LIFE CONTINUES AFTER THE NEW YEARS 2010 CELEBRATIONS
At least we are here yet so guess everything went OK on New Years
for us. You can figure from the comment that I wasn’t awake for the
celebration. After 88 years what more is there to celebrate for? Everything
seems to be OK and let’s hope it continues for the whole year of 2010. What is
still going to give us a headache I fear is going to be our new 2,000+ pages of
health care from congress. Change the thinking a little I did order the no extra
pay prescription drug program so at least that should be settled, I hope. A few
years back I was making several thousand dollar prescription payments each year
and I guess the biggest change was when the Wal-Mart stores went to the $4.00
plan for most generic prescriptions so at least that has become a big saving for
our house. There was a time when I had AARP car insurance and found out that
their Hartford carrier was not in the best interest of we the insured when we
needed something from them so I dropped it and never looked back. Talk about
life continuing in Las Vegas, so far we seem to be the winner’s nation wide
given what has happened through the country. Some parts of the country are
having -51degree wind chill and we are in the 50 degree range. The entire
country is being hit the bad weather. Even in Florida the freezing weather is
hitting their fruit so badly that they had to spray water to keep it from
freezing. Even Europe has its problems with the UK reporting 22 people died from
the worst weather in 30 years. Yes I know, we will forget this when it is 115
degrees plus next summer.
GOLF and SEX
How about a little bit of golf mixed with a little sex scandal to
make the year interesting, by that I speak of Tiger Woods who just got up to
speed from his operation last year and then he had to come down with an over
active extra curricular sex life added to his golf game. We have been watching
the golf games for a year or so and it is always interesting to watch the
golfers, get to learn something about them and watch Tiger take all of them to
the cleaners. He has done a lot for the increased interest in golf over the last
half dozen plus years. We will miss seeing him if he doesn’t get back on the
game this year. Maybe Tiger has done something to even increase the
interest in golf more than ever. Hooray for him if he does increase more
interest in golf.
TAXES
Knight and I have been looking at the change in our up coming
real-estate taxes and mine looks like it will be about 20% lower than last year
on our home. So if we think the city, county and state have trouble now lets
just wait until these new tax rates hit the above who live on our
real-estate taxes, will see hemorrhaging like tomorrow but that isn’t going to
put money in the bank for them so lets see what they do to reduce spending. I
know a lot of people may not agree with me when I say our Governor Jim Gibbons
has done the right thing when he promises to wield his veto pen any time the
legislators want to raise taxes. As far as the county and cities go in southern
Nevada I doubt if many tax payers will be rushing to the podium asking the
council or commissioners to raise our taxes. It looks like Clark County already
anticipates the trouble by laying off 70+ employees. Now let’s see the rest of
our southern Nevada entities do the same. You can say well that’s all you old
people do is say, don’t raise my taxes. Well most of us have not had a pay
check is some 25+ years so why shouldn’t we say that?
WE HAVE BEEN HIT BY A TERRORIST, NOW WHAT?
Our new administration has been in office for barely a year and we
have already been hit by a terrorist. Not a good start and lucky for us no
American nor anyone else were killed. I do not want to see it happen to
anyone on our land or in our air space for people coming into or leaving the US
A. We need to protect ourselves on land, by sea and in the air. No one
should ever suffer violence coming to or flying in our air space or by any other
form of transportation. I know this is asking for a tremendous effort by our
government but so be it. Let me and the rest of our citizens see it the same
way. Yes we can and must pay what ever it takes to make our country the safest
in the entire world. We need to show the world that we will not take any thing
from these radical terrorists who have nothing else better to do. We have a
great country and I with millions of other GI’s gave our blood sweat and tears
to save this country in many wars that we did not start but had to finish.
Think what a terrible thing it must be to see young men trained to give
up their life by doing anything in attempting to kill us. And they call it a
religion. I cannot believe it.
IS CHINA REALLY THE GREAT ECONOMIC FORCE WE ARE TOLD IT IS?
Having just read an article on a Mr. Chanos who is one of the big
Hedge Fund managers, It is his contention that China is more likely to fail in
its projected 8% growth and in fact he thinks it may be way too high a
projection. I also have wondered about all of the great projections on China
with what looks like the very same bust and go for broke we did in this country
in the past years. They seem to be doing the very same thing we did and in the
end we had to pay the price for our greed to turn our world into gold at any
price. China in a way reminds me of Russia in the late sixties when they were
doing the same thing and it all collapsed. What happens in these dictator run
countries is that the government needs to educate their smartest young people in
order to grow at such a rapid rate and when they educate these young people and
at the same time do not give them equal rights to be wealthy and heard by their
government things began to unravel. We were in Russia before it happened and
after visiting their plants, their planners and all up and down the line that
made things happen it was obvious that there was a lot of unrest by these young
well educated young people and it wasn’t very long before their desires were
to much for the country to hold back and it wasn’t long before they had their
own internal revolution. I believe Chanos sees the same thing happening in
China. In fact with such a huge population it is very surprising that they have
been able to keep the cap on all of their very young energetic people. Once
people see others getting the gold the glitter gets to them also and before long
the government cannot keep up with the desire to all be equals in their country.
We can only trust to the wisdom of our elected officials and bureaucrats
to see to it that we have ample protection for young people in the military and
to use them wisely if and when they may be needed.
AT OUR AGE WE CAN ONLY TRUST AND PRAY THAT WE DO HAVE THE MOST HONORABLE PEOPLE
AVAILABLE TO DO THE RIGHT THING IF AND WHEN IT MIGHT COME TIME TO NEED THEM. I
WISH ALL OF YOU A BELATED HAPPY NEW YEAR.
