Debt problem? Well, this is pretty easy. Stop spending so much dadgum money, and quit committing to spending so much dadgum money in the future. The problem goes away very easily following this simple strategy. Want to solve this problem? Great, let's get to work:
ObamaCare...gone. I just saved us well over a $ 1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
Cut funding for Iraq and Afghanistan by 50% by the end of the coming fiscal year, and then by 75% the following year. Lybia, not spending another dime bombing Lybia. I might let New York ship their garbage over there an dump it in Moammar's front lawn, but that should be revenue neutral. Hell, given what those trendy Manhattanites throw away, I might be able to sell that junk and turn Moammar's lawn into a revenue center. New Yorks' junk is Lybia's trasure. I just saved another trillion plus over the next 10years.
Raise Social Security age by 2 years for anyone under 55 and index all future increases to inflation. Boom, just saved another trillion plus.
I haven't even started on Medicare and Medicaid yet. I guarantee there is trillion of saving is each program over the next ten years, minimum.
Subsidies for Ethanol...over. Really easy one there, I saved billions, lowered food prices, and cleaned up the environment in one swoop. Feeling hot today, so let's keep going.
In 5 minutes, I have cut spending by well over 7 trillion dollars, probably even more.
Need more revenue? Done. I am cutting the corporate tax to 10% and wiping out the loopholes, so now every profitable business is paying into the coffers no matter how much they pay their tax attorney...in fact they can probably put those folks to work creating value for the stock holders instead of figuring out how to sidestep paying taxes. Guess what else? Those trillions of profits trapped over seas because no rational business person would repatriate them at 65 cents on the dollar, all those bucks just came home to momma and are driving net new investments in the domestic private sector.
BTW, since the doom of ObamaCare is now gone and business knows what it will cost to hire new employees, unemployment is getting ready to drop...driving up tax receipts and driving down billions in federal aid to unemployed families.
If the CBO would score me on this, I am thinking over 10 years just saved at least 8-10 trillion in spending and drove tax revenues through the roof with robust economic growth, and I did all this for free. Once again, simple problems made very difficult by our geniuses in Washington.
I'd like to have those ninnies who write for Salon and The Daily Kos try to come up with a better plan. After they finished complimenting each other on how smart they are, admiring the new ripped up t-shirt collection, and cursing former president Bush, I am pretty sure they would settle on a plan to raise taxes on those mean "rich" people who buy things, hire people, and provide capital for markets that need it. Corporate jets would not only lose their tax breaks, I am pretty sure they would be banned...except the ones that Al Gore, Jane Fonda, and George Soros use. I am guessing oil would be taxed more, so we would have less of it. That's helpful.I am pretty sure we would spend more money we don't have on green energy projects that don't work. When green energy is ready, I am pretty sure the capitalists left in this country will figure out how to make a killing by making it affordable and accessible to the masses. If Washington provides it through subsidies, it will be as successful as ethanol. 'nuff said.
We have 300M people in the United States. Is everyone going to love my plan? Nope. But I am not trying to make everyone love me, I am trying to solve the problem. Maybe that's where things go awry in Washington. If Obama was as freaking smart as he thinks he is and as his minions on MSNBC tell us he is, you'd think he could figure this out on his own. That Ivy league diploma is losing a little bit of its shine.
Well, that didn't take very long. You can thank me later.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
No Mas! - Probabaly not what you are thinking....
This is for my niece Lindsay who told me I needed to lighten up in my blog posts...
A while ago, one of the many delightfully wandering and inane conversations over beer with one of my good friends, who I have known since 6th grade, meandered to the Tom Hanks movie “Castaway”. Why the conversation went there, I have no idea, but in the random walk of conversation topics, this was just as likely as any other topic. My friend stated that he would not have lasted a week as a castaway on an island because as he aged his eyesight had gotten so bad that not only could he not read a stop sign without contacts lenses, but he couldn’t see a stop sign without contacts. He stated that as soon as his contact lenses dried up, he would essentially became the “blind castaway” and walk off a cliff he couldn’t see in broad daylight. The thought that popped in my head as he described his likely fate as a castaway was…”reality show” somewhere in this tale of woe was a great reality show.
Several years ago, when I was training for my second marathon, I became overly sensitive to even moderate heat and/or humidity. When I am exercising, working in the yard, or running with my luggage down a long concourse to catch a flight, if there is a trace of heat or humidity, I start to perspire…profusely. My golfing friends have noticed this (how could they not?) and now I am the justified object of ridicule when I have to change my shirt after walking 9 holes. I usually forget that my shorts are plaid and pack a second shirt that is striped which helps my back nine immeasurably. The last time I sweated out my golf shirt and was changing to my backup, I had a thought pop in my head…”reality show”.
Ideas bounce around in my head for a long time before they fuse with other equally ridiculous ideas and are merged into a ridiculous concept. Sitting on the tarmac waiting to takeoff this week, my two reality show ideas fused into what I think is a winning idea.
Let’s take two people, like my friend and me…with seemingly minor ailments in modern, civilized society, and put them on separate but essentially equal remote tropical islands as castaways and see how harmless ailments are magnified into intolerable handicaps until the ailment eventually becomes their undoing. The show would be called “No Mas!”. Here is how an episode might work:
My essentially blind friend would be put on an island by himself with a film crew to record his every move and make sure he does not actually walk off a cliff once his contacts dry up.They would film him trying to forage for food, chasing what he thought were edible rodents that turned out to be rocks. Chasing what he thought was a harmless edible monkey that turned out to be a feral boar with 4 inch fangs. Assume he was able to fashion a fishing spear while he could still see. Now imagine him throwing the spear trying to catch fish after his contacts have dried up. If a fish was large enough for him to see, it would likely be a submerged bolder or a shark the size of Jaws….either way, spear fishing rocks or man eating sharks is good reality show fun. Imagine he was able to find crabs to eat. Any crab he could see would be enormous. In his blinded state, he might be able to grab a giant crab, but there is no way he could see to fend off the crab’s giant pinchers. So a crab-grab is really a suicide mission of the hand (manocide?) Food might be within his grasp, but there is going to be hell to pay. Viewers would certainly be treated to a series of slapstick head bumps and trip-and-fall events as well as tossing and losing his fishing spear at objects, none of which were fish….zainey reality show fun.
On the flip side, I would be on another island, doing everything I could to either preserve fluid or find fluids. I imagine that my stay would be more of a game of strategy but no less futile. Do I just try not to sweat, or do I risk sweating, looking for water, knowing that the drain and the bottom of the tub is letting water run out faster than I am finding it? How does one not sweat in the tropical heat and sun? I can imagine trying a conservation strategy first. Standing up to my neck in sea water trying my best not to sweat until the sun goes down and it is safe for me to move around. Given my acute ADD, I suspect I could stand still in neck-deep water for maybe 10 minutes before I became totally bored or totally paranoid and convinced that I was going to be attacked by a school of piranhas. Conservation having been tried and failed as a way to win the game, I suspect I would then begin a futile search for water – looking for dew drops on leaves that dried up while I was standing in water up to my neck, running around looking for streams that don’t exist, all the while sweating like a mule. I expect strategy would devolve into beating coconuts to death. The race for hydration would be on…could I refill the tub before the last drop ran out, before my competitor declared “No Mas!”?
“No Mas!” ends when one of the castaways has had enough and raises the “No Mas!” flag signaling he has had enough. Alternately, the castaway could light a roman candle that spells out “No Mas!” in firework smoke. The first castaway to declare “No Mas!” would lose, unbeknownst to the other castaway. This is where “No Mas!” really takes shape. Say I declare “No Mas!” first. I lose the game, but also I get picked up by a helicopter and flown to a tropical Four Seasons to recover from my ordeal. My competitor stays on his island, bumping his head on tree limbs and getting his hands mauled by crabs…despite that fact he is the unwitting “winner” of “No Mas!”. Once he declares also “No Mas!” he would be declared the “No Mas!”winner….and told that I had been sunning myself at the Four Seasons for the past week. I suppose he would get a check for like $ 200K or something and maybe I get the runners up check that for “No Mas!” which is the other “No Mas!” joke because the runner up check is for “Nada”.
Maybe I haven’t had enough sleep, but this sounds like good clean fun to me, fun until the point when I have to declare “No Mas”. We could follow this up with “Celebrity No Mas!”
A while ago, one of the many delightfully wandering and inane conversations over beer with one of my good friends, who I have known since 6th grade, meandered to the Tom Hanks movie “Castaway”. Why the conversation went there, I have no idea, but in the random walk of conversation topics, this was just as likely as any other topic. My friend stated that he would not have lasted a week as a castaway on an island because as he aged his eyesight had gotten so bad that not only could he not read a stop sign without contacts lenses, but he couldn’t see a stop sign without contacts. He stated that as soon as his contact lenses dried up, he would essentially became the “blind castaway” and walk off a cliff he couldn’t see in broad daylight. The thought that popped in my head as he described his likely fate as a castaway was…”reality show” somewhere in this tale of woe was a great reality show.
Several years ago, when I was training for my second marathon, I became overly sensitive to even moderate heat and/or humidity. When I am exercising, working in the yard, or running with my luggage down a long concourse to catch a flight, if there is a trace of heat or humidity, I start to perspire…profusely. My golfing friends have noticed this (how could they not?) and now I am the justified object of ridicule when I have to change my shirt after walking 9 holes. I usually forget that my shorts are plaid and pack a second shirt that is striped which helps my back nine immeasurably. The last time I sweated out my golf shirt and was changing to my backup, I had a thought pop in my head…”reality show”.
Ideas bounce around in my head for a long time before they fuse with other equally ridiculous ideas and are merged into a ridiculous concept. Sitting on the tarmac waiting to takeoff this week, my two reality show ideas fused into what I think is a winning idea.
Let’s take two people, like my friend and me…with seemingly minor ailments in modern, civilized society, and put them on separate but essentially equal remote tropical islands as castaways and see how harmless ailments are magnified into intolerable handicaps until the ailment eventually becomes their undoing. The show would be called “No Mas!”. Here is how an episode might work:
My essentially blind friend would be put on an island by himself with a film crew to record his every move and make sure he does not actually walk off a cliff once his contacts dry up.They would film him trying to forage for food, chasing what he thought were edible rodents that turned out to be rocks. Chasing what he thought was a harmless edible monkey that turned out to be a feral boar with 4 inch fangs. Assume he was able to fashion a fishing spear while he could still see. Now imagine him throwing the spear trying to catch fish after his contacts have dried up. If a fish was large enough for him to see, it would likely be a submerged bolder or a shark the size of Jaws….either way, spear fishing rocks or man eating sharks is good reality show fun. Imagine he was able to find crabs to eat. Any crab he could see would be enormous. In his blinded state, he might be able to grab a giant crab, but there is no way he could see to fend off the crab’s giant pinchers. So a crab-grab is really a suicide mission of the hand (manocide?) Food might be within his grasp, but there is going to be hell to pay. Viewers would certainly be treated to a series of slapstick head bumps and trip-and-fall events as well as tossing and losing his fishing spear at objects, none of which were fish….zainey reality show fun.
On the flip side, I would be on another island, doing everything I could to either preserve fluid or find fluids. I imagine that my stay would be more of a game of strategy but no less futile. Do I just try not to sweat, or do I risk sweating, looking for water, knowing that the drain and the bottom of the tub is letting water run out faster than I am finding it? How does one not sweat in the tropical heat and sun? I can imagine trying a conservation strategy first. Standing up to my neck in sea water trying my best not to sweat until the sun goes down and it is safe for me to move around. Given my acute ADD, I suspect I could stand still in neck-deep water for maybe 10 minutes before I became totally bored or totally paranoid and convinced that I was going to be attacked by a school of piranhas. Conservation having been tried and failed as a way to win the game, I suspect I would then begin a futile search for water – looking for dew drops on leaves that dried up while I was standing in water up to my neck, running around looking for streams that don’t exist, all the while sweating like a mule. I expect strategy would devolve into beating coconuts to death. The race for hydration would be on…could I refill the tub before the last drop ran out, before my competitor declared “No Mas!”?
“No Mas!” ends when one of the castaways has had enough and raises the “No Mas!” flag signaling he has had enough. Alternately, the castaway could light a roman candle that spells out “No Mas!” in firework smoke. The first castaway to declare “No Mas!” would lose, unbeknownst to the other castaway. This is where “No Mas!” really takes shape. Say I declare “No Mas!” first. I lose the game, but also I get picked up by a helicopter and flown to a tropical Four Seasons to recover from my ordeal. My competitor stays on his island, bumping his head on tree limbs and getting his hands mauled by crabs…despite that fact he is the unwitting “winner” of “No Mas!”. Once he declares also “No Mas!” he would be declared the “No Mas!”winner….and told that I had been sunning myself at the Four Seasons for the past week. I suppose he would get a check for like $ 200K or something and maybe I get the runners up check that for “No Mas!” which is the other “No Mas!” joke because the runner up check is for “Nada”.
Maybe I haven’t had enough sleep, but this sounds like good clean fun to me, fun until the point when I have to declare “No Mas”. We could follow this up with “Celebrity No Mas!”
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