I hate bureacrats

Grrrr!!!!!!! I am so mad today I could spit nails. I have always known about bureacracies and the brain-dead loop you can get into with them, but it's been some time since I found myself in the middle of one of their insane catch 22s. Let me reiterate the fun time I have been having over the past two days.

A week or so ago I received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying they will no longer automatically deduct the premiums for my Medicare supplemental insurance plan from my monthly benefit. They did not say why they had made this decision.

Yesterday I received a letter from my service provider telling me that the reason the Social Security Administration had given them was that my benefit was not large enough to cover the premium. My benefit is 10-12 times as large as the premium. This did not make any sense.

I tried to call Social Security. Good luck with that. At first I tried to call my local office. I got two responses from that: in the first I got a recorded greeting, a notice that all their people were busy, and could I please hold. From there after maybe three minutes they apologized and asked me to continue holding. Three more minutes I was automatically sent to a full mailbox, then bounced back to the end of the line. Rinse and repeat endlessly. The second was even more fun. The message said "Thank you for calling the Social Security Administration. Goodbye." Then they hung up on me.

So I called the main office on the toll free line. After maybe half an hour of the most irritating telephone hell you can imagine I got to talk to a real person. She told me that the Medicare people has ordered the stop to the automatic deductions and there was nothing she could do without them telling her to do so.

The Medicare office just kept hanging up on me so I got irritated and stopped trying that. I called my service provider and told them what was going on. They told me that only a letter from the Social Security agency could fix things with them. Back to square one. I had a glass of Scotch and vowed to return to the fight the next day.

I reached the Medicare office the next morning (this morning). They checked their records and said that their records show that the authorization to automatically withhold my premiums was in effect and they had not nor could they tell Social Security to stop payment since they do not know the size of my retirement benefit, so had no way of knowing if it would cover the premiums or not. They sent me back to Social Security.

After endlessly trying to reach a real person in Social Security both nationally and locally I gave up and drove to my local Social Security office. The woman there confirmed that their records show that the automatic deduction had been stopped but there was no reason given. They tried to tell me I had requested it be stopped, but I squashed that one fast. She called Medicare who confirmed that my automatic deduction was valid and fine with them. She confirmed that the Social Security records showed they had ordered the deduction halted. She could not give me a reason and suggested that I should talk to my provider again, who had already sayd they could do nothing.

So here is where I stand. My premiums are not being automatically deducted. Nobody knows why. Nobody ordered it. Nobody requested it. And Nobody can fix it. Nobody has been really busy. My next step is to send a copy of something similar to this rant to my U.S. Senator and as that this be resolved. I need a drink. I need two; they're small.

Mike Huckabee is a Nut

Yesterday Mike Huckabee stated publicly that he wants to change the Constitution of the United States to conform with his version of "god's" law. How exactly he knows exactly what god wants is questionable, and what is more questionable is how one would determine which brand of god's teaching would be imposed on us.

There are as many versions of Christianity as there are stars. The definitions and interpretations of what the bible means fills libraries. Yet Mr. Huckabee wants to try to change the Constitution to impose what appears to be the Christian version of Sharia law on the United States.

I am very thankful that what he proposes is actually next to impossible. Changing the Constitution requires extraordinary cooperation between two parties who cannot even agree on what day of the week it is most of the time. Then it requires a 2/3 or 3/4 majority vote of the states in order to put something new in or take something old out of the document. This is as it should be. I'm really thankful after hearing him talking about what he wanted to do that he's simply spitting into the wind. I would hate like hell to believe for an instant that someone was willing to try to subvert this document.

People are already trying to explain away what he said. They're saying he only meant he wanted to force his views on abortion, gay marriage, and giving citizenship to anchor babies onto us, not the whole of the bible. But that's not what he said. For me, amending the constitution to conform with someone's religious beliefs is not only ridiculous it is the first step down a very slippery slope. I have my fingers crossed tightly that this will never happen.

I Am Bored

If I were any more bored I would be in a coma. It seems all I do these days is clean house, work, run errands, and putter. I cannot think of a single thing except playing WoW from time to time that doesn't bore me nearly to tears.

Most of this, I admit is my own fault. I've drawn more and more away from people and the world as I have gotten older. I'm simply no longer willing to put forth the effort it takes to find, make, and sustain friendships. Then one day I woke up and discovered I am a total hermit. What is even worse is that I have little if any real incentive to want to change that even if I had the slightest idea of how to do that at my age.

I'm very self-conscious when I am out in public. Not, as you might think, because of my weight. I made peace with that years ago and figure anyone who judges another by the breadth of their ass rather than by the depth of their soul isn't worth the powder to blow them to hell anyway. I am self conscious mainly about my teeth. I have nice dentures on the top, but on the bottom we got half way and I lost my job/insurance so I never could afford to have them finished. As a result when I smile I look like a jack-o-lantern on crack. So I rarely smile.

It's just easier and more comfortable (and lots more boring) to just stay home and fill my life with chores and projects. But I do admit that sometimes I really miss having someone to talk to. Year before last in the summer I went to Hawaii for a week and met some of my brothers friends. We talked politics and other things for literally hours. It was like being drunk but without the booze. I looked forward to every single day and couldn't wait to get up in the morning. I had a big grin on my face (at home of course) for two days recently when one of those guys sent a wave and a hi through my sister. It was so great to even be remembered.

Tonight, however, I am just bored. My daughter has been sick for days and is just now beginning to get better. She and her friend and husband are in the other room watching American Idol. Personally I would rather watch paint dry, so I am here writing this, then will do one of my Spanish lessons and read a bit in my new book "An Incomplete Education." It's a rather interesting big book of odd facts and information across a spectrum of subjects.

After another hour or two I will go to bed and thus ends another boring day. With more to follow. Thank heavens all of the errands were completed today. I don't have to go anywhere or do anything outside tomorrow. Yay!