Britinezation

Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
Bob Edwards

435 house representatives
100 senators
1 vice president
1 president
8 Supreme Court justices
Total = 545 officials

This is the effective total of positions within our 3 branch system which governs over us. I bet you would have a hard time of naming more than ten people from the 545 available positions. Give it a shot. Prove me wrong. I will buy you a cookie if you can name more than ten. Serious. Most people can’t even name their state representatives, much less the representative of their congressional district. This frustrates politicians very much. They spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars of their lobbyist’s money to ensure that you at least know their name…….. and it has gotten them nowhere.

“The Parable of the Pop-Star” can help you understand the lifecycle of the average politician. This is quite comparable to the life of Britney Spears, otherwise known as the Anti-Christ. She initiated her career as an impressionable Mickey Mouse Club Mousketeerina, and around the age of 16 completed the transition of selling her soul to Satan for some record sales. She initially convinced us of her spry innocence, youthful ambition, and vocal talent, but I was on to her Beelzebub-induced pop beats, short skirt, and goat-like facial features. After hooking millions of impressionable, young girls on her tantric cultic séances, Britney contained sufficient power to begin the mind altering process of “Britnezation.” Britnezation, like all other Lucifer induced transformations, is a three step process:
1. first you like someone
2. then you want to be like someone
3. then idolization causes you to mimic this person’s every move.

Most girls just started liking her music, then they liked her style and dressed like her, then they wanted to be an “innocent” slut just like her, then…do I really need to finish. The end result of Britinezation is to shave your head, get knocked up, become an alcoholic, hooked on drugs, become an emotional train wreck, and make a few truly bad CD’s.

It all starts because something seems fun, then they like the fame, then they need the fame, and then they will do anything in their power to keep the fame. In Britney’s mind, there is nothing wrong with shaving your head if it gets you back on the headlines for a couple more weeks. Do you know the difference between Britney spears and the average politician on a headline? I don’t either.

One day, a politician feels like a cast member on Cheers (where everyone knows your name) and then they enter their favorite bar and no one knows their name. It is a terrifying experience for a politician. A politician can’t imagine going somewhere and not receiving any special treatment. Once a politician finally has a life-altering experience in which nobody knows who they are, they realize they need to take it up a notch. Most politicians start promoting some radical legislation that gets them back on the headlines. Unfortunately, some politicians come from such radical states that nothing can help them but a real life scandal. Their only chance to become re-elected has nothing to do with what they have accomplished but how recognizable their name is on a ballet.

The news is filled with politicians exposed in the throes of scandals, affairs, rumors, gossip, and any other headline title. The GOP party is so scared of not being re-elected anywhere that they are confessing to an affair per week. Every politician now has a gay child, sex scandal, tax evasion, lobbyist connection, war criminal story lined up just waiting for that opportune time to open the can of worms.

The possibility that we, as a society, can end the political scandals being spewed before us can be compared to the treatment of a bug bite. What happens when you have a bug bite and you constantly itch it and give it attention? It never heals, in fact, it just itches worse. The more attention you give bug bites and politicians the more attention they will need for the future. You see, politicians are mildly more uncomfortable and annoying than wasp stings. The best thing we can do is simply turn the newspaper page, change the channel or act completely uninformed on political drama.

“Governor Richardson, I must say I was unaware that you have married a donkey and that you are addicted to heroin. I hope that works out for you. Take care.” Politicians can go through such an unfulfilling conversation only so many times until they will start committing suicide in mass waves. Wasn’t this what we wanted in the end anyway?

Ah politics....

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
Bob Wells

My wife hates political discussions. Her opinion of political discussions is absolutely accurate; which could be described as, “Political discussions typically have two or more ignorant people supporting opinions which are loosely based on exaggerated or misinterpreted facts.” Political discussions get even better when people throw their “moral/ethical” two cents into the equation as well, which needs no facts or evidence to be supported, just their gut feeling. I can’t ever recall observing or participating in a political discussion in which both sides were edified and enlightened at the end of the discussion. The typical conclusion of political discussions are that everyone walks away cursing the stupidity and illogical standpoint of the opposite perspective. I love it! A good book once said, “Contention is of the devil.” If that is true, then all politically active people, especially politicians, are the devil’s minions. Ha!

For most of my life I have been rather complacent with the knowledge that better minds are determining what the future will bring. Parents, teachers, advisors, friends, family, church leaders, even politicians could all be considered people that I have always trusted to provide great counsel on how to proceed in life and form my opinions of right and wrong. Wisdom which has been accrued by life experience teaches that most of their suggestions and directions were accurate, however, a small portion of that has been proven to be bologna, which is somehow pronounced baloney proving that truly some things in life are not as they seem. Here are some instances of times in my life that I was absolutely fooled and had to learn by sad life experience the resounding truth.

Tobacco- I was fifteen the first and last time I smoked a cigarette. Kurt Cobain was a chain smoker, so it had to be a cool and totally gnarly experience to smoke. There were three of us first time smokers gathered together to “enjoy” our first cigarettes. We repeatedly tried to hack and cough down the whole pack of Marlboro Reds that day. At the end of the day, I realized that people smoke because they are absolute idiots and cannot be counted on for the truth in any regard. At the age of sixteen, I had my first go-around with chewing tobacco. This time it was five guys giving it their best shot. There was so much projectile vomit found around the house that it looked like the film set of the Exorcist. Society taught me that it was “cool” and “thrilling” to use tobacco products, that myth was debunked in a matter of hours. I really have no clue why people smoke or chew; they must be so bored with life that they have relegated themselves to forms of torture to pass the time.

She wasn’t possessed by Satan; she had simply attempted to use Copenhagen chewing tobacco for the first time. The power of Pepto-Bismol compels you!

Real horsepower - My parents used to own a 1996 Toyota Avalon family sedan which looks just like a Camry with a different grill. This is a grocery-getter car. During my sophomore year in college my parents were kind enough to donate the family sedan to me, which I was/am very grateful for. I had a couple buddies at the time that had some Ford Mustangs and a Chevy Camaro. One day we thought it would be cool to do a quarter mile drag of a 1996 Ford Mustang GT versus a 1992(?) Chevy Camaro. We all loaded up in a bunch of cars to go watch the scene. The Mustang whipped the Camaro like a red-headed stepchild. Some guys said, “hey, let’s race the family sedan avalon versus the camaro to make the camaro owner feel better.” The family sedan absolutely raped the camaro by hundreds of feet. Then it raced the mustang and dusted it too. Which goes to show that horsepower and speed don’t need bad gas mileage, uncomfortable seats, no rear seats, no head room, a loud exhaust and everything else that sports cars represent as being fast. The really sad thing was that the GT owner’s brother owned a newer Mustang Cobra which was actually slower than the older GT. Figure that one out??!!

Fastest commercially available car on the streets today

Diplomas- Having graduated from high school and an accredited four year university, I now have two special pieces of paper. I always thought that having those pieces of paper would prove that I was now smarter than before. Life experience has taught that those pieces of paper represent nothing more than lots of hours and money dedicated to the pursuit of a better lifestyle, that’s it.

Obesity- I was always taught that everyone has a different inherent metabolism and energy storage (fat) ratio. You can’t fight it, so just put up with it, accept it. I have since learned that if anyone performs thirty minutes of continuous by-the-book cardio exercise (70% max heart rate/30 continuous, nonstop, uninterrupted, no break minutes) and regulates a balanced diet every day, that obesity will not exist except for medical anomalies which comprise 0.00007% of American society. I knew a guy who lost 120 pounds in one year because he just had to walk everywhere he went and didn’t have tons of junk food available to him. I know this is a very easy thing to say when you are the skinny guy.

Cardio Queen

Technological capabilities have nothing to do with age – I grew up with a commodore 64. For those younger than me, this was a monochrome computer which had the processing abilities of today’s handheld calculator. My Uncles copied a bunch of games that were like 4-bit computer games with fancy names like Burger Time and Advanced Pinball Simulator so us kids could play. You had to type in loading functions to get the 5 ¼“ floppy disk game to play. Sometimes the command prompt written on the disk wasn’t correct, so we would spend hours and hours typing in various commands until something would work. Everything, in the end, worked for us because 30,000 attempted failures were not in vain if the game finally played. See, when you get old, failure completely frustrates you. Old people can’t deal with the fact that something didn’t work the first time, so they throw their hands up in frustration and ask a younger person for help. Little do they know that younger person spent 376 hours last year figuring out how to solve this problem and makes the solution look very easy in about 30 seconds. Old people aren’t dumb at all; they are just easily frustrated, stubborn, and impatient. If anyone has the time and money to figure out technology it is retirees.

As the child softly states, “See Grandpa, you have to press Ctrl+C not just right click. Will you ever learn?!”

The Female "O" - Figure that out yourself.

Ok, enough about life’s truths that I had to learn the hard way, what does this have to do with eliminating political corruption? Please read the quote below and then reread it three more times to actually understand it, as it has been translated about 13 times.

“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.”
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

It is very easy to sit back and say everything is going to crap, it is a different story to fix the problems before you. The only way people will determine the truth about 1) society’s problems, and 2) how to fix said problems -is to get your hands dirty. You have to get involved at some level. My whole life I have never gotten involved in politics much less watched mainstream news but it has become blatantly clear to me that those in recent power are not steering our great nation in the right direction. It is finally getting to the point that this course deviation is starting to affect my life. Here are some areas that government intervention is currently (or about to) affecting your life:
1) Devaluation of our currency
2) Devaluation of our economy
3) We can’t manufacture, process, or produce anything without severe regulations
4) It is easier to receive handouts than work for it yourself
5) Healthcare
6) Moral issues
7) Taxes

I heard somewhere that Aristotle was a smart guy, he said the only way for real liberty and equality to exist is if everyone gets involved. Until everyone gets involved in the topic, whatever it is, it is not diverse enough to accurately understand. A real democracy is led by the people. It is time for the “people’s” decisions to govern society, not the “people’s” politicians. Only the “people” can get to the real truth, not a committee or special interest group.

Join a Tea Party, speak up for your chosen party, write your congressman, discuss things with friends, family and co-workers, actually vote, get involved somehow on some level or else you have no reason to complain about what is coming. Cheers!

Conspiracy Theory #56- Why are we at war all the time?

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Being a Child of the eighties I have only witnessed 4 “wars” in my lifetime. I only remember 3. I can still remember coming home from school on January 12, 1991. I was nine years old at the time. I remember sitting in the living room and my mom very intently watching President George Bush on TV as he declared a military engagement authorized by congress on the nation of Iraq. She started to cry and I knew something very serious was happening. I had a paper route at the time and can remember rolling newspapers on the ground as I watched tons of missiles lighting up Iraq at night. It was quite a scene, like out of the movies. Very surreal. This was the beginning of the Persian Gulf War.

At the age of nine, I would simply describe the Persian Gulf War as “war”. What a silly little boy. No, No, this was a military engagement authorized by congress, which is different from a formal declaration of war, which is different from military engagement of presidential authorization. There have only been 5 formal declarations of war (War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, WWI, and WWII), 12 military engagements authorized by congress, and well over 125 (it is really a much higher number, but most of it was unofficial) Presidential military actions in the history of the U.S. Interestingly enough, the Civil War doesn’t fall under any of those categories.

So in the 233 years of the United States of America, how many years have we not been involved in some kind of military action? Zero. The “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” has never had so much as one day of zero military actions. It is estimated that the U.S. has killed 8 million people in the course of 233 years. That is nothing compared to written history of the world. Since 2925 B.C. there has been an unbroken period of hostility between one group of people and another group. That means, so far as recorded history goes, there has been 4934 years of continuous war…..and counting. Nice!

I am extremely grateful for the men and women who have sacrificed their lives so I may enjoy the freedoms, fortunate lifestyle, opportunities, and relative peace of today. I wish that statement applied to every military action the U.S. has ever been involved with; however, I think everyone can agree that some military actions have not been quite as “noble” as other military actions. I am not about to begin to evaluate every military action ever undertaken, so much as ask the question, “why are we at war all the time?” Do we really need to be involved in some military action all the time? Must people be killed at our military hands’ all the time? On one hand you would think that we should be able to sustain true peace and on the other hand you might think that it requires constant military action to maintain the level of peace we have right now. I think the truth is somewhere in between.

Each hand represents an opinion regarding war. That is the meaning of this statue.

So here is the dirty conspiracy: Have you ever thought that our economy might be dependent upon wars occurring? Have you ever thought we need wars as a reason to redistribute money? I graduated college with a degree in mechanical engineering. From my graduating group, I am the only person I know that took a job in a private industry outside of the government. Now, I include all those department of defense (DOD)contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc. as being government jobs because that is really who their paycheck comes from. I take that back, I know of one other guy who got a job in the private world and then lost it. So how much of a chance do I have at getting a job outside of government funding? Not very likely at all. Tons of engineers and scientists of all fields are getting their paycheck from the Gov. That is a lot of money. Our normal budget for “Defense” is not enough to cover all of that…..so we need some extra cash. What is a great way to request a lot of money and keep it somewhat off the books? War. If we were no longer at war, the government would be required to eliminate most department of defense contracts. The streets would be filled with unemployed scientists and DOD support staff. The last thing you want to do is give the smart people who were designing those bombs and missiles a pink slip and send them on their way with no hope for future employment. A smart person with a grudge and idle time is a lethal combination. Then there is the military dependent people themselves (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, etc.). Do you really want to hand out pink slips to people that have been trained to kill you?

Since the forties, the U.S. has needed a body of scientific intelligence for defense oriented tasks in addition to typical military groups. Like all government programs, this body of scientific intelligence just got more inflated and expanded to the point that you can’t start minimizing it without serious repercussions. Our great nation’s simple fix for this epidemic is that we must be involved in some sort of military action all the time. Congressional appropriations have to come up with this extra cash to fund all this stuff. Where is that money coming from? Heck if I know?!!!

War costs in Iraq have increased sharply every year—from $50 billion in 2003 to $135 billion in 2007. Costs are projected to keep rising. Interesting phenomena…. The war in Iraq has already cost over $900 billion as of today.

In October 2007, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that additional war costs over the next 10 years would range between $570 billion and $1.1 trillion, depending on troop levels, with overall costs for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the “global war on terror” reaching $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion by 2017. If all that money translated to paying soldiers $50,000 we would be able to fund 34 MILLION soldiers for one year. For some reason I never heard a number even close to that? If all that money isn't going to pay soldiers, then where is it going?

Funny thing is, I am willing to bet most of that money will never even leave our soil. That money is staying right here no matter where the war is. Redistribution of money. Those tanks and guns being used in these wars were not made in china. In fact, DOD stuff is the only thing America really does make significant amounts of. Whatever we don’t use we sell at bargain prices to the next regime we will fight 25 years from now. Who gave Saddam Hussein those guns and missiles? oh that’s right….the U.S.!!! Given the past history of U.S. military actions and the current dependency upon redistributed DOD money you might as well get comfortable with the idea of war. It is not going away anytime soon. Just wait for the moment that we get our hands dirty with Africa’s problems. That place can keep you busy forever.

However, I still want to know where congress is coming up with this extra money to fund these wars! There must be some U.S. currency printing presses that are overheating with usage.
Vietnam, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, etc. Sure Muslim extremists are scary, but we have a higher purpose for these military engagements – your way of life and your job.

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
Jack Handey (1949 - )

Free Voter Registration Money!! (Fiscally Responsible Government)

Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians.
Chester Bowles (1901 - 1986)

You are in luck this will be a quick post because it is a very simple topic. During this economic downturn I have learned something very important. Everyone needs to learn to live within their means. Period. The government needs live up to that even more than individual citizens should. If political lines and issues are very ambiguous to you like they are to me, then you may find it difficult to get a great feeling with regards to one politician over another. I look at it like “which bum is the better bum.” Thus, I have never voted. Here is my recommendation that should clear up this problem very well.

Do not support any politician unless they will force the government to be fiscally responsible.

If any politician sees a need to have a budget deficit then he/she is a moron and obviously does not understand the implications that come with a budget deficit. We can still fix things, but I will promise you that if you find the government is running a budget deficit ten years from now we are absolutely screwed. This year (2009) we are lined out for a $482 billion budget deficit. We need about $300 billion to just pay the interest on our national debt for this year. That means we are at least $782 billion dollars in the wrong direction. The total budget was only $2.9 trillion which means we are about 27% over budget for this year. In the private sector a company would have to figure out how to cut costs to make ends meet, therefore they fire people, enforce pay cuts, invest less, etc. Does this mean that politicians will take a 27% pay cut this year? Where do I vote to make sure that happens?

Ex Prez Bush and congress under his tenure have been the most fiscally irresponsible U.S. political leaders of all time. I see nothing changing with the current administration. The government doesn’t know how to cut back, that train only goes in one direction. Trust me, this issue will affect your life a whole heck of a lot more than abortion, gay marriage or drug legalization. (Unless you are a knocked up gay person on drugs)

Do not support any politician unless they will force the government to be fiscally responsible. If a current politician signed on to the 2009 budget, then they need to be ousted. As far as I can tell, that means about 70% of congress, the senate, and presidency needs to go. Happy voting.

I am serious this really needs to be your number 1 priority as a voter.

Change (Dictatorship)

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
Harry S Truman (1884 - 1972)

You know I had somebody ask me the question over the weekend whether or not I thought that the current president was doing a good job.

As far as society’s expectation of a president goes, I suppose he is doing a fine job. He is a good spokesman. He appears to be very compassionate towards even our worst of “enemies”. The international opinion of him is very high. He is very proactive with regards to his contingencies’ opinions. He makes concerted effort to fix every societal problem that arises, whether that is good or not is a matter of opinion. So what grade do I give him? I give him and just about every other president in the past 20 years a “D+”. Here is why- No president in the last 20 years has been a true leader.

A true leader can be compared to the captain of a ship. What happens if a true captain of a ship sees something wrong with the ship or maybe notices the ship going in the wrong direction? A true captain of a ship will see his ship going in the wrong direction and command those under him to actively steer the rudder, move the sails, cut the engines…….do something! As far as I can tell, every contemporary president clearly sees that the ship is going in the wrong direction. Every new president and potential president gives lots of speeches about how the ship is going in the wrong direction. This is what the last 20 years worth of presidents have done about our navigation problems……. he yells a lot, waves his arms, tells the sailors to adjust the load of the ship or focus on the engine as the problem……but nothing ever changes. As much waving of the arms or yelling that he does, by the end of his term the problem is hushed, neglected or considered insignificant. The ship just keeps going in the same direction. Nothing really changed. The country is not really in a better position than before, we just look at the problem from a different angle and blame the predecessors for the problem. It is going to take someone with real ambition to do what needs to be done. Real drive. Real goals. Real change.
The question you have to ask yourself is why they are not truly changing these problems or really attempting to fix them? Answer: “Don’t rock the boat” or “It ain’t sunk yet.”
Do you know how difficult it is to correct a ship that is sinking or going in the wrong direction?

America's Savior

Which leads me to a great story….
So a buddy and I went to do some lake fishing and took out an old boat with an even older trolling motor. The motor ran on 12V batteries which I charged the entire night before. The sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to return soup at a deli! I tell ya the waves were ten feet high if they were a foot. A great wind came up and this weak little trolling motor couldn’t overcome the wind pushing us further and further away. It didn’t help that each battery could operate the trolling motor for about 5 minutes until dying. So here we were, on the far side of the lake, with two dead batteries and a couple leaks. My buddy saw the oars laying next to him and decided to show me a thing or two about brute strength. After five minutes of aggressive rowing he snapped the starboard oar in two. His determination only grew stronger having seen that. He jumped to the front of the boat and started paddling the row boat like it was a canoe. I felt like Pocahontas being saved from Jaws by this great Indian Chief Paddler. After another five minutes, only toothpicks of the broken oars remained in his hands. No fish, no oars, a leaky boat, a hurricane of a wind storm, two dead batteries and a 100 pound paperweight of an engine. Don’t tell me I don’t know what real American problems feel like. We needed real change on those angry seas. We needed a real savior. Then we saw it, as if it were a mirage ten miles away. A boat came towards us, the driver wore a white robe which shone brighter than the noon-day sun. He spoke little but said, “Be ye believers?” We answered, “ yes.” No sooner could we finish our statement then the boat was accelerated to an incredible speed which coasted to a perfect stop at the necessary dock. I looked behind us toward the path we had travelled and saw only one set of wakes. I asked the driver of the other boat where the other wake was and he answered, “That is where I towed you.” It was about that time that I awoke from my dreamy state to realize my head was throbbing. My friend, in his aggressive paddling, whacked me in the head and knocked me out. Ok, Ok I admit it, some if not ALL of that story is true.


Truth is, that is the kind of president we need. We need a leader that can see the leaky boat, broken oars, dead batteries, worthless motor and say, “we need to be over there and I am going to take you.” That’s right………… we need a perfect dictator. Scratch that, terrible idea. But seriously though. No one man in democracy can make the necessary changes happen. All one man can do under the current system is what the contemporary presidents have been doing……patching holes, offering broken oars, trying to teach dumb people how to swim, hiding the lifeboat so nobody jumps ship, using a ½ HP trolling motor to push the titanic and other silly things that never fix the primary problems.

Here are the things on my checklist that must be reformed, revamped, re-anythinged to earn a higher grade than a “D” as a current president. If you want to know why all presidents of the last 20 years get D’s, then as you read the following points, ask yourself how in the heck has any president in the last 20 years changed any of the following for the better? I don’t mean attempted to change but actually changed any of the following items. None of these problems happened overnight, they have all been going on for thirty to forty years.

1. Social aid. Everyone is milking this. You can’t turn around our national economy without addressing the biggest, ugliest, most expensive portion of our deficit. This includes welfare, Medicaid, unemployment, Medicare, the prison system, immigration support, and every social program that is solely reliant on grants and government funding. The government refers to this in their budget pie chart as “necessary spending.” What I love about the budget pie chart is that the government got smart and starting dividing up the all those social aid programs to make social security and the defense look bigger. Don’t be confused, pull out your calculator and work the numbers yourself.

2. Social security. We are dumping huge amounts of money into this program and it is sinking way too fast to fix.

3. Defense. Do we have to be at war all the time? Do we really need to dump 16.6% of our budget towards defense? This pie chart is so awesome it has a special section called “global war on terror” AKA Middle Eastern donations of $145 Billion. Fear not, I will talk about this individual topic in a future post.

4. Waste. 7.2% of our budget is “other off-budget discretionary spending.” I wish my personal budget could afford a preplanned $50 billion mark off target. That is just one line item mentioned on the pie chart but all the pieces of the pie are replete with prolific monetary waste.

5. Bailouts. It is not our collective responsibility to bailout everyone’s mistakes. Whether it is an individual or company bankruptcy we need to re-write how we whitewash the system. I once heard that Trump actually plans on declaring bankruptcy every 7 years to remove his debts. What a disgusting, fake-hair, sleeze-bag! But tons of people and businesses do it every year.

6. National debt. We are no longer the international trade standard and our national debt is the reason why. This is actually the primary reason that our economy will progressively get worse and worse as time goes on. We are devaluing the dollar because we are losing our reputation as the international trade standard.

7. We can’t produce anything in this country. You can point fingers at unions, retirement programs, international labor costs, manufacturing costs, resource production and resource limitations, hippies, lawyers, environmental concerns and on and on and on. Fact is we can’t afford to make a dang thing. You can’t outsource all your labor forever, eventually other countries will get smart and cut you out of the picture.

You may notice that NOT ONE of the social predicaments such as abortion, gay marriage, drug legalization, illegal immigration, death penalty, equal rights, baseball and other worthless media highlights are even mentioned on this list. The simple fact is the government should have very little to do with or little say on any of those problems. People should have the right to sort out such trivial social problems because all of those issues are a matter of opinion. The government can never regulate such things without making some or lots of people upset. Most of these are moral issues. Why the heck is the government really making calls on moral issues? Since it is so difficult to sort out right and wrong on moral issues, let us take advantage of our democratic rights and vote on them. All of those things should just be put to a public vote and the majority rules. End of story. Maybe we can re-vote every ten years or something like that. If you don’t like it, try to be proactive and persuade people to your opinion. It is called democracy and that is supposed to be how it works.

So when am I going to get a president that will fix or attempt to fix all of those problems. Um…… well……he/she will have to be a dictator for that to happen. We will either get a Hitler or King Solomon. History seems to teach that we are in line for another Hitler as opposed to King Solomon. Sieg Heil B!

Raw Data (Budget Deficit)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

I love looking at raw data which comprises unique information. How many people have climbed Mt. Everest every year, what vehicles survive the longest and which survive the shortest, how much wood would a…you get the point. My mind is filled with utterly worthless trivia.

The Germans tried to copy Coca-Cola and came up with the drink Fanta. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise. If an Amish man has a beard, he is married. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning. SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below. In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives. Barbie's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts. The Himalayas cover one-tenth of the Earth's surface.

Did you know that 1945 was the worst year to be a rich man in the U.S.? If you made over $200,000 in 1945 then the government was going to tax 94% of that. Can you believe that?! That same year, the poorest person alive was still taxed 23%. War is awesome! See….. some things are getting better! Something that is surely getting worse is the great and abominable “national debt” of about 11.4 trillion dollars. That number increases by about 3.8 billion every day.

Have you ever had those teachers that one day thought up this great analogy of everyday life which could easily illustrate every principle they are ever supposed to teach in the classroom? A college chemistry professor I had used diet coke as the ultimate example of chemistry. One of my college economics professors would use the same example of how he used to be able to fly from El Paso to Phoenix and L.A. for like $35 roundtrip for every economics point he ever made. Deep down, I loved that man. We never had homework, only exams, and during the class before the exam he would read every single question for the multiple choice test and provide the correct answer. The test was also open book and open notes. In spite of these efforts, about 30% of the class failed every semester. Never underestimate the stupidity of a freshman. I learned nothing from that man. One thing he always would say is that, “we don’t need to worry about the national debt because that is like taking money from one pocket and putting it into the other.” That comment didn’t sit well with me then nor does it today.

Suppose you want to spend more money this month than your income. This situation is called a "budget deficit". So you borrow (use your credit card). The amount you borrowed (and now owe) is called your debt. You have to pay interest on your debt. If next month you don't have enough money to cover your spending (another deficit), you must borrow some more, and you'll still have to pay the interest on the loan. If you have a deficit every month, you keep borrowing and your debt grows. Soon the interest payment on your loan is bigger than any other item in your budget. Eventually, all you can do is pay the interest payment, and you don't have any money left over for anything else. This situation is known as bankruptcy.Each year since 1969, Congress has spent more money than its income. The Treasury Department has to borrow money to meet Congress's appropriations.We pay interest on that huge debt. And now the Treasury is having trouble finding lenders. The U. S. Dollar is being replaced as the international trade standard. Our large national debt is the main reason; and now (2009) Congress has just passed the "Economic Stimulus" bill that will shift us from an "economic crisis" to a debt crisis! If businesses could print their own money and give it away to customers so they could buy the products, many folks would be happy for a while; but the businesses would go bankrupt. Well, that's what our government is currently doing, printing and giving away money. We used to say that in order for the government to give us something they would have to take something away from us; in all actuality, they can just print more.

The New American Dollar

Here is some really really crazy trivia that I can’t even come close to understanding. Since 1984, consumer prices have been less than producer prices. If that is true, how have businesses even been alive since 1984? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. The only fix I can come up with for this economic nightmare is George Clooney. He is the only man that can pull humans out of “The Perfect Storm.” If I were the president or congress, I would be knocking him down with questions right now. You know, I didn’t know George Clooney was even a doctor but I saw this real hospital story where George Clooney saved a guy that had cancer, 14 bullet holes, and AIDS. If George Clooney could save that guy he could surely save our economy.

Well if you are wondering where all of this trivia is going, I would like to refer you to the picture below to help you understand what is about to happen to us.