http://www.wramc.amedd.army.mil/WRResource/SupportRecoveringAmericanSoldier.pdf (requires a PDF reader)

For ideas on how to support our troops at Christmas, they recommend...

www.americasupportsyou.mil
http://www.usocares.org/
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/tooursoldiers/

Additionally, the Red Cross is offering a program to deliver holiday cards to our troops and their families, but cards have to be received (not postmarked, but actually in their hands) by Monday, December 7th.

Red Cross Holiday Mail For Heroes

Please feel free to share this info.

So I tried to think what I could give up for 25 hours that would make me feel denied... Computers. No internet, no e-mail, no digital cable, no cribbage or solitaire on my phone, no CDs, no DVDs, no MP3s, and since all my radios have digital tuners, no radio. So, basically, I get to read real paper books and go for walks. Although all my phones have chips in them, I'm making an exception for phone calls because a potential employer may try to contact me or my kids' day care may try to contact me, and I need to take those.

Computers and TV are such a part of my daily routine, it's going to actually be hard. It's not even a matter of addiction so much as force of habit. You have to be on your guard against ingrained behaviors. You want to do these things because they're your ritual, and by not doing them, you have to leave your comfort zone.

Hopefully God will appreciate the sacrifice.

I've blogged on this, so I copied a few bits out of that blog post, edited it a bit, and replied to all with:

Amazing what you'll do for luck, [friend's name].

What kind of good magic threatens you with bad luck? Any magic that does harm is black magic... evil magic.

Basically, you're not sending people good luck. You're sending them bad luck that they must pass on to others to avoid. And if they do what the evil magic tells them, they will be rewarded.

If you pass on chain letters like this, you become a tool of evil. So by sending this to all of us, you proved you're a tool.

He didn't respond, but two people did. His sister e-mailed to agree with me. And the woman who sent the chain letter to him (a conservative whom I've chided in the past for some racist crap disguised as "humor", and who I added to the "reply all") wrote this:

How to tell Greg's a liberal:
Read his manifestations. If he's angry about stupid little chain letters, there's a good chance he's a liberal.
Lighten up, Dude.

Hire [her name] http://www.geocities.com/[rest of URL obscured so no one harrasses her]

So I responded...

Who's upset? Did my suggestion that sending on chain letters is evil make you feel defensive?

How to tell [her name]'s a conservative:

She'll talk conservative values and then engage in petty acts of black magic (i.e. chain letters).

That kind of hypocrisy can only be found among conservatives.

"What the heck" isn't a valid excuse. If you believe it can confer good luck, then you're giving credence to its claims, and the other claim is that it will confer bad luck. So in a selfish act, you send it to all your "friends" so you can get good luck, ignoring the bad luck you're potentially passing on to them, because you got what you wanted.

Also a typically conservative mindset: the "I got what I want, so screw everyone else" philosophy.

And her signature still sports a Geocities URL, despite the fact that Geocities will close in less than 2 months and she was told about it over 3 months ago (by a liberal who put his differences aside to help her).

Just like a conservative, she sees a problem and does nothing. Guess she's hoping magic chain letters will make her so lucky she doesn't need to do something about it.

Kisses,

Greg

P.S.: It's not just me who dislikes chain letters. You sent the chain letter to [friend's name] using your Yahoo! Mail account. Let me quote from the Yahoo! terms of service.

6. MEMBER CONDUCT

... You agree to not use the Yahoo! Services to:

...g. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation, except in those areas (such as shopping) that are designated for such purpose (please read our complete Spam Policy);

You agreed not to send chain letters. But I guess calling someone on breaking their word is just another liberal trait, seeing as how we had to do it so often during the Bush administration.

But for once I wasn't angry about this claptrap polluting my inbox. In fact, I want every Republican I know to keep circulating these jokes and I'll tell you why.

In November:

A month ago:

Since the election, a time when people tend to identify more strongly with a political party, the Democrats have lost 10% of their support. The Republicans have lost a whopping 34% of their support.

Time and time again, the credit for the huge losses in support has gone to the abrasive ideologues who have been taking control of the Republican party. Limbaugh, Cheney, and their ilk have been compared to GOP Neros fiddling while the Republican party burns.

And that's why I encourage the distribution of these unfunny jokes. These ideological rants, thinly disguised as humor, are helping liberals accomplish a lifelong dream: the marginalization of the Republican party. So please keep distributing them guys. Nothing better than watching a political party self-destruct.

I can already envision my Republican friends (you know who you are) responding by posting comments about some sin they believe the liberals have committed.

I'm going to cut you off right now. That doesn't matter. That's a deflection. Nancy Pelosi's statements about the CIA have nothing to do with why over 34% of the people who called themselves Republicans in November have defected from the party, why you're down 16% from just two months ago. Nancy Pelosi's mistakes, Obama's mistakes, and Harry Reid's mistakes can't explain why people don't want to call themselves Republicans.

If anything, mistakes by the liberal side should be increasing your numbers. The more convincing your arguments for why the liberals are screwing everything up, the worse you look. If all your rhetoric about the bad liberals is right, how freakin' lame are you that your numbers are dwindling at a time when potential converts should be flooding your way?

So please, keep sending out these jokes. Please keep drilling the talking points on Fox News. Please keep putting your feet in your mouths with veiled racial slurs. Please keep doing all the obstructionist stuff you accused Democrats of when you held majorities, but doing it more blatantly and obnoxiously so it's really easy for the media to show you doing one thing and then quote your condemnation of the very same thing from a few years ago.

Stay the course, guys. It's working so well for you.

If Obama wins, Palin will be a passing fad. But if she's the VP, or better yet, the president, drag queens will work that shtick for years.

A vote for Palin is a vote for drag queens.

I replied...

I thought maybe you'd encountered enough prejudice as a Jew not to buy into this, but I guess you've lost that connection to your roots. I guess you've forgotten all the lies the right has spread about our people over the years. Every time you hear a Republican say "Barack Hussein Obama" ask why they don't use Johnny Mac's middle name. It's because they're trying to emphasize Obama's otherness, how he's not like us, and if you don't think that's racist, I don't know what is.

Bad economic times are the greatest recruiting tool Nazi groups have. And you better pray that your racist friends don't turn on you next... jewboy.

Now, calling him "jewboy" was supposed to be ironic, showing him how the "friends" who would send him this kind of racist propaganda could turn on him.

This was his response...

Its a known fact obama has ties to 9 11 as well and he is muslim most muslims hate jews thats a fact ask any jew or israeli

OMFG. He's not just a dumb-ass, but a moron. I have to assume that comes from his dad's side of the family. Known fact that Obama's a Muslim? What? His dad was. But that no more makes him a Muslim than my dad's time in the high school marching band makes me a tuba player.

Then we have the woman on Friday who told John McCain that Obama is an Arab. McCain's actually having to defend Obama because "Republican activists" are spreading fear through a campaign of poisonous lies. And it's even worse than the swift-boating of John Kerry, because they have to do with Obama's ethnicity, his racial identity, and his faith. These are the three things that most are NOT supposed to matter in America. These are things we've tried to protect from this kind of discrimination in the most fundamental foundations of our democracy. And these are the things that the average Republican is showing he/she has no respect for.

It's hillarious how they can use this racist propaganda as a basis for the claim that Obama is unamerican without realizing that doing so is one of the most unamerican things they could do. This is the America of George Wallace and Bull Connor. This is the kind lying and fearmongering more associated with the KKK and the Neo-Nazis... and I'm hearing it from a Jewish real estate broker.

If you want to vote against Obama, vote against him because you don't like his economic policy, because you don't like his energy policy, because you don't like his health care plan. Those are very valid reasons. But if you're uneasy because someone told you he's secretly Muslim, secretly hates whites, secretly Arab, then that says a lot more about your racism (and that of the person who told you) than Obama. And if you're out there spreading these lies, shame on you. You're the one betraying America.

In 2007, John McCain made $405,409. That's his own income, separate from Cindy McCain's millions. She filed separately.

Of that $405,409, $23,157 came from Social Security benefits. Here's a link to USA Today that discusses his 2007 income.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-18-mccain-taxes_n.htm

A man who earned $31,771 a MONTH thought that wasn't enough and accepted another $1,933 a month in Social Security funds.

You and I are paying into Social Security while being told it will run out of money before we reach retirement age. People who will NEED this money and who have paid in all their working lives, won't have it. John McCain, whose personal income, not including his wife's millions, was 3, 4, or even 5 times the household income for a middle class family last year, takes it when he has no true need for it.

If John McCain loses the presidential race and retires at the end of 2008, he'd be entitled to a yearly pension of $132,160 in 2009.

Need proof? Here's the Senate's public information page on pensions.

Now, the idea that senators don't pay into Social Security is false. They voted away that privelege under Reagan back in 1983 and started paying in at the start of 1984.

But the cap in 2007 was that you only pay in on the first $97,500 of taxable income. McCain likely paid in $6,045 in Social Security taxes on his Senate salary, but then collected $23,177 in Social Security benefits for a net profit of $17,132.

In high-school civics class, I was taught that Social Security was supposed to be a safety net, security in rough times. When you're making $31,771 a MONTH, you're pretty secure. How much more secure is $1,933 a month going to make you?

Even though giving up his $1,933 a month (or net of $1427.67 when you count what he paid in) wouldn't save Social Security, you'd think that while he was still earning 3 or 4 times the income of many middle-class families, John McCain would forego it as a matter of principle. He doesn't need it and the system is in trouble. It would be the patriotic thing to do.

Instead, John McCain, the self-proclaimed enemy of pork, pigs out on taxpayer dollars he doesn't need just because they're there for the taking; making sure they won't be there for the hard-working Americans who will need them in the future.

I can only assume Obama doesn't bring this up because he fears any mention of Social Security in a negative context will cause older voters to have a knee-jerk reaction and vote for McCain out of fear.

But someone has to bring this up. Republicans love to moan about "entitlement programs" and McCain's acting pretty entitled.

If the McCain campaign wants to make this race a matter of character, then this is a side of McCain's character that needs to be exposed. Why, when the Social Security system is in trouble and he's doing just dandy in his own right even without his wife's millions, is John McCain taking tax money he doesn't need out of Social Security and putting it in his own pocket?

The next time a Republican brings up character, you can be glad they did, because you can ask them to defend McCain taking tax money he doesn't need and putting it in his own pocket. Ask them about McCain's personal pork.

After learning about that, the only way I can use the word "character" in reference to McCain is when I say: "McCain... what a character."

But what about the company Sarah Palin keeps? Her husband joined a secessionist party. He so hates America that he wanted to make Alaska its own country and stop being an American.

Obama served on a charity board with his America-hater. Sarah Palin sleeps with hers.

But more to the point, Sarah Palin tries to play up her Christian values. I'm not sure, but I thought that two of the biggest tenets of Christianity had to do with man's potential for change and redemption and man's duty to forgive. Considering that Ayers has put the 60s behind him and has done some good works, maybe she could let go of the past. Maybe she could forgive him and believe he has changed.

Ahh, but like most Republicans, Sarah Palin is a politician first and actually living up to the values of Christianity come a far, far second. If it is profitable for her to stop believing in redemption and forgiveness for a while, she's only too happy to chuck them out the window. She picks and chooses which "Christian values" will bring her profit and power and she pisses on the rest. One of the pictures the right likes to circulate is a recent one of Ayers standing on the flag. Wish we could circulate one of Sarah Palin shitting on the bible.

But it's not just this. She's been blaming the media for her own inability to form meaningful or coherent answers to their questions and she's been riling up her "base" against them at her speaking events. She's now got her fans booing and jeering at the reporters who cover her speeches.

This quote from a Washington Post article just made my jaw drop:

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

How can we take seriously her attacks on the company Obama keeps when this is the kind of company she keeps?

Looking toward the next year, I asked God to help me be a good father to my older son and the son due to be born, to be a good husband to my wife, and to be healthier and more successful in my financial enterprises. I asked him to help me generate some good ideas and find the passion to make them happen. I asked him to give inspiration to the scientists trying to solve the world's climate and energy problems. And I asked God for hope and reasons to be hopeful.

Then I went to bed.

I was up late last night with some ideas about ressurrecting Burgerfinder.com that I had to do some work on before I could get them out of my head. And also because my dog, who sleeps on a pillow under the bed near where I rest my head, was farting in her sleep (major SBD's that went straight up to my nose - let's see you try to fall asleep as those waft in every 15-20 minutes). So I ended up sleeping in since it's not like I had to get up to go to work.

When I got online and checked my mail this morning, lo and behold, there's an e-mail from a manager on a previous contract gig at Microsoft. He knows another manager who needs someone to do a contract similar to the one I did for him and he wants to know if I'm available. I reply that I am. He tells the other manager, we have a phone call, and now I have an interview tomorrow.

It's only an "a-dash" position, meaning it can last a maximum of 1 year before I have to take a 100-day break, but it's work at a good rate of pay. They'll also be flexible about my hours/days in November so I can support my wife during her recovery from giving birth to our new baby.

I asked God for hope and reasons to be hopeful. I wasn't expecting God to deliver so quickly. I mean the period between Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur is His busy time. But even when He's most swamped, He found time to help me when I needed it. That's God for you.

We'll see whether I actually get offered the gig. But just this amazing serendipity, this hope, praying for good news before I go to sleep and waking up to it... big props to the man upstairs.

Hope all of you who are job hunting and have found this site have good luck too. And if you're not praying, perhaps you've stopped believing, try a prayer anyway. What have you got to lose?

As the stories like Troopergate and the firings during her term as mayor show (including trying to fire a librarian who resisted her attempts at banning books), Sarah is a poor loser... which puts her right in line with all the Hillary supporters who said they'd vote McCain for spite. But it also shows that Christian values like "forgiveness" are easily rationalized away in her brain.

And let's not talk about Charity. Her view on that Christian value is that the government should cut funds to help the neediest and most vulnerable in our communities and that charities should step up to provide replacements. To an extent, taxation and government spending are an enforced redistribution of wealth, and to the extent that this wealth is spent on social services, it's enforced charity. Since charity should come from the heart, they think "let's cut out government social services so it's true charity." And if people don't make enough charitable donations to help the truly needy, well, either they'll have to form a big enough majority to get something voted their way, or they can die off.

For a party that doesn't believe in Darwin, their belief in Social Darwinism is through the roof.

But I digress. I originally started this post because I wanted to blog about a video a friend pointed me to. It's by a musician with the stage name of Dean Dobbins and addresses the whole "vote for her/me because she's/I'm a woman" thing. Fun little song. And for those of you who know my family, no, the guy on the piano isn't my dad with his hair grown out. It's just an unfortunate circumstance that if you're an older Jewish man with a few extra pounds, gray hair, and a beard, you look like my dad... or vice-versa.

As the song goes: "What God wants, God gets, God help us all."

The AP reports that, in an address last June, Sarah Palin claimed that the Iraq war was a "task from God" and that a $30 billion natural gas pipeline project in Alaska was "God's will." This was part of her attempt to implement God's will from the governor's office, because she felt her legitimate accomplishments like job creation and development of resources would be meaningless if the hearts of the people of Alaska weren't "right with God."

Let me put this to you Republicans... our founding fathers never intended a theocracy and never wanted a majority religious point of view to hold sway in our nation. Or have you forgotten how many early colonists were in protestant sects that were being murdered and driven out of Europe? Have you forgotten the "100 Years War" which was a battle between Catholicism and Protestantism? Do you recall the massacre of the Huegenots, when 20,000 protestants were slaughtered by French Catholics in a mass genocide greater than that committed in Kosovo?

Anyone who votes for McCain is UNAMERICAN. If you support McCain, you're violating the principles upon which this nation was founded and violating the trust our founding fathers put in us to uphold those principles.

Sarah Palin is not merely frightening, she's a freakin' horror show. If McCain is elected, Sarah Palin will help turn America into the kind of nation our forefathers left. If Obama is too liberal for you, vote for Bob Barr. Just don't vote for McCain. That way madness lies.

Maybe I was misinformed, but I got taught in school that Social Security was a "safety net" like welfare or unemployment insurance. If you deducted his charitable donations and the Social Security, he made around $276,000. Why does he need Social Security? More importantly, why does he take it? Apparently because he can.

When I reach retirement age, the Social Security trust fund will be close to bankrupt. I'm paying in now so John McCain can get $23 grand in payments he has no need for? How many other people whose retirements would be perfectly comfortable without Social Security payments are taking the payments anyway? Every one of those people, John McCain included, is a greedy leech who is getting fat on blood from their children and grandchildren.

First thing I'd like to see Obama do when he becomes president is order a one year study, compiling statistics on how much money Social Security would save if we cut benefits to the wealthiest 10/20/30 percent of recipients. If we took away this government pork from wealthier old people who didn't need it, could we keep Social Security solvent? More than that, could we use some of those savings to raise the benefits of the poorest recipients who have to struggle to get by on the $25k a year they get now?

What if we used a formula like, anyone who has taxable income greater than 3x the poverty level for a family of 4 in their region, or has personal assets totalling over $3 million (excluding the value of their primary residence) doesn't get Social Security payments. Basically, if you don't need them, you don't get them.

Would we save enough to save Social Security? Would we save enough to give the poorest recipients a bit more so they can live with a little more dignity?

It's so funny to see the Republicans coin terms like "Welfare queen" when their presidential candidate is a "Social Security piglet," sucking money he doesn't need from the public teat. Isn't a leader, particularly one with a military background like McCain, supposed to lead by example? So is his example to willfully suck Social Security dry? Is his example to take money simply because it's there to be taken, even if he doesn't need it and taking it actually does harm to our country?

Maybe the people who collect Social Security benefits they don't need are such a minority, it wouldn't make a difference in the long run. But it would be nice to know that for a fact. And I'll bet you that if you vote for John McCain, Social Security piglet, that study will never be commissioned. It's possible that the AARP and elderly voters will scare Obama so much that he won't commission it either, but at least with him there's a chance.

Strengthen the dollar. The value of the dollar against foreign currencies has dropped 30-50% over the past few years. In 2003, the Euro was worth as little as $1.12. Today it's worth over $1.56. If the dollar was as strong today as it was when the Euro was worth $1.12, that $133.60 per barrel for gas would be $95.91 a barrel, and if gasoline moved apace, that $4.17 per gallon gas would be $2.99.

Yes, we need to rein in the speculators and bring these markets out into the light of day to prevent manipulation, but the quickest way to fix things is to strengthen the dollar against foreign currencies. That will bring down the prices of all imports, not just oil, lowering prices at the pump and at the supermarket.

An immediate way to strengthen the dollar is if the Fed raises interest rates. They say that it will slow economic growth, but look at what the cost of oil is doing to inflation, consumer confidence, and a number of other of major economic drivers. Lowering the price of oil by strengthening the dollar will do more good for the economy than the interest rate boost will do harm.

In short... stronger dollar = lower gas prices. Why isn't this being discussed with the fervor that offshore drilling is?

One of the rules under that section of the tax code is that these organizations cannot officially endorse or oppose a candidate, try to influence legislation, or engage in propaganda. And this is entirely fair. In theory, if this organization wasn't tax exempt and had to pay taxes on its income, I would benefit by paying less taxes or getting more services, therefore as a tax payer I am supporting this organization's tax-exempt status. Essentially, the taxpayers have made a compact with non-profits (and churches) to say "you don't get involved in politics and we'll subsidize you by making up the tax revenue that is lost via the tax-exempt money you collect."

It's so funny how the conservatives tend to talk about "entitlement" programs when their "core constituency" seems to think it's entitled to do whatever the heck it pleases. These churches that are challenging the political provisions of 501(c)(3) are under the mistaken belief that they're constitutionally entitled to tax-exempt status.

Nope. That's a privelege, not a right. The taxpayers have agreed to let you off the hook they place themselves on, but they've put some conditions on it. If you don't want to agree to those conditions, you're free to do so without penalty, but you have to pay taxes. You're not getting a right taken away, but surrendering a privilege.

And yes, candidates do come speak at churches, but that's under an equal time rule like broadcasters have to follow. If Obama goes to speak at a church, that church has to give McCain an equal chance to speak there if he wants to.

It just galls me what huge shmucks these pastors who are challenging this law are. They may claim to understand God's law, but they have no concept of the law of man and can't get it through their thick skulls that the tax exempt status of religious institutions is not guaranteed in the constitution, and just as we tax Muslims and Christians the same, we can tax Dry Cleaners and Churches the same. And with a Supreme Court that went for the habeas corpus rights of Guantanamo detainees despite being stacked with conservatives, do you honestly think they're going to re-interpret the First Amendment that "liberally" as to read a tax-exempt status for religious enterprises into it?

I understand you have a political opinion and that it is informed by your faith, and to the extent that you carry it out as a private citizen, I say "more power to you." But when you violate the conditions of your church's tax-exempt status from the pulpit, I say "double dumbass on you, you deserve to lose your priveleges."