SECURE AND UNSECURE MESSAGING

As I have mentioned before, I am an enrolled veteran with the VA for medical care. I have a doctor who has been assigned to my care. As is the case for most General Practitioners, he is a very busy man. He is virtually impossible to reach by phone. So, the VA in its wisdom installed a system that allows patients to communicate with their doc that doesn’t include the phone. It is called the “secure messaging service.”  When I need to communicate with my doc, I just send him a brief note over the system and he has forty-eight hours to respond. For the most part it is an effective system of communication. 

I did have an occasion to question the security of the system however. I sent my doc a note which was a private correspondence. Lo and behold, I got an answer from someone I had never heard of. When I was able to question him about the experience, he informed me that I had a team of people responsible for my care and they all had access to my private correspondence. To this day I don’t know who they are or what their qualifications are in dealing with me or any question or issue I may have. So much for “secure messaging.” I probably would be better off just publishing my messages in the newspaper. 

So, Ron, why did you bring this matter up anyway? Well I am going to tell you why. Recently our President was on the phone with another world leader discussing whatever world leaders discuss. Now, wouldn’t you think that if there was a secure phone in the world, it would be the President’s? Apparently it isn’t secure. Maybe his system is similar to the VA’s secure messaging system. It seems the so-called “intelligence community” has access to these private phone calls. That’s not bad enough, they also sometimes feel it necessary to leak the contents of these calls along with their opinion of the legality and value of the communication. 

Now, we are talking about the President of the United States and his occasional need to negotiate with other world leaders over the phone. That, by the way, is his job. That is his mandate according to the Constitution. Nothing about any of that communication is available to the public unless the President says it is public. 

What we have here is a case of spying on the leader of the free world by some civil service bureaucrat. And, worse than that, that same bureaucrat leaking the contents of top secret communication to anybody he chooses.

He says he is a “whistleblower.” No, he’s a spy and he is spying on our President. He apparently isn’t the only one spying on this President. This particular spy has been reported as a holdover from the Obama Administration. That would make him an obvious partisan whose intent has nothing to do with what is good for the country. 

First of all, why is there a holdover working in this White House? They all should have been put out with the rest of the Obama crowd. Secondly, instead of protecting this clown as a whistleblower, we should immediately prosecute him for domestic spying. There is no place in this country for this kind of nonsense. 

Get used to it, liberals. Trump won and you lost. Deal with it. If you think it’s tough now, imagine how you are going to feel when he sweeps the country in 2020 and takes Congress with him. 

Oh, and by the way, when the real story of what the President was talking to the President of Ukraine concerning Joe Biden and his son Hunter gets out, there will be no place for Uncle Joe to hide.

Ron Scarbro

MONEY TALKS

MONEY TALKS

The first of the “college admission bribers” has been adjudicated and sentenced. There are several more to be tried. This group of wealthy, famous people saw fit to bribe college officials in order to get their children into prestigious schools and onto sports teams. Apparently this is quite common. The fact that these kids probably otherwise would not qualify to get into these schools seems to be irrelevant. The goal is to make sure not that they get a great education, but that their diploma is from the right school. That brings to mind the question, is a degree from Stanford, regardless of what one has learned, more valuable than a degree from any other less prestigious school where a student has applied himself and gotten a solid education?

Does money talk? A few years ago the late US Senator John McCain railed against the amount of money in politics. His contention was that the money being offered to politicians corrupted them. What? You mean that an honest person could be corrupted by someone offering money, bribes? What if I told you that a normal honest person would not be for sale to anyone regardless of the money. A corrupt person is already compromised. The money just confirms it.

All of this brings to mind this question. Who is more guilty, the briber, or the bribee? Take the cases of these individuals who are paying huge sums of money to these, pardon the expression, corrupt college officials. The ones who are doling out these huge sums of money are in trouble. Why aren’t the officials who are selling degrees from prestigious schools in even more trouble? Which of these activities is worse?

Consider the classroom at, say Harvard. Within that room there are students who have gotten there fairly with good grades and equally good character. There are also students whose admission was bought and paid for by wealthy parents. Is the material being taught compromised? Must the lessons be “dumbed down” to include persons who are ill prepared to be there? I guarantee you the professor knows who is in the class and how they got there. If a student, who has been given admission by bribery, flunks the class, will the professor give him a failing grade? I’m fairly sure that the parent who paid $500,000 to get his child admitted, would not look too kindly on a school who would reward that parent with a failed student. I’m pretty sure that half million was intended to not only gain admission, but also to make sure the students are graduated with the right grades. 

This whole deal cheapens the idea of prestigious schools and the value of their diplomas, doesn’t it? I surely don’t want the surgeon gloving up to cut on me to be one whose degree was bought and paid for by his wealthy parents. How about you? I don’t want the accountant who prepares my books and my taxes to be a graduate with a phony degree that was purchased with bribe money. Where does it end?

My take is that if a school is willing to exchange a degree for money, why should the payer of the money be in any more trouble than the school? If we are to arrest and punish the briber, then by all means we should also sanction the bribee, the receiver of the money. The whole deal stinks, period.

I have heard that the “Golden Rule” has been revised to read, whoever has the gold, makes the rules. I refuse to believe that. No doubt money talks but sometimes what it says is wrong.

Ron Scarbro

KEYS TO THE BATHROOM AT THE LOCAL SHELL STATION

Like you I have been listening to the “candidates” for the Democrat nomination for President. Let me just say this. To me they sound like a bunch of clowns. What they are proposing is never going to happen, period. Even in the far out event one of these morons was ever elected President of this country, intelligent people would stop them in their tracks. 

Let’s look at some of these far left ideas and what would result. This proposal that we eliminate all fossil fuels, for example. That means no diesel, no oil, no gasoline, and of course no coal. No drilling, no fracking, and no new exploration. The rest of that ridiculous proposal is that we eliminate all automobiles, all trucks, all airplanes, all farm equipment which produces our food, and all coal fired plants which produce the electricity we need to heat and cool our homes and businesses. If you can, conjure up the picture of this country under that situation. To go anywhere we would have to walk, ride our bicycles, or our horses. Of course we would have to have horses that produced no flatulence. To heat our homes and businesses we would have to burn wood. How long do you suppose our forests would last if three hundred fifty million people started cutting wood to heat their homes?

The next big idea from this bunch is that every gun owner in this country sell their guns back to the country. A conservative guess is that would probably amount to about five billion guns. Well listen up, Democrats. Neither my guns nor my rights under the Constitution are for sale. My guns are not for hunting. They are for the protection of my family from any bad guys who might want to try to get into my house, but more importantly, they are there to protect me and my family from the government. The first act of tin horn dictators is to confiscate any weapons held by the citizenry. That confiscation serves no one but the potential dictator. History is full of examples of former free people subjugated by an ambitious dictator. All he had to do was take away their guns.

Next, let’s talk free stuff. Free education, free medical care, even free money sent out from the government every month to everybody. Most of these clowns who are currently running for the nomination have never had a real job or ever had to make a payroll. They seem to have absolutely no understanding of basic economics. The government doesn’t produce anything and the only money the government has was previously confiscated from the citizens. The government cannot pay for anything. In other words, there ain’t no free stuff. There are only goods and services supplied by working taxpayers who produce it. For the government to pay for anything, they must first take it away from you. 

Finally in this tirade, I want to talk about illegal entry into this country. Listen, I don’t blame them for trying to break into our country. If I were homeless, I would look for a place to live. If I were poor and needy, I would look for someone who would pay my way. People from all over the world have believed America’s streets are paved with gold and money falls off the trees. I guess compared to some places in the world, we do look like that. The pure reality is that we cannot take the entire world into our fold. If the lefties got their way and opened our borders, it would be a matter of days before we would be overrun. 

This bunch are running around this country asking us for the keys to Air Force One.  Are you kidding?  I wouldn’t give them the keys to the bathroom at my local Shell station. Think about it.

Ron Scarbro

THE HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE

THE HEALTHY ALTERNATIVE

Have you seen the latest Burger King commercials? They now have a veggie burger. It is being touted as the healthy alternative to their regular meat hamburger. The actors in the commercial are standing around heartily eating this new veggie burger and commenting on how it tastes just like their regular meat hamburger. I have a question. Does this mean that their regular hamburger has very little meat, or does the veggie burger actually include meat? Just a question.

Not to be outdone, KFC is now out with what they call a healthy alternative to their batter coated deep fried chicken. They are offering batter coated deep fried vegetables. Hmmm. Let me think about that one.

Somehow someway the word has gotten out that vegetables are healthy and meat is unhealthy. Here is an inconvenient little fact. Humans are a part of the animal kingdom and animals, it turns out are either herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores. Humans are omnivores. That means that our bodies function best on a diet that includes both meat and vegetables. In fact, if you choose to eat only meat or only vegetables you would have to supplement your body with the nutrients you would be missing from that exclusive diet.

I once met with a physician’s assistant for a regular appointment. Unknown to me she was a vegetarian. In her zeal for that religion, she decided to teach me how to become a vegetarian. She told me it was easy. You just can’t eat anything with a face. I asked her if I could eat clams and oysters. She went screaming from the room.

I remember when the soybean farmers, in an effort to increase the demand for their product, spread the word that lard or meat fat of any kind, was bad and oil from soybeans was good. Wow, did that ever catch on. It is actually hard to find lard in the grocery store now. Here’s another little fact, the abuse of anything is not good, fat from soybeans or from animals. It turns out that fat is fat and oil is oil whether its origin is animal or vegetable. 

The message here is simple. If you choose to be a vegetarian, that’s great. If you choose to eat meat, that’s also great. I personally don’t think either diet regimen should be a religion. Also, be careful about what you believe and the source of the information. On a regular basis we hear about some product that is harmful to your health and almost before the ink dries on that proclamation, we are told that the product is actually ok. How many times have we heard that coffee is bad or that red wine is actually healthy? What is the actual truth? Only time will tell. 

A few years ago when I lived in Seattle, it was reported that a group of young mothers from Bellevue, at that time a higher income suburb of Seattle, had their babies on a low cholesterol diet. A serious danger to the children. They had heard the headlines and bought into it. That episode caused me to coin the phrase “Bellevue housewife” which identifies to me people who jump on the latest food fads or taboos. 

This final example. My father smoked cigars most of his life and ate gravy on his biscuits and mayonnaise on his sandwiches virtually all of his life. He lived well into his nineties. I don’t recommend that. Nor do I discourage it. You cannot pick your genetic makeup. I know of people who can smell of a bakery and gain weight, while others eat desserts every day and remain trim. I guess life just isn’t fair. 

More people are sickened by worry over their diet than actually eating the food. Think about it.

Ron Scarbro