Garden Surprises

Firebush Berries with Gold Frog and Wasp

 

Zebra on Red Penta–Too Easy

The object of my photography hunt, a beautiful orange and white butterfly, did not cooperate. The zebra was all too willing, as usual.

The gold frog was a surprise as I focused in on the ripe berries. Then nature piled on as a wasp moved into the frame. Sometimes you win.

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How Much More in Your Pocket?

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Joe the Plumber Lesson

We are missing the real lesson of Joe the Plumber, the citizen who asked a question of Obama at a rally. He wanted to know how an Obama tax increase to taxpayers making over $250,000 would affect him when he buys the plumbing company he is working for.  A simple question that has become a new game called “Kill the Questioner.” The Google engine heated to fiery red immediately after the report aired. We soon learned Joe had no plumbing license, made only $40,000 (How could he afford to buy a company, we were asked.) and owed personal taxes to the state. Keith Olberman even did a six-degrees-of-separation search that placed “someone with Joe’s last name” as a cousin of Charles Keating of S&L fame.  

Courtesy The Inquisitor

 

 

So what is the real lesson? This is it. If you attend a rally, town meeting or ask a question at a debate, be very, very sure all your parking tickets are paid, your alimony is up to date, you scrubbed your computer of X-rated sites you visited last week, watch only PBS, listen to classical music and don’t pick your nose at the traffic light. I jest — but in truth. The REAL lesson is DON’T QUESTION AUTHORITY. Got it?

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Whiny, Pathetic, Ungrateful Seniors

MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics writer says Social Security checks are going up $63 a month for the typical retiree — the largest increase in more than a quarter century but likely to seem puny to the millions who have been watching in horror as Wall Street lays waste to their retirement nest eggs.

 

He goes on to say the Senior Citizens League said (doesn’t he believe them?) it did a study that indicated people 65 and over have lost 51 percent of their buying power since 2000, with the price of home heating oil and gasoline more than doubling since the beginning of the decade and such food staples as eggs and potatoes showing big increases as well.

 

Well, I guess seniors were the only consumers to face these increases for eggs and potatoes, heating oil and gasoline. How does that work? You’re under 65, you get a discount? Oh, I forgot. You get a discount all over the place if you are AARP age. Don’t forget 10% off Mondays at TJ Maxx, Tuesdays at Marshalls (or vice versa).

 

If Crutsinger has really taken the pulse of seniors, what a bunch of whiny, ungrateful, wrinkled old buzzards there are out there. We are talking 5.8% increase. How many younger workers do you know who got that kind of raise this year? (Excluding CEO’s of failed, bankrupt and bankrupting companies)

 

Yes, those felonious Wall Street crooks laid waste to retirement eggs, including ours, but who are we to expect hard working, young wage-earners to make up the difference? Their 401-K’s got battered, too.

 

So if you are a senior, stop your sissy, pathetic whining and enjoy your 5.8% raise by spending it where young workers who are contributing to the Social Security fund every working day will get a little benefit back. Maybe with the new money circulating around next year a few of their tedious, grinding jobs will be saved. It’s the least you can do.

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