Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
Planning for Spring
The weather forcast is looking better every week, I guess Spring is right around the corner. This year Barb and I have decided to plant some tobacco to feed our habit.
Barb found these nifty little starter cubes at Big Lots the other day. They have a water tray, a lid and 72 little pots in each unit for $4.50 what a deal. I'll mix up some starter soil in my cement mixer and start the tobacco in about another month. They will need a controlled environment for the first 30 days, then I can plant them out side.
Goodbye America
I could have written this post before the State of the Union address because I could figure out what was going to be said the day after Obama was re-elected. I have been alluding to what was said in the address ever since his re-election. The only difference between now and when he was first elected is that he has learned to lie out of both sides of his mouth which makes his speeches sound more convincing to the mentally challenged. He has started to contradict himself within seconds though and he isn’t smart enough to know he’s doing it – either are the people who listen to his babble. He talked about trade with the EU and how many jobs it created and in the very next breath wanted to get us involved in a new Transatlantic Fee Trade Agreement – the exact opposite of creating jobs. He doesn’t quite get the fact that tariffs not only create revenue for the U.S. but they also protect our industries and jobs. All the while the EU has passed the Tobin Tax to tax the piss out of our financial markets because they know how tariffs work. How has NAFTA worked out for us? He wants to raise the minimum wage, a time proven job killer, oh but wait he wants more stimulus money to restart the WPA – rehabbing houses and repairing roads and bridges that we already paid to have repaired in the past two stimuli. He wants the rich to pay their fair share – didn’t we just do that? This time it’s different and will reach deep into the middle class, as if anything he has done hasn’t already, by changing the tax code. All in the same part of the speech as strengthening the middle class. How is taking away your mortgage deduction, increasing taxes on your investments and taxing the hell out of your 401k strengthening the middle class? He says he created 6 million jobs – isn’t there some other number in the equation to get a sum? He must have forgotten that in the same period of time our economy lost 16.8 million jobs, a net loss of 5.8 million jobs. He says he has figured out a way to control the weather, another sham to fleece us at the gas pump by applying big carbon taxes on petroleum use – have you been waiting for gas prices to go down? Wait no more, they are guaranteed to go higher, I hope it doesn’t get too cold next winter. Maybe, someday someone will pay attention, but it is not very likely, our population is devoid of common sense.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Cause and Effect
Cause and Effect
Pat; I figured out why you can’t post a comment on the blog. I have recently started using voice recognition software and I use Microsoft Word to do it, it isn’t a BlogSpot program so it won’t allow interaction. I will post a direct e-mail address so you can comment and I will publish it in the next blog post; I really want to hear from you.
Humans live in a world of cause and effect. If there is a drought one year the next year you grow more than you normally would, if you don’t get that raise you think you deserved you start looking for a new employment, etc.. So when you have a bad government, what do you do? Well you can’t just replace the government, for the same reason you don’t go out and start a company to compete with the company that won’t give you that justly deserved raise. It is way too complicated, costly and takes way too long, not to mention you don’t have the wherewithal to do it anyway. Same deal with the government, don’t flatter yourself into thinking your somebody and can make a difference, there are over 300,000,000 people in this country and they could care less what happens to you or your family. What chance is there that your political representatives care about anything other than their political future? Your certainly not going to change the opinion of over 50% of the population, who are just trying to get free stuff because they are worthless and can’t get ahead, they feel it is their right to get your stuff too and when the President of the United States leads them in that direction it just fuels their fire. Chances are nothing will change along those lines until they have driven the taxpaying public into financial insolvency, until the federal budget exceeds federal revenues by a margin of $2 of debt for every $1 in revenue, until healthcare is so expensive only the poor can afford it, until the growth of funny money exceeds the growth of production in the entire country. My bad, all that has already happened!!!
Cause and effect – there is no turning this boat around, we’re all aboard and there isn’t a paddle among us. I say toss the dead weight, paddle with our hands to the shore line and get the heck off this river. You better be working on a plan really hard to avoid this scenario because it isn’t going to get any better anytime soon. Our economy is so fragile all it will take is continuing drought in the mid west, a run on tech stocks, a down grade of our credit by S&P, a war in the Middle East, one of the EU countries fails, the sequester on budget cuts may do it, you know the domino effect. There’s the cause – what are you going to do to lessen the effect? Oh it will never happen to me – that’s going to work real well when the dollar in your pocket only has the purchasing power of 50 cents today. People panic real easy – what are you going to do about that? My guess is you just read and talk about it, you don’t think it will really happen, but what if it does? I don’t have anything to sell you guys, I kind of wish I did – I think a lot of folks would buy common sense, it’s in short supply. I can discuss with you what I think might make life a little easier - no matter what happens.
Because I am using word processing software to write this stuff, the blog won’t take comments. If you’ve got something to say about this subject or some other topic or you just want me to know I am an idiot, you can send me an e-mail oldmanmax@mail.com - mark it private or public so I know what to do with it.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
What can we do?
Pat; Thanks for your comments – I’ll touch on your question.
Mike; good to hear from you, I hope everything is good with your family. Aren’t you glad you didn’t get into the solar energy craze?
The question is what can we do to stop this politically driven downward spiral of just about everything in this country? The answer is – NOTHING. We the people of this country, collectively, don’t have enough sense to wear a coat on a cold day. If you took all the common sense of Congress and the White House, made it into a ball and rolled it down the edge of a razor blade – it would be like rolling a BB down a 6 lane highway. We don’t have the sense or the gumption to do anything to stop this flight of fancy. I can tell you what I am doing but you already know about most of that, nothing dramatic just good common sense. I can assure you I will survive no matter how it goes down. There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for we the people, whether we can transform that into a growth pattern for our economy is questionable.
The Republicans, Boehner, Ryan, Cantor, Rubio and my favorite Carl Rove are busy trying to make us the Democratic Lite party and are sending us down the creek with no paddle, so much for leadership. The Democrats are trying to take advantage of their momentum and permanently change the social fabric of our country but their house of cards is showing signs of weakness – that’s what happens when you build on a foundation of lies.
Obama is out of gas – he will lose on gun bans, his political capital is gone, his advisors are jumping ship, his appointees are getting out while they still can, he will lose on killing American citizens without evidence by drone, 7 million people won’t be able to keep the insurance they have like he promised, Egypt is forming an alliance with a nuclear Iran, North Korea has specifically targeted the U.S. with a nuclear attack all while the sequester that he signed into law – which he said would never happen - will cut the military budget by 7.3% and is already having a negative effect happen or not. He is very unlikely to get favors from the Senate this term because he has nothing but failure to offer them and they want to be re-elected. 11 states are considering their own currency based on the gold standard, the number of law suits against him are mounting, states and counties across the country are trying to trump federal laws (10th amendment), the federal deficit that he said he would halve is still growing by leaps and bounds. The effects of his first term are coming home to roost and we all know human nature – you don’t pay any attention until it affects you.
Are we the people smart enough to take advantage of the chink in the armor? Our representatives certainly are not, it’s the democrats not the republicans that are raising a ruckus. The consolation prize is what we have been talking about for the last 8 months – high high inflation, a big drop in the stock market, currency devaluation, tax increases, a single payer health care system, amnesty for 11 million illegal’s, lots more unemployment, more social programs. These are all the things that happen when we follow FDRs policies, something Obama said he wants to continue doing in his inaugural speech. FDR made it illegal to own gold, 91% income tax (100% on business), federal employment to offset the high unemployment, hundreds of executive orders creating the social program mess we have been dealing with since, terrible cuts to the military and veteran’s benefits. If it weren’t for the Second World War we would still be in that depression but Obama wants to continue the experiments of FDR, he said so in his inaugural speech. The worst president in our history but the most loved by the people, doesn’t it sound like that is what Obama wants? To be loved by the people by giving them free stuff, regardless of the consequences to the country.
Obama has no foreign policy except to wait for something to happen then lie to the public about how it wasn’t his fault. We could be drawn into another war by Iran, Egypt or North Korea lobbing a nuclear missile at us, I mean how strong are our missile defenses; we can’t even secure our own borders. What a terrible way to end a depressed economy. It certainly looks like he could care less about that compared to waging class warfare right here in the U.S..
Welcome to the new normal, that’s where we are headed, sooner than you think. We don’t learn from history, we repeat it and we have been given the model – FDR, by a man who thinks there are 57 states and a moderate Taliban. If you think I am out of my mind take a look at legislation on the House floor right now – today there is a bill to allow Presidents to serve unlimited terms, now that would requires a 3/4ths vote by the states for a constitutional amendment. The fact that our representatives could even think this guy should be allowed to hold the highest office in the land for longer than the Constitution allows gives you some idea of how messed up this country is.
Brace yourself, we’re going there. There is no way around it, the damage has already been done. The emphasis should not be on what we think we can do to stop this eventuality but what we can do to survive it.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Blocks
Building Progress
The place where I get sand had some blocks delivered the other day - so I checked with the folks where I get blocks and sure enough they had some blocks too. Even though these guys all say they have different suppliers it all comes from the same distributor.
They tell me the order has been in since November sometime and they got 300 blocks out of a 1200 block order, I guess this is the spring shipment. I may get this foundation done yet. I carry 24 blocks at a time out to the building site - that's roughly 800 pounds and it fits well between the wheel wells of the truck. Even though I carry a ton of sand when I get it - I lose the price break on less than a ton - but I don't like to press my luck too much with a 12 year old 1/2 ton truck. I can carry an easy 100 blocks a week and still get the sand, rebar and portland cement I need without making any special trips back and forth. By the way, I saved $240 by waiting for the blocks as opposed to blowing the foundation budget and then some, besides it was too cold and muddy to lay blocks anyway. I am like Obama - I have some pretty lame excuses for not getting things done.
Political Stuff
We're into the budget talks again and over the next couple of weeks it will start to dominate the media again - after the intial round of immigration amnesty gets pushed down the road. You know ofcourse that the president is required by law to submit a budget this Monday, ofcourse he will be late as he has been for the last 3 years. Congress is also required to submit budgets but the Senate hasn't passed a budget in 4 years, the House of Representative has passed a budget every year only to be tabled by the Senate every year. Our country has not had a budget for the last 4 years, is it any wonder our deficit is out of control.
I saw a neat trick the other day concerning the U.S. budget. These are the real numbers.
Revenue - $2,170,000,000,000.00 from taxes
Budget - $3,820,000,000,000.00 this is imaginary because of no budget but they spend it.
New Debt - $1,650,000,000,000.00 in addition to the above.
Budget Cuts - $ 38,000,000,000.00 these are the only budget cuts passed by congress.
Now take those numbers and remove 8 zeros to make it a regular looking household budget.
Income from work - $21,700.00
Household Budget - $38,200.00 I know, who would budget twice their income - the gov't does.
New debt - $16,500.00 Pull out the credit cards and have at it.
Budget Cuts - $ 380.00 You can't buy bullets for your gun anyway.
How long could you last on something like this?, who would get into a mess like this? I think you know the answer but we allow it to happen year after year. I wonder what the weather is like in that alternative universe?
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