The Election

My limited research on blogs tells me that every single one of them is required to comment routinely on the political landscape.  I believe there is a memo somewhere that is sent to blog owners informing them of the rule.  I’m not sure what happens to those who disobey but I think it has something to do with an uncomfortable chair, a damp noodle, Chinese finger-cuffs, and a midget.  In my case The Misses has gotten involved.  She thinks I need to make my feelings on the election known to the world in order to do my part in adverting a tragic mistake on the part of the voting public.  Well, if the news is to be believed the election has already been decided and this blog can only be used as an, “I told you so” in four years time.

 

So what do I think about these two candidates?  They are both bad.  We have a “Republican” who will spend more money than Imelda Marcos at Payless, and a “Democrat” who thinks Lennin was a fiscal conservative.  Our choices are leftist or super-leftist. 

 

Obama scares me, and here are a few reasons why:

Healthcare.  He wants to nationalize it.  There are some interim steps in there but the end result is nationalization.  I think healthcare in this country is a mess, and I don’t have a good idea of how to fix it.  But I cannot think of one thing the government runs well.  If you can think of an example please forward it to me.  Government agencies are usually the butt of jokes, and the bigger they are the more useless they become.  When was the last time you thought the DMV was helpful?  When was the last time you looked forward to dealing with the Social Security office?  When was the last time you said to yourself, “Everything will be OK now, FEMA is here”?  Bigger government and more regulations are not the answer.  Specifically I don’t understand why any small business would offer healthcare under Obama’s plan.  Why should a small business owner incur the cost when employees can get their own coverage in the government plan?  When pressed about this in one of the debates Obama said small business owners would be give tax credits to help them “do the right thing”.  Do the right thing?  We should also hold hands and sing peace songs while we’re at it.

 

Taxes.  Obama has engaged in class warfare plain and simple.  Now I’m an opponent of the whole Income Tax idea in the first place.  It will be the subject of a blog one day I’m sure.  The idea of taxing the penalizing the rich to help the poor just doesn’t work.  Redistribution of wealth is a bad idea.  I say again, redistribution of wealth is a bad, bad idea.  It stifles growth, kills incentive, and demoralizes individuals.  There is a word for this taxation system, socialism, and it doesn’t work.  Originally the income tax was passed because Congress promised it would only be used to tax the rich.  Now just about everyone pays income tax.  Governments are greedy, it constantly takes more and more the feed the beast of bureaucracy.  The $250 thousand number hasn’t even lasted 12 months.  Already it’s slipping down to $200 (as stated in Obama’s primetime infomercial) or $150 as stated by Biden.  Just like the income tax it will continue to drop until everyone is affected.

 

Iraq.  I don’t know if I agree Obama here, it depends on which version he’s supporting this week.  If Obama settles on his promise to pull everyone out within a few months, I do not concur.  If he settles on the promise to listen to generals on the ground and follow their advice, then I agree.  I just don’t know which policy he will follow.  Obama claims that he’s gonna save a ton of money ($10 billion a month) by pulling troops out and this will help pay for some of his programs.  But he also says he needs to deploy those same troops to Afghanistan.  Did I miss something; did we get a discount from Afghanistan and deploying troops there?

 

Education.  I actually like most of Obama’s ideas here.  I don’t know how he will pay for it, but I like the ideas.  The only thing I disagree with him on is the vouchers.  Vouchers work, and I support them. But you can’t agree on everything, so overall I think this is the one area where Obama has a pretty good plan.

 

Personal associations.  Obama is a mess.  You know the names Rezko, Ayers, Jones Jr., Khalidi, and Rev. Wright.  One or two you could overlook as a bad idea, but put them together and it starts to make you wonder.  If this guy knew he was gonna run for president one day he should have distanced himself from them a long time ago.  I’m not running for any public office but I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt none of the people in my extended circle of friends are unrepentant terrorists, white supremacists, or embezzlers.  I can’t remember a politician who had this many questionable friends since Gary Heart took a ride on the “Love Boat”.

 

Voting record.  Present?  Present?  Seriously?  There’s a term for that it’s called chickensh*t.  If you have problems with legislation vote it down. 

 

After re-reading this blog I realized I could have probably save myself some time and cut and pasted it from Limbaugh or Hannity or one of those guys.  Those fellas are entertainers, not real people.  Here’s my opinion in a nutshell (and it took 940 words to get there) I’m worried Obama’s policies will send us into a deep recession.  Obama’s policies mirror those of President Hoover and that didn’t work out too well for the country. 

 

From the Mouth of Babes

After reading a few blogs (doing some homework for a change) I realized that most blogs fall into categories.  For instance some focus on politics, others humor, others news, others sports, you get the picture.  I don’t think I know enough about any of these categories to get that specific and still post articles on a semi-regular basis.  So here’s what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna give most of my posts a category.  If you don’t want to read about my take on that particular topic, skip it.  If you’re smart you’ll skip the whole thing all together and do something productive with your time like working at the food bank or playing guitar hero.  This way I can post stuff, and you can decide if it’s worth your valuable time.  Fair?  I think so.  Here goes.

 

HUMOR

 

To kick off the humor section I’ve decided to share a couple of things my middle child said to me that I find funny.  Before we start I need to establish some ground rules about the family.  I think they will be a heavy focus of the blog, as they are a heavy focus of my life.  But I’m not sure if they should be named in the blog.  After all, I’ve made the decision to put my name, opinions, and picture out, they did not.  So, to protect the not-so-innocent I will give the family quasi-pseudonyms.  I’ve got three kidd-o’s.  The first will be referred to as “Number One Son” (see where this is going?), the second will be “Number Two Son”, and the youngest, my only daughter, will be known as “Princess”.  The boys already call her that, so I guess I’ll follow suit.  I haven’t settled on a proper name for the Misses.  I need to make sure my pseudonym doesn’t get me in trouble (I asked her if I could call her as “Ball and Chain” or “old Battle Ax” or “Rolling Pin” in the blog, but all of those suggestions got me the Evil Eye, so I dropped those options right away).

 

Humorous Tidbit Number One:

Number One Son and Number Two Son have just started soccer practice.  They love it.  Watching little children play soccer is like watching worker bees move a queen bee to a new hive.  They all swarm around the ball for no apparent reason.  There’s no strategy involved, they just known instinctively that near the ball is where they should be.  A few of them kick the ball once in a while and every so often the ball escapes from the pack.  When that happens the swarm scratches its head in confusion, and a dozen parents yell in unison “Go get the ball!”  But the best part isn’t the swarm around the ball.  The best part is that since these kidd-o’s are only four to six years old their attention span matches their age in minutes.  So at any given moment two or more of them wander away from the swarm idly picking clovers or looking for whales in the clouds, and the goalie is swinging on the posts like a monkey or flopping in the net like a snapper on the deck of a shrimp boat.  Jr. Soccer is nothing but straight comedy.

 

Humorous Tidbit Number Two:

Number Two Son refused to call his shin guards by their proper name.  Despite repeated attempts to correct him he seems incapable of putting the words “shin” and “guard” together.  We try and try but to no avail.  The Misses and I break the word down for him and he can successfully say “shin” and “guard”, but when referring to the piece of plastic that covers his lower leg he constantly says at the top of his lungs to anyone who will listen, “Shit. N. Guards.”

 

Humorous Tidbit Number Three:

Most parents give fair warning to their children that trouble is on the way if they do not listen.  Children tend to know what is coming when parents reach the end of their rope.  Bill Cosby explains it plainly in what should be required viewing for every expecting parent in the movie Bill Cosby, Himself when he declares “Let the ritual beatings begin”. (If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve done yourself a disservice, here’s a link to the second half, Bill Cosby, Himself)  But in order to avoid going through the trouble of smacking backsides, most parents have adopted the age old countdown system.  Something on the order of, “If you don’t get in bed before I count to three…”  Now children’s reaction time can be slow, so we give them an out with the two-and-a-half, two-and-three-quarters, two-and-four-eights…  So tonight, as I ushered my children to bed I gave them the countdown.  Number One Son needed a little extra time to climb the ladder on to his top bunk, so I gave him the two-and-a-half count courtesy.  After I reached two-and-a-half, Number Two Son looked at me from the safety of his bed and called out, “Two-And-Three-Car-Keys”.  I need to work on fractions with that boy.

Super Hero Status

So I've only had a blog for a few days, and now I have been elevated to Super-Hero status.  Yes that's right, due to the power of the Internet my cover as semi-mild sometimes aggravated mannered enterprise architect has been blown.  I don't know how they did this, but someone got video of me doing superhero stuff and posted it on the Internet with a very cool soundtrack.

I don't know how long the video will be up, but now that I have been outed I figured I should share the footage with all of you:  

Brian the Superhero

My First Crack at the Blogging Thingy

Welcome to another blog site.  It seems that these days everyone has their own blog, and I’m not exactly sure why.  Are all these people so important they need to have their opinions posted to the world?  If you read enough of these you’ll quickly see importance is not the answer.  I think maybe it’s just a glorified public journal.  Give everyone a chance to feel their 15 minutes (in Internet time it’s more like 15 seconds).  Or maybe there are just a ton of failed or wannabe authors out there happy for a writing outlet.  This is about as deep as this blog ever needs to get.  I wonder this makes me a failure, a wannabe, or a glory hound?

 

So why am I blogging?  Easy answer, because my wife said I should.  She believes I throw just enough wit and common sense around our house that it might occasionally make for some interesting reading.  Plus we have friends and family all across the US (and a few outside of the States) and maybe it might be nice for them to check in on what Brian and “his brood” are up to.  So here I am, as a general rule if the wife says it’s a good idea, I try and comply.

 

A [very] little bit about me:

I was born a poor black child in Mississippi…no wait that was The Jerk, let me try this again…

I was born and raised in Baton Rouge, LA.  Greatest place on Earth.  I love the food, the people, the activities (read:  parties), and the atmosphere of Southern Louisiana.  Growing up there was the second most influential factor on the man I grew up to become.  The most influence are my parents.  Great people from that great state.  I’m lucky to have two individuals I could look up to as a kid and still look up as an adult.  They still live in Baton Rouge along with almost all of my relatives and close friends.  I’m one of the only people in my family without the sense to stay put.  I went to LSU (I’m sure you’ll see a lot of “Geaux Tiger’s” info in the blog).  Some of the best six years of my life.  Too bad I only remember about three of them.  After that I joined the Army to see the world and play outside.  The Army sent me to Maryland and locked me in the basement of a building with no windows.  I got out of the Army after my four year tour and stayed in Maryland for another couple of years.  My government job there was fun, but I was too far North for my liking.  In search of warm weather and better food I moved to Houston, TX, where I currently reside.  Here in Houston I work as a consultant doing Enterprise Architecture work.  What the heck is that, you ask?  I’ll get to it one day.  Right before I left for the Army I met my future wife at JazzFest in New Orleans.  I wooed her during my Army training (what are more romantic than daily love letters about pushups, squat-thrusts, deep knee bends, and the exploits of sweaty men?) and she made an honest man out of me in 2001.  We have a wonderful life together and three fantastic kiddos.  I’m sure they will turn up in later posts along with stories, adventures, and pictures.  My middle child (three at the time) took the picture that adorns the cover of this blog.  He isn’t exactly Ansel Adams yet.

 

So what kind of blog is this going to be?  I’m not sure yet. Ever since I was young I was told I could spin a yarn.  This is probably true.  But I’m pretty sure it’s true because I exaggerate, embellish, and sometimes outright lie in order to make stories entertaining.  It also helps that I tell my best stories to people who have been drinking heavily.  I’m not sure how that will translate in print, but we will take a stab at it anyway.  You might want to settle into the blog after a high-ball or two.

 

Here’s what I’ll focus on, stuff on TV, stuff in the news, stuff we do with the kiddies, stuff in sports, stuff that I did once, stuff I might want to do, and stuff I didn’t think of yet while typing this sentence.  Got it?  That’s the best I can do for now, cut me some slack I’m a novice blogger.  No matter what we (and by “we” I mean “me” because none of you reading this have been any help at all so far) focus on in the blog you can bet I will include a healthy bit of sarcasm (I am embodiment of the lowest form of *insert noun here*) and an occasional nugget of insight, probably provided by my wife