The next Great Depression

Who remembers the Great Depression? Neither do I. But everyone else does and they seem to believe that 12 years of gov't spending and gov't programs is what got us out of the Great Depression. And that seems to be our gov'ts plan today. Spend spend spend spend spend. Somebody, anybody, please explain to me how spending hundreds of billions of dollars we don't have is going to help us get out of debt. Somebody convinced Obama and all of the Democrats and many of the Republicans. Somebody convince me.

I'm tired of hearing that the Free Market failed. Really it did? When? When in any of your lives has there been a Free Market?

There can be no Free Market as long as there is gov't intervention and regulation. Gov't intervention has been growing since the Civil War. FDR accelerared the process and it's been getting worse ever since. Read 1984 written in the late 40's (I think). There are many that saw it coming, but we are the frog in the hot water that can't see that it will soon be boiling us alive.

A wise man once said, "There is nothing new under the sun". History always repeats itself and those who don't study history are doomed to repeat history. Why we got here is easy to explain. Where we are going is easy to see. How we survive the ride in tact is the question? Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

In the beginning.......... well, isn't that where we are now?


When I started wrting this I thought I was gonna ramble on for hours... but alas, I just don't feel like it. Off to watch LOST.

Buy or Rent

Until recently I was seriously considering buying a house. But there is really only two reasons to buy a house and I'm not sure I meet either of the two criteria. The two reasons you buy a home are
1) You intend it own it long term as your family home
2) You intend it to be a rental unit.

I have no intention of spending the rest of my life in LA so option 1 is out. So what about option two?

Option 2 isn't as sure fire as it may seem. Even with the housing market approaching a 10 year low, there is no guarantee it won't crash even further. If the economy continues to tank to a level that no one can afford the "rent", than I'm stuck.

And since Congress and our beloved President are doing everything they can to prolong and deepen the recession, I have no faith that the economy will hold out enough to pay me rent.

I guess that leaves me a renter for now. At least that means I'm not tethered to any one place.

Peter Schiff on our economy

If you want to know why we are, where we are, listen to this. It's long, but he spells it out for you.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3915119166991168859

40%

FYI of the 4.3 million babies born in 2007, 40% were born to unwed mothers.

I fell into a burning ring of fire

I've had this song stuck in my head since last Saturday. For the first time in two years (basically since Caleb was born) my wife and I went on a date. We joined up with a friend of mine at City Walk at Universal Studios and spent an evening in a piano bar drinking, singing and watching people make fools of themselves.

In retrospect, I wish we had done something a little bit quieter. But it was good to go out. Our next date? Will most likely be our anniversary. Look at 3 days and 2 nights in a quiet little mountain town called Idyllwid. Hiking, picnics, jacuzzi's, good food, critters and of course each other with no kids.

And then movie night.

Daylight Saving Time (DST)

Today I should be at church. Instead I'm at home writing you, dear reader. Why? Daylight Saving time. Both me and my wife forget to change the clocks.

So I decided to look up how we came about this crazy habit of changing time.

Long gone is the day when the farmer woke to the rooster's crow and slept when the sunset, or the days of the sun dial where time was always based upon daylight hours and thus naturally adjusted throughout the year.

Now we live in a calculated time where we live by the clock which is based upon scientific study of how long a second, minute, hour, day and year should be. And so we stopped living by natures clock (the sun) and started living by man's clock (big Ben).

So Big Ben Franklin came up with the notion of Daylight Saving time, though at the time nobody listened to him. In a society that lives by the clock, who lives North of the equator, nature changes daylight for us. So is it wise to live like Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and until 2005, Indiana? Or is it better to send ourselves into self induces jet-lag for the sake of daylight?

The argument for Daylight saving time is twofold.

-We waste daylight if we don't adjust the clock an hour

-We save a whopping 1-2% in energy cost

Indiana used to be divided on the issue. Western Indiana practiced Daylight Saving Time and Eastern Indiana didn't. In 2005 a new law changed that and the whole state no practices the changing of the clocks. A study of the Energy used before and after the time change law show an increase in energy use after the change.

Now the "experts" argue that this finding won't be true of all areas (trying to retain their dignity in proclaiming the energy savings). Now I concede this may be true, but it is also true that the notion of DST being a universal energy saver is a false notion.

And so we are left with the "it is a better use of daylight" argument.

I personally think we would do just as well to spend an extra hour in darkness in the mornings of winter than to juggle our clocks twice a year. Most of us Angelino's are driving to work at that time anyway. This would afford us and our children that extra hour in the evening for outdoor time. And I wouldn't be sitting here at home, researching the beginning of this national if not global phenomenon.