Sadly this video has embedding disabled, but here’s the next best thing:

100 Million > 3.5 Trillion

A famous Mark Twain quote my grandmother use to use comes to mind when I think about the recent coverage of President Obama’s budget cut: “Figures don’t lie, liars figure.”  This type of lying using figures always seems to come up when the government starts using really really big numbers. Most recently Obama told his cabinet to reduce their combined budgets by 100 million dollars. The media hailed this as grand fiscal responsibility and told us that Obama had listened to the tax day tea parties and was giving the people what they want. American’s all across the country hear 100 million and think, “holy cow that’s a lot of money.” Truth be told, yes it is a lot of money, but compared to 3.5 trillion it’s chump change. A discerning person will recognize the difference between million and trillion, however, it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing that 100 > 3.5 and they’re both “illions” so this must be a good thing. Realistically this comes down to a lot of zeros and even if I write the numbers out as follows, it still seems like 100 million is a lot.

         100,000,000
3,500,000,000,000

You could take a minute to stop and realize that just one trillion is the same as a million millions and that since 100 millions is a lot smaller than 1 million millions that should give you pause, however even that makes things hard to comprehend. 100 million is 0.0029% of 3.5 trillion, which means that it would be the same as having 29 out of 10,000 of something. Realistically that’s really stinking small. To give you a better idea of scale I was going to put together a picture full of pixels each representing 1/10,000th together but somewhere along the line I got lazy and by now really you should be getting the point. Obama is cutting a minuscule fraction of the budget but making sure that it sounds like it’s a lot.

To put it another way: imagine you make $100,000 per year and in the 2009 year you expect to spend $134,000 (the ratios are analogous to the current government budget situation). You decide you want to be fiscally responsible and cut some spending so you decide not to have your $3 coffee. The thing is, you’re deciding that you don’t want your $3 coffee once, on one day – that’s it. You cut $3 out of a 34 thousand dollar deficit and then tell all your friends you’re being responsible.

General Electric -> NBC/Universal

My post is long enough already but since yesterday was Earth day and you’ve probably been spammed with all kinds of “go green” initiatives on radio, TV, the Internet, and even at work and school. NBC/Universal has been running commercials all week about going green. We’ve been encouraged to recycle, plant trees, use less electricity, and most importantly of all use fluorescent light-bulbs and switch to wind power if we can and so desire. News stories, TV shows, and commercials all say the same thing and NBC and it’s affiliates are pushing all of it stronger and harder than anyone else.

It might be interesting to know who owns NBC. If you don’t already know it’s GE, the company that makes all those fluorescent light-bulbs and wind turbines. The company that has positioned them perfectly in recent months to gain government bailouts, the company pushing cap and trade legislation and the company that stands to make billions (that a thousand millions) if the whole country puts its faith in environmentalism.

Personally I have no problem with you believing in man-made global warming or save the whale campaigns or you want to keep the oceans clean or protect the rain forest. Those are all well and good, but if your company stands to profit in the billions by particular initiatives and then uses a TV station to help spread propaganda I start to get a bit angry at you. I happen to like several shows on NBC but I can’t stand when the characters on those shows have to tell me why I’m evil and destroying the earth. I know they’re not the only TV station to do “public service” commercials for the environment, but they’re really the only one profiting if we follow them and their ideas.

Really though, don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain, I’m sure he’s not manipulating anything at all.

You see the tea parties weren’t about taxes on April 15, 2009. They were about the taxes next year, the year after, and for generations to come. They were about uncontrolled government spending both the stimulus and bailout bills of the present and the proposed spending measures of the future including but certainly not limited to universal health care. The parties were about a federal government that has taken too much power and failed to abide by the 10th Amendment. They were about the hypocrisy of the Republicans and the Democrats and the corruption and lies that permeate both political parties. They protested the media and it’s harlotry with one Party and its failure to report truth on even the simplest issues. These Tea parties, in large, were organized by everyday folk like you and me and were filled with people who are ticked off about their government’s trek towards tyranny no matter who gets in power. The parties were reminding each other that capitalism is the life-blood of our economy and that our president is leading the nation down a path towards socialism.

Our founding fathers saw this coming and they worked hard to create a constitution that would keep our republic squarely between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny. They were so concerned about having an oversized federal government that our first constitution, The Articles of Confederation, so stripped the central government of power that it nearly collapsed altogether. The Constitution as we know it today has been interpreted into oblivion, however, and we have set ourselves in a position opposite of the Articles of Confederation that we risk collapsing on the other side of the pendulum. Thomas Jefferson warned us of the exact position we are currently if we are to “preserve our independence” we would do well to heed his call and return to the principles of this nation’s founding.

“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” — Thomas Jefferson

That being said there is at least a little hope. A similar poll taken at the end of December 2008 showed that “70% of U.S. voters say a free market is better than one managed by the government” with only 15% undecided and 15% suggesting that a government managed economy is better. The question that we must ask is whether or not the discrepancy of these two surveys has to do with a change in mindset or if it has to do with the definition and understand we as a nation have for the words capitalism and socialism. I hope it is the later and that people seem to understand that a ‘hands off’ approach by the government is the best.

I fear that public opinion has simply changed. We have seen little public rage about the president firing the CEO of a private business and yet have seen plenty of rage when a private business decided to honor it’s prearranged contracts. We aren’t just approaching socialism anymore we are embracing it and with it we are embracing the policies of the great socialists of the past: FDR, LBJ, Woodrow Wilson, Vladimir Lenin, Hugo Chavez, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler. While some of these men were not “socialists” by name (although many were), they all share the same basic economic principles and it is these principles that are diametrically opposed to ours. The progressives of the early 20th century hailed Mussolini just the same way the progressives now hail Chavez and Castro. We stand on the edge of a cliff and we can choose to follow the economic failure of some of the worst scum on earth, or we can follow the example in our own country where we have prospered in the free-market and miserably failed when we forsake it. If this poll is any indication, we are moving in the wrong direction.

To prove that not all of my statistics are made up on the spot you can feel free and check out the poll here.

We went on this nice little car ride to a beach a little while north.  The boys played in the water and left me to be EATEN BY KILLER SEAGULLS!!!!!  Thankfully Tom came to rescue me.  After that little fiasco we went to Disney World.  There were many cool and exciting things to be seen.  The most disappointing thing of the day was that there weren’t any corn dogs , but the sight of the spectacular Prince Caspian movie trailer made up for it.  Disney was very exciting with all the adventurous shows and the drive home was quiet and peaceful since half of us were asleep (which was quite dangerous considering Tom was driving while half of his body was asleep).  The rest of the week ended out as anyone would expect with much video gaming playing and some video game playing, oh and did I mention video game playing?  Come Friday it was time for our grande company to go home.  After they left, the dishes were done, the furniture re-arranged, cords were put away, and my refrigerator re-stocked, I sat down on my sofa and thought about how sad it was that once again silence reigned supreme.

~Sugar

We start this story off where Dan’s Whale Tale left off. After leaving the beach we took lodging in Dan’s “Aunt’s” house. The following morning we scooted off to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for a day of fun. At the gate we met up with Dan’s second cousin or some such relation who gave us free entrance into the park. We were only allowed in after we gave Disney our thumbprints and signatures so I fully expect we are on some sort of watch-list now. Never underestimate the power of company that got its start drawing mouse pictures.

Dan’s second cousin just happens to be the crazy mean German dude in the Indiana Jones™ Epic Stunt Spectacular! so he also hooked us up with VIP seats to his show. Ohyo waltzed off to tell Disney that he was ‘celebrating’ his birthday and so naturally when they asked for audience member extras during the Indy show Ohyo was front and center in VIP seats with a Birthday Button more than willing to participate.

After the very cool Indy show we proceeded to go on a quite mild Star Wars ride that made both Ohyo and Sugar a bit woozy. It wasn’t much more than a flight simulator but I guess the big screen showing 1980s style graphics was a bit too much for them. From there we enjoyed the super cool Lights, Motors, Action!™ show in which a bunch of drivers drove a bunch of cars in a bunch of cool ways. They were also very tricksey I might add.

We waited on eating until after we enjoyed the ride formally known as the Tower of Terror. This particular ride was milder than Ohyo or Dan remembered it but thoroughly enjoyed by me for the first time. Sugar was, however, not a fan. Our food was followed up by a pathetic Narnia exhibit that wouldn’t be worth mentioning except that it really was that terrible. Relaxing seats in the American Idol Experience were enjoyed by all, the strobe lights, screaming fans, and music were not however.

The trip ended with a quest to find the perfect souvenir, which we ultimately decided would be a plush Mikey dressed differently, one for each of us. The person who guesses who picked each Mickey gets ten points and a gold star.

Generally I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve tried to hold off critism of our new president until he actually does something I disapprove of, and when reading his speech over I tried to do the same thing. That was until Obama claimed that he’s “proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks.” Now I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, since I brought this up last week, but the so-called stimulus bill was many things but one thing it wasn’t was earmark free. In fact it was a bill that comprised lots of little Democrat projects they’ve been trying to get passed for at least a decade. This isn’t unexpected, realistically it’s the way Washington does business and while I’d like to see it reformed we all know that both the Republicans and Democrats have been putting earmarks in their bills since 1776. What I can’t accept is the President coming before a joint session of Congress and a large portion of the American people and flat out lying to us.

Remember Nixon, remember Clinton? What didn’t we like about them? It was that they lied to us. With those two former presidents they were lying about somewhat significant things. Clinton lied under oath which is a felony while Nixon lied about a crime he had people commit. The Democrats have been saying for years that George Bush lied about the war in Iraq and while I would disagree with them the point still remains that the American people don’t like liars. You could say, well Obama’s just lying about a silly bill. Sure if you consider a 900 billion dollar stimulus bill to be silly, or if you consider the future of our country’s economy to be a trivial matter then yes I might agree with you, but the fact of the matter is that he is lying about important things too.

It doesn’t simply stop there either. If he lied in this one sentence of a 5,902 word speech where else did he lie in it? Did he lie about saving jobs, or about the significance of his tax cuts? Did he lie about keeping local governments around the country responsible, or about the federal government’s fiscal responsibility? Did he lie about how effective government is at fixing problems, or did he lie about health care costs and risks or about global warming? The list goes on and on and on and this is just one speech. We already know he lied about posting legislation for 5 days prior to a vote and about keeping lobbyists out of his administration so I’m going to go out on a limb and say it: Barack Obama is a liar. That’s right he’s a liar and until he starts proving to me otherwise I’m not likely to trust a word he says. There is a lot of time left to start telling the truth Mr. President, but somehow I doubt we’ll see or hear that anytime soon.

I don’t know how many of you watch TV on the air with commercials and whether or not you pay attention to a single one of those commercials. I for one hadn’t watched “live” TV for years until I recently bought one and have since seen far more commercials than I’d like to admit. One of the one’s that was spammed at me for a while was McDonald’s and their quarter pounder deal taking place on Feburary 17th. I wish I could find the ad for you but frankly I’m too tired to do more than a basic google/youtube search so I’ll have to summarize. Basically the ad hails the wonders of the quarter pounder and ends by saying: “On February 17th buy one quarter pounder with cheese and get one free for a quarter.”

Prior to yesterday that ad meant only one thing to me, that on Febuary 17th McDonalds was going to lose money on quarter pounders to make money on other things because they were selling you two quarter pounders for just 25 cents. As it turns out McDonalds expects that you believe that the slogan means that if you buy one quarter pounder with cheese for full price you will get the second one for only a quarter. Now maybe I was being neive when I thought they’d basically be giving these away free, but hey Denny’s gave away free Grand Slams a few weeks ago so why not.

The thing that gets me about this, is that they purposely worded the ad so that you would think you get two burgers for 25 cents and they knew that if you didn’t read the fine print and went into the store thinking that, you would probably still buy one because it’s actually still a pretty good deal. I can’t quite say it’s false advertising, because honestly I didn’t read the fine print but what in the world does McDonald’s think free means anyway? Obviously to them free means 25 cents and that strikes me as somewhat odd. Personally I hope people walked out of stores disgusted at the gimmick and didn’t give them any more money. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind McDonald’s doing lots of business, but if they’re going to lie to me they’re not getting mine.

Around a year ago the Republicans nominated John McCain who was about the worst possible choice they could have made. They claimed he would bring in the moderate vote and they would thereby retain power. The democrats on the other hand nominated the most far-left candidate that we’ve seen in quite some time. They had no desire to be moderate. They had managed to paint a picture in the popular media that George Bush was nothing but a crazy far-right extremist and that only they could bring the country together via bipartisanship. Barack Obama tried to cast himself as the moderate that John McCain really was. Their platforms seemed on the surface to actually be quite similar except Obama’s was cast in this vapor of hope and change. Each of these meant something different to every person and the masses loved him for it. Yet through all of that 46% of those who voted still didn’t buy into his strategy for America.

Now he is in power and any pretenses for bringing the country together in the spirit of bipartisanship are long gone. We’re only weeks into his presidency and we’ve seen a call for reform in White House leadership coupled with appointments that include lobbyists and several people who committed tax fraud. His big plan to save the economy includes tax cuts that will amount to $13 extra a month and tax credits to shift the wealth to low income people who don’t pay taxes or pay very little. The spending is mostly on pet projects or building plans that won’t take place for years to come and he’s also managed to sneak in the beginnings of universal health care into the bill that is suppose to stimulate and create jobs.

But what does this really have to do with my disillusionment? After all he won right? That’s the thing, yes Obama won and he is now my president, the Democrats won much of the house and Senate and they are now my representatives but the power of these United States was suppose to be to the people and the people know that this bill stinks. That however doesn’t matter, house and senate Democrats have even said, and I paraphrase loosely, that if the people wanted them to do something different they wouldn’t have re-elected them. It was basically a “we’re elected and we’ll do what we want.” I’m sorry but it’s not about what they want, it’s about what we want. Washington has forgotten that, and that is why I’m disillusioned.

The Democrats are not the only culprits either. The Republicans spent eight years spending like drunken sailors and doing little if anything to reform the government back to it’s constitutional upbringings. They expanded government at every chance and listened to the people only if we got really mad about something. One example is immigration reform and yet they still didn’t do what the people wanted. They’re only voting the way the people want now because they’re afraid that they may lose their power altogether and quite frankly they may anyway, but they brought it on themselves and deserve every bit of it.

We as a country do  not deserve it…or…maybe we do. We’ve allowed ourselves to get addicted to government programs and to believe that the government can answer our problems or at the very least we thought that the government was capable of fixing anything at all. The problem is, the government is the solution to nothing and never has been. The government is a necessary evil to keep law and order and to protect the people of the country and to provide for the freedom to live our lives. That is slowly eroding and it won’t be long until the government, rather than limiting itself, is limiting freedom so that it can grow itself. Before long there won’t be the freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but rather the freedom to live if you’re worth saving, liberty to say and do what the government asks, and the pursuit of anything that is asked of you. That is why I’m disillusioned and I’m not alone…when will the sleeping giant that is the American public stand up, or will we be like all the good men in history past who failed to do anything at all.

Republicans and Democrats have argued over tax cuts for decades. Republicans have historically called for increased tax cuts while Democrats have called for increased taxes. In the end the argument that the people usually hear in sound bytes always comes down to whether or not the rich should get tax breaks. But what exactly is a tax cut? Simply put, say you have a sales tax of 8% in your county and the legislature votes to decrease that rate to 7%. That is a tax cut meaning you will pay one less dollar to the government on every hundred you spend. More importantly though is income tax cuts. Say you make $40,000 and pay taxes at a rate of 10% (don’t we all wish), that means you’ll have approximately $4,000 taken out of every paycheck. This means if a tax cut is introduced bringing the rate down to 5% you only pay $2,000. The other way a tax cut could occur is by deductions. Say you’ve given $2,000 to a charity and that qualifies for a deduction, when you do your taxes you’ll wind up getting $2,000 of your money back. If you have more deductions than the taxes you paid then you will get back the amount you paid and nothing more. [yes I realize this is all an over simplification of a very complex process]

Now don’t get lost in all the numbers there is a point I’m really trying to make here. In the new stimulus plan, rather than reducing the rate of your taxes (aka a tax cut), or giving you extra deductions the plan actually offers tax credits. Remember our numbers from before, but this time imagine there’s a $1,000 credit for having a child. This means that at the end of your taxes when you’ve determined if you owe anything or the government owes you something, you add on the credit. So say you paid your $4,000 over the year, and you have two kids. That means at the end of the day you get $2,000 from the government. It sounds the same as the deduction example right? Wrong. What if you didn’t owe any taxes because you made very little money then you get the $2,000 without having paid anything at all, or what if you have 14 kids because you just popped eight out at once? Well then your credits start to add up and you’re getting money back that isn’t yours.

You see the difference between a tax cut and a tax credit is that when a tax cut happens the government gives you back more of the money you earned. When a tax credit happens the government gives you money that some other tax payer earned as long as you behave a certain way. It’s a sneaky underhanded way of increasing welfare in the name of tax cuts. I’m all for 95% of Americans getting tax cuts, the problem is that some 40% of  don’t have to pay any taxes. I was one of those 40% last year actually. When I filed my tax return I got all of the money I had paid back which is great but in no way did I deserve to get extra money above and beyond what I paid back. I wouldn’t have earned that money and I don’t deserve to get it. Make sure you watch both of the magician’s hands in Washington or you might just fall for a bit of trickery.

My plan will start by upgrading any infrastructure concerns we may have. We must keep on top of the WordPress updates that may come out in the future as well as invest in dozens of new plugins. We will, over the next few months, spend resources on reorganizing the site and making sure that everything is easily accessible and readable. We will also spend time and money making sure our servers are as good as they possibly can be. If necessary we will upgrade service plans and switch companies and we will make sure that Zomgee loads as fast as any site out there.

My plan will also focus on the research and development needs of Zomgee. We will pour our dollars into the Mozilla Foundation and we will add a research position a year from now to seek out more knowledge about issues and to create ideas for the future. We will also spend money on various small projects that need not be listed here.

Finally we will seek to tweak our revenue stream by targeting only those readers who do a lot of reading. After All the little-guy readers need not be burdened exceedingly. We will therefore increase the ads for power users and while this will perhaps decrease your enjoyment of the site a bit you have plenty of enjoyment to go around. It will ensure that we spread the load among all our users and allow for more fairness to everyone.

We must create a better tomorrow for Zomgee and we need to start by taking action today. Without this stimulus package we will continue to post less and less and if we’re not carefully we may not even have a Zomgee left in the years to come. Please join me now in supporting what will be a monumental plan to increase posts in the year to come.

Inauguration speeches tend to be somewhat vague. Generally they are a venue where new presidents attempt to bring the country together by saying a bunch of things on which everyone agrees. President Obama’s speech was no different and he hadn’t even completed two paragraphs and I was already agreeing with him. He said quite simply that,

“every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on [...] because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.”

If I was at the inauguration I would have cheered loudly at that line because he was right, in times of crisis the American people have stood up and done the right thing for ourselves and the World because that is who we are, that’s what makes us Americans because that’s the example that was given to us by those who created this country and those founding documents are the ones that gave us the ability to do it. The problem is that what our President is saying out of one side of his mouth is completely contradicted by his actions and his planned actions for the next four(eight) years. I don’t need to look deep into his speeches, his past policy decisions, or his updates to whitehouse.gov I can simply look no further than his inaugural address to show you how President Obama will fail to “remain faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.”

To do that we must look at what he said. If you haven’t heard go listen . I personally found it somewhat boring and found it to be a somewhat better read. If you wish to do neither of those things I’ll give you some highlight of some of the things he said this country [read that: this government] needs to do. For you see when the President is making promises he is making promises for the Federal Government and you must realize that first and foremost before you start thinking about what the Constitution says can and cannot be done.

The President said, “For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift action [...] to lay a new foundation for growth.”Allow me to list some of the things that President Obama said in his speech:

1. “We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines.”
2. “We will [...] wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.”
3. “We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”
4. “We will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.”
5. “We will work tirelessly to [...] roll back the specter of a warming planet.”

President Obama went on to say that, “the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works—whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.” The problem Mr. President is that isn’t the question that you should have been asking. The question you should be asking is whether or not government has the right to do what you suggest it must do. Did the founders give the federal government the right to accomplish your list of “we wills.” The list may sound nice, and if you go to whitehouse.gov you’ll find an even longer list that might sound even nicer, there is but one problem and it is that pesky little 10th Amendment.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The problem is the Constitution gives no power to the Federal Government for any of those things listed nor does it give the Federal Government the power to do a slew of the things he’s suggesting. The purpose of the government is not to supply all the needs of the people nor is it to make the country a better place to live in, nor is it to make wonderful schools or fantastically transform the environment. The purpose of our government is to provide the country in which we can do these things for ourselves. We were endowed by our creator with rights which are self-evident and they include the “pursuit of happiness.” The constitution allows for this pursuit by suggesting that the government can “promote” the “general welfare” not by provide for every need of a lazy populace. Sure some of these things are good and need doing but it’s not suppose to be up to the federal government or President Obama, it is suppose to be up to the states because the infrastructure needs in Montana are different than those in New York City. Our government has lost it’s way on both sides of the isle and it’s time we all wake up and notice before we stop using the Constitution altogether.

Don’t worry about the bad news, you’ll just get ulcers. Instead focus on the good things, like the nice weather we’re all having right now. I mean I’ve got my windows open and my shorts on. I know some people find it a little chilly but hey it’s not that bad. Walk outside at night and it’s a bit cool but otherwise it’s quite comfortable and there’s even a nice breeze right now. All in all when we’ve got nothing else, at least we we can be thankful for the weather. I hope all of you are enjoying it as much as I am because really if you don’t have this nice weather it’d be really easy to get down and depressed about the state of the world.

The conflict between Israel and other Arab nations has been going on for thousands of years and I suspect with the way the world is treating the issue it will last for many more. You see somewhere along the line the entire world got this idea that war is a bad thing. Now this is a statement that I would agree with, war is bad – unless it is just. You see going into Germany to take the country over is bad, but going into Germany to take out a ruthless dictator who murdered millions of people and was bent on creating a one world government under his control is good. There’s a distinction that must be made.

In the case of Israel vs. Hamas there are two sides to the story. You can either see Israel as a nation being torn by terrorist rocket attacks for months and going in to Gaza to militarily stop them, or you can see Israel as a nation that wants to brutally kill innocent Palestinians. If you’ve seen any of the American news reports you may think the later but if you think that there is such a thing as a just war, you really must believe the former. You see the World is begging Israel to stop the fighting, agree to cease fires, send in aide, and otherwise be nice to the people who have been trying to do nothing but kill them for decades. It’s preposterous.

Israel not only has every right to attack Hamas inside of Gaza, but they have every right to not drop leaflets in telling civilians to take cover, to not allow aide to the people of the area who have so long harbored the terrorists, and to not stop from using brutal and unyielding force to destroy Hamas once and for all. They won’t do it though because unfortunately it looks like the world is against them. Why we as a western society have been turned into such pansies to think that there should be no war at all costs is beyond me. We should take a page from the history books about Neville Chamberlain and realize that some things are evil and won’t stop until they are entirely eradicated. Israel must not stop their offensive and they must realize that there will be no peace in our time until terrorist organizations like Hamas are destroyed. Quite frankly we should have learned the same lesson ourselves but it will probably take another attack for us to open our drooping eyes once again.