The Boston Tea Party

From Wikipedia:

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action protest by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and has often been referenced in other political protests.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their constitutional right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protestors had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protestors would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a legislature in which they were not directly represented.

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.

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While the Boston Tea party was primarily about the colonists belief that they shouldn't be taxed by anyone but their own elected representives, today the "tea baggers" are protesting, not just taxes, but the wild and out-of-control spending in Washington. You cannot spend your way out of debt. It just can't happen.

I can't speak for everyone, but I believe that we wage earners are being taxed out of our paychecks today, and future generations are, in effect, being told to not bother to dream of high paying jobs or being the next Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, or Donald Trump. Oh, they can make the money, but the taxes will make the effort pointless.

The current "fixes" may make a difference. I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know for sure what this "economic stimulus" will do. I do know that taxing is only going to create a society of people who do just what they have to do to get by. There will be fewer and fewer people who have the gumption to do more, to find out what's behind that next curve, that next door.

Don't tell me that President Obama is cutting taxes for 95% of Americans. The $15 a month in tax cuts most of us will get won't make a bit of difference. Oh, sure, we'll be able to buy a pizza once a month, but it's not going anywhere near to what the Administration wants us to buy: big ticket items like cars, house, big screen tv's and so on.

Moving from an income based tax system to a consumer based system will do just that. No money withheld from paychecks, everybody (including illegal aliens and the criminal element) becomes a tax payer instead of just a portion of us, no more filing tax returns, and so much more!

Liberals just don't understand that this isn't just about taxes, it's just not the only part. They can't see that we, the American people, are tired of seeing our money going to bail out companies that should be allowed to fail. No business is so big it can't fail. There may be businesses that are so big their failure will have a huge impact on the economy, but we've survived world wars, depresssions, and terrorist attacks. I'm sure the failure of big Wall Street companies will have an effect, but life does go on.

Yes, taxes are a part of the protest. I have no objection to paying taxes to pay for governmental infrastructure that the states are not responsible for. I understand that national defense must be paid for. I understand that Social Security is a Federal responsibility. I've paid into SS for over 40 years now. I want what I've paid into, what I've earned, what I was promised and what I'm entitled to.

Many of us are in favor of instituting a consumption tax instead of an income tax. Liberals don't want to go this way. They can't see beyond the fact that the "evil rich" won't be paying an income tax anymore to think about this: the average wage earner will get more in each and every paycheck. No withholding, no FICA, no Federal taxes at all. That money goes back to the people who earned it. That's you and me. Believe it or not, it will make more of a difference to you and me than it will to Donald Trump or Bill Gates.

The wealthy will be taxed when they build their mansions, buy their Jag's and Gulfstreams, and 75 foot yachts. Continuing on this way will only narrow the gulf between the rich and the poor wider, and the "middle class" will be only a very narrow margin.

Look, there will always be the rich and the poor. I will probably never be among the "rich", but I would like to keep what I've earned and spend it as I see fit, not as how the government thinks is best. I think the economy can be stimulated with the FairTax and that growth will occur like we haven't seen since the end of WWII. The rich will always be here as will the poor. I'd like to see the band between the two widen, so that there are fewer rich, few poor and many more in the middle. From what I have read, the only way this can happen is to institute the Fair Tax.

Please, go to the official site, Fair Tax.org, and see for yourself.

Jumproping to the Extreme

I jumproped as a kid, but nothing like this!

Makes me want to get out the old jumprope and start jumping again. Great exercise!

I received the following in email from Chris Chocola, President of the Club for Growth:

....The liberal group, MoveOn.org, recently sent an email to its supporters stating, "If Republicans convince voters that clean energy legislation amounts to a new tax, Obama's plan is toast."

Well, consider it toast, or at least very warm, but not because Republicans are calling it a "tax"...they are and they're doing a great job. But they're getting help from a top Democrat as well! During a House hearing on cap and trade legislation, liberal Rep. John Dingell said, "Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax, and it's a great big one."

He's got that right. And for the record, Dingell received a 0% on our 2008 scorecard, so even the most liberal of liberal congressmen knows what cap and trade really is -- a HUGE TAX HIKE.

TARP Plus ACORN Equals $$$

Posted By Bobby Eberle On April 24, 2009 at 7:18 am

One of the problems of TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) is the complete lack of accountability in how the funds are spent. A lending institution or other entity could be billions of dollars in debt, come to the federal government for a bailout, and then waste it on parties or trips. In addition, these companies could also use the money to fund left-wing fringe groups, and we have no say whatsoever.

If a company requests taxpayer money, then the taxpayers need to know how that money is being spent. More importantly, since the entire program is designed to help "troubled" companies, the money should be focused on restoring the company to "good health," not funding groups like ACORN whose sole job is to promote a left-wing agenda.

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe is addressing this problem with an amendment to S.386 -- the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA). Inhofe's amendment (announced with Sens. DeMint, Vitter, and Ensign, "would require TARP recipients to fully disclose any expenditures that are not essential to restoring their solvency."

As Inhofe notes in his press release, "Some of these companies have donated to ACORN, Friends of the Earth, Planned Parenthood ... to name just a few. The vast majority of Americans do not support the agendas of these fringe groups, whose excesses have been well-documented over the years."

Inhofe's objective is simple: "If they're not focused on increasing their solvency or liquidity, if they're not working on lending to small businesses and individuals, if they're not helping get this economy back on track, and are instead financing extremist organizations, then the American people need to know about it."

Transparency and accountability are two processes that are in short supply in Washington. To give away billions of taxpayer dollars with no accountability and no real plan should be criminal. To use that money to fund groups like ACORN is beyond crazy. It's OUR money! Obama, CNN, and the Congress seem to forget that fact.

Everyone knows the king of the beasts has sharp claws.

 
It should be obvious. 

Like any other cat, he has lion knives.

from Kim Komando 

Ben Stein How Not to Ruin Your Life

Big Brother and Your Taxes
by Ben Stein
Posted on Monday, April 20, 2009, 12:00AM

Here is a scary story for you.

Recently a friend of mine, who lives in a city in Northern California, called me, extremely upset. She said she had just received a letter from the California Franchise Tax Board, the ruthless entity that collects taxes in sunny California.

The letter referenced her 2006 taxes, asking her how she had the means to buy a certain very expensive car she owns. She was asked to document how she had the money for it and why they saw no sign of that income on her 2006 return.

The fact is that the woman in question was in a serious car accident in late 2005. Her prior car was totaled. So she got a lump sum insurance payment of about $30,000. Rather imprudently, she used that money as the down payment on an extremely pricey car -- the sort of car she really does not have enough income to afford.

That's her problem, and she will deal with it.

The scary part is that the California Franchise Tax Board knew what kind of car she bought and how much she paid for it, and they could and did compare those numbers with her earlier years' income.

The Servant Becomes the Master

This shows that information gathering by taxing authorities has gone way past where it should be. The whole incident reminded me of the beginning of ‘Terminator', when we learn that, at a certain stage, machines become self-conscious and have the will to take over the earth. The servant becomes the master. And since the master is a machine, it has no feelings other than the will to control.

If the taxing authority knows what kind of car a taxpayer has and how much it cost to buy, what's next? Can the state match up our credit card purchases with our social security numbers and then keep a total of how much we have spent in 2009? Can the IRS or the Franchise Tax Board then have a program that figures that if we spent X, especially on Y and Z items, then we must have had an income of A? Can it then send us a letter demanding to know why we did not pay tax on amount A?

More frightening, the taxing authority can slap liens on taxpayers, and sometimes the taxpayers don't learn about it until later. Can the IRS or the state authority compute what their machines "think" we owe, and then simply debit that amount from our bank or brokerage accounts? If there is not enough there to pay what they figure we owe, can they put liens on our homes and garnish our wages?

If the IRS really gets rolling, can they get an instantaneous, automated look at our checking accounts? Can they compute what the machines think we owe by the checks plus the credit cards, and then attach our wages or our bank accounts until we pay?

Soulless Machines

Our government, to some people, appears to be a fair-minded, careful body. And many bureaucrats do fit that description, although many do not. But what happens when soulless machines take over the tasks of tax gathering?

Then we humans have to gather our records and try to fight back as well as we can. How long until we go into an audit and don't even talk to a human being but instead have a machine scan our documents and then instantaneously give us an answer?

The answer, of course, will always be "pay up."

At present, only the top echelons of wage earners pay any meaningful amount of tax. But once the collection process is fully computerized, what is to stop the IRS or the states from collecting at least a few ounces of flesh from everyone?

The future liabilities of the government -- thanks to wild overspending by both the Democrats and Republicans -- are almost incomprehensibly large. The needs of the states are critical right now. What is to stop the politicians from making machines our oppressors to squeeze out every dime they can from us?

A Plea for Privacy

And what about some minimal amount of privacy? I am happy to pay my taxes. I like the fact that some of what I pay goes to the military and police and firefighters. But I don't want the government to know all the details of my life, which is what they are clearly on the way to knowing.

For years now, I have been hearing that we need a very large sales tax instead of an income tax, and I have pooh-poohed the idea as being too regressive. But now that I see where the income tax system is going, I am eager for a fresh look at a national sales tax, which would stop the government from prying into our lives.

Taxes are a basic part of life, and we all have to pay our fair share. But Big Brother is a lot closer than we think, via the tax system, and I don't like that one bit.

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I am excited that Mr. Stein is now interested in a national consumption tax (the Fair Tax HR25). Should he really be interested in such a tax, he needs to talk to Neal Boortz, Representative John Linder, or read their book, The Fair Tax. It would be great to have Ben Stein on board as a proponent of the Fair Tax.

Mr. Stein is incorrect in his thought that a consumption tax would be regressive. And, the national sales tax proposed as the Fair Tax, is not as large as Mr. Stein thinks. It is 23%, but, we already pay approximately 22% in hidden taxes, so the Fair Tax would increase the current tax by only 1%. This is a very simple explanation and you really need to read and study more about the Fair Tax.

It is indeed scary that any governmental agency would be able to send a letter to a taxpayer asking how he or she could afford to purchase, in this case, an expensive car. I'm afraid that we will be hearing a lot more about this kind of thing. There are people who derive income in ways they wouldn't want Uncle Sam to know about, but there are a lot of people who simply don't pay income tax at all. Personally, I'm more interested in them, if only so that the tax base would be that much larger.

In any case, welcome, Ben Stein, to the wonderful world of a national consumption tax!

http://www.fairtax.org/

How we're going to save more

It won't be by renouncing all 'frivolous' spending. It'll be by focusing on the big things - and resisting the urge to beat ourselves up.

By Pat Regnier, Money Magazine assistant managing editor
February 26, 2009: 6:17 AM ET

(Money Magazine) -- Sometime last fall, my wife and I began having urgent conversations about putting more money away. It wasn't fun. A typical day went like this: Work. Feed children. Get children to bed. Clean up after children. Look at bank statements and bills. Stress out. Blame each other (occasionally). Sleep. Repeat.

A lot of families have been doing the same thing. According to a December survey by Pew Research Center, 85% of Americans have recently made personal spending cutbacks. Most of those people weren't in immediate financial trouble. Like us, they were just reading the headlines.

Our stab at saving more involved making changes to our daily spending. Impulse purchases on gadgets and new clothes have stopped, and we stick closely to the shopping list every time we hit the supermarket. I'm eating PB&J for lunch. And our savings account has grown by...a whole $75.

It's not the small stuff

What happened? A fat tuition bill from our daughter's private preschool, that's what. The experience brought home for me an observation by Chicago financial planner Mary Claire Allvine: It's the big things that really count.

If you've got a decent income, changing your brand of coffee or being the last person in your zip code to buy an iPod just isn't going to get you very far. To make a real difference, you are going to have to cross out a major line item. The private school. The house with the great address. A parent staying at home with the kids. Or the plan to retire early. These are not frivolous, spendthrift things. Responsible grown-ups can choose among them. It's just that most of us can't choose every single one of them.

There's been much wringing of hands lately about the conspicuous overconsumption of the 1990s and early 2000s. Many people feel that we're simply being punished for buying all those flat-screen TVs. Maybe we could appease the angry money gods with a bonfire of surplus Prada bags.

But guess what. Most Americans really weren't unusually self-indulgent. At the height of the boom, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School expert on bankruptcy and consumer debt, crunched the numbers. In 2005 the median-income family was spending substantially less of its income on clothing, appliances and food - even after including meals out - than families did in 1972. If it seems as though your closets have filled up with trinkets and baubles, that's partly because that stuff got a lot cheaper relative to incomes. Where the spending really grew was in the big fixed costs, including mortgages, health care, child care and college tuition.

This is not a test

There's no question that the American economy was badly unbalanced over the past decade or so. And, yes, many of us lost perspective about the value of housing. But the vast majority of the people I know, including people I met when I was reporting on the housing bubble in Southern California, weren't after anything more than what my parents tried to get for their family back in the 1970s: a safe home, a good education, a future. Our national character hasn't deteriorated since then, even if lending standards did.

So let's not get caught up in the idea that we must expiate the collective sin of frivolous spending. In this economic crisis, that kind of thinking could lead to some lousy policies. One of the common arguments against a fiscal stimulus is that since overspending got us into this mess, the real cure is for everybody, including the government, to start balancing the books again. Certainly families have to act responsibly - the Regniers are dropping the private school next year. But the economic lesson of the Great Depression is that in desperate times, fiscal austerity by governments just makes things worse. This is a moment for action, not finger wagging.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The adage used to say, "watch the pennies and the pounds (dollars) will take care of themselves". That's true enough, if you're indulging in a lot of frivoulous spending.

I remember an episode of Grace Under Fire where Grace was having money problems (when wasn't she?) and she remarked that she had money for pizza, it was rent money she was worried about.

One pizza wasn't going to make or break Grace, just as it probably won't make or break you or me. I've been going over my credit card and bank statements to see where I might make some significant differences. Not many but a few.

I read an article recently about a group of couples who met at a restaurant once a month. They started meeting at each others homes, bringing something to contribute to a meal and found they saved money, and had as good a time, if not better, than they had on their restaurant nights.

We all have our pizza issues, but it's probably the bigger things that can be cut out that will make more of a difference in your financial life. Look at your statements with an unjaundiced eye and see where you might make a difference. If you're really honest with yourself, you can see places where you can make a real difference. Not many, but one or two can make a difference.

Will The Tea Parties Matter?
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)
Posted 04/22/2009 ET

The elite media tried to ignore us.

The government labeled us “extremists.”

But on April 15, more than one million Americans came together, spontaneously, to defend fairness and freedom.

I know because Callista and I were there. Here is our story.

A Reaction to the Left’s Effort to Create a Radical, Secular, and Socialist America

Callista and I spent last Wednesday evening at the New York City Tea Party in City Hall Park. We had a terrific time, as did the crowd that the New York Police estimated numbered 12,500 fellow citizens.

The Tea Party in New York was a great example of the nature of the entire movement: It was a grassroots citizens’ initiative aroused in reaction to the left’s aggressive effort to create a more radical, secular, and socialist country.

The force behind the New York Tea Party was Kellen Giuda, a 26-year-old small businessman (three employees), who decided on his own to organize a protest.

A Modern Day Sam Adams

At the New York Tea Party, I called Kellen a modern day Sam Adams.

Like the original 1773 Boston Tea Party, the nationwide Tea Parties of 2009 were held in response to a government treating Americans as subjects to be commanded rather than citizens with God-given rights.

Kellen Giuda is a citizen, not a subject. His first internet-based effort led 300 people to get together. These 300 then reached out and organized an effort which drew 12,500 people to City Hall Park. It was a bubbling-up of the grassroots comparable to anything the left-wing anti-war movement had been able to achieve in the last eight years.

More than One Million Americans Held Tea Parties.

Dave Ryan, the head of American Solutions, had a great time with Fox News’ Sean Hannity and 20,000 fellow citizens in Atlanta on Wednesday evening.

My friend and co-author Bill Forstchen estimated there were 1,500-plus citizens at the Asheville Tea Party.

Rick Tyler, founding director of Renewing American Leadership, helped drive tens of thousands of people of faith out to Tea Party Day rally sites around the country.

Will the Tea Parties Be a Moment Quickly Forgotten or the Start of Something Big?

Adam Waldeck, the Tea Party coordinator for American Solutions, reported that the Tax Day Tea Party effort organized in at least 850 sites, with more than one million people all told.

An impressive showing, especially considering that the elite media virtually ignored the movement, no big donor or organization was behind it, and right and center-right leaning Americans generally have jobs and lack the professional protest and “community organizing” prowess and funding of the left.

Still, David Axelrod, President Obama’s chief strategist, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” last Sunday that the Tea Party movement was potentially “unhealthy.”

So what does this movement really mean? Will the 2009 Tax Day Tea Parties be a brief moment in time quickly forgotten or the beginning of something big?

Dispelling the Media Myths about the Tea Parties

Liberal politicians and pundits did their best to discredit the Tea Parties by describing them, first, as a partisan Republican movement, and, second, as a revolt of greedy rich people who don’t want to pay more income tax.

But as Callista and I saw -- and anyone who went to a Tea Party with an open mind would have seen as well -- the Tea Parties were not essentially Republican. People were as disgusted with big spending under President Bush as they are opposed to big spending under President Obama. This was a powerful movement of Americans fed up with the irresponsible politicians of both parties. In most cities they did not have a politician speaking. In some places, politicians were barred from speaking and forced to listen.

Alarm at the Growing Burden of Government on All Americans

Second, Tea Party participants were not simply angry about higher federal income taxes. Like Kellen Giuda, they were alarmed at the growing burden of government on all Americans, and the America we are leaving to our children both born and unborn. Taxing future generations to pay for our irresponsible spending is the epitome of “taxation without representation” which was precisely in line with the spirit of the Boston Tea Party in 1773.

What the elite media missed is that state and local taxes are going up for everyone. Add that to higher gasoline taxes, corporate taxes, death taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, and the threat of an energy tax. All of these combine to convince people that the general burden of government is getting bigger.

The Obama budget being negotiated in a House-Senate Conference Committee this week projects an astounding $9 trillion increase in federal debt over the next eight years. Since no one expects the liberals in control of Washington to cut spending, this level of debt virtually guarantees either higher taxes for the middle class or higher inflation. Higher taxes or higher inflation -- either path means declining incomes, declining savings, and fewer economic opportunities for every American.

The elite media didn’t get this. The Americans at the Tea Parties last week did. They understand that more government means more taxes and more taxes means less freedom. That’s why we came out.

The Real Meaning of the Tea Parties: Fairness, Responsibility, and Freedom

But more important than understanding what the Tea Parties were not is understanding what they were. I believe there are three much deeper meanings to the Tea Party movement that the elite media completely missed. The first is fairness, the second is responsibility, and the third is freedom.

Fairness is the great Achilles heel of the left. As Callista and I travel around the country, more and more people tell us how unfair it is for the government to pick winners and losers.

More and more people tell us they are disgusted that the government is subsidizing those who bought houses they couldn’t afford while making those who worked hard, lived prudently and saved for a home they could afford help pay for the transfer of wealth to those who chose to live beyond their means.

Responsibility vs. Irresponsibility: The Choice of the Next Generation

The Obama Administration’s new budget document is entitled “A New Era of Responsibility,” yet there is nothing responsible about increasing the size of the federal debt by $9 trillion over the next decade. This means that the average 21-year-old college graduate will have to pay $114,000 over the course of his or her lifetime just to pay for the interest on the new Obama debt.

Burdening the next generation with this much debt is the height of irresponsibility. It’s akin to the parents of today buying and driving a mid-range Porsche 911 and stiffing their kid with the bill. It’s going to get harder and harder for new college graduates to pay down school loans, their first car, a down payment on a mortgage, and start a new family if part of every paycheck has to go to pay for their parents’ $100,000 sports car.

The Most Radical Administration and Congress in American History?

The ultimate underlying force behind the Tea Parties is the cause of freedom.
There is increasing recognition that this is the most radical administration and most radical Congress in American history.

This is a left-wing team that wants to raise taxes, undermine charities, churches, and synagogues, (see my piece in Christianity Today) impose a radical secular agenda (eliminating the conscience clause protecting doctors of faith from being compelled to perform abortions is just one example), create bigger and bigger bureaucracies and take control of more and more of the private sector. This is a left-wing team dedicated to centralizing power in Washington.

The Difference Between Subjects and Citizens

The Democrats, Republicans and Independents who went to Tea Parties last week want the same thing that the patriots of 1773 wanted: To be treated as free citizens with inalienable rights, not indentured subjects of an all-powerful government.

Subjects don’t complain when government makes their lives more secular and more socialized.

But citizens demand the “right to pursue happiness” as their Creator endowed them in the Declaration of Independence.

Citizens do not want to be told that they can earn up to $250,000, but above that, they are illegitimate possessors of the “people’s wealth” and should expect to have it taken by the government.

Citizens do not want to be told that members of Congress or bureaucrats in the Treasury will set salary schedules and decide income for Americans in private business.

The Tea Parties were a reaction to all these threats to the American way of life.

Will the Tea Party Movement Matter? July 4 May Tell the Story

All that said, if the Tea Parties prove to be a one-time event they will probably not matter.

But if the Tea Party movement is the beginning of a larger, broader and deeper dialogue about the future of America then they will matter a great deal.

People are wondering what they can do next. American Solutions has an easy answer: Contact your representatives in Washington and urge them to oppose the big spending, big deficits, big government, big taxes, and big debt Obama Budget. Visit www.americansolutions.com/teaparty to learn more.

Then, we should make July 4, 2009 “American Freedom Day.” Tea Party activists across America should plan to go out and recruit supporters from every Fourth of July celebration in their community.

If one million freedom-loving Americans work from now to July 4, the size of the Tea Party movement will grow dramatically.

As Tea Party leaders around the country email, chat, and call each other, they should learn the lessons from this past week and begin laying plans to make July 4, 2009 a day that goes down as a decisive turning point in the history of defending freedom.

They Are Entitled to an Opinion

and I'm entitled to mine. I won't be calling anyone names such as "racist" without knowing them personally. But, I do have the right to choose not to patronize any movie or watch any tv show in which Ms. Garafalo appears.

I believe she has talent, but I won't pay the price of a movie ticket or patronize the sponsor of a program on which she appears. That doesn't mean I won't purchase the sponsor's product, but it won't be because I saw it on a show Ms. Garofalo was on. I can't say that I will not watch Mr. Olbermann's show. I never have and see no reason to start now.

I resent that Ms. Garafalo and Mr. Olbermann think they know what I'm thinking and that my actions are because I don't like the color of the man who is the President of the United States. I also resent that they think I don't understand what the original Boston Tea Party was about. It's been a long time since high school, but I seem to remember it had something to do with...taxes?

I've said in prior posts that I searched my heart and my motives about not voting for Mr. Obama. I honestly and truly believe that the color of his skin is very low on the list of my questions about his ability to lead this country. I can't speak for anyone else, but I am not going to defend myself any further against the label of "racist" that has been placed on me and thousands of others. And, I'm quite tired of defending myself because I haven't fallen at the feet of Mr. Obama. The last I knew, I lived in a country that allows my to have a different opinion than others. If we have truly evovled into a country that could elect a black man as president, why do I have to defend my reasons for disagreeing with his politics?

Ms. Garafalo and Mr. Olbermann don't understand that the Tea Party Rallies have nothing at all to do with the color of the skin of the man in the Oval Office. It has everything to do with securing my future and that of future generations.

Ms. Garafalo and Mr. Olbermann just don't get it. Instead of talking to the "tea baggers", and finding out just what they are protesting, and more importantly, why, they prefer to label people they don't know with hatefilled names. And I do mean hatefilled - racist isn't a name to throw about lightly.

I won't call either of them names, but I will say that they are reacting just as I would expect of Liberals.

I believe -


That we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

And There's No Media Bias

A liberal reporter who has become the news, rather than reporting the news.

Welfare Comedy

A guy walked into the local welfare office to pick up his check. He marched straight up to the counter and said, "Hi. You know, I just HATE drawing welfare. I'd really rather have a job."

The social worker behind the counter said, "Your timing is excellent. We just got a job opening from a very wealthy old man who wants a chauffeur and bodyguard for his beautiful daughter. You'll have to drive around in his 2009 Mercedes-Benz CL, and he will supply all of your clothes. Because of the long hours, meals will be provided. You'll also be expected to escort the daughter on her overseas holiday trips. 

"This is rather awkward to say but you will also have as part of your job assignment to satisfy her sexual urges as the daughter is in her mid-20's and has a rather strong sex drive.

"A two-bedroom loft type apartment with plasma TV, stereo, bar, etc. located above the garage, will be designated for your sole use and the salary is $200,000 a year."

The guy, just plain wide-eyed, said, "You're bullshittin' me."

The social worker said, "Yeah, well . . You started it"

Click for the Animals

(to the tune of Dr Doolittle)

anyway...

PLEASE DO THIS 'FREE' GOOD DEED - Animal Rescue 

Hi, all you animal lovers. This is pretty simple... Please tell ten friends to tell ten today! The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on its website daily to meet their quota of getting free food donated every day to abused and neglected animals. 

It takes less than a minute (How about 20 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box 'fund food for animals' for free. This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising. 

Here's the web site! Pass it along to people you know. 

The Animal Rescue Site

I went and I clicked. Now, take a minute and do the same. It will only take a few seconds and I'll still be here when you get back. I promise!

A Sunday School teacher asked her class why Joseph and Mary took Jesus with them to Jerusalem. 

A small child replied, 'They couldn't get a baby-sitter.'

A Lesson to Us All: Don't Judge a Book 

By It's Cover

Britain's newest talent is Susan Boyle who made her television debut on the British program Britian's Got Talent. And indeed she does. 

Ms. Boyle completely turned the place upside down. If you watch the video, which I can't supply because the embed was disabled by request (see the URL for the video at the end of this post), you might note that at the beginning, Simon didn't have much hope for the talent of Ms. Boyle. But, at four minutes into the video, I think Simon, not to mention the rest of Britian and, yes, let's say it, the world, has fallen in love with this lady. At least with the talent she displayed.

I believe it was because she is not what would be described as a beauty that most people immediately downplayed the possibility of Ms. Boyle actually having talent. Shame on everyone of us. Yes, even me, although I already had an idea of what was going to happen. If you took her on appearance alone, you might think she be more suitable for comedy. In appearance she reminds me of Kathy Kinney (Mimi from The Drew Carey Show).  By the way, comedy worked very well for Fanny Brice, who as I understand wasn't much of a looker either, but managed to become a Zigfield star in spite of her lack of beauty. 

In today's society we put so much emphasis on what the outside looks like that we forget to look for other beauty. And that's to our detriment. By looking for outside beauty, we overlook inner beauty, grace, and talent. This lady, Susan Boyle, has the voice of an angel. I don't know what her future on Britian's Got Talent might be, but I think her future will be brilliant, as the Brits say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY