Just got home from my 8:00 A.M WW meeting and it was great!!  It is freezing outside, I have a miserable sinu infection and I still made myself go and boy, am I glad I did.  Lost another 2.8 pounds for a total of 14.2 pounds in just one month.  I can’t even believe it!! I amaze myself!!  Here I am sick as can be, it’s 20 degrees outside and I still got up to go.  I never would have done that a month ago!!!  I still am waiting to have my clothes hang, but it took months for them to get tight, so it will take months for them to hang!! Patience, it’s all about patience!!  I have all the patience in the world.  Spring starts in seven weeks and in seven weeks I will not have to hide behind heavy winter clothes.  I still may have to wear clothes with a “W” after it, but that’s okay, they will just be a smaller size “W.”  Then, when I am done with all my “W” clothes, I will either burn them or….. SELL THEM ON CRAIG’S LIST!! YES, THAT’S WHAT I WILL DO.  SELL MY ENTIRE WINTER WARDROBE ON CRAIG’S LIST AND THEN NEXT YEAR SELL THE SPRING AND SUMMER WARDROBE!! GREAT IDEA!!  Have a good weekend to anyone reading my blog!!

So, I woke up yesterday and every teacher’s dream came true- it was a snow day!! OMG!!! I was as excited as my second graders and then the excitement faded.  Why was I happy?  I was going to be home all day in a house full of food, snacks, chocolate ( in the freezer) and other temptations.  What was I thinking?  How was I going to make it through the day?  Snow days to me always meant baking chocolate chip cookies,  cooking a fattening dinner and lots of hot cocoa.  A day without those things?  What was one to do?  I planned the day.  I made my strategies and I stuck to them.  Breakfast, check.  Exercise, check.  Do some cleaning, check.  Watch a movie, check.  Make a yummy dinner, check.  Play online, check.  Catch up on phone calls, check.  Eat a healthy lunch, check.  Stay out of the kitchen, check.  Take a nap, check.  And before I knew it, it was time for bed and I had survived the day!! A whole day off, a wonderful day, a stupendous day and not once did I feel the urge to cheat!!  Miracles do come true!

And today, what made today great?? I was walking down the hall and two coworkers stopped me and asked if I was losing weight!! My first compliments!!  Yes, I screamed.  Yes, yes, I am!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I think they thought I was nuts!!  Those compliments felt better than any food tastes!!! I will remember that when I’m faced with another temptation!   I can, also, finally say that I am exercising and loving it!! (Okay, not loving it, but getting up at 5:30  A.M. and doing it!)  And that is all for today from a thinner Judy!!!!!

Right, you’re thinking what the hell is a motard? Well, much like my resume, accomplishments and friends, it’s something I made up. I don’t consider myself very PC at all. I admit to laughing at stereotypes and saying words I probably shouldn’t. So in this age of censorship, right wing religious fanaticism and closed-mindedness, I decided to do something about it. So instead of using a word someone would get slightly offended at, I made up my own. That way, nobody can get offended. I don’t want to hear someone whine that motard is some ancient Native American tribe, or holds some racial meaning. Motard is an offensive word that you can’t be offended by. Pretty smart, huh?

                OK, so I didn’t quite make up the word. The first time I ran across it, it was the name of a band. And I molded it into its original meaning of “idiot driver”. You can even see ‘motor’ in the word. Since then, like most words, its meaning morphed into any sort of idiot; idiot on the street, idiot at the bar, idiot in the mall. There are motards all around us.

                (For the record, there is some previous debate on the origin of the word. A cursory search on Yahoo reveals motard is the name of a motorbike, a Marine term, and a cross between ‘retard’ and ‘moron’. I won’t take credit for any of those, but it’s damn close to the last one. Plus I have documented use of motard from at least 7 years ago. If you can dig up the band The Motards, I will be glad to cut them in on some t-shirt money.)

                Motard is a flexible word. You can say things like, “John is such a motard” or “Stop acting like a motard”.  You can be ‘motarded’.  But perhaps it’s best to use a few examples to show the origin of motard. All of the below are true stories and have happened to me at some point.

                While in the toll lane waiting to pay the toll to go over the bridge, the car in front of me started backing up. Right into me. That is a motard.

                While waiting at a red light, the car in front of me backed up. Right into me. That is a motard.

                While driving out of the city, we were clearly struck from behind. Not that it was a high impact at all, but enough to jolt us. The car behind us immediately jumped out and sped off into the right lane. We jumped right behind him and I wrote down the plate. Upon seeing this, the driver pulled back to us, and asked us if there was a problem. “Yes,” I said. “Number 1 you hit us. And number 2, you are a motard.” Yes it was a Jersey driver, and no it wasn’t a female.

                There’s plenty more examples of motards behind the wheel. I am sure you’ve seen the driver in the left hand lane who suddenly has to cut across all the lanes to make a right. Anyone that drives 20 miles below the limit is a motard. Just the other day, I was coming down the street, doing the speed limit. From the shopping center in front of me, some guy pulls right out in front of me and proceeds to drive 5 MPH. All the while, he is physically motioning me to slow down as I am braking so as not to hit his bumper.  Play traffic cop somewhere else, but not in front of me.

                Motards drive at night with no lights on. Motards drive miles with the turn signal on. Motards can also perform their special brand of stupidity when they’re not driving, too. You’ve seen them in the parking lots, where they are taking up 2 spots. Or worse yet park in the handicapped spot. Unfortunately, modern science doesn’t agree with my contention that being a motard can count as being handicapped. Motards park in fire lanes, too, just so they can “run in” to the store for 20 minutes. Every time there’s a flood you can count on seeing at least 1 motard who ignored all the signs, and drove into 5 feet of water and got stuck. You know the firemen and cops can’t be happy. “Copy that, command, we got another motard stuck in the road. Yea, usual road, usual spot.”

                So please be safe out there. The motards are always out there. Usually right in front of you.

As of last Tuesday Barack Hussein Obama is no longer the President Elect.  He sits now the acting President of The United States and as his first call to action our President has decided to close GITMO.   Close GITMO?  As we the citizens of the great United States stare down the barrel of our economic future with our wallets open and the hopes and prayers that the loans our Government is demanding we tax payers make don’t leave our Country laying dead in a dark alley hemorrhaging from a massive head wound, our great President is freeing suspected terrorists.  While the Chinese Government stands over our bleeding corpse and its wealthy elite rifle through our pockets looking for any land, financial institutions and big business they may have missed when picking through what remains of our once great country we can all rest easy knowing everyone but the common man is getting bailed out and helping themselves to our wallets. 

From the Financial Institutions to Mortgage Companies to The Big Three Automakers to the largest Retail Chains, the companies and institutions we the people have relied on to provide jobs, dreams, stability and economic growth have failed us in their most basic of functions while getting rich on the average citizens inability to understand the interest rates we were agreeing to.  Greed was good in the 1980’s, but so was the United States’ ability to compete in a global market space.  The greed of the Unions, the greed of CEO’s and the greed of our health care system has driven up the cost of production which in turn lead to cutting corners in production, cutting corners in technology and turning a blind eye to it all.  This vicious cycle eventually lead to ‘Enrons’ and the like cooking their books to support lifetime benefits, inflated stock evaluations and the rising cost of their homes in the Hampton’s and the always expensive private jet fuel. 

And, as we, the great United States of America continued to create laws and legislation which provided the backdrop required to allow CEO’s to further line their own pockets and drive up the cost of living at a rate which was drastically faster than the increases in workers salaries the average worker is driven into a state of economic induced coma.  The rich have been raping the poor in our country and forcing their rules and their products down our throats at their determined price compounded by outrageous interest rates with no real concern for the long term impact this would have on the strength of our dollar and the psyche of the American public.

Red tape covers the United States and binds our hands behind our backs, strangling our ability to effect any true change.  By the time a US dollar reaches its intended recipient that dollar has been touched by so many hands, institutions and interest rates that it has declined to equal the value of a dime. And yet, here we are the general public sitting in a position where those who have used us and taken advantage of our trust are now telling us we are going to use our tax dollars to bail them out of their own graves.  The graves they themselves dug.  We are being asked to fund their corporate retreats, ensure they miss no payments on their G5 jets and ensure their children get Ivy League educations.  We are being asked in a way that we know the answer was already given and the question was merely a formality.

President Barack Obama has proposed a stimulus package which outlines a tax payer loan in excess of $825 billion dollars.  This comes just on the heels of a corporate bailout for mortgage, financial and auto institutions.  How thin can we spread our own money and what financial institution is foolish enough to back it?  The U.S. economy has become the dork at the school dance who stands in the back wishing it was as cool as the Peso.  While the Russian Ruble is getting a “swirly” in the bathroom stall of the mens’ room, the American dollar is doing its best to act cool in an outfit that is ten years old and two sizes too small.  The American dollar is that guy at the dance with black slacks, white socks and a bow tie.

The wealthy have their hands out and we, the ‘every day joes’ are reaching into our empty pockets once again to bail them out.  Mortgage companies made predatory, inflated, fluctuating loans to people who could never repay the debt and to people who in many cases could not understand the terms of the contracts they were signing.  Foreclosures have spiralled out of control as people removed equity from their homes to live lives they could never truly afford and mortgage companies raked in profits from loans that should never have been made.  Money was flowing like beer at a fraternity kegger and the only ones getting hurt were those of us too stupid to realize we were to proverbial drunk girl just waiting to be taken advantage of.  But, that all changed when the mortgage companies realized their loans had created an overflow of abandoned homes and defaulted loans with no buyers in site.

The Big Three auto makers have been creating inferior automobiles for the last two decades at a cost of per unit production three times higher than Toyota (Lexus), Honda (Acura) and Nissan (Infiniti).  Couple that with inferior products which are integrated technology that is on average five years behind that of their foreign competitors and you have a recipe for disaster.  But if you are a GM, Ford or Chevy Executive why worry?  The heartland of the American public would never turn on you, right?  The American public has, up to this point, been too stupid to realize they could buy a far superior machine at a moderate price point with unparalleled service, outstanding longevity, European elegance and up to date technology.  Why worry?  Well, the state of their own ineptitude and ’never change’ attitude has finally caught up with the Big Three Auto Makers and they now stand in front of Congress with their hands out.  What makes them worthy?

Financial institutions are no exception to the fate of the Auto Makers and Mortgage companies.  They too stand with their backs to their failures, their backs to their greed and their feet covering up the graves of those Average Citizens they so eagerly took advantage of, their hands out trying not to stare Congress in the eye and asking for a bailout.  I have yet to read an article outlining how the CEO’s of these desitute companies are diverting their own salaries into the health of their own companies.  I have yet to read an article about the Unions which demanded higher wages and lifetime benefits are now slashing their own dues and salary caps to ensure the health of the companies they rely on to stay employed. 

Greed is still alive and it is breathing better than ever.  There are trillions of dollars on the line for those who know how to act destitute enough to get it and have the power to demand a Congressional stage.  This is money we the taxpayers are being forced to shell out.  But, where do we go?  Who does the American taxpayer turn to?  Where is my bailout?  Where is the bailout for the people who have lost their jobs due to a recession brought on by the greed of the companies we trusted? 

Where is the helping had for the family who just lost their home and everything they own because their high school education didn’t provide them the backdrop needed to understand the Variable Interest Rates embedded in their mortgage.  There is no bailout for them.  That family who blindly placed its trust and its future in the hands of a greedy mortgage banker, a greedy title company and a greedy real estate broker is now living in a poorly made car the Big Three Auto makers want to repossess. 

What about unemployment, right?  Don’t be fooled.  Unemployement in most states is a sham.  In California Unemployment benefits max out at just under $500 per week.  After taxes that check is now $325.  How far does that go?  Would $325 per week pay your mortage/rent and your car payment, your utility payment and your car insurance and still put food on the table? I highly doubt it, so you are out on the street suffering from the ills of a recession you had nothing to do with.  And, while major corporations like AIG are getting bailed out of their financial troubles and enjoying massages on corporate retreats all on the taxpayers dime, the taxpayers themselves are left to wonder how long they can survive before the company they rely on to live goes out of business and they themselves are jobless and homeless.  There is no stimulus package for the average citizen. 

The true stimulus package is designed to bail out the very companies who put our country in the crapper and is being handed out by the very same government who pulled the handle and flushed us down the drain.  With $600 checks being proposed as a way to stimulate spending the chatter in the room isn’t from optimism it is from laughter at the thought that $600 would some how quell the uncertainty we all face.  The buzz in the room is from the fact that just behind that $600 check is the school bully wearing an Tax Refund I.O.U. shirt and staring at the fleshy part of our $600 check’s exposed earlobe and licking his lips as he is about to flick that earlobe and laugh as we cry out in pain.  The stimulus package promises the creation of jobs, but those jobs will come much too late for most of us.  Those jobs are the life preservers thrown in long after our heads have gone under water.  The American public is drowning while the lifeguards are chatting up hot chicks and laughing in our frightened faces. 

President Obama has positioned himself as the voice of hope and change.  Our President has begun to draw a line in the sands of accountability and fiscal responsibility however he is only handing out money to those who already have it and to those who have the ability to stand in front of Congress and demand a financial rescue.  You, your family, me and my family and every other citizen who winds up a casualty of this financial war has no one to turn to.  We have no bailout.  We have no financial lifeline to call on.  We only have the feeling of hope President Obama was elected on.  But, hope doesn’t put food on the table or heat your home during the winter. 

Analysts are now looking at America’s past and how this great country we call home clawed its way out of the Great Depression as a benchmark for the growth of the future.  However the Houdini act we pulled off in the past was driven by war and supported by manufacturing processes now handled by automated lines and unmanned machines.  Men no longer pop rivet sheet metal by hand.  The days of American Muscle and American Ingenuity now sit on the same museum shelf as VHS tapes.  The American Drive, Spirit and Backbone has been weighed down by Whopper lined, bloated bellies and sprinkled with a sense of entitlement, a litigious attitude, a lack of education and an ‘it’s all about me’ sense of being. 

American company’s move their operations outside of our country because foreign governments provide incentives to open up shop in the forms of tax breaks per employee hired, subsidized building and a more educated work force due to the fact that college educations are free in most European countries.  I see the drive and determination in Obama’s eyes and in the way he carries himself.  I see his confidence piercing the night sky, but I do not see how the average schmoe is going to keep his home or keep his job.  I do not see online applications for citizens to get their piece of the stimulus pie.  America is the Titanic.  We have hit the iceberg and the wealthy elite are filling the lifeboats while the laborers and wait staff are left to tread water in the icy Atlantic Ocean as the Captain of our ship assures us help is on the way.  The real tragedy lies in the fact that they help will come far to late and only end up helping those who already have the ability to help themselves. 

At some point in the near future we may all realize it wasn’t our own banks backing our dollar as we made these loans to ourselves, but a foreign governemnt we should have been keeping our eye on.  And, my advice to us all is learn Chinese because our debtors will soon come to call and when they do they won’t be speaking English and sporting a waistline larger than 33.5 inches is grounds for ‘re-education’.

YOU HEARD ME!!

www.rdadslife.com

It’s all the rage these days; talking about the high cost of pharmaceuticals and the evil drug companies. We are forced to give our hard-earned dollars to gigantic corporations and insurance companies so that we can manage our blood pressure, depression, ADD and HD children, and our erections. Billions of dollars spent on drugs that don’t work, cause debilitating side-effects, and force people to live in poverty. Yet a rising number of people in this country are willing to swallow the most expensive pill ever formulated. It’s going to cost us jobs, industry, and billions of dollars and it will grind our economy to a halt. We won’t need a prescription or any particular illness; we won’t even need water to swallow it. I am talking about the global-warming pill.

We are constantly bombarded with “green” adds and the message of inevitable, catastrophic destruction of our planet under the boot heel of our carbon footprint. Most of our ills will magically disappear if we just listen to our Earth. It wants us to drive hybrids, and build wind farms, and purchase carbon credits. Only we, and our devine egos, can save the planet from a fiery death. Massive storms, melting ice, and starving polar bears are just some of ways the Earth is warning us of our impending doom. Almost every natural occurrence (and so-called disaster), even though they have been around for billions of years, can be attributed to our (relatively) short-lived existence and the effects of global warming.

Accurate and steady temperature records have only been kept for about the last 150 years. In that 150 years our planet has seen population, industrial, and technological growth like never before. We have altered the course of rivers, cleared lands of forest, and unleashed nuclear weapons. But as hard as it is to believe, we have never altered the temperature of this planet. We may have affected local temperatures in and around our biggest cities, but not the entire planet. Though hard to imagine, there is something out there much bigger than us; bigger still than our collective egos. Something even greater than the love we express by hugging fur seal. A universal force of almost limitless power and unbridled energy; it’s known as the sun.

The sun is the single largest contributor to our planet’s temperature and consequent unending cyclic temperature changes. Why is this fact so hard to accept? Because we cannot change it. Regardless of how many CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards we enact or loads of laundry we dry on clotheslines. There are factors in this universe that will not yield to our presence or lack thereof. Solar cycles are one example.

Solar cycles are recurring cycles of sun spot activity. Solar cycles last an average of 11 years according to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, and have been observed almost as long as the telescope has been around. These cycles reflect the increasing and decreasing number of sunspots that appear in the sun’s atmosphere. Sun spots are closely associated to solar flare and magnetic field anomalies. The beginning of one cycle (or the end of the previous) is marked by a minimum of sunspots while the middle of the cycle is determined by a maximum of sun spot activity. Temperature changes on Earth can also be tied to solar cycles; as sunspot activity increases, so does the temperature due to solar-flare activity, and vice-versa. As a matter of fact, when man started recording sun-spot activity (about 1600), the Earth was in the middle of the “Little Ice Age” which lasted about 250. Concurrently, sunspot activity was at minimum during that time (referred to as the Maunder Minimum).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dismisses the “Little Ice Age” as merely a mild change in global climate, about one degree Celsius. The IPCC and Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, remember? This is the organization set up by the United Nations Environmental Programme and World Meteorological Organization, and was instrumental in the implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which lead to the Rio De Janiero Summit and Kyoto Protocol. Try saying that three times, fast. What’s ironic (or moronic, depending on your take) about this, is that this same group has labeled our current global climate change (less than one degree Celsius) a crisis.

It is no mystery why the planet undergoes temperature changes. And we are destined to see them in the future. We are currently in the transition period between solar cycles 23 and 24, which means that sun spot activity is at, or near, minimum. It has also been documented that the last few winters have been setting record-cold temperatures around the globe. Surprised? Probably not, because it has all been attributed to global warming. Realistically (that means ignoring the global warming hoax) we can count on colder temperatures for the next 5-7 years, followed by a warming trend; playing the odds established over the last 300 years, and the Farmer’s Almanac.

Our new president gave his ideas on global climate change this morning (January 26), and our collective need to squelch it. He is going to save us all by investing our money in “green” technologies and fuel-sipping autos, while leading us all into a world free of gas fumes and economic despair. We can all revel in the fact that it will be paid by the prescription we have so willingly filled, and the pill we so blindly swallow.

There are few subjects that incite passion as does discussing the economy. The United States is in a world of hurt and sinking fast and no amount of money can save us. But just maybe… there is a way.

Think back ten years, or fifteen, to when Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, Westinghouse, GE and numerous other large companies announced that they were building plants in other countries and closing the ones in the US. Remember NAFTA was supposed to level the playing field and help Mexico deal with its unemployment. Remember China was given “favored nation” status by Reagan as his next to last act as president. He later pocketed a $2 million speaking fee in that country, for a 45-minute speech.

As a nation, we import more goods than we export (arms and weapons is not included), giving us the largest trade deficit in history, and its still growing. How did we allow this to happen? because the manufacturing lobbiests have a lot of money to throw around and did. They bribed our Congressmen into passing the legislation, selling out America for a few dollars. It was the American people who suffered as jobs were sent overseas, to India, Philippines, Cayman Islands and other countries. Millions of Americans lost their well-paying jobs.

There are several things we can do, if Congress would just get off their collective, lazy butts, to reverse this. Number One would be to tax any American corporation having plants in another country until they scream from the pain in their accounting department. Levy a tarrif on any product imported, any product. Only reduce that tarrif by the amount that that same country imports from the US. Don’t give tax breaks to companies for simply being in the US, tax them the full amount. If they want to lower their expenses, try automation but retrain those put out of work.

Even as we struggle, more than fifty countries still get a handout from our Treasury; its called foreign aid, or economic aid, or by some other name but it all means the same — free money from us. Slam the checkbook closed, put a padlock on it and let those countries fend for themselves, let them develope their own economies and sustain themselves. Israel alone receives $3 billion a year under a number of different programs, all at the first of the budget year, unlike other countries who have it spread out over the year. We wouldn’t need to send half a billion dollars to Mexico to fight their drug war if we simply closed our borders and used the military to patrol the air and sea lanes. We have agencies knowledable in patroling our states, let them do their jobs. Enforce the drug laws we have on the books and put the drug dealers out of business for good.

Make it worthwhile for Americans to buy American, appliances, cars, homes and groceries at reasonable prices, not extortion prices. Control the pay of executives, no man is worth $35 million a year for the title of CEO, control the amounts banks can charge on accounts (hidden fees are a killer) and regulate the business practices of brokerage firms but most of all, rid ourselves of the Federal Reserve. The FR is just bankers controlling the flow of money, and getting rich doing it.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? All we need is a president and Congress with the backbone and courage to do it. Will it happen? Probably not.