What I’ve come back to: First: If you still live in an urban or even suburban area and don’t have a well-planned and sited (and accessible) retreat shame on you. The amount of time you’ll have to react once Ferguson comes to your neighborhood in some way, shape, or form is going to be measured in minutes, not hours or days. Second: Our nation is now officially a drunk private with a credit card at the “gentlemen’s club” with a “girlfriend” named “Tiffany”. And the private shows still cost extra. The truth: First, simple numbers. # of Americans: 318 million (est.) % of civilians in the labor force: 62.4% # of folks employed in the private sector: 116 Million Current US Debt: $18.2 Trillion Per citizen (employed or not) chunk of that sammich: $57 Thousand Per taxpayer bite of that sammich: $154 Thousand The unfunded debt liability per taxpayer: $828 Thousand Now two basic statements: The number of folks in the working pool (meaning they work or are looking for work) ain’t going up. .gov sector jobs don’t generate real income. Those wages and liabilities are burdens of the taxpayer. If you think anyone (especially a politician) is going to fix this you’re fooling yourself. Folks there isn’t any fixing this. The generation of the Free Shit Army (FSA) currently glued to their phones aren’t going to let you cut social handout programs. Hell they’ll let you cut programs for folks that have actually earned them (soc sec and vet disability) before you cut the “gimmee free shit”. Cut defense spending? In the current state the world is in? Do you see where it’s headed? 4 simple words: Halt and catch fire. I love Libertarians. I gravitate that direction. But there’s simply no way the ballot box is going to do anything at this point but slightly prolong the life-support bill. Third: WTF did anything having to do with being white become racist? Part of my recent soiree in the workforce included a stint in Africa. And ya know what? Those folks don’t really give two squirts of piss about what color you are, they measure you by your word, deed, and courtesy. We had a young former Marine (a black guy) who I had the distinct displeasure of having to sack for some drinking on the job issues. Instantly it became a matter of race. I was racist, the company was racist, the contract was racist, etc. wash, rinse, and repeat. He made quite a little spectacle of himself on the way out and was pretty loud about the “injustices” he was suffering. Ya know what happened? Afterwards one of the real African supervisors (meaning a native born African) commented that Americans are too fixated on race as an issue to ever get beyond it. Here’s a little insider info: I was told shortly after my arrival by the previous site super the real Africans aren’t too fond of the phrase “African-American”, they feel as connected to a black person from the US as they do someone from Mars. Go figure. Next week: Dalrymple, intellectual dishonesty, and Confederate flags. Continue reading...
