Obscure Mania

What if Thomas Paine, the writer of Common Sense was alive today? That’s the premise of this video. I agree with most except for:

Term Limits: There probably should be term limits, but two may be too few for the House, that’s only four years. How about an age limit? Especially some of these old farts in the Senate, how much work do they do nowadays anyway?

Abolish the Electoral College? The electoral college allows the rest of the country to participate in the Presidential election instead of the two population centers of NYC and LA. You want the most liberal areas or the country to have control of the President? When it works, there’s nothing wrong with the electoral college

Required Service: Maybe. I don’t want the draft for the military. The military is the best in the world because it’s all volunteer. Draft people for the Peace Corps. You can’t force people to be grateful.

Don’t know who Thomas Paine is? Or his pamphlet Common Sense? Went to public school in the last 15 years? Thanks goodness for the Internet. Here’s a good place to start: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

If it works for government it should work for the rest of us right? Typical Democrats, they come up with a plan that might work, then screw it up with their own agenda to ensure it has no chance of working. I thought the economy was in dire straits and we had to get a stimulus package that created jobs TODAY, not two or three years from now. What a bunch of idiots.

And now the Republicans decide to start acting like Republicans? Where have they been the last five years? How about a few months ago? Why didn’t they stand up during the last stimulus failure? If it takes a Democratic President for the Republicans to get their spine back, then Obama as President is a good thing.

Hopefully, they can keep their spine and take some seats in two years.

The election is over and America in its infinite wisdom has chosen the candidate that promised them the most stuff. We survived Carter’s debacle and Clinton started with a Democratic majority in Congress, went too far and the Democrats lost their majority. Hopefully, the same thing will happen this time and in two years the Republicans will find their conservative soul and a backbone so we will at least have some checks and balances.

Life on the Road has been offline since Friday. I’ve been lobbying to get more control and the longer it’s down, the better my chances are of getting total control. I’m just a truck driver, but even I know about backups and redundancy. I’ve already offered space on this server with a current backup, I’m not sure of the exact details of the outage yet, so I’m not sure why they can’t restore the site on my server.

I’m also in the middle of decision of my own. I’m seriously investigating another company to work for. The money maybe a little less, but it might be more consistent. I will have to find a place to store the trailer until it’s sold and I may be gone more but the company I’m with now, hasn’t been a trucking company for a long time. It changed into a warehouse and a brokerage that happens to have a few trucks. I’ve made good money and even last month, with almost 50% of my total miles being empty, the loaded miles were really good and made up for it.

The new company will be more like Graebel, that pays a rate per mile with a fuel surcharge, with strict detention and layover rules. It will mean going to Canada and more New York City but the one driver I know over there seems to really like it. Maybe it’s just time for a change.

While Life on the Road is having technical difficulties and everyone is watching the country go you know where in a handbasket, watch the last of John, Sarah (Tina) and an appearance by Cindy McCain on Saturday Night Live. Which is actually pretty funny. Someone get me one of those Palin 2012 t-shirts!

If by some electoral miracle, John and Sarah do win the White House, when the dust settles after all the rioting in the streets, this White House will probably do more to encourage people to service only because of their examples. All the charity work that Cindy McCain really does instead of the 1 or 2 percent Obama-Biden give to charity, the military service of John McCain and even the example of a regular mom getting involved in political service. I would rather be led by example than told what to do by someone that makes a teleprompter sound like a sermon. But that’s just me.

Can’t stand the bias of CNN or Fox? Getting tired of Keith Olbermann’s tingly feelings? (Great SNL spoof on Keith.) There are places to watch the results without the commentary. Google has an election map updated in realtime. Zoom in on a state and choose Senate, House or Presidential races or just watch the big picture. Go to Google Election Results. There’s also a direct feed from the AP and CNN has good website for local race results.

Have we hit rock bottom yet? Probably not. The price of oil is dropping, so that’s good right? Not so much. The price of gas is still high and businesses still can’t get the credit or don’t want to invest in any more equipment or people or anything else. If no one buys stuff, there’s no reason to ship that stuff no one is buying. Plus if oil drops, everyone will forget and lose sight of becoming energy independent, like we always do. What’s the point of investing in new technology, new drilling or anything else, when oil’s so cheap? Remember when diesel was over $4.50? Huh? What? When? Britney’s sister is pregnant again? That was just a freak thing that happened, it will never happen again.

Florida is tough for me to get out of with a load on a good day. I thought there were a couple of things lined up, but they fell through. Normal stuff. The truck stop is almost full even in the middle of the day, not good. I’ve noticed a few trucks (moving style trailers like mine) that were already here when I got here and they’re still here, not good.

Is the election over yet?

I can’t listen to any more news. McCain is struggling and it doesn’t look good. I just want to point out a few things: The economy didn’t fall on its butt until this last year. The seven years Bush was in office were actually pretty good, even with the war going on. I keep hearing how there are people in Congress that don’t know how we got here. Figures, since they were the ones that put us here and in their arrogance they can’t see that putting their fingers in the market screwed it up. You would think they would know how to fix it, since they’re the ones that broke it. Admitting you have a problem is the first step in fixing your problem. Or something like that. That’s not going to happen with the arrogance in this Congress.

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After unloading near Miami, FL and heading back north, the southbound interstate 95 was shut down. Cops were blocking the onramps and more troopers were blocking the southbound lanes. Obama is in the area. I’m sure it’s for security, but my only thought was that he doesn’t want to be on the same interstate as the unwashed masses. Even if I was voting for him, I couldn’t take the arrogance of the man. From the Presidential seal modification, the Greek columns at the convention and now he’s planning his victory party with Iranian caviar. Isn’t there a trade embargo with Iran? Maybe it doesn’t include the cavier.

And now with Joe the plumber. I thought the democratic party was pro working man. Aren’t they supposed to be the compassionate ones? Aren’t they the party that wants everyone to be included? Since he’s not in the union, he’s not relevant to them. Since he wants to better himself instead of remaining elbow deep in other people’s feces, his questions don’t count. Since he’s a registered Republican he’s not relevant and not supposed to speak to the anointed one. I wrote a Joe the Plumber post over on Life on the Road you can check out.

Since we are registered as “unaffiliated”, I get calls from both sides. I always give different answers on surveys, so don’t believe any polls you hear about, especially about the Nevada candidates. I had one democrat caller say they wanted to talk about the issues, but they asked if I was supporting Obama, I said, “probably not”. They didn’t want to discuss the issues anymore and hung up. I want them to convince me to vote for their guy. I’m not talking about the survey takers, that’s different, this was clearly a party volunteer. One time I was asked if I was supporting Obama and I answered, “Hell, yeah! I want him to take ALL my money, not just some of it.” They hung up too.

Speaking of voting, I’m filling out my absentee ballot after dinner tonight. I would take it in to the restaurant, but don’t want gravy falling on the Obama box by mistake. I’ve still got plenty of homework to do and I need to check with CSN and see how I did on my english placement test. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if I had to take a remedial class to get to a college freshman english class? How is someone going to tell if I need a remedial english class from one page of an essay? Just looking at this site, there are probably plenty of reasons I should be in remedial english. Nevermind. Math, that’s a different story. I know I’m going to be in the pre-math class, I’m not even worried about that yet.

Probably not. I’ve heard this a few other places that Obama’s Honolulu birth certificate looks a little suspect and his time out of the country, there is an issue with his citizenship. I never realized the Annenberg at factcheck.org is the same Annenberg project in Chicago that Obama’s was connected to. If they were the same you would think someone would have brought that up somewhere by now.

I’ve been home for about a week now. The truck went in the shop for a minor fix, then I took the truck to have the APU fixed. That APU thing has been in the shop so much I’m not sure it’s saved me money or not. It’s always something different. If it goes out again, I may not fix it. It’s nice to have because that’s the only way I have right now to make the microwave work. I need it to watch TV, but I haven’t watched TV in the truck for a long time now and when I do, it’s usually a DVD of a CSI rerun.

RTC Southern Nevada

The mass transit system in Vegas is great. You can take a bus just about anywhere in the metro area. It’s $1.25 to ride one way or $2.50 for a 24 hour pass, as many transfers and any direction for 24 hours. It’s a great bargain. I rode to the shop, picked up the truck, took it to the APU shop, back to the house, then to my dentist appointment the next day. I was in the dentist for so long it was past 24 hours, so I walked home. All buses have bike racks and it takes two seconds to put your bike up or take it down. The website for the bus system has a routing program, you put in your origination, destination and the time of day and it gives you three options. All with times and walking distance and a very detailed map and trip info. It really is pretty cool. And since Vegas is a 24 hour town, a lot of the buses have 24 hour schedules. Those aren’t for the tourists, they’re for the casino workers and everyone else that works the night shifts.

The Bailout Mess

What else have we done? I’ve listened to way too much news. The so-called bailout that wasn’t really a bailout was probably necessary, but all of the extra junk that they put in the bill probably wasn’t. Everyone says they want to fix the problem and not place blame. I would feel a lot better if an investigation was done and people went to jail. Why is this different from Enron? People are losing their retirements and 401k’s just like Enron. Enron lied about their books while the executives were spending shareholder money. People went to jail. In this mortgage security fiasco, people need to go to jail. Maxine Waters, Barney Franks and Chris Dodd would be a good start.

Everyone has seen this video right? The democrats yelling at the regulators trying to tell them Fannie and Freddie are cooking their books, while the democrats are saying there’s nothing wrong.

Chris Dodd on the bank and finance committe getting the most money from Fannie and Freddie? What’s up with that?

What about ACORN?

While we’re throwing people in jail, how about the people at ACORN? And wasn’t Barack Obama training ACORN community organizers and telling them how to intimidate banks with racism if they didn’t make loans to people that couldn’t afford to pay them back? And no one knows who’s fault this is? They can’t have an investigation because it would be like a bunch of foxes trying to determine which one of them raided the hen house when they all did it at the same time they’re all denying it.

ACORN gets raided in Nevada for voter fraud? What a surprise? They actually investigated and raided ACORN’s office. ACORN will have so much power when Obama gets in office they will do anything it takes to get him in office. Did you know in Ohio, when you register to vote, you can place your vote. So if you just make up a name when you register, they can’t check and see if your even eligible to vote until much, much later. If at all. ACORN is working BIG TIME in OHIO. What a stupid system.

I can’t wait for the election to be over. I really don’t think anything is going to get much better and might even get worse, no matter who is in office.

And the first commercial is out. I listened to the first half of the debate, then was able to come back to it when it was done. This commercial come out about 30 seconds after the debate was over. Barack Obama says he’s going to cut taxes on the middle class, how come I don’t believe him? The bar is at $250k, is that net? Gross? Adjusted Gross? That’s also in the range of a majority of small business’ and small business is the core of the economy and if they have to pay more taxes, they’re not going to hire or spend more.

You know everyone is going to be watching the VP debate.

No one really messed up. I thought McCain was smoother with his answers. Hannity kept mentioning how Obama’s answers were well rehearsed. You could tell when he went off script a little and lost his train of thought a few times. But since McCain spent more time in Washington working on the bailout fiasco while Obama was rehearsing his debate speeches, McCain did really well. But no one thinks any minds were changed. Probably won’t be any movement in the polls next week.