Thoughts to Ponder

Number 10
Life is sexually transmitted.

Number 9
Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Number 8
Men have two emotions : Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich .

Number 7
Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.

Number 6
Some people are like a Slinky-not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

Number 5
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospitals, dying of nothing.

Number 4
All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

Number 3
Why does a slight tax increase cost you $800.00, and a substantial tax cut saves you $30.00?

Number 2
In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

And The Number 1 Thought
Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers--what you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.

- - - and as someone recently said to me:
"Don't worry about old age--it doesn't last that long."

545 vs. 300,000,000 People

-By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House now? He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan ...

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees...

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

Taxes

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom, if agreed, stayed home to raise the kids.

What in the heck happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'

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Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

Pride of Lions

The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for groups of animals.
There is a Pride of lions, a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), a School of fish, an Exaltation of doves and, presumably because they look so wise, a Parliament of owls.
Now consider the baboon. The loudest, most dangerous and viciously aggressive of all primates. And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons - a Congress.
Sometimes the jokes just write themselves...

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. Term Limits.

12 years only one of the possible options below..

A. Two Six-year Senate terms

B. Six Two-year House terms

C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension.

That a Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3. Congress (past present & future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system and Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.

Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

Keystone Kops

I don’t know about you. But when I watch these Congressmen on TV argue back and forth about the budget, I’m reminded of those old Keystone Kops episodes. The 1910s-era silent films featured a rotating bunch of incompetent, uncoordinated officials chasing their tails and otherwise bumbling about … while the bandits made off with the loot!

Here in the present day, both Democrats and Republicans have been haggling for months on federal budget cuts — while getting essentially nowhere! They’ve had to pass not one … not two … but SIX continuing resolutions to keep the government operating so far this fiscal year — a year that began more than six months ago!

The key point of contention? Just how much federal fat to cut. Tea Partiers who helped get several conservative members elected to Congress last year want cuts on the order of $100 billion. Other Republicans are content with $61 billion. But some Democrats want no more than $10 billion, while others are only willing to consider a figure around $33 billion.

Regardless of how the negotiations play out, however, several things are abundantly clear to me … First, the “leaders” we’ve elected aren’t leading. They’re bungling. Second, even the figures being discussed by the most aggressive budget cutters are too timid! And third, a future debt crisis is virtually guaranteed as a result!

Let me tell you why … It Doesn’t Matter Whose Cuts We’re Talking about … They’re All just Spit in the Wind! The White House recently projected cumulative budget deficits of $7.2 trillion over the next decade. But the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said those figures didn’t hold water. It says the deficit tally will be even higher — $9.5 trillion. Folks, that’s an average of nearly $1 trillion EVERY SINGLE YEAR through at least 2021! It took more than two centuries to rack up TOTAL deficits that large, and now we’re going to be doing it every single year for as far as the eye can see!

Let’s say for the sake of argument that mainstream Republicans get every last penny of the $61 billion in cuts they want. Even if by some miracle that happened, it would amount to just 3.7 percent of the $1.65 trillion deficit the Obama administration is predicting for fiscal 2011. Meanwhile, our nation’s debt load rose by $61 billion in the first 22 days of March alone. That proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’re just spitting into the wind. If Congress really wanted to make a difference, it would make major, long-term changes to the biggest budget-busting programs out there — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. They account for roughly 44 percent of federal spending right now. And those percentages are only going to rise as America ages.

Congress refuses to make meaningful spending cuts to costly entitlement programs. Yet despite years of talk, successive administrations and Congress have failed to make meaningful progress on reforms. Our official government debt load is hovering around $14.2 trillion. But in a recent and widely-read commentary, PIMCO guru Bill Gross noted that our unfunded Social Security liabilities total $7.9 trillion, while our unfunded Medicare liabilities total $22.8 trillion. Throw in Medicaid and you get another $35.3 trillion. That’s roughly $80 trillion in official debt and future liabilities. Yet our “leaders” are haggling over a couple tens of billions of dollars in cuts as if they’ll turn the tide. Unbelievable!

Think I’m just blowing smoke about the magnitude of this looming debt crisis? Think again! No less an authority than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agrees with me! In a just-released report titled An Analysis of US Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How? the IMF concluded we would have to “immediately and permanently” slash all transfer payments and jack up taxes by a whopping 35 percent to eliminate our current and long-term deficits! Its stark warning? “The United States is facing an untenable fiscal situation due to the combination of high fiscal deficits, and aging population, and rapid growth in government-provided healthcare benefits.”

How to Protect Your Portfolio from Washington’s Bumbling Bottom line: Regardless of how and whether the 2011 budget debate settles out, our fiscal outlook will get worse and worse each and every year thereafter. The only way to get us off this path to peril is for Washington policymakers to take these threats seriously, and tackle them head on. But that just isn’t happening, not by a long shot.

If there’s a bright side to all this, it’s that you don’t have to sit idly by and take the abuse from Washington. You can insulate your portfolio in a number of ways. Martin Weiss goes into much more detail on how in the extremely timely online presentation “American Apocalypse.” If you haven’t already viewed it, I urge you to do so right away. Other actions to consider? Buy foreign bonds and stocks to profit from the dollar plunge that’s resulting from lousy policymaking in D.C. Avoid long-term U.S. Treasuries like the plague. And invest in the shares of companies whose balance sheets are in much better shape than our own government’s, while dodging the multitude of dogs out there!

H. L. Mencken

Here are some H. L. Mencken [1880-1956] quotes that are good to remember when thinking about politicians in general:

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

And some that are relevant to Progressives in particular:

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

It is also good to remember that Mencken himself both believed in and helped to shape the Progressive agenda. He was simply too experienced and too cynical to accept it for himself or to believe that he himself was a "common man". And he detested most politicians, with a special distrust of Franklin Roosevelt.

Here is a Mencken quote on Political Correctness that is lost on today's liberals:

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

And some acrid observations on democracy [which are shared by almost all politicians, but never in public]:

No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

And a great quote on politics and human nature:

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

And a good quote to remember whenever any politician or advocate or pundit is speaking [or writing emails]:

There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.