Memorial Day 2009

Being the old goat that I am, I saved my thoughts for the real Memorial Day. This politically correct bullshit about having so many special days ruined just to give people a long weekend may be fine for many people, but I want to observe things when they should be observed.

Memorial Day is such a special day in my heart that I can not belittle it by caving in to the fad of the day. I have to many family members and friends who deserve more than that. May 30th is the proper day to sit quietly and reflect on just what it means to have been blessed with so many great Americans in our past and our present, and God willing in our future. Men and women ready willing and able to put everything, including their dying breath on the line for America. Many of us in the blogosphere have put in our time and took the gamble of not coming home and I just think it is right to take the time, the proper time to truely give thanks to our comrades who weren't so lucky. God bless every one of them.

Probably, without a doubt, the thing in this world I am most proud, aside from my family, is having my name etched on the veterans monument in Gorham, New Hampshire. I share this honor with hundreds of others from Gorham who have served in wartime. There are over a dozen other names listed who are close relatives of mine and just as many friends. I feel very honored indeed to keep such company.

Hanging in my favorite bar

Steal this picture, have it laminated, and stick a tack right dead center to hang on the wall of your favorite watering hole. Spin it like a clock's hands to see when it's time to quit. Works as good as a breathalizer, well almost as well.

5000 word post

These gun loving, abortion hating, veteran, conservatives are all probably terrorists!




I'll get you my pretty!




The CIA is lying!! They NEVER said they were going to use waterboarding. They just want to make me look bad!




What am I doing in this post?




Those poor Mexicans can stay here. We should let them vote and suck up as many government freebies as they can. They only do jobs Americans don't want to do anyway.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I guess I won't need to type much more on this post then. All these beautiful women's pictures were stolen from Yahoo image search. Maybe a poll is in order: Which witch is the ugliest? Which witch is the bitchiest?

Finally!

It looks like they are FINALLY going to do something about illegal aliens that are criminals. Oh, they are all criminals you say? Well, no, only the ones that double-dip and commit OTHER offenses, or at least that is the leftard definition. Well, at least this is a start.

Here's a link to: U.S. to Expand Immigration Checks to All Local Jails

The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President
George W. Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every
person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a
tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and
identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said.

So far, so good. This starts to sound like a great idea, at least to this point.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has made it "very clear" that her top priority is deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, said David J. Venturella, program director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Whoops, Janet Napolean just threw her 2 cents into the ring. That is never good news. She only wants to catch the murderers and rapists, not the small-time crooks.

Based on the pilot program, the agency estimates that if fingerprints from all 14 million bookings in local jails each year were screened, about 1.4 million "criminal aliens" would be found, Venturella said. That would be about 10 times the 117,000 criminal illegal immigrants ICE deported last year. There are more than 3,100 local jails nationwide, compared with about 1,200 federal and state prisons.

Hmmmmm. If they check 14 million and 1.4 million are illegal aliens, that's about 10%. I'll bet the number is a lot higher than that!

But even some supporters of the program wonder whether it can be implemented smoothly and whether there will be sufficient funding. A surge in deportation cases, noted Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of homeland security for policy, would require more prosecutors, immigration judges, detention beds and other resources.

WHY? They serve their sentence at the local, State, or Federal prison and then they get put on a fucking bus and DUMPED on the other side of that God Damned fence we are supposedly building!! What in HELL is so hard to understand???

Venturella said ICE will give priority to deporting the most dangerous offenders: national security risks or those convicted of violent crimes. Based on initial projections, the agency estimates that 100,000 of these are "Level 1 offenders" and that deporting them would cost $1.1 billion over four years. Removing all criminal illegal immigrants would cost $3 billion, ICE estimated last year.

It doesn't have to cost much more than a ONE-way bus ticket and maybe a fucking bag lunch! Oh, shit, I don't even care about the cost. JUST DO IT!! Hell I don't! I just had to reopen this post when I noticed this. 1.1 BILLION amounts to $11, 000 EACH to ship their fucking asses back home! BULLSHIT!

Critics say that deporting the worst criminal illegal immigrants, by itself, does not go far enough because it would not fully address the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States or deter further illegal immigration.

I have to agree with this paragraph, for the most part. Send every one of them home ASAP. Where in HELL did the 11 million number come from? Shrinking the quantity every time it is reported on does NOT shrink the problem. We all know the number is certainly northwards of 20 million!

Amnesty International and immigrant advocates warn that the change could lead to immigration checks in other arenas and the "criminalization" of illegal immigration.

Man, I SURE HOPE that their fears are warranted on this one. The thing is, being an illegal alien IS ALREADY Criminal! There is no need to "criminalize" it.

Please read the whole article. I just had to comment on a few paragraphs, but you really should read it all. Now, if you all will excuse me, I have to go puke. That's what talking about illegals does to me.

Social Security and Medicare finances worsen

Social Security and Medicare are fading even faster under the weight of the recession, heading for insolvency years sooner than previously expected, the government warned Tuesday. Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, a year sooner than projected last year, and the giant trust fund will be depleted by 2037, four years sooner, trustees reported.

Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year, just as it did for the first time in 2008. The trustees project that the Medicare fund will be depleted by 2017, two years earlier than the date projected in last year's report.

The trust funds -- which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. -- are bonds that are backed by the government's "full faith and credit" but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the head of the trustees group, said the new reports were a reminder that "the longer we wait to address the long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security, the sooner those challenges will be upon us and the harder the options will be." (DUH, no shit Sherlock!)

Geithner said that President Barack Obama was committed to working with Congress to find ways to control runaway growth in both public and private health care expenditures, noting the promise Monday by major health care providers to trim costs by $2 trillion over the next decade.

However, Republicans pointed to the newly dire assessments as evidence the Obama administration has failed to come forward with actual entitlement reform to close the funding gaps.

"Instead of getting existing public programs in order right now, some are saying we should create a new government-run health insurance plan," Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a reference to the administration's health care proposals. "When we can't afford the public health plan we have already, does it make sense to add more?"

House Republican leader John Boehner said the trustees report "confirms what we already knew: Our nation cannot afford to continue this reckless borrowing and spending spree." (Someone actually sees the light!)

The findings in the trustees report, the annual checkup given the two benefit programs, did not come as a surprise. Private economists had been predicting that the dates the programs would begin to pay out more than they take in and the dates the trust funds would be insolvent would occur sooner given the economic recession.

The deep recession, the worst the country has endured in decades, has resulted in a loss of 5.7 million jobs since it began in December 2007. The unemployment rate hit a 25-year high of 8.9 percent in April.

Fewer people working means less being paid into the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare.

The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that Social Security will collect just $3 billion more in 2010 than it will pay out in benefits. A year ago, the CBO had projected that Social Security would have a much higher $86 billion cash surplus for the 2010 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. (Geez, that's only about 96% less than hoped for.)

The trustees report projected that Social Security's annual surpluses would "fall sharply this year," then remain at a reduced level in 2010 and be lower in the following years than last year's projections. The report said that the Social Security annual surplus would be eliminated entirely in 2016, reflecting increased demands from the wave of 78 million baby boomers retiring.

That means Social Security will have to turn to its trust fund to make up the difference between Social Security taxes and the benefits being paid out beginning in 2016. The trustees projected the trust fund would be depleted in 2037, four years earlier than the 2041 date in last year's report.

At that point, the annual Social Security taxes collected would be enough to pay for three-fourths of current benefits through 2083. To tap the trust fund, the government would have to increase borrowing or raise taxes because Social Security bonds exist only as bookkeeping entries.

While the smaller surpluses that will begin this year will not have any impact on Social Security benefit payments, the government will need to borrow more at a time when the federal deficit is already exploding because of the recession and the billions of dollars being spent to prop up a shaky banking system.

Medicare's condition is more precarious, reflecting the pressures from soaring health care costs as well as the drop in tax collections.

The options available to deal with the Social Security shortfall include raising the payroll tax that funds Social Security, such as removing the cap on income subject to the tax, or cutting benefits in some fashion such as raising the retirement age.

The administration is pushing Congress to pass legislation this year to extend health care coverage to some 50 million uninsured Americans, preferring to tackle health care before Social Security. (Oh sure, that is bound to fix shit, NOT!)

The trustees report is likely to set off renewed debate over Social Security and Medicare. Critics have charged that the Obama administration has failed to tackle the most serious problems in the budget -- soaring entitlement spending.

The administration on Monday revised its federal deficit forecasts upward to project an imbalance this year of $1.84 trillion, four times last year's record, and said the deficits will remain above $500 billion every year over the next decade.

This story is important enough to warrant posting the entire thing, so I did just that. Here's the link in case anyone wants to find it to feel confidant that I didn't just make it up. Believe me, my mind in not that bizarre.

Just when in Hell are enough people going to wake up and do something constructive for a change? When are we going to get rid of the bozos that are doing this to our us, AND OUR GRANDCHILDREN?

One Liner of the Day

“Wait a minute now. I didn’t authorize ‘attacks’ on the pirates, I authorized ‘a tax’ on the pirates.”

Makes sense, the asshole's taxing everything else, why not the pirates.

Will Jose get JAIL TIME?

After reading the following article, I feel just a little bit more hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, justice will be served. It would be a good start. Enough cases like this might mean fewer jobs for our illegals, and that might start a migration South! Does anyone else have dreams of a 20 million man march headed south?

JACKSON, Miss. -- The human resources manager for Howard Industries, Inc. has been indicted and accused of hiring illegal aliens at the Laurel, Miss., plant.
Jose Humberto Gonzalez was charged in a 25-count indictment of conspiracy and employee verification fraud in connection with the employment of illegal aliens at the transformer manufacturing facility.
Gonzalez made his initial appearance Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael T. Parker at the federal courthouse in Hattiesburg.
Gonzalez's indictment followed an immigration sweep of the Laurel plant in August 2008. At least 595 illegal aliens were arrested during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's largest workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.
"ICE aggressively targets employers who egregiously violate immigration laws by knowingly employing an illegal alien workforce," said Michael A. Holt, special agent-in-charge of ICE's Office of Investigations in New Orleans. "This indictment demonstrates firsthand how ICE agents use our investigative tools to pursue those who take advantage of illegal labor for personal profit."
Of those arrested, nine faced criminal charges with aggravated identity theft and pleaded guilty to federal identity fraud charge.
If convicted, Gonzalez will face a maximum of five years in prison on each count and a maximum fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release for each count.

I guess I would be satisified to see him get the max term served concurrently, meaning a total of 5 years, and for the company to have to pay the fine. Maybe that would make a few other criminal hirers think twice about how serious we view their antics. While perusing the companies website, I had to laugh when I read this crap, and I knew you all would get a kick out of it too:

Howard Industries is an equal opportunity employer. Howard Industries complies with all Federal and State laws governing labor. The company has developed an Affirmative Action Program to ensure equal employment opportunity.

On the lighter side

In the beginning of a marriage, this lasts for about 40 minutes. Later, the time drops to less than 15 minutes. What is it?