1.) Eliminate all foreign aid. Sure it’s nice to give to a country in need some cash to get them out of a sticky situation, but the constant giving of money that we do to many countries is taking money out of the mouths of people in this country. Why are we not taking care of our own people first?

2.) Eliminate all foreign military presence. Yeah, this is probably one of the most controversial of my decisions, but if we don’t have good enough relationships with our allies that when we need to get close we can borrow an airstrip and pay them for using things, then they aren’t our allies. And if they can’t protect themselves, I’m sorry, but again we have feed and care for our own people before we can do anything for anyone else.

3.) Eliminate NAFTA and all foreign trade agreements where we can ship the work outside the country and the companies reap big rewards. There is a trade defecit present, and the only ones getting rich from it are the big companies. When Fruit of the Loom shipped their manufacturing to Mexico, the price of the underwear didn’t get cheaper. Again, this goes back to the fact that we need to help ourselves first, we shouldn’t funnel so much money into other countries when they aren’t funnelling any money back to the US.

4.) Send all illegal immigrants back to their country of origin. If you didn’t fill out the correct paperwork and go through the correct channels to get here, you don’t deserve to stay here. A limited amnesty would be provided for illegal immigrants that came here, paid their taxes, and have been productive members of society. Those here that are not under political asylum and here illegally mostly burden the system without paying back. This would also include the elimination of the rule that says if you are born here, you are automatically a citizen. Being a citizen of the USA is not a right, it’s a privelege.

5.) Make Welfare run out. Welfare is not something you should be on for your entire life. You should do something to earn your paycheck. There are many many citizens that have a sense of entitlement and think that the government owes them. The government doesn’t owe you shit. At the end, the best you should be is even. And there are many ways you can work. Either you can take one of those jobs that we opened up by sending all the illegal immigrants home, or you can take one of the jobs that moves back to the US when we cancel NAFTA et al, or you can go work for the government, because with all the paperwork we are going to add as far as citizens and corporations filing taxes (more later) as well as other programs the government runs, there’s plenty of desk jobs. If you’re still without work, you could serve as labor for the Corps of Engineers (similar to the New Deal), or serve in the military. Everyone should be able to work, and with all the jobs that will come back into the country, there should be enough to go around.

6.) Flat tax. As long as you make above the poverty limit, your tax rate is the same no matter if you make a dollar over or a million dollars over. No more loopholes, no more off-shore accounts either. Oh, and taking other compensations in lieu of cash would be taxed appropriately too. Also, removing the caps of where medicare and social security stop taxing should help those funds, but you’re allowed to opt out of paying those taxes. However, opting out means you never get a dime from those funds.

7.) Eliminate corporate tax loopholes. GE paid no taxes last year, and their revenues were in the Billions last year. And a lot of those revenues went to their executives and their stockholders. While I understand that the stockholders get paid when the company does good, the execs taking millions and millions a year are just being greedy, and they just need that money to feed their sense of entitlement and the race to have the biggest and the best. Eliminating the loopholes of off-shore accounts and incorporating inside of other countries just to shelter the money would be eliminated, and corporations still found doing it would be penalized as the money comes back into the country.

It’s not all fixed, I guess, but it’s a damn good start.

Rant time, kiddos.

We’re not taking the Christ out of Christmas, we’re letting everyone celebrate their Christ too.

I have a real problem with people that are boycotting retailers or fighting with me on the internets because I’m finally taking an opinion and stand on the fact that saying Merry Christmas is not the right thing to say. Let’s get it right people: Merry Christmas is dead.

First, we’ve went away from the original meaning of Christmas. It’s no longer the Christian holiday we all expect it to be. It’s super commercialized, and the very farthest away from the birth of baby Jesus and what that means to the Christian world.

Second, Christmas isn’t the only holiday during this time of the year. We’ve got Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah. By excluding any of these, you’re offending a group or groups of people. Most importantly, if you leave off Thanksgiving, you’re alienating pretty much every religion not covered under the other three holidays, which is over 60% of the world’s population. (Yes, Thanksgiving is US only during this time of year, another rant for another time about American centrosity).

Third, I would be very upset about walking into a place either as a customer or a employee that was doing a strict “Merry Christmas” only message when I’m not a Christian. I would be totally offended, and would walk out, especially if made to adhere to using it, as it would offend my sense (or lack thereof) or religion.

Fourth, the person who shared the top link on Facebook is female. I know I’ve seen her wear Victoria’s Secret items before. I’ll be tee-totally damned if I see her boycott Vickie’s for the rest of her life over this. If I do, I’ll eat my hat.

Now, for pictures.

THE BOX!

THE MEAL!

THE SODA!!!!

Edit: Yeah, the second taste is not all that good either. No bueno. Sorry Jones, this was not a hit.

Pros: Tastes like bacon!

Cons: Tastes like bacon!

Okay y’all. Pull up a chair and listen to old man Daniel spin some stuff your way. Don’t agree? Comment below.

I read the post on Dooce, and I just can’t stand it any more. I just can’t fucking BELIEVE the nerve of people these days with regards to kids. We in America have gotten way too soft here lately with how we are raising our children. You tell your kids what the score is. Tell them to do what they need to do, and not to do what they don’t need to do. If they don’t follow the rules, they either get the consequences by their own hand or a punishment. End of story. Your kids aren’t supposed to be your best friends. You’re the guardians and caretakers, you set the rules and they follow. Not saying don’t be nice. Be awesome to your kids. But there’s a boss to be had, and by damn it’s not them. You tell your kids not to jump out that window. They won’t.

2.) Replying to an e-mail thread with a totally different conversation

3.) Doing 2 without changing the subject of the e-mail

4.) No subject

5.) Using the same subject for 3 different e-mails on three different topics

6.) Including too many people in an e-mail chain

7.) Having to retain e-mail forever because the documentation doesn’t live anywhere else

8.) Those damn e-mail forwards

9.) Signatures that are longer than 3-4 short lines (just this week, I got a signature with 12 lines and with 8 )

10.) Calling or stopping by less than a minute after sending an e-mail to talk about the e-mail

Before making my change, my money was going into two categories of mutual funds: Short-Term Fixed Income and Balanced/Asset Allocation funds.  The Fixed Income fund is known for a low risk and a low return and there’s never much activity with the rate of return.  It has stayed around 4% since the inception of my 401K.  The Balanced/ Asset Allocation fund is one that Principal sets up based on your projected retirement date (mine being 2050), and it is a medium risk and a medium return.  This is a safe way to play investments, but without great risk, there is no great reward.  I’m stockpiling cash for free, and based on that (and the fact the balance on my 401k has never went below what I’ve put in it), I decided to get a little more aggressive with my investing setup.

To figure out what I wanted to do with my money, I turned back to the statement I got in the mail.  I took all the funds and compared them on a basis of how they had done over the past 10 years.  In the past 10 years, we’ve had a bubble burst on us (2000) and we’ve had the current recession we are in.  That says to me if the funds can perform decently over that 10 year period, they’re bulletproof to near anything.  I also listen to Dave Ramsey, and follow his advice on the subject of how to do mutual fund investing (even though re recently has changed his stance to a 5 year track record and not a 10), so that helped me set my time table.  What I found was that the Short-Term Fixed Income fund was at around 4%, and that was the lower of the two funds I was in.  I made that my baseline for what funds had to have done over the past 10 years in order to qualify it to get my money.  I looked through all the other funds and found 8 funds that had been around for 10 years and had a track record of 4% earnings or more over that time frame.  I took each of their 10-year return percentages, and summed them up, and then got a percentage based on (fund return / total of fund returns).  I made that the percentage I based my investment in the fund upon.  What I found is that most of my money went into the higher risk, higher reward fund categories, with five funds in the Small/Mid U.S. Equity category and one in International Equity.  Some may see this as a fairly aggressive stance, but for a man as young as I, I can afford to take some risks because I won’t need that money for quite a long time.  In crunching the numbers some more along with reviewing past statements, I realized that if I had done this same analysis even 6 months ago when the market was at the absolute worst, I would have earned a 90% return on a significant portion of my money.  There would have been no more risk, and there would have been much more reward.

The moral of the story is to make sure you are watching your money so it can work harder for you, and don’t be afraid to take more risks, especially when things don’t look the greatest.  You may just make a decision that gives you the leg up on the pile you need.

My son helped me get my bow-tie all straightened out since my hands were dancing all around my body. “Don’t worry,” he says, “you weren’t this nervous when I got married. No reason to start now.” I couldn’t help but agree with him, but after 35 years of pain and toil and heartache, the original dream I had in my mind was finally coming true. I was going to watch her walk down the aisle, hold my hand, and we were going to be one. That fateful day in college, had anyone told me the hell she would put me through to get me the heaven, I would have laughed and said that no woman was ever worth that. Yet, she grabbed my heart and soul at every opportunity and made sure that it was hers. Maybe just for those briefest of moments, but when she saw the opportunity to pounce on me she did. And now, she was going to get me for her own for the rest of my life.

This by no means is finished or even fully fleshed out, partly because the story hasn’t finished yet. We’ll see.