Dear American Citizens:
Lend me your ears! Tea Parties are all well and good but so far, they have not effected any major change in what’s taking place in Washington, D.C.
Listen to me: If you want change, your opportunity is just around the corner.
Tuesday, May 4, is Primary Election Day. It’s the day when you can start a snowball down the hill of change.
Listen people: This is not about any party – Tea, Democrat nor Republican. It’s about YOU taking the time and energy to have a look at every candidate, regardless of party affiliation, who is running for any public office.
Contrary to some movement’s suggestions, it’s not about just automatically displacing an incumbent with a new body. It’s about looking for the person who actually has ingrained into his very being the integrity and ethical conduct that would cause him to only give voice to issues he will actually follow through on.
He is a person who will truly and fully research an issue, present an accurate accounting of what’s at stake for all of us then listen and act on what his/her constituents want. He or she is the person who, when they say they will act on your behalf, mean that if we say overwhelmingly “don’t vote for reduction of Social Security benefits” or any other major/minor issue, he won’t.
The person you must vote for is the one who will never cave in to the financial offerings of lobbyists. He or she will not trade favors ‘across the aisle’ to enhance his own personal position. He or she will not trade away the stated desires of his constituents for his own personal gain. This person is the one who will fight unfailingly for the desires of his hometown and home state constituents. He will also encourage those around him to do the same!
Friends, if you want to effect change, really look into who the candidates are; examine their very moral fiber. In life before candidacy, what did they do? How did they handle themselves in business? What would a customer say about them? What would their neighbor say? Is their speech just what you want to hear or are they supporting their talk with good examples of how they mean to move it forward once in office? If they’re tossing mud at their opponents, are they doing that to keep you from focusing on the mud they, themselves, are sitting in? Do they just show up for every photo opportunity right around election time or are they accessible all of the time?
Your vote shouldn’t be a mindless click of the keyboard. You need to go into that voting booth armed and dangerous with knowledge that can help you effect a much needed change! Do your homework. Make your vote actually count.
Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, Democrats, Ecology, Global Warming, Government, Jimmy Carter, Legacy, News, Nostalgia, Politics, Pollution, Republicans, Taxes
I did not write this. I got it via email from a friend who also did not write it. However, we both think it’s worth the read and is very indicative about how our ‘gubmint’ works. Read on and feel free to copy it and send it to anyone you think might care or those who are too gullible to actually think this is the way it really is. Maybe they’ll finally ‘get it’.
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.” So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.
Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created a planning department and hired two people; one person to write the instructions and one person to do time studies.
Then Congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people; one to do the studies and one to write the reports.
Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?” So they created the following positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer, and then hired two people.
Then Congress said, “Who will be accountable for all of these people?” So they created an administrative section and hired three people; an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.
Then Congress said, “We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget. We must cutback overall cost.” So they laid off the night watchman.
NOW slowly…let it sink in. Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY during the Carter Administration?
Anybody? Anything? No?
Bottom line. We’ve spent several hundred billion dollars in support of this agency…the reason for which hardly any person who reads this can remember!
Ready?
It was very simple…and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.
The Department of Energy was instituted on 8-04-1977, TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. Hey, pretty 
efficient, huh???
And now it’s 2010 — 33 years later — and the budget for this “necessary” department is at $24.2 billion a year.
They have 16,000 federal employees and approximately 100,000 contract employees; and look at the job they have done! (this is where you slap your forehead and say, “what were they thinking?”)
Thirty-three years ago, 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports.
Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports — good ‘ole bureaucracy.
And now, we are going to turn the banking system, health care, and the auto industry over to the same government?
Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter.
photo Tribune Chronicle
Friday night, five young people, four men and a woman, got into a Mustang and went on what would be a last ride for some. By the time the ride was over, two of them were dead. Two more were in critical condition in local hospitals. The driver lived; but he, too, was in critical condition.
The speed of the car was so high that when it hit the pole, the car literally split in two. The newspaper said bodies were thrown everywhere. How could they not be?
All of this caused me to think about the belief that many young (and some not so young) people seem to have that they are invincible, that nothing can stop them when in fact, everything can stop them. In a mere heartbeat, with the next breath, life can change forever, just as it has for these five.
Was alcohol involved? Most likely and it is suspected that other substances played a part as well. Not to say that the same thing could not have happened without those influences; they could. But the likelihood goes up 100 fold when you add alcohol or drugs.
One of the reasons people, young or old, use drugs of choice is because it reduces their inhibitions, makes them feel free. It also adds to their already overblown sense of indestructibility. Next thing you know, you’re trying feats of madness you’d never dream of in a sober state. You look for the next big thrill and the bigger one after that.
While you may get the thrill you’re looking for, you may also get more than you bargained for, like these kids did.
Though we might think that death is the worst part of what has happened, I think there’s a large case to be made for the aftermath that will follow those who were ‘merely’ critically injured. Paralysis, mental deficiencies, speech defects, many reconstructive surgeries, future arthritic conditions, a life of physical pain, not to mention the emotional pain that will most likely linger, especially for the driver.
If it only affected those who are now in hospital, it would be one thing. But every single thing that they will have to go through to recover from that joy ride (funny how fast joy riding turns into death, isn’t it?) will also be visited on their families who will bear the brunt of all the care, the worry, the sadness, the questions of ‘what if’ and ‘if only’ to be spoken and thought of time and time again. Every family member will become the sad witnesses of how a night of folly, drowning in the sea of alcohol and drug excess, changes everything. They will be forced to trade their peaceful lives for a life of being a caregiver to someone who thought they were invincible.
Friends, we are not invincible, be we 18 or 88. The choices we make have consequences, consequences that should keep us ever mindful of how our lives can change in the next breath.
So, dare to be ‘thrilled’. Dare to be maimed. Dare to be dead. But remember: what you do may end up unexpectedly affecting every single person who knows or loves you in some, possibly terrible, way. Can you live with that?
If you die, is that the legacy you want to leave behind?
Filed under: Barack Obama, Government, Healthcare, Jimmy Carter, Jobs, News, Over reaction, Poll - Take One, Racism, Taxes, Work
Ladies and gentlemen.
I have experienced a dearth of ideas, meaning I just haven’t had an idea for days. Until today when the world has seemingly gone mad all at once (again)! Now I have about a half dozen ideas.
So, starting at the top – pun intended.
The criticism of President Obama and Jimmy Carter’s assessment.
First of all, I don’t believe, as Jimmy Carter is saying, that people are necessarily criticizing President Obama as a person, as a partial African American, nor as a man. Nope, I’m pretty sure they are not.
Many, if they are criticizing him, are taking cracks at him because of his infinitely unwise decisions.
Remember back in the campaign days when Mr. Obama assured us – as have so many before him – that he would hold down the spending and especially the pork barrel spending? Yet in the middle of the campaign, both he and John McCain ran back to D.C. to vote for the first $700 billion bailout. This turned out to be an $850 billion bailout that included numerous pork barrel items and one of the first instances where words didn’t 
match actions for either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain.
Our displeasure in these people had nothing to do with either man’s race. Their actions, however, should have caused a lightning bolt action running through our psyches telling us we shouldn’t vote for either man, black, white or otherwise.
Then there was the auto maker’s bail out. I was really against this one but Mr. Obama championed the cause and the senators and congressmen yet again, did not heed our tortured, crictical screams. Next thing you know the American taxpayers became the not-so-proud owners of the Government Motors Company. Our displeasure had nothing to do with Mr. Obama’s race – only with his stupid response to a ridiculous situation that would have been better off left alone.
A small aside here: General Motors handed their bail out money to the Chinese government in order to extend their factories and auto production in China. I’m not sure why they didn’t ask China for the bailout? Oh, wait, yes I am. The Chinese government wouldn’t have given them one red cent. They’re not that gullible.
So now Mr. Obama is promoting a healthcare plan that will cost the American public $835 billion – so far. The plan is so unwieldy that I’m pretty sure no one, not even the lady who had to type it all up, knows what it says. The one thing that has been noted is that families who don’t subscribe to some form of health insurance will be fined $3,800. Maybe that’s how Congress plans to raise the $835 billion?
Stick with me here while I do the math on all this. $850 billion + $35 billion + $835 Billion = 1.720 TRILLION dollars of non existent taxpayer dollars earmarked for spending in less than a year by our first, partially African American president.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not on this rant because Mr. Obama is partially African American. I’m on this rant because I do have a brain and I am living and breathing in America. I’m ranting because I do resent someone who would give my hard earned money to crooks and thieves who have either stolen from the accounts of or raped the American people by stealing their jobs and giving them to the Mexicans and Chinese in order to make greater profits.
I am ranting because it is unbelievable to me that anyone would look at what has taken place in the last year and still have the gall to say people are picking on Mr. Obama because he’s our first partial African American president!
Have you lost your minds? Do you seriously think the caucasians would be sitting around saying ‘gee, we’re so glad the white guy in office dumped us into the cesspool of a 1.720 trillion dollar debt’ if John McCain had gotten into office and committed these financial atrocities? If you do, then it’s time for more than a change in American government; it’s time for a change in its people.
9/16/09 – 11:25 p.m.
Filed under: Britney Spears, Matt Lauer, Michael Jackson, NBC Today Show, News
Often, in the morning while I’m getting ready for work, we turn on one of the morning shows to see what’s going on in the 
world. After years of viewing ABC, we finally honed in on the NBC Today Show. We liked that in the first half hour you got a wide range of actual news from across the globe before they switched to a lighter fare in the second half hour. Those were the days when the entire program was just two hours long.
Over the course of time, much has changed about our regularly scheduled morning program. Instead of the likes of John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw or Jane Pauley, all who were actual journalists, we now have Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera who did herself no favor by joining the crew. In his credits, listed on NBC, Lauer is labeled a ‘news reader’, not a journalist. His curriculum vitae is about as impressive as that of Michael Jackson were he to have sought a position as a pre-school teacher.
Each morning, after the hosts greet the audience, they headline what we’ll be told in the next 24 minutes. Every morning this week, the second or third headline was about Michael Jackson, the disposition of his kids, pending legal proceedings against his physician, his mother, his kid’s mother. I don’t know about you, but this is NOT big news for me. Neither was the daily report of the current activities of one Britney Spears for the six weeks they made her one of the top three headlines each day.
Yes, you’re right, I could turn it off. And I did about three days into the whole three ring circus. But why should I have to? Why do we have to put up with such pandering? Why can’t we try to effect a change for what’s being shoveled into our morning cereal bowls?
My point is this: Don’t we have greater issues at hand that we should be concerned about, reporting accurately about, other than what happens after Michael Jackson dies or how many pairs of underwear Britnry Spears has (or doesn’t have as the case may be)? How is it that the networks, who want us to think of their reporting as legitimate, have allowed their programming to become trash TV? I know that college sophomores write most of what’s shown as network comedy, but when did they sneak into the local newsrooms?
Have we dumbed ourselves down so much that this is the drivel we are willing to accept in place of good, solid reporting of the facts about real issues in our country? Are our lives so devoid of personal fulfillment that we require a daily shot of the 
disgusting to make us feel better about ourselves? Are we so afraid to hear the truth that we’ll listen to anything else just to escape it? Or have we just become a peeping Tom society with a voyeuristic need to grope through the muck of the tragedies of other people’s lives? Gross.
People, wake up! Turning off the TV set doesn’t change a thing. Write a letter, send an email, somehow find a way to communicate with the networks and news channels about what you really want to see and hear on TV. That’s the only way they’ll know that you’re not just some toothless drone who never blinks when you see and hear stupid stuff coming across the airwaves.
Of course, if all you want to do is turn off your TV set, go ahead. Maybe the Neilson ratings will get your message and pass it along.
