The DUMBEST Thing I've Seen In a While

Here's a forwarded chain email I was forwarded earlier today. It suggests instead of the government spending $85 billion to bailout AIG, they should just uh, give it to the American people.

Subject: The Birk Economic Recovery Plan

I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in
a "We Deserve it Dividend".

To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000
bona fide U.S. Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman
a nd child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a
We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.
So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
A husband and wife have $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.
Repay college loans - what a great boost to new grads
Put away money for college - it'll be there
Save in a bank - create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
Buy a new car - create jobs
Invest in the market - capital drives growth
Pay for your parent's medical insurance - health care improves
Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean - or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks
who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company
that is cutting back. and of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we're going to re-distribut e wealth let's really do it...instead of
trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( "vote buy" ) economic incentive that is being
proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we're going to do an $85 billion bailout, let's bail out every
adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG.

·        Liquidate it.

·        Sell off its parts.

·        Let American General go back to being American General.

·        Sell off the real estate.

·        Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.

Sure it's a crazy idea that can "never work."

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion
We Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington
DC.

And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because
$25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

Kindest personal regards,

Birk

T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic

PS:  Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it's either good for a
laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

May want to even flood Congress with this message!!!

Okay. So here are my thoughts on this idiocy. The problem isn't who the money is going to but that we're printing money while we don't have the silver and gold to back it up. Every time we do something like this our dollar loses its worth and we dig ourselves even deeper into this hole. 

And anyone who wants to pin all of the fault onto AIG and these other companies, think again. People should be smart enough to read the contracts that come with their mortgages and not agree to something they can't pay back. The American people don't spend enough time educating themselves on what simple terms like interest rate or credit are.Therefore if you give a lot of money to either of these entities it's a bad move.

This is also hypocritically Republican. A Conservative obviously wrote this message saying "Dang it I'm American and I deserve $250,000 because I work hard." However, that's just like saying "I'm a disadvantaged African American living in a tough neighborhood, so I deserve welfare." We all know how much Republicans dislike welfare so I don't see how someone can be so adamantly opposed to giving money to someone else while saying they deserve the same thing while giving even less reason for it.

Bottom line, no one deserves anything but what they earn. Every time the government gives you something, you can guarantee it's not a gift and they will get it back from you and more than likely at your loss. Less government = more freedom. Americans need to wise up and realize that printing money to fight wars we can't win and bailout companies and lazy people is going to be the downfall of this country if it doesn't stop.

Oh yeah, and Mr. Birk obviously didn't check his math. 85,000,000,000 divided by 200,000,000 DOES NOT equal 425,000. It equals 425. Good luck paying your bills off with that. It is this sort of ignorance and quick decision that is tearing this country in pieces.

Cheers

P.S. Go here for more information.

The Radiance

I recently had the pleasure of discovering an amazing poem by A.R. Ammons entitled "The City Limits." I love it when in the last sentence of a piece of literature I am stopped cold as if shot through the heart by a sharp idea from an author. This poem does just that. 

I happened upon the poem while reading for my 20th Century Poetry class and we discussed it yesterday. Actually they discussed it because upon first reading it I had an immediate reaction to the underlying tones of religion and admiration of God and his ever-reaching Grace. However, the one who speaks of that reaction to the class is automatically a God-nut and his/her legitimacy and merit are immediately thrown out of the window.

That is the problem with poetry classes. The moment one begins to elaborate on what the poem has done for them, those who disagree feel they are sticking up for the author, doing their best to keep your words from that pen.  Go ahead and read the poem, the class discussion follows.

"The City Limits"

by A.R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold

itself but pours its abundance without selection into every

nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but

lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider

the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,

not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider

the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped

guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no

way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,

each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then

the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark

work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes

and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

So I listened to the class search for the meaning of the poem. And no one could make sense of it. The discussion of the poem is fairly summarized in the teacher's last sentence in class:

"The terms fear and praise are juxtaposed, they can never mean the same thing."

Without the existence of God, her confusion would be justified. I smiled at this and all the other times in which I have heard people run from the notion of God in literature, thereby losing all of the meaning in a whatever they are reading. I am certainly not one to push my beliefs down a person's throat but when a poem speaks of a "roomier heart" upon the consideration of grace, it seems the implication is clear. 

That is how the poem affected me. I am not saying Ammons is a believer, but I do believe that my God has the power to move the pen of his foes. However my teacher decided to go with this:

"It is through this juxtaposition that Ammons brings praise to the coil of s***."

I don't know that I have ever heard something so foolish in all of my life. God's grace extends to the wicked and ugly, but they are not made so much better as to receive praise for their rebirth. The radiance gives them the ability to approach their creator. 

It is in this approach that fear and praise become one. No God, no approach. No approach, no meaning.

Cheers.

The Lateness

Once again,

I have lost 

sight of you.

But that does

not mean I 

have closed my 

languid eyes.

Cheers

The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me

I don't really know what it is about the band Brand New that demands my continuous attention. Their music incites this feeling of home in me, of reassurance that everything isn't as bad as it appears. So even though I may go a month or so without listening to one of their albums, it isn't long before I get the urge and go on a two-week binge of nothing but the three albums and unreleased tracks that they've produced.

In my opinion, the band gets better with age and their latest album from November 2006 is their outright best. "The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me" takes a painful look into the souls of men. What it finds is that no matter what we have done for ourselves we are pathetic creatures lost without the hand of our creator.  However, those that seek Him, are often most vulnerable to the attacks of the one that opposes Him.

This album is about that struggle: The want to do good and the devastation of the failure to do so.

Below are the lyrics to the song Coca-Cola, a bonus track for the album and video of Jesse Lacey, the band's frontman, singing it live. (Amazing performance by the way.)

"Coca-Cola"

There's blood and feathers
On my dumb paws
You ain't nothing but a dead duck
I ain't nothing but a hound-dog.

You seep in the windows and vents.
I lay in the grass and I lose your scent.
If God gave me grace, then why aren't a graceful?

My joints are frozen, cold, old, and idle.

If it's by air
Then I don't want to know
If we all don't take cover
We're all gonna fall back in love again

You work late and fight off your boss
If your patient dies, take the night off

They've worked out
All of the bugs
And if you have enough money
You can buy love

You work out your reception seating
While I sing, sing, sing
These ten lords still leaping
With the mark on your breast from your baby teething

Give him my name if he is needing.

If it's by sea
Then I don't want to know
If we all don't take cover
We're all gonna fall back in love again
"Bless your beautiful hide."
And curse your God when your friends die

If it's by air
Then I don't wanna know
If we all don't take cover
We're all gonna fall back in love again

You work late, fight off your boss
If the patient dies, then take the night off.

Cheers

The Stressed and the Un

My version of a sonnet. I struggle with iambs.

"Leviticus Perverted"

Remember to make eye contact as you

cradle the back of his head. The silence

will vibrate the brown in his eyes, turning

the world shades of death. His lips will tremble,

part, and snap shut and all in the name of

his loves. Then, in an instant, his eyes will

slide upward to search for God up above.

Then slide your fingers from under his skull

and try not to let the weight pinch. It's not

what you think, the pull of gravity, but

the glow of myrrh gone dull. Off of your knees,

standing at ease, hovering one- two- three...

The priests in the crease, sacrifice with false

guile, munching bloody-burnt scraps with a smile.

The Revolutionary

It saddens me that in our country of "liberty and freedom," we are forced to vote for one of only two men. Our two-party system is not fully representative of our people and it is wrong for our government to pride itself on open elections by telling citizens to vote for whomever they want while the reality is only two men have somehow gained the right to win because a group of fanatics have chosen to play politics like a game of Red vs. Blue.

If any of you are unaware, I am currently planning on voting for neither John McCain or Barack Obama. McCain, to me, means more Bush policies, while Obama means using fancy speeches to defame those awful policies while doing nothing under the guise of "Change."

I voted for Ron Paul in the Alabama primary, and while people laughed and called Paul supporters crazy as our candidate failed to get a tenth of the delegates McCain garnered, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

What people can't seem to understand about Ron Paul is that, it's not about gaining the Presidency like it is with the other candidates. I'm sure he wouldn't mind being President, if that weren't the case he wouldn't have run. However, the Presidency and really, candidacy for that office, was simply a way to push the ideas of political reformation into the public sphere.


Ron Paul will not be our next President. But he represents the good left in this country, concerned not with affiliations or petty cookie-cutter two-party arguments, but with liberty and making America the "light on the hill" it used to be.


September 2, Paul hosted his own convention along side that of the Republican National Convention. Paul sold 10,000 tickets to the Rally for the Republic for $17.76 and made a statement that there are a substantial amount of people in this nation unhappy with our Republicrat government.

I'm currently reading his book The Revolution: A Manifesto, and let me tell you, it's an eye-opener to see how far we have strayed from the original foundation this country was built upon.

Here are some highlights from his speech at the Rally which you can watch here.

"You know the survival of the Republic was discussed at the time of founding, and the founding fathers came to the conclusion that we would and could have a Republic, but the Republic depended on a moral people so we complain a lot about the government and all that is going on and we blame this person or the other person, but in a way, it is the reflection of the morality of the people. So in doing this we have to understand the morality of the law and the morality of what we do. If we are not a moral people [even] a perfect Constitution cannot save us. We don't have a perfect Constitution, but we have a real good one. But the fact that if we have people who ignore it, it won't serve our purpose so you have to have a moral people and a system of government and moral politicians who represent us."

"Another thing that has happened is that we've lost track that the Constitution was written to restrain the government. Now, it's turned on its head, the Constitution or the government that's there, they use it to restrain us and that is upside down."

"And not only that, we get taught history in our public schools, and who are the great Presidents? The great Presidents are always said to be the ones who run a war. Why don't we have the peace candidates be the great Presidents?"

"Something else has happened over the many decades and that is our confusion on what patriotism is all about. Guess who the true early American Patriots supported? They didn't support the current government that they had and yet today they want you to believe that patriotism means that you support everything the government wants. A true patriot defends liberty and the people. And just naming a bill the Patriot Act and voting for it, doesn't make you a patriot. The true patriots will repeal the patriot act. That's what they would do."

"In one of the debates we were asked as a group what do you think is the greatest moral crisis that we're facing today in this country and the thought that crossed my mind in that debate and I still believe it's one of the most serious moral crisis we face and that is, we as a nation have come to accept, at least the policies go in that direction, that we as a nation now accept the principle of preventive war, actually starting war. There is no moral justification for that and there certainly is no Constitutional justification to fight these many wars that we have been fighting without a declaration of war."

"We do a pretty good job defending against foreign threats. We overdo that because we have no foreign threats. We have no threat that somebody is going to invade this country. We have the threat of terrorism but that is a consequence of a seriously flawed foreign policy."



Cheers