Because as an American, I can!

I’m watching The Green Zone.  From the start of the movie I can tell it’s a liberal piece of shit which really bashes the Bush Administration for it’s entrance into Iraq and search for Weapons of Mass Destruction.  However something else really caught my attention, something most likely did not pick up on.

Growing up the son of a contractor, my father once told me about a competing construction firm that got so large that one day it showed up to bid a new construction project for a client, and it’s sister branch from another part of the South East also showed up with a full bid package.  The point: One arm did not talk to another.

The same holds true to the Green Zone.  The movie revolves around the aspect that the US Government is so large that different sects (CIA, DOD, Army) all are competing against each other for sources and intelligence.  At one point, the Army gets a warrant form the White House and raids a CIA headquarters looking for a book with intel.  Hollywood liberals tried to make this a Bush bashing movie talking about the failure of the Iraq war.  Yet, to me it just says one thing: Our government is too big.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about High School Football and how much I sucked at it. I could never “look around” the field and tell what type of play it was, I could not react quick enough to make that pass block, that tackle. I was thinking that if I could take today’s knowledge and understanding about the sport back then it would all be different. I was wrong. I played kickball tonight with my team. I SUCK. I had more errors than I want to own up to…. But I realized something. We are all built different in God’s likeness, I don’t have a flare for grammar, art, or music… and I know God did not make me a person who can react quick. And it is just not athleticism… I can never make that snappy joke in conversation, I can’t catch a girl if she trips…. And when I catch that ball in the outfield I don’t know if I should hold it, or throw it to second or third base… it’s not me, and I hate it. Yet, I know we all have gifts in this world. I believe/hope that mine lies more with analytics… give me data, give me time, let me make a decision, I think…. I know I cam make the right decision. I hope that I can find a job that allows me to use this skill which I have, and be successful with it. As Jimmy Buffett says: “only time will tell”

It might be a strange statement that so state that dealing with shit (literally), it makes me proud to be an American.  But it does. This morning I called a local septic tank company which services one of our many rural Waffle Houses.  The call was like countless other conversations with these small, family owned businesses; and as always one constant was in the background:  a crying baby.

For you city dwellers, a septic system is a way of disposing of the waste that goes down your sink, toilet, dishwasher and processing it when a local municipality is not capable of providing sewer.  Part of this process involves a septic tank, which is literally a large tank in the ground that holds all of your solids (human waste, food scraps).  Once every six months to a year this tank must be pumped.  It’s a smelly job and not for the weak.

This is not some major company, there is no office address, no 401k for employees.  Here is a rural family, whom likely has a mortgage, a car payment, a work truck payment and a baby.  The wife is a stay at home mother whom also juggles answering the phone for clients, dispatching the husband to jobs, bookkeeping for the company, shopping, laundry cooking… the list goes on and on.  The husband is out before dawn every day.  He leans over moves a 75lb man hole cover (some times four of them) and sticks an apparatus that looks like a giant beater from your mom’s kitchen-aid mixer into a hole in the ground to break up smelly, deteriorating human waste that has been in a hole for 6+ months.  Every night he comes home from work….want to guess what he smells like?

Yet despite all of this, they press on and they work day in and day out.  They chase the American dream, participate in capitalism and bring a much needed service in an industry that is not glamorous.  I respect them for what they do, and I hope everyone else does as well.



BBC Planet Earth might be one of the best TV documentaries I have ever seen.  I highly recommend it.  I’ve been sick all week.  Don’t feel like typing, just wanted to give a shout out.

I must say, things could be worse, I was mostly moved out.  But it is still depressing to lose stuff.  Mostly of note is pretty much every article of work out gear I have for winter, my suits, my medals and numbers from races I have run, spare sheets for beds, all my kitchen wares (pots, pans, microwave, fridge)

Some things really irk me.  Government spending is #1.  Shortly following this is people who bite the hand that feeds them. The AP Wire has picked up a story regarding South Africans protesting because the US will not increase funding to combat Aids in THEIR country.  From the article – “The protesters, clad in green T-shirts emblazoned with the words “HIV-Positive,” marched before the consulate in a wealthy northern suburb of Johannesburg to demand that the U.S. government increase its contribution to the Global Fund on AIDS, TB and Malaria….”

Currently the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has an annual operating budget of $6,800,000,000 – That’s a lot of cheddar.  But where does it all go? I reviewed PEPFAR’s 6th annual report to congress, it’s a mind boggling 21 page report filled with statistics.  As usual, I am just so upset about this I can’t form coherent sentence – list time!

The fine points about PEPFAR’s stats I just don’t get -

• 721,900 Chinese received HIV/AIDs testing and counseling  services
  • Last I checked China has an estimated 297 Billion Dollar Surplus, while the USA has an estimated debt of $13 Trillion.  Why are we spending money in China?
• The fund treated 2,485,300 people world wide with Antiretroviral treatment.
  

  PEPFAR Activities Worldwide

  • According to the CDC “At the end of 2006, an estimated 1,106,400 persons (95% confidence interval 1,056,400-1,156,400) in the United States were living with HIV infection, with 21% undiagnosed
  • The cumulative estimated number of diagnoses of AIDS through 2007 in the United States and dependent areas was 1,051,875″
  • It seems parent to me, we could provide FREE treatment for HIV/AIDS to every diagnosed American Citizen for what we spend to treat people in other countries who do not pay taxes to us.

Let’s do a little math – What percentage of non-green card holding Americans actually have relatives in third world countries?  Now compare that to the percentage of Americans which have children in school.  I think it’s a safe bet that the latter is a significantly larger number.  Finally, who does the US Government have more of a responsibility to watch over, it’s citizens with children in schools, or non tax paying citizens who are ruled by their own government.

As cruel as this may seem, I don’t see how AIDS in Africa, China or third world countries is our problem.  I don’t plan to go have unprotected sex in Africa, I don’t plan to go get a blood transfusion over there.  Why is MY government spending MY money in Africa?

PS – I hated using the analogy of Federal funding for schools, everyone who reads this knows that I believe the Federal Government just adds layers of bureaucracy to the public school system, and Jimmy Carter never should have started the Department of Education… but it’s all I could think of at 6am.

When I was a kid, I worked summers for my dad’s construction company.  Learning the value of a hard earned dollar was important to my father.  As such, since the age of 12 he had me out on job sites dodging OSHA inspectors while I swept floors, cleaned anchor bolts, dug ditches, picked up trash and whatever the super needed from me.  In the hot summer months of Florida, wearing jeans and heavy boots, it’s about as bad as one can get (at least he was not a roofing contractor!).

Needless to say, one summer when I got to work in the office I loved the experience, no matter what I had to do, even make blueprints… See kids, before the days of digital wide format scanners; blueprints were actually blue (shocking I know).  This happened as the copy was made using a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, and boy did it smell!

So today, I can only say that I am happy to still have a job in an industry were I can continue my passion of carting around 24″x36″ sheets of paper all rolled up.  It’s one of the perks I readily enjoy, it reminds me of the hard work I put in on the job site, and to be grateful for what I have in life.

Why this was not played during the USA-England world cup soccer game I don’t know, but it should have been.

A good little video here, I think I posted it on my facebook status once, but here it is again.

I am in DC for the first time in my life.  Never before have I felt so patriotic, we are living in a great society, food is plentiful, we have blue skies, green grass, a stable economy (in comparison to many other nations) I can put gas in my car at any time.  Things are great.  Then I watched the US House of Representatives for 30 minutes from the gallery.  That’s all it took to make me so upset with our government I had to leave.  Never before have I been so convinced that democrats are truly ruining this great country.  The source of my anger lies in the introduction of Amendment 13 (PDF Link) of the  H.R. 5136, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. The overshadowing subject of this bill is revision to the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.  But this is what not upsets me.

When I think of H.R. 5136 is about one thing: National Defense.  Everything and anything belonging within this bill should directly relate to the security and defense of this great country.  Treatment of our soldiers, new planes, ships, the naming of destroyers, new medical treatments for GIs, Benifits for GIs’ families, Free lunches for public schools.  Wait…. what? What does subsidized school lunches for America’s poor children have to do with National Defense?  Well according to Amendment 13, a lot.  The on the floor arguments mentioned that these children are subjected to eating filling but unhealthy high calorie foods as they are too poor to eat finer foods, as such, fat children are too fat to serve in the military, a major issue towards our national security.

This is what is wrong with Democrats.  They choose to throw $1,000,000 WE DON’T HAVE towards an already failing school system which provides fattening lunches to our children, all while they kill PE classes which teaches children to be healthy.   A few comments in bullet points, as I am so angry right now I can’t form coherent sentences:

1. Fast food restaurants need to stop taking SNAP (AKA Food Stamps).  Everyone knows that it is cheaper to cook at home than to eat out.  Perhaps we should teach these poor people how to cook rice.  We have plenty of food at the super market, it just needs to be cooked!  Also here’s another tip: the leftovers can be sent with the child to school the next day for lunch.
2. I love how in the context of Amendment 13, they also made the case that before WWII many of the recruits were undernourished… AKA “We can’t cut this failing program because it is making our kids to fat, if we do that, we will have undernourished kids! Let’s just throw more money at it!”
3. I mourned Reagan when he died, I still remember where I was when I saw the news.  I’ll never mourn Carter.  I hate that asshole, he’s a pansy peanut farmer with no balls who let Iran trample all over us.  Did I mention he is responsible for the creation of the Department of Education?  FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD HAVE NO PART IN THE FUNDING OR OVERSIGHT OF EDUCATION. IT SHOULD BE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STATES.
4. I am just pissed about the sneakiness of the system.  Yesterday I saw a $1,000,000.00 amendment get folded into a larger bill that was a shoe in for the democrats. There were no more than 10 representatives on the floor.  I would have never known about it if I had not sat there and watched it for myself.
5. If republicans can’t beat the democrats in a majority vote for the overall bill, I think they need to make an effort show up in force and  block every single amendment within that bill that is nominated by the democrats.  Two outcomes are possible: A) The democrats will never show as all democrats are lazy or B) The democrats will show up and we will finally have a congress which is active and has to vote on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE.