Cover Your Eyes...You Don't Want To See This...
Or DO you?
Today is supposed to be something quite hysterical...I mean HISTORICAL.
Our President is signing that "Stimulus" Package" into law, and after ALL those hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars are spent, and perhaps MUCH more, YOU, the Great American Taxpayer will get to see a whole, whopping $400 out of it.
I know I'm happier than a pig in sh*t...NOT!
FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS?
For having excellent credit, being personally responsible, accountable for my actions and decisions, and being a good steward of that which I happen to have acquired over the years?
FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS?
Wow, someone must think I'm following the rest of the lemmings off that cliff.
Sorry to disappoint, but it's not going to happen.
Now I must admit that I like most pork products, for the most part. It makes a smaller "carbon footprint" to produce than beef (still my favorite charred meat of choice), I will draw the line at pork rinds, however...!
But this so-called "rescue plan for America" is something the Founding Fathers warned us about.
And here are some of THEIR takes on all of this pork:

((Caution: Educational Alert - You may learn something here))
--"That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied." --Thomas Jefferson to Josephus B. Stuart, 1817.
--"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23
--"(With the decline of society) begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omni (war of all against all), which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
--"I deem (this one of) the essential principles of our government and consequently (one) which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith. " --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322
--"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." --Benjamin Franklin
--"Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel." --Benjamin Franklin
--"How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them." --Benjamin Franklin
--"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." --John Adams
--"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." --John Adams, Journal, 1772
--"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." --George Washington
--"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth." --George Washington
--"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington
--"In planning, forming, and arranging laws, deliberation is always becoming, and always useful." --James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791
--"It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people." --Richard Henry Lee, letter to Col. Martin Pickett, March 5, 1786
--"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." --Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes & Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book, 1774-1776
--"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it." --James Wilson, Of the Study of Law in the United States, Circa 1790
Gee, 'ya think they might have been ON to something WAY back then?
These are but a mere handful of pertinent quotations from these great men, who provided us, the American people with the means to avoid such a situation as we now face.
But we didn't listen up all that well, and we allowed men and women of dubious character and ethics to infiltrate our government to the point where THEIR agendas hold court, and THEIR BEST INTEREST is taken to the forefront, instead of the BEST INTEREST of the AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Is today's signing of this bill (which I feel went through the House and Senate like crap through a goose in a rather cavalier and possibly UN-constitutional manner) historical?
Hell, yeah!
It marks the first time that THIS MUCH MOOLAH is being dumped into the financial black hole of misunderstanding!
That alone has the theoretical physicists abuzz with hypotheses.
It is also providing a HUGE frigging cliff for all the "Amerlemmicans" (Bob's Lexicon) to jump from, as they blindly follow whatever comes down the pike, that might look like a dangling carrot.
Had this plan been scrutinized to the extent to which it NEEDED to be, it would be a LOT leaner, and a LOT less self-effacing to those with "special interests" (NOT to be confused with the Special Olympics which actually DOES HELP many).
We might very well be trading Capitalism for Socialism on some levels.
Is THAT what you "signed on for"?
Well, Komrade, I sure as hell did NOT.
And I trust YOU didn't either...
Personally, I plan to keep on doing what I have been doing...financially-speaking, of course.
Thing is...when you go through life LEARNING from your mistakes, instead of repeating them, or looking for MORE mistakes to make, you do pretty well.
That's NOT to say that your happiness is ASSURED.
The Constitution proclaims that you have the RIGHT to "Life, Liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness".
Nothing is mentioned about a 24 carat gold-edged GUARANTEE to happiness.
But this stimulus package might just be the great "equalizer" in that respect. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is NOT constitutional...nor fair.
Everyone has the SAME opportunity to make it in the world.
How each of us chooses to chase the dream is up to US, and should not be entrusted to ANY form of government.
We succeed OR fail on OUR OWN MERITS.
And when we compromise that aspect of our humanity, we are diminished AS a society.
But it's not like ancient Rome didn't show us that path already, is it?
"Qui non est hodie cras minus aptus erit". ~
(He who is not prepared today will be less so tomorrow.--Ovid)
Let THAT be the new catch phrase.
We just might need it.