The question

The president was on TV when we turned it on, so we
turned it back off. We listened just long enough to
hear him say that the debt ceiling had to be raised
or the country would face a dire economic future.

This may well be, but we haven’t heard anyone
asking what we believe is THE question. How can you
possibly know how much will be enough if you don’t
have a budget?

If you don’t know how much you’re spending, how can
you possibly know how much money you need? This
administration hasn’t had a budget in two years.
A true leader would not accept that. A real leader
would launch a bi-partisan effort to get the job
done and/or put a mandate on non-essential spending.

This bunch has borrowed money, printed money, and
given it to other countries. We found out the trillion
dollar stimulus didn’t stimulate, the shovel ready jobs
weren’t ready, and they ignored the laws of our Nation.

Obama cannot blame Bush for this one. Democrats who
raised a big stink when unemployment went over 5%
under Bush now claim 9% is the new norm under Obama.

It is time to make a change and ensure that Obama is
a one term president.
Comments are always welcome.

Leave the veteran’s alone

Sometimes people get too big for their britches and try
to impose their will others. Sometimes when this occurs
they also walk on the fighting side of me.

Recent actions in Houston, Texas, at the Houston
National Cemetary is such an occasion. If someone has
earned the right to buried in a National Cemetary, no
official should be able to tell them they cannot use
the word “God” in the service or require that any
prayers be submitted to the government for approval.

Then to add insult to injury telling volunteers that
they cannot say “God bless you” and/or “God bless
your family” is absurd. Why the Department of
Veteran’s Affairs is doing it is beyond comprehension.

The Veteran’s of Foreign Wars, the American Legion,
and the National Memorial Ladies have made a complaint
that the cemetary director and other government
officials have violated their first amendment rights.

We don’t care if athiests and those of other religions
claim to offended, the family of the veteran’s should
be able to have the sort of service they want. The ladies
who volunteer should be able to bless whomever they
want.

Stop the nonsense! This is supposed to be the land of
the free and home of the brave.
For more on the story go here.
Comments are always welcome.

Really?

Some have likened June 30, 2011 to the Judgement
Day. That is when the master plan of Ben Bernanke,
called “Quantitative Easing”, ends. Some call this
the Money-making plan, as in printing not earning.

We have heard from several investment specialists
who claim when that happens, gold could go up
to $4,000 an ounce almost overnight. Cash of course
could be almost worthless.

Our country appears to be on the edge of very
deep crevasse known as insolvency. Could it be
that we have already gone too close and can’t get
back? We don’t believe so, but we also know we
are too close for comfort.

Since Obama has been in office gas prices have
increased by as much as 84%, unemployment has went
up over 24%, the number of people on food stamps
has increased by 35%, the median household income
has gone down .7%, and our National debt has been
raised by over $3.5 trillion.

Just over the past year corn is up 76%, wheat is
up 44%, soybeans are up 24%, and sugar is up 55%.
In the past year coal is up 33%, oil is up 45%,
rubber is up 86%, and cotton is up 148%. Imagine
what the prices would look like if we get hit
with high inflation.

But the problem is deeper than even this. Around
September 30, 2011, our national debt will be more
than 102% of our GDP.

Yes, it seems the lazy, hazy, crazy, days of the
Obama recovery summer are as much a fallacy as
the shovel ready jobs of his stimulus.
Comments are always welcome.

Some crime news

We’ve noticed a few things lately and thought
we’d comment on them. We aren’t going to
prioritize them, so in no particular order,
here they are.

A Roman Catholic priest has been indicted for
actions while he was a prison chaplain. He is
charged with passing information from Chicago
mob boss Frank Calabrese, Sr. to his associates
outside the prison. To learn more about this go
to the FBI website.

Speaking of Chicago, it now seems Rod Blagojevich
is a convicted liar. We’ve heard his press conference
after his conviction was a short one for a change.
Hope he finds a good barber in prison.

A Michigan man has been charged with four counts of
traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of
engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors. It
appears he sexually molested children at the Morning
Star Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A residential
facility that provided shelter, food, and education,
which he has operated since the 1990s. For more go
here.

And a woman in East Hartford, Connecticut has been
sentenced to 110 months in prison for the sex
trafficking of minors. In 2009 she recruited to 14-
year-old girls to work as prostitutes. For more go
here.

And the Department of Justice has disrupted an
International scareware ring. Scareware is malicious
software that acts like security software but hits you
for money to fix your computer. For more on this scam
go here.

They walk among us, and in some cases they want our
children.
Comments are always welcome.

This is only a test….

Are you willing to participate in a yearlong experiment
that could cause our electric clocks to gain time, mess
with traffic lights, and possibly crash our computers?
What if we don’t have a choice?

Since the early 1930s America has regulated our electrical
output to a frequency of 60 Hertz. The claim is this
process is expensive and in a effort to save money the
North American Electric Reliability Corporation is looking
to start a one-year experiment to lower the frequency and
plan to start in mid-July.

It might not happen then, but it will happen and company
officials are calling it an inetesting experiment. We call
it taking a lot for granted including how the public will
react when some things electrical go wrong.

The experts don’t even know for sure what will, or won’t,
be affected by this. We don’t like the smell of this one.
More information-
Robert Johnson story
AP story

Comments are always welcome.

Monkey Butt?

Usually we list upcoming events on friday but we
have something else in mind for this post. We had
a case of cabin fever yesterday and decided to
cruise up to Dubuque then eat, shop, and be
tourists before spending the night in a motel.

The wife always likes to go in Shopko in Dubuque
and Pamida in Dyersville. That’s fine because she
goes with me to Theisen’s. It’s like a Farm &
Fleet if you’ve never been in one.

We don’t pretend to be a cosmopolitan couple who
keep up on the latest trends, but we saw a product
in Theisen’s we didn’t have a clue about. While
looking at jeans in the women’s department, I noticed
some bottles stacked on top of a rack of jeans.

The labels read: Ladies Monkey Butt Powder!
We laughed and both admitted we had no idea what such
a product would used for. We then went to the men’s
department and again saw a display of bottles except
these said Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. This produced
more howls of laughter.

I wanted a bottle just so we could be the only
ones on the block with such a product, but my wife
vetoed my vote so I had to read about this amazing
product online. We have to get out more.
Comments are always welcome.

Obamarant

We did not listen to Obama’s speech since we learned
long ago that he likes to hear himself talk a lot more
than we do.

We have been hearing Reagan quotes lately since the
election is only 502 days away. The one that seems to
strike a chord with the newscasters is the one about if
you’re better off now than you were four years ago.

Shouldn’t the pertinent question in the upcoming
election be; are you more comfortable now than you
were four years ago?

Are you more comfortable with Obamacare than you were
before it? Are you comfortable with the high
unemployment rate after being promised the ultra-expensive
Obama stimulus would ensure it never happened?

What about the disappearance of the death penalty and
early release of dangerous criminals to ease prison
overcrowding? Why is suddenly ok to save a convicted
serial killer while giving an unborn fetus the death
penalty?

Are you happy with actions of this administration when it
comes to the christian religion? Are you a believer in
the trickle-up economy theory? Are you more comfortable with
our costs spiraling higher while our wages are stagnant?

Are you comfortable with illegal aliens waltzing across
our borders while we are groped or x-rayed before being
allowed to board an airplane? Do you like how our freedom
of speech only applies when it agrees with the politically
correct?

Are you happy with the fact government employees can
watch porn, at work on government computers, but we can’t
put a cross on government property to honor the fallen?
Or name a street anything that can be remotely considered
religious in nature?

When are we, as Americans, going to stand up and say
“enough!”. We hope others feel it’s time for a change.
Comments are always welcome.

About time

Things are getting interesting in California thanks to
John Chiang, the state comptroller. He started a blame
fest when he announced he would take proposition 25
seriously and refuse to pay lawmakers who can’t pass a
balanced budget on schedule.

According to Senate President Darrell Steinberg,
“Governors and finance officials should not have the
power to control the pay of 120 independently elected
lawmakers simply because they don’t like what those
lawmakers produce”.

You mean somebody has the nerve to tell them they
should have to do their job in order to get a paycheck?
This could be fun to watch.

The LA Times
did a blog about it as did BeniciaPatch.
Comments are always welcome.

One more time…

We got sidetracked and didn’t get a chance to post
anything until now. Don’t know if it happens to
you or not, but we stopped to think and couldn’t
get started again. We are happy to announce that
the problem is fixed.

The ethanol scam is still stuck in our head and
we’d like to add a little to our last post. How can
anybody still believe that ethanol is a greener
alternative to gas when it has been proven otherwise?

In the manufacturing process alone it takes 4 gallons
of water to make a gallon of ethanol. And of course
that fact has nothing to do with the water company
wanting to raise rates.

Ethanol is also being blamed for ruining the rain
forest. Untold acres are being cleared to make room
for more sugar cane crops to make the ethanol there.
And even though ethanol made from sugar cane burns
cleaner than corn-based ethanol, it doesn’t offset
the loss of the natural carbon sink the forest
provided.

A new scientific study should be out shortly that
states, when the deforestation is added to the mix,
ethanol and biodiesel produce twice the emissions
of gasoline. Even some cellulosic ethanol is grown
on farmland and that hasn’t been counted either. If
the land is used for a fuel crop it cannot be used
for anything else.

So, what does the government do knowing all this?
Pass laws requiring more ethanol be produced and
pushed on the consumer in a 50% higher concentration
that may come from a blended unmarked pump. A blended
pump is one that pumps 2 or more fuel mixtures out
the same nozzle.

An unmarked pump would just pump whatever fuel you
pushed a button for. If you accidentally pushed E15 and
have an older vehicle this could result in costly
repairs to your vehicle. It is time to eliminate the
lies.
Comments are always welcome.

The future?

Have you ever noticed how our legislators can take
something simple that works perfectly and turn it
into something complicated that doesn’t work at all?
Sometimes in doing so they also claim to be able to
foresee the future and know what’s best for us.

Case in point is the official government solution
to keeping our skies clear and water drinkable. Yes,
once they decided gasoline was the cause of most of
our ills they began pushing ethanol. We were told it
is the renewable fuel substitute of the future.

According to Wikipedia;
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol,
grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile,
flammable, colorless liquid. It is a mild psychoactive
drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best
known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic
beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a
solvent, and as a fuel. In common usage, it is often
referred to simply as alcohol or spirits.

How many of us know that ethanol has been used as
a fuel since 1826 when Samuel Morey developed an
engine that ran on ethanol and turpentine? That it
was used as a lighting fuel until a tax on ethanol
during the Civil War made it too expensive? Or that
in 1896, Henry Ford built his first vehicle, the
Quadracycle, to run on pure ethanol?

Standard Oil, now BP, began adding ethanol to their
gasoline as early as the 1920s. And the first U.S.
ethanol plant was built in the 1940s by the U.S. Army.

In the 1960s the FAA banned ethanol for use in
aircraft, and in 2006 the FAA and EEA issued statements
warning the public never to use ethanol in aircraft.

If you own a boat, marine manufacturers advised
against using ethanol in marine engines until the
1990s, and recommend only a 10% blend.

In 1975 the government put an end to leaded gasoline
and added Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) due to
groundwater contamination of lead. It was later
discovered that MTBE was just as bad and it was
banned in almost every state.

In the 1980s Oxygenates were added to gasoline using
Ethyl Teriary Butyl Ether (ETBE) made from ethanol
and petroleum. Isn’t it about time to come up with
something that is new and actually works?
Comments are always welcome.