Debt Clock

I just added the National Debt Clock to journal today. Debt became a major project of mine in the last 5 years as I determined to completely eliminate all my personal debt and do the best I can to remain debt free or if I do use credit to use it as sparing and wisely as possible.

I am within 3 months of seeing that goal accomplished. Having gone through this it made me realize more than I had before the differences between serious discussions of policy to adders our nation's debt and political ones. If you look at the National Debt Clock I have a few things to keep in mind. It has been going up rapidly for my entire lifetime. I have never known a period in my life when it wasn't going up. Every President in my life time has contributed to the problem.

Every president in modern times has taken money form the so-called "social security trust fund" to pay interest on the national debt. In 2005 the "trust fund" was exhausted. In 8 years of President Bush we saw the debt go up around $10,000,000,000,000.00. In just over two years of Obama it has going up by nearly 5,000,000,000,000 with trillions going to "stimulus" that we were told we had to have to keep unemployment below 8%. Since the fistulous unemployment has been over 9% for well over a year and at times was over 10%. the actual unemployment in the country is far higher than the official rate.

If we raised taxes on everyone in this nation to 100% of income we could not solve the debt problem with revenue increases. It stands to reason therefore that anyone constantly insisting that in an increase in revenue, which is code for raising taxes, on only some Americans is a serious fix to the problem is either delusional or lying. I know which I think it is...

Our nation has a terminal spending disease where we cannot seem to convince our leaders to act responsibly. current crops of leaders in both parties refuse to address the problem due to fear of political repercussions due to the pain it will have to cause to turn things around. our leaders are scared to do what needs to be done since it will require the country to face some realities as to what we can afford to continue spending on.

If we as a nation fail to address these issues I belie it is possible we will see the demise of our republic in my lifetime. Our current path is simply unsustainable.

The coming elections may demonstrate how many Americans really do understand what we are facing. The times dictate that it is no longer sufficient to argue over whether D or An R is better. What we need is to elect leaders who understand the reality we face and are willing to do what is necessary to start correcting it.

To continue to pretend that just having a D or an R is the basis for choosing leaders is folly. It is high time we start evaluating if those seeking higher office are qualified, serious, and honest enough to admit the situation at hand and bold enough to do what will be necessary to confront it.

YouTube NetKook Kill File

I have created rules on my mail servers where I can set certain criteria to kill file anything I no longer have interest n receiving. Sometimes this comes in handy for a person who posts content on the internet. As anyone who has spent any amount of time online knows there are a number of kooks out there. In the old days on the newsgroup sci.skeptic we called these people net kooks and they included people like Earl Gordon Curley a self proclaimed psychic and total net kook who's website I now have archived on one of my servers. By the way I was one of the people lucky enough to be threatened with law suites by this wing nut when he could not answer my challenges to his bogus claims.

I used the system of kill-filing things off and on in those days when someone was no longer fun to mess with or if they seemed as if they may be a legitimate threat and I no longer wanted to even see any correspondence mentioning their name. I have not used it in some time but recently re-instated a kill file rule on my server to weed out a particularly vial person on YouTube.

The reason I re-instated it was because I attempted to have a conversation, the other person was content to curse and twist facts to make political points. He was totally incapable of understanding I could care less about his political views and I was not going got play my party good your party bad with him. He was also incapable of being rational and posted disparaging remarks about Trig Palin who if you do not know has downs syndrome and is only a few years old. He saw nothing wrong with publicly making fun of a child with a disability to him it was political points to score.

People of this low character are the reason I used to have a kill file and if I am to be more public online again I thought it was high time to set one up again.

So this is a notice to raving lunatics, net kooks, vulgarians and degenerates that if you email me, my server deletes it. If you reply to me here, on YouTube or several other places I won't list and the forum or site emails me, the server deletes it.

Let me repeat how this works just so you wing nuts get it. You email me, the server deletes it. I will never see it.

Now, how does it know to delete it you may wonder? That's the question isn't it? Well I am not about to tell anyone. Just know that you email me, the sever deletes it.

Thanks for reading.

Updates

If you wandered over here from my youtube channel I will explain briefly why it has been so long since I have posted anything new there.

First off this stuff is a hobby for me, I am not a film maker or a political activist or a former ACLU lawyer with no life who never does anything but watch Fox News looking for things to pretend to be outraged over.

In fact I work full time and for many years that meant around 90 hours a week, no kidding. I recently changed jobs to a position where I work half the hours for pretty much the same pay. I gave up a raise that I had just been granted, yes I got a raise in a recession, to move to a job that did not demand all my waking hours. I think the slight drop in pay was worth it but being a workaholic I am not adjusting to more free time as well as I expected.

I had fully expected to be back to making videos by now but I am not.

Another reason I am not doing more right now is that I lack motivation. Politics as it is often done on you tube bores the hell out of me after a few minutes. The thing I notice however is that political topics get more attention than my non political topics. I like to take on paranormal claims, I like to be critical of con-artists and Charlestons a lot more than I like to do politics but politics is what the number of views suggest people want for the most part.

I will get motivated again to do something, I have some ideas and I am pretty sure the format of what I do will change. I intend to do audio commentary with some visual presentation and less of the type of video I have done in the past. I also think it is likely I can get some video of candidates on the campaign trail and if by some miracle some of that is interesting I may post it.

In response to the violence that occurred at Representative Russ Carnahan’s town hall meeting held in St. Louis on August 6^th 2009 the Service Employers International Union or SEIU posted a video on YouTube suggesting we get back to more peaceful and respectful debate on the issue of Health Care Reform. While I would agree with that basic premise there is a problem with their video.

The video they posted shows union demonstrations as completely peaceful and nice while opposition to reform as being ugly and violent. They even used portions of the video of the incident that followed the Carnahan event. The problem is they edited out significant portions of the video including all portions that show people wearing SEIU shirts behaving erratically, cursing, and threatening other people on scene and finally at least one union member being arrested.

Who actually started the violence and what lead up to it is not entirely clear by any reporting I have seen to date. I am sure there will be law suits over this and the courts will have to decide who is at fault but it is clear the SEIU wanted no part of the embarrassing video of their members behaving in a manner that befits the label of union thug which they took strong offense to apparently.

Here is a link to the union website posting on the incident and the video.

http://www.seiu.org/2009/08/stop-the-violence-at-health-care-town-halls.php

Here is a link to the full video and below that is a link to the Weekly Standard Blog, which attempts to decipher the dialog in the video.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/08/eye_witness_to_st_louis_scuffl.asp

You be the judge of what really happened but what is hard to deny is there was more to this than the union wanted to acknowledge on their site.

It’s been awhile since I have put together a video on a political subject.



The news and events surrounding the health care debate recently have caught my attention. Public concern about expensive plans that no one seems to know all the details on and mixed messages on what government options will mean and what the ultimate goal of reform is have caused a great deal of this concern.

What has caught my attention however is the propaganda on both sides of this debate but in particular that coming out of the white house. I find their constant labeling of citizen concern and participation disturbing. The recent addition of an email to report “fishy” claims about health care is even more disturbing.

The white house claims this email address is only to help them combat disinformation but the appearance is otherwise that that coupled with misrepresentation of some of these crowds by the White House and members of congress adds to the suspicious nature of a system to report fellow citizens to the government. It all starts smell like suppression of free speech and intimidation tactics.

People showing up for town hall meetings expressing their point of view have been compared to Nazis and Brown shirts by members of our government. This is different than commentators or talk radio making outrageous claims this is your government labeling fellow citizens and claiming they are all members of an organized mob effort.

A long-standing rule of thumb for me has been that the first person to bring up Nazis lost the debate. I am not sure who that is in this case but for me the rule stands.

I also have never supported shouting people down. As someone who believes in free speech I believe that means it goes for everyone. Everyone has a right to express a point of view and people have a right to agree or disagree with that point of view. Shouting people down to shut down debate or prevent someone from expressing their point of view is not respectful and does not support the free flow of ideas. This goes for left wingers who have used shout down tactics against people on the right for years and it goes for people opposing the current big government big spending trends whether they are right wing, libertarian or even normally left leaning people who are simply tired of over taxation and under representation.

The fact that the Government is not respectful of the citizenry and is not listening to the voters is no excuse to adopt thug tactics that shut down free expression and debate. Let people talk then respond to them. If they are lying I have no problem with telling them they are lying but back it up with facts. Be respectful but also stand up for what is right. That is how debate should be conducted. Sometimes raising your voice to be heard in a town hall may be necessary but allow the speaker to make his or her points then you make yours. If they try to shut you down let everyone know. I think recording events is more than called for right now and I am glad many people are doing so. This also helps protect free speech and it gets information out to people who want to make informed decisions about what is going on. That I can respect and that I can support.

There have been a lot of indications lately that our elected officials are not listening to the voters. Most polling data shows the majority of Americans are happy with their health insurance and do not want the massive reforms being pushed through congress. It is also frustrating that for years now we have heard this figure of 47,000,000 uninsured Americans who need coverage. That number is artificially high due to the inclusion of some illegal immigrants as well as a number of people who for one reason or that other have chosen not to have insurance.

The proposals being made by Democrats would require every American to have health insurance whether they want it or not. If you take out people who chose not to have insurance and illegal’s the figure of uninsured that cannot get insurance by no fault of their own but would like coverage is actually between 10,000,000 and 15,000,000. This is important because if we start with an artificially high number how can we arrive at a sensible solution?

None of this is being considered and when people try to get answers on this they are not forthcoming from Senators, Representatives or the Obama Administration. There is no acknowledgement that the most recent polling data still shows people do not want massive government reforms and after having had huge bailouts and stimulus plans pushed through in a hurry before anyone even read the bills or listened to the American people it seems that the citizens are just fed up in many cases and will go to great lengths to have their voices heard on this issue.

To have our government call that brown shirt tactics, suggest people are thugs, unruly mobs or somehow paid representatives of the insurance industry or organized by the GOP is frankly insulting. Setting up email addresses and putting messages on the White House page suggesting citizens start informing on each other is down right un-American.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljszZ961rdM



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz7tHAtjteI



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOLs7Cybnqw



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOdlZgMHKcQ



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXBOgPCh9w


Obama at SEIU Health Care Forum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbJCBP_2RvI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtbfPOgKf2g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0ER4rhpwIM

Governor Chester of Iowa

Governor Chester of Iowa was asked what he thought of the California Supreme Court ruling in fairness it was probably because some idiot reporter in Iowa actually thought he would have something interesting to as on this so they asked him.

The ruling essentially was that they decided not to blatantly strike out sections of the constitution that had been passed according to the process laid out in the California Constitution, in short they chose to follow the law but exercised great arrogance in even hearing a case on the constitutionality of a constitutionally passed amendment but very few people seem to be pointing that out.

Regardless of the arrogance of the court, they did decided not to overturn the people and frankly since for a period of time the state operated as if same sex marriage was legal I think they did they only thing they could in ruling that same sex marriages that were performed during the time would be allowed to stand. This was what was expected to happen for some time so the only real news made was that they didn’t do something outrageously outside the bounds of their authority.

Chester however had to do the typical Chester thing and say something completely idiotic, totally wrong, and in general make a fool of himself while pretending to be a grown up with grown up views. Chester said that every state has their own constitution and the courts rule based on the law. Wow that’s brilliant isn’t it? I mean Chester’s opinion on this seems to be that the court would rule according to the constitution if you listen to what he said which should be obvious. The problem is that is not what happened in Iowa.

In Iowa the court made it up as they went along changing the meaning of our equal protection clause to suit their needs and the Legislature and Chester are allowing a ruling in one case with specific parties to apply to all 99 counties by not doing their jobs. This is a long way from courts ruling based on the law and within constitutional bounds and is really the problem with how this has been handled in Iowa. Regardless of what people think on the issue of what marriage aught to mean this is not how the system is supposed to work. Like Vermont and New Hampshire if Iowa wants to recognize same sex marriage as equal under the law then the legislature aught to pass it through the legislative process but they did not do that in Iowa.

In Iowa the legislature had passed and the Governor Vilsack signed a law that said the opposite. What we are existing under in Iowa now is judicial tyranny allowed by cowards in the legislature and the Governor's office and Chester has the nerve to tell that idiot reporter that courts rule based on the law which makes him seem to support constraint but in practice he allows tyranny and lawlessness.

Yellow Journalism

Today in every state thousands of people turned out to protest high federal and state taxes and ever increasing government spending. These protests turned out far more people than any anti-war protest had in the past four years but because the message was against what the current President is trying to do and what many states are doing which is frankly popular with the legacy media it was mostly ignored and often mocked.

MSNBC, NBC and CNN and even the White House Press Secretary mocked the people who turned out to protest the way their money is being used. We cannot ignore that the bailouts began under George Bush but President Obama for all his bluster about the mistakes of the previous administration during the campaign has not changed direction and in fact has increased spending and federal intervention in private industry.

The release of a Homeland Security report suggesting the danger of increasing “right wing radical” organization activity and the dishonest media coverage of these protests in comparison to all the attention and importance they assigned significantly smaller anti-war protest activities is not a coincidence in my opinion. This is a coordinated effort to paint anyone opposing the current state and federal trends in this nation as nothing more than wing-nuts that at best are to be ignored and at worst may be “dangerous.”

This has the appearance of a coordinated attempt to silence the message by unfavorable media coverage and mockery of US Citizens by appointees of President Obama. In my view this falls far short of conspiracy but it really smells like political coordination by much of the legacy media and the White house to mock taxpaying citizens who are exercising rights guaranteed them by the constitution.

This is just another in a recent string of very troubling events by federal or state governments. If any anti-war protests during the Bush Administration had been this large and this wide spread it would have been the lead story for weeks as smaller protests usually were. A few dozen people camping in Crawford Texas was national news for weeks if you recall. It is very difficult to look at the difference in coverage and not see the bias proudly on display now. Any illusions left that we had fair media in the United States ought to be reconsidered.