none. The real slap in the face is they were in south Iraq were there was little or no danger or fighting. The rest of the so called countries that are there with there 300 and 400 troops, so what let them go home, it sure as hell will not make a difference in the balance of power.
As we are increasing our troops the British’s are cutting and running. It’s that what they say about the French? As I have said many times before if we can’t get the support of our so called alias let give them no option but to help or loose our support and money. Like Japan, Germany, let’s pull our troops. Stop supporting the World Bank and demand our loans to other countries be paid in full at once. Pull our troops out of all other counties and ship them to Afghanistan and Iraq. Let used our strength as a supper power, and if no one else will fight the terrorist we will have to alone however when they bomb others countries let us just stand there and scratch our heads and let them Handel it .
Again I have to express that this terrorist problem is a world wide problem and the world can not afford to turn there fact away as they have done in the past.
Bush and Chaney must face up to the fact that we are not bomb enough to believe the ridiculous statement that Chaney has uttered. It is not a good thing that our allies are abandoning us in our time of need and there’s. It is time the President and Vise President start telling us and the world the truth.
I do not agree that the Iraq war was necessary to start but we are there and know we have no choice but to make sure that we do not make another mistake that will change the world and not in a good way. This is a battle that will last for years to come, maybe not in Iraq but in Europe and Asia and here.
I do not agree with Bush and this war but Bush has perpetuated this war. I do agree the we must win at all cost.
Herb A Krantz
I have created a discount shopping internet mall that donates 40% of profit to the charities listed
Please click and enjoy shopping while giving to charity.
Home Shopping Center Mall (Affordable Shopping Mall)
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com/
AAA Vacations Plus
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com/
Blog
http://tazmansvoice.blogspot.com
Bush and Chaney to peas in a pod one is dumb and the other is dumber. Which one is which I couldn’t tell you, or maybe they think that we are the dumb ones, especially when our biggest allied support over in Iraq will be pulling one third of there troops out soon.
I don’t know how Chaney or bush can say that this is a good thing.
The British didn’t have a hell of a lot of troops over there to begin with and pretty soon they will have none. The real slap in the face is they were in south Iraq were there was little or no danger or fighting. The rest of the so called countries that are there with there 300 and 400 troops, so what let them go home, it sure as hell will not make a difference in the balance of power.
As we are increasing our troops the British’s are cutting and running. It’s that what they say about the French? As I have said many times before if we can’t get the support of our so called alias let give them no option but to help or loose our support and money. Like Japan, Germany, let’s pull our troops. Stop supporting the World Bank and demand our loans to other countries be paid in full at once. Pull our troops out of all other counties and ship them to Afghanistan and Iraq. Let used our strength as a supper power, and if no one else will fight the terrorist we will have to alone however when they bomb others countries let us just stand there and scratch our heads and let them Handel it .
Again I have to express that this terrorist problem is a world wide problem and the world can not afford to turn there fact away as they have done in the past.
Bush and Chaney must face up to the fact that we are not bomb enough to believe the ridiculous statement that Chaney has uttered. It is not a good thing that our allies are abandoning us in our time of need and there’s. It is time the President and Vise President start telling us and the world the truth.
I do not agree that the Iraq war was necessary to start but we are there and know we have no choice but to make sure that we do not make another mistake that will change the world and not in a good way. This is a battle that will last for years to come, maybe not in Iraq but in Europe and Asia and here.
I do not agree with Bush and this war but Bush has perpetuated this war. I do agree the we must win at all cost.
Herb A Krantz
I have created a discount shopping internet mall that donates 40% of profit to the charities listed
Please click and enjoy shopping while giving to charity.
Home Shopping Center Mall (Affordable Shopping Mall)
http://homeshoppingcentermall.com/
AAA Vacations Plus
http://aaavacationsplus.globaltravel.com/
Blog
http://tazmansvoice.blogspot.com
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