March 2009

The Democrats keep pointing to Clinton and claiming that he balanced the budget, and even ran a surplus, but it seems like no one has bothered to check the figures. Read the figures below, obtained from the US Treasury, and see for yourself:

National Debt on September 30 of each year (the last day of the Fiscal year); followed by the deficit that increased it
Year  //  Public Debt ……….   increase from previous year
1993 // 4,406,339,573,433    The start of Clinton’s first budget
1994 // 4,692,749,910,013…..286,410,336,580
1995 // 4,973,982,900,709…..281,232,990,696
1996 // 5,224,810,939,135…..250,828,038,426
1997 // 5,413,146,011,397…..188,335,072,262
1998 // 5,526,193,008,897…..113,046,997,500
1999 // 5,656,270,901,633…..130,077,892,736
2000 // 5,674,178,209,886….. 17,909,308,253
2001 // 5,807,463,412,200…..133,285,202,914 (Bush assumed the helm Jan 1, 2001)

Sure, he came close with an $18 billion deficit in FY 2000, but that is certainly not a surplus. Clinton ran a deficit every year he was in office.

Congress has a lot on its plate. In fact, today the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights is having hearings on whether the current system of deciding the National College football championship is fair.

Behind the push for the hearings is the subcommittee’s top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. People there were furious that Utah was bypassed for the national championship despite going undefeated in the regular season. In the House, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, has sponsored legislation that would prevent the NCAA from calling a football game a “national championship” unless the game culminates from a playoff system.

and the Republicans wonder why they are being considered irrelevant. Can we please have a viable third party, or am I going to be forced to continually be forced to choose between a douche and a turd? Where in the Constitution is Congress even granted the power to interfere in this?

Meanwhile, we have a Treasury Secretary who is announcing that he is just fine with the Chinese and Russian plan to stop using the dollar as the international trading currency, and is also seeking to expand his control over the private sector, as he seeks to get the power to regulate how much risk you can take as a private investor.

I am starting to think that we are seeing the end of the American Superpower status, and the beginning of the end of our nation. China will be the next leader of the world, probably within the next decade. We will be bankrupt by then, as our national debt will be around US$30 trillion.

One of the factors in your FICO score is your credit utilization. That is, how much money you have borrowed. Well, today the Treasury had a bond auction, and the lenders were not biting.

Investors gave an unexpectedly cool response to a $24 billion auction of 5-year Treasury notes Wednesday, which also sent prices for Treasurys lower…Bond prices fell after the auction. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, jumped to 2.78 percent from 2.71 percent late Tuesday. The yield on the three-month T-bill rose to 0.19 percent from 0.17 percent Tuesday.

I guess this means that the Nation’s FICO score just took a hit. Investors are starting to shy away from loaning money to Uncle Sam. The government has to respond in the only way available: raise yields. We are on a rapid accelerating slide towards becoming a sub-prime borrower. As the yields climb, interest will take a larger cut of the budget, meaning that the deficit will climb. This will increase the debt, causeing the deficit to climb further. I wonder what the breaking point is…

Recently, someone made it to my blog by searching for the term, “percentage of ammunition used in crimes”

Let me help you on that:

First let me say that there is no way to know, since many crimes involving ammunition are unreported, like shooting in prohibited areas, poaching, and the like. If you are talking about violent crimes, like robbery, this is again problematic since the police do not report how many shots are fired unless they strike someone.

Each year, there are approximately 10 billion rounds of ammunition sold in the United States.

In the year 2007 (the latest year for which data is available), according to the FBI, there were 15,972 murders in the United States,and 68% of these murders were committed with firearms. Therefore, have a total of 10,860 homicides in which a shot was fired.

This relates to 1 bullet in 920,810 being used in a homicide. Your odds of being killed by any particular bullet are less than the odds of you dying by being bitten by a rabid squirrel in New York’s Central Park.

This article is about a boy who wanted to wear an Obama mask during a dance number he was performing for a school talent show, claiming that Obama is his idol. The school is prohibiting it, because they feel it is rascist. The boy and his gay parents disagree, saying:

“I understand the history of black face and how African Americans were caricatured by it,” Lechert said. “However, we now have a popular biracial president who is admired by white and nonwhite people. At what point will it become OK for an 11-year-old admirer to dress up as the president without fear of offending someone?”

Kelly said that as a gay couple, he and Lechert consider themselves particularly sensitive to issues of minority groups.

“We are white, but we’re a minority class,” he said. “We have some insight into this process of what is and what isn’t offensive. There was obviously no intent to harm here — or really any possibility of offending anyone.”

So let me get this straight, you can only be a racist if you are not a part of a “minority group?” That is, you must be white and straight in order to be considered racist? I hear this argument all of the time, and I cannot fathom how a person can believe that they are excused from racism simply because they are a part of a certain class. So you are wrong about something else- someone was offended, and it was me.

A black man who believes you are keeping him down because you are white: a bigoted racist.
A woman who believes men are sexist pigs: a bigoted sexist.
A gay couple that believes that they are somehow exempt from racial sensitivity, because they are part of a “minority group” is bigoted as well.

The funny thing is, I support this child’s desire to perform in the talent show, mask and all, but not because of some illusory challenge from his self-professed protected class. No, I support it because it is his right to say what he wishes, and the school (a branch of the government) should not be censoring protected speech.

I am sure the child has learned a lesson here, I am just not sure what that lesson is.

Reading Newsweek today, it looks as though the mainstream media is finally tumbling to the fact that his administration is going to be inept, and no different than the last. Huh, I pointed that out during the election.

There is no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats- they both want to take your money and your liberty and give it to someone else. They only differ in who they are giving it to.

According to Salon, it isn’t Obama’s fault, it is the fault of his advisers. Isn’t that what President Bush said when he finally admitted that there were no WMDs in Iraq? The mainstream media didn’t give Bush a pass on that one, so why is Obama being given so much leeway?

Still, 50 days into the Obama Presidency, and the first cracks are beginning to show.

They stop caring about profits. After all, all a company should care about is helping the poor, because their owner doesn’t care about profits.