Success Warrior: Alan B. Rowley II - Beachbody.com, P90X, Voluntaryism, Voluntarism

Sword Point Saturday - Totem

  I was only able to get a couple of hours of sleep last night so instead of doing any real thinking, I did a bit of surfing and came across this quiz on totems.

No surprise to people that know me but I think my totem is the Wolf - loyalty, family, intuition, and adaptability.

Tia's, without taking this quiz, is the Bear - industrious, instinctive, guardian of the world, and will power.  She has dreams about bears all the time.

I took this quiz to see what it had to say about me and it said that my totem is the Lion.  I don't know who gets to choose these things and if you took a bunch of these quizzes, you would probably get all kinds of different answers.

Anyway, this particular quiz put me as a Lion.

What was your result from taking the quiz?

Does this totem represent you or is there one that you think fits you better?

5 Sword Points.

Screw up, move up

The Federal Reserve helped create this huge financial mess that we have by lending money too cheaply and allowing the whole house-flipping game to be played.

How does our government plan on punishing them?

By giving them more control over financial regulation.

I am not kidding.

Paulson plans on giving the Fed more control over other banks and regulations.

At a time when we should be reducing the power of the Federal Reserve, King George is going to sell out.  People who see a recession coming will gladly jump on the bandwagon because they think *someone* should fix this mess.  Maybe Uncle Bernanke will promise that Santa will bring a big screen TV to everyone this Christmas.

This will bring about all kinds of changes to common sayings.  For instance, the dollar will now have the saying, "In Fed we trust."

Someone sneezes.  "Fed bless you."

Swearing in to testify in court.  ". . . and nothing but the truth, so help you Fed."

When King George signs this thing into law.  "Fed damn it!"

It was pointed out that I have missed 2 Sword Point Saturdays in a row now.  I'll make up one of them tomorrow.  I lose track of the days.

Oil vs. Gas

It is possible that oil prices will drop well below $100 a barrel.  It's not good news though.  For that to happen, the entire stock market would have to crash.

My guess is that gas prices won't go down proportional with oil prices. 

Oil companies take in record profits and I think they're going to continue to take in as much as possible.

Part of this is the declining value of the dollar.  Of course, revenues are going to go up when the dollar goes down.  It takes more of these less valuable dollars to buy the same amount of gas. 

In addition, the oil companies know that oil is on the decline.  Time to milk it for what it's worth before people make the change to some other energy source.

Sunday Start - March 23rd - Hey, it's Easter.

It's Easter.  You know what that means.  It's the day that Jesus rolls back the stone and comes out and if he sees his shadow we have 6 more weeks of Ben Bernanke's lies.

I saw an interesting Easter egg this morning.  A guy stopped in front of my house and sat there in his truck for a while.  I recognized him so I took my finger off the trigger but kept checking in on one he was doing.  I saw him walking in circles in the middle of the street with a GPS and it still didn't dawn on me what was going on. 

I had completely forgotten that it was Easter.  I'm not much of a holiday kind of guy.  So, for me, I have the day off from work and have a bunch of housework, email, and blogging to catch up on.  My mind is in other places.  Most holidays have lost any meaning they once had and many Christian holidays are actually Pagan celebrations that have had their story changed so that Christians are allowed to join in the fun without worshiping a different religion.  Anyone who does a bit of research will find that the Son of God was resurrected on December 25th.  On top of that, every holiday has been commercialized so that even the stolen holiday doesn't have it's recreated meaning. 

Not that I'm a total humbug.  We had Trey color eggs Wednesday with a couple of friends and did a little plastic Easter egg gathering yesterday with Tia's friends and their young kids.  Tia and a friend bought kites for all the kids and we flew kites after gathering up the eggs.  See, flying a kite symbolizes elevating your spirit into heaven, even if it's in the shape of a space shuttle.  Trey is going to be saved in the last days because of this ritual. 

Anyway, back to the story. 

We'll have a good Christmas

"Scott Brown, chief economist with Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Fla., predicts that U.S. economic growth could be "close to zero, maybe negative" in the first half of the year but likely improve in the second half."

Things might go backwards for a couple of months.  Might.  It might just flat line for a bit but then everything is going to be okay.  Ben Bernanke is going to wave his wand and everyone's house value will return to its over-inflated price and people will be able to refinance to get out the equity and start spending gobs of money on poisonous crap from China again.

Okay, the article doesn't say that Bernanke will wave his magic wand.  It doesn't even say good ole Ben has a magic wand, to be honest.

The article also doesn't mention that the economy was being artificially fueled by skyrocketing illusionary home values and that many experts believe it will be at least 5 years before home prices return to those values.

I suppose the $600 checks we'll be getting are as good as 5% per year equity on a $417,000 home.  That and the ever lowering of the Feds interest rates. 

So, for those people who haven't lost their jobs, their houses, their health, their spouses, the value of their dollar, or their sanity - it's going to be great Christmas.

Glory and Hallelujah.

Good News from Kinplinger's - if you don't mind being lied to

I was reading April's Kinplinger's magazine yesterday and the first article was about the recession.  They assert that if the Federal Reserve continues to aggressively print and lend out fiat money and if Congress gets the fake money that it has requested out to the people in the form of rebate checks quick enough, a recession might be avoided or, at worst, be minor in severity and duration.

I've kind of skimmed the rest of the magazine because it's hard to take it serious after reading crap like that as the lead off article.

If you want to devalue the currency by 10% so that stocks continue to rise at .1%, just say so but don't say that losing 9.9% in purchasing power isn't a recession just because you managed to keep stocks from going down.

I didn't pay for the magazine and yet I still feel like I was gypped.

Yay! The Stock Market Rebounded

How high and how long can we prop up the illusionary system before the whole thing collapses in on itself?

Sunday Start - March 16th

Do you look at your week and decide what you're going to accomplish for the week?  A daily to-do list is nice but sometimes it's too small of a picture.  I plan out my week in blocks of time.  I leave lots of empty spaces so that I can chase shiny stuff because that's my nature. 

This week, topping my weekly list is creating a meal plan that will support my exercise level but help me lose weight at the same time.  A balancing act, to be sure.  There are less than 3 months left before the cruise and I'm not seeing the results that I want and I know that it has to be the diet. 

I'm going to finish the Kunstler book this week so that I can turn all my reading time over to Eckhart Tolle's New Earth.  World Made by Hand is an easy read so even with the limited time I devote to reading, I should be able to finish it. 

Finally, I need to update my index pages for my blogs.  I've neglected them for quite some time.

What do you have planned?

Sword Point Saturday - The One In/One Rule

Have you heard of using One In and One Out to avoid clutter.  I thinks it's something that's is done a lot with kid's toys.  If you get a new toy, you have to get rid of an old toy.  My wife and I do with it with clothing too.

If you could expand the concept beyond your personal realm, what would you apply the One In/One Out Rule on?

For me it would be laws.  Every time a governing body created a new law, they would have to get rid of an old law.  This would clear up a lot of confusion and contradiction and also maybe giving enforcement agencies a chance of knowing what the laws were. 

We have so many laws on the books now that agencies have to pick and choose which ones they decide to enforce.  This is handy if they decide to target someone because they can look back through a hundred years of laws and find something to charge their victim with.

Where would you apply the rule?

5 Sword Points.

Churches in Vegas

                   

THIS MAY COME AS A SURPRISE TO THOSE OF YOU NOT LIVING IN LAS VEGAS , BUT THERE ARE MORE CATHOLIC CHURCHES THAN CASINOS.


NOT SURPRISINGLY, SOME WORSHIPPERS AT SUNDAY SERVICES WILL GIVE CASINO CHIPS RATHER THAN CASH WHEN THE BASKET IS PASSED.


SINCE THEY GET CHIPS FROM MANY DIFFERENT CASINOS, THE CHURCHES HAVE DEVISED A METHOD TO COLLECT THE OFFERINGS.

THE CHURCHES SEND ALL THEIR COLLECTED CHIPS TO A NEARBY FRANCISCAN MONASTERY FOR SORTING AND THEN THE CHIPS ARE TAKEN TO THE CASINOS OF ORIGIN AND CASHED IN. 

  THIS IS DONE BY THE CHIP MONKS!

-Thanks to Rhiia for this little gem.-