A Little Comic Relief

As I slog through the seemingly endless bad news, every once in a while I stumble across something that just tickles me until I sit here laughing out loud.
Enjoy a few chuckles.

how tv works

what REALLY happens to your icons when you aren't looking

and a different concert

Enjoy

A Very Good Read

There is a gentleman whose site I often read. He presents articles that are considerably "deeper" than the average blog, but often are cause for deep thinking and meditation.

He has just come out with another, and I strongly suggest you pop over there and read it. He presents some views that are cause for concern, but perhaps in the knowledge that he gives us, we have a way to work against it.

Thoughts on the Porkulus bill

It's a given that we tend to see the world with a view skewed by our surroundings. Thus the person from a liberal outlook will see the world through the eyes of a liberal bias and feel that “everyone” sees it the same way because he/she sees it that way as do his/her friends. Likewise a conservative will talk with other conservatives and soon feel that “everyone” feels the same way he does.
Even with this built-in bias, I am sensing a mood change here. I am hearing more people wondering why they are working so hard to stay afloat when the government is taking more and more of their earnings and handing it out to other people and groups who are quite happy to live off the government dole and let others pay their way. “Why shouldn't I just quit and go on public assistance? It would be a whole lot easier and I probably would come out ahead financially as well”, I hear other saying with greater frequency than ever before. And when one looks around, it is easy to see why this feeling is becoming so widespread. We watch as Congress passes a bill that THEY NEVER READ, a bill that will take thousands of dollars from each and every one of us as well as our children and grandchildren, and then hands that money out to people and to groups whose only claim to that money is that they were friends of some congressman. And then as a slap in the face, we're told that we all will get a tax break and that should keep us all happy. Let's see, they take an average of about $13,000 from each of us, give us back $13 a week and tell us to shut up and smile......maybe, just maybe, that is why people are getting fed up. And in my area, we are blessed with a senator who stands up at a press conference and says that the people aren't bothered by the pork in this bill, and a congressman who BRAGS that he didn't read the bill and would vote for it no matter what it said. Lord help me, but I stand almost in awe of the arrogance and stupidity of these people. Hey Mr. Hinchey, that is my money that you just stole. You just took money from my children and spent it on the biggest load of manure ever to come from Washington, and you have the audacity to brag that you didn't even read the frigging bill!!!! Aside from the rather obvious conflict with all that was promised to us about governmental transparency and openness by Mr Obama and the democratic leadership ( 5 days for people to read and comment on all bills), it rubs salt in the wound when it is rushed through as a crisis, an emergency that can't wait even one more day, but then the President leaves it on his desk over a long weekend while he goes on a vacation. Where, or why, or when did we give this bunch of thieves such control over us? Is Mr Shumer or Mr Hinchey or your congressmen and senators, really that much smarter than us, that they can take our hard earned money and our hard earned freedom and squander it on a trillion dollar bill they don't even read? I am old enough and cynical enough to say with complete certainty, NO. They are not smarter. They are not better. They certainly are less interested in your or my well-being than we are, and know a whole lot less about what is good for us than we do. But because they live in DC, somehow they suddenly become experts in economics, in all that passes their desks, even those bills not yet written and never read when they discuss them and vote on them. And the fact that most economists disagree with them, the fact that simple common sense tells us that you can't get out of debt by borrowing more money than you can afford, doesn't bother them in the least. And the Constitution, that piece of paper written years ago, is simply ignored whenever it interferes with their desires and plans. The Constitution has no provision for government take-over of banks; it doesn't allow Washington to set mortgage rates or conditions; it certainly doesn't allow salary caps (in fact it specifically PROTECTS private contracts such as those fixing salaries between employer and employee); it doesn't allow the sec'y of the Treasury (remember him, the tax cheat?) to decide what type and price cars Detroit can manufacture. But no matter, it is just a piece of paper, and our representatives know so much more that our founding fathers ever knew.

"Til Death Do....."

I have no stocks or bonds, so what the market does has little direct effect on me. The credit crunch affects me as it affects us all, but only in a rather indirect way. Unfortunately, I am getting to the point in life that I am more and more aware of my own mortality, and recognize my increased likelihood to need medical intervention to keep me among the living. So when I saw this article about the "little package" buried in the porkulus bill, I cringed.

Now even if you aren't yet at the age of gray hair and creaking bones, please pay attention to what this lady is saying. This package is nothing short of the government taking over medical care, not in a round about "sort-of, kind-of " way, but the direct takeover and control of how YOU and your family will or will not receive care. There will be someone sitting behind a desk in the wilds of Washington, looking at the cost of your care and your age, comparing your case and your prognosis with the costs involved, and deciding absolutely and irrevocably, whether you live or die. You have no say in it, your doctor has no say in it. You can' even opt out and get private care out of your own pocket. You are at the mercy of a nameless, faceless bureaucrat who gives not a rat's posterior about you, your family,your hopes or dreams. He/she is simply following government guideline number something-or-other, and on the basis of that formula, controlling your destiny, your life.

Look east to England to see how wonderfully this system works; watch people being refused chemotherapy because it would "only" improve their quality of life, and would be expensive to use; watch people sent home to die because they are too old to be considered for organ transplant or cardiac surgery, or too fat or too thin or whatever cockamamie reason some bureaucrat comes up with. And as their doctor fights an unwindable battle for their patient, the government accountant looks at the books and nods in approval of the cost savings.

Think really hard about this question......can you think of any project, ANY project that the government doesn't completely screw up? And do you want that same government to take responsibility for the medical care of you and your loved ones?

To make it even uglier, much of this plan is straight from the book of Mr Tom Daschel, the tax evading cheat who was going to run the Dept of Health and Human Services in a fair and honest way, controlling the same companies from whom he was collecting huge fees right up to his appointment. And in that book, he even suggests that this sort of control be snuck in some sort of funding bill, so the poor suckers who will be most affected (that would be you and me) will not even know that it was there until it was too late to stop it.

This is getting really scary, really spooky. Our country is disappearing right before our eyes, replaced by the megalith of a larger and larger Washington bureaucracy that is swallowing us up. As one pundit put it, our country is changing from what we came here to become back to what we tried to escape from 250 years ago in our declaration of Independence. We are ceding our Independence, our country, our future to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Sen Reid, B Obama, J Kerry, and the hordes of socialistic bureaucrats who think that they are so much smarter and better than we are. Stop! Stop and think where this is taking us. It is a dark and dangerous road that leads to indenture, to slavery, not to another man but to a government of faceless, nameless, uncaring automatons who answer only to a malformed idea of what they think the world should be.

A Helping Hand

A little brightness in an otherwise grim time. We've not heard a whole lot about the fires in Australia...they have been devastating with death toll over 200.

I Wish I Thought of This

We now have a tax cheat as Treasury Secretary. If you feel as frustrated and helpless as many others do, perhaps this will be a way for us to have our voices heard. Consider it a "stamp act" of 2009.

Why are We Putting Up With This ??

Over the weekend, when most people are not paying attention, the slimeballs in Congress voted them selves a $93,000 raise. When you and I are getting clobbered with recession and financial hardship, they are going home with an additional $93,000 in petty cash!!! And they have the nerve to say that it is for their constituents.

This country is in a serious hurt, and it isn't the financial crisis. We are being ruled by a group of corrupt, selfish, amoral or immoral pieces of crap, and we put up with it!