Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

It seems that our representatives, some of them anyway, are again looking to reduce social security payments to make sure their rich friends do not have to pay any taxes. The fact that the majority of us live as pawns in a giant chess game is really a pain. When anything troubles the very wealthy, it is always the middle class and poor that are targeted to be the ones whose income is targeted to fix these problems.

In truth this group of congressional leaders would probably like to see the age to collect retirement raised to 70 with mandatory termination at age 69. Would not change the collection process, it would just eliminate the paying out process. 

We have lived to see a fair number of Star Trek innovations come to pass. Hopefully we will never have to deal with the one where everyone has to be put to death by a certain age. At present with the gun culture that we have going on and all the shootings that are happening on a near daily basis we will keep our population in check. Has anyone seen a news article that said X number of births recorded today with Y number of deaths natural and not so natural.?

Let’s have a look at targeted groups for reduced benefits. First start with the bottom rung, like do away with school lunches, next rung is welfare and help for the needy. Then we move on to the aged population and any help that may have gone in their direction, then veterans’ benefits, and if it were not for the people that served in uniform that lot of suit and tie bastards would not have a place to hang out and vote on these issues. Then we move on to the other social issue of social security because we are rich and don’t need it, so you don’t need it either. Beyond that we will stop building roads, taking care of bridges, providing help in the event of disaster and go have another drink with our elite buddies that do not want to pay taxes.

Every person currently serving or that has ever served in congress has made speeches and made promises and turned around and broken those promises. Many had good ideas, and a few may have really hoped that they could do some good, but because of party lines being what they are none of these people were able to accomplish much. If we put a bit of effort into talking to people on both sides of the house, we might just get something done, but we let the ranking members call the tunes and we are not allowed to cross that line for any reason.

The military is an autocratic society or was at one time. Current-day attitudes seem to be pretty open with not a great deal of respect for rank, or so it seems. The members of congress are all civilians, and their positions are titles that may require a bit of deference, but they should not have punitive powers over any other members. The reality of how they conduct themselves indicates that senior members seem to take a great deal of pleasure in bossing the junior members and do so regularly. The only ones that seem to run their mouths without engaging their brains and an ounce of common-sense wear MAGA hats.

Read a comic today that one character claimed to have gotten a letter from the government telling him he had used up his bad attitude credits and from now he had to be nice. What an idea. Would like to see the results be something like the film about a person that could never lie, that would be remarkable to say the very least.  Without telling fibs how do you answer the question, “Does this pair of pants make me look fat?”

Not everyone in the country has the resources to be self-sufficient and yet there are people that believe we all should be. Our cities are filled with more and more apartments and the hope of being independent from the marketplace is a fantasy. Some communities have garden spaces for use by local folks but again you are not going to produce enough to sustain life for very long in a small garden. Even people that have access to wilderness areas find it to be very time costly to hunt, fish, grow and preserve all that is needed to sustain. 

Farming is not easy and sometimes it is not very profitable or rewarding as man still cannot control factors such as weather. These days we have some very unusual swings in the weather that make trying to work around nature can be a bit of a problem. The point is that we are all dependent on each other whether you are at the bottom of the ladder or the top you are impacted by the same elements just maybe not to the same degree or intensity. 

It is hard to imagine that anyone sets out in life with the hope of failing so we all want to at least make some sort of mark and we all have the same destination ultimately whether we like it or not. So, the best we can do is to cooperate with each other, not get annal about our differences and celebrate our similarities.