Ron's Musings

Romney’s Problem

Mitt Romney’s problem is not what he says he believes now. I agree with almost everything he says!

His problem is also not what he clearly believed 10 or 15 years ago. Most conservatives have respect for anyone who moves from liberalism to conservatism.

Romney’s problem the lack of a path from one to the other!

With the exception of the abortion issue, Romney consistently claims he’s always been a conservative, multiple video evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Conservatives have a real problem with that. It’s disingenuous at best and downright lying at worst. It leaves conservatives with the sense that Romney has no real core beliefs. That he’s willing to say what he thinks people want to hear. That smacks of pure political calculation, which is exactly what people are sick of.

If MrRomney has had a true conservative conversion, tell us how and when it happened. Tell us why you’ve rejected the liberalism of your past and now embrace conservatism. But do not pretend to have always been a conservative when all the evidence declares otherwise.

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GOP Race

When Rick Perry got into the presidential race I was excited. To that point i’d held out hoping he’d get in. I liked Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain but did not think either had a chance.

Things have, of course, changed in the last few weeks. Perry has performed badly in debates, going so far as to call principled conservatives “heartless” for not supporting subsidized college tuition for illegal aliens.

Bachmann has also hurt herself by being to aggressive in her attacks against Perry while mostly ignoring Romney, the guy least trusted by conservatives. Her efforts have the effect of actually helping Romney!

Then there’s Herman Cain.

Cain has performed well in all thebdebates. He’s been knowledgable and given solid, substantive answers. More importantly, in my view, he’s remained above the fray by contrasting himself with other candidates while not attacking them.

The impact of all this has been Cain’s rise in the polls while both Perry and Bachmann have fallen. On Saturday Cain stunned everyone by winning the Florida straw poll! Now a Zogby poll has Cain leading with Perry second and Romney third.

Speculation of a Cain/Rubio ticket is now rampant on Twitter! Can you imagine how the dems would handle that? Such a ticket would, at the very least, nake it very difficult for dems to play the race card.

Cain now claims he can win a third or more of the black vote. If he’s right just think of impact that would have in the general election!

For many conservatives and tea party activists this race is equal parts conservative idealism and electability. At this juncture Cain seems to have both. The momentum has shifted and Herman Cain is in a great position to surge ahead.

If you can’t tell, I’ve now switched my suppot from Perry to Cain, a true American conservative.

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Tags: Cain, election, GOP, primary, vote

My Question for the FOXNews/Google Debate

Repeatedly we hear democrats charge that the collapse of the housing market and subsequent recession was the result of capitalism run amok. Indeed this has become a mantra of the anti-capitalist left. Yet we almost never hear Republicans challenge the left’s assertions and defend capitalism.

In fact the housing bubble and subsequent collapse was the result of artifically low interest rates by the fed and government backed loan programs that ignored credit worthiness, along with “anti-discrimination”regulations that forced lenders to make bad loans, all of which removed normal market forces from the supply and demand equation. The predictable results were an artificial increase in demand leading to rising prices along with growing numbers of bad loans. Lending institutions were then forced to find ways to mitigate the risks forced upon them by the government which lead to the toxic mortgage backed securities. From start to finish this was ALL the fault of government regulation, NOT free market capitalism. This would not have happened in a real free market.

So my question is this: Why don’t Republicans make this argument and defend capitalism and market economics?

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Tags: Capitalism, debate, GOP, Republican

MIA

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted. I lost my mom in March and that’s been difficult to overcome. It also changed my life significantly in that my dad now spends his days at my house.

Lately I’ve been struggling over a desire to return to political blogging. I don’t really want to turn this back into a political blog again but I’m going to have to post some on politics. It is, after all, that season.

For now I’ll just do a little update.

My lovely wife has gotten hit by the Bank of America lay-offs. Her last day will be Oct 31. Thankfully she will get a decent severance and she has good prospects for new employment. In spite of all we’ve been through we feel especially blessed.

Our church search ended up at the church I grew up in. This is a church that has been in decline for years and I never imagined myself as a member there again. But God, it seems, had other plans.

I’m also getting involved in student ministry again for the first time in 10 or so years. Our high school boys small group is meeting at our house on Sunday evenings.

I think I’ve fully adjusted to my vision situation. I’ve found many ways to function a little differently so I can do many things and I virtually never feel sorry for myself any more. It’s been almost a year and a half and I’m used to the new normal.

So the next post will likely be political and for the next year plus there may be more political than non political posts. But I will also be posting about what God is doing in my life and how He uses my circumstances to grow me.

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Family

Often holidays can be stressful. In past years Thanksgiving meant traveling to Georgia, making arrangements for our cats, staying with my parents and just generally a lot of stress. It’s not that we didn’t want to do it. Family is important to us. It just required so much planning and effort and we were generally glad when it was over and we were back home with our cats, sleeping in our bed.

This year was different.

The events of the last year brought us back home. While those events were in no way desirable, the resulting move has been a big blessing.

This year Thanksgiving was at our house, twice. Thanksgiving with my family was Thursday and with Jules’ family was today (Saturday). Everyone was relaxed and the food was great both days. Everyone enjoyed themselves and there was very little stress.

I love my family and Jules’ family and enjoy spending time with both and I think we’ve established a new tradition because doing it all here has relieved a lot of stress from everyone else.

It is often mind boggling to me how God takes very difficult, even tragic situations in our lives and uses them to accomplish good things. As much as I would like to have my vision back I am repeatedly forced to recognize that I am in a better place than I was before losing my vision.

I don’t pretend to know or understand God’s plans but I just have marvel and praise Him when He continues to provide good things. I am so glad that He is running things and I’m not.

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Tags: blessings, gratitude general, Thanksgiving

Social Security Misinformation

For five months I’ve waited for Social Security to make a decision about my disability application. In that time I probably spoke to people in the SS office at least ten times and every single time I was told that if my application was approved I would be paid back to the date I became disabled. So for months we’ve beef counting on that big back pay check to help dig out of the hole this whole situation has put us in. It actually made it a little easier to be patient while waiting on the incredibly inefficient federal government.

When we found out I was approved last week we were elated but we were also frustrated because all we could find out about was my first monthly check coming in December. There was no mention of back pay and no one could tell me why or what the deal was. So waited on the approval letter hoping it would have more information or maybe a check. The letter came and still no mention of back pay.

So today I called again and got a completely different answer from what all previous SS reps had told me. I was told today, for the very first time, that I had to be disabled for five months before I could receive SSID. There will not be any back pay.

How is it that government agencies can be so totally incompetent? How could I have been given the same wrong information by multiple people over a period of five months? And what senesce does this rule make anyway? Has some idiot determined that a person should lose their house before getting any benefits?

I wish I didn’t need SSID. I wish I could see normally and continue to earn a living. But the fact is, here I am and I’ve paid into the system my entire working life. It may have been unrealistic but I expected better.

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Tags: blindness, Disability, Government, incompetence, social security

Answered Prayer

After five months of waiting and being unable to get any answers I’ve finally been approved for Social Security disability. Even though my case is clear cut I still feared being turned down and having to fight. And now I find my benefit is almost $100 more per month than we had calculated.

Thanks to all who have been praying for us. God does answer prayer!

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Tags: Disability, prayer, social security

Ballots mean nothing

It seems that ballots are now meaningless, at least in Alaska. Every state has barriers to getting on the ballot. The main way one gets on a ballot is to win their party’s primary. Alternatively there is usually a path through petitions to get on the ballot. But the fact is you can’t get on the ballot just because you want to.

Write in candidacies also exist because people want on the ballot but can’t get there. But now, according to the Alaska Supreme Court, none of that matters.

Lisa Murkowski’s campaign had managed to get poll workers to distribute her name in polling places which clearly amounts to electioneering and negates the barrier to getting on the ballot. Republicans sued to stop it and got a restraining order, which seem quite reasonable to me.

So what does the Alaska Supreme Court do? They stay the restraining order. So now all anyone who can’t get on the ballot has to do is have their name distributed at the polls.

Why bother having primaries at all? Just put everyone who wants to run on the ballot! That’s in effect what the court has just done, after all.

UPDATE:

It seems that a radio talk show host in Alaska, upset over the ruling, put out a call for citizens to sign up as write in candidates. The last count I heard was 56 new write in candidates poll workers have to distribute at the polls. That was an ingenious move and it perfectly illustrates my point. I wonder if the geniuses on the Alaska Supreme Court are rethinking their idiotic ruling?

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Tags: Alaska, ballots, Elections, Politics

iPad Good & Bad

Let me start by saying the iPad is a game changer, indeed, a life changer for me. Even though the screen is small, with the right glasses and holding it close enough I am now able to read fairly easily for the first time since becoming legally blind several months ago. I just cannot adequately express just how huge that is.

Let me also say that I haven’t exactly been an Apple fan in the past. I’m a PC guy and have been for years. And one the biggest problems on a PC since the inception of the iPod is iTunes. To put it simply, iTunes on a PC just sucks! It has from the start and it still does. But now I have no choice but to use it if I want to put my music collection on my iPad or stay current on updates. I wish there was another option.

Then there’s the Safari browser. Yeah, that sucks too. I can’t believe the number of web sites I have trouble with because of Safari and they aren’t flash sites. I actually agree with Apple’s decision not to support flash because flash is a memory hog. No, I’m talking about simple things like scroll-bars on a web page that can’t be scrolled. On numerous sites I simply cannot see content “below the fold” and there appears to be nothing I can do about it.

Safari also doesn’t deal with the WordPress editor very well. Once I get beyond a couple of paragraphs I can’t convince Safari to keep the window where I’m typing which is pretty annoying since I can’t see what I’m writing. I can scroll back down but as soon as I type one character the window automatically scrolls back up on it’s own.

That’s enough of the bad for now, though I may have more to say in another post. For now let’s look at what works well for me.

Pinch zooming, which I believe has been around for some time on the iPhone and iPod, is a big plus. Many web pages wouldn’t be readable to me without it. But it’s important to note that pinch zoom doesn’t work everywhere. Primarily it works in Safari and in the email app. And sometimes, for reasons I’ve been unable to determine, pinch zoom doesn’t work in Safari. Also many web pages will only zoom so far and if you go farther it snaps back smaller when you lift a finger.

Fortunately there’s another option, the three finger tap. The three finger tap zooms the whole scree which means it no longer fit so you have to pan left and right as well as up and to see everything. This panning must also be done with three fingers. It is this feature, which is turned off by default, that really makes the iPad usable for me. The fact that it works everywhere means I can access menus and settings that would otherwise be out of reach for me.

Being a longtime PC guy means I’ve had to make some adjustments but they’ve been mostly painless. I’m looking forward to iOS 4.2 coming out next month which is supposed to add multitasking, folders and printing. Being able to print will make a big difference to me, as will being able to organize my apps into folders.

Apple has done a lot right in the iPad but there are real problems with Safari and Apple needs to address them. For most people the iPad is a convenience in addition to their computer. For people like me with major vision impairment it is a replacement that needs to work on the web.

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Tags: Apple, assistive technology, blindness, iPad, visually impaired

Changes

A lot has happened since my last post. We’ve moved from South Carolina to Georgia, we’ve rented out our condo in SC, we’ve been looking for a church and I’ve triedti find things to occupy my time. That’s been no easy task with my new limitations. But that is changing.

I haven’t posted because it has gotten progressively more difficult to use a computer. Even with a big screen TV for a monitor the backlight was wiping out what vision I have and the problem gets worse as the sCreen gets bigger!

But thanks to my men’s Bible study group and my brother in law, I now have an iPad and it’s incredible what it allows me to do. Reading is once again a part of my life. I can do research on the web again and reading emails is so much easier. In fact, I’m writing this post on my iPad.

It seems counter intuitive that the iPad would be a good solution when a 20 inch monitor is unusable for me but the key is the interface. The screen is small enough that the backlight doesn’t wipe my vision while the interface makesit accessible to me. I highly recommend that anyone with low vision problems visit an Apple store and try one out.

I’m no Apple fanboy. This is the first Apple product I’ve ever owned and I still hate iTunes but this iPad is life changing for me.

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Tags: accessibility, Apple, iPad, low vision


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