Cycling and BFS/CFS

Seven years into my diagnosis of BFS/CFS my exercise intolerance continues to get worse. CFS/BFS are benign disorders because they will not kill you, but that is not entirely true. If a person can no longer exercise, they will waste away and die younger. And there is nothing benign about worsening symptoms that are debilitating. Many sports I performed a few years ago are becoming much more difficult to perform – hiking, rock climbing, wrestling (some things are considered too dangerous such as rock climbing with paresthesia symptoms in the hands) and so forth. Even walking is becoming exceedingly difficult – lots of pain and discomfort and longer recovery times.

Cycling is the one sport I am able to do with less pain and in fact I am able to do at a fairly high level. I am astonished as to what I have accomplished in the sport this year. Right now, cycling is saving my life. I do not know what I would do without it – I believe I would be becoming a burden on my family. I am not too sure how long I can keep it up, but right now I am living in the moment and trying not to worry about it. I have plenty of pain when I cycle but it is far more tolerable.

This past week I competed in the National Senior Games in Minneapolis Minnesota. I placed 10th and 14th in the two road races, but 3rd and 7th in the 10K time trial and 5 K time trial respectively. This exceeded my wildest expectations. My times have improved by nearly 2.5 minutes in the 10K time trial in just over the past year. Yes, I invested in better equipment, but I am still the only person competing in time trial events with a road bike and not a specialized time trial bike.

Each day is difficult, I wake up stiff and in a lot of pain. I force myself to cycle and usually feel better for doing it. My rankings in USA cycling continue to rise steadily. At the Colorado state time trial championships I won Category 5 (although not officially recognized) and broke 1 hour for the 25 mile time trial. That is a huge barrier, breaking 25 mph for one hour! On shorter events I am now breaking 26 mph. Even my training runs are a lot faster. I have taken 10 minutes off my time to do the 4000 feet climb and 18 miles to the summit of Cottonwood Pass. I am on a roll and rank 18th in the country for Category 5 Time Trials.

BFS and CFS changes lives, but it is not over. We have to work that much harder to succeed. I remind myself everyday how lucky I am because people have it so much worse than I do. This helps me to stop feeling sorry for myself and to push forward.

My USA cycling results can be found at (This does not include my results at the Arizona, Colorado, and National senior games):

http://www.coloradocycling.org/results/individual?usac=457284

The Wacky Left

Sure, the right has its side show in Donald Trump (and yes, it is even scarier that he leads in many polls). But the Left is out of control and no one seems to care. Democratic, presidential candidate Martin O’Malley has apologized for saying “all lives matter” and then the next day claimed climate change led to rise of ISIS. So basically, all lives do not matter (especially White ones) and he invented a new fearmongering science overnight.

Meanwhile, Obama has refused to reach out to any of the military families who lost loved ones in the Chattanooga terrorist attack (and he has refused to call it a terrorist attack). He still has not recognized the murder of a young women by an illegal alien in a sanctuary city (San Francisco – which violates federal immigration law that Obama refuses to enforce) – which supports O’Malley comments that White lives do not matter (we know this because Obama only opines about White on Black crime – Charleston massacre, Trayvon Martin, Henry Louis Gates, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and Eric Gardner to name a few). In fact, under Obama, Black on White crime has increased by 13% for violent crime. The end result of Obama’s policy of only politicizing black on white crime (and in most cases, a crime was not committed): Riots and chaos. Do we still think Obama can transcend race, especially when he invokes the N word? All of this is just one week removed since Obama caved to Iran to agree to a treaty that will eventually yield an atomic bomb. And let’s not forget Iran is the biggest reason for Middle East instability because they are a state sponsor to dozens of terrorist organizations including ISIS. The Cuban embassy opened on U.S. soil after decades of being banished for supporting terror and civil rights violations (which incidentally still happens daily). So yes, negotiating with terrorists and civil right violators is the Obama administration’s key foreign policy achievement to date.

If all of this is not bad enough, Obama is proposing to place gun control on people who collect social security benefits through executive order. I do not see how this is remotely constitutional.

Hillary Clinton was showing off her ignorance by demonizing trickle-down economics with false facts. It is almost comical as she defended Big Government spending Keynesian economics after 6.5 years of one failure after another by Obama (ObamaCare, Stimulus, etc.).

Two videos surfaced of Planned Parenthood doctors profiteering off the tissue of aborted babies. And what’s worse Democrats are still defending this organization. They should rebrand themselves with a new name: Avoided Parenthood. If this was a legal or transparent process doctors would not be negotiating prices, there would be a documented table of prices.

I would never join a political party and the above issues are why. We are being brainwashed by politicians into thinking terrorism, civil injustices (including abortion), fearmongering by using fictitious science, Keynesian economics is the only way to run a country (big government), and only minority lives matter are not only the correct way of thinking, it is the only way to think.

And all of this happened just over the past few days.

Liberals Eye Cash Cow after Gay Marriage Ruling

With every decision there are consequences. And the SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage is no different. With liberals, it is never enough, they want more. And if Churches refuse to marry gay couples they could be their next target. Liberals will pressure the IRS to eliminate tax exempt status of those churches refusing to marry gay couples.

Liberals are grossly wrong to assume the government can spend church contributions better than the church itself. Our government is a massive bureaucracy loaded with egos making it highly inefficient. Whereas, I can see the result that local churches have on communities by offering free meals and collecting donations for families going through tough times. This is always a big misconception by liberals. And let’s not forget, if the charitable status is eliminated and charitable contributions are no longer tax deductible there will be a decrease in charitable spending.

Do not get me wrong, I am not a big fan of religion (I do not see faith and religion as having to be the same thing). Like the government, they are a smaller version of bureaucracy and wasteful spending. And I am not a huge fan of tax exempt organizations for the most part. But, it is wrong to go after some non-profits and not others. We do not like to create and enforce laws equally. Tax exempt universities do not follow many federal laws, but the government has not come after them. For instance, they work with corporations and patent royalties are paid out to employees (teachers). Heck, states such as Colorado, Washington, and Alaska do not follow federal laws for marijuana and the federal government is looking the other way.

Separation of church and state is not a Constitutional right, it was brought forth in the Federalist Papers. However, SCOTUS has generally ruled in favor of religious freedom whenever government has tried to interfere in such matters as with the Hobby Lobby case. However, in the gay marriage case Justice Kennedy warned Churches that they can lose their tax exempt status if they refuse to uphold the law of the land. But so long as IRS continues to include the Church of Scientology on the tax exempt list, most Churches should not fear this threat from SCOTUS.

Government and the courts interfering in church activities, such as marriage, is certainly not a good thing. And what’s worse is that the government is never consistent with its enforcement of laws. While the government will be more than happy to collect tax revenues from churches, it will continue to allow Planned Parenthood and labor unions to continue with their tax exempt status even though they are more political than they are willing to help people.

Personally, I would like to see a separation of government from all tax exempt organizations. Unfortunately, the government funds many tax exempt organizations which turns into a vicious cycle of dirty money through the quid pro quo process. We see this with Planned Parenthood and labor unions as well as many conservative tax exempt organizations (for government subsidies they in turn give monies to political campaigns). This is just wrong and the only way to rid ourselves of such evils is do away with all tax exempt statuses. Of course, this will destroy some very good charitable services along the way. It is too bad some bad apples took advantage of such loopholes for political and personal gain.

Political Haste and SCOTUScare

On issues that require immediate attention Obama is slow to act – for instance, ISIS – it has been over a year and he has yet to put a plan in place to defeat the terrorist group. On other non-urgent issues the President and liberals like to act quickly without giving the topic much debate to formulate a good plan. Obama and Congress did this with ObamaCare – they acted hastily without reading the legislation. The result was a bad law that was failing to meet everything that was promised – it would lower insurance premiums, care would get better, patients can keep their doctors, and so on and so forth. We all know the big lie. The Supreme Court has twice saved the law. Obama and liberals have no one to blame but themselves for the many challenges to the law. If they were not in such a political haste then someone would have read the law and corrected the questionable wording.

In the first challenge to ObamaCare the Supreme Court ruled the law Constitutional and called the mandate a tax. But the justices also said that the federal government could not coerce states into participating in ObamaCare and they therefore did not have to set up their own insurance exchanges. Hence, many states opted out of the law which created the current dilemma in the second case of ObamaCare before the Supreme Court. In King v. Burwell the Supreme Court had to decide if ObamaCare subsidies can be given to individuals (and families) in states that did not set up insurance exchanges. The law explicitly states only people and families from states that created insurance exchanges are eligible for subsidies. The four words are clear in the law: “established by the states”. However, only 16 states have set up their own exchanges but that has not stopped the IRS handing out ObamaCare subsidies for people and families in the other 34 states. Why ObamaCare remains legal in the view of the Supreme Court remains a mystery, but all of these challenges could have been avoided if political haste was not used. As Scalia proclaimed in his dissent, ObamaCare should be known as SCOTUScare.

Obama has used executive orders to bypass congress and pass other laws hastily such as immigration reform, climate change, and gun control. These efforts are futile because executive orders can be abolished by the next President. Hence, using executive orders to write laws is not only useless it is idiotic. But this is a common theme of the current political landscape: not to take the time to write good laws, but pass anything as expediently as possible with no regards to its consequences.

Obama and liberals also act hastily with their mouths – especially after horrific events. They love to politicize tragedies. They did this with the Charleston massacre calling out for gun control. Unfortunately, the proposed gun control laws by Obama and liberals would not have stopped this tragedy. Other liberals blamed the killings on the Confederate Flag that still flies over the South Carolina Capital building. Do not get me wrong, Governor Haley did the right thing by finally removing the flag, but let’s be clear the Confederate Flag had nothing to do with the killings. Political haste, especially without facts, fails to solve problems, but worse yet it potentially create new ones. Obama used the N word in an interview on the subject – which once again does nothing to solve a problem. We should expect more from our President instead of introducing more vitriol into the subject. This proves Obama is a problem creator not a problem solver.

Instead, Obama and liberals alike would learn more by listening to the family members of the victims of this terrorist attack. These are the most amazing people I have ever listened to. Less than 24 hours after the massacre these people had nothing but forgiveness in their hearts and it brought the community closer together than ever before. These people have united the community while the press and liberals want to divide and place blame on guns, flags, Republicans, and Fox News. Political haste is destroying our country. It is divisive. It is wrong. But let me be the first to admit, that I am not as good as those people in Charleston. If someone murdered my family I would never be so forgiving. That being said, I doubt I would blame the problem on guns, flags, Republicans, and Fox News. As an educated man, I know more and more people are being brainwashed and indoctrinated by hate speech on the internet. Just this month alone, 10 Americans have been arrested for plotting against America – indoctrinated by ISIS on the internet. And let’s not forget that many people knew Dylann Root was a troubled young man and did nothing to help him. We need to do more about hate speech, but that is hard because it is protected by the first amendment. And we need to do more about mental illness in this country – it is an epidemic. Both are not easy problems to solve, but they had more to do with the events in Charleston than those liberal targets: guns, flags, Republicans, and Fox News. This is just political haste and not thinking before acting.

Now Obama is acting hastily to set up a nuclear treaty with Iran. Obama does not care what is in the treaty, only that one is reached. You see his legacy is more important than national security.