Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

America’s expanding police state

In the increased police state around us and the amplified NSA surveillance everywhere, citizens are feeling more and more like they are guilty until proven innocent. The police in Fairfax County, Virginia, cannot stop many people for speeding since the interstates and highways are constantly partially blocked by accidents, road repairs, and rush hour - it is almost impossible to go fast – just a crawling speed bumper to bumper at all hours of the day and night.

The Government-assigned Concrete Block Apartments

An American diplomat who flew over communist Romania during Ceausescu’s reign of terror asked the innocent question, where are the farmers and their homes, I see nothing but fields of green everywhere?

The Ship of Global Warming Folly

I ponder the 1549 German woodcut, “Ship of Fools,” Albrecht Durer’s illustrations, and even Hieronymus Bosch’s artistic allegory of humanity’s folly sailing aboard a ship without a pilot, a stark reflection of what humans do, sometimes ignorant of their own direction, pursuing untrue and unattainable objectives.

Tiger Paws

Princess, the cat we babysat for a military family assigned overseas, was pregnant. What a joy! We had no idea because she was a plump kitty. She gave birth on January 18 to three smoke-grey kittens and a yellow one.

Falsifiers of History

“The absolute worst – and often irreparable – damage done to the Free World has been caused by the Kremlin’s disinformation operations designed to change the past.” – Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa The Oxford dictionary defines “disinformation” as false information that is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media.” The word originated in the 1950s with the Russian word, “dezinformatsiya.”

EPA, the Enforcer of Federal Pollution Control Laws

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created in 1970, is the primary federal agency and key player with boundless authority to develop and enforce regulations to allegedly protect human health and the environment from harm caused by pollution. EPA regulations are issued based on the following Acts enacted by Congress:

Sweet Lucy

Sweet Lucy moves painstakingly slow and carefully, her arthritis twisting her back in pain, forcing her to slow down. The sunshine turns her hair into a fiery mane, warming and soothing her painful arthritic joints. She sits down in her favorite chair on the patio, taking in the gentle breeze with a sigh of elation and a smile when she notices the ducks floating on the nearby pond.

Leave Your Secularism at the Door

The atheist minority in this country is challenging everything the majority holds dear in their traditions, faith, and beliefs in order to satisfy their agenda of fundamentally changing America in their view of “social justice” promised by the hollow “hope and change.”

Christmas, the Season of Faith, Family, and Charity

Christmas was my Dad bringing home proudly a scraggly fir with sparse branches - fragrant with the smell of winter, tiny icicles hanging from the branches, miniature crystal daggers, melting on my mom’s well-scrubbed parquet floor. I never knew nor asked how he could afford it from his $70 a month salary that barely covered the communist subsidized rent, utilities, and food. No matter how bare the branches of my Christmas tree were, it was magical to me.

Art Imitates Painful Life

Radu Mihaileanu’s 1999 award winning movie, “Train of Life,” is a metaphor for the resilience of the human spirit and the desire to be free with a decidedly anti-communist and anti-Nazi message.

What is a “Living Wage?”

The recent fast food workers strike sponsored by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) demanded a “living wage” of $15 an hour. In progressive public policy, the “living wage is considered the minimum necessary for a worker to meet needs considered basic.” Who decides what the “basic needs” are? Are everybody’s needs the same? Why stop at $15, why not $50 an hour?

Sonny and the Red Shouldered Hawk

Sonny was running back and forth in the wet snow, barking furiously in the direction of the back yard fence. Scott Lingamfelter’s yellow lab was normally quiet, he rarely barked. Something must have really attracted his curiosity.

“Robbing” and the “War on Christmas”

Psychological projection was described by Sigmund Freud as an immature “defense mechanism in which a person unconsciously rejects his or her own unacceptable attributes by ascribing them to objects or persons in the outside world.” (Sigmund Freud, Case Histories II, p. 132)

You’re Too Old for MRI under Obama Care

It is not easy to find a doctor who takes Medicare in our area. When we found one that did, mom accepted him, no questions asked, based on his sweet, smiling demeanor. I was not so easily convinced. Call me from the Show Me State if you’d like.

Low Information Voters in the Information Age

As a former college teacher, I know why idealistic young people vote with their hearts and not based on logic or with their pocketbooks. They have yet to mature into serious tax paying adults.

Is Health Care A Fundamental Human Right or a Service?

How many Americans believe that health care is a fundamental human right? How many Americans believe that it is just a service that must be paid for just like any other service? Good doctors and nurses who train a long time and invest a lot of money in their education expect to be paid well for their expertise and unique skills.

Do Young Americans Understand Thanksgiving?

"Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be." - John Wayne While on errands today, I overheard shopkeepers wishing customers happy holidays. One young woman who handled my purchase wished me Happy Thanksgiving.

Everybody Loves to Hate Home Owner Associations

My plane landed safely at Reagan National Airport. We were deplaned on the tarmac in the dark, away from the gate, to find our black suitcases by the jet way in the lightless, windy, and below 20 degrees Fahrenheit night. After much confusion and shivering, we were loaded onto buses and delivered to the terminal.

Prairies, Wind Turbines, Solar Panels, and Fried Birds

The green energy policy in the United States which requires blending gasoline with ethanol produced from corn has expanded the corn fields to the detriment of prairies. According to AP, more than 1.2 million acres of grassland were lost to the federal requirement of blending gas with 10 percent ethanol, soon to be 15 percent ethanol. These former prairies are now planted with corn and soybeans.

Now it’s “Biotic” and “Fossil” Carbon

Global warming/climate change proponents are a hardy, determined, one-track mind group. They were brainwashed by the elitist powers that, unless we fundamentally alter our way of life and de-develop to subsistence level economies of the Middle Ages, the planet will perish. “We can’t keep developing infinitely on a finite world,” said one of the organizers of a recent protest in Canada.