IRS corruption, US debt, and the hell that is day to day life.

*NOTE* This post has become very long and rambling, for that I apologize, but what can I say, my mind tends to ramble and wander frequently... I always have various things zipping through my mind... always thinking about something, and unless I make a concerted effort to reign it in, you get posts like this one. ;)  unfortunately for you, I didn't feel like concentrating on it this morning!


Not that any sane person that has a brain in their head couldn't have figured this out all on their own.  We have now "learned" that the head of the IRS Exempt Organizations division overruled the IRS' own lawyer, and forced conservative, Tea Party, and libertarian organizations to go through a non-standard "multilayer" review that included the Obama appointed chief counsel.  Now if anyone thinks that Obama himself didn't have something to do with this, or at the very least direct knowledge of it going on, they are deluding themselves!

Personally I, and several others I have spoken to believe that this is election tampering and fraud!  Someone, or several someones more than likely, need to be imprisoned for this.  Couple this with the DOJ's lack of desire to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation, and the people who voted multiple times for Obama, supposedly with the assistance of the Obama campaign, you can come to only one logical conclusion... the 2012 United States Presidential election was rigged!  Not that every election is rigged... popular vote, contrary to popular opinion, means exactly squat!  Every man woman and child could vote for a single candidate, and they could still not win.  You may say, "but Jason you just invalidated your own point" In a way, yes I did, but you have to understand how, at least how I understand it, it all is supposed to work... If the populous want's a certain candidate, they all vote for that candidate.  Then their reps are supposed to see this and vote accordingly in the electoral college, obviously this is a fundementally flawed system, as there are far too many people to be able to tabulate the popular vote in a small enough time window so that the reps can then see who they are supposed to vote for, and then of course you have the fact that most of our government is corrupt, and votes strictly with the party, thus insuring that there is always a good chance that we are not getting:

1. The President that we the people actually want.
2. The President that is best for the country.

Such is the case, in my opinion, with the 2012 election; What was best for the country most definitely did not happen... anyone that thinks that I am wrong only needs to look at the facts as they are now:

1. Current US National debt 16.8 Trillion dollars! (it was $9.8 trillion on this day in 2008)
2. The "official" Unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted as of May 2013 was 7.3% (I would counter that this number is much, much higher if you actually include all of the people that have run out their unemployment benefits and still don't have a job!) in May of 2008 we were at 5.2%.
3. Over 47.5 million Americans are on SNAP as of April 2013 contrast this to the 28+million that were on SNAP as of April 2008.
4. The US stock markets are up, but many wonder if that is solely due to the Federal Reserves open ended quantitative easing of $85 billion per month!
5. The employment-population ratio is at 58.7% as of June, this means that almost half of all Americans are not working!  Does anyone else see this as a disaster in the making?

This country has become a whiny, entitled, shell of what it once was... If this trend continues, how can we continue as a successful country?  In short, we cannot!  Other countries are beginning to abandon the US dollar as the reserve currency; if this continues, and spreads, our "money" will be exposed as the fiat currency it has become... The USD has been a fiat currency for over 4 decades, and most of the general public is unaware, or doesn't care about this issue!

This country, the United States, my home for my entire life is run on faith, faith that we will maintain our place as the largest super-power on earth, Faith that we can repay our debts, faith that the political system is not corrupt.  In short, we the people are fucked!  Currently the individual share of the US Debt is over $58,00.00 and it is growing every second; I fail to see how, in our current condition, we could ever hope to pay off our debts.

Sadly the government's spend, spend, spend attitude has directly affected it's owners.  Most US households run in the red to the average tune of $70,000.00!  This includes over $15,000 in credit card debt!  Now of course this only counts households that are in debt, but since over 60% of US households carry debt, that is a astronomical amount of people and money!  We have to change, if we do not change ourselves, we will never be able to change the government.  So I say to everyone, QUIT SPENDING MONEY YOU DON'T HAVE!!!!  Learn to wait for gratification, if you can't afford it, don't freakin' buy it then, save your $ and get it later.  Pay off your debts, start with the smallest and pay it off, then work your way up, it's not rocket science, it just requires discipline, lots of it. 

One of the quickest ways to "add" money to your budget is to stop eating out, I know that this is very hard, I'm just as guilty as anyone.  I commute about 2 hours a day, it makes meal planning a challenge to say the least.  It is so much easier to just run out and grab food for the family then cooking something at 6pm when I get home... (not saying that my wonderful wife does not cook, just that it's hard to plan when to have food done, when I never know exactly when I'm going to be home) couple that with the normal things going on in a family, and a couple home improvement projects and you quickly run out of time to accomplish any cooking at home.  We all have to work on this, or we will quickly find ourselves living in a colony of China!


This post has become very long and rambling, for that I apologize, but what can I say, my mind tends to ramble and wander frequently... I always have various things zipping through my mind... always thinking about something, and unless I make a concerted effort to reign it in, you get posts like this one. ;)

Tyranny in the USA?

In order to have an intelligent discussion on this or any other subject, is to first have knowledge of what is being discussed; therefore here is some knowledge.

The definition of tyranny according to Merriam-Webster's on-line dictionary is:

1: oppressive power tyranny

over the mind of man — Thomas Jefferson>; especially : oppressive power exerted by government tyranny of a police state>

2a : a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler; especially : one characteristic of an ancient Greek city-state

b : the office, authority, and administration of a tyrant

3: a rigorous condition imposed by some outside agency or force tyranny

of the clock — Dixon Wecter>

4: an oppressive, harsh, or unjust act : a tyrannical act tyrannies

>The google definition is:

1. Cruel and oppressive government or rule.
2. A nation under such cruel and oppressive government.

 

I am presenting my personal views and opinions on this topic, if you don't agree, please comment and we can have an intelligent and civil discussion.  If you begin to simply regurgitate rhetoric, or begin to personally attack me, I will delete your posts... If you continue, I will do everything I can to track you down, and make your life hell.  This is not said to dissuade commentary, it is meant to dissuade the idiots that tend to troll topics such as these.  Again, these are my viewpoints, and mine alone.

So, now that we have gotten the basics of the word out of the way, let us continue.

Here are the current list of major governmental misdeeds, as I see it, in no particular order:

1. The foolish, misguided, illegal, program known as "Fast and Furious"
2. The purely political wrangling of the Benghazi tragedy where an American ambassador, and three US servicemen were murdered by terrorists, and the ineptitude, dishonesty of the current administration.
3. The complete fiasco that is the IRS targeting people and organizations based on their beliefs.
4. Eric Holder, and Barrack Hussein Obama's "handling" of the George Zimmerman trial.
5. Eric Holder and the DOJ spying on the Associated Press.
6. The NSA spying on freakin' everybody.
7. Eric Holder being in contempt of Congress, and perjuring himself.
8. Out of control government agencies, i.e. The VA going to Disney World, the GSA having the mistaken idea that what happens in Vegas, really does stay in Vegas, and of course the various IRS "conferences".

 Now any one of these would be a stain on the spirit of an administration, two or three, a major embarrassment, all of them combined, well in my opinion, this is the modern face of tyranny.

Let's take this, to me shocking list (which is by no means complete) and go point by point.

First off we have Fast and Furious.  This project, to me and most logical, patriotic Americans was a complete and total cluster-fuck from the very beginning.  Someone in the bureaucracy of our government, thought that it would be a good idea to force law-abiding business owners, who by the way are under constant scrutiny by the government, to sell legal semi-automatic firearms to known felons (which in and of itself is a felony) with the supposed purpose of tracking the movements of these illegally obtained weapons.  Now, let me get this straight, you are handing weapons to a criminal, and then expect them to tell you where they are going, and what they are going to be used for?  Anyone else see the fundamental fail in this idea?  The government, not surprisingly,  lost all control of these firearms the moment after the felon laid hands on these firearms.  Now the next stupendously stupid thought of the ATFE, the governmental agency who thought up this "brilliant" project thought that they would be able to track the weapons once they left the US and headed to Mexico to be snapped up by drug cartels, thugs, and murderers.  Now I don't know how in the hell the ATFE thought that they would be able to track these weapons... we have no power in Mexico, they do not respect the US government, and who in their right mind would go along with such an asinine plan anyway?  On top of the phenominal amount of fail in this plan, at the same time there were many, many elements in our government trying to remove these very firearms from the hands of citizens.  Now I know firearms are a hot button topic, and everyone has an opinion on them, but, until the Constitution of the United States is Amended,

"...the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

I know everyone has their opinion on that amendment as well, but we are supposed to be a nation of laws, if we are not going to follow those laws, or, in my opinion even worse, selectively follow the laws that have been laid out, we no longer have a Constitutional Republic (By the way, this is the type of government we have, despite what so many think, we do not live in a democracy, as our founding fathers, in their wisdom, knew the inherent dangers of a democracy... think mob rule).


Next we move on to Benghazi.  Here we have a stunning amount of corruption and political gamesmanship.  We have a consulate that requested increased security numerous times, we have a DOJ that denied the request, the head of the DOJ refusing to admit that she actually was the one and only person ultimately responsible for that denial.  We have a President who did nothing while the consulate was under attack and those four Americans were being, in some cases, tortured, desecrated, and murdered.  We have someone in the DOJ supposedly ordering the stand-down of reinforcements, and then we have numerous members of the administration changing the, now infamous, talking points on the events that were correctly prepared by the CIA.  On top of that we have various members of the DOJ, and even our own president going on live TV and outright lying to us, the American people, about what happened.  Before any of you can say that the president didn't know that he was lying, how does that make it any better?  Either he is so incompetent that he doesn't know what his own appointees are doing, or he is a willing participant.  Either way, it's wrong, and it is bullshit!  The families of these men deserve better, they deserve the truth, and the direct apology of every lying, duplicitous bastard involved in this blatant cover up!  We the American people deserve to know why 4 our our own were allowed to be murdered, and we deserve to have those directly, and indirectly held accountable!  And That is why it matters Mrs. Clinton!!!  The only logical reason I can see for this coverup was to avoid the political embarrassment of having to admit that terrorism was still alive and well, and still targeting the US, after Obama stated that the war on terrorism was over and we won.  I can't see any other reason for this travesty of justice; other than it was right before the election, oh I'm sorry the rigged election.

 The IRS scandals... where to even begin... targeting conservative and patriotic groups and people for illegal scrutiny, lavish parties and conferences on the taxpayers dime; IRS agents negligently discharging their firearms more often then purposefully discharging them!  At it's core this agency is corrupt, always has been, always will be.  The tax code should not be almost 74,000 pages long!  There is no way any citizen can avoid an infraction of some kind!  I am one of those crazy people that believe our tax code needs to be completely trashed and re-written on one single piece of legal paper... every pays X% of their income, to include businesses.  If you are found in willing violation of that law, you forfeit every asset you have, and I mean everything!  The entirety of the IRS could be cut to what, maybe 98% of it's current size?  Oh, and what the hell does the Internal Revenue Service have to do with healthcare?  These idiots are exposing our social security numbers in bulk to the entire world, and you want me to think that having them enforce Obamacare (AKA socialist medical care taxes) is a good idea?  Are you fucking nuts?

The George Zimmerman trial has been a media circus since before Zimmerman was even arrested.  The local police could find no reason to hold him that evening, could find no reason to charge him, and were going to record it for what it appears to be, a clear case of self-defense; until the media and such "upstanding members of our society" as Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson threw a damn hissy and insisted on an arrest, then insisted on a trial, and are now insisting that justice wasn't done... Hey assholes, I hate to tell you, but he was aquited of all charges... that means the JUSTICE system has spoken!  This case has been meddled with by our administration since day one!  You have the president of the United States injecting race into a crime that was not racially motivated, you have Eric Holder sending the FBI to investigate racial overtones in George Zimmerman, then you have Eric Holder sending the CRS (Community Relations Service) to Florida to incite racially motivated protests, Then you have Eric Holder (again with this guy) all but promising to "get" Zimmerman on something, after he had been found not guilty of all charges by a jury of his peers!  Now in sixteen months of the FBI investigating the guy they can't find one shred of evidence that he is at all racist, in fact to the contrary they have found voluminous amounts of evidence that he is an incredibly diverse and kind man leads me to the conclusion that there is not a bit of evidence to support that Zimmerman violated Martin's civil rights.  And now you have Eric Holder (how the hell does this guy still have a job?) going after laws that had absolutely nothing to do with this case!  Holder is now stating that the Stand your Ground laws are the cause of this tragedy... umm this was never a stand your ground case, it was a self defense case... it's hard to claim he (Zimmerman) could have retreated when he was being pinned on the ground while being beaten...   Now before everybody loses their fucking mind on me, let me point out that I stated from the beginning that this entire situation was a tragedy, and that there was plenty of blame to go around on both parties in this event.  However from a purely legal standpoint, the only person that broke the law that night, from the evidence which we have available, was Trayvon Martin.  I'm sorry if that is not what you want to hear, I'm sorry if you think that me saying this makes me racist, again, I'm not racist; I hate everyone equally.  I am not however, sorry that Zimmerman was acquitted.  Again from the evidence available he was clearly defending his life, and I will defend that principle of our country to my dying breath!

Eric Holder... wow, I just cannot believe this guy is still walking around as a free man, let alone that he is still a high ranking government official!  During numerous investigations by Congress, Mr. Holder has; perjured himself, defiantly refused to hand over documents, denied access to witnesses and whistle-blowers, and been an all around arrogant dick!  Spying on the press, being involved with the NSA spying on the whole damn world, etc...  There is just too much on this guy, hell he is walking around after being found in contempt of Congress!!!!  WTF?

Government agencies wasting taxpayers money... I'm not even going to rant on this, as it has been this way since I have been alive.  The easiest way to fix all of this?  Cut the size of OUR government by at least 60%, implement citizen oversight committees for every agency; implement rigid term limits on all members of congress; Politics were never meant to be a goddamned career!

In my opinion, everyone of these items are tyrannical incidents.  This is tyranny, pure and simple, period.  There is a Movie and a Book partially entitled "Enemy at the Gates"  Our enemy is not at the gates, it is in our damned House!  We must take our country back, and demand our personal liberties and freedoms be restored; else we will soon no longer be the land of the free.

*Note* I got tired of looking up links, and doing research on all of the transgressions of our government.  If you are interested, which you damn well should be, all of your answers are just a query away on the Internet. 

When things don't go the way people want...

In light of the Zimmerman verdict being announced I thought I would blog, not about the tragedy that led to the trial, not about the verdict itself, but about the insane reactions to the verdict.

I know many people on FB that are absolutely losing their fucking minds over this verdict.  accusing people that they have known for a while of being racist, insinuating that riots are a good idea, wishing someone would kill Zimmerman, suggesting that the movie Purge seems like a good idea.  Now, personally after listening to the evidence presented, I agree with the verdict, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't be so damn deluded to think that killing the accused would make any difference now.  If we want to become better people and continue to develop as a country, we have to live by the rule of law.  If you do not like the law, work to change them.  rioting will not solve anything!  Rioting will only lead to more death and destruction, it will not solve anything.

To those people that want to make this a Racial crime... Zimmerman is not white, so it really isn't the race based event that so many seem to want it to be.  It seems that the only ones that were trying to make it a racial crime were the media, and the damn government!  The Media news should report the news, not taint it, not spin it, not try and manipulate the facts to fit an agenda, which the news should not have anyway, but they all have one now.  The government should be uniting the people of the country, however this administration seems to want to do the exact opposite!

To all of you wanting to riot, if you feel the need to cause additional mayhem, death and destruction, please remember that there is a saying that goes quite well with these actions... "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes"  this means simply that rioting affords you a very high chance of:

1. Ending up in jail or prison
2. Ending up dead from another rioter, or someone that is trying to defend their home or family.

Neither of these options seems like a good outcome to me, but you know, hey, whatever you want.

Self Improvement?

OK, so I've decided to do this blog, partially as a way to keep myself motivated to better myself, and quit making excuses.  To that end, I am now going to stream out a bunch of random thoughts:

1. I have become the fat, sweaty guy... I don't like that guy.  I will be killing that guy every day from now on!
2. I need to quit making excuses for why I don't get things done; no one else is going to do them, so I better just get them done, no matter how much I don't like doing them, how tired I am, how much the physical activity part sucks.
3. Walking up 4 flights of stairs SHOULD NOT leave one out of breath and slightly red in the face... refer to point 1 above!
4. Complaining about my state in life by doing nothing more than whining about it is not helpful, it is in fact somewhat self-defeating... by whining about it I get it off my chest and don't think about it again for a while; This does not solve the problem, it simply allows me to self-delude.
5. If I don't like how my career is going, I, and I alone, am responsible for improving it; this means studying and learning new things.  Time to get off my ass!
6. The current state of the country, economy, and government does not give me a warm fuzzy, therefore I need to work to change it, and prepare for the worst.
7. Make sure that in my preparing for the worst, I do not become a paranoid nut-job!
8. Quit regretting the Could-have-been's, and start making new been's (OK my mind is failing me at the moment, I know there's a more eloquent way to state that, but damned if I can think of it)
9. Start planning for the future, instead of wishing for the future.
10. Get back in contact with old friends, and stay in contact with them!  You are stuck with your family, your friends are of your own choosing, choose wisely! Rick, Troy, Casey, John... be warned, your numbers are almost up!  LOL
11. Be honest with myself in all things... This one is going to be very, very, difficult to do.
12. Quit eating out so much!  Refer to point 1.
13. Quit eating so much in general!  Once again, refer to point 1.
14. Blame +Cushla Young  for beginning this blog!  :)  
15. Run a marathon/Warrior Dash/Limit of Advance or other similar activity. +Cushla Young I only partially blame you for this one!
16. Work out to help with numbers 1, 3, 6, 12, 13, and 15.  Now if only I could find some similar motivation as Cushla did!  LOL 
17. Make sure that I actually make progress on this list!

I'm sure that I'll end up adding more to this list, and I'm sure I've left things out that I should have added...so, if you know me and know I need to add something, leave it in the comments, the worst I could do is tell you to Fuck Off and delete it!  ;)

Bitching about work!

This post is basically me bitching about work.  I know I shouldn't bitch, I have a job, it pays reasonably well, and hell, I have a job!  But, as this is my blog, so I'm going to bitch anyway!

I work for an IT consulting firm, and with that comes the understanding that, at times, you are going to be dumped in an assignment last minute.  I get that, I've been in IT for going on two decades, I'm used to it; what I am not used to, and what drives me bat shit crazy, is when I'm dumped at a site, with little to no knowledge of the environment, for an undetermined amount of time, with no guidance other than, you are fulfilling a contractual obligation!  Now, as I post this, I am literally sitting at my "desk"

Now, as you can probably tell, it's not much of a desk, and it really wasn't ever meant for a man who is 6'7", and a disturbing 360+ pounds.  My current tasks are to assist one of my coworkers with any "build requests".  What this entails is when the Desktop Services group gets a request from some employee for a new PC, we have to "build" it.  This means that we take a (hopefully) new PC and install the "blessed" Operating system and base applications on the computer.  Then we begin the wonderful task of installing the countless bazillion other programs that ever user seems to have, and not be able to function without.  Now for those of you that are not in the IT industry this may sound difficult, complicated, and, dare I say it, challenging.  In reality it is the most boring task in IT.  Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can do this task; It really only involves the ability to double-click on the install file or batch script and click next a few times; well for some of the programs you get to click next, a lot of them are what is known as silent installs, meaning double click, wait a few minutes, and move on to the next program without ever touching it beyond that.  This may sound like a dream gig, no real work, responsibilities, etc... however when you are titled "Enterprise Engineer" this shit will drive you insane in the matter of a few hours!  Which brings me back to my initial bitch about this assignment; I have no idea how long I'm stuck in IT purgatory!  So instead of learning new technologies, playing with new hardware and Operating systems, I'm stuck pressing F12 to boot from the network, and selecting which install image is dumped on the computer.  Ah the glamor of the IT field up close and personal.  And I drive two and a half hours a day for this fun!