A LESSON IN GOVERNMENT SPEAK

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly." - William Jennings Bryan

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I tried enlisting one of our cats to help me figure out this problem. You can see that she eventually just gave up. I haven't had any luck in solving this one, either. Maybe you can help?

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Being retired and dependent on Social Security payments for a lot of my income, I have always looked forward to the start of the new year as a time when I get a yearly raise. (And so have a number of my friends looked forward to their raises.)

Well, I got my notification a few weeks back that there would be absolutely no increase in my lowly paid income from Uncle Sam. (Yeah, yeah, I know I paid into it all through my working life but that has nothing to do with the mathematics of it. Nor does the fact that I seem to be paying a lot more for the same things I was buying last year.) It seems that any and all increases are based on a magical thing labelled Cost Of Living. (I thought that the COLA was based on the harsh realities of living day to day. 'Taint. It's based on a mystical, magical, mathematical formula full of dungeons and dragons and things that go bump in the night. (Like nothing you've ever seen before.) Just believe me: No one ever got rich on Social Security.

A few years ago I discovered that there seems to be more than one COLA. There's one that covers Social Security retirees and apparently one that covers government employees. For example, one year I received a 1.2% increase due to the COLA. While in that same year government employees got a 2.1% increase in their COLA. Yeah, I thought it was a clerical error, too. A transposition. So I wrote my Senators and asked about it. Neither of them could bother to answer me. I called and gave my phone number when the person answering the phone said they'd have to talk to the Senator in one case, and they'd have to look up the answer in the other case. Never did hear from either of them. Well, that's not quite true. I got a form letter thanking me for writing them and informing me that they would get back to me. I'm sure glad I didn't hold my breath waiting.

But this lack of an increase this year, I was informed, was not a clerical error. It was because America did not have an increase in its cost of living in 2009. And it looked as if there wouldn't be an increase in 2010 either. They have some really great computers in the government, I guess. I mean, they seem to be capable of figuring out the future for us.

So I asked the cats to help me calculate my cost of living. You can see what happened. They gave up and decided a snooze was a better use of their time. No answer from them.

But I have figured out why "our" government didn't think there was a rise in the COL. It's simple, you see. First off, we were paying $4 a gallon for gas during part of the year. We're paying less than that now. (Of course, we are paying more than we paid a year ago. But I don't think that counts in the government's view.)

Secondly, haven't you noticed, like most all of us have, that the manufacturers of our foodstuffs have taken to putting less in our packages, cans, cartons or containers that we buy our food in and take home to consume? We sure have in our household. But, for whatever reason, the Administration says that isn't a price increase in the unit price. I'm sure their economists have a new word for it, but I'm gosh darned if I know what they use. I know what a friend of mine uses, though: "It's a screwing," he remarked the other day. He also told me that the government employees at the VA hospital here have gotten a raise. He wondered if it was a general sort of raise for good work, or if it was a government COLA raise. My cats slept through that question, too. Wish I could sleep like they do.

But if any of you can explain this to me, I will be sure to pass it on to everyone I know.

THEY WERE JAPS THEN

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Follow this link to a further addition: http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=10668

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We learned, from parents, politicians, school teachers and friends to call them Japs. Many of us learned to hate the very name of our enemy. The American people became one in their unity to defeat the Japanese, Germans and Italians. And, as a unified group, they got it done. A war without mercy got it done. No one stood around telling the rest of America that they lacked pity or compassion. We could not have cared less about what happened to our enemies. We simply, succinctly, wanted them destroyed. We did not care what was "politically correct". That phrase was not invented then. Win or die. That was what was written then. And brave Americans enlisted and were drafted in order to save our country. And it came to pass.

Nowadays, we asked to put up with things like this:http://www.cdt.org/policy/congress-rejects-patriot-act-re-write-modest-improvements-still-possible#4

Just sayin'.

EAT YOUR WAY TO HELL

Click the header. ******************************** Did you know that the chicken you're about to dig into has never had its feet on the ground? And its very thin shell has never seen a nest? It's modern farming. The big suppliers (and the bigger, the more they practice this) jam chickens into a roost with no chance of them falling nor getting down to walk on the floor. It's called "high density stocking". Meat suppliers do the same with cattle and pigs. I can remember when ranches were rated on how many head to the acre they could handle. Big business says they can make more money by jamming the animals in until they can barely walk around. Additionally, they find it's easier to load them with antibiotics to prevent illness outbreaks. They don't loose many animals to germs that way. By the way, when we ingest that meat, we help to build a resistance to the antibiotics we just might need to save our lives one day. ************************************************************************************ Confinement at high stocking density requires antibiotics and pesticides to mitigate the spread of disease and pestilence exacerbated by these crowded living conditions. In addition, antibiotics are used to stimulate livestock growth by killing intestinal bacteria. Widespread use of antibiotics increases the chance of a pandemic resistant to known measures, which is exacerbated by a globally distributed food system. Decreased genetic diversity increases the chance of a food crisis. "An animal feeding operation is defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a lot or facility where animals are kept 45 days of the year or more [and] structures or animal traffic prevents vegetative growth. Note that this is different from a EPA's definition of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) which is an animal feeding operation larger than a given size." http://www.google.com/search?q=CAFO+&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-ContextMenu&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7ADBS_en ********************************************************************************* *** The No Bell Peace Prize *** As to Obama and his Nobel prize; the story of Butch the Rooster John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called "pullets" and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs. The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells. The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, and a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. But to Farmer John's amazement, Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of Butch, he entered him in the Boone County Fair and Butch became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result: The judges not only awarded Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well. Clearly Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention? **********************************************************************************

ONE MORE THING

I meant to include this on my Vet's Day download, but I was not at the peak of my powers.

Sorry.

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http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=15407

ARMISTICE DAY, 2009

Click the header. Or else. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The eagle still still soars over our military and the self sacrificing men and women who make up our armed forces. God bless you, every one. When I swore the allegiance oath upon enlisting in the Navy, although many years ago, I remember how the words seemed to stick in my mind, I wondered how they could only be words to some taking the oath. And, yes, I was scared. I had just volunteered to give up my life if it was needed. The oath swearing was very definitely one of the high lights, and stirring events, of my life then. And it remains so today.