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| Just in case you want to check a current observation that you have missed, here they are. The archives on this page go back a couple of months. The More Archives go back a few months further. If you want something older send me an e-mail via the Feedback page, I can send you my archive file that goes all the way back to the beginning of this journey through the hallways of my mind. The comments on these pages are mine and mine alone. If you disagree with my opinion, that's your right.
May 18, 2011....Tax Cheat Gets One
Right Timothy Geithner, our tax cheating Treasury Secretary, made
the following statements during a speech at the Harvard Club in “Neither Congress nor the administration should be
able to use unrealistic assumptions about future economic growth or future
political courage, or other forms of magical thinking, to minimize the magnitude
of the reforms that will be necessary.” “fiscal problems are so pressing that they threaten to undermine the foundations of our future economic strength” and the country’s ability “to protect our national security interests.” Floored me to hear that anyone within the Obama
administration has the balls to tell it like it really is. Of course those are
the kind of comments that might just put Geithner on the fast track out of town
permanently. Heaven forbid should we have too many people in President Obama traveled to It should be no surprise to anyone that the school that won the White House’s contest to have the president speak at their graduation ceremony is a primarily black high school from a depressed neighborhood. It’s been over a week now since our Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden. The media keeps coming up with new angles to keep the story alive, but the thing about all of this that burns my butt the most are those who keep saying we should have taken him alive so he could have his day in a US courtroom. Anybody who thinks that way should have their heads examined… right here in Central Florida we have a trial starting this week, you might have heard about it, for a sorry excuse for a mother facing charges that she caused the death of her 2 year old daughter and then proceeded to try to cover it up with a bogus story about a non-existent babysitter. It’s taken the judicial system 3 years to get this far and most likely will spend tens of millions of dollars before it’s over. Can you just imagine trying to hold and prosecute Osama bin Laden? It would take decades and the trial itself would end up lasting months and would cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars. No… the cost of a couple of bullets to dispense justice in this case suits me just fine. Alright… they say they killed Osama bin
Laden. Since there is no body to put on display on the National Mall in Let’s suppose that the reason our government has told us that they buried bin Laden’s body at sea is to keep anyone for looking for or expecting to see a body. What if all the pictures and video’s that will be released in the coming days and weeks were staged specifically to corroborate the story. What are the chances that the operation
President Obama ordered wasn’t a search and destroy mission but a search and
extract mission? The Navy Seals
could have just as easily taken bin Laden alive, made him up to look dead, took
some photos and videos for prosperity and then smuggled him back into the Somehow I don’t buy all the talk that
Obama thinks Osama is such a bad person. After all they both have been
tirelessly working toward the same goal… the destruction of the After a shit load of embarrassing press Florida Workforce has decided to discontinue their latest promotion that involved giving away red super hero capes to the unemployed…. Apparently they spent $73,000 on this campaign, of which $14,000 was used to buy thousands of red capes. I suppose that most of the dumb-masses will now believe that since the program got cancelled that the agency has recovered the $73,000 so that it can be better spent. They’d be fools… my guess is the whole $73,000 worth of materials is going to end up in the dumpster with the hopes that the hoopla associated with it disappears as quickly. What should happen is those responsible for the idiotic idea reimburse the agency every dollar spent foolishly. We should also conduct an investigation to see if anyone within Florida Workforce either directly or indirectly influenced the purchase of all this crap from a company directly or indirectly owned/operated by a relative or friend. It wouldn’t surprise this person to find out it was the case… in which the party(ies) involved should face criminal charges. The Orlando Magic’s 2011 playoff run started last Saturday… every Magic fan was experiencing a sense of euphoria last week while dreaming of winning their first NBA championship. Unfortunately with the highs come the lows… If the Magic loose game two at home Tuesday night you’ll see a lot of long faces around town come Wednesday morning. President Obama gave a pep talk to the nation this afternoon on the economy. He started off with a history lesson, which regurgitated the Democrat’s position that places blame for our current economic woes on the second Bush administration’s fiscal irresponsibility… ie tax cuts for the wealth and an unfunded expensive prescription drug program. I’m not sure why he failed to include in his list of fiscal irresponsibility the uncontrolled spending spree that he’s orchestrated over the coarse of the last two years. Obama then went onto give us the bad news/good news. The bad news being if we continue on the present path we’ll loose favor with those lending us money and interest rates will skyrocket for everyone. The good news being he’s got the plan to correct the problem… only problem is it’s the same plan he’s been trying to implement since he took the oath of office, which is make the wealthy pay more in taxes. Obama spent a lot of time detailing scenarios that would either have the elderly and disabled fend for themselves and the only way to prevent that is to increase the taxes on the richest Americans. If there was ever any doubt that President Obama would like to transform this nation into a socialist society… one where the government tells you when you have enough and takes the rest away from you to redistribute it to those who they feel should have more, this speech should have erased all suspicions. So what is Obama’s grand plan for
bringing fiscal responsibility to Florida Governor Rick Scott signed and executive order directing most state agencies to put a drug free policy in place within the next 60 days that mandates pre-employment drug screens for new hires and random drug screening for all state employees. It should come as no surprise that the American Civil Liberties Union was the first of many liberal organizations to raise a stink over the very idea of drug testing employees. So what’s the big deal here? Employers have a right to demand a drug free workplace and it seems strange to me that the State hasn’t taken the lead on making it happen before now. I’m sure there are statistics to prove that people who routinely take illegal drugs are much more likely to perform poorly, have unreliable attendance records, are more likely to be involved in or cause on the job accidents… in short employees with a drug problem are a huge liability and there should be a system in place to either weed them out or force them to clean up their act. Florida’s Governor Rick Scott called Washington today and told them we weren’t interested in their 2.4 billion in Federal funds to build a high-speed rail between Orlando and Tampa. We finally have someone in government that doesn’t have their head up their ass and can see what a financial drain this albatross would be on the State of Florida once it was built. Oh sure for a few years the construction industry would salivate at the prospect of pocketing a ton of cash at the expense of the Federal Budget and it would create plenty of jobs… but they aren’t long term jobs. Obama just can’t see that if he let small business people (the one’s he’s targeted for huge tax increases) keep the money they earn they will create the jobs we need to climb out of this hole we have created for ourselves. When you start punishing success with higher taxes to fund useless projects, which also requires this country to borrow 40 cents out of every dollar it spends the hole only gets deeper. President Obama in a speech today said, there are very few chances in our lives to witness the kind of transformation that has taken place in Egypt today. He went on to shower praise on the people who have been relentless demanding a change from the suppressive government that they have lived under for the past 30 years and how Egypt has opened the path to creating a government based on free and open elections by the people. I think he may be jumping the gun… what makes him so sure that the new government that emerges from the ashes of the current regime will resemble what we do here? If we send Jimmy Carter over there to supervise and certify free and open elections we can pretty much count on a cluster @#&*. Please… can we get past Christina Aguilera’s mistakes while singing the National Anthem at last weekends Super Bowl? They hired a foreigner who has trouble with the English language to sing our National Anthem… They got what they paid for! Enough Said. It’s become apparent this week that the US Supreme Court will ultimately decide the constitutionality of Obama Care. It should be obvious to everyone that congress and the Obama administration has overstepped its authority by mandating the purchase of health care insurance. However there are a lot of stupid people out there that don’t see such a disregard to the constitutionality of a law as a deterrent to its existence. You should be scared… very scared that the Supreme Court Justices will place their blessing on Obama Care and all of it’s demons. The homophobes are always worried that if we legalize same sex marriages that it will lead to people wanting the government to recognize the union of man and his dog or man and his favorite plant. Well… if the Supreme Court rules that the government has the power over the people to force them to purchase health care insurance what other demands could they legally place on us? Broccoli is good for your overall health… why not mandate that everyone eat broccoli? In some states they are already talking about making any kind of distraction while your walking a crime. Let’s make that a Federal law. Where does it end? At what point does the US population stand up and say enough is enough and start fighting back? I don’t know the answer to that. As long as the government keeps finding stupid people to lend them money so they can constantly expand the number of voting citizens feeding off the government tit there is no end in sight… Unfortunately I’m afraid that we’re going to have to face a financial crisis of the likes we’ve never experienced before enough people wake up to the notion that we should be embracing freedom instead of running away from it. I’m sure you’ve seen the video of the woman who fell into a mall fountain while texting on her phone… We’ll now we have legislators all over the country who think that it’s a great idea to pass laws to make it illegal to partake in any distraction while walking, running or in general doing anything but standing still. Why don’t we just make breathing illegal so we can throw everyone in jail… This is the mind set of the legislators that you put into office… they’ll dance around the issues that need attention because they are going to bring this country to it’s knees, but jump all over some ridiculous notion that we can regulate stupidity. The parents of Christina-Taylor Green, the nine-year-old girl who was gunned down and killed by Jared Lee Loughner during the assault on Congresswoman Gifford a two and a half weeks ago in Arizona will be President Obama’s guests at tonight’s State of the Union Address. Can you fathom the conversation that lead to their decision to accept such an invitation? They must be big Obama supporters because otherwise you would think they would have told Obama to whore some other unsuspecting sap to use to bolster his image as a compassionate leader. Try to put yourself in their situation having just buried your daughter while dealing with the hoard of national media attention. There is no way I’d be in any kind of emotional condition to even make the trip… I hope Obama is making it well worth it to be exploited for the explicit purpose of improving his chances of getting re-elected. The war between the two biggest players in the tax return preparation industry is heating up … H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt are at each others throats in an attempt to sway a bigger share of the pie in their direction. You’ve heard the ads… free tax preparation, free electronic filing, get a huge refund in days… blah blah blah. Does anyone out there think they are giving away their services for free? If your shaking your head up and down you should go stand in line with the rest of the morons. What’s really happening here is a timeless example of bait and switch. New income restriction on the part of the IRS give the big tax preparer firms the authority to limit who can actually get their return filed for free. I believe its somewhere in the $58,000 range. For the ones who still qualify they’ll find in the small print a statement that filing for an earned income credit isn’t included. Of course those are the really big profit returns, the ones HR Block and Jackson Hewitt make the lions share of profit from… the returns that include a huge Earned Income Credit. The returns filed by people who salivate all year at the prospect of the government giving them thousands of dollars for nothing. The type of people who don’t have a problem spending someone else’s money on things like Refund Anticipation Loans that carry interest rates that make loan sharks envious. If the whole process wasn’t sanctioned by the US Government what they do would certainly be illegal. Have we gone numb to the news of a gun being discharged at a school that results in serious injuries to multiple students? That’s what happened on Tuesday in a It’s now Wednesday morning and I had to search to find this story on MSNBC and Yahoo News. I did so after hearing a news flash on the radio Tuesday afternoon but remembered that I hadn’t heard the story while watching the news Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. Could it be that because the gun went off
on it’s own? Was it because, as the story on MSNBC states, “The 17-year-old
student was negligent in bringing the 9 mm semiautomatic pistol to Either way two students have injuries that will affect them both physically and mentally for the rest of their lives… that’s providing the girl survives at all. Unfortunately the main street media didn’t deem the story worthy of any news copy or airtime. I tuned into the Neil Boortz show Monday morning to discover that his long time engineer and friend Royal Marshall had died over the weekend at the age of 43 of a massive heart attack. The news hit me hard because of the fact that he left behind a wife and two very young daughters. It’s always hard to hear about someone dieing way too young, but especially hard when there are children involved. As is typical in situations like this a trust is being set up so that the public can make donations to a fund that will take care of the needs of the remaining living family members. Being a presents on a highly rated radio talk show I’m sure Royal has a lot of people across the country who will feel compelled to make a donation… however in Royal’s case I can think of three close friends and co-workers who by themselves could fund this trust with more money than either of Royal’s two daughters could ever need and never miss it. Why do I bring this up? Because I’m sure that every single day of the year there are dozens of similar situations around the country where small children are left fatherless, but what do they get? If they’re lucky they qualify for some paltry Social Security payments, otherwise they are mostly left to fend for themselves. It would do my heart good if I was to find out that Royal’s widow puts at least some of the money that will swell this trust fund to good use helping other people in similar situations. The world observed the first anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti. We should be talking about all the great things that have happened rebuilding lives using the billions of dollars donated by bleeding heart Americans. Unfortunately the reality is that about 2/3 of that money is unaccounted for and has most likely been pilfered by corrupt Haitian government officials and their elite supporters. I don’t know why any of this is a surprise to anyone… it’s how the country was run before the earthquake. The discussions stemming from last weekends
shooting spree in The big news story from the weekend was the attack by Jared Lee Loughner that killed 6 people and severely injuring several others including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. To me its a clear cut case of a man with several screws loose with a gun and a grudge against the system… the last time a case of violence against a sitting member of congress resulted in a death was 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was gunned down… So is the media digging into the background of this disturbed young man to discover what motivated him to commit such an atrocious crime? No, actually they are doing their best to pin the catastrophe on Sara Palin and the Tea Party crowd. The conservative crowd has immediately gone on the offensive defending Palin and the Tea Party movement, which leaves the real victims of this horrible tragedy forgotten even before the dust settles. The media and politicians… on both sides of this story should be ashamed of themselves for the way they are handling themselves. The boob tube at our house was tuned to the People’s Choice Awards program Wednesday night… at least I think its still classified as an awards show. There were several times that I had to do a double take because what I was hearing sounded more like QVC or an infomercial. Award shows have typically given prize packages to the award winners… usually a lot of trendy overpriced crap that nobody in their right mind would buy. However this was a first for me watching the host of the show working in a promo for each item during the presentations. Is this the new norm? If it is it’s a tacky move on the part of television producers and unfortunately a huge decline in the already lousy quality of our television programming choices. Just to make our New Year special John Hofmeister retired Shell Oil executive is predicting that we’ll be paying over $5 a gallon for gasoline by 2012. Whenever I hear an industry insider priming us for huge price hikes at the pump I can’t help but think that it has nothing to do with the future price of crude oil and everything to do with gauging our reaction to see how hard and how fast the industry can get us there. Of course along with talk of high gas prices comes dialogue about tapping into the vast resources of crude oil located within US boarders… unfortunately those discussions will fall on deaf and dumb ears in Washington and bring the tree huggers out in groves with their gloom and doom predictions for global environmental catastrophe. Yesterday’s big news story came out of Panama City, Fl where ex-con Clay Duke pulled a gun at the local school board meeting and attempted to kill several of the board members before being wounded by a security guard. Duke then ended the ordeal by fatally shooting himself. From what planet did this moron come from? Duke has a beef with the school board because his wife couldn’t cut the mustard and was let go 10 months ago from her teaching position, so he decides the solution to his woes is to shot somebody and then kill himself? What warped reality do these people live in where irrational actions suddenly make sense? Do our politicians have their heads up there asses? The current legislation to extend the Bush tax cuts includes a provision that will lower the Social Security tax rate on the employee by 2%. For the average working stiff it’ll mean a few bucks more in their paycheck each week. For the employer it doesn’t do a thing except to make payroll calculations that much more complex and confusing. What it does do is take $120 billion away from the money the government uses to write Social Security checks. The system is already a fiscal train wreck… leave it to our government to find a way to accelerate the rate at which it goes broke.President Obama compromised his core principles and has agreed to a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for everyone… he went on record as saying that the move would be the best way to spur economic growth within the private sector and create jobs. How much is too much? That’s the question I wish someone from the Obama administration would tell us… Is it $250,000? $1 million? At what point should the federal government be able to say you have enough? And what then? It seems to me that when the liberal crowd talks about the nasty rich making more money than anyone should have they are basically saying that anything above this hypothetical threshold should be taxed at 100%. The liberals talk about it being a matter of fairness to tax the rich because they happen to have a disproportional share of the money… but what happens when those nasty rich stop working when they hit the point where they won’t be allowed to keep any more of the money they earn? Who do you tax then??? Do we keep lowering the threshold until it gets down to say $50,000? Well do we? Wouldn’t it only be fair? Congress is gearing up to look at eliminating employer based healthcare tax breaks as a way to reduce the federal deficit… in short the government is going to be looking into shifting the health insurance premiums employers now pay as an untaxed benefit and deduct as an expense and making the value taxable reportable income to the employee. The way I see it, for the employer it’s a wash… they get to deduct the cost either way (as an outright expense or as part of the employee’s compensation.) The difference is the federal government will, for the first time in history, be collecting income taxes on the value of your health insurance benefit. The real kicker is the bull shit coming out
of Once we’re aware of the cost they feel that the government-sponsored exchanges will provide a better option for most people and we’ll all migrate to the government plans… further pushing the private insurance industry out of business. It’s
a win-win situation for The horror stories about abusive pat downs at airport screening keep coming in, however despite the public outcry the TSA has said in no uncertain terms tough shit… the new rules are going to remain in place! Talk show hosts keep telling us the TSA has gone too far and we should push back… which might be a nice idea for someone who could turn around and charter a private jet to take them where they want to go, but for the rest of us the prospect that we could be handcuffed and escorted out of the airport if we voice the smallest of objections leaves us right where they want us… scared to death of the consequences of opposition. Is this where our federal government is taking us… down that slippery slope towards a Totalitarian Society? Neil Boortz tells us that the Federal Transportation Department is looking into mandating all cars come equipped with a cell phone jammer to prevent us from using our cell phones while driving. I’m sure the FDA would love to be able to legislate healthy eating… It’s scary to think the federal government might have to take away our Twinkies before we push back. The discussion about the Bush tax cuts was hot and heavy on Tuesday’s edition of the Phillips Phile. Jim Phillip’s contention is that those evil evil rich people, the ones who stand to benefit with an extra $700 in their pocket if the tax cuts are extended for everyone, don’t need the money and they should be willing to make that sacrifice for the betterment of our country. I don’t know if his numbers add up, but he believes that the 1% of the population considered to be in the ‘rich’ category translates into 30,000,000 taxpayers. According to my calculations, based on real figures, the number is more like 2,800,000. (based on 144,400,000 Individual tax returns filed in 2009 times 1% and assuming they are all married filing joint returns equals 2,800,000) Multiply my numbers by the $700 and you get just shy of $2 billion in additional tax revenue… theoretically. Historical reality tells us that if you slap the rich with extra taxes it actually causes a decrease in the tax revenue because the rich are not creating any new jobs, which expands the income base from which the IRS collects taxes on. But that is a whole different argument and trying to talk logic with a liberal is like beating your head against a wall. All they see are the opportunities to take from the rich so the government can give to the poor poor pitiful poor. So anyway… I came up with a compromise
solution. Extend the Bush tax cuts but put a new line item on the tax forms to
allow taxpayers to voluntarily kick in an extra $700 per person to their tax
bill. I’d bet that from the 200+ million The
bigger question still remains… would any of it matter? Using my numbers the
government is looking at increasing revenues by $2 billion. Congress can blow
that before their feet hit the floor getting out of bed in the morning. When
you’re $3 trillion in debt it hardly seems like it’s worth the effort. So
that brings us back to finding the elected officials with the balls to go to If you thought Halloween was the height of the begging season think again… we’re just getting into the 2010 Begoween campaign. It might be the numerous Angel Trees where some really deserving kid signs up to get a present from a total stranger because his parents won’t be able to give them anything for Christmas. Or it might be the local food bank telling us how little food they have on the shelves to distribute to the millions of unfortunate people who are going to bed hungry. And the worst of them all is the quasi-religious group who collect shoeboxes full of goodies for boys and girls in third world countries so they too can share in the joy of the Christmas season… of course they throw in a good dose of self-serving religious propaganda before they forward your donation on to its final destination. I get so tired of people begging for donations to their particular charity to help the needy when I know a good chunk of those charities are designed to make certain individuals wealthy, sometimes at the expense of those they claim to help. Ask yourself what does the top executive at the Florida Blood Bank do to earn the hundreds of thousands of dollars they take in compensation? And who are these millions of people who won’t have anything this holiday season if I don’t pitch in with a donation? They are people who have been groomed to fail by a government that has pandered to them for way too long. Hell… I go to bed hungry most nights… should I put my hand out hoping someone will feed me? Oh yeah… I’m on a diet to loose weight so the hunger is self inflicted. However when the government counts the hungry they don’t ask why you went to bed hungry they are only interested in inflating the numbers by turning a deaf ear to the truth. I know, I know… many of you are saying, ‘where’s your Christmas spirit?’ My Christmas spirit is with my children and my grandchildren… charity starts at home and lord knows I give enough there and I’m glad to do so. Is the TSA out of control? TSA rules recently have been revised as the full body x-ray scanners are being deployed in airports around the country and the use of metal detectors, including the handheld wands are phased out. Apparently if you refuse to submit yourself to the x-ray machine a TSA employee will take you aside and conduct a full body pat down, which leaves no part of your body untouched. The pat down, which is conducted by a same sex employee, is supposed to be done in private, but most passengers are manhandled where other passengers can view the procedure. I don’t believe that line of bull for a second… when you step into that full body scanner knowing that someone on the other end is seeing an image of you naked how are they supposed to let anyone know if they see anything suspicious if the two TSA agents aren’t communication as you’re being scanned? Now we’re hearing if you get to the screening and refuse both the scan and the pat down that you can’t get on your flight and you face a $10,000 fine if you leave the airport without giving the TSA the pleasure of grouping your most private parts. Where does the abuse stop? One man taped a TSA agent admitting that what they are doing would be considered sexual abuse... if they weren't the government. Next week is one of those busy travel weeks and the first during the 2010 holiday season… It will be interesting to see how load the outcry gets before the TSA backs off. A used car dealer in Sanford, FL began a promotion where he advertised a free AK-47 to anyone who buys a truck from him. Wouldn’t you know the story has created a firestorm of controversy throughout the community and across the country… fueled by the over zelous media attention. The evening news program where I first heard of the story did an interview with the owner of the business and he explained that he isn’t actually handing anyone a semi-automatic weapon with the keys. He’s giving truck buyers a $400 voucher to a local gun shop to be used on the purchase of a gun. If anyone doesn’t want the voucher he’ll give him or her $400 cash. So what’s really happening here… in the process of over sensationalizing this story the media has given this used car dealer more exposure than he could ever dream of getting. The media in this case is acting the part of the fool… and an ignorant public is falling right in line with them. At the onset if the media had said, ‘I’m not going to help this idiot sell trucks’ and killed the story the promotion would have expired without so much as a whisper and the used car dealer would have slithered back underneath his rock to contemplate his next move. Is the future of Florida High Speed Rail in trouble? Could be if Governor Elect Rick Scott stays true to his principles. I say if because the powers to be that stand to gain the most by building a HSR system are applying the pressure to get Scott to change his mind. Its sort of Scott’s first test and he hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet… If he caves we know we’ve elected the same old political mindset, money and clout are in the drivers seat while logic and common sense get thrown out the window. In which case we’re screwed again. The logic in this case is asking the
question, does Senator Bill Nelson might say we don’t want to look back 25 years from now and say we missed our opportunity. I say we definitely don’t want to look back 25 years from now and say what a colossal waste of time and money. On the flip side… if they wanted to build a rail line (something short of the bullet train envisioned) that went from the airport to Disney property I might actually think they had something. The congestion on I-4 is mainly within the Metro Orlando area. If we could get most of the tourists out of their rental cars and off the highways you might stand a chance of giving the rest of us a break. Obama says the United States needs to do more to repair the frayed relationship with the Muslim world… Maybe Obama hasn’t been paying attention, but it’s the Muslims that keep saying death to America. Of course we’ve heard it over and over that it’s only this very small portion of the Muslim world, the most radical and extreme factions that wish to do us harm. However until that larger portion… the ones who apparently tolerate us… unite as one voice and publicly proclaim loud and clear to the whole world and their warped brothers that they denounce the actions and ideals of those few giving the Muslim religion a bad name will I start to believe them. I also don’t believe I’m going to be holding my breath waiting for that day to come because I truly think the Muslim world is just as threatened by their radical members as the rest of the world is. What is up with all this flap about Florida Governor Charlie “the putts” Crist granting Jim Morrison a pardon for something the long dead rock star did on stage back in 1969. The media would have you believe Crist is solidly behind the idea when in reality this one particular reporter, Gary Fineout, has been hounding Crist with the question for the last four years and even Fineout doesn’t admit he’s a Door’s fan nor does he have any particular reason to see Morrison get a posthumously pardon. What I’m seeing is freelance reporter Gary Fineout’s desperation to find some reason for the media to mention his name. Nothing more nothing less… a lame pitiful ploy to gain attention and possible notoriety in the eyes of his peers. One of the provisions of the massive Healthcare Reform Act passed earlier this year involves a huge increase in the 1099 rules that would force every business to spend a fortune to comply… President Obama touched on the issue during his post election comments on Wednesday. Obama hinted that he might be willing to let that part of healthcare reform go, but only because business is unwilling or unable to comply. I look at the provision and wonder how the IRS is going to expect to handle the flood of documents that will be filling up the mailbox. If the expansion of the 1099 provision was going to be a burden on business you can multiply that by a 1,000 and that’s the effect it will have on the IRS infrastructure. For every dollar the provision is expected to increase federal tax revenues the IRS will no doubt spend two dollars to manage the paperwork. Anyway you look at it, if the government keeps the 1099 expansion in place the only people who will not be losing their shirts are the tens of thousands of new IRS employees trying to keep the system from imploding. It’s amazing… less than 24 hours after being handed a resounding defeat of the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party we get President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid talking about compromise and the importance of working together. Is it possible that these two actually believe they can still push their socialist agenda down the throats of the American people? Obama is clueless… he believes that the election results came as a result of him not moving the country toward socialism fast enough, that he just didn’t get enough of his agenda done quickly enough. The reality of the situation is the people of this country… at least those who want an opportunity to succeed without a government handout… don’t see much of a future for themselves or their children and grandchildren if we followed Obama’s roadmap for America. Perhaps the strangest ballot proposition
before the voters this year would have to be Initiative 300 for the City of
Denver, Colorado. If the voters approve the measure the city will create an
Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission… a seven-member board whose job it would
be to “ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of The initiative is the brain child of Jeff Peckman… I wonder if anyone has suggested creating a commission to investigate what he’s smoking. Election day… or as most people call it freedom day, freedom from the obnoxious phone calls and endless negative political advertising. I don’t know anyone who isn’t sick to death with the crap that masquerades as a political campaign. Politicians spend millions of dollars to tell us why the other guy/gal isn’t fit to hold office, while their opponent is doing the same. If we took the political ads as the gospel truth there wouldn’t be anyone on the ballot who should win. So once again it comes down to the age-old program of holding your nose as you pull the lever for the lesser of the two crooks who made it onto the ballot. I know I’ve harped on this over and over, but when are we as a society going to demand real campaign finance reform… by reform I mean replacing our current system of financing political hopefuls with three simple rules;
Not only would these rules eliminate the influence of big money contributors on the political scene… it would make the candidates focus on the people they are going to be representing if elected. Imagine a world where you could back a political candidate with your $100 contribution and know that your money is just as important to the man running for political office as Bill Gate’s money would be… that is if Bill Gates lived in your voting district. Charlie Crist… will his last dirty political trick backfire? Setting up Bill Clinton in an attempt to get Meeks to drop out of the race and making early morning phone calls to the candidate himself to make a deal to get to his supporters. Charlie Crist has sold his political soul to the democrats in a last ditch effort to win. He Promised Bill Clinton that he would side with the liberal agenda if he could persuade Meeks to quite. Charlie Crist… once a putts always a putts. Space Shuttle Discovery is set to blast off on Tuesday for its last flight to the International Space Station. On board waiting for delivery is a robot... yes I said robot! Isn't that just what they need up in space, a robot that will, if built by any kind of government specifications, quickly become a maintenance nightmare if it works at all. This past weekend’s big screen box office champ with $50 million in ticket sales was Jackass 3D. Graco just issued a recall of 2 million child strollers because there is a possibility that if an infant is not buckled in properly they could slide down under the tray and suffocate. The recall has been prompted by 4 infant deaths that are attributed to the problem… all the deaths occurred between 2003 and 2005. The effected models were manufactured and sold between 2000 and 2007 because apparently they stopped making this particular model in 2007 due to regulatory changes that mandated design improvements of all strollers that eliminates this particular possibility. I can only imagine why this recall is happening 5 years after the fact or why the media is jumping all over it like it’s the day’s hottest news story. The most likely scenario is that Graco lost a lawsuit brought by one of the parents of a dead child who had a lawyer with enough bull to convince the courts that it wasn’t the parent’s fault. The French citizens are rioting in the streets… people are clashing with the police, overturning and burning cars… you would get the impression that they are really pissed off. So what is it that has crawled up their butts and is gnawing on them? The government is trying to push through legislation that will change the retirement age from 60 to 62. Oh My God! What a disaster. I feel real sorry for all those French who might have to wait until they are 62 to start drawing on their over bloated government pension. I’ve heard a couple of radio talk show hosts praise the rioters for standing up to the man like that, which is really saying that they believe us Americans have no balls when it comes to standing up to unpopular positions when it is being jammed down our throats. I’m not real sure where they get off saying such things… if the violence being displayed in France was to happen here our local, state and federal government agencies would waste no time using whatever force was necessary to squash the protestors and send a clear message to anyone else thinking about rioting that such behavior will not be tolerated. We might look like lambs quietly grazing until it’s our turn in the slaughterhouse, but those in political power who have been pushing their socialist agenda on an unwilling population might find out that those lambs are really wolfs come Election Day. When Charlie Crist came to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to beat Marco Rubio in the Republican primary for the US Senate he decided to ditch his Republican Party affiliation and run as an independent. The Democrats were salivating at the time because they figured that Crist would split the Republican vote and make Kendrick Meeks a shoe in to win… That was then, this is now… The reality of the situation is Crist is drawing more voter support from the Democrat side, which shouldn’t surprise anyone because Crist has always been a political whore and has flopped his positions to appeal more to the left. Voters in this election are looking for something other than the typical party lapdogs that seem to populate the halls of the Capital building. So now the Democrats are calling for Crist to pull out of the race and throw his support behind Meeks… it’s their only hope. On the other hand, Crist has been urging Meeks to pull out of the race and throw his support behind his independent campaign. Both of them have reached the end of their rope and are now clutching at anything they can scratch at to save their pitiful political lives. The mentality of some Democrats never ceases to amaze me… during the debate last night between the three US Senate candidates Meeks made the comment that he’s the only one of the three who voted to save Social Security by voting no on the legislation that would have given younger workers the opportunity to own 5% of their mandated Social Security withholdings. What is more surprising is the other two let him spout off like he was actually saving Social Security instead of attacking his position that only the federal government is capable of managing those funds. To listen to Meeks and others like him, if we let anyone actually own part of the Social Security money being taken from their paychecks that it would somehow magically be given directly to Wall Street. When in reality the Democrats are worried that they might actually have to invest that portion of the funds in an account that can’t be pilfered and spent on pet projects and worthless research grants. As I was saying in yesterday’s blog… we
spent last weekend in Anyway, for my own safety and the peace of mind for my wife I found activities where I’d be with a group. I booked a walking tour of the Garden District Saturday morning and a Photo tour of the French Quarter for the afternoon. As I was searching the variety of company web sites I notice most of them offered the standard faire of tours including the 'Katrina Destruction' tour. It’s been 5 years and apparently there is still enough devastation left to run buses full of tourists through. Makes me wonder, as long as the tourist industry is still profiting from the death and destruction in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina why would they ever want to clean it up and move on? Because of the chatter by known terrorists and the increased possibility of terrorist attacks in Europe, the US Homeland Security alert code was bumped up to Orange over the weekend, which apparently puts the TSA on high alert at all domestic airports. We were in New Orleans over the weekend and flew back Sunday afternoon and could tell our crack team of security officers were on their toes… first off they caught my wife trying to take the tiny snow globe she bought for her mother through the security checkpoint. All of one ounce of fluid in a plastic ball, but apparently it poised a serious threat to national security. They confiscated it and toss it in the trash when my wife told them there was no way she could get her checked bag back to put it into. (She then walked around the corner to the first gift shop and choice another snow globe from the dozens they had available for sale and took it on the plane.) When it was time for us to board the plane we passed by no less than 5 TSA officers standing in the gangway between the terminal building and the airplane. You know that retractable hallway you walk down to get to your plane. I’m not sure what purpose that served other than to spend a lot of money to get nothing done. (The only thing the government does well.) Schreiner works at the The problem I was seeing is Schreiner might be classified as handicapped, but doesn’t use a wheelchair and has apparently adequate use of his legs to be able to stand and make himself mobile. So why isn’t he utilizing the handicap spaces in the parking garage and the free shuttle service? Looks to me like he’s fully capable of getting into the golf cart that transports people between the courthouse and the parking garage, yet he insists on taking up a handicap space near the front door forcing others arriving alone confined to a wheelchair to make their way from the parking garage a block away. Is there no consideration on his part for those more handicapped than himself? The I can only imagine how much of it will be squandered on useless studies done by college graduates that couldn’t make a living in the real world. Former President Jimmy Carter gets a touch of airsickness
on a flight from If it was any other ordinary Joe they would have been given a barf bag and sent on his way. The Democrat plan is to take pie away from those who have too much and give it to those who don’t have enough. The Republican plan: Bake a bigger pie so everyone can have more pie. Why are politicians still saying “I’m So-n-So and I approved this message” when they are the only one in the commercial that has spoken? I understood the need when the phrase first became popular… a politician needed to endorse messages (usually negative) about their opponent that were being produced and paid for by unaffiliated political action groups, which in turn with out their endorsement gave the politician a way to distance themselves from some of the more fringe groups using nastier political tricks. Could it be the politicians feel they need to legitimize their own words???? Could it be that they are all liars and cheats and don’t even believe what they just said unless they make the ridiculous statement that they approve of the words that are coming out of their mouth? On Tuesday of this week Toy-r-us released it’s list of the 10 hottest toys for 2010. The list, in no particular order: Fisher Price Dancing Star Mickey Nerf n Strike Blaster Sing-A-Ma-Jigs Pillow Pets Lalaloopsy Dolls Magic Orbeez Maker Razor Ground Force Drifter Go-Cart X-Box’s latest/greatest Fisher Price Zommer’s Spinnin Sounds In my opinion this is a blatant and shameful ploy by the toy retailer to manipulate the market and make the items they fear they have too many of popular in the eyes of the children in order to create a demand. Reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ where Mr. Shellhammer, the manager of the toy department, slips Kris Kringle, Santa Clause, a list of toys to suggest if a child is undecided… I guess the toy industry hasn’t change all that much in the last 70 years. Ines Sainz, the Mexican bombshell sports reporter, is at the center of a sexual harassment claim filed with the NFL by fellow journalist when she became the subject of crude remarks inside the NY Jets locker room. First of all she’s in a man’s locker room… maybe she’s not sticking a microphone up into the face of some guy in the shower, but come on it’s still the men’s locker room. Sainz appeared on the Today Show Tuesday morning to defend herself. She didn’t make the complaint and wasn’t offended by any of the comments directed toward her. Sainz gets it… why don’t the rest of the media? If you dress like a slut you’re going to be treated like a slut. Sainz is okay with that because she knows it’s her looks that is going to take her places in the broadcast industry. She showed up on the Today Show wearing an outfit with an opening in front that served no other purpose than to show off her ample breasts. I rest my case. Pastor Jones, the self serving nut case who has been driving the media this week with his plan to burn a bunch of Koran's has cancelled the event and announced that he brokered a deal to move that controversial building of a Muslim mosque near the site of Ground Zero. Jones is flying up to NY City tomorrow for a face to face with the Muslim hierarchy to seal the deal... My guess is all this talk about the Muslim's moving their planned 'religious complex' is just that a lot of talk. How does it work? The biggest bully typically gets it their way at the expense of the weak. The anniversary of the 9-11-2001 terrorist attacks by extreme Islamists is this Saturday and one small church in Gainesville, FL is planning on burning the Koran to mark the occasion. As you might expect, word has reached the Muslim world and the masses are swarming the streets all over the globe in protest, carrying their banners and signs declaring death to America. Despite objections from the local police, the commander of the American forces in Afghan, the Black Panthers, the media and high ranking members of both political parties in Washington this once obscure pastor from nowhere USA hasn’t flinched on his plans… and he shouldn’t. If you ask me all this does is point out the deep-seated hatred the Muslim population as a whole has for America and that it's not just some supposed radical faction. If it wasn’t this event it would be something else… oh someone looked at our holy book cross-eyed. Islam doesn’t teach its followers religious tolerance. Its just the opposite, for them religious intolerance is a way of life, any excuse for a violent confrontation. On the other hand… I have to wonder what this pastor is teaching his small Christian flock by degrading another religion’s holy book. Isn’t Christianity supposed to be all about Faith, Love, Forgiveness and all that What Would Jesus do crap? I heard in one story that this church only has 50 members… could this be a publicity stunt by the pastor to gain notoriety and boost his membership roles? I wouldn’t put it past them… Christianity isn’t any different from any other religion when it comes to no holds barred self-promotion. The bodies of a missing Of course that’s not the story the media is focusing on… the fact that Turner had a request for a restraining order denied by the courts has the media on a witch hunt looking for someone to hang. Turner’s family is fueling the fire by making comments like she’d be alive today if the judge had granted the request… Unless you’re living with your head buried in the sand you have to realize how worthless a restraining order is if the psycho that is after you is hell bent on killing you, which in this case is exactly what happened. I can’t help wondering if the fool-hearted comments being made by Turner’s family isn’t something scripted by an attorney in order to increase the chances for a huge settlement on some bogus wrongful death lawsuit. It seems like our society is breeding these possessive jerks at an alarming rate and every time you hear one of these stories you realize just how powerless we all are and how neutered the courts are when it comes to domestic violence. Alan Grayson has cast the first stone in the race to keep his US House seat. The television spot highlights his Republican opponent Daniel Webster as a wasteful spender… having spent $35,000 on a spiral staircase in his office when he was first elected to the Florida State Legislature. This from a man who is still under attack from some of his constituents for spending $73,000 in tax payer funds to send out a DVD to every registered voter in his district, which was obviously a campaign move, but somehow he convinced the House review committee that it was not. (House review… if you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours) Alan Grayson is a jerk… he opens his
mouth and either something stupid or a lie comes out. He thinks his crap
doesn’t stink, but as far as I’m concerned he belongs in a loony bin. I
don’t know… maybe that makes him expressly qualified to be a The other This past week was the 5 year anniversary
of the devastation in Brian Williams was in the lower 9th ward
Friday morning where he was reporting on the recovery… Per his report, before
the flood there were 18,000 people who called that area home. 5 years later
there are fewer than 1,800. He was using those numbers to highlight the piss
poor response the residence have gotten to their plight.… I, on the other hand
beg to differ with his assessment. I think the numbers show significant
improvement by the citizenship of that area of I seriously doubt Brian Williams spent much time tracking down how the billions in government and private funds were distributed. Most of the displaced residents spent years living in government housing and resisted every move made that would push them back out on their own. If Katrina teaches us anything it should be that making people dependant on government handouts is a bad idea. The Florida primary vote is in and Rick Scott defeated the political insider Bill McCollum. Talk about throwing a monkey wrench into the Republican Party machine… I love it! After a day of silence from McCollum he finally came forth with what should have been a solidarity speech to rally his supporters behind the Scott’s campaign, but unfortunately having an outsider advancing in the race to fill the Governors office must be a tough pill for him to swallow. He had the nerve to say he couldn’t endorse Scott because he didn’t know who he was… The 2010 Florida primary vote is only a day away, which means it won’t be long before we know which two schmucks we have to choose from to replace the putts now serving as Florida’s Governor. Sometimes I wonder if politics have been this way for as long as this country has been having elections… did the citizens casting their ballot back in the late 1700’s have to hold their nose while making their choice like we do today? I keep hoping for the one candidate that will break out of the mold and actually run a positive campaign. A campaign with substance and a clear view of how they plan to tackle the issues instead of the tired old opponent bashing and generic talking points that they think you want to hear. Seminole County Florida opened its 2010/2011 school year on Monday with no crossing guards at several key intersections… no money in the budget to pay for them was the excuse given. Of course the news story created a firestorm from angry parents that rightfully are fearful for their children’s safety, which I’m sure was the reaction the school board expected. Now they can use the school crossing issue to get the State to cut loose of some more money to appease angry parents without having to find some item that is a big waste of taxpayer money and cut that out of the budget instead. I get so tired of the political games that use the children as pawns in a power struggle between the local school boards and the powers to be who have a strangle hold on the purse strings. Last night saw Republican Gubernatorial candidates Bill McCollum and Rick Scott face off in what should have been an opportunity to show the voters of Florida who they are and what they stand for... Unfortunately all the viewers got was an extension of the current batch of negative ads as both men used the same tired old accusations to bash their opponent. As a registered voter, the trait I look for first and foremost in a politician is the guts to be their own person and not play the typical political game... In all the years of voting I have only seen a handful who ever really deserved my vote. So what does that leave us with? Another ballot where you have to hold your nose as you vote for the lesser of the two stinkers. President Obama went to I wonder when the mainstream media is going to start calling out the first family for abusive use of public funds? The Obama’s might be paying for lodging and meals on these personal trips, but you know they fly on private government planes… and not just any planes. Air Force 1 is a highly specialized 747 and the first ladies plane must be a 757 if it’s doing trans-Atlantic duty. If anyone tells you the Obama’s are paying for their air travel too you can tell them they are full of crap… What might be happening is the first family reimburses the travel office an amount equal to the cost of a commercial flight and we’re supposed to make believe the rest of the cost to fly in a private government jet just materializes out of thin air. The Obama’s might be paying for their room and board, but the taxpayers are picking up the tab for their entourage’s travel expenses. Of course I know that Obama isn’t doing anything different than every other president has done… however I thought Obama was all about ‘change.’ I don’t see much change going on under his watch, unless change is running the country into the ground faster than any of his predecessor’s. A Federal Judge has ruled to block parts of
I’m
under the impression that Ben Burneke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, made a public comment that it might be good for our economic recovery to keep the Bush tax cuts in place beyond their current expiration date of December 31st. Wouldn’t that be like a Catholic Priest standing on the steps of the Vatican and saying there was no God. I can just imagine that oxygen masks were falling from the ceiling at the White House as they tried to avoid hyperventilating over the idea that one of their own had just thrust a dagger into the heart of the Democrat mission.
Are lawyers, while creating a new revenue stream for themselves, actually contributing to the housing problems facing our country? We hear them all over the television lately throwing out the phrase ‘strategic default.’ Which is just another way of saying walking away from your home and home mortgage. I’m sure there is a lot of people upside down with their mortgages… does that mean they all can’t make the payment and need to dump the property back onto the bank? I think not… in fact I believe that the more we hear the lawyers tell us that its perfectly acceptable to apply business logic to your home mortgage situation and abandon your contractual obligation with your mortgage company, the worse our situation is going to get. All these people who bought into the housing bubble by selling high and buying high or doing a refinance deal to pull all that inflated equity out of the home so they could buy a new car, motorcycle, boat or motor home need to face the fact that they made a lousy decision and unless they find themselves a victim of the economic downturn should keep paying for their mistake and hope for a speedy recovery so they might someday break even. Unfortunately we’re a society of ‘it’s not my fault.’ And as long as someone can figure out a way to make it easy to pawn their financial woes off onto someone else they’ll do just that. What people don’t realize is the more we dump the financial losses on the banks (Not that I’m feeling sorry for the banks at this point. They made their bed and need to lie in it too.) the longer its going to take to dig our way out of the hole we’re in. I have often wondered why the projections to supersize and recreate the Apollo moon mission was going to take 20 - 30 years to accomplish when the original moon landing mission took 6 short years and was orchestrated by engineers and scientists that were doing things man had never accomplished before using technology that has been far eclipsed by the refrigerators on the market today. Last night I happened to catch a documentary on the progress of the Apollo missions leading up to the first Lunar landing and realized what is different today... we're now a society of chickens unwilling to take the slightest risk that might result in some incident that the lawyers can use to sue the pants off anyone involved. The people running the Apollo program faced the loss of a whole crew on the launch pad before they even got the first ship into space and almost lost another crew in space when the third planned Lunar landing, Apollo 13 developed problems on its way to the moon, but somehow they managed to forge ahead in the face of what must have seemed like insurmountable odds. Today we have become afraid of our own shadow and have lost all confidence in our abilities to succeed that we find ourselves doing redundant tests on redundant tests before we dare take another step forward. And heaven forbid should something still goes wrong... We have to do countless studies and investigations on a political level before we let the engineers do their job of finding a solution and jumping back on the horse. The early NASA engineers were true pioneers... today we have become so inept that we can't even figure out how to follow their footsteps. And yet somehow we call that progress? The CEO of BP was seen attending a yacht race over the weekend and the media goes ballistic… followed closely by its ignorant audience. I’m not sure what people are thinking? Do they believe that if the CEO is out of the office that everyone working under him is taking the day off? We all know the CEO isn’t going to be down at the bottom of the Gulf with a straw attempting to suck up all of the oil still spilling into the waters. People are idiots if they think the CEO of BP is the key to fixing all the problems in the Gulf and they are morons if they think he’s the only one who has made mistakes. Our own government… all the way to and including the oval office has made their share in this comedy of errors. Obama might think he’s slicker than his old pal Slick Willie, but some of the decisions he’s made, particularly in the case of refusing to suspend certain regulations and restrictions that have put up road blocks in the way of much needed assistance from other countries, will come back to bite him when it comes time to run for re-election. President Obama signed an executive order on Thursday of last week that forbids federal agencies from making any more payment to dead people. Do we praise him for such a bold move… or should we simply shake our heads and wonder how many times that idea has been brought up at the White House and then gone no where. According to a recent report, over the last three years we’ve sent checks totaling $180 million to 20,000 dead people. That’s an average of $9,000 per corpse. Over the same period the federal government has issued checks totaling $230 million to 14,000 convicted felons who are either in jail or on the run. That’s an average of $16,428.57 per felon. And of course what story about government waste and abuse would be complete without mentioning that there was $65 billion in Medicare and Medicaid fraud payments last year alone. It never ceases to amaze me that our government can come up with these numbers, but can’t ever seem to do anything about curbing any of it or is it that they are simply unwilling to try. President Obama addressed the nation on Tuesday night from the Oval Office and brought us all up to speed on what’s happening with the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf. Well, at least he told us all the great things he believe he's done/doing. I’m not sure he really said anything concrete… he says he’s called for a comprehensive plan to deal with the here and now and he’s formed a committee to explore ways to avoid a similar incident in the future… both worthless political moves designed to pass the buck onto someone else’s shoulders. I’m not really sure what I or anyone else expects him to do… I know the liberal crowd thinks he should seize BP’s assets, but what would that accomplish? We’d end up with a different group of people standing around this gushing oil well scratching their asses wondering what to do next. Obama’s answer to the problem, in a nut shell, is to intimidate BP into handing over $20 billion (I say intimidate because there is no law that gives the federal government the power to force such a move) so a slush fund can be set up to pay damage claims that are being made by Gulf Coast businesses who have been impacted by the spill and have been repeatedly promised by Washington that they will be made whole.News Flash... After meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, BP executives have decided to turn over $20 billion to the federal government and will relinquish the task of handling any future damage claim payments to an organization of (I assume) Obama's choosing. Oh but not to worry... whoever is picked to dispense this $20 billion will do it with the typical efficiency of the federal government, which means it will get pissed away on administrative costs and fraudulent requests. In the end the federal government will turn the whole situation into a cluster f@*K. It's what they seem to do best. I heard a report a few weeks ago about how people along the Gulf Coast are being paid $18 an hour to scoop up oil and tar balls from the beaches. Folks who have boats (mostly out of work fishermen) are being paid handsomely to deploy booms or skim the oil off the surface before it gets on shore... God gave them lemons and some of them are making lemon-aid out of it... the rest of the Gulf residents (I'm guessing those who still think Obama is God) are sitting on their assets waiting for a handout. When are we going to wake up and realize the current way we choose our elected officials just isn’t working… I’m sure this isn’t a new trend in election campaigns, but it seem like this year we have an over abundance of millionaires/billionaires who have decided to fund their own political campaigns. Now if the campaign finance laws are supposed to give everyone a level playing field doesn’t allowing the really rich people spend an unlimited amount of their own funds tip the scale in their favor? I think everyone can agree that the campaign finance laws are a joke… but why does the candidate get a pass when it comes to giving money to his own campaign? What’s wrong with making candidates follow the same rules that dictate how anyone else can spend their money when it comes to funding a political candidate? Helen Thomas had a slip of the tongue and got caught speaking her mind. As a result she has been forced to resign from her position as a syndicated columnist with the White House Press Corps, a job she has held since the Kennedy administration. Personally for the last several years I've been wondering what in the world this old hag was doing there anyway. She's 89 years old for Christ sake... I can't imagine there is anything she could write that would be comprehensible. It’s official! The people affected by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will make it. They can all take a deep breath and relax knowing that everything is going to be okay because the big man himself has said so… President Obama met with his crisis team yesterday and when he finished conferring with his expert team of advisors he made the announcement that they have nothing to fear. Problem is now he’s counting on someone else to make that happen… which means those poor unfortunate bastards along the Gulf Coast are on their own, because the rest of the country is going to go about their business as if nothing has happened because Washington has declared it to be so. I’m close to finishing the book “Atlas
Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand. The book was written over 50 years ago and is about
what happens to society when one by one the leaders of private industry go on
strike in response to an over aggressive governmental assault on free enterprise
with the express intention of redistributing wealth to the looters and moochers.
Does that latter part of the story line sound familiar? The author
could have been writing a running biography of the current administration in At the center of the government opposition is a man named John Gault who makes a rather lengthy address to the American people as society as we know it is facing emanate collapse. During that speech he makes this statement. “you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.” If that doesn’t exemplify the sentiment of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party I don’t know what does. Art Linkletter passed away this week at the age of 97. His television shows taught me how to laugh… How sad is it that Art Linkletter’s kind of gentle humor has been lost in the sea of rude/crude reality TV that permeates the airwaves today. As I’m writing this, BP is in the process of using a procedure called ‘top kill’ to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. We most likely won’t know for a while if the attempt is going to be successful or not. If it doesn’t work the cries for Washington to take the lead in the effort to get a handle on this mess will be deafening. Unfortunately that’s when the Obama administration might actually have to admit they haven’t a clue what to do to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. There’s no denying that the economic and environmental impact from this mishap is going to be with us for decades and I have to wonder if this isn’t going to become the event that defines President Obama’s legacy… unless of course they somehow find a way to blame the lack of a governmental response to this disaster on the Bush administration. I know… I know that weeks ago the mighty messiah Obama gave the order for BP to stop the leak, but alas I’m afraid that his God powers must be fading about as fast as his approval rating. It must be a big shock to Obama to find out that just giving an order doesn’t always get the job done. Sometimes you have to get yourself down and dirty… of course in Washington’s typical response to anything they’ll throw a lot of cash at the problem… cash he doesn’t have to spend and despite the pledge that he made that the American taxpayers weren’t going to be paying the bill… I don’t know what dream world he was floating in when he made that statement. Even if the US Treasury isn’t writing the checks every American in this country is going to be paying to clean up this mess. When did we start trying criminal cases during the pre trial maneuvering? Casey Anthony’s attorneys have filed a motion to require the prosecution to disclose its strategy so the defense knows where they are going???? And the judge granted it! Somehow I don’t think the defense team is going to be as generous about sharing their game plan with the prosecution. I heard one news media outlet describing Casey as being in tears for most of her recent court appearance… However, I’m not sure if Casey was crying because the proceedings weren’t going all that well for the defense or if the tears were because she was missing The Price is Right? I just wish they'd get on with it so we can give this little bitch the ending she deserves. Was it a slow news day? Hannah Estes, a 4th grader vacationing with her family at Disney’s Animal Kingdom spotted a countdown sign at one of the rides that read, “one seconds.” She snapped a picture of it and sent it to Disney who promptly replied to the girl that the grammatical error would be corrected. For that she gets interviewed on national television? I would have thought the bigger story here would have been the search for a ride at any of the Disney parks that counts it’s wait time in seconds… The European nations have pulled together a $145 billion bail out package to save the Greek government from going bankrupt... I wonder if Barack Obama thinks the same kind of generosity will befall the United States when we reach the point of insolvency? Of course the buzz word on Capital Hill at the moment is the Value Added Tax... a politicians dream tax because it's paid by the consumer with every purchase they make, but it's built into the price so they never see how much the tax is, so Washington reaps the benefits while industry takes a ration of shit for higher prices. The way I see it Barack has already made up his mind that we're going to get this massive additional tax burden piled onto the backs of every citizen of this country... despite the fact that such a tax will stifle business growth and drive more companies overseas. He doesn't care because he's clueless when it comes to economic issues. All he knows is how to take from those who have so that he can give to those who don't... The 2010 NFL Draft is in full swing… 26 football team owners wheeling and dealing in human flesh... Hey, wait just a minute.... Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like slave trading? I guess when the outcome is dozens of uneducated jocks becoming millionaires it's okay. And since a good many of them are black must explain why the process passes mustard with the NAACP. The newly redesigned 100 dollar bill is slated to be introduced today… the new design incorporates 650,000 microlenses that creates one of those moving pictures like the ones you got out of your cereal box 40 years ago. It’s going to be interesting to see if anyone tells us how much it’s going to cost the US Treasury to produce the newest creation… what’s next, imbedded computer chips that will need to be scanned every time you use one so the US Mint can verify its authenticity? It cost the mint more than a penny to produce a penny, how long is it going to take before the 100-dollar bill cost us more than $100 to make? What’s this the 3rd or 4th redesign in recent years… they don’t retire the old currency so we have several designs floating out there, so how is anyone supposed to tell if the bill they are holding is a forgery? I can’t tell you what a rush it was to hear that 11-year-old Nadia Bloom was found alive and well after being lost for 4 days in the woods near her home. However the elation was short lived as soon as the man who found her opened his mouth and began gushing praise onto God. It never fails that as soon as there is a positive outcome to a dire situation that some religious nut case gives all of the credit to God. “God lead me to her.” Was one of the first comments made by James King who stumbled upon the girl deep inside the swamp she had wandered into. Well if God lead him to her then where was God’s guidance 4 days ago? Why did God leave this poor girl lost in a snake and gator infested swamp for several days if all he had to do was lead James King to her location? And what if God had waited too long and Nadia didn’t survive her adventure? Would James King be out there talking about how God failed us? Hell no… he’d be making excuses and twisting everything around so God still looked like their shining star, their savor. So
James King passes the credit onto God… is that the end of the story? Not
hardly. Within hours he was on a plane headed for It's happened twice this week... an earthquakes hits some part of the globe and the initial reading from the seismograph gets revised within 24 hours. The Southern California/Mexico earthquake went from a 6.9 to a 7.2 and the Somalia earthquake went from a 7.6 to a 7.7. Is it that hard to read the machine? There's a line and it either hits 6.9 or 7.2... it doesn't move or change overnight. This isn't rocket science, so is this an indication as to the caliber of people we have who study earthquake activity. Well the Democrats have done it... passed a health care reform bill that President Obama will sign with a huge grin on his face, after which he'll carry it around as a big chip on his shoulder for the rest of his term in office. We thought the guy was conceded before... just wait. The only thing left to do now is to wait until our health care system implodes under the weight of all of the intrusive regulation and tax demands that will every man woman and child in this country. Obama might think he's accomplished what a lot of his predecessors have failed at, but his real legacy is going to be that he set in motion the chain of events that leads us to socialized medicine? What will the poor, underinsured leaches who wished this on the rest of us do when they find out the rich don't have enough money for the government to take from them to pay for the level of health care that they are expecting from government controlled health care. What are they going to do when small businesses start cutting their work force to compensate for the increased costs? What are they going to do when the health insurance industries find themselves forced to raise rates to cover the massive claims the government are mandating they take on? The minority in this country that thinks this bill is going to bring about utopia and harmony within the health care industry is going to be in for a huge shock. The bad news for Toyota seems to be growing by the day... What I have to wonder is how can you have a problem of this magnitude with cars that have been on the road for four and five years, but it's only been the last few months that we're hearing about all these stuck accelerator related incidents? Could we be having... it's not my fault moment? If your driving a Toyota and you go brain dead and step on the gas petal instead of the brake and run through the front wall of a business or hit some brick wall why take the blame for it if you can pawn it off as a problem with the car... who's going to ever question you? Hell the first time I heard about the recall and that my truck was included I said to my wife... 'hey if I get pulled over for speeding all I have to do is claim my accelerator was stuck.' Take the guy who last week says his Prius accelerated out of control and took him on a 30 minute 94 mph hair raising trip down a California highway. First off will a Prius really do 94 mph? Anyway it seems suspicious to me that he had taken his car to a dealership just a short time prior to this with a recall notice in hand and was told his car wasn't being recalled. Could that have been the icing on the cake that made him say to himself... I'll show you! I find it hard to believe that any body no matter how stupid would think the first thing to do when your car accelerates out of control is to call 911 on your cell phone. The officer who caught up with him says he could smell the brakes burning and could tell he was standing on the brake because he was lifted off the seat, but he'd look that way if he was mashing both the gas petal and brake at the same time. Its awfully convenient that his gas petal sticks wide open on the open highway, a highway where traffic is light enough that he can dodge the other cars at 90+ mph for a half an hour before the car all of a sudden slows by itself. I wonder if the media will be as generous with their coverage when they find out that most all of these incidents that are being reported as accelerator problems are really common operator errors or just plain hoaxes. I'm still fuming over this 2010 Census warning letter... As I wrote about yesterday our imperial federal government feels its necessary to waste millions of dollars and tons of valuable resources to let us know we'll be receiving our census form shortly... but that's not the only bitch I have with this letter. The letter is mercifully short. At the bottom is this one sentence telling you to visit their web site if you need help filling out the form... no big deal right? Wrong... some moron felt the need to repeat that sentence in five other languages. Spanish, of course. Then they have two different oriental looking letters and then a couple of who to hell knows what they are. My beef with this multi lingual bull crap is the very idea that anyone who can't read English needs to even return a census form. I've already read that the form is uncommonly simple for a federal project... 10 questions. Unfortunately they failed to include the most important question, the one that asks if you are a US citizen! That means the liberals in charge don't really care how many American citizens we have in this country... they are more interested in how many people they can pander to. Did you get your 2010 Census letter yet? I did. Problem is it wasn't the 2010 Census form... its a letter telling me to expect to see the actual Census form in about a week. I wonder what brain surgeon up there in Washington felt it necessary to spend who knows how many millions of dollars in tax money to send out a letter to tell you to expect to get a letter. You would think someone, just one person, amongst our vast political crowd would have the brains, or the balls, to stand up and suggest that it might be a better idea just to mail out the forms and cut the postage costs in half plus save a bundle on printing... not to mention saving all those trees and the space in our landfills, which would certainly earn them some brownie points with the tree hugger crowd. Unfortunately what we get is the mentality we have come to expect from our Federal Government. I think they go out of there way to find ways to waste money and nobody seems to see the harm in it. Casey Anthony has petitioned the Orange County Court to have the taxpayers pay for her team of defense attorneys. Personally the very thought of her makes my blood boil... the idea that she could use public funds as if they were her own makes me sick to my stomach. I think if she is granted this request she should have to use a public defender... however apparently there is this thing called continuity of service and the state is forced to let her keep whatever high priced team of lawyers she has hired. That being the case... I believe the public now has the right to know the truth about where someone who was resorting to stealing money by forging checks to buy stuff just prior to her being arrested can have nearly $100,000 to pay for legal fees. If she's not willing to do that then I say let her rot in hell.
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