Although Obama has repeatedly said that under his health care initiative we will be able to keep our existing plan and our existing doctor, this week I discovered that this simply is not true. Employers are already scrambling just two weeks after the health care bill was signed.

Yesterday I received the following letter from my employer, a large defense company: “Dear Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO)  participant: In order to better manage rising health care costs, beginning July 1, 2010 we are consolidating all Exclusive Provider Organization (EPO) medical plan options to a new, single EPO plan option, administered by Anthem, with prescription drug benefits administered by Express Scripts.”

Like many of us with health insurance through our employer, we have to enroll for coverage annually. In our case, that was just 4 months ago and I selected the provider I had been using since joining the company, Aetna.

Fortunately for me, my doctor accepts Anthem, so although I will lose the health insurance I selected I will at least be able to keep my doctor if I wish. But this may not be the case for others who will lose both their health plan and doctor.

The letter makes no mention of the premium under this forced plan change, but it will not surprise me in the least if it happens to be higher and with less benefits than the plan I had chosen under Aetna just 4 months ago.

There is another annoying thing about this imposed change too. I am a Nexium user and selected Aetna because I can get Nexium under their plan. Whereas at my previous employer, who also used Express Scripts for prescriptions under some of their plan options, they will not cover Nexium without subjecting me to the ridiculous hassle of taking every other known heartburn medication under the sun first- despite the fact that I had already done this several times over the years with other providers- including Express Scripts! The other medications do not work for me. Only Nexium does, which is why I have been taking it for 15 years!

So think about it for a second. For each drug they insist I try (which is usually 3 or 4), I pay a co-pay and the insurance company pays the remaining amount- each time. Only to find out what has already been proven several times by this process that those drugs do not work for me. So after all this they end up approving my Nexium prescription.

And people scratch their heads wondering why our health and prescription drug insurance is so high! Well, right here is part of your answer and yet another broken promise to add to the following long list:

A Long Post: The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates – Jim Geraghty.

Then there is traitor Major Hasan. Can you believe the press and politicians are actually debating whether this was an act of terrorism? What are the facts that we know? That seems all that we need to know. They are these: Hasan repeatedly expressed his objection to deploying in accordance with his orders and was trying to get out of them. He also voiced his support for terrorist suicide bombers and shouted ALLAH AKBAR as he was shooting American soldiers.

A sane person would look at these facts and say he didn’t want to go to  war to fight against Muslims terrorists. Instead, he chose to side with them and become one himself by killing American soldiers who were being deployed to fight them. Not only was Hasan a traitor under the UCMJ, he was also a terrorist. He lived through his attack and 4 bullets in his gut only to tried under the UCMJ as a traitor to (hopefully) receive the death penalty. I can only hope that he suffers from his injuries until that day comes!

Van Jones, the “Green Jobs Czar” and self-described Communist, stepped down today, citing the “vicious” attack mounted by the right. If the attack was vicious, I say rightfully so! It’s hard to deny accusations when there are video and audio recordings of you to confirm them Mr. Jones… Of course, Mr. Jones tried to deny them by saying he was “taken out of context” and that he somehow didn’t know what he was signing when he joined the lunatics that claim the Bush administration was behind the attack of 9/11 (blah blah blah). But let me ask, even if all his denials are true (what are the odds?), he should STILL step down for being so irresponsible to sign things without reading them. Hey, come to think of it- that sounds like most of our Congressmen and Senators who read bills without reading them! They should step down too in my opinion… I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am willing to bet that in our own jobs if we went around signing off on things without knowing what we were signing off on, we’d be joining the back of the ever-growing unemployment line.

There is simply no provision within the Constituti0n for the President of the United States to appoint officials that  answer to him alone. Not to mention the backgrounds of these Czar’s that Obama is appointing! Apart from Van Jones, other Czar’s have pasts that are at least as radical as his. If you are unaware of their backgrounds, I urge you to do a little research of your own. Do not be deceived. We all may want “change we can believe in”, but the change that is being forced on us will do exactly what Obama says: “Fundamentally change” the shape and course of this country.

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Ok, now for the nuts and bolts of it. We have two arguments being waged in the halls of Congress. First, the right is saying to the left, “hey, wait a minute. You knew about this stuff a long time ago, so why are you saying you didn’t now?” Then the left is saying to the right, “that’s not the issue. The issue is torture.” You might phrase the arguments differently, but that’s pretty much the two sides in a nutshell.

If it turns out that those on the left did, in fact, know that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were being utilized, but deny knowledge of it in order for them to add ammo for their case against the Bush administration that led to calls for impeachment and accusations of “war crimes,” etc., then I submit to you that these people are guilty of treason against the United States. Why? Because as the Speaker said in her news conference yesterday that her focus was to replace the administration as a means to correct the policy. Those were her words and they amount to the overthrow of the government from the inside- by means of deceit and dishonesty. And it doesn’t end with the use of water boarding either. It also applies to the whole “WMD” thing that she also brought up again, stating that the Bush administration misled the Congress- when the Congress received the same information from the same sources. Again, they act like they didn’t in order to use it in their case against the Bush administration. Whether you are attempting to overthrow the government with arms or lies, it is still treason. Attempting to get the President and members of his cabinet impeached using lies and treachery as your weapons has the same effect. It’s TREASON.

Now for the torture issue. So, let me get this straight… We have these people saying the water boarding is torture. But I’m confused, because it seems to me that it wasn’t deemed torture immediately after 9/11. That conclusion was made after the fact- after the counsel for the Bush administration had deemed it wasn’t. Whatever… It doesn’t really matter to me because I simply do not believe that a technique of interrogation that does no physical harm; does not result in hospitilization; and leaves no lasting impact on someone can be deemed “torture.”

And while the left is screaming that it is torture, our own service men and women are undergoing the very same “torture” as part of their training!!! Apparently, it’s okay with them that we’re torturing our own people. They just don’t want terrorists tortured. How insulting can you get! That should tell us all what this argument is really about. It’s not about torture. It’s about politics.

Let me get this straight… In a time of war, it’s okay to shoot your enemy in the face and kill them, but it’s NOT okay to pour some water over it in controlled conditions and make them uncomfortable for a few seconds at a time (with a doctor present no less)? How ridiculous is that???

Virginia, as was the case in 1786, should rightfully take the active lead in calling upon the leaders of our United States to call for such a Convention in order to give the People our say in how, when and where our tax dollars are spent. Our voices matter and when they do not, we must have the means to peacefully and effectively act should the necessity arise when the Federal Government does not act upon the will of the people. The voting booth, while it remains the most powerful voice of the people, is inadequate when our elected officials abandon us for their own purposes or gain.

Political power, when it goes astray, can only be met with political power. Otherwise, the recourse left to the people is to seize that power- or wait for a new election which often only results in more of the same corruption of power. The people must have a means to hold its government accountable in a more effective way in an age when things happen at the speed of a mouse click.

Now that I’ve done it (three times), I should be able to swap the clutch out between my ZRX-1200r commuting bike and my ZRX-1100 track bike whenever the need arises.

What does a slipper clutch do? In short, with a stock clutch if you downshift too aggressively and carry too much speed for that gear you could end up locking the rear wheel (hop). The Slipper Clutch helps by allowing the clutch to slip until the engine speed matches your own speed, thereby eliminating the hop. When entering a corner, the hop can have a disastrous effect! With the slipper clutch, it’s nice a smooth. On the track this can mean that in certain corners you can afford to downshift earlier to set yourself up for the best line without being slowed down by engine braking. Good stuff!

Once I got it installed right, I took it out for a test ride and it worked great. I could easily downshift, even two gears, pop the clutch out and get no hop at all. I does take some getting used to though because I found that I can carry a lot more speed into the corners and I seem to use less brake.

Great mod that I think I’m going to really enjoy!