Khaddafi is dead

“Sic Semper Tyrannis”.

This is what John Wilkes Booth is supposed to have yelled when he leaped from the balcony at Ford’s Theater after shooting President Lincoln in the head. Thus ever to tyrants, in Latin.

While I appreciate that Libya deposed their dictator (and Khaddafi WAS a bad man), they might have liked a trial for him. Like Saddam Hussein. But maybe this is better – at least he is gone and cannot affect their lives any longer.

Of all the dictators in history, how many get statues built of them, and how many die in the streets, fleeing their own people? It just doesn’t seem like a job with a future, unless your name is Castro or Kim. But their days are coming…

Have you ever wanted to be a dictator of a country or the whole world? If so, how would you govern? Leave a comment – I’d like to hear from you.

Dogpiss of the Year Award – 2011

Stephen King once wrote something like “if you die in an accident, you are a hero. If you take someone else with you, you are dogpiss.”

First of all, our prayers go out to the families of the shooting victims in Arizona. Our hearts hurt with you, and we pray that God and His son Jesus Christ comfort you. We also pray for Gabrielle Giffords and all the other wounded victims, that they may have speedy and full recoveries. We pray for the agents, prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses and jury members who must now go through the trial of the deranged gunman.

Finally, we pray for the deranged gunman himself. I award him the Dogpiss of the Year – 20011 Award, and will not use his name in print or pixels. Often these people want to be remembered for their deeds. So when you see a puddle of dog piss…..

I know that mental health is a huge issue in our country, but there is just no excuse for taking violent action against unarmed people. Two of the gunshot victims were in their 70′s, and one was just a little 9-year-old girl.

Dog piss.

Oh yeah. And the media? Trying to paint this insect as “right-winger” or inspired by talk-radio? Not true, didn’t happen. If anything, this nut was an anarchist or a leftist.

Peace – Chester

Feeling Over-Taxed?

I suspect that PA decided to balance the state budget through a unique program of selectively finding tax-payers throughout the state and sending them notices of small taxes due for prior years. For example, I received a notice that I owed something like $137 from 2007. I checked my return copies, checked with my tax preparer, and sent a letter of disagreement back to the PA Dept. of Revenue, stating I did not agree, and could you please explain the reason for this letter?

In return for not paying the $137 supposedly-owed tax, I received another letter, stating I owed around $400 in unpaid taxes from 2008. I sent this letter back with another letter of my own, disagreeing (once again!) that I did not owe this additional tax, since the state saw fit to increase my income on their paper, but failed to actually let me have the money they say I earned.

In return for not paying the $400, I received yet another letter, this time saying I owed $3500, because they were disallowing all the taxes I paid in 2006 to another state, where I worked in 2006. To that letter, I replied with copies of my tax returns, showing the non-resident return, the PA Schedule G-S, etc.

All the while, I had not received any acknowledgment of the other letters I had sent. I tried calling their telephone number, over a dozen times in one day – busy signal every time.

Finally, I received a letter telling me, in effect, yup, I was right, I did NOT owe them them $400. Well, there’s a nice surprise. Hey, they got one right.

Then, I received an Assessment for the $3500, with instructions on how to appeal. Which I have. <- (Princess Bride reference)

So my question, gentle reader, is this – does it seem like the state of PA decided to send out some small “you owe us some back tax” notices to say, a million PA tax-payers, with the hope that most would just pay the bill and forget it? Is this a sly way of balancing the budget? What if I HAD paid the first erroneous tax bill? Now I would be expected to pay the rest, wouldn’t you think?

So lesson for the day folks: keep good tax records.

Peace – Chester

Found the Money!

OK, so Barak Obama announced he was giving away the Nobel Peace Prize money. I saw the article on another blog I read, Blonde Sagacity, and that linked to the Washington Post article detailing where the money will go.

Looks like the money will be split between 10 different charities, with a wide variety of efforts dedicated to helping folks out. Thank you, Mr. Obama, for donating the money and not keeping it for yourself, giving it to ACORN, or Rev. Wright, or some other dubious charity.

Hope for 2010

First of all, let’s get one thing perfectly straight: How to pronounce the new year 2010. It’s “twenty-ten”. Repeat after me: “Twenty-ten”. Like counting the bills that will be in your wallet when this sluggish economy finally starts turning around.

It’s not: “Two-thousand-ten”, or “Two-thousand-and-ten”. Too long. Too much last decade, which everyone refused to name. The “Oh-Oh’s”. The “Aughts”. Like .30-06, one of my Dad’s favorite rifle calibers and a pretty good year  – “aught – 6″. Anyway, boys and girls, that one’s dead and gone.

So here we are, in “twenty-ten”, and it’s starting to look pretty hopeful. So here’s my prayer: Let’s stop calling each other names (Left and Right), let’s agree to disagree on some major ideals and policies, but let’s work together on real stuff that needs to be changed – tort reform, simplified tax code, jobs creation. Let’s forget the Global Warming crap and have everyone acknowledge we all have a responsibility to treat the planet with respect. So do your part by recycling your trash, composting your yard waste, walking or taking the bus (if you live in an area that HAS buses), or buying a motorcycle and saving gas.

Let’s treat each other with respect, but still work for a better, stronger country.

Show us the Money!

Just thinking the other day about the Nobel Peace Prize money. I am pretty sure you get a check when you pick up your prize in Stockholm. So……where’s the money? To whom did it get donated? President Obama stated he would donate the prize money. Haitian Relief comes to mind. The Chester Arthur College Fund for HS Seniors is accepting donations.  Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government article asks the same question.

But just in case you think this post isn’t about positive news, just think how happy some charity is going to be when they get Obama’s $1.4 million!

Contest: First one to spot the charity (and a good link for proof they got the money) wins a cyber-Harley ride!
Enter today.

One More Communist in China

Comrade Obama visits the homeland. This prez is starting to make me a little queasy. Any of the rest of you get that feeling at all?

I submit the following for your consideration:
Obama would not go to the Berlin Wall Coming Down remembrance celebration in Germany last week. He sent Hillary instead, so she could represent the US, while other countries sent their actual presidents, chiefs-of-state, or folks who really contributed to the destruction of Communism in Eastern Europe and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Onion (sic).  Maybe he didn’t want to celebrate the end of Communism?

Then he heads for Asia, where he’s gonna lecture the Chinese on human rights. Right. Remember, though, in Obama’s world, a human only exists and has rights IF it survives the womb. Killing humans BEFORE they become humans is OK, because it’s a “medical procedure”. And before you light up my inbox, email me and we can chat about abortion – I have an opinion and some very personal experience with the subject.

But before the Faker in Chief gets all the way to the Motherland, he stops off in Japan and bows to the Emperor.
There’s a picture and story here. It just irks me that this president has absolutely NO sense of history, no sense of who the POTUS is or is supposed to be. I get it – Japan and America are good friends now. We are respectful of each other. The past is long past. They attacked us long ago, in a different age, when their military ambitions got the better of them. We bombed the living sh*t out of them, and they calmed right down, so we rebuilt their country for them. But that doesn’t mean that our Dear Leader bows down before their Emperor. This prez is seriously pissing off huge sections of our nation. For Christmas this year, I will send him a history book on America.

Which brings us to China. Remember China? Filled with Communists willing to engage in capitalistic commerce as long as they can keep frog-marching Tibetans, polluting like crazy, killing girl babies and censoring the Internet. But don’t ask them to lighten up on the human rights abuses, because they just might get perturbed and ask for their trillions in Treasury debt to get paid off. Yeah, in case you weren’t counting, China owns the Fed now.

But they wouldn’t do that, would they? Nah – cause we would just bomb the living sh*t out of them. Wait, what? Osama’s the Prezident? Never mind. I think he gave the nuclear launch codes to Iran.

Updated Post:
Commenter Preston pointed out that Nixon also bowed to the Japanese Emperor. But a story I read about that points this out:
“The bow as he (Obama) performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.” Read the article.

No Bell Piece Pries

So, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, as an encouragement to actually do something some time in the future. Well, that’s great. We’ll look for that. Meanwhile, he needs to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan to finish fighting the war there. Or maybe he’ll just “weaken the Taliban”. So the Taliban will just rape and kill women in their own country, but not elsewhere. Sounds like a good plan, worthy of a Nobel Prize, even.

Phew! Found those millions of missing people…

Marketplace, an NPR show, found the missing millions of people. Thank God! I was afraid they got wiped out by Obama. They clarified Obama’s speech – he mentioned “30 million Americans without health insurance”. Marketplace stated that when you take out illegal aliens, and people who can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it, you go from around 46 or 47 million down to about 30 million.

Well. That kind of cuts the problem down by over 30 percent, don’t it? Doesn’t seem like such a massive problem when over 30 percent of the problem just disappears in a neat accounting trick.

Oh yeah: So I just heard that “no one should go bankrupt due to health costs”. Really? Man, bring on the excessive food, the lack of exercise, the alcohol and the cigarettes! Why should I worry about whether I am healthy as long as someone else is going to pay?

Question: Do YOU understand the “health care debate”? If so, please leave a comment, in bullet point format, that breaks down the problem we are trying to solve.

17 Million people just disappeared!

“Then I learned to play some lead guitar, I was underage in this funky bar
And I stepped outside to smoke myself a j
When I come back to the room, everybody just seemed to move
And I turned my amp up loud and I began to play
It was late in the evening, and I blew that room away” – Paul Simon, “Late in the Evening”

So President Obama was a little late to his speech last night. I figured he was out smoking a cigarette before his big speech. But once he finally did arrive, the room erupted into applause. And then Obama did a really neat trick: He made 17 million people disappear.

For months, pretty much everyone who is in favor of goverment takeover reform of health care has stated that “47 million people are without health insurance. And that’s a tragedy we just can’t ignore any longer!” Then last night, the prez sez: “Over 30 million Americans are without health insurance.”

Now we all know the difference between “people” and “Americans”. One is a subset of the other. But by my math, 47-30=17. So where’d the 17 million “people” w/o health insurance go? The other thing the prez sez is that folks who oppose the idea of goverment takeover reform of health care don’t have any ideas or nothin’. Wait, what?

I have some ideas, but I also have some questions.  OK, I can accept that we need to do something about the health care system, but I don’t think a single HR bill, followed by a single Senate bill, is the answer. I think we need to ask a few questions.
What is the problem we are trying to solve? Don’t say “the health care system”, that’s too vague.
What are we doing about tort reform?
How many people are there, really, without health insurance? Not the ones who can afford it and don’t want it, not the illegal aliens, just the folks who want it, need it, and can’t afford it.
If the government admits that Medicaid is broken, do we really want to trust them with a MUCH bigger problem?

Let’s start to answer these questions, with a conversation, without shouting, and see if we can’t come up with something. Since the media reported in November 2008 that an “overwhelming majority of Americans voted for Obama (52%)”, then it also must be true that an “overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of Obama (52%).”

So for the three people who read this blog (that’d be me, Pete and my big sis), what is your take? What should we do about the health care crisis of the century problem that is so huge if we don’t fix it now with trillions more in spending the world will come to an end?