Dwain Northey (Gen X)

In the fiscal year 2023, the federal government is estimated to spend $6.3 trillion, amounting to 24.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Each year federal agencies receive funding from Congress. The Department of Defense (DOD) had $1.80 Trillion distributed among its 6 sub-components.

According to my calculations, nearly 30% of our federal budget is on defense. Saying Defense gives us a false sense that this is keeping us safe, but we can all see the turmoil around the world and in our own cities, all this spending but is it really keeping us safe. The Biden administration is asking for $1.5 billion for Israel, Ukraine, and the border that is 1/2 of 1% of our total defense budget. Republicans are as usual against this because they can’t even keep their house in order. If America is a bastion of Democracy and has led the world in that arena since WWII ½% of our bloated defense budget seems like a small price to preserve democracy in the world.

Globally we spend Trillion of dollars killing each other, tens of thousands of dollars on bombs that destroy infrastructure that can only be used once. This seems like a huge waste of capital, spend on an efficient way to decimate something that will cost more to rebuild. These resources would be better spent on solving problems instead of creating them. The time and money we spend killing one another could have solved world hunger, created oases in the desert countries by efficiently desalinating water, made renewable energy cheap and efficient, but that isn’t in our nature.

Gene Rodenberry’s picture of a time when we explore without the desire to conquer seems to be a dream that will never come to fruition. We assume that if there are other world out there that they are violent because we are, our narcissism has us believe that other life forms haven’t evolved out of the violence that we perpetuate.

My hope is that one day that effort is made to help instead of harm, to grown instead of tear down. It’s a hope…

Feel free to respond to any of my post.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

  There are so many issues to deal with in the world it is difficult to know which should get considered at what level of importance. It really depends on where you stand on the stairs as to what you believe is most important.

  Issue, handling of classified information. If you have had no experience with anything in this order you have been living under a rock. Classified information does not just mean national secrets that may cause or stop a war, it also refers to corporate secrets that create huge amounts of profits or losses depending on if the secrets are kept or not. Businesses can suffer major layoffs or huge hiring booms and that means money gained or lost in communities and by private individuals. So if you compare a loss of classified government information to a monetary situation in the millions then it does become more important, at least to the average person.

  Issue, global warming. Living in some regions of the country allow you to have fairly consistent weather year after year. Other parts have very different swings with extremes in either hot or cold depending on the season. The areas of dramatic change are seeing things like the death of entire populations of some animal and plant species because they were not prepared to deal with such changes.

  Issue, Wars and the unnecessary pain and suffering that come with conflict. What are the conflicts about, greed A wants B’s oil, land, water, place in the sun. B does not want to share it as “be my guest, take whatever you want”. B may be willing to sell you the oil, rent you the land or the place in the sun but not out right give it to you, not good enough A wants it to be totally his so he will kill to get it. WAR. Another reason for conflict is not believing in the same God. How dare you not bow to our sacred Deity. He is the one true God and you must obey and follow or die. Nice choices. One variety of monkey has come up with a way to calm the situation and keep things peaceful, that is with sex, maybe mankind should take lessons.

  Issue, Birth Control, Seems such an odd thing to be bringing up when most of us thought this was a done deal a long time ago. We were wrong, as the Republican Party has once again brought this fight back to the table. They want all birth control removed from the US. Somehow the idea of sex without producing offspring does not seem right. They are preaching against it and campaigning against it as they did before and finding the leaders of these movements being caught in “John” stings. The simple truth is that it is another way to control and that is what that party is all about. There are very valid reasons for birth control, one is the size of the population of the world. It may not be in the propaganda material but the idea may be to make sure that birth control is encouraged in places where the population wears darker tans so that their numbers decline and make sure fairer skinned people do not practice birth control so that once again they can dominate the world. In the meantime they will continue to practice the archaic subversive laws that they have enacted and hope to enact on us.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I hate to insult clowns that is why I accentuated the miss spelling of with a K in every word that should be a C, and the KKK reference was not accidental.

The GOP has made their bed and now instead of trying to clean up their own mess they are coming out and placing the blame on the other side of the isle.

 ‘The Democrats are not voting to let the House get back to work.’ ‘If the Democrats would have just voted for McCarthy, we wouldn’t be in this mess…’   

Give me a break, the left voted to keep the government open while McCarthys’ own party brought a motion to vacate the Speakership, a rule by the way that they put in. No, the Democrats didn’t vote to save McCarthy and won’t vote to put Jim Jordan in that seat. It is not Hakeem Jefferies job to get the democratic caucus to vote to give the arsonist the match. We have offered to run the government like adults but that won’t work for the Greene, Jordan, Boebert wing refuse to do any kind of compromise governing, they would rather take their ball and go home than act like reasonable adults. So don’t give me the story that the Democrats have to step in and babysit the winy bitch party.

I am convinced that the disfunction the Republicans are displaying is a Feature not a Bug. They like disfunction, they relish it. In 1980 campaign for President, Ronald Reagan said, “The scariest works ever spoken are, ‘I’m here from the government and I am here to help.” That is the GOP mantra and every day they want to prove that government can’t work, and we should turn the whole country over to the corporations. Their collective campaign slogan should be, “Government can’t help, vote me in and I will prove it.” It is amazing the people that hate government but still want to be a part of it, I suppose it’s easier to burn it down from the inside.

A prime example of the party differences is job growth. The findings for private-sector job growth are even more striking: businesses have added jobs at a nearly 2.5 times faster rate under Democrats than under Republicans, on average. In fact, the private-sector job growth gap between Democrats and Republicans is even greater than the gap when including government jobs. The supposed fiscal conservatives record according to PolitiFact “Reagan took the deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. Bush 41 took it to $300 billion. Clinton got it to zero. Bush 43 took it from zero to $1.2 trillion. Obama halved it to $600 billion. Trump’s one term got it back to a trillion.” For those that aren’t old enough to remember Jimmy Carter, he served one term and handed Reagan a budget surplus.

The republican will have us believe that they have such a narrow margin in the house that they can’t get any legislation passed unless the democrats play ball. They neglect to mention the Nancy Pelosi had the exact same narrow margin and the republican voted against nearly everything but still the democrats passed a budget, the PACT act, help for veterans, I could keep going but I won’t.

The government is set to run out of money again in November if a budget isn’t passed and the Klowns can’t even decide on a driver. This tells me that this iteration of the Republican Party is not serious about governing and should be relegated to the minority until they can get their shit together.

Thanks for suffering through another rant.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Are we collectively on a path to ensure extinction of the Human Race? I am seriously asking this because with climate change and war we seem to be continually hammering nails in our own coffin.

The jury is still out over what killed the dinosaurs, was it a meteor, volcanic activity than caused plant life to die because eruptions blocked out sun light for multiple growing season that led to an ice age, there are lots of theories out there. I am going to hazard a guess than when the next intelligent species rises on this planet their archaeologist will determine that we killed ourselves. “they were so smart and so stupid at the same time” will be on the tombstone of humanity.

I am sure you are wondering why I am so morbid today… Well first off it is October 20^th, 2023, and it is 100°F /38°C here in Phoenix AZ that is not normal for this time of year. Our summer was the hottest on record and according to future predictions our steek of 110°F+ days this past summer is only the beginning of that nonsense, but to way too many, climate change is just a folly, nothing to see here. On the that front we are rapidly running out of water worldwide which is amazing for a planet that is 71% water but 95% of that water is in the oceans and not potable for human consumption. Nothing like dying from dehydration on a water planet.

The next item of contention on this blue marble floating through the cosmos is our constant desire to kill each other over a deity that no one can prove actually exists. We have genocide in Jerusalem and Iseral over a piece of land that they both consider holy, but can’t agree what prophet is the right one, Moses, Mohamad, Jesus, Aberham. Seriously they are all monotheistic and teach the same basic morality and from I have gleaned from the collected works of all these religions, ‘kill thy neighbor’ wasn’t one of the tenants.

Since man could walk upright, we have found ways to kill one another, maybe the ‘God’ that’s image we were allegedly created in was Aries the God of war or Hades who relishes in the suffering of others because the pledge to Love one another seems to be far down on the list.

I hope we figure this out but at the moment to don’t have high hopes, just hope that the next intelligent species has more sense than we do.

Sorry for such a dummer post.