TMI a little place to whine

What ever happened to an honest answer? Whatever happened to the truth?

Now everyone has to put a special spin on a subject.
The truth with a twist. The truth with additions and explainations. The truth with deletions. The truth with several analyses. So many people analysing that there are even analysis of the analysis. Soon the additons, corrections, explainations and deletions become more complex and complete and the truth somehow becomes something hidden, secondary to the new message, which is not the truth. The spin is so complete that as it spins and spins like a twirling top the truth, a small piece of paper that was unattached to the spin, gets flung off into space by the whirling spin.

To fix unemployment numbers they recount and recalculate and tweek them. Tweek? What is tweek? In Viet Nam they added animals, like dog and cows to the "body count" to make it sound like we were winning the war. In Iraq they don't tell people the whole truth about how many people are killed. By magic it's tweeked? Tweeked? Does that bring human beings back from the dead? Making negative numbers positive? Resurrect civilian casualities? Or is tweeking just failing to count everyone?

Is tweeking just "crunching the numbers?" So, is that how Exxon told us they had no money so they raised the price of oil suddenly posted a $36 billion profit? When they wanted us to pay through the nose they didn't have money and suddenly they had lots of money? Is tweek a magic word that makes profit appear from mid air? Or is tweek another word? A word like spin. A word that means lie?

I want tweeking and spinning to be illegal. I think it's already immoral, but I want it to be illegal. I want it to be called what it is. Lie.

And when it is made illegal I want every CEO, COO, CFO and government elected official who breaks the law to be put in jail.

Is it too much to ask that it all happen before "W" does his state of the union address tonight?

There used to be this stuff we called discretionary income. That was the money left over from your paycheck AFTER you paid for essentials, like food, shelter and clothing.

Then came the credit card, and you spent ahead of the discretionary income, using the left over from essential money to pay for it in installments. Buy things now, keep the economy running by going to the mall and buying more stuff! Almost at your credit limit? As long as you pay the minimum the banks and credit card companies were glad to increase your spending limits. Spend more, it's good for the economy.

Then the credit card companies were given permission to adjust the rates of their cards, upward of course, and after that they were permitted to increase the minimum payments. So that people who were barely making the minimum payment now can't.

Suddenly the bare essentials cost more. Housing is unaffordable, food costs soar, utilities are no longer a stable expense, gas and insurance are through the roof.
We're being priced out of existence. For what? So people who have homes can afford second homes? So kids who don't go to public school can go to more expensive private schools? So families of people who STILL have discretionary income can use it on more consumer goods?

Senators and Members of the House still have discretionary income though. They use OUR money,the money we gave them in our taxes, to impress each other. They are forever spending money WE don't have on things WE don't need while reducing the money for things we do need.

Every time anyone from Washington says they are trying to "help" in this Republican led government I cringe. They have helped alright, they have helped the indurstires
like insurance, medicine, and other big corporations, while reducing spending on health care, education and our nations inffrastructure.

Makes no sense to me. It makes me angry that the governmetn would sell out Americans for a chance to impress the rich and greedy. For a group of people who rely on the good will of ALL men and women in this country to deny the needs of those who need help most is a crime.

I hope someone has the balls to prosecute.

Why don't people see what's in front of their faces?

Yesterday the President had a press conference. In it he said the same thing over and over again. I don't need any law telling me what to do, I am the president of the United States and everything I do it right.

He also said, if you cut out the jubberish "War is Peace". Didn't hear that part? Well let me tell you how I heard it:

We are at war. I must do everything to do to keep you safe. To keep you safe I must break the law because I can't work under the dictates of a outdated law passed by "congress" in 1978. I am trying to keep the peace in the world. In order to keep peace I have to conduct this war. Therefore, war equals peace.

Yeah, made no sense to me either.

Judge Alito. (obviously another topic). Am I the only one who notices that he looks like Chief Justice Roberts? Perfect Republican clones. Reminds me of the Stepford wives in a male version. I keep waiting to hear the music to "It's a small world" anytime I see either of them. Look ma, no strings! It's all done by remote control now - and drugs and plastic surgery.

Can anyone explain why parents think that school is supposed to do all of the educating that their child needs so they don't have to do anything?

I can't understand why a mother lets her child run the house before he or she goes to preschool and then expects the school to teach the child how to behave.

The school's responsibility is to teach the child the correct behavior for school. It is NOT - and I repeat NOT - the responsibility of the school to make up for the deficit of a lazy parent who doesn't want to take the time to teach correct behavior.If they want the kids to be good at home and respect their siblings and family members someone at home has to teach them. Do parents expect the teachers and the school system to do it for them?

Another thing that ticks me off. People who say:"Religion is a lie and hypocricy. So I won't make my child learn any of that religion stuff."

Yeah, ok. So I want to ask them, " Do you teach them ANYTHING about morals? Do you teach them anything about right and wrong? Do you teach them about not stealing, and not lying? Do you teach them how and why it hurts you and others? How about civic responsibility? Or do you just teach them that they deserve to be treated fairly and no one is fair if they don't get what they want?"

What I see kids learning lately is selfishness. Thank God they haven't expected the schools to teach THAT.



Do you teach them about self sacrifice? Compromise?

Today I got taken out to dinner to Red Lobster for our 35th wedding anniversary.

Thirty five years? I can't be that old, can I?

Still together. Comfortable with each other's faults. Breathlessly in love? I doubt it, but after all this time we know each other and know what the other will tolerate. He cam be a [ain in the butt, but then so can I. Sometimes it's boring, mostly it's interesting - although I wouldn't call it an adventure. It's just how it is.

Information overload.

Is it just me or are we being so bombarded with news that seems totally unbelievable that we can't absorb it all.

I mean Washington and the minions of evil who reign there just seem to be making one serious mistake after another and the mind reels at the implications nationally and worldwide.

There is so much corruption and so many lies that there is no pleasure in the "Ah ha, I told you so!" that I am so fond of using.

I feel like America is on life support, just waiting for someone to pull the plug, because another 2 years of this living death is unthinkable.

Bush has a bad bout with the polls. The Patriot Act is in trouble. His picks for the Supreme Court aren't rubber stamped and then...Ben Laden suddenly appears with another *credible* terror threat, verified by the CIA that it's definately his voice.

Ben Laden says plans are in the works for another attack on America. Cheney says that it's no coincidence that no terrorists activity has occured since 9/11 (credits the Patriot Act, increased survilance, Homeland Security etc,. etc.) The White House spokesman says that Ben Laden is weak because he offers a truce, and we all know thatwe don't negotiate with terrorists because America is strong.

Amazing how the news shifts from the confirmation of Alito to the Supreme Court just as the votes are to be tallied, isn't it?

There's something wrong with this picture, and if you can't see that then you must be Republican.

Culling the herd.

First it was the welfare reform, then education reform, food stamps, surplus commodities, medical malpractice insurance reform and now social security, and medicare.

Do you see a pattern? The young, the sick, the elderly.

They aren't saving the "systems" with new reforms and saving taxpayers' money. They are getting rid of the weaker memebers of the herd.

Didn't Hitler do the same thing in the name of reform?

One person told me we don't need to worry about scheduling a meeting for today because we didn't have any black people who would be attending. I guess she didn't get it. Today isn't a "black" holiday. It's an American holiday.

Martin Luther King was an American who championed the rights of Americans in their own country.

Maybe it would sink in if there was some kind of symbolism that we could associate with MLK. Yeah, I know, the "I have a dream" speech. But it's not really a symbol.

I'm talking log cabin Abe Lincoln, cherry pie George Washington, American Flag 4th of July (and Memorial Day) kind of symbol.

Where is the special "holiday" food that is associated with MLK Day? As far as I know there is none.

So without a symbol, people forget it's a holiday.

Or is the symbol a free black American and is that why people who fear such things tend to think of it as not significant to us all as a nation?

They do it to people who are rescued from Cults, right? So how long do you think it will take to deprogram Republicans and those who voted Republican?

I mean, they have a grasp of the stupid. Maybe we can find a "political intervention group" (Thank's Annie) to make them all see reason.

I just wonder how much it will cost?

OK. My friend Sharon just took a graduate level Sociology class and did a paper on barren branches.

What are they?

Well, in China boys are the prefered child to have, and girls are not valued by society. Consequently girl children are aborted or "discarded" by society.

She showed me pictures which she used for a class presentation that showed a body of a "girl infant", not a fetus mind you, but an infant, lying in a curb on the side of the road - being walked past by men in business suits, children (male children) who were playing ball, and other pedestrians. Finally at one point a woman saw the infant and picked her up and deposited her into a dumpster.

When the photojournalist who saw this called police to investigate the police walked to the dumpster and looked, but when they say a "female" child the investigation was over because it wasn't worth bothering with. However, the journalist was taken into custody for taking pictures of the incident and was only relased if she would surrender her film (but she had other film so she did give them "some" of it.)

Families in China had been so insistant of having boys children that they are now having to resort to kidnapping girl children from other families to raise with their family as "future brides" for their sons. They were so focused on perserving the seed they forgot that the seed won't germinate unless it has an egg to fertilize.

I think all those with Y chromosomes have this habit of only using the head of their penis, not their head with the brains.

Yeah right, men think that they are important. The most important and that females are inferior. But let's face facts. No cloning experiments have been done with male cells. Why? Because male cells can't reproduce WITHOUT females. You can't fertilize a male cell with another male cell and expect a duplicate. It doesn't work. You need an egg. Men don't have eggs WOMEN have eggs. However, a female cell can fertilize another female cell and it will produce a duplicate.

Can you see the pattern here?

Without females there will be no continuation of the human race. It does matter how many males there are on the planet. Men left to their own devices will kill off the species. By killing off the women and girls as unwanted they are dooming themselves.

Funny, but the way it looks to me is that WOMEN are the more important of the sexes, and the Y chromosomes who don't understand it are doomed to extinction.

Yeah, you read that right. Hamburger $33.

Here's the scoop.

Times are tough and I thought I should buy some hamburger instead of trying to buy chops or steaks or more chicken, since everything is so expensive.

I remember buying 3 to 5 lbs packages of ground chuck, bringing it home and separating it into individual packages and freezing it for future use. So when I went shopping last weekend that's what I planned to do.

I went to the meat section and looked for the "family packs" which are usually 3 to 5 lbs packages. Well, there were none that small. The smallest package was 8 plus pounds. That's 8 pounds at $3.49 a pound. So one "family pack" of 8 plus pounds of ground chuck (not extra lean, or sirloin, or ground round) would have cost me $33!!

Can anyone see what's wrong with this picture?

Hamburger.

The staple of us po' folk. Hamburger, which can be stretched seven ways from Sunday to feed a hungry family with 4 kids (or more). Hamburger, which people think of as a cheap meal meat. Hamburger is $33.

Tell me how far $100 goes if you buy milk - 1 gallon is now about $3.59 on average. Bread, cheap squishy perservative filled white bread, is $1.09 a loaf. Eggs are still relatively cheap at around a dollar a dozen for medium grade A. Butter is between $2.99 and $3.59 a pound. Lunch meats from the deli are costly - $6 a pound for roast beef on special. Bologna is $4.99 a pound sliced from the deli. If you want pre packaged meat it's cheaper, but the packages are also only 12 oz. not a full pound. So how is it that we are supposed to buy food plus the other necessities of life, fruits, veggies, rice, and other food staples, plus sanitary products, soaps, deoderetns, dental products, etc. when you have to shell out 1/3 of your grocery budget for hamburger?

Am I the only person who sees something amiss?

Our president tells us there are more jobs and the economy is great.

Can someone tell me what planet the man is broadcasting from?

Why is it that even the smallest house seems to have much more space in it once the Christmas tree and other decorations have all been taken down?

Strange the stream of conscienciousness stuff that floats through your head.

Sometimes I wonder if just because you think something it will exist? I mean there is some kind of scientific/philosophical/phychological theory that if you think it it IS.

So given the number of people who live or have lived or will live there are too many ideas to even count.

So, is this what is meant by infinity?

At age 46, 11 years ago, I heard the news that my cousin Ron, 6 months younger than I, had died after a long illness. In our youth, when we both lived in Pittsburgh, Ron and I were sort of close. We were part of the 26 cousins, the middle group, so at large family gatherings we hung around with others of the same general age. So we knew each other pretty well back then. Same interests, same grade in school, heck, we even shared the same Godmother.

Of course as we got older, married and had families and moved apart. Most contact was kept through others, mostly his mother my Aunt Marge who wrote occasionally and who would say how Ronny and the other of her 10 child family, was doing, etc. Or if we would attend the same wedding or funeral. But his death did affect me. When he died I decided I had to start doing the things I had put off. Things that I had planned to do some day and yet some day never got around to happening. I had time, I thought, to do them.

But Ron died. He may have had plans like me, but he ran out of time and never got them done. Because of his death I bought a stick shift car and learned to drive it. I took a long distance ride on a train - Miami to Philadelphia for my college reunion. I got tickets and attended an Olympic game, when the games were in Atlanta, the soccer quarter finals were held in satellites cities and Miami was one of them. I saw Brazil play Japan and get beaten (big upset). I went back to school and got my Master's degree.

Now I don't just say "someday", I plan for it, because some day may not come for me.

There were the "older kids",much older than I, 7 of them all of them my cousins since I was the oldest child of two in my nuclear family. Tony, Ron's oldest brother died within the same month he did. He had a heart attack. Jackie, an only child of my Aunt Irene, died a few years ago, he was the very oldest of all of the cousins, and now Philip, the oldest son of another branch of the family, my Uncle Phil, has had a cerebral hemorage and is virtually waiting for his organs to fail so he can complete the dying process. Philip is 65.

My family is getting old and begining to die off.

I guess that means I am getting older too.

I knew it was coming, after all dying in a part of life.

So I wonder what has been left undone? What else should I be planning? What else will I be able to do before my time?

Maybe I should sit down and write a list so I know.

Do I get to say it yet?

Please?

Pretty please?

Ah come on. I've waited 5 years, can't I do it NOW? Do I have to wait longer?

Yeah maybe you're right.

I'll wait just a bit longer, like until he is Impeached.

If they found out Nixon authorized illegal wire taps and he resigned in disgrace and they DON'T impeach "King George" for doing what the law post Nixon clearly prohibited then something is terribly wrong with the United States psyche.

I just can't wait until I get to say to those pious Christian Evangelical Conservative voters who sold their souls and our freedoms for "safety".

I TOLD YOU SO.

So our comes the old 9/11 rhetoric again.

This time "w" wants to remind us that he made a promise to keep Americans safe. So that means that 9/11 and his promise give him the right to do domestic spying?

Hey, why should I believe that when he took an OATH that he isn't living up to. Yeah, an oath. One of those promises made to God, sworn on the Holy Bible in front of the Capitol Building and all that. You know "...to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God."

Yeah, like that promise meant a lot to him.

"W" has called the Constitution that "peice of paper", so I guess by his actions the oath does not count because the Bible is just a book.

Every time the president evokes 9/11 as a justification for his actions I want to scream "LIAR!" Any sentence from his mouth that uses 9/11 as an excuse or a shield means we had better keep a close eye on what he is trying to hide.

My problem is I can't decide who is dumber, the president for thinking he can fool Americans or the Americans who believe him.

Numbers 6:22-27

The Lord said to Moses:

"Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them:
This is how you shall bless the Israelites.

"Say to them:
The Lord bless you and keep you!
The Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!
The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace!

"So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites, and I will bless them."


God's blessings on all for 2006.