Sheepville

There was never any doubt it would be raised, neither side wants the ship to sink on their watch. Even if they hadn’t done it we would have kept borrowing – this happened once in the past and we just borrowed past this “debt ceiling”. The only real question (that hasn’t been addressed) is what does the government do when no one will loan them money any longer?

First thing is simply that we won’t pay countries we owe money to – like China. If they stopped loaning us money, we have no reason to pay them back. What are they going to do, nuke us? They may not buy from us, but since our imports far exceed our exports, that would likely turn out to be a good thing for job growth in America.

Payroll. If you work for the government, do we really need you? Armed services will be cut down to protect our soil, but we won’t be in other countries trying to push our idea of democracy on them. Things like TSA that should have never been created in the first place will once again return to the hands of private companies and again create tax revenue instead of wasted tax dollars. The Post Office will once again have to charge you for what it actually costs to mail a letter – and stop delivering the mail a couple of days a week. About 80% of the customs and immigration people (are you one of the 4 out of 5 people in the ICE office that stand around all day and chat with nothing to do?) are going to lose their job. If you’re productive/needed for public safety and education, you will still have a job – if not, you’re toast.

Big corporation? Your lobbyist aren’t going to be able to help you anymore – you’re going to lose all those tax breaks and have to pay real taxes again. And if you moved our jobs to Mexico that won’t help, expect NAFTA to be repealed. You will either make here what you sell here (generating jobs that make tax-payers) or you will pay out the nose so much to sell it here that you either move the jobs back or lose your business to new start-ups here providing the same product. Things like farm subsidies that taxpayers are paying huge corportations now – expect to lose those as well.

Freeloaders? If you depend on the government for your food, housing, clothes, and transportation – You might have a problem. Until recent history people depended on friends, family, and their church for help – and pensions from companies they spent 20 plus years working for. Now there are third generation welfare families – and that’s a problem. Sadly crime will go up, tremendously. You can’t expect anything else when you cut off support from people that have never supported themselves. We got along just fine before WWII, I’m sure we can again.

This will happen, and it’s not very far into the future. The only question is when and the longer the build-up, the harder the fall when that time arrives.

A few years ago I had her sitting on a grassy field with a view of Seattle in the background as the main page of my blog. Tracy recently asked what happened to her when she saw the newest version of my blog, that she was so “me”. I never saved the original image I made so had to recreate it. No, original image not me, just enhanced by me from an original manga cartoon image I have that I scanned.

Growing up my mom could only fix two meals – deep fried chicken livers and chilli. I’m pretty sure the only side to those meals were Pillsbury canned biscuits. Needless to say my pallet was intimately familiar with the fast food joints growing up. First you didn’t have all of the size choices you have today, which really are nothing but a way for them to gouge more profit out of you. It used to be, “Would you like fries with that order” which one could politely respond with, “Did I ask for fries?” Now it’s, “Would you like to supersize that order and double the calories and fat” which most everyone responds with, “SURE!” Sizes used to be simple – small, medium, and large. Somewhere along the lines companies decided small was a bad word so started calling it regular. Others like Starbucks come up with misleading names like “tall” for their small. My first trip into a Starbucks when I moved to Seattle the conversation went like this:

Me, “I’d like a large coffee.”

Cashier (oh, excuse me, “barista”), “We don’t have large.”

Me, “You only have one size?”

Cashier, “We have tall, something or other, and venti.”

Me, “I don’t speak French, is the tall the largest one?”

Cashier, “No, that’s the smallest one.”

Manager overhears the word small and berates the cashier letting her know Starbucks does NOT have a small size.

Cashier blushing, “The something or other and the venti are bigger.”

Me, “So you’re telling me the other two are taller than the tall? Why not call the tall short then?”

Manager gasps and stares at me in distress making it obvious the word short is in the same company as small.

Me, “Okay, which one is the largest?”

Cashier, “The venti.”

Me, “That would be the one I want then.”

It took a few weeks for me to learn to say venti instead of large, but they eventually got me trained well enough to use one French word anyway. Another angle on the size – take Arby’s. We ate there a lot when I was growing up. When you got a roast beef sandwich you got a pile of roast beef in it. Now the only way you’re seeing a pile of roast beef is the picture, what you get is a measly amount that just sticks to the top of the bun when you pick it up. You’re just buying a bun and dressing made with lots of corn syrup and very little meat.

It’s just not the size either, quality has gone to the dogs as well. So much emphasis was put on “dollar menus” that to squeeze as much profit as possible out of that they had to sacrifice on the quality of the ingredients. And it’s our fault for allowing it – we could have said no to this by simply not buying it, but instead we were attracted to “cheap” like moths to a flame and we got what we paid for. IN-N-OUT Burger has been in business since 1948. Nothing frozen, all fresh ingredients, same basic burger/fries/shake menu (not a “salad” that has as much fat as the bacon cheeseburger) and yet after all this time they have so few locations compared to the standard “dollar menu” joints because people would rather pay for cheap instead.

Diabetes is an epidemic in the U.S. right now, and this is the biggest reason why. We don’t think about it – even knowing I had a family history I went for decades not making healthy food choices, and then one day you go to the doctor and find out you’re diabetic. I have only myself to blame for that. But what gets me the most is there are people in their early 20s and even teenagers that are reaching the diabetic stage it took me over 40 years to get too. We vilify smoking, but in a very short time our diet is going to be killing ten times as many people as smoking does.

I’ve taken down the regular website I did with Microsoft Expression last year and put this in its place for now.  The problem is I post rarely enough so making it more complicated using web design software really wasn’t a good idea.  I definitely don’t have the technical interest I did years ago.  I should try to import the Little Known Seattle Attractions I started there.