A day late and a dollar short.

A day late and a dollar short

So Obama released his budget…actually he should have released it a week ago, so he is seven days late….

…and the deficit is a bit more than a dollar…in fact it is $1.65 trillion…for the academically challenged, that is…1,650,000,000,000 or something in the order of $4,500,000,000 a day. Is that too hard for you to get your head around…how about an hourly rate…$18,750,000…or a minute….$312,500. Most people average 70 heartbeats a minute…so for every heartbeat you have, the government must borrow $4,500 (approximately).

Now, let me think for a minute…every time my heart beats we go further into debt by over $4,000?

And this is what Obama comes up with even though he is 7 days late? Maybe we should be thankful it was only 7 days late…any more and a heartbeat could be even more expensive!!

Enough of the frivolity…today I want to talk of something that has my heart all aflutter….

It is February 13 and for the last several days…or weeks…we have been assaulted with reminders of Valentine’s Day on February 14.

Diamonds, dinners, flowers and cards.

The history of Valentines Day is a little difficult to track down. At some point as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire many of the traditional Roman festivities were renamed and re-engineered to become celebrations of Christian events.

In 450 AD or thereabouts…a fertility festival was slated on the Roman calendar for February 15. These celebrations contained all the debauchery one would expect from a fertility celebration. If the God’s were kind…well, you get the idea….

The deflowering of virgins was a highlight of these celebrations, as was the promiscuity permitted for all on this one day of free love.

Sometime around that date, the fertility celebrations stopped and it seems were replaced by the more conventional celebration of love started by Saint Valentine. The historical records provide little insight into which St Valentine we are talking about as there seems to be three possibilities.

Does that really matter though?

It is very clear that St. Valentines Day is now a Christian holiday celebrating lovers….or at least it should be.

When I was a young ‘un, Valentines Day was limited to a celebration between those who loved each other and were able to consummate that love in the most intimate manner. It was a celebration of the love that lovers have…and certainly not something that children were a part of.

It was a special day…a day full of romance, full of promise, full of forgiveness, full of hope rekindled…a day when lovers would connect once more…intimately, emotionally and faithfully…a day when the troubles of the world would stay out of the connection that two people had for each other.

I remember the snickers and laughter as we children grew to understand what Valentines Day meant…and we secretly longed to be grow up quickly so that we could be a part of this seemingly magical day.

But it wasn’t to be.

You see…some people did not have lovers, and the endless celebrations around them simply made them feel even more left out. It wasn’t fair…they should be involved too.

So Valentines Day gave up some of its wonder…some of its importance…and in the interest of being all encompassing…became a celebration of the love of friends…not the love of your lover.

At some point, it became apparent that children were also loved…so Valentines Day became reinvented once more to not only celebrate the intimate love of lovers, and to be all inclusive of friends, but to also reflect the love between parents and children and vice-verse.

Oh how joyous a day it has become…a celebration of love all around.

But wait…how do we now deal with an inclusive Valentines Day in our schools?

Why, we must ensure that EVERYBODY is treated equal…if a child gives a Valentines Day card to his much loved best friend, he must also give one to everybody else in the class…after all, we would not want anybody to NOT get one, would we…what a tragedy that would be.

So Valentines Day is now a day to celebrate those that you love intimately, those that are your friends, parents, children, brothers, sisters, school friends…and people you don’t like.

In other words, it has been destroyed.

Once again…in our search for equality, we have taken something special, something unique…something deeply personal…and sacrificed its meaning on the altar of all-inclusiveness.

No longer is Valentines Day a sumptuous romantic dinner filled with the promise of intimacy…it is little more than an all-inclusive buffet …where the food is bland and the promise is empty.

I mourn the loss of a day set aside for lovers…

I cannot say that the celebration of love is meaningless…we celebrate every day (and if we do not, we are way off the mark)…we celebrate and love our children every day, we should love and celebrate our parents every day…we celebrate our friends….

…but how often do we put everything else away and celebrate our lover? How often do we stop the world and devote our full attention to the person who makes our life complete? How often do we make him or her the most important person in our lives…even if for just a few short hours?

And how do we do this if we share that special day with everybody else in our lives?

For everybody reading this, I ask that you do one simple thing….

Retake Valentines Day and make it a day for you and your lover…that is who it is for. Do not allow the world to convince you otherwise. Make it special…and give your children something special to look forward to when they are of the age to have a lover.

The all-inclusive nature of the modern day Valentines Day has sufficiently relegated its meaning that it is no wonder to me that many see it as simply a marketing piece for the florists and candy manufacturers and Hallmark.

It is FAR more than just that.

Maybe the early Romans had it right? A fertility celebration makes much more sense than the over commercialized meaningless and valueless messages we send today.

OK…now for another quick direction change.

I want to briefly talk about this kerfuffle between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church.

I am not going to say much…except for this….

This battle is not over religious freedom as the Church and many pundits claim

This battle is not over the rights of women to use contraception or even the morning after pill.

Those are inconsequential sideshows. (Now, I am not saying they are not important…what I am saying is that they are NOT what this is about.)

This whole thing is about freedom. Freedom to make individual choices for yourself. Freedom to follow religious beliefs. Freedom to NOT follow religious beliefs.

When the government tries to overstep its bounds by attacking religious freedom, it knew it could not win that battle. It was never intended that they would force through those requirements on the Catholic church.

What Obama intended was to create an uproar that would enable him to APPEAR to compromise, APPEAR to listen, while at the same time pushing through a mandate that was what he wanted in the first place.

He wants to APPEAR like the good guy…the reasonable guy…while still overstepping the governments rights to interfere in your life.

His intention was to distract you with the religious freedom trip while he implemented mandates that strip your personal freedoms, and for which you WILL pay.

This is the most corrupt and deceptive administration in modern history…do not be fooled by his clever antics. He is preparing for total government control over your lives, and is just now testing the waters as he waits for his next term.

He may have overplayed his hand this time around…but you can bet the farm on the fact that he has learned from it…and the next attempt will be FAR more subtle.

The Deceiver-In-Chief is on his game…be warned!

…..devereaux

The great American addiction!

The great American addiction.

I have heard many people say that each generation of Americans find their own particular drug of choice and the addiction begins….

Per-prohibition we had the love affair with alcohol – a love affair that resulted in hopelessness, family break-ups and soul numbing binges. The addiction to alcohol was seen as the greatest threat to America….so the nannies stepped in and determined that the solution was prohibition. Government felt the need to decide what the citizens should do, and in doing so provided the very climate for the rapid growth of organized crime.  Government determining what is best for the citizens is not often the right solution.

In the 60’s it was drugs….the relatively harmless weed quickly became replaced by the more debilitating heroin. Drug laws did little to stem the flow of the drugs demanded by the addicted.

The drug of choices change continually….heroin, cocaine, crack…all the same in that they provide the means of escape while enslaving the addicted.

Cigarettes…same thing.

America’s capacity to become addicted to that which is bad is legendary.

But the drug of choice is not the only thing that America is addicted to. In fact, it is not even close to the biggest addiction America faces.

Let me ask you a question….

If more than 20% of America’s population was addicted to a “product” that ultimately and quickly destroyed their life….we are talking about 60 MILLION people waiting for their next “hit”…and the economic cost of this addiction was measured in the TRILLIONS of dollars every year, would you be wanting the government to look into it? To perhaps, at the very least, study what could be done to reduce that addiction?  Would you want the government to find some way to reduce the economic cost?

What about if it was YOU who was actually paying for this addiction? What if the economic cost was being paid out of your pockets? Would you want to understand it better, would you want to see something done about it?

After all…as I wrote at the start of this blog…to the addicted, their drug of choice is a way to escape BUT in reality it is simply a way to become enslaved.

To find a way to help the addicted get over their addiction could be seen as providing them with the very freedom they were seeking….it would be a great thing to do, right?

So…why do we let the Government continue to feed the addiction? Why do we allow the government to continue to take money from your pockets and use it to keep the addiction growing, to lead more people to succumb to this drug, and to prepare the way for more pushers to stand on street corners handing out the drugs at no charge to the addicted?

You think I have lost it, don’t you? Devereaux has finally gone crazy with talk of government provision of drugs with the intent of addicting people? Not quite…..

In fact I have never been saner.

The drug I am speaking of is the drug of dependence.

Dependence on the government.

Dependence on the government for food, health care, college tuition, housing…even retirement assistance.

The Heritage Foundation today released its latest report of Government dependence, and it shows exactly how dependent and addicted Americans have become. One in 5 Americans depend on the government for all aspects of their life….that is over 65 million people.

And the government looks after them.

In fact the government looks after them better than many people can look after themselves.

Here is an example…

“The average individual who relies on Washington could receive benefits valued at $32,748, more than the nation’s average disposable personal income ($32,446).”

What this means is that the average disposable income in America is LESS than the benefits that can be received by the dependent.

With this fact firmly in my mind, I marvel that there is only 65 million people opting for the government benefits. After all, why work 40 hours a week and be worse off than somebody who can sit on his government provided sofa in his government provided house munching on his government provided potato chips while watching reruns of Hogan’s Heroes on his big screen TV that he bought with his government provided money?

Of course, he will use his government paid cell phone data plan to text all his friends and tell them they are suckers for working for the man when they could be getting it all for free.

So the addicted spread the word….the army of the addicted grows….the skills of the addicted, like those addicted to drugs, become less marketable as what is left of their minds become even more numbed with re-runs of Jerry Springer.

Like all addicts, they do not see the impact their addiction has on them. They do not see that by becoming addicted to government slavery, they have nowhere better to go. They cannot get a better life, they cannot hope for the realization of their dreams…they are as trapped by the handouts as if they were addicted to crack cocaine.

And we as a society applaud this under the guise of a “safety net”.

So, how does the Government continue to feed this growing addiction?

Easily. They take it from you and me. They take the money we earn and use it to provide the handouts to the addicted.

But there is a problem. The addiction base is growing…but the taxpayer base is shrinking. Nearly half of the U.S. population (49.5 percent) does not pay any federal income taxes. Now, let’s think about this for a moment…we have 20% of the population already addicted…with 49% not paying taxes. That means that there are 29% of the populations that are “low income”…and available to be seduced into the government giveaway addiction without a second thought. These are the folk that our friend with big screen TV is calling and telling to get the handouts instead of working.

BY some estimates, the cost of the addiction is currently around $2 trillion a year (this excludes things such as Social Security and Medicare…this is only for welfare, food stamps, section 8 etc.

If the number of people demanding these benefits doubles (which is quite likely given the number of low income folks) the annual cost could be $4 trillion.

That has to be funded either through higher taxation of the 50% of the income earners who pay tax, or through additional borrowing.

How much do you want to pay to keep Joe Nohoper sitting in front of his TV eating Doritos and adding further strain to a health care system that he gets free of charge?

So, why does the Government encourage an addiction this harmful to the individual and to the economy?

One word answer…votes.

If the government can keep as many people as possible addicted to their give-aways, then the elections become a question of who will provide the most giveaways. After all, the addicted do not care who supplies their drugs…all they care about is that they get them.

It is the same with votes….the addicted will vote for the person who feeds them the best drugs.

And the democrats play this game better than anybody else. Starting with Woodrow Wilson, and becoming established with FDR, the intent of addicting the masses has been gradually increasing….with many new methods and drugs being offered in more and more sophisticated ways.

And the final intent has always remained constant…re-election. Republican administrations are equally as guilty.

So…are you supporting the addiction of the masses? Do you believe the safety net is a social necessity? Do you believe that addiction leads to loss of humanity, loss of pride and loss of dignity?

Is the type of country you wish to live in?

What you do speaks volumes about what you believe...do the right thing!

…..devereaux