Back in the saddle again! or Hey Big 0, where is my stimulus package?

Here I am, hot wired into the Internet once again! We got our DSL up and running, once again, and all is right with the world. All except annoying little things, like pirates jumping ships in the Indian Ocean and our apparent inability to do anything about it. Or, maybe, the fact that tax time is upon us and we have to pay for these morons in DC to screw up our nation even more.

I am personally miffed about tax time this year. Our son is working a construction job where he is considered contract labor, so no money is held out of his check to cover taxes and such. We have known that he needed to hold back money to cover his tail, but alas, he did not and now the wolf is knocking at the door. What really stinks about the whole matter is the fact that if you are a contract laborer, you are required to file as self employed. This means that you are responsible for paying the bill that most business' are required to cover for their employees, like FICA and Medicare. Wow, they really sock it to ya, to say the least. Normal people who work normal jobs pay somewhere around 7% of their income for these taxes. The poor schmoes who decide to go at it on their own are doomed to paying around 15%. That is a lot of freaking dough!

Now this is where the rub really comes in. We have been shown, over the past few months, that if you are a mega corporation with billions of dollars to blow, you can mismanage your investors money and get a nifty stimulus package bailout from our new friend Barry O. While, us poor peons down here in the real world, where you wonder where the next scrap of bread is coming from, are stuck counting pennies to pay the bill to feed the pigs. Do I sound a little jaded? Good, that was the color I was working on.

But hey, we got our DSL going, so that's a good thing and that's my 2 pennies!

Broken Wings

I had surgery on my shoulder yesterday. Let me explain what happened to get me to this point.

Back in September, I was having a get together at my house with some family and close friends. We had retired to the front yard, where we have a nice porch swing and several chairs to sit on. Well, apparently, the chairs had decided that they were going to throw a rodeo that night and didn't bother to let any of us know about it. I mounted on of the frisky white ones and then someone pulled the chute. that little heifer started bucking for all she was worth and managed to toss me off in 2 seconds flat. I did a back flip across the grass and landed on my left side with my left arm pinned under my body. As I laid there in pain, the support crew ran out and made sure that the little booger didn't come charging after me to inflict more pain. I got up from the mud, dusted off my jeans, found my had and put on my best face for the crowd as they cheered me on.

I had bruised my ribs pretty well and my shoulder felt like a 1000 pound steer had sat on it. Although my ribs eventually healed the shoulder kept causing me problems. I went to the Doctor before Christmas and she took some x-rays and gave me some Naproxin, which seemed to relieve some of the swelling, but the pain was still present. I went back in February and they ran a CAT Scan and found that the bone structures were sound so they decided to send me to the surgeon. He said that he needed film of my muscles and tendons to see if I had ripped my Rotator Cuff. Since I have a neurostimulator implanted into my hip, for my never ending back pain, an MRI was out of the question ( the magnets would suck it out of my body, or some other terrible thing like that). So I was able to undergo a great little exam called the Arthrogram. This little torture treatment is designed to make you shut your mouth and quit complaining about your little problems. After all, there are people in China who are starving and have it worse than you do. I am positive that the Germans in WWII devised this treatment to pry information from captured spies. They began by laying me on the x-ray table and shooting pictures of my shoulder joint in several unnatural positions. This was followed by pulling the Floriscope down as close as they could get it to my body (I'm severely claustrophobic) and taking what seemed to be a 3 foot needle and shoving it 4 feet into my shoulder joint. Then it was time for the truth serum. The injected a cocktail of iodine and what smelled like arsenic into the joint, making sure that they hit every available nerve on the way down. I think they managed to hit some of the nerves in my toes to boot. Then it was time for the contortionist portion of the act once again. They re-shot all of the pictures of my shoulder joint with the contrast dye in place this time. These pictures showed that I had a moderate tear of the Rotator Cuff which would require surgery to repair. Yipeee!

So that leads us back to yesterdays adventure at Harris HEB.

They wheeled me into the ER at 12:50. As the nurse placed the oxygen mask on my face I noticed the clock said 12:55, the next minute I looked at the clock and it said 1:50 and I had been magically transported into the recovery room, where I found myself gasping for air as they pulled the breathing tube from my throat. Finally things started coming into focus as the pain monster in my right shoulder said," good morning sunshine, we're about to get better acquainted." Thankfully, there was a full compliment of angelic nurses there with syringes full of Demerol who were more than happy to chase the pain monster away. I was sent to my room for an hour to wake up then it was time for the trip home.

So now, I am sitting here at 2:30 in the morning wide awake because I have had such a large amount of drugs during the day. Wow, for those of you who know me, you know that I carry a fully stocked pharmacy with me wherever I go so for me to make a comment that I think I have taken a very large amount of drugs in the past 24 hours is really something.

So, you have just completed reading the ramblings of an inebriated, postop Arthroscopic survivor. I would like to take a minute to warn all my friends to avoid having this procedure as a form of entertainment. I would suggest that you take in a movie or something along that line. But if you find yourself the victim of a Chair Rodeo gone bad, go see my bone doc', he managed to get this done very quickly with a lot less pain than I was really expecting.

By the way, no chairs were harmed in the telling of this story...and that's my 2 pennies.

L8er
~marty

It's The Short Bus For The "One"

Friday night "Zero" took the stage on Johnny Carson's... um, Jay Leno's show to show us all that he is just one of us. A normal guy, who just happens to have a very demanding job. I have to admit, the man is memorizing. He commands attention, he is an eloquent speaker but he needs his TelePrompter near by at all times. In his 45 minute twirl in the Hollywood Spotlight, he managed to insult the Special Olympics. When Jay tossed him the softball question about his bowling progress, he said that he had bowled a 129. Jay commented that, "that's very good, Mr President" with an obvious tone of sarcasm, Blammo replied, "It's like the Special Olympics or something".

Alright, he made a joke. Not a very good one but it was a joke. However, the folks at the Special Olympics were on the phone with him toot sweet, reading him the Wright Act. He apologized and said he will be a good boy and not offend the window licking set any more.

What if, lets say, W would have uttered those hateful words? Or better yet, what if it were Rush Limbaugh who crossed that dreadful line? Every news outlet in America would have been camped on their doorstep demanding an apology. But this little faux pa has basically been dismissed, forgiven and swept under the rug by his admirers in the Main Stream Media.

Well, there is a long line of us folks out here who believe that restitution is in order and penance has to be paid. I suggest that he be required to don the headgear of choice of our offended brethren and wear a helmet anytime he leaves the White House, whether in his limo, Marine One or Air Force One. He needs to protect his little noggin' so he don't put his foot in his mouth in public again... but that's just My 2 Pennies.

Pirates of the Potomac

It has been a very long time since I have sat down to share my thoughts here on the 2 Pennies, but there have been some good reasons. Number one: DEPRESSION! Since the day after the inauguration, I have been in sort of a denial about where our country is headed. It saddens me deeply to see the truths that our forefathers fought and died for be so carelessly tossed aside as so much garbage. I am afraid that we have lost our moral compass and have settled for change just for change sake.





The following is a brief narrative on my feelings. I encourage you to share your thoughts about mine with with me, maybe you can show me where the "Hope" really lies in this current venture that we have embarked on.








PIRATES OF THE POTOMAC


Monday, March 16, 2009


by: Marty Renfro





The Armada has been gathering in the depths of the Chesapeake Bay for several months now, as battle plans are being draw up for the big assault. The crews are battle proven and more than ready to begin storming the beach, but as always in the throws of battle, a preliminary bombardment of the defenses is necessary to soften the will of the defenders until it is seen advantageous to send in the first waves of pirates to begin the looting and pillaging.





The winds of change began blowing a few years back, as the crusty old sea dogs began smelling a little blood in the water. Captain "Nasty" Nancy took control of the House of Representatives, putting Congress under the control of a woman and a left coast liberal to boot, for the first time in history. The woman part is not what makes her nasty, no, it is the left coast liberalism that smells like opening a barrel of fish that have been allowed to sit dockside a couple of months too long. Her trusty Henchmen, "Flaming" Barney Franks and "Devious" Dennis Stroyer, have been busy twisting arms pushing through legislation that would be sure to weaken the foundations that the unassuming public were jumping up and down on screaming, "what about me?"





Meanwhile, in the Senate, "Terrible, one more for the road" Teddy and "Dingy Harry" Reid were busy undermining the credibility of the Republican Party by conning them into supporting their agenda in the name of "Precious Unity".





All the while, we were being commanded by a man who allowed himself to be painted as a halfwit by the "Main Stream" media at every turn. Although he had some good programs to offer and intentions that were upstanding and moral, he lacked the intestinal fire to take a stand and force the rabid dogs biting at his heals to back down. I was a definite supporter of our President and his policies (for the most part) but was left perplexed by his inability to stand up against those who would cast the biggest stones at him. Maybe, he would have been more apt to take a stand if he could have had confidence that he was not standing alone on his end of Pennsylvania Avenue. But alone he was. Members of his own party had turned their backs on his authority to govern, by supporting ream after ream of opposition legislation and by lining their political nests with pork fat from the projects earmarked for their districts. And to top it all off, the Party of Lincoln bent over backwards to run a candidate who spent so much time in the beds of the members from across the aisle, that he was seriously considering a party jump during the last election cycle just to get elected.





Which leads us where we are now, watching our tax dollars and possibly our personal freedom being tossed out the window like yesterdays bathwater. The American public had grown weary of the political theatre that was played out daily on their television screens. So much that they chose the team that seemed to be ready to make a change in the way the game was being played. However, one important ingredient was missing, a clear definition on what change actually is.





Couple this lack confidence in our government with the lackluster performance of a politician who is out of step with the core principles of the Republican Party and you had the prefect recipe for "Change". Add to that a charismatic speaker and a media complex dead set on driving the American political experience and it is not a far fetched notion to expect the degradation of the American Experiment to the point that it just becomes another lackluster ingredient in the septic stew that has become the Global Community.



The Pirates have been very busy during their hiatus from power over the past decade. They have been laying the groundwork for a total overhaul of the Constitutional American system of
life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness and are ready to replace it with culture of death, bondage to bureaucrats and the pursuit of catering to the whims of the political elite.



Arrgh, we Americans have demanded "Change", I'm just afraid that we are about to get it...but that's just my 2 pennies.



Stay tuned for my ideas for a revival of sanity in the USA.