No fixing stupid

Earth hour is coming up Saturday at 8:30 Texas time.. Turn off your lights for an hour to "help raise awareness for global warming". BARF! Global warming is a hoax, and you turn off your lights for an hour, you're inviting criminals. Turn ON your all your lights at your local "earth hour" time! Get floodlights especially for this.. Rent those big spotlights and turn em on. Put out all your Christmas lights, and flip them on. This is one big hour of global stupid.

I was listening to Walton & Johnson this morning on KKRW streaming (they're on till 9 central time) and found out about that silliness. Also a few other things, like Collector's Firearms in Houston... Collectors Firearms Inc. has one of the country's largest collections of militaria, uniforms, weapons, and memorabilia of all types. Including over 2,000 books. I think I need to visit there and check it out.

On the eating side, HERE is a great article by Stephen Byrnes, PhD, RNCP, about the myths of vegetarianism. I had always heard how red meat was bad, butter was bad, all the stuff we grew up eating was bad for us. Turns out margarine, and other fake foods is the worst stuff for us to eat. Better to eat a bit of butter than slather on the margarine. Also a book I found at the grocery store while waiting for the kidlet to finish her training for her job, I found this book, In Defense of Food. Quite an interesting book, talks about how the rate of cancer and other diseases have risen sharply during the last century, and how basically fake foods created this mess. He talks about the rise of nutritionism, basically instead of eating your foods to get vitamins and nutrients, you take pills instead. I enjoyed the book quite a bit.

Back to the idiot fools running the government. Found this gem:

For February 2010, the U.S. government last week reported tax receipts of $107.5 billion and expenditures of $328.4 billion. The federal budget deficit is now so large that even if Americans were taxed at 100 percent of their income that would not be enough to balance the budget.

Lovely. And still, I have not found anyone who can answer the question "What entitles you to someone else's money?"

This cannot and should not go on. Here are the symptoms of spending/shopping addiction:

• Spending over budget
• Compulsive Buying
• It’s a chronic problem
• Hiding the problem
• A viscous circle
• Impaired relationships
• Clear Consequences
• Shopping or spending money as a result of feeling angry, depressed, anxious, or lonely
• Having arguments with others about one’s shopping habits
• Feeling lost without credit cards — actually going into withdrawal without them
• Buying items on credit, rather than with cash
• Describing a rush or a feeling of euphoria with spending
• Feeling guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed after a spending spree
• Lying about how much money was spent. For instance, owning up to buying something, but lying about how much it actually cost
• Thinking obsessively about money
• Spending a lot of time juggling accounts or bills to accommodate spending

I'd say more than a few fit the government. It has to be stopped.

As there are not enough taxes that can be extracted from the private sector, the U.S. government will be forced to the other two methods of obtaining assets from others: borrowing and inflation. In February 2010, the federal government paid $16.9 billion in interest on the federal debt, which averages out to an interest rate just over 2.5 percent.

They sure like to tax. The tax on indoor tanning starts today, a tax of 10%. And they said they would not raise taxes on anyone making less than 250,000$. The nail place I go to has tanning, and it's a small place, I don't think the owner makes over $250k.

Is hyperinflation coming?

Medicare was created in 1966 at a cost of $3 billion per year and the House Ways and Means Committee estimated in 1966 that in 1990 the cost of Medicare would reach $12 billion per year. Instead, the actual cost of Medicare in 1990 was $107 billion (792% more than what was projected) and today Medicare costs $408 billion annually. In 2003, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimated that the Iraq War would have a total cost of $50 to $60 billion. So far, we have already spent $713 billion on the Iraq War (over 1,000% more than what was projected).

The Congressional Budget Office is estimating that the healthcare bill will cost $940 billion over the next 10 years, but if history is any indication, the actual cost will likely be several trillion dollars. NIA believes the healthcare bill will be the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. economy.

Better start investing in something besides the dollar I think. Check out the NIA article linked, it's quite interesting with deficits, interest, debt, etc.