I am tired beyond belief of hearing Republicans and Conservatives saying that we should stop sending money to Ukraine and to spend that money back here in America.
No.
We shouldn't spend it at all.
We are running ridiculous deficits and have substantial debt. We need to curb spending dramatically. Enough with omnibus bills that spend, spend, spend.
We need fiscal responsibility immediately at the Federal level. Pare down every program, eliminate many.
This idea that we have the cash to spend in Ukraine, so hey, just spend it here, is as irresponsible as spending it in Ukraine.
You don’t exceed your budget at home. You don’t spend money you don’t have. You make hard choices. Well then it is time for the Federal Government to make some very hard choices.
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I’ve never understood all these people advocating for Universal healthcare, or claiming that Obamacare or some other free giveaway program can “save us all money on healthcare”.
Look, if you have 100 people paying for healthcare, and you decided that hey, 20 people are going to now get free healthcare because they can’t afford it. And you still only have 100 people paying into the system. But now for 120 to receive care instead of 100. It can’t get cheaper. That isn’t possible.
The only thing adding 20 people does is clog the system, and make it harder to get care. We have a finite number of physicians and facilities in this country. You can’t just add patients and have everything work the same. It isn’t possible.
All this talk of how great the system is in England, or Canada. Bullshit. They wait forever for knee replacements, and other surgeries. Giving healthcare to everyone who can’t afford it will just delay care for those who can. That is a fact.
If you can’t prioritize health care for your own family then you shouldn’t expect it to be paid for by others.
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I may have said this before but it is worth saying again.
If instead of payroll deduction the American worker received his full and entire pay, and then had to remit the taxes, social security, and other deductions on his or her own, we would have a revolt in this country in one pay cycle.
The smartest thing the government ever did was to allow for payroll deduction.
Americans can be a stupid lot. You quote them a salary and they immediately start to think about the “net pay” as their real renumeration, their “take home pay”.
How much do you make? “I take home eight hundred seventy dollars and change”.
Uh, you get paid almost twelve hundred dollars a week. Where is the rest of it?
The very day workers had to actually write the checks on the balance of that twelve hundred to the government, and realized just how much is actually being taken, they’d get the pitchforks and torches.
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Sitting on the beach the other day I created a playlist that included Chaka Khan and Anita Baker. Holy Hell can they sing, and their songs will make you feel great, just alive, happy to be alive. “To the limit, to the wire, to the wall” indeed.
Pure talent.
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I’ve discovered a weakness for street tacos. Simple, three bite tacos with cilantro, onion, and then either beef, chicken, or pork. Maybe a sprinkle of queso. I only eat three but I know I could house a dozen if the wife wasn’t around. And only in corn taco shells, not flour. Made pulled pork the other day, had a bunch left over. So I made barbacoa street tacos.
If I had been born in Mexico I’d weigh three hundred pounds.
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I’ve said before here that I am a Lily-White Suburbanite. I am as far from Hip-Hop culture as one can get. I see they raided P. Diddy’s house. Can someone tell me why? Far as I knew he was revered in the community, a self made success. Last I saw he was walking around in France with some guy holding an umbrella to shade him from the sun. Now they are raiding his multiple homes. Why?
Is this the same as all that R. Kelly stuff, where it was always generally known he had deviant tendencies but everyone collectively decided to just look the other way?
Were raids necessary? They couldn’t have just asked him to come in for a chat?
From out here in Lily-White Suburbanite land the raids do feel racially motivated. I doubt they’d raid Taylor Swift in the same way. Didn’t the man’s career achievements allow him to be approached in a more respectable manner? Or were his “crimes” so heinous as to require such a show of force. I hate the race card played but in this case I say throw it out there.
In the comments section someone more clued in than a 66 year old clueless White guy tell me, as Marvin sang, “What’s goin’ on”.
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A week away. Just another week. And all the snowbirds will fly back North. Then we will be able to get into restaurants here in Florida, we will be able to drive freely absent aging idiots doing 10 miles under the speed limit. We will be able to slide right onto bar stools instead of having to wait, and wait. The beach will be less crowded, no more smelling putrid cigar smoke, and pot, instead of fresh beach air.
I can’t wait, I can’t wait. Go home interlopers. Home, where you all belong. Go.
Can you imagine walking into a restaurant and just sitting down at a table? No more being handed a buzzer or giving your number and waiting on a text.
The car carriers are lining up. The condos are being packed up. Goodbye snow birds, goodbye.
Life becomes more wonderful here in Florida come next Monday.
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Oh man, the Ravens, my Ravens, are releasing some video series telling “inside stories”. Those “inside the game” stories of plays, hits, the personal issues within the game itself that molded and created situations that resulted in plays we will long remember.
I have to say having Ravens season tickets during the Ray Lewis era, what a privilege getting to see him play at full speed every week. Within the sidelines he was relentless, fearless, and bold. Uncontrolled ferocity on full display.
There isn’t a die-hard football fan alive who wouldn’t sell 10 years of their life for ten minutes of being able to walk out that tunnel, get onto that field, and live the glory of being part of the game. To walk from that tunnel bathing in that adulation, to play the game at the highest level, every ounce of athleticism being put to the test. We do live amongst the Gods, they wear helmets and do what is impossible for the rest of us.
They can try but they will never kill off the alpha male. They live and play on Sundays in the Fall. And we revere them.
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No one talks about root beer floats anymore. When was the last time you even heard about a root beer float much less actually had one?
I say we add back into our weekly culture the root beer float. It would lessen the coarsening of society, it would lead to more overall happiness. Regular application and consumption might lead to less therapists and medications.
Bring back the root beer float!
For that matter someone please bring back Sarsaparilla. And Almond Smash.
This will lead to a happier and more content society, happier youth, and an even happier old people.
No government paid for this message, and no bottling company. This message was a public service announcement brought to you by me as I found myself typing and craving a root beer float even at ten AM on a random Wednesday. Thank you for reading. Now go out and buy some Frostie root beer and the finest half-gallon of French Vanilla you can find and marry the two together. Blissful happiness and fulfillment in a glass. Enjoy. I’m here for you, this is about your happiness, not my own.
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Dogs are the single greatest creature ever made by God. They ask for nothing for themselves but care and reward back with a love and devotion that cannot be found in any other species. Not even other humans.
We have two small half-breeds, they are getting up in age, one is fourteen the other about to turn fourteen. I go to the bathroom, they come in too. I take a shower, they sit just outside the bathroom. I go to my desk, they come and sit at my feet. I get onto the sofa at night to watch television they cry until we put them up on the sofa too.
They simply must be near us all day, 24/7. If either of us go on a work trip when we return we get a celebration of emotion that has to be witnessed to believe. Flips, tail wagging that shakes the entire body emphatically, and noises of happiness that emanate from their souls.
There must be a dog heaven, there must. They are too good a creature to just die and end. If you don’t love dogs you need to analyze that part of you that can’t connect with unconditional love. Because it is you, not the dog.
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The Teacher’s Union is a cancer on America. They are producing illiterates. If you find yourself voting on the side of the Teacher’s Union you need to seriously evaluate your choices.
I wouldn’t let my kids attend a public school ever. Ever, ever. I’d take a night job cleaning toilets to pay for private school tuition before I’d allow my child to attend a public school.
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The media died but no one told them. NBC hired, then fired Ronna McDaniel to much fanfare and upheaval of, wait for it, the major media, while the average Joe watching could care less. It upset all the industry, which is still very loud and proud, but has no base. No one outside of media, or outside the DC beltway gives a rat’s ass what MSNBC or NBC does. They are echo chambers for assholes with nothing better to do than chew on politics all day long. Grocery bills are skyrocketing, who has time to worry about Ronna McDaniel?
There is no audience for any of them these days, what, a million views per hour in prime time, in a country of three-hundred-sixty million? Golf gets those numbers on a weekend and goes into a grand Mal seizure panic. The news on cable just keeps chugging.
Soon the entire cable news business will implode as sure as your local newspaper. I remember getting a Wednesday newspaper so thick it was difficult to take out the sections. Then the “Baltimore Sun” got so thin they could have delivered it under the closed front door. Thin as single ply toilet paper and worth less than toilet paper.
Loud and popular are two different things. The media has yet to learn that fact.
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A guy on twitter was extolling the virtues of Israel having facial recognition software installed in Gaza which meant they could identify “terrorist suspects” more immediately and allow them to just take out the terror suspect, saving “innocent” civilians.
Holy Shit.
He said it as if Israel was being humane, and saving the poor souls who were not combatants.
If Israel has installed facial recognition in Gaza, the territory of the Palestinian people, supposed a sovereign country outside the actual borders of Israel proper, exactly what does that say about the amount of control Israel exerts on their Palestinian neighbors? Wouldn’t that indicate a complete and utter full control? Living under that as a Palestinian, installed facial recognition in your country by another nation to surveil you, would you be perfectly comfortable with that?
As a free American how would you feel if our neighbor Mexico installed facial recognition software here in the US, to make sure that bad actors could be singled out, would that fly with you?
Israel has such full, utter, and complete control over the Palestinians they control all movement, all access, all electricity, all running water, and all movement of the Palestinians within Gaza, and within the West Bank.
I’m sure all you Right Wing freedom fanatics who wholly support Israel would be perfectly fine with living under those conditions as a Palestinian in Gaza. Your own land. Outside the 1948 borders of established Israel. Facial recognition software. Hey it’s for your own good. From your friends and neighbor Israel.
Sure. You’d be fine living under that authority.
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The wife had us change cable companies about two years ago, in the change I lost “The History Channel” and all its shows. I used to check in on “Oak Island” regularly. The other night I’m at my son’s home babysitting and on his cable package they still have “The History Channel”. Great, I get to watch “Oak Island”.
Two years later they still haven’t found a damn thing, they are still finding wood pieces, old nails, and the detritus of civilization who called the area home, but no treasure.
And what is worse is, when I left the show two years ago they were digging in some main shaft where the water deposits showed measurable traces of gold and silver.
So did they dig there?
Well, in the show I watched the other night they were digging the entire time in the swamp and some newly purchased lot 5. Very little work was shown from the main shaft with the supposed traces of gold and silver concentrations in the water table.
Let me get this straight. Here, in this shaft, we find traces of gold and silver.
But we decide to dig over there in the swamp, and way over there in the newly purchased lot 5.
Does any of that make sense? How does this show still have viewers? Who is watching this trash?
If there is some chest with gold and silver, or some vault of treasures, why wouldn’t you dig for those? Why would you decide to dig “over there”, and “way, way, over there”?
This show proves the old Seinfeldian statement about why anyone would watch a show about “nothing”. “Because it’s on TV” George replies.
That has to be the only reason to ever tune into “Oak Island” at this point.
Because it is on TV.
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***dogs. God’s greatest gifts. We in AZ relate 100% to snowbirds go home. Finally.
Great message on fiscal discipline.