Where, oh where, did my wallet go?

Losing or misplacing important items happens to everyone, I suppose, during the course of their lives. How the item gets lost doesn’t really matter, a momentary lapse, something else on your mind, or just plain forgetfulness can create a very somber couple days as you try to recover the items lost.

Recently, one of my sons went through that experience by losing his wallet. The wallet contains just about everything a young man, or an old man, needs in his life. Cash notwithstanding, the licenses, credit cards, identification cards, and a myriad of other things that are in all likelihood are gone forever.

And you sit, puzzled, trying to retrace your steps. Trying to remember where it might have been that you lost the wallet?

For my son, it was no different. He was on his way home from classes at Richard Bland College and stopped by the Wawa to get gas. He went inside, got a drink, and paid for the gas and the drink. He went to the car and thought he may have put the wallet and drink on top of the car to fill the tank.

So far so good, right?  First thing to do is call the Wawa. But the Wawa hadn’t had anyone turn in or report that they found a wallet. So, he had no luck there. The next step is a thorough and complete search of his Jeep. But even after going through it several times, with several people helping, no wallet.

For some time, you still have that outlying hope that somehow the wallet will reappear. Somehow the whole thing is just a David Copperfield disappearing wallet act, but by the end of the night you know it’s as real as a punch the stomach. So you start calling the credit card companies, and everyone else you can get hold of to let them know that someone else may have your cards and please don’t let them use it.

You know it will take days to get the replacements, so you’re sort of held up for a few days waiting for things to get back to normal. At some point, you reach the level of acceptance and you understand that you are just going to have to live with the problems.

But then out of the blue something happens to brighten things up. You get a phone message from the Prince George Post Office. They tell you that someone has dropped off your wallet and that you can stop by and pick it up whenever you want to.

And then you think that maybe the world isn’t as bad off as it sometimes appears to be. Thankfully, the wallet didn’t fall into the hands of someone who was more than willing to run up the credit cards, or try to get money out of your bank account. No there was no cash nor were there any credit cards, but the hard to replace incidentals were all there.  There really wasn't much cash anyway, and using the cards would be hard cause they were cancelled, but at least the remnants found a good Samaritan.  Somehow, almost miraculously, there seems to be at least one decent person left in the world.

So to whoever that person may be who dropped the wallet off at the Post Office, let me be among the first to thank you for being a solid stalwart human being. Thank you for understanding how a missing wallet can affect a 21-year old. But above all thank you for proving that human beings can be, and are, decent well-meaning and caring people.

Look out! The Idiom police are watching!

If you don't think we have too much government, try this on for size: the US Department of State has a position called Chief Diversity
Officer.  That office is currently held by John M. Robinson, who apparently has nothing better to do than to tell everyone else in the
United States, and one assumes the world, what they should and should not say.
Apparently, all kinds of common use phrases are deeply racist and, when speaking, one ought by common decency, and uncommon sense, refrain from using those choice idioms.  For instance, didn't you know the term "holding down the fort" is deeply injurious to the American Indian populace?
According to Mr. Robinson that term is more about holding land that we stole from the American Indians back in the day. Certainly it has nothing to do with keeping a watch on things, like the house or the store or the fort for that matter. Nope, it's obviously intended as a slur to those American Indians who were chased off their land and onto the reservation while we nasty old Americans made off with their property.
Robinson's comments are featured in the July/August issue of the official State Magazine.  It's living proof that the thought police are
with us, day-in and day-out.
Is it not enough that the government seems to operate as if they have carte blanche to do whatever they want? Once elected, it seems, they no longer work for the electorate. No indeed, even at the highest levels, those half-hearted promises go out the window at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as soon as the resident is secure for the next four years.
For years the language police have been trying to control "what we can say," and would very much like to control the "what we can do" thing as well. They want us to use the Politically Correct thing to say versus the bare naked truth.
Our society has gotten far afield from reality, resorting to euphemisms and other forms of rhetoric instead of actually telling it like it is.
Sorry, for me, just let me have it. I don't need it sugar coated or worse hidden under some other term.
Here's another example of how simple terminology has gone astray. Apparently, Nike, you know that shoe company, was going to bring out a new line of shoes called "Black and Tan." Robinson shot it down, stating that it can refer to "the brutal Protestant militiamen who ravaged the Irish countryside in the early 20h century." So sorry. I wouldn't have known that if you didn't tell me, and even so I don't really care.
Get over it.
Robinson even has it out for the term "going Dutch," or as I remember it, Dutch treat, which meant pay your own way.  But, not so, says Robinson. What it really refers to is the Netherlander's hypothetical stinginess, Robinson says.
Give me a break. These terms have earned new meanings and now have new, completely legitimate uses.  It's what makes the language grow. Robinson also takes umbrage with the term "rule of thumb."  A perfectly good term for a standard followed by the general public. But not so fast, says Robinson, it actually "refers to the width of a stick a man could once use to legally beat his wife."
It's obvious to me that Robinson's post should actually be a Cabinet position. We can't have people going around spouting these phrases and leaving the multitude with hurt feelings, now can we?
It's very hard for me to believe that we actually pay someone to do this.  To be quite honest, I think we should apply the Rule of Thumb to Robinson.

Trust a government that endorses this! No way!

While I fully understand that we, the general, law abiding public, have an obligation to provide health care to those who have been incarcerated for one reason or another, I do have a problem when the care we are providing seems a bit over the top.  I understand that general health care needs to be provided for all those men and women who have managed to become wards of the state, and I fully accept that, since many of them do not need to be among the rest of us law abiding citizens. Some merely need to pay their debt to society and they too should be taken care of by the state for medical issues.

But there does come a time when I believe common sense should take over.  Even insurance companies won’t cover some kinds of medical care, considering it elective surgery rather than life saving surgery. Take for instance the recent Federal judgment requiring the Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) to provide a sex change operation for a “transgender” inmate doing time for murdering, now get this, his wife.

It seems Michelle (Robert) Kosilek was born a man but has received hormone treatments and lives as a woman in an all-male prison.  Last week, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Massachusetts DOC ought to pay for Kosilek’s sex change operation.

Kosilek first sued the Massachusetts’s DOC 12 years ago claiming he had trans-gender disorder. Wolf, according to an Associated Press article, is the first Federal judge to side with the defendant in a trans-gender case and order prison officials to provide a sex change.

Two years after Kosilek filed his first suit, Wolf ruled that he was entitled to treatment for his disorder, but stopped short of requiring sex change surgery. Kosilek sued again in 2005, arguing that the surgery was a medical necessity.

In his ruling early last week, Wolf ruled that surgery is the “only adequate treatment” for Kosilek’s “serious medical need.”

"The court finds that there is no less intrusive means to correct the prolonged violation of Kosilek's Eighth Amendment right to adequate medical care," Wolf wrote in his 126-page ruling.

Prison officials have repeatedly cited security risks in the case, saying that allowing her to have the surgery would make her a target for sexual assaults by other inmates.  But Wolf ruled the DOC's security concerns are "either pretextual or can be dealt with by the DOC." It will be up to prison officials to decide what to do with Kosilek after the surgery.

But above and beyond that, it seems to me that Massachusetts is now in the business of providing its prisoners with sex change operations. Where does it stop? Insurance companies today would disallow such a request, I am certain, as being elective surgery and not a necessity.

Why in the world would he/she, who has been sentenced to life in prison, need a sex change? This case opens the door for numerous other ridiculous lawsuits from inmates. What will the Feds support next: face lifts, liposuction, and breast augmentation must be right around the corner.

What goes around, comes around

In another homo-simpleton update, it would be hard to say the punishment fits the crime in this case, even though the punishment was self-inflicted.

It seems some prospecting thief in Uganda thought it a good idea to pinch a cell phone from a patient in an isolation ward. He soon realized he was a victim of his own larcenous behavior as he started to exhibit signs of the Ebola virus.

Ebola, in case you have been living in the mountains, is a deadly fever that kills by causing people to bleed profusely.  Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper reports that the 41-year-old thief grabbed the $23 phone from a patient at Kagadi Hospital.  The hospital was housing several people who were infected from the most recent Ebola outbreak in the country.

The patient, who recently succumbed to the disease, reported the phone missing shortly before he passed, according to a report in the Global Post.  With the patient dead, can the culprit be far behind?

It seems that investigators were able to track the thief, who used the phone to call friends. It wasn’t long, they said, before the thief started showing symptoms of the Ebola virus. Ironically, he checked himself into the same hospital where he had stolen the phone in the first place. Reportedly, doctors say they are treating him.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the Ebola virus can cause Ebola hemorrhagic fever, a highly contagious sickness.  Symptoms include rash, diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding from every orifice.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni warned citizens to refrain from physical contact, including shaking hands and casual sex, as those are ways in which the virus can be passed between people.  It follows that stealing personal items from those afflicted with the disease may also put you in jeopardy of contracting the dreaded disease.

It was unknown whether the virus could be transmitted via the cell phone, other than from using one that belonged to an infected individual.  Current virus protection software is unlikely to protect users; it is also likely that the virus can be contracted from toilet seats used by infected people.