Fortunately I’m no idealist and I don’t put anyone on a pedestal so there is no resounding THUD as overblown, overly optimistic dreams of a super hero like leader hits the ground like a watermelon thrown off a tall building breaking into a thousand pieces and just leaving clean up for those who had hoped for so much.

And, it’s necessary affairs like these than makes you wonder how politicians make peace with themselves after catering to some of the very people they propose to be against. I’m not sure how they do it. Perhaps they argue that it’s for the greater good or that the ends justifies the means.

I certainly hope the dinner was tasty!

The first is for those of you who like to cook and, perhaps just as much, like finding good recipes and chatting about it online. The site, Home Cooking Connection, is a fun site with tons of great recipes and a forum for devotees to chat with each other. Aside from recipes, there are also good articles that discuss things like party planning and simple table decorations. So for a killer bacon dip, go pay them a visit.

But to be honest, more of my time has been working on my yard. I have to admit it, my landscaping (if I could even still call it that) had become hugely overgrown. So with the help of my brother-in-law all sorts of things have been ripped out and the place looks 110% better. While I was looking online for some yard ideas, I found Reel Yard which is a site that has a ton of good info about how to improve your lawn (my ‘grass’ had far too many weeds in it for my taste) and extols the benefits of using a reel mower to cut your grass. I didn’t even know those things existed.

Well that’s all for now, I’ll be back more regularly but for now, I’ve got a cedar stump to remove before sunset!

The issue is that this was a very short term spike in car sales which isn’t likely to produce any significant long term benefits to the economy. We’ve given one segment of our economy a short term boost but without any real economic recovery to support continued sales, it’s just a shot in the arm that may make August economic data look better than it really is (if looked at a sustainable basis) and keep the unemployment rate from going any higher. It does not do anything to address any of the real underlying issues in the automotive industry.

Finally there are real concerns that all the cash for clunkers program really did was divert monies that would have been spent on other retail purchases have now be diverted to making a car payment that wasn’t in the family budget before this program Retail sales in July was weak and the back to school spending looks to be down this year. For those struggling in non automotive related retail sales, the cash for clunkers program was not any bargin.

Moreover, many charities that take on used cars are now reporting a significant drop off of donations since the used cars turned in under the cash for clunkers program must be destroyed. That’s frustrating to them and hurts those with limited means.

But the real health issue that confronts this country is the fact that we have become a nation of sedentary, overweight, and lazy Americans. Obesity is at all time high rates, Diabetes continues to climb as a condition of our sedentary lives. And we eat poorly on top of sitting all day. Fast food tends to carry a ton of fat and the American love of French Fries has us consuming a fatty food that also has starchy carbs that hits our bloodstream quickly and causes our bodies to work at just controlling blood sugar levels.

Offering wider inclusion and lower rates to all Americans is great but if we don’t take responsibility for our health, the rate of disease incidents will continue to climb and so will our health costs. It’s inevitable without a change in ourselves, not our healthcare insurance options.

Getting fit is not that hard. Drink more water to reduce your appetite and improve your body’s metabolism is an easy step. Taking a few breathing breaks during the day where you breath deeply will better oxygenate your blood which can actually help you lose a few pounds. It will also relax you and stress reduction will reduce the hormone cortisone in your blood stream which had a whole waterfall of favorable impacts on your body.

And get some exercise!

Come on, exercising is not that big a commitment. There are many workout programs that you can do in your own home. In fact I recently found a great site, Press Play Fitness, where they talk about different, well balanced (weight lifting plus aerobic) programs. Imagine if all you had to do is just show up to exercise. Now isn’t that something you could commit to? Isn’t that something we really should expect of all Americans?

If we want to live in the best country on Earth, we need to make ourselves the best we can be.

Update: September 28th

I wanted to come back to this post because in addition to exercising it seems like we should be eating better as well. I know I need help in that arena so I was interested in this new shake I found. It’s called Shakeology and it had tons of good stuff in it. I’ve been drinking a shake for breakfast and I have to say that I feel better and I dropped 1lb this week. Now I don’t expect to continue to lose weight but it sure was nice to see.

Funny thing about this unfortunate incident is that when initially confronted by a reporter on the Henry Gates Jr. incident, President Obama was correct in starting out with a comment that he wasn’t there. And had he just left it at that, the rest of the story would not have happened. Unfortunately he did render his opinion and that touched off some real strong feelings. Moreover, the policeman involved has a totally different perspective on the story which when you hear it, makes a fair amount of sense.

So who is right? I don’t know - I wasn’t there!

AP - Trying to tamp down an uproar over race, President Barack Obama said Friday he used an unfortunate choice of words in commenting on the arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and could have “calibrated those words differently.”

When asked by a reporter why he was pushing so hard for a bill before the August recess, our President responded by informing the reporter that healthcare costs had doubled in the last ten years which outpaced the average pay increases.  Now I’m not disputing this but I felt it was kind of odd.  Odd because just because healthcare costs doubled in 10 years hardly seems a just cause to push for a bill on what is a very complicated subject in a matter of weeks.  And I also felt that while a doubling of healthcare costs sounds pretty scary, a doubling in 10 years translates to just an 8% inflation rate. 

Sure we’d like to see that decline but college tuition rates have been running just about as high according to http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml which reports an 8% average inflation rate.  High tuition rates are shutting out many of our youth from attaining higher education and those who do leverage up with loans to make it through come out of college with a staggering amount of debt.  My point here is that sure we have issues to deal with to make our dear country the best it can be but healthcare is not our only problem.

The second comment that really caught my eye was when Obama inferred that doctors choose which care to give based on reimbursement.  I find that an insult to all the hard working physicians out there that provide the very best treatment they can.  And beyond that, the President only provided a vague argument about why his plan would force doctors to select the best treatment for a patient over the most lucrative one.

And this plan still hasn’t had it’s funding fully identified.  While the President cited a potential tax on those making over a million in income each year, I find it hard to believe that there are enough $1 million+ pre-tax income individuals out there to cover the huge gap.  I also heard, for the first time, the President say that he wanted to keep tax increases to fund this ‘primarily’ on the well to do.  It sounded like he was opening the door to taxing folks most of us would label ‘middle class’ - just a little.

We all need to research the bill emerging from the house.  If we have objections, we need to raise them with our congressmen and senators.  Don’t complain to your family and friends, complain to those who vote on the bill.

Another alledged child molestation case and out of control spending led Mr. Jackson to close Neverland Ranch several years ago.

Mr. Jackson seemed to be a tortured genius and some of his contributions to the world of music certainly need to be acknowledged.  But a week and a half later, I grow weary of hearing more speculation on the man’s death.  I grow weary of what has been a rather one sided presentation of his life (most of the weirdness has been under reported).

Please let the man rest in peace and the rest of us move on to more productive issues.

The Treasury on Thursday offered six life insurers capital infusions under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The precise terms of the proposed investments have not yet been negotiated.

All of the life insurers that received the offers have stock that is publicly traded, providing a constant measure of investor confidence. They had to apply for the money by last November, and some took other steps to shore up their finances during the long wait for Treasury approval.

Now it appears that some companies including Ameriprise Financial will be declining the funds.  Decline free money?  Now on the surface that may not seem very logical but like most things in life, the funds come with some hidden costs.  The Washington Post article speculates that one main consideration may be that the funds come with restrictions on executive pay.  Now that may be a factor but frankly I’d have to suspect that possible dilution of the company’s stock value is a bigger concern.  After all, if stockholders see their stock prices decline, they are more likely to vote out the CEO and other key officers.

What is more interesting is that most of these companies are deciding they just don’t need the money because they are not financially strapped.  If that is the case, why are they being offered the money?  If the Government has funds to give out, what about more ways to send funds to small businesses which are likely to be decimated in numbers by the time this economy turns around.

The current administration continues to help out the industry giants who severely mismanaged funds while almost completely ignoring the Mom & Pop shops who continue to face squeezes on their credit lines and credit rates.  This at a time when revenues are down is just going to kill many businesses and further increase this nation’s unemployment rate.

If only some of that attention and financial assistance that big companies are being offered who don’t need it were directed to small business, we just might see this economy pull out a bit faster.

I’m still wondering about the so called racy photos many of which are tamer than what you can easily find in a Sears catelog in the ladies panties section.  I mean come on.

But the pot on this is deep and being stirred by many.  There have been accusations that the photos were dug up and released only because of Ms. CA’s stance on gay marriage.  When asked if she personally was for it, she politely said no.  Now many of us feel that this shouldn’t even be a question - that gay marriage isn’t any threat to the fabric of our society and allowing it provides a clear legal protection to loved ones.

But regardless of how you feel, she was asked and was courteous in expressing her honest opinion.  Even when it was a gay man asking the question and even though even she must have considered that to answer with how she really felt could cost her the Ms USA crown.  Now Ms. CA came in as runner up and the rumors flew that she would have won had it not been for her answer.

After losing the top slot, she was asked if she felt her answer led to her losing the USA crown.  She not only said yes, she lent her name to an organization that is against gay marriage.  Many of the Ms. CA contestents who obviousl did not win, started to bad mouth her including allegations that Ms. CA had a boob job.  Now that doesn’t seem to be the spirit of the competition.

Then the photos showed up.  Smear job?  Who knows but all the media attention then forced Mr Trump, owner of the franchise, to render a verdict.  Either way there was bound to be ‘controversy’ if only be the media who need a constant feed of news to report even if it’s not very newsworthy.  So tomorrow we’ll get a few more words and then, with any luck, this will go away.

Then maybe we can focus on more important issues like the pending insolvency of both social security and medicaid.  Who’s covering that?

In a worse case scenario, if unemployment continues to increase coupled with the loss of equity in housing markets, total loan losses could hit 9.1% of total outstanding loans.  To put this in perspective this is a larger loss rate than banks had during the worst of the Great Depression in the 1931-32 time frame.

Unemployment does seem to be key here.  So the question then becomes whether President Obama’s plan will help the unemployment rate.  His own verbiage has changed from one of creating new jobs to keeping jobs to keeping govenment jobs.  Perhaps even he sees that the job creation isn’t happening as he gave American’s hope for.  Even Democrats are talking in hushed tones of a ‘jobless economic recovery’ that if left unmanaged could slaughter them in the 2010 elections.