Let Me Be Clear

The President likes this phrase as a means of indicating that somehow, his message isn't getting through. 

I shall do the same, because it is clear that this is unclear.

I have no objections to our government providing a safety net for the poor, for those who find themselves without the resources to cope with a sudden or progressive or debilitating condition that threatens to rob them not only of life, but of dignity as well, by bankrupting those around them in the struggle to stay alive.  I do believe that we need to provide health care for those who cannot through their employment, manage themselves.  This is part of the function of good moral government. It is in a sense, its only purpose, to create a system of rules and laws that prevent the overflow of chaos, and that also establish a baseline which is an attempt to limit suffering.  Most Catholics including the Bishops as a whole, wanted a government run health care policy expressly for this reason.

But the 2000+page bill that is obamacare, violates our Catholic conscience --it demands things that as Catholics, we can't tacitly accept.

The monstrosity that was upheld yesterday, is a bad plan. It is a bad policy. It is a coercive policy that threatens religious liberty (by the government determining what is and is not a religious insitution, and what moral codes must be ignored to serve the state), and the further demands that grave immoral acts (abortion), be funded by all people of faith who know such acts to be not only sinful but lethal.

To those who start to shout about the Department of Defense, go ahead.   I don't think we should fund the wholesale slaughter of the innocent for grave, casual and all the inbetween rationales that humans can concoct.  I'll join you in saying it's a waste laden department with gobs of good thoughtful people implementing an incoherent policy that reigns death down on strangers for grave, casual and inbetween rationales in our name and probably shouldn't.  I also would submit, we shouldn't be doubling down on this policy by waging war on our own people, destroying them before they could become educated good tax paying citizens for the sake of other citizens who simply declare at the moment, they wish it. 

This healthcare plan like the unmanned drone strikes, changes the game.  We will now fund abortion through taxes without end.  We have been doing it on the sly for years. Now it's out in the open.  It's not better either way. It's wrong either way.  Drone strikes or patriot missles, RU-486 or partial birth or chemical, it's still dealing death without restraint, without reflection, and without any hope of stopping, because our tax dollars never stop being spent, and policy once enacted, seldom gets redacted. 

If no one sees the killing and they aren't reported, it's much easier to pretend we aren't doing evil.  If no one pauses to reflect on the taking of lives because the drones rather than humans are doing the death dealing, we can all pretend we're good moral agents.  I'm a good person even if I slaughter unborn babies on a daily basisBut we all know, what we finance, we support, what we support, we are morally culpable for, what we say to the world with our actions, defines us.  So if we carelessly deal death with indifference, it is clear, we are indifferent to life.  Human life of those not in power, is cheap. Begun, the drone wars have.  We can kill without pesky moral quandries...it's not true, but we tell ourselves that every time we kill.  "Am I my brother's keeper?"  because that's the way we cope with being less human. 

No one with one ounce of moral sense thinks otherwise.  The only ones who glory in killing are those who are mad. The rest of us cope with killing by explaination: self defense, patriotism, protection of those weaker, policy, sustaining law/order, stopping an evil act, or proclaiming the act itself is not evil, is not killing, is a mercy, is a medical necessity, a choice, reasonable thing, hard heart breaking decision, but it is an act of the will that we must endure, there are more, but you get the idea.

I don't want to bow down before this golden idol, this pharoah called government and do what my God has commanded we should not.  I do not want to knowingly fund evil acts.  Torchure is wrong. Abortion is wrong, unmanned drone bombings are wrong, death sentences are wrong...killing is wrong.  Rubberstamp me as Pro-life (that's fine, I'll take that label), but understand that supercedes both sides' short sightedness. 

I want my government to be good.  It cannot be good by doing evil.  Ceasar has declared we must render what should be God's unto Ceasar, and I say no.  And I will say no with my votes and my voice. I will not be silent simply to be polite.  I will not give a blank check to the GOP or the DNC. You both have blood on your hands and you're both committed to demanding that we fund it mindlessly.  This has to stop.  This is not a government of the people, it is a tyranny of party elite and political will over the general public funded by all but those who do not abide by the rules --those who make them.   Let's call the elected officials what they are, aristocrats and petty tyrants who view the rest of us as little flyover people.  Pay your taxes and shut up. We know what's best. 

Ceasar has told us we must do this or we cannot render acts of mercy (care for the sick --Singer (bio-ethicist and advisor to administration, prof at Yale has said, the Catholic hospitals should simply close if they won't comply).   No.  Again, let me be clear.  I say no.   Get stuffed.  We will do good.  We will not comply.  We are being slowly boiled to only allow the goverment to perform the corporeal acts of mercy, such that we shall absolve ourselves of the acts, the obligations to perform such acts and remove ourselves from the graces attached to acting itself.  We will also be corroded by our cooperation with evil.   We cannot not be.  We cannot participate/fund an addiction without being part of the problem.  We cannot participate in bullying without being bullies, we cannot cease to be liars if we allow truth to go unspoken, if we allow lies to go unchallenged. 

We are to comfort the grieving, care for the sick, and do this not because the state declares it a good or because the state provides it, but because God do command that we do it, and not by proxy.  We're responsible for our souls and those around us, for all that we do and don't do, so everything we do and don't do counts.  This counts. 

We're called to care for the unborn and the pregnant mother, care for the sick, the dying and the immigrant, the homeless, the stranger, the people in tents across the world from us and the neighbors next door. We're called to pray ceaselessly, to love ceaseslessly, to serve ceaselessly, to be the Eucharist to others and to seek the Eucharist endlessly. We're to see the nails in the hands of our savior and both weep and rejoice, to know that the metal through the bone is for each of us, and to give great thanks for so great a love. We're to hold sacred the beauty of truth, of love, and to pour it out. There isn't a vacation or end to this mission either, it goes on even after death. Further, we're to be endlessly filled and on this earth unsatisfied. But it doesn't mean we're to be wimps or silent or acquiese to evil in this life. The martyrs were not wimps or defenseless, they were brave beyond measure with how they faced death and why. All they had to do is the perfectly reasonable denial. They didn't.

So let me be clear once more.  No.  We will not comply. But let me propose an alternative, one that will be neither Republican nor Democrat but Catholic. We will pay more. We will offer 40%, if the 40% shall be used to ensure that we do not fund war and we do not fund death as a nation, as a people. We will fund the roads and the hospitals and the research, but we will not fund abortion or death from the skies. We will turn the other cheek, offer our shirt, give more to make the society one that does better than the least amount possible, we want our country and our people to be a people of light and life.    Come. Take more if you must. (I'll even give it freely if less gracefully than the saints do).  But do not do perpetuate this grave evil in our name with all that you take.

Pray hard for our country, for leaders who recognize that while we need to provide for the 33 million, (and we do), we also need to do justice by all our citizens, and not destroy the unborn as the price for the 33 million. We need to always do both and --it is the nature of Catholicism, that both and...prayer and service, words and deeds, what is done and not done. Body and blood, bread and wine, soul and divinity. We are never not called to acknowledge the reality is both and. We must be clear.  To be Catholic, we will radically not comply because we cannot do less. 

Truth in Advertising

Every year, there is a report that calculates the cost of government based on the burden per individual in federal, state and local taxes including sales and property taxes designed to show exactly how much the existing bureaucracies in their multiple hydra head like forms, takes away from the private sector. The date in 2010 when a person meets all the obligations imposed by all of government this year, was August 19th.


With that in mind, I submit the following truth in advertisement slogans for the existing government entities to use free of charge; presuming they won’t figure out how to tax me for satire which in Philadelphia, they’re already trying to do vis-a-vis a $300.00 registration fee for bloggers. Apparently online writers in the city of brotherly love make out pretty well to warrant that sort of a grab from the state. For the curious and the public record, I’m still waiting here for my first two cents from AdSense and my blog is approaching the tender age of three.

Ten Proposed Bumper Sticker Mottos for the Government

10) We spend it all so you won’t have to.

9) Cost of running the government for this year; 3.5 Trillion dollars. For everything else, there’s taxes.

8) Defying the laws of country, supply and demand and common sense.

7) What? Me worry?

6) Reading the bills first?  How quaint.

5) Greece did it first.

4) Land of the not so free.

3) We spent 1.3 Trillion Dollars and I didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt!

2) Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

1) Relax. We’re From the Government, and We’re here to help.

At least, we haven’t reached the irony point of finishing paying for all of this on Labor day.

Monopoly Rules

On December 21st, the President, touting some 41 billion the federal government would save by 2011, said the following. "The Federal government can no longer spend taxpayers' money like it is “monopoly money.” I'd congratulate the President but he already did for himself anyway, and it just means our deficit is 12.1 trillion plus at the moment, as opposed to 12.5 trillion plus at the moment.

Keep in mind, I concede that any government must spend money to function. In Monopoly, every player starts with 1,500 in cash. But the Democrats have gobbled up the utilities, the cars, they're the banker and seem able to roll doubles three times in a row without going to jail. People are selling the houses they've amassed on their properties to pay the bills while Congress never pays the luxury tax and keep raiding the parking lot and community chest for extra dough. We pass go. We do not collect the 200 dollars, they do.

As straw men go, this one is pretty weak Mr. President. It's not like tax payers have been beating on Congress's door saying, "Spend more! Spend more! We know who we're working for!" Like his predecessor, he gets the bills congress passes. They write the bill. He signs the bill. We pay up the bill. It is very convenient.

He's right though, it's not monopoly money, it's ours. Even though both games are made in China, it's not like we can raid the Game of Life for more funds if we run out. This scenario is more like Wheel of Fortune and we landed on Bankrupt. In one year, we've added a third to our total national debt. I'm not sure we can afford much more of the current government's financial restraint. The government plans to pass health care and cap and trade is next and silently, they've raised the debt ceiling so they could borrow more. The president's "I feel your pain and that's why I'm scolding CEO's, banks and Congress." moment does not resonate a real thirst for fiscal thrift.

I sympathize that the problems the current leader of the land received upon taking office were not easy, but to lecture on how the government will be cutting coupons from now on is laughable given the current Congress's monopoly on power and the Executive's fetish for the high life.

The Presidency is supposed to be a symbolic office in addition to being an actual executive office. Let us examine the symbols we've seen. His wife wears 400$ sneakers. He feasts on Wagyu Kobe beef at 100$ a pound. His kids go to Sidwell, a $28,500 per kid per year school. This year, they Christmased in Hawaii at a place that costs more per day than Boardwalk or Park Place with hotels. Now it's okay that the first family wanted to go take a vacation and Hawaii even makes sense for their family; but they've had more than a few. Trips this year included a jaunt to China, Copenhagen, France, Germany, England, Cairo, the Virgin Islands and the pricey date night in New York plus those necessary democratic fundraisers that are scattered throughout the land. I didn't go to Harvard so maybe I'm missing the nuance, but these things do not seem to me like symbollic empathy with the poor, down trodden or economically struggling.

With 10% unemployment and 20% underemployment, 401K's that still offer little hope for a secure future, underwater mortgages, looming higher taxes on a federal and state level to make up the shortfall of projected income for new and reallocated spending, most people scaling back on even everyday things. Maybe he should you know, trim it back a bit, have the staff shop at Costco or use priceline to book his hotels and maybe occasionally order up some ground chuck or pasta for dinner.
Bo could switch from the gourmet can food to dry, just to underscore the "skin in the game" and sacrifical stewardship of the public trust and public funds the President feels those in government ought to be so concerned about.

Then he could say, he understands and that these tight economic times even affect his own family.

But for the rest of us taxpayers, we've got to keep rolling the dice and hope we can keep landing on Chance to get taken to a Railroad we own, Go or directly to jail, and that last one might be cheaper than even just visiting.

No one is Forcing You to Change

I know the President has said on many occasions that "If we like our current insurance policy, the government will not make us abandon it." He's said this in various ways and I believe he is sincere when he says this.

I also think about the fact that he has never run a business.

Most businesses are in the business of making money and most families are about turning out healthy happy capable adults. For the sake of this discussion, let's think of businesses as being like families, wanting to churn out happy customers and have a profit margin and succeed without being strung out by too many obligations or too many activities or too much overhead.

A business has operating costs. So does a family. A business will add to operating costs only if it is necessary to improve the business. It's called investment. Families add burdens of classes or an extra car to make the business of running a family easier, trading money for time or convenience or enrichment that will pay off both now in enjoyment and possibly later with a life skill.

There are some families who opt to put their children in Catholic schools and thus make an investment. They do not get to opt out of property taxes which pay for public schools. They do not re-coop on their investment of tax money fiscally, but believe the pay out of the extra cash for tuition,is worth it. After all, it's their kids.

Very very few businesses are going to say, "I want to pay taxes to finance the public option on top of paying for my own plan. While I was happy with the plan before there was a public option, now I must decide. Do I want to pay taxes for one health care policy I don't use in addition to offering one which I pay out of pocket pre-tax?" Very few businesses will want to pay double tuition as it were, taxes and private school even if they liked their plans before. Businesses, being about making money, will opt for the public option and only pay the tax once. With an additional tax if the plans they offered were premium, the businesses will say "No thank you." They're not going to say, "After all, it's my employees."

While no one is forcing them NOT to pay more, most of them will when given the option of not paying, will out of merely a sense of good business, opt for the public option.

While we may have liked our prior plans better, there will be no take it or leave it in this scenario. Businesses, being businesses, will opt for the public option that helps the bottom line, and so there will be no take it or leave it option, just "Take it."

How Much Can We Pay Them to NOT work?

Remember the government shut down back in the early 90's, over spending?

What a quaint idea.

To be upset at waste and fraud and excess. The problem now is, the government has factored waste and fraud into its budgetary process and yet wants to claim that by eliminating it, we can pay for new programs. Maybe I'm just not educated enough to understand how if we can identify waste and fraud such that we can then eliminate it and fold the money back into the budget, why we have waste and fraud in the first place.

And won't that money that is recooped from the unnamed wasteful and fraudulent programs that are so easily discerned when we still want to spend the money, then not go to programs that as I understand it, still offer some good even if they are wasteful and fraudulent? Wasn't that part of the justification for the excessive amounts in the Enviornmental bill, the stimulus package 1, the stimulus package II, the budget, and the pending health care program? We had to have numbers in the billions and trillions to offset the costs that would include waste and fraud?

But don't worry, none of this will affect you. Between all the hidden money preallocated via waste and fraud programs and the spare change all those idle rich have that they got through licit business, we'll be able to afford everything. We'll have a pure earth, perfect health and schools that graduate everyone in one year of preschool with degrees that even NASA would envy. Why? Because we've got good intentions, we're with the government, and we're just here to help.

Marie Antoinette's Legislative Tips for the Current Congress

Feeling darn firey lately, I put that energy to use and called my congressmen to tell them not to vote for the Cap and Trade bill currently being whipped to fruition by Nancy Pelosi et. al.

Why did I call?

Because I'm frankly tired of a congress spending money hand over fist without ever bothering to read the damn things they are voting on. Is it too much to ask that they read before they rubber stamp via their party affiliation?

When I was a kid, I loved making cakes from boxes but I didn't want to bother with the stinkin' directions, I wanted the cake. For me it was all about the end result, but I was impatient and unwilling to do what it took to get there, so there were a lot of cakes that 1) lacked structure 2) lacked significant ingredients and 3) got fed to the dog. Until I took the time to examine the directions --at my Mother's insistence (thanks Mom!), I continued to churn out crumble cake after flat cake after inedible reported to be cake. It wasted money. It wasted time. It wasted cake.

Here's an idea, make passage of every bill dependent upon everyone who votes, having listened to it be read aloud --it would slow legislation to a crawl but we'd spend a lot less, or at least, we'd know what we were spending the money on, because the bills would be smaller and more discreet but fully disclosed. And then,maybe we can have our cake and maybe eat it too.

Otherwise, we'll be left with something that isn't even healthy for dogs.

Call your representatives. Stomp up and down. Let them know at least, we require reflection and discernment before they spend more of our future earnings. They work for us, at least for now.

The American Milky Way

The economy affects us all.

In a family of 11, there are limitations on resources like milk. Our refrigerator can only hold so many gallons, especially when you add other needed items like meat, butter, vegetables and adult liquid fuel also known as diet coke. In the past, we just used what we had and rotated for meals, orange juice for breakfast, milk for lunch, juice or water or milk for dinner. But one of my children loved whole milk, and as such, she requested we purchase a separate gallon for her.

Another daughter suffered from a slight skin allergy and requested soymilk instead. Both requests were accommodated. Then a child decided that while he didn’t mind skim, whole milk was too thick and could he please have 2%? Things were getting out of hand until the parents in a fit of frustration designated individual gallons of la leche for each child.

“When you run out of this, you are out for the week.” We announced as we loaded up the refrigerator. And then things got a bit crazy.

Some contested that cereal milk should come from the general stock, used for cooking and providing protein and calcium to the non school going crowd on a daily basis in the form of a beverage. Others lectured “to thy own stock be pure.” But kids figured out pretty quickly, once the common stock milk was poured into the cereal bowl, it couldn’t be taken back, and thus the purists abandoned their position until Mom began raiding their stock.

When people began to hold to only their gallons, there were ants and there were grasshoppers, which resulted in over the breakfast counter deals. “I’ll trade you a glass of milk for two cookies.” Such things I could tolerate, but then came the milk miser. One child in particular, nursed her milk by drinking water the first three days of the week so she could smugly make milk shakes every afternoon in front of the rest. This was the same child that hadn’t finished her Easter bunny by Memorial Day, but I took care of that problem personally.

We tried labeling the milks to mitigate milk disputes. “Remember, some milks look alike so remember to check the label before pouring.” We tried buying different brands. “Mine’s the CVS brand, yours is Lucerne…see?”

And then one time, the general stock went dry. “I’m making muffins and need a half cup, any donors?” No one was feeling charitable milk wise. I used water and the kids complained that the breakfast tasted a bit off. The next time, I used an equal measure from each person’s milk, which brought complaints when some had more to start. “This is America.” One of them argued. “You should do a progressive tax of the milk.”

I responded, “We’re Republicans. I’m doing a flat tax.” The voter left disgruntled but admitted the muffins tasted better.

Then there was the spilled milk incident…and from the hoarder no less. Talk about genuine sorrow, and subsequent glee from those who had watched her sip her chocolate shakes so smugly. I was about to intervene with my own version of the stimulus package when the kids took pity on her and pooled their resources to replenish her stock. In response to such generosity, she promised the following week to share in the shakes come Friday.

I thought we had turned the corner.

Then the milk black market started up over breakfast, and enterprising capitalists were charging premium dollars for moomoo juice and measuring it out in fluid ounces. They were shaking down a five year old. I exercised parental fiat power to declare a dairy detaunte.

“We are a family! Milk is a common use product, like toilet paper, bread, air conditioning, the computer, the television, the laundry machines and the furniture of this house. Everyone gets it. Everyone uses it. The milk is for the greater good of the whole family, ergo, as far as food is concerned, this is a communist state. Being the mother, I am the state, and I shall distribute the milk, it to each according to his or her needs.”

“But Mom, we’re Republicans!”

I produced the powdered chocolate Quick mix. “I will sweeten the deal.” They lined up. Pouring each a drink and creating a sense of peace, Motherland has spoken, and sometimes, it’s good to be the State.

If I Flunk Summer, It Won't be for Lack of Effort!

Every year, I take my kids out to lunch at the beginning of June and we make a list. It’s an ambitious selection of activities, some of which we hope to accomplish in the 90 days that seem to stretch out before us with endless tantalizing possibilities on that last day of school. We usually have pick berries, baseball, cook out, camping, amusement park and go to the movies, along with more excentric possibilities like the Circus, salt water fishing, flying somewhere, and horseback riding.

Last week was Memorial Day, the official start of summer.

We spent that long weekend in the hospital. This week, we’ve upped the ante by paying a visit to the department of Motor Vehicles two days in a row, followed by a physical for two of the girls and a protracted stay on hold for the Cable guy, the phone company and the rescheduling of a doctors’ appointment I had to cancel from the week before. In a determined effort to make time stand still, next week I’ll be attempting to organize back to back oil changes for our two cars, read governmentese for some hired work and suffering through my middle son’s root canal.

These joyous activities shall be followed by reorganizing the shelving in the back basement, cleaning out the garage and shepherding my five school attending children through the tedium of a daily math and reading activities. But it isn’t all drudgery, I have a doctor’s appointment first thing in July, and that’s when we should order school books. I wondered if I had stepped into an anti-summer zone, such that I was attempting to fill months usually reserved for reading comic books and drinking lemonade with obligatory studies of statistical analysis and the mandatory eating of a daily grapefruit.

I started considering my summer, and with the prospects of having to repair an air conditioner, my oldest not yet driving but having a job and the recalcitrance of my toddlers with respect to toilet training, the dog days of this year looked like they'd take seven years each.

When did I surrender my soul to the powers that be for the pat on the back for subsisting on broccoli and water from the tap? When did I trade in being the drummer on Rock Band for the docile reward of keeping all the lamp fixtures dust free and well lit? I thought about the dental appointments I needed to make, the bills, the heat and the dullness that seemed not only pervasive but imbedded, I wondered how to shake it. The very nature of all the things that needed to be done, seemed to pile upon each other in a daunting fashion, with tendrils wrapping around all other activities. I felt as though, even if I ordered a snowcone, it would come in the flavor of dutiful novacaine or over cooked vegetables.

It was time to shake things up. I grabbed a CD and cranked up the ABBA.

“Hey Mom, what’s for dinner?” my teen mouthed as he walked upstairs to the kitchen to find a dancing queen mama and three toddlers showing they could jive.

“I don’t know, I’m thinking get everyone in the car and we’ll get shakes.”
“But that’s not dinner.”

“It is today.”

Carpe Diem, or at least Summer!

Obamanomics

Forgive me. I admit, my economics background is grounded in pure experience. Budgets require that you not spend more than you earn. Borrowing from the future is a bad idea. Having more money allocated to fixed expenses does not promote spending, it promotes cutting back. These are things I have learned via the school of hard knocks, the occasional over expenditure that resulted in a raidings of the savings account, and the brief experiement with a home equity loan.

We spend much easier than we save.

I remember wondering how the dot coms made money. It turns out, they didn't. I remember wondering how people could afford these McMansion houses starting in the low 900's. It turns out they couldn't.

So I'm wondering how taxing to create a 1 Trillion dollar bail out plan will actually result in more money being available. Flooding the markets with money to loan won't be something that people can afford. If we're paying more in taxes, we're not going to want to take on more debt.

The number could be a gazillion or five hundred google and it wouldn't matter. The money has to come from somewhere. If we print too much, the money we have will be worth less. It's been tried before.

Yet, we're going to press on with this plan because that's what the Country needs and people who write for the New York Times even fret that it's not enough. Those who complain are slammed as hypocrites because they spent foolishly when they were in power. So if I understand this correctly, the Democrats are entitled to spend foolishly because the Republicans did.

But the economy shall rise like a Phoenix because we spend this money quickly. I really hope it does, but my own ordinary understanding of economics says this won't work. We can't make the economy sing by taxing ourselves into oblivion.

So you heard it here first. I have coined the phrase, "Obamanomics." You tax to prosperity and when that doesn't work, you tax more.

I'd laugh but this isn't funny.

Thursday Political Questions (TPQ) from now on.

Watching the third and final debate, I have to wish that we could have a screen running below with a truth o'meter. I'd wish that we could get the correct take on everything but even factcheck takes time to address these issues and it's still filtered through the prism of whomever wrote the piece for factcheck.

Who checks on the factcheckers?

So here are some thoughts that I have about this political process.

Who do you want to hear talking at you for the next four years or for that matter, even the next twenty minutes?

If a single community organizer signs up 150,000 new voters from a list of 400,000 in one year in 1992 using dial up and the rudimentary equivalent of America Online, how many people would he have to meet/phone/fill out forms for per day?

Answer: 410 successful contacts. Please note, this does not take into account any weekends or holidays, just a straight 150,000 divided by 365. It does not also account for wrong numbers, hang ups, refusals, incorrect or double identifications, deceased, moved, or unfindable individuals.

If we factor in the entire list, assuming 1 of every four individuals was reachable, but the other three had to be attempted in the process, the number rises to 1095 per day. But hey. Maybe it wasn't this hard.

Maybe 1992 was a leap year.

Do you think your taxes are too low?

Do you think your neighbor's taxes are too low?

Name a person you KNOW, who you think should pay more. Tell them. IF they agree, ask how much more.

Name three things the government does so well, no one else can do it.
Aside from spend at a staggering rate, writing papers on every subject imaginabl.e and talking about anything and everything for as long as possible.

If you love how insurance micromanages health care, you'll love the government creating an administrative overlay. Right?

Do you think that having one party control the house, senate and White House is a good thing?

Would you think it was okay if your son who was eight when we experienced 9/11, when he's 47 hangs around with Osama Bin Laden if the later is then a professor at a University in a major city?

Does anyone know if Hillary wants to make a Rocky like comeback now? She's starting to look good to me...or at least moderate.

And Finally, and this is the big one...
Can we make a law so that the political process can only last a single year, from the primary start to the election of the president...so as to shorten the entire season?

I'm scared I'll see bumperstickers for 2012 November 7th.

Reflections on the Election and the 850 Billion Dollar Bailout...

I want in on the pork pie.

I mean, I’m willing to be bought and what’s more, I’ll even tell you what you get for your 850 billion. You get a promise.

That’s right, a promise I’ll keep except if I don’t want to or deem it no longer valid.

I promise not to ask for more.

I also promise that all the problems will go away. If the taxpayers only pony up, all the problems will just disappear. At least, they will for me.

Until such a time as congress okays my modest proposal for bailing out a writer who hasn’t yet been foreclosed, invest in Euros or Campbell’s condensed soup and peanut butter. Maybe Ramen nooles.

I’d follow my own advice if my 401K was able to actual invest in anything but it’s losing money faster than I could spend it and that’s saying something.

From listening to his speeches and ads, Obama considers any alternative proposals associated with McCain or anyone with an “R” attached to their name, to be reckless, inequitable and misguided at best. For the good of the whole country, we should all just stop pretending we work for anyone but the government. We should be happy to do this because, as Joe Biden says, “It’s patriotic.”

Silly me, I thought we fought a revolution to be able to pay less.

But, Obama says it’s fair so it must be. He went to Harvard and is a supra genius type guy with all the answers and wisdom necessary to fix everything.

Let’s just say, he’d better be.

Obama’s tax plan proposes that 95% of the country can fairly ride on the back of the remaining 5%. I’m not sure how that is actually fair as much as it is advantageous to the plurality of voters.

Taxing the rich will of course, in no way affect the rest of the country. The wealthy in that 5% won’t say…lay off workers, cut budgets or adjust their businesses, raising costs to limit damage to themselves. No. They’ll stay status quo, as if they were playing economic freeze tag and just got touched and have to wait for permission to move. Yeah. That will happen.

The CEOS, business owners with excessive largess and people making more than 250K themselves in profit will look at that tax plan and say, “Tag, you’re it.” and the middle class, small businesses and lower class will get to munch a bunch of dollars they didn’t get a vote on to implement, and can’t afford.

Understand if he wins, I will hope that he's absolutely right.

Obama has always wanted change, but found each step along the way towards power that the influence he had acquired was insufficient to the job to create an actual brave new world. So, being smart, he always sought the next level of leadership to be able to affect the world of influence he had just left. Thus, the community organizer became a two year state senator and then a two year senator running for president. But will being President be sufficient? I mean, you can’t control for outside factors if you only rule one country.

If he is the one we’ve been waiting for, for heaven’s sake and earth’s, let’s name him King of the World now. Why wait for the election? Crown the man already.

Then, let’s find out what’s in his 401K.

For more FREE humor, less painful than taxes or looking at your quarterly reports, .Humor-Blogs.com!

Minding Your Own Monkey Business

Because it's tax day, here's one I wrote a while ago...happy filing and reading folks!

Don’t get me wrong, I love nature shows on television. My kids are fascinated by the stories on Discovery and National Geographic. We encourage them to learn about the creatures of this Earth and to be stewards of all creation.

But sometimes, I think the narrators are in serious need of an intervention.

We were watching a show on PBS called "Primates" as told by a British researcher and nature hottie as she traipsed through the jungle in New Guinea and later in Matagascar to document the lives of various primates. One expects the researcher to love her subject. I can’t imagine braving the sub-topical heat, countless bugs, assorted necessary vaccinations and physical deprivations required of this type of research, unless one was in love with the subject matter.

However, this babe’s breathless descriptions of the various creatures and their habits and habitat paralleled that of the type of fan that is normally issued a restraining order.

In her first segment on orangutans, she was attempting to describe how these creatures move from limb to limb on a tree without suffering injury or breaking the branches.

"Careful judgment is called for, the orangutan must determine not simply the weight of the branches, but also the amount of force to be applied while taking into consideration his own weight. These calculations would be difficult even for a human." she whispered as we viewed said calculating primate move from branch to branch with nary a slide ruler.

Who knew orangutans could rival the engineers at MIT?

Still, the critters were pretty interesting so I watched the next segment on chimpanzees. As we viewed the "thoughtful stoic faces" of a family at peace with the world, she talked of how these chimps would sit for hours contemplating the world around them and showed footage of the chimps staring out at the jungle.

“Perhaps most startling about these pensive creatures is their sense of awe at nature.” She offered as she hiked to a local waterfall. “These chimps perform this same ritual every time they come to the waterfall.” The chimp on film is jumping from one side to the other in a zig zag pattern. “They do this whether they are alone or in a pack.” The footage shows the same chimp zigzagging with others over the waterfall. “This celebration of the water could be some form of ritual, signifying the higher awareness of the chimps, their sense of beauty, of wonder at the majesty of nature.”

She paused to look at the waterfall thoughtfully and then mentally went over the edge. “It could be their expression of essentially what for us would be religion.” The image of the waterfall blurred on the camera and the scene faded to black.

Following the religious chimps, she then took us with a war party from the same colony who set out to defend their territory. "The attack is brutal, unexpected, viscous and sends a clear message. But perhaps who are we to judge?" she posits as we are left with the shocking image of four angry chimps mauling a fifth for not showing due deference to their territory. Maybe the waterfall was a form of confession.

After the monkish monkeys, the film crew took us to an Amazon Utopia, where Pygmy chimps used sex as the dominant means of controlling behavior. Women (note not females) ruled the roost and over aggressive males were pacified with "a quickie." Also unique amongst this "chimp culture" was the use of tools and the occasional decision to walk on two legs instead of hunched over on four. The use of tools and the fact that some were left handed as versus right indicated "imagination, creativity, problem solving, intelligence and a sub culture." This particular cluster of chimps had determined how to open a kind of nut rich in protein that other chimp families could not open by using stones. More advanced than others, they had formed a chimp charter Mensa organization.

Though not the first to anthropromorphise the creatures she studied, I couldn’t bring myself to not see how far she would take it.

The silver back gorillas in Rwanda were obviously the grand prize of her documentary and she had us follow her through the bush to their territory, where the whole clan was having a "siesta." Seated less than five feet from one of the gorillas, she talked about these gentle giants that are so closely related to us, showing shots of the "children playing," the adults lovingly grooming, and others enjoying a well earned rest. I had to wonder, what exactly fatigues a gorilla, I mean besides nosy documenting film crews and the ongoing feud between the sex amazon monkeys, Mensa Chimps and religious sect.

When they woke from their rest, the lead silverback "sensibly" led them away from the camera but two adolescent males stayed behind as a rear guard and to "show off for the camera." She said. One knocked over a tree and thumped his chest. The second dragged the tree over to him and then went over and lightly tapped the intruding narrator on her back with his foot. She beamed with pleasure at having been brought into the game. "I’ve just been kicked by a gorilla!" she grinned impishly at the camera as though it had caught her first kiss. The second adolescent male, not to be outdone, charged at her and knocked her over before the behind the scenes guide could chase him off. She turned to the camera, breathless and hardly missing a beat, "Who knows what he might have tried if the guide hadn’t driven him off?"

After the sex chimp colony, I was certain I didn’t want to know.

Editor's note: Wonder if I can get the mensa chimp to do my taxes next year...

Mental Tapas Served

With eight children and version 9.0 on the way in September, there are always opportunities for articles, some more coherent than others. I keep a notepad for jotting down potential ideas. The following were all created by my loving offspring, for you, before 9 am Friday. While none of them flowered into a full fledged piece without seeming trite, overwritten or tired, I feel an obligation to keep trying so these are the mental tapas under consideration.

Witnessing the Lawn Mower man on his new tractor...Boo (newly four year old son)expressed his concern rather eloquently. "That man is scary, he freaked out my toes."

Cupie Doll (age 2 and impossibly cute), thinks pull ups make the perfect head accessory. We have even let her wear one into the car, on the theory we could pull it off when we arrived at our destination. So far, I haven't forgotten.

Taxes. Free Starbucks. Coincidence? I think not. Both normally cost a lot. Both take an inordinate amount of time, both will leave you shaking for hours in the aftermath.

Toilets: It's a bad day when the plunger makes an appearance before breakfast.
Bugs and Bathrooms: It's a really bad day when your daughter takes a shower and finds millipedes. Explaining it could be worse --mice, snakes, bees...doesn't help.

Sins of Omission: When a child alters his gate to step over a paper plate that has somehow made it to the floor, it is time to assign chores.

It's a really rough day...when the broom breaks in half in my hands, the washing machine starts smelling like burnt rubber and the vacuum quits on the same day, it is time to call the maids and order out.

Finally: When my infant daughter's sucking on her empty bottle at 4 a.m. translates to me as a metaphor for how writing works --the shell of an idea encasing something great which may or may not be empty...it's clear 1)I need more sleep 2)my world is a little bit tiny and 3)I should really get up and get her a new bottle.

MEMO to Mom and any public officials from child protective services reading this, I did.