Does anyone else feel that with all these town meetings, that chill pills need to be handed out prior to going into the auditorium?

People don’t seem to have all the facts, but they’ll listen to other people tell them the “facts,” via radio/TV.  Yes it’s all of some 1100 pages long, some in Congress haven’t had a chance to read it, so let the fear mongering begin. 

It seems to me that there is this great desire to keep people under your employers thumb, by threatening that, “if you leave here, you may not get any insurance for your preexisting condition.” 

Call me funny, but does that sound like Freedom?  Or does your health care insurance company dictate what health care services it feels you should get?

If some health condition that someone you love has, has already run through there limit of provided coverage.  Where’s the great coverage then?  If, you’re limited for the entire family to 2 – 5 million in total family coverage and just one of your kids get sick with some rare form of cancer, try an hope you have enough to help them to recover.  When the parents run out of coverage from their employers or personal health insurance, you end up having to go to your State’s Title-19, if you’re lucky.  If, your child becomes of age then they can apply for their own Title-19, hopefully, it’s enough.  They’ll never get an insurance company to cover them ever again for it though, because it’s a pre-existing condition.  If not, then you’re left with so much debt that they or you the parent will have to file for bankruptcy.  Good luck with that after the Bush Administration changed the rules there. 

Death Panel Claims are Dishonest.  Expresses Obama’s dismay that such a claim is being taken out of context.  When the various town meeting’s become a shout fest, then who’s listening?  Yes, we all have the Freedom of Speech and with that please, always remain civil. 

Nothing is resolved when angry heads prevail.  However, in the mean time everyone’s health care suffers.

Every once in a while something comes across our television set and it makes me wonder.  Just how grandiose our ideas in this country can be?  It would seem that we may have very well sent the right President to Washington in a time of great peril.

Will his administration have the time needed to complete all that needs changing in time?  There seems to be way too much politics as usual in Washington for this all to work.  It doesn't seem that even the Democrats can even get behind their President, they're worried about the upcoming 2010 elections.

If, they make one wrong move they'll be pounced upon by the other side of the aisle so much so as to cloud the job that needs to be done to get this country back on track.  They're so afraid to rein in those that started this mess with more regulations of old that were there to prevent the Great Depression ever happening again, that they're frozen in their thinking.

Regulations and those who watch the hen house were put in place by our forefathers to do just that, however we seemed to have forgotten and history repeats itself.  We've got to do better if we really want to leave any kind of country for our children despite the cost.

I watched a little bit of today's experimental White House Town Hall Meeting presentation and what I saw of it, I felt was a great start. 

It was history in the making, in a time of great skepticism. 

There were lots of questions for one day to be answered, but none the less it started a dialogue for the very questions that will indeed need to be answered.

Let's hope the answers come soon.  Let's all become part of the answer to a greater calling for change is in the wind.

How then shall we set our sails?

Today I came across this interesting You Tube audio address recording that some have said got President Kennedy killed.  After listening to it, I thought about why there's so much buzz on Television about all the big newspapers going bankrupt an thought, "well when they all remained silent about the atrocities of the past Administrations lies, all the while telling me what I should think, then why should I buy their papers. 

A good friend of mine told me this afternoon that his silly credit card company was raising his interest rate to 31% and if he didn't like it to bad, was the gist of the companies letter.  What kind of stupid ploy would cause a Credit Card Company to do such a ridiculous thing?  This needs to be addressed in Congress and if they can't because they're too scared, then people don't get any new credit cards ever again.

Partially true from recent WalMart news! (+how wacky emails get spread)

Recently, Walmart announced that, sometime in '09, it will begin offering customers a new discount item ... Walmart's own brand of wine.  The rumor has it that they'll soon be teaming up with Ernest &  Julio Gallo Winery of California to produce the spirits at an affordable price -- in the $2 to $5 range.

Wine connoisseurs may not be inclined to put a bottle of the Walmart brand into their shopping carts, but "There is a market for inexpensive wine" said Kathy Micken, professor of marketing at University of Arkansas,  Bentonville.  "However, branding will be very important."

Customer surveys were conducted to determine the most attractive name for  the Walmart wine brand.

The top surveyed names in order of popularity were:

Chateau Traileur Parc

White Trashfindel

Big Red Gulp

World Championship Riesling

NASCARbernet

Chef Boyardeaux

Peanut Noir

I Can't Believe it's not Vinegar

Grape Expectations

Nasti Spumante

The beauty of Walmart wine is that it can be served with either white Meat (Possum) or red meat (Squirrel).

P.S. Please don't bother commenting that this is a hoax.  I know that Possum is not the other white meat and they don't taste like Chicken or Squirrel either.  Of course my suggestion never got chosen: "Pinko Infidel."  I don't think they'll be Christening any new Bush Aircraft Carrier with my suggested brand either.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?!! *smacks bow with Pinko Infidel*

I bad.  I know the above is old news but it's still funny. 

A tip of the hat to Dirty, cheapwowgoldl1,  

I've been wondering about this one thing about personal debt for some time now.  These economist come on my TV and whine about how the last stimulus checks that were issued during the Bush Administration, on how we the people used our checks to pay down our debt rather than spend them.  Let me get this straight, a check comes in my mail, to my house that I'm paying property taxes on, gas & light bill, water bill, phone bill, trash removal bill, household insurance, car insurance, etc., etc., etc., and I have debt.  Hmm, it seems to me that the best way out of debt is to pay as much as I can, that is at my disposal to pay down my credit bills on items I've already charged.  Now, the best thing that I can do for my household is to not charge anymore debt.  For that is what I did in the past, and look where it got us all.

This afternoon's Oprah was about our feelings about the upcoming economy.  One of her guest was CNBC's Dylan Ratigan, his comment says it all.  When the Dow dropped 500 points back in October of '08, we collectively realized that we were all in over our head with our finances.  For those of you that knew better than to get into such a situation, I congratulate you one an all, however, I was not of that mind set.  I spent like there was no tomorrow and with a single thought that I'll pay all this down with tomorrow's dollars.  This was a great wake-up call for me, and Dylan was the one to put it as simply as he did and for it, I'm now a whole lot wiser. 

Could you please click on the Oprah site above an read for yourself's what Dylan had to say.  Then take it to heart that you an I have received our joint wake up call collectively.

It has been said with all this supposed 825 billion dollar "Stimulus Package" that this will jump start our economy.  Some of what's been said is true, some needs further looking into, I have to agree with some of the Republican concerns, however, they knew what President Obama ran his campaign on and the majority of Americans have spoken with their vote.  If, there seems to be a concern about condoms being purchased or supporting the National Endowment for the arts, they've got to do better than wince at those expenditures.

On the other hand Democrats, President Obama ran a great campaign based on his full disclosure of this "Stimulus Package" proposal that he and his fellow economics professionals felt is needed to get things moving.  Full disclosure will be called for in this bill and all others to come, enough with the dog an pony shows of the past, but let's not beat around the Bush, have we Americans ever thought about our faults when it comes to this recession?

Yes, we allowed a bully to tell us that everything would be OK, if we only invaded a country called Iraq.  I've harped on this before, what's past is past, now how do we as a nation of free thinking individuals straighten this whole mess out.  Mind you we can't do this alone, it's not only going to take a village folks, it's going to take a lot folks around the world to come to a mind set that yes, things will get better, but we've all got to stop spending, spending, and spending.  Our infrastructure is indeed in need of rebuilding, but this takes a long time to get shovels moving, contracts signed, etc., however I'm all for getting this done and done right.  We don't ever need another New Orleans.   New Orleans, Houston, along with the National Mall are a disgrace, fix them now.

Tax Cuts my dear Democrats, would put money in every working persons pocket to pay down debt now.  Immediate results for all.  Medical Insurance for those unemployed and underemployed, now Republicans.  It's not about sound bites Congressman Boehner, we can't afford folks becoming ill, weakening our nations work force, so as to not be there on the economies upswing.  Unnecessary births to teenage mothers is not only just another unwanted pregnancy it's a National Hardship.  We should be smarter than this, and bring America into the new millennium with a greater sexual attitude towards preventing unwanted pregnancies.  Or is the Republican party not happy until they have a cesspool of drones to chose from for their constituents slave labor?

I have often wondered with the credit card false economy, let's all keep up with our neighbors mentality, that's what brought about a lot of this false economy during the supposed "good times?"  Case in point, when things weren't going just so with household budget, just charge it.  Yeah, grab that 0% credit card out of your wallet and charge it.  Some smart people who went through the 1929 Depression of course knew better, but how soon we baby boomers forgot the horror stories of old, and was so glad that we got another credit card offer, that we could get cash advances from one card, to pay the other cards payment that was due monthly.  I've seen this many a time on television, with households having $85,000.00 in credit card debt.  I guess if you're making several hundred thousand a year this isn't a big deal, and yet here we all are as of the result of a false economic fallout.   Do you really need a million dollar home to be happy?

It has been said by folks a whole lot smarter than I, that with this 825 billion, that if you gave each and every American a million dollars to take care of their bills you would still have 824 billion.  Hmm, what could possibly be done with that kind of money?  I just looked at the population clock on the Census Bureau's site, American Fact Finder.com and their saying we're at about 305,699,870 million people, so you can see where I'm going with this.  If you had a million, what could you pay off, purchase, etc.?  Where did the days go that we were promised a new car in every garage?  What about paying a contractor to build that new garage?  There don't seem to be enough of them as it is, you just can't have enough storage space.  Can you?

I'd like to bring up another point, every 50 years the Jewish folks forgive debt, or so I'm told.  Now, if this would work out that we could all get a million dollars directly deposited in our banking accounts, the banks wouldn't need to be bailed out, since they make their loans on deposits on hand that very day.  I'm told this is, "making money from air."  These loans are then sold as securities to others.  Are you following me so far?  If you had this in your banking account, the banks could use this to run their business, but that would mean we wouldn't be in bondage now would it?  That's right, you wouldn't owe the bank, it would be indebted to you as a share holder.  They don't like to call you a share holder in their affairs, so they like to call us depositors.  "Your deposits are FDIC Insured," as "Barney" was saying on Monday nights CBS Show, "How I Met Your Mother."   I guess you had to see the episode to get the punch line, God knows "Barney," said it enough.

Well now, you maybe saying how could this work?  Before anyone receives so much as a dime, you go back to school.  Consumers Credit Counseling Services has a wonderful course booklet for $35.00, upon going through this booklet and taking the open book test in the back this would show your creditors that you are a better risk at managing your money in the future.  Thus now you have taken a money management course, you receive your million dollars.  Not so fast, what are you going to spend it on?  Again, remember we're a nation of consumers and land fillers, the spending aspect needs to be done very prudently.  What do we as a nation want our future country to look like?  Electric cars?  Yes.  Solar grids on every home?  Yes.  Windmills in every backyard or city roof top?  Yes.  Free Internet Wi-fi connections in our mobile hand held devices, along with our electric cars and homes?  Yes.  So take this "Stimulus Million" and invest it in energy saving device manufacturing stocks! 

Can you envision it now, folk's standing in line to get their study booklet, so as to get their million?  You might think, ah, people wouldn't bother to even look at the material, they would just set up web sites or call their smart accountant cousin for the answers.  True.  Here's a proposal...we randomly test every 3rd person in any given line that turns in their answer sheet with a computer screen or by paper in a booth at a screening facility set up by our Federal Government putting testers to work checking answer sheets.  Or this could be set up like our former draft, by lottery.  Failure is not an option, neither is cheating.  Fail the answers or cheat, you don't get your share of the "Stimulus Package, ever.

This could work for folk's who are near retirement and got ripped off by someone who Made Off with their investment retirement money while our under funded SEC slept.  It's funny to me why certain people in Washington don't want to see to it that the SEC if funded with enough auditors, then again I can see why we're in the mess we are, because there weren't enough auditors to begin with.  Back to the retirement folks, some would say they'll be OK, they've got their retirement portfolios to lean on, everything for them is going to work out just fine.  However, as things are going, this would be a great time for the rest of us to get in on the ground floor of dog food stocks (or sweepings from the dog food manufacturing floor) since that's all we'll be eating, if things don't change.  Again I digress, but seriously when everything was supposedly set up for their portfolios to invest in stocks, stocks, stocks, through company 401K's, IRA's, etc.  What did we all truly think was going to be the outcome in this false credit card driven economy?  Between that and the outrageous housing market loans.

So Washington, let's get the greatest minds together to put this land of Liberty back on track, and lets not dick her about condoms.